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CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE OF
CHRISTIAN LOVE.

A SERMON,
PREACHED ON THE
FEAST OF S. JOHN THE EVANGELIST,
MDCCCXL,
AT ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, BRISTOL,
IN AID OF A NEW CHURCH
TO BE ERECTED
IN AN OUTLYING DISTRICT IN THAT PARISH ;
WITH A PREFACE
ON THE RELATION OF OTJK EXERTIONS TO OUR NEEDS.

REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
vvv
RF.G-HJR PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH,
LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE.

Published by request.

OXFORD,
JOHN HENEY PARKER;
J. G. F. AND J. RlVlNGTON, LONDON ;
STRONG, BRISTOL; LANE, CLIFTON.
1841.

BAXTEB, PRINTER, OXFORD

PREFACE.

The following Sermon is published, as it was preached,
if it may, in any way, aid in increasing the impulse, of
late given to Church-building, and to self-denying charily,
as shewn therein. In the exertions which have been made
in this necessary work, during the last years, there is much
reason, as in the restored Temple after the Captivity, for
joy and thankfulness, still more for sorrow and humilia
tion : joy, that God is bringing back some few wanderers
into His fold, out of the captivity of Satan ; sorrow, that
for each hundred restored, tens of thousands are, through
our neglect, still wandering in the pathways of death ;
joy, in that in these exertions, inadequate and imperfect
as they have been, we may see " the good hand of our
God upon us11 rousing us from our past listlessness, and
leading us forward to increased performance of duty, of
which we may trust that the present beginnings are but
the dim morning-dawn; for sorrow and humiliation, in
that, as a nation, we have so little profited either by
mercies or by warnings, and have fallen so short of the
stirrings of His hand. And unless we humble ourselves,
there isjg.ttle hope that God will raise us up to do deeds
more worthy of our Christian Name. Boasting of
our new Churches, our deeds and contributions, blinds
ourselves, and must be displeasing to Almighty God.
New Churches, if we were indeed faithful, would be
a2

4 PREFACE.
an ordinary daily sight, (for it was calculated long
ago that to provide for our increasing population alone,
omitting the deep debt already contracted, a Church
should be built daily,) so ordinary a sight, that it would
be rather strange not to see them rising. As it is, the
sight should humble us, because it is its rareness which
makes each new Church a source of so much gladness.
We have been mixing too much self-gratulation with the
rightful joy, that something has been done among us for
God's glory and the souls of men ; all works of duty and
mercy have their allotted joy : yet more may it be a joy,
if in this renewed anxiety to fulfil on a larger scale for
gotten duty, we may venture to recognize the tokens of
our Master's Countenance, looking graciously upon this
portion of His Church, and by His look, quickening it.
Yet such as we have been and are, that Look rather bids
us " Repent and do our first deeds," " remember whence
we are fallen," than imparts the bright joy of those who
have not so fallen ; it is a gracious Look, bestowed, we
trust, upon us as upon St. Peter, recognizing and restoring
us to be an Apostolic Church, as him to be an Apostle;
but not until, with him, we have " gone out and wept
bitterly." We are apt to speak of the neglect of our
immediate forefathers, of the slumber of the last century,
of their neglect3 to provide for the growing population, of
their leaving to us their task and burthen to bear as well
as our own; and, because we are doing something our
selves, we contrive to hide from ourselves that we are
rehearsing the same sad tale of neglect and listlessness
a Yet in those times, one Nobleman, of whom the author knows,
built four village Churches, one very handsome, and four parsonage
houses : has this individual exertion, though now happily re-com
mencing, been so common among us, that we dare take on ourselves
to judge those times ?

PREFACE. O
and indevotion ; if they were losing ground, so are we ; if
they were allowing the wants to accumulate, to be sup
plied (if at all) by posterity, so are we; if they were but
little aware of the extent of the deficiency, and did (as it
is alleged) well-nigh nothing, we do but little, though we
have not even their excuse ; we know, complain, of our
wants, yet set ourselves not in earnest to remove them ;
" spiritual destitution" is become a current phrase, yet
while we acknowledge thereby both the misery and duty,
we remedy it not_: if they threw the duty upon the State,
and shielded themselves under its neglect, we acknowledge
that the State will not help us, and yet put not our
shoulder under the yoke to help ourselves. If they were
asleep, we are but like persons in their first waking,
unconscious of what is going on around us, whether we
are going backwards or forwards, making uncertain un-
stedfast motions here and there, and thinking and telling
people that we are awake, because we have ceased to be
fast asleep. We may indeed trust that it will yet be well
with us, if this awakening end in our being awakened ; yet
if we comfort and congratulate ourselves on our present
state, it is too like the voice of the sluggard, " A little
sleep, a little slumber, a little more folding of the hands to
sleep, until poverty come as one that travelleth, and want
as an armed man."
The powers of evil are awake, ever on the watch ;
we see their stirrings, the musterings of their hosts ; we
feel their approach, their very breath ; we speak with
terror of Chartism and Socialism ; we feel that in the
heathen population of our places of manufacture or our
mines, there is a moral contagion generated, polluting our
atmosphere, choking our breath, and greater than we can
know of or conceive : our ills are the greater because we
know not what to look for, what form they may assume,

b PREFACE.
and so also, what form they may not assume ; when and
how they may not start up upon us ; we know that they
are withheld by no visible might, but by an Unseen Hand,
yet betake not ourselves in earnest to find protection
under the shadow of That Hand ; we speak currently
and familiarly and even well, of an approaching conflict
of the kingdoms of Light and darkness, of Christ and
Belial, and yet arm not ourselves in earnest for the battle,
nor seek to Him Who alone can avert it. We seem like
those of old, who were " eating and drinking, marrying
and giving in marriage, until the day when Noe entered
into the ark, and the flood came, and swept them all
away." Meanwhile, we are congratulating ourselves, as if all
were now right ; we hear here and there of plans of ten
Churches for some vast town, or fifty for our Metropolis,
which is one ninth of our whole people; and, unaccustomed
to the like, think that all will now be well ; or a fund
is raised by instalments for successive years, and the sums
so subscribed make a fair show ; and in this we rest ; the
effort is made, and we contemplate it and ourselves in it as
though we might account ourselves charitable or safe, and
had done not only enough, but a work of supererogation,
(so much we seem to admire it,) in having done one deed of
Christian charity for the relief of the spiritual starvation
of millions ; (as though having done a duty once, were
a reason for having done with it, instead of persevering in
it;) meanwhile, year by year glides by unmarked; the
Churches are slowly raised ; and long before they are
finished, the growing population has far outstripped our
lagging steps ; the giant growth of our numbers, though
silent, stops not ; it makes not one effort, like our contri
butions, and then stands still ; it rests not, day nor night ;
undiminished by foreign war, and as yet by domestic

PREFACE. 7
sedition, unvisited by God's immediate scourges of famine
and pestilence, it swells upon us, year by year, a mighty
torrent of human souls, gathering fresh strength every
where, enlarging every instant, in well-nigh every place,
unheard, unheeded, but unceasing and universal, and
growing almost visibly under our eyes, if we would
but mark it ; pent in as yet within the bounds of human
law, and stilled by Him, Who " ruleth the raging of the
sea, and the noise of his waves, and the madness of the
people," but ready to burst forth and overwhelm our
land, if ever He should withdraw His merciful " Hitherto
shalt thou come and no further ;" and while we might
fence it in, and conduct it on safely to eternity's endless,
boundless, ocean, through the widening channel of the
Church, we neglect it. Year by year, we may have some
few thousands more inclosed within the Church ; yet year
by year we have also fresh tens of thousands shut out from
her ; more Christians, yet far more Heathen also ; more
light, yet increased darkness. And who then is to
guarantee to us that this growing darkness shall not
extinguish the light, which we ^are at so little cost and
pains to keep alive ? or, if we have still hope in God's past
and present mercies to our Church, that our " candle
stick" shall not be " removed," nor our " light put out in
obscure darkness," where is our pledge that we shall not
be left alone, as " an ensign on the top of the mountains,
or a beacon on a hill," a monument at once of God's mercy
and His wrath, kept alive, like His former people, " for
the fathers' sake," yet widowed of all those children, whom
God " begat and nourished up" for us, but whom we have
failed to keep for Him ? It is painful to quote solemn
words, lest they prove our condemnation, and we be
" bearing witness" and passing sentence against ourselves ;
vet what is this but attesting that we are the children
of the fathers, whom in words we condemn, and in deeds

8 PREFACE.
we imitate, so far from repairing the negligence we con
demn in them, that we fail in our duty as they failed in
theirs ? Why, then, unless we repent and apply ourselves
more earnestly to our duties, should it not be said to us,
" Truly, ye allow the deeds of your fathers ;" " fill ye up
then the measure of your fathers, that on you may
come" — one shrinks from giving any conclusion to these
words, but that they may not fall upon us, and that the
blood of those, whom we leave to live and die as Heathen,
be not visited upon us, we have much need of more
faithful self-denying exertion.
But how old are we, that we should be speaking of the
sins and neglect of our forefathers rather than of our own?
Are we or they responsible for what took place between
1811 and 1831? or if the generation immediately before
us were united with us, are we free? In those twenty
years, we, for the most part, were living, acting, hearing
what went on around us, and God's word exhorting us by
our hopes and our fears, by God's love and His wrath, to
have mercy on Christ's poor, nay, we were ourselves
praying for the coming of His kingdom and the doing of
His will, before we prayed for our daily bread or the
forgiveness of our sins ; we were praying daily or weekly
for His Church, for "our Bishops, Curates, and the congre
gations committed to^their charge :" and yet in these same
twenty years, notwithstanding two parliamentary grants,
amounting to £1, 500, 000,'- while the increase of the popu
lation was nearly 4,000,000, the increase of church-room
was but 500,000": that is, on the lowest and most
inadequate calculation, in those twenty years, there were
added to our people two millions and a half of undying
souls, for whose salvation no provision whatever was made
by a Christian state, or an Apostolic Church; two
b Report of Windsor and Eton Church Union Society, 1839, quoted
in British Critic, No. 54, p. 468.

PREFACE. 9
millions and a half were added to the sins of our immediate
forefathers; mostly, in name as well as in life and in vices,
Heathen, and perhaps less miserable, because they were
so, but, except as so far as God's love may, by a dis
pensation secret to us, undo the effects of our want of love,
left to perish for ever. These were our deeds ; those
whom in those twenty years we left to be added to
the existing Heathenism, were equal to one fourth of
the whole population of England before them. Whatever
then we may since have done, or be doing, were it ten-fold
what it is, those twenty years, — in which not our fathers
only, but we were involved, — saw a phasnomenon, the like
of which, for its frightfulness, was never seen in any
Christian Church since her beginning hitherto, from the
day that the Sun of righteousness dawned upon this
earth, — that, in the bosom of one Church, there sprung up
two millions and a half of Heathen; that, instead of souls
being " added to the Church," the scions of the vine
which God had planted here were left to grow wild ; the
offspring of our own bowels, the children of our own
Church, were shut out from her who is the image of
heaven, and who was the appointed instrument and Ark to
conduct us thither. The number of Heathen added to
the people in these twenty years was at the lowest estimate,
nearly twice as many as souls " added to the Church ;"
they were equal to one fourth of all who ought to have
been, or were gathered into the Church before them ;
one fourth of all who would have been refreshed under
her shadow, had she still retained the full blessing of
her God and Maker Who planted her and " filled the
land." It is difficult to realize this painful fact, that had all
England before been one Church, there has, within twenty
years, sprung up a nation within her, alien to her and often
hating her and the Gospel and the Light, equal in magnitude
to one fourth of what she was, before those twenty yearsbegan.

10 PREFACE.
This was what we left undone ; and what did we ? We,
nationally and individually, built, rebuilt, enlarged, re-
pewed, galleried Churches0, which our fathers built, —
and of this far the most in what cost the least, contriving
that the ancient structures which our fathers built to God's
glory, should, after in a way little seemly or favourable
to devotion, hold more worshippers — but in all these ways
together, we contrived to provide room for 500,000 addi
tional persons, grown people and children together; i. e.
on an average, for 25,000 in each year, and this through
out all the counties of England, and aided, alas ! one
must rather say, chiefly, by a grant of £1,500,000,
which because raised out of the general resources of the
nation, we none of us felt individually. Twenty-five
Churches containing 1000 each, — had they been so much
as this, whereas the room was chiefly gained by cheaply
re-adapting what our forefathers had bequeathed to us,
but had it even been gained by building new Churches, —
twenty-five Churches would have been the offering annually
made by this wealthy country, collectively and indivi
dually throughout its fifty-two counties ; one Church in
each two years would have been the quota furnished by each
c It was painful to see in former years in the Reports of the Church-
building Society, how small a portion of its contributions went to
assist in building new Churches; the most was employed in eking out
somehow by new pews, or galleries, or otherwise, those already exist
ing. And since in almost every new Church, the first consideration
was, how much of the burthen could be shifted off persons' own
shoulders upon that Society, it implied how few Churches were then
built. The last report of that Society acknowledges the fact, in speak
ing with thankfulness of a change. " Of the number of grants made
during the last year, it is satisfactory to find how large a proportion
[nearly half, the whole were 132] is for new Churches and Chapels,
amounting together to 58, a. number greatly above the average of
former years." In 1839 it was but 31 ; in 1835, but 27.

PREFACE. 11
County for His service, Who makes us this great and
wealthy nation. There are even sadder recollections than
this penuriousness, how in wealthy towns, because the
Parliamentary grant was to be made up by a rate within
itself, heart-burnings have been left to this day, and this
unhallowed strife about Church-rates had its birth in the
very little which was done to provide Church-room for
our Christian poor. And this notwithstanding that, one
must perhaps rather say, because, our money was multi
plied by, and in proportion to, our population. We were
gorged with wealth; we knew not how to employ it; every
wild scheme, which could be devised as a vent for it, and
to bring in some earthly return, was eagerly caught at;
we knew not what to do with it ; it yielded but little
interest, because there was so much of it, and so little
means of employing it ; and the only assured treasure-
house, the only safe interest which repays " an hundred
fold," we would not have; we would not lend it to
Almighty God, although we had His holy promise, " what
he layeth out shall be repaid him again," yea though
God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Who deigns
to be considered our debtor, promised to repay us Himself,
and His payment is Himself.
There should be then, even on this ground, an end, for
ever, of the boasting wherewith we compensate ourselves
nationally for our individual disclaimers of any merit or
intrinsic acceptableness of our good works, as though we
might safely take credit to ourselves for the sums which
we have raised for circulating the Bible in foreign languages,
and converting a few scattered Heathen here and there,
while we allowed a large nation of Heathen to spring up
among ourselves, unconverted, unnoticed, uncared for, and
sent out nations of heathens, in part with the worst vices
of the worst of Heathens, to colonize the world.

12 PREFACE.
But sad as those twenty years were, the last ten years,
which we may account wholly ours, are probably, in
respect of the actual increase of destitution, still sadder ;
and the denser the Heathen population becomes, the denser
must the darkness be, the less penetrated by the light
even of the surrounding Christianity, the more inaccessible
to it, the more hopeless, the more sinful, blacker in itself
and more threatening to us. It is said that " the evil has
been fearfully aggravated by the discontinuance of the
Parliamentary grant d." The disclosure, which the ap
proaching census will lay bare, is too probably one, from
which any thoughtful heart must shrink. In the metro
polis alone, not merely during the whole period, but during
the very years in which the Bishop of London's cheering
exertions were made, the destitution became greater than
before. Had the forty-one Churches, which are to be
completed through the fund hitherto raised, been already
finished, and so " 147,600 persons been brought within
reach of the ministrations of the Church and the pastoral
superintendence of her Clergy," " the actual extent of
spiritual destitution," we are told6, would be " greater now
than it was when the operations of this Fund commenced."
And yet this was an effort, which drew the eyes of the
whole Church ! it was begun and carried on upon a scale
larger than any of late years ; contributions were, from
their scale, more self-denying; God blessed the work, and
multiplied " the cruse of oil," although they who were
ready to pour it out, not now at a prophet's but at their
•Lord's bidding, were comparatively few. And if we were
losing ground in the very place where the chief exertion was
made, during the very years of that exertion, how must
the five barren years of the decennium " withered, thin, and
d British Critic, ib.
= Fourth Report of the Metropolis Churches Fund, p. 10.

PREFACE.

13

blasted by the east wind," in which " the famine was very
grievous," have " consumed the land ;" how must they
have eaten up the five — if for the earnestness' sake of our
Bishop and those who aided him, one may dare call
them — " good" years ! and if this were so here, what must
be the history of the whole compass of our unhappy land,
town by town, factory after factory.
Nor is this all, which these ten years have to witness against
us. We have been relieving ourselves of the pressure of our
population by a thoughtless system of colonizing, export
ing the members of our Church, as though they had
been sheep and oxen for the slaughter, not Christian men.
We have in Australia alone laid the foundation of what
in the course of a century will probably be four mighty
empires or, as we are now acting, republics'; but, if our
exertions be only such as they have hitherto been, four
Pleathen states, whether empires or republics, with a
weakly Church, keeping by God's mercy a seed of life in
her, a light amid the surrounding darkness, yet scarcely
such a light, as the Christian Church was in the times
f " There is the great Continent of New Holland, upon the shores
of which, north, east, south, and west, settlements are daily forming,
which in the natural course of events, and through the possession of so
many natural advantages, must in the course of a century or less
become the seats of so many flourishing kingdoms, or (as our rational
policy tends, I fear, rather to make them) republics. There is the
great island of Van Diemen's Land, which must form a separate and
most important member of the great confederation, growing by
accretion, like the coral reefs which surround us : there are the
islands of New Zealand recently added to the before inordinate
extent of this diocese ; and there are the multitude of the islands of
the Pacific clustering around, and from their position certain of being,
at no remote period, brought into our political vortex ; and under
some form of worship and discipline, to be included among the numbers
who profess the Christian faith." Extract ofa letter from the Bishop
of Australia.

14 PREFACE.
and in the midst of Heathen Rome, unless the Heathen
power, which our negligence is fostering, persecute the
Church, and she through suffering be purified by those
who might have been her children, and by suffering regain
some of those whom she might now retain with joy.
And now what is to be the history of the next ten
years, if ten peaceful years are allowed to our Church
and State without any intestine convulsion, which, earnestly
as we may hope and pray for, who dare promise ? Is there
hope but that iEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem ;
that the Heathenism which we have been engendering,
will not yield a more fearful death-crop? Amid much of
fear, there are some cheering signs ; some streaks of light
amid gathering darkness; but if we are to escape political,
it must be by a moral and religious, revolution ; a revolu
tion, not changing our Church, a word in her Liturgy, or
a phrase in her Articles, but changing us, conforming us
to her spirit, breathing fresh life into us, teaching us to
act up to her rules in the three great Christian duties,
prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and all which these branch
out into and include, dependence upon God, denial to
self, love to men ; — a revolution, " not coming with
observation," but wrought by that Blessed and renewing
Spirit, Whose " kingdom is within" us. Of a dawn of
that morning there are faint but cheering glimmerings ;
some, though among the rich they seem to be few, have
struck into the right path of self-sacrificing charity ; anony
mous gifts of £6000, £5000, £4000, and £1000, mentioned
in the Metropolis-Churches Reports, " furnish examples,"
as it says, " which it is hoped may be speedily followed."
It may lawfully be hoped, since our hope is not in man

PREFACE. 15
but in God : it is not whether the tide be setting in
rapidly or no, whether we be moving slowly and toilsomely
up hill or no, but in which direction we be going, up hill
or down it, whether the tide be ebbing or be turned.
At the turning, it will be scarcely perceptible which way
the tide is moving; but, so it have turned, the barren shore
will in time be covered ; dry and prickly is the plant,
which is the first token of vegetation and life among the
recovered sands, but it is a sure herald that where fresh
life has been infused, however meagre, flocks will one day
find pasture there ; we may be moving slowly, yet if the
eye is looking upwards, we may hope to reach our home.
But the very condition of our restoration is the acknowledg
ment of our deficiencies.
It is but the very beginning of a new course, upon which
we are setting out, fettered by the iron chains of evil
habits, universal to us; and as we could not have set out one
step of ourselves, no neither can we of ourselves add one
step to those we have taken ; much less, persevere to the
end. The course upon which we were, and as a nation,
still are, was preference of self to God ; the course, of
which we trust there are some slender beginnings, is the
preference of God to self. The habits of any luxurious
nation, like ourselves, are to spend largely upon self; self
is its idol ; " luxury," says Bishop Horsley, " renders
every man selfish upon principle ;" our own houses,
our grounds, if we have them, our own persons, tables,
furniture, equipage, attendants, are its first object; the
first thing to be regarded, that which is essential to us ; it
is taken for granted that these are to be provided with
" all that the soul lusteth after ;" no matter for expense
here, if the eye be but gratified ; nay in very wantonness,
people multiply things which no ways minister unto their
comfort, as when they cover their tables with prints, which

16 PREFACE.
scarce occupy a passing gaze, or with ornaments, which
they never regard, and which are an encumbrance. When
all these things have been heaped around, then people
think it a great thing, if some petty sum be spared to
Almighty God. It matters not, they in fact say, how mean
the buildings to His Great Name are ; ornaments in His
Temple, its architecture, its windows, its Altar, are waste;
they have discovered, — at least they act as though they
understood, — that the ways of the world and of the Church
should be different, and evince their sense of the difference
by sparing no cost or luxury upon self, and thinking
nothing too mean and poor for the service of their Maker ;
so many Churches are needed, that it is to be held wrong
to expend money upon ornament, on tower or spire ; it is
held out as an inducement to give that " the strictest
economy is to be observed ;" that " the sacred character"
is, at best, to be " combined with economy ;" it is made
a condition that nothing be " expended on superfluous
ornament ;" there are, it is said, so many calls, that
nothing beyond what is barely necessary should be em
ployed on each ; and people forget, the while, that" the one
ever-exhausting, unceasing, call, which dries up and drains
off all their charities, is self in some changing form of
luxury. The Catholic (i. e. the primitive, Apostolic) model upon
which our forefathers, amid partial darkness, yet acted,
was, preference of God to self. Austere to themselves,
they sought their glory in the glory of God ; their joy,
their glory, their happiness, was to see the holy pile, year
by year, rise heavenwards, although themselves hoped to
be translated to Paradise ere it was completed ; when reared,
they filled it with painted windows, that no object of the
outward world might intrude upon their devotions, but even
the very instruments of transmitting light might convey

PREFACE.

17

spiritual light and edification also; they lived in its services,
its walls were their home, ever open to receive them ;
through it they were to be transmitted, they hoped, to
their long home ; and so as the house of their God, it was
their joy to ornament it, rather than to dwell in " ceiled
houses" themselves. What is first in a man's affections
finds no lack ; a narrow income is found large enough to
supply his chief, first, wishes : year by year, they spend
or accumulate upon this one object, until we may be
amazed how with such means they have wasted or heaped
together so much. Any one almost would be surprised
and startled to find how much himself had spent in twenty
years, of how much expenditure, which passed away un-
perceived, he has to give account to God, when his steward
ship is to be given up. Be God the first object, and in
this wealthy nation, we should have enough and to spare ;
in whatever degree He becomes such to us, our wants will
be mitigated ; unless He, in some degree, become such,
we are lost. When people in earnest seek Him first, they
will be surprised to find how much of the wants of their
poor neighbours they might readily supply ; how many
thousands in this wealthy nation might annually build a
Church to Almighty God, and not miss what they expend,
so that they at the same time somewhat retrenched ex
penditure upon self : or, since the very rich will mostly
be the last to " enter the kingdom of heaven1' or take the
road thither, how by saving out of a moderate income
(professional or other) a few hundreds yearly, an indi
vidual might, in the course of not many years, provide a
village Church'; if persons had but ^10 to spare annually,
f Littlemore Church, in the diocese of Oxford, whose walls are built
as befits a Church which is to remain until our Lord comes, and dug
deep so as to be founded on a rock, cost somewhat under £1000. It
contains 200.

18 PREFACE.
ten such persons might in ten years, provide one?: would
we, in providing for our families according to S. Augustine s
beautiful suggestion, regard Christ as an additional son,
and eive to Him, Who is " more to us than ten sons," our
only Hope for ever, give to His poor, the portion of one
child, what wants might not, in this wealthy nation, be
supplied, and our families be not the poorer, but enriched,
in that they had (to speak reverently) enrolled among
them their Redeemer, in Whose " hands are all things in
heaven and in earth !" Were the offertory restored, how
might the increase of our stores be consecrated, our poor
provided for, our rich gain almost insensibly the true
treasure !
The restoration depends much upon the Clergy ; there
is much feeling left in our nation ; much susceptibility
ready to answer the call ; much high principle, which
would be ready to sacrifice self, as soon as the thought of
such sacrifices being acceptable should be brought before
it ; we must preach self-denial, and practise what we
preach ; preach, not once or twice, but again and again,
until people's minds become familiarized to the thought,
that we have responsibilities towards those, by whose
labour our comforts are supplied ; that we have no right
to draw human souls together to " minister to us in
carnal things," our manufactures, our commerce, our
fuel, our clothing, our ease in our places of resort, and not
minister to them, in what measure we may, " in spiritual
8 This is being acted upon.
h Serm. 355. (al. de div. 49.) S. Aug. is explaining why he refused
certain gifts to the Church, as of one who had disinherited his son; he
adds, " But if he did, what I often exhorted to ; has he one son, let
him account Christ a second ; has he two, let him account Christ a
third ; has he ten, let him make Christ the eleventh, and I will ac
cept it.''

PREFACE. 13
things." The rich have a duty wherever they go ; they
have no right to draw people to our vast metropolis, and,
because they spend but a portion of their year there, pro
fess that it is not their home, and as far as in them lies,
destroy those whom they in fact brought there, but " for
whom Christ died;" we have no right to go to seek health
or refreshment, and though the village thus swells into a
town with tens of thousands, profess that it is not our
concern, because we are only a portion of the multitude
who draws them thither ; and so " follow that multitude
to do evil." We have no right to wander about at will,
as though we were our own lords and had not all One
Lord, content ourselves to find houses and Churches, and
full supply of all our needs, wherever we go, and regarding
as aliens in whom we have no interest, those through whose
agency God supplies all our wants, lest we be ourselves
considered as aliens in His sight, Whose people we treat
as aliens; we have no right to draw large incomes from
places where we reside or reside not, and be careless of
their welfare through whose labour " the earth yields her
increase" or manufactures their wealth. These things we
must repeat constantly; and if the many refuse to hearken,
we shall have saved our own souls and those to whom God
giveth " ears to hear." Least of all must we flatter our
selves or others on any increase which may be made in our
contributions ; our self-gratulation wastes us, and makes
us stand still or fall back, instead of pressing onward ;
rather our habit of mind, in giving, should be to confess
our un worthiness to give to His Great Name, our sin
fulness in former or present wasting of His goods, the
poorness of our offerings, the worthlessness of the offerers;
seeing and acknowledging the extent of our misery, and so
substituting for boastfulness, humility; for self-gratulation,
abasement ; that so " for our shame we may have double,
b2

20 PREFACE.
and for confusion rejoice in our portion ;" and, in this
spirit, praying G id in the words of the most penitential
Psalm, " Be favourable and giacious unto Zion, build
Thou the walls of Jerusalem ; then shalt Thou be pleased
with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt-offerings
and whole burnt-offerings ; then shall they offer bullocks
upon Thine Altar." As God looks graciously upon His
Church, we may hope that He will look upon us in it, and
" accept the work of our hands," in itself worthless, for
His sake, Whose Body the Church is.
Feast of the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple,
1841.

A
SEEMON.

CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE OP CHRISTIAN LOVE.

S. John xiii. 34, 35.
A neiv commandment I give unto you, That ye love one
another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one
another. By this shall all men know that ye are My
disciples, if ye have love one to another.
To-day is the festival of the Apostle of love :
the " beloved disciple" of Him Who was and is
Love ; the Apostle who was, in an especial way, the
beloved of Him, Who " loved His own which were
in the world," and " loved them unto the end;"
him did He choose in an eminent degree to declare
to us love, that having drank in His love from His
Saviour's breast whereon he lay, he might impart
it to us; the love of God, and the love of man;
the forecoming love of God to man, His inworked
love in man to Himself, issuing forth in deeds of
love to our i fellow-men, whom, with us, He has
loved. He, Who " distributeth to every man seve
rally as He wills," and " assigns to every man his

22 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
work" in His great household, seems to have ob
served the same economy in inspiration also, and
even when filling with the Holy Ghost the inspired
ministers of His word, and making them His own
oracles, to have allotted to each his especial
office ; — to the beloved Disciple to impart that
which he had received, making him the herald of
that love, wherewith he had been loved. He,
whom our Lord so loved, that, loving all, it seemed
as though He loved him alone ; he, whom He took
to be the son of His mother, giving him unto her,
as it were, instead of Himself, when His earthly
relations to her were now about to cease, — well
might he speak of love ; for he " spake of that
which" he " knew," and ': testified that" he " had
heard :" and well were it for us, whom God has
permitted on this day to assemble on a work of
love, to listen to his teaching, and honour him on
this his holy day, by obeying the commandment
which he delivers to us from his and our Lord.
For him then it was reserved to declare what
God in Himself is, " God is love," — not holiness
or justice, though holy and just, but love ; yet not
loving only, but Love, though a Love, which
cannot endure iniquity. The chief subject of his
Epistle is love ; the love of God towards us, in the
death of Him Who was God; " hereby perceive
we the love of God, because He laid down His life
for us3;" — its source in us, from Him," herein is
¦" 1 John iii. 16.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 23
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us,
and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
sins ;" " we love Him because He first loved ush;"
the means, whereby the love of God is upheld in
us, by keeping God's commandments and loving
our brethren ; "if we love one another, God
dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in usc ;"
the nature of that love, " not in word but in
truth l];" not in professions of charity, or high-
sounding speeches, or liberality in words, but in
deeds, and specially in such deeds as we are this
day called upon to do, deeds of compassion to them
who have need ; " whoso hath this world's good
and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth
up his bowels of compassion from him, how
dwelleth the love of God in him?" lastly, the privi
leges of that love; that thereby we " abide in the
light6;" " we know that we have passed from
death unto life, because we love the brethren' ;"
" to assure our hearts before God?;" to " have
confidence in the Day of Judgment, because as He
is, so are we in this world11," i. e. doing good, as
He doth it, largely, unsparingly, regardless of un-
thankfulness, persevering, unwearied, seeking out
every where whereon to bestow itself, finding
entrance if not in one way yet in another, loving
to communicate itself, shining alike on the evil and
the good — this love is a proof that we retain our
b 1 John iv. 19. c iv. 12. <> iii. 17, 18. e ii. 10.
' iii. 14. 8 19- " iv- 17-

24 CHRIST THE SOURCE AND RULE
birth of God ; it hath the knowledge of God ;
" every one that loveth is born of God, and
knoweth God';" it is dwelling in God, and His
Indwelling in us, " he that dwelleth in love dwelleth
in God, and God in him1';" and, with God, it hath
eternal life dwelling in us, for God is life and love,
life and love eternal, eternally abiding in them who
live and love in Him, whose life and love He is.
What then is the nature of that love, which the
Holy Ghost by St. John so commendeth to us?
what is it, which hath these promises annexed to
it even in this life ; the knowledge of Him Who is
Love ; the indwelling of His Love, the Son of His
Love by His Spirit, the fruits of the Cross of Christ,
of His love wherewith " He loved us, and gave
Himself as a propitiation for our sins ;" of the love
of the Father " Who gave His Only-Begotten Son,
that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life?"
What is Christian love ? is it the same in kind
as God's ancient people may have had, before the
Son of God came in the flesh to make us " sons of
God ;" before, as man, the Holy Ghost descended
upon Him, that we also might become in Him " an
habitation of God through the Spirit ?" are we safe
while our love exceeds not the love of the Scribes
and Pharisees, as we know we are not, unless our
righteousness exceed theirs ?
Our Lord, in the text, decides this for us ; He
1 l John iv. 7. * 16.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 25
tells us, that it is a new command which He has
given us, " a new commandment I give unto you ;"
that it shall be the mark of His disciples, " by this
shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye
have love one to another." It must, even from this,
be something above the love of the Old Testament ;
else had it not marked us out at once to be His
disciples, as distinct from the Jews among and with
whom the first Christians dwelt, and from whom
our Lord was now separating His Apostles, as the
foundations, in Himself, of the Christian Church ;
it must be " new" because He calls it so.
It suffices not then for the meaning of the word
" new" that our Christian love should differ from
that of the Jews, in that the Christian Name com
prehends all people, nations, and languages, whereas
the Jews were but one people : the command is
that we " love one another ;" Christians then being
one family, there were nothing new and surpassing
in this, that all Christians should " love one
another," as all Jews were commanded to " love
one another." The family is larger ; still the love
between the members of one family is of the same
sort, whether they be more or fewer. It suffices
not, as others have said, that it is an ever-renewed
command ; our Lord says not only " renewed,"
but "new;" nor again, as an ancient Bishop1
says, that " love is renewing, makes us new men,
makes us heirs of the New Testament, worthy to
1 S. Augustine, on the passage.

26 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
sing the new song of the Lamb." Love doth so, as
being that whereby the Holy Spirit dwelleth in us,
yet doth not this shew, wherein the " command
ment" is " new." In like way, if it be said that
this love belongeth to the new man, as new-created
in Christ Jesus, derived from the " new Spirit of
love, as the old from fear," this also is partly true,
but not all. The full truth, as our Lord explains
His own meaning, contains all these, and goes
beyond them ; the command is new, because it
is a new kind of love which He enjoins ; a love
peculiar to the Gospel, as flowing from His Cross ;
and so a love inwrought in us as renewed by His
Spirit, and renewing us by being inwrought, and
embracing not one or other, but all whom His
Blood hath redeemed.
Yet the love of the Old Testament was a lofty
love, a righteous love ; it flowed from the love of
God : " the stranger that dwelleth among you —
thou shalt love as thyself — I am the Lord thy
God," are the very words of the Old Testament ;
our Lord bears witness to its teaching, " thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength ;
this is the first commandment ; and the second
is like this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy
self." And these two commandments thus knit
together, and each securing the real obedience to
the other, He pronounces to be the very centre
and substance of the Law and the Prophets; " on

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 27
these two commandments hang all the Law and
the Prophets." It was no common love of man
which was to flow from such intense, entire, love
of God as this ; no common duty which wras thus
joined on, as like to the love of God. It must
have been a love of man for God's sake, else had
it not been a religious love; it had been a natural
earthly affection, not an act of piety and duty to
God. Its rule is perfect, as far as it goes ; " thou
shalt love him as thyself ;'' it forbids every thing
we would not have done to ourselves; it enjoins
every thing which we could desire for ourselves, if
we were in our neighbour's stead. Thus essential
in its character, as the very key-stone of the ancient
dispensation; holy in its source, as coming from
God ; in its end, as loving man for the sake of
God ; in its measures, as giving a strict rule of
right, and shutting out all selfish preference of self,
what was there lacking to it, or how could our
Lord's command of love be a " new command
ment ?"
Because the commandment of the Old Testa
ment, though " holy, just, and good," was only
such ; it was a love founded on justice rather than
on mercy ; it forbade doing what we would not
have done ; it bade to be done what we would have
done ; but it flowed within these channels ; self
was still the measure of its duty ; it had no expan
sive force to carry it beyond these bounds, bearing
richness and mercy wherever it spread ; its pat-

28 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
tern and rule was man, not God ; it said, " Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," not " Thou
shalt love him, as thy heavenly Father loves him."
And herein was it chiefly that the commandment
of our Lord was a " new commandment," that it
proposed a new pattern, a new measure. Christian
love is not the love of man for man ; it is a Divine
love, after a Divine pattern, and so, widening and
deepening endlessly ; it is to love man with the
love wherewith God has loved him. For so our
Lord goes on to say, " that ye love one another;
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
It is a love, then, which as far as man may come
up to it, is formed upon, and to realize the love of
the Redeemer ; it is, as being members of Him,
and so partakers of His Spirit, and capable of a
Divine love, to love His other members, as He
loved them, with a love which shall bear some
likeness to His love for them.
How then did Christ love us ? Need one at any
time ask Christians how their Saviour loved them?
need one especially ask them now, when we have
just been praising Him, in that being " God, and
with God," He " for us and for our salvation,
became man ;" in that, being Lord of all, He took
upon Him " the form of a servant ;" having " the
glory of the Father," He took upon Him our
shame; holy, He took upon Him " the likeness
of" our " sinful flesh;" rich in the love of the
Ever- blessed Trinity, for our sakes " He became

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 29
poor;" full, " He emptied Himself;" " the Ever
lasting Son of the Father" did not " abhor" to
be born anew in time of " the Virgin's womb ;"
He, the immortal, " overcame," by tasting it, " the
sharpness of death ;" He, Whom the Father loveth
ineffably, as He the Father, bore for us the wrath
of the Father, Whom He loved. As saith the
Apostle, " Being in the form of God, He thought
it nothing to be desired to remain equal with God,
but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form
of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man ;
and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled
Himself" (yet farther), " and became obedient unto
death, and that the death of the Cross," seeking
in each act of humiliation a lower depth, where-
unto for us to abase Himself. " Ye know," he
saith again, " the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though He were rich, yet for our sakes He
became poor, that we through His poverty might
be rich"1." " He, Who knew no sin, was made
sin for us ;" " it pleased the Lord to bruise Him ;
He put Him to grief ; the Lord laid upon Him the
iniquity of us all."
Our Lord then (to speak reverently on such a
subject, yet as ancient Fathers11 speak) " loved
us not as Himself, but more than Himself." For
us He left the worship and praise of the Heavenly
Host, to seek His one lost sheep in this our wilder-
m 9. Cor. viii. 9. " See note A at the end.

30 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
ness ; for us, He endured the humility of the In
carnation, " the contradiction of sinners against
Himself," " the blasphemy of the multitude," to
be rejected by His own unto whom He came ; to
be betrayed by a disciple ; to be dishonoured, as
though He Himself blasphemed His Father Whom
He honoured : He hid not His face from shame
and spitting ; " the reproaches of them which
reproached" His Father " fell on" Him. What
should one more say ? It behoves us to speak
reverently and warily in these depths of mystery ;
yet this we must say, that of all these sufferings
we know the outward face only ; we know that
they must have been far other than we can think
of, that all these sufferings were heightened, perhaps
had their real character from that which we know
so little of — His holiness, as resulting from His
Divinity, which enabled His human nature to bear
its load of suffering. What to His holiness must
have been the approach of His fallen Angel Satan,
to tempt Him ? What to be accounted a blasphemer
of His Father ? What to see those harden them
selves, whom He came to save ? What, to know
that His word must at the last Day condemn of
those whom, in their own day, He " would have
gathered under" His " wings" and they " would
not ?" What that mysterious agony, which wrung
from Him those heavy words, " Father, if it be
possible, let this Cup pass from Me ; nevertheless
not as I will, but as Thou wilt ?"

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 31
Such, then, Brethren, is the length and breadth
'and depth of our " new commandment ;" its pattern,
our loving Master, Who was God and man ; its
foundation, His inestimable love in our redemption ;
its extent, His infinity : it was given to us in sight
of His Cross ; when the traitor had just gone forth
to deliver Him into the hands of sinners, and, with
the traitor, all which was not love, was gone forth ;
it was given, while He was even yet speaking of
that Death whereby God should be glorified in the
Son, and so should Himself glorify Him when He
had first been consecrated through sufferings. Such
was it with regard to Him ; and as to us, it was given,
the one command amid all those gracious promises,
of the aid of the other Comforter, which should make
even the loss of the sight of our Saviour, gain ; of
abiding in His love, as He in His Father's love ;
His abiding in us for ever ; the abiding of our fruit ;
the Indwelling of the Son with the Father by the
Spirit ; His invisible coming to us ; His peace left
with us : amid all these gracious assurances, wherein
He seems to pour out all the treasures of His love,
He gives this one command, with the promise,
" whatsover ye shall ask the Father in My Name, I
will give it you ;" He gives it as His one command ;
" This is My commandment, that ye love one
another, as I have loved you."
And, in each place, our Lord speaks it in regard
to suffering ; in the text, of those sufferings whereby
" the Son of Man" should be " glorified, and God"

32 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
be " glorified in Him ;" and again0, " This is My
commandment, That ye love one another, as I have
loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that
a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are My
friends, if ye do whatsoever 1 command you ;" that is,
I am about to lay down My life for you ; and thus
have made you My friends ; I have admitted you to
partake of My counsels, My love, My Self; I have
made you, in your measure, such as I am, since a
friend beareth a likeness to his friend, is one with
him ; if ye would continue My friends, ye must be
like Me, love as I have loved, do as I have done,
be ready to suffer, one for the other, as I have
suffered ; the disciples of the Crucified must not
" count" aught of their own, their wealth, ease, com
fort, nay their very lives, " dear unto themselves,"
if by parting with them, they may do good to their
brethren; none of these things are their own but His
Who bought them with His own precious Blood,
that whether they live or die, they should be His; if
they themselves, soul, body, spirit, are not their own
but His, Who created, redeemed, regenerated them,
how should aught besides? how should they with
hold from Him what is His ? how should they not
gladly join their own sufferings with His, for those
who with them, by virtue of the same Blessed
Sacrifice and Sacrament, are also His ?
And thus the beloved disciple explains His Lord's
words, " Hereby perceive we love, because He laid
° John xv. 12 — 14.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 33
down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our
lives for the brethrenp," that is, as His love passeth
into us, so ought it to bear like fruit in us ; the
disciples of Him Who bare the sorrows of us all,
should be ready to bear each other's sorrows ; the
disciples of Him Who withheld nothing from us,
should themselves keep back nothing ; the followers
of Him, Who gave Himself for us that we might
live, should gladly give their earthly lives, if so they
might win those for whom with us He died.
And as our Lord calls this " His command," so
St. Paul speaks of obedience to it as the fulfil
ment of His law ; " Bear ye one another's bur
thens, and so fulfil the law of Christ ;" and of him
the Holy Ghost witnesseth, that " in his flesh he
filled up that which was behind of the afflictions of
Christ for His body's sake, which is the Church ;"
that is, though all meritorious sufferings were
Christ's alone, yet did He bequeath to His Church
a precious gift, which was to belong to all His
more chosen vessels, even a certain residue of His
own sufferings ; their sufferings for Him and His
body the Church He joins to His, and accounts
them His own ; yea they are His own, since He is
persecuted in His members, He hungers, thirsts, is
sick and in prison, in His members ; the marks of
the stripes, and the iron bonds, are " the marks of
the Lord Jesus," which they " bare about" them.
And they rejoice, not in suffering only like Him,
P 1 John iii. 16.
C

34 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
but that they are partakers of His sufferings; " that
I may know," says St. Paul, " the fellowship of
His sufferings," and, " as the sufferings of Christ
abound in us';" and St. Peter, " Rejoice, inasmuch
as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings':" they
are Christ's own sufferings, which overflow into
them as true branches of the True Vine ; His
sufferings, in that they are borne through His
Spirit, in Him, for Him, by Him ; they are fruits,
to the end of time, of His Cross ; they are images,
and shadows, and reflections of that Cross,
shining in its glory, streaming down some of its
lights upon us, tokens of Its Presence and Power,
witnesses that we are yet the same Church, for
whom Christ suffered.
Well then may it be called " a new command
ment," since its character is derived from the very
depths of that new disclosure of God's mercy in
Christ, which had been but dimly shadowed out
in the law ; which " Prophets and kings desired
to see, and saw not;" which in times past was
hidden from men and Angels. The new com
mandment belongs to that " new and better cove
nant, established upon better promises," whereof
our Lord is Mediator, and not man ; that " new
covenant" in which God's commandment should
no longer be an outward letter which killeth, but
in which He would " put His laws into their
minds," and they should be the law and rule of
i 2 Cor. i. 5. ' 1 pet. iv. 13.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 35
their minds; a new covenant, in which we " have
confidence to enter into the holiest by the Blood of
Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath
consecrated for us through the vail, that is His
flesh';" a new covenant, in which " old things
are passed away and all things are become new;"
it belongs to us, as we have been stripped of the
old man, and are become new creatures, having
been renewed, re-generated, re-created in Christ
Jesus; bearing a "new Name," even our Re
deemer's, which in Holy Baptism was named upon
us ; it is given to us, with a new Spirit, new
powers, new hopes, new faith, new capacity to
love, in that we have been so loved.
And well did the first disciples fulfil this new
law and our Lord's prediction, " by this shall all
men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have
love one to another." What is the history of the
Apostles but the history of a sharing of their
Saviour's sufferings for His Body's sake ? What of
the Bishops for centuries, but that, following the
steps of the Chief Bishop Whom they represented,
they were delivered to death and suffering, that the
other sheep might escape? What of the whole
extension of the Gospel in all lands, but of the
good seed sown every where by Christian blood,
harrowed in by Christian suffering, and so yielding
a harvest of souls won to Christ ? What of the
whole conduct of Christians to each other, but of
• Heb. x. 19, 20.
C 2

36 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
self-denying love for each other, as in all, Greek
or Barbarian, bond or free, near or far, known or
unknown, seeing their unseen Lord, Whose sacred
Name was called on all, hallowed all. " See,"
cried the heathen*, " how the Christians love one
another, and they are ready to die one for another."
" Their lawgiver," says another", " has persuaded
them, that they are all brethren." " They love one
another," exclaimed yet a third", " almost before
they know one another." And hereby did men
know that they were His disciples, and learned to
love Him, Whose love so lived in them ; the
love of Christians, we are toldy, drew the Heathen
to the Faith yet more than miracles ; and miracles
impressed them, because their hearts were first
won by the sight of Christian love ; as, after that
love waxed cold, the absence of the visible, strongly
marked, tokens of that love was more objected
to the Christian, than the loss of miracles? which
accompanied the declension of faith and love.
Nor is this a history of other times, in which we
are not interested ; among us too the Gospel was
planted and renewed by the blood of martyrs ; they
who brought the Gospel to our then wild and
inhospitable shores, endured cheerfully hunger and
thirst and cold and nakedness and homelessness,
and at last death, that they might win our rude
1 Ap. Tert. Apol. c. 39. " Lucian de Morte Peregr.
p. 567. ed. Graev. « Caecilius ap. Minut. Fel. p. 81.
ed. Ouz. 7 S. Chrys. ad loc.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 37
forefathers to Christ : had not the first founders
of our Church loved our fathers more than them
selves, we had been heathen still, sitting in the
darkness of the shadow of death, " without Christ,
strangers from the covenant of promise, having no
hope, and without God in the world :" because
they had this love, we who were far off, have been
brought near unto God ; we have been made mem
bers of Christ, children of God, and are yet, as
we humbly trust, heirs of heaven. And our
Church, of old, in its turn sent forth Apostles
and Martyrs ; the Vine, thus planted among us,
" sent forth her boughs unto the sea, and her
branches unto the river," having first " struck deep
root and filled our land ;" the Churches, wherein
we yet, wherever we go, worship God, and bring
all our needs before Him, are mostly the fruits of
others' love ; the provision for our ministers, of
others' loving liberality, who gave of their own that
we might for ever benefit by their gifts.
Such and much more hath God done for us
through the love of man, flowing out of the love
of His Son. " Beloved, if God hath so loved us,
we ought also to love one another." " Freely
have ye received," saith our Lord, " freely give."
Or beseemeth it us, who have received so largely
at the hands of God through man, ourselves to do
little to fill up that which yet remaineth? beseemeth
it us to be enjoying the benefits of the self-denial
of others, in ease and self-indulgence and sloth ?

38 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
My brethren, we must speak plainly in this
matter ; we are not what our forefathers were ;
we boast of the light of the Gospel which is shed
around us, but it is to us a powerless light, it
warms us not to those deeds of self-denial and
love to which they were trained, amid much com
parative darkness. If the men of Nineveh shall
rise up against the generation which saw the
miracles of our Lord, how much more shall our
forefathers, who, living in what we call darkness,
did the deeds of light, which we do not ! This
very city, wherein this house of God stands,
exhibits in the very face of heaven the deeds of
our forefathers, and our own. It is sad to behold
it from the fair eminence of the neighbouring
heights, whither its rich men have for health or
comfort so often retreated, to see it, as they too
must see it, set as it were in the garden of the
Lord, one part of it thickly studded with churches,
whose towers or- spires pierce the skies, and bear
witness to the deeds of our fathers, — and then to
look on to a long waste of human habitation,
unsanctified by the presence of a single temple of
our God, or with one, here and there, as a resting-
place amidst a desert, and to see therein our deeds.
It is sad to see how every portion of their city is
hallowed by the presence of temples of their God,
rich, lofty, more capacious than was needed abso
lutely to contain their inhabitants, so that this

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 39
ancient city was the " city of Churches';" and
how ours seems to betoken (God forbid it should
continue so) who has been our god, " the god of
this world :" how in theirs their churches, as their
hopes, rose to heaven ; how ours creeps along the
ground, a low dark mass of earthly building, the
workshops of our gains ; or if aught rises heaven
wards, they are the instruments of this world's
wealth, the masts of our vessels ; as though we
would say, in the very presence of God, to Whom
our forefathers reared those hallowed piles, " these
be thy gods, O Israel." It is sad to see how a part
of your Cathedral, destroyed in civil war to which
God once left us, still, after two centuries, remains
unrestored, bearing witness against us, century after
century, that we come not up to the measure of
our fathers ; we not only do not deeds like theirs,
we do not even sustain the monuments of piety
which they left us. But edifices such as these, it
will be said, are superfluities ; be it so ; only let
us measure ourselves by the same rule whereby
we measure our service to God, and then speak
of " superfluities" in the honour and service of
Almighty God, when we have cut off all from
ourselves; let us not be sparing and niggard in
the worship of our Creator, and lavish upon self !
1 Chatterton also says,
Thys quaintissed place so gloryous
Seemeynge alle chyrches joyned yn one guylde.
Parlt. of Sprytes, near the end.

40 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
But what shall we say then of necessities? What
will ye plead, when it appears that in three parishes
alone in this wealthy city, nearly 26,000 persons,
(such were the wants ten years ago, and now
through the increase of population employed in
the increase of your wealth the wants too are
much increased",) in three parishes alone of this
wealthy city, nearly 26,000 undying souls are left
to pass year by year from their cradle to their
graves, are left, like beasts, to perish, outcasts
from the Church and from the gate of heaven, left,
at best, to find shepherds for themselves, as they
may, but the most to fall an easy prey to Satan,
because none has fenced them round in the fold
of Christ's Church ; left to live and die in careless
ness and sin, because they who could have helped
them would not, they to whose love and care our
loving Lord committed them, loved them not?
What, when this single Church, containing scarce
] ,000 souls, and these mostly persons connected with

now

addition

deficit

deficit

population
probably
Church room
since
in 1831
in 1841
8 S. Paul's
12,641
16,000
965
9,746
13,105
S. Philip ^
and W
19,663
22,163
3,800
8,263
10,763
S. Jacob 3
S. James
11,488
12,988 51,151
1,200
1000
7,888
25,897
6,388
43,792
5,965
1000
30,256
Two Church s, which the body, holding the patronage of
St. Philip and St. Jacob, propose to build, containing 2,400
persons, would reduce its deficiency considerably; but while these
are being built, besides the continual increase of the population,
" a large accession will be taking place through a large cotton
manufactory lately established, and now quite in its infancy."
OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 41
the wealthier sort, is hitherto the only provision for
a parish containing (ten years b past) nearly 13,000,
now too probably 16,000 souls, and the good
work, which you are called upon to aid — good and
well-pleasing to God as far as it goes, and as a
beginning — will, when accomplished, extend the
blessings of the Gospel to 2,000 of your brethren,
yet will it leave above 13,000 still destitute ?
What shall we say, when in this worldly city,
with such means at its command, the way to
heaven seems (as far as man's will goes) barred to
the poor man; scarcely any place of worship of any
kind in the whole city receiver the prayers of the
poor, or is gladdened by the fac ; of a poor man ;
the Church, the common refuge and Mother of all
who will come to her, is not open to them ; what are
called free seats are occupied mostly by the servants
of the rich ; the poor are shamed to enter in, where
so few, such as they, can find entrance ! As though
we had not all one Father ! as though we were not
all redeemed by the same Blood ! as though we
were not to appear before the same Judge, among
other sins of our people, to account for the neglect
6 At the census of 1831 the " iu-parish" of S. Paul's, in which
the Church stands, was 9,146; of whom even at the insufficient
rate of providing room in God's House for one third at once,
6,251 were excluded ; the " out-parish" of Montpellier contain
ing 3,495, now probably 6 or 7,000 souls, is hitherto wholly
destitute. The new Chapel is intended for the out-parish, but to
contain only about 700.

42 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
of His poor members— as though the prayers of the
poor to Him, " Who being rich, for our sakes
became poor," were not the wealth of any nation !
as if we meant to have no share in our Lord's
blessing, that " the poor have the Gospel preached
to them!"
And why is this? why this difference between
our fathers' deeds and ours? why while they
erected Churches and provided ministers for each
little groupe (if it so happened) of 1, or 2, or 400
souls0, do we leave our twenty thousands unheeded?
Lack we the means ? Alas ! this wealthy city
might readily supply all the wants and to spare,
without even, on this world's calculation, missing
what they bestow. The Christian knows that such
scattering would increase their stores. The goodly
houses which encircle this Church, and shew so
fair, shew no lack of means ; your warehouses
crowded with this world's goods, your shops filled
with all manner of luxuries, imply no want of
means ; the costly building even now rising in
the town blended with this, for ends which end
with this world, implies no lack of means. The
difference lies not in our means, except that ours
are far greater than our forefathers' who built those
goodly piles, but in our habits; they " sought first
c The population of S. Werburgh was, in 1831, 100; All
Saints, 180; S. Mary Le Port, 400; besides these, three
Churches have been razed, within the memory of man, and the
parishes which belonged to them joined on to others.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 43
the kingdom of God and His righteousness," where-
into they are now entered in rest, we " the things"
which " the Gentiles sought ;" they confessed
Christ in deeds, we in words ; they had a care for
Christ's poor, we for our families ; they practised
self-denying charity, men now think it much, if
they give out of superfluities ; they thought it their
highest glory to glorify God, we to aggrandize
self; their habits were what we should think an
austere and rude and self-denying simplicity, ours
a soft and elegant and self-indulgent luxury ;
luxuries, which they knew not, we have made our
essential comforts, and year by year heap up new
luxuries ; and furnish our houses with expenses
which they knew not of, and cover our tables with
needless profusion, and should think the fare of our
forefathers coarse and hard ; and ornament our
houses with refinements, and our persons with " gold
and costly array ;" and we fence ourselves round
with elegancies, until there is no way for the breath
of Heaven to pass through, and breathe into our
souls the spirit of charity ; and if a somewhat
larger sum be needed for some urgent Christian
purpose, we give our own petty contributions, and
make up the larger portion with the sale of baubles,
(confessing that we cannot obtain what we want
from men's Christian love,) and call this multiplying
of our luxuries Christian charity ! We have ad
mitted the moth and rust among our treasures, so
that we have none wherewith to make an offering

44 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
to God, or wherewith to purchase eternal treasures,
or have not left ourselves the hearts to make it.
We give guineas when we should give tens, and
tens for hundreds ; and hundreds are given, when
thousands might be given, and yet abundance left ;
alas ! would one need not say, when tens of thou
sands might be readily spared, people grudge
themselves their rich reward, and think well of
themselves for some costless offering. But which
were most like Him, Who for our sakes had
not where to lay His head ? which were most con
formed to the likeness of their Crucified Lord ?
which most loved their brethren, as He loved them?
which have most treasure laid up with Him against
the Great Day ?
This cannot last ; either our luxuries must
destroy us, as they have every luxurious nation
before us, or we must unlearn our luxuries, in order
to learn the Cross and Christian charity ; we must
learn to sacrifice self, in order to Christianize our
land, or the Heathenism of our land will destroy us.
You have, in this place, already had an awful
warning of God's displeasure upon past neglect ;
the wealth, which a few years ago was here burnt
upd, because out of it none had been spared to
extend the blessings of the Gospel to the poor,
would more than have provided this whole city
d The loss by fire and pillage in the riots of Bristol were
assessed at £100,000, which is now being levied by annual
instalments.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 45
with Churches, worthy of God's great Name ; you
have, in the flames which were kindled in the very
heart of your city, consuming the idol on which
men's hearts were set, that themselves might escape,
had an earnest of that punishment which all are
heaping up for themselves, who neglect Him ; in
their extinction, a token of His long-suffering :
but beware how ye tempt that long-suffering ; re
collect that there is a Judgment, of which all
temporal judgments are but forerunners ; a fire,
which God will not extinguish ; suffering, of which
there is no mitigation, no end ; a doom, in which
there is no Intercessor ; and that these are espe
cially reserved for such as, in this life, shewed no
mercy to Christ's poor ; that while fornicators,
unjust, covetous, have no portion (we know) in the
kingdom of heaven, yet in our Lord's own descrip
tion of the Great Day, the sin, which He singles
out for condemnation, is neglect of Him in His
poor and suffering members.
But though we dare not leave out of sight God's
terrors, which He so often sets before us, yet on
this festival of the Apostle of love, in this season
of our Saviour's love and great humility, He ap
peals rather to our love for Him, to lead us to this
act of love to our brethren.
If, then, we " would be" as He is in this world,
if we would follow His steps as our loving Master,
if we would, not among men only but before His
Father and the Holy Angels, be acknowledged as

46 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
His disciples, if we would receive a disciple's reward,
if we would hear the gracious words, " Forasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these
My brethren, ye have done it unto Me," there is
but one way, one strait narrow way ; the way of
self-denying charity. Gifts, which are given out of
our abundance, may gain us credit among men,
they may shew a kindly spirit, such as the Jews
were bid to cherish, but they are not tokens of
Christian love. Alas ! would that we were not put
to shame by the very Jews ! would that our righte
ousness came up even to theirs, and that we pro
vided for our poor as they even now do for theirs !
would that we, who are God's people, came up to
them, who for the time are " not His people !" Of
old they bestowed year by year one tenth of their
substance on the poor, beyond the one tenth which
they gave to God's Priests ; yearly they retained
but four fifths for themselves ; one fifth of the
increase wherewith God had blessed them, they
gave to Him in His ministers and His poor ; and
each third year, they gave a third tenth to God.
And shall we then, on whom the very Name of
the Son of God has been called, be content with a
Jewish charity ? shall we, on whom the light and
love of the Gospel have been poured, fall short of
the measures of the Law ? have we no faith, no
eyes to see, no hearts to look for, heavenly treasures?
shall we always be so fixed on the things of this
passing world, as to have no sense left for the

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 47
things of eternity ? shall we, year by year, celebrate
the festivals of the self-denying love of our Master
and only Saviour ; year by year, accompany Him
in outward gesture from the manger whither He
descended from the highest Heavens, to the Cross
whence He ascended thither again, and year by
year hear Him in word and deed bid us love these
our and His brethren as He has loved us, and yet
go on, year by year, loving — not ourselves, but —
the perishable comforts, luxuries, ease, of our
perishing frames, and neglecting those whom He
has committed to our love, until He come again
and require of us an account of our stewardship,
and of our deeds of love to those, in whom He bade
us shew our love to Him ? Shall we go on speak
ing of His Atoning Sacrifice, but ourselves sacrifice
nothing ; of His poverty for us, but have ourselves
no thought except for this world's riches ; of His
humiliation for us, but ourselves seek only how to
exalt ourselves and our families in this world ; of
His abandoning all His unspeakable glory, and
ourselves seek our glory and credit in this passing
scene; of His having "emptied Himself" of His
inherent Majesty, and ourselves remain " full?"
Not in words but in deeds did He love us, when
He came down amid our sin and shame and suffer
ings, to be hated, scorned, crucified, to bear our
sins ; not in words but in deed do we hope that He
will shew His love, in that Day in which if He

48 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
compassioneth us not with His exceeding love, we
are undone for ever ; not in words then, but in
deeds must be the love which we meanwhile shew
to Him in His poor ; learning, slowly it may be,
but day by day, to deny ourselves our own desires,
to forego things, in which we should have pleasure,
and what tempts the eyes, the taste, the senses ;
looking not what we can afford to spend upon self,
but what we may lawfully deny self; not what
additional comforts we may keep around us, but
what indulgences which we have, we may part
with, that we may give the more unto Him ; look
ing in detail into our expenses, in order warily to
cut off superfluities ; seeking how our habits may
become more simple ; parting with luxuries which
perish in the using, and which soon must part with
us, in order to win the love of God ; parting with
what you now call comforts, to win the only
assured comfort, peace with God and joy in the
Holy Ghost, the earnest of acceptance and of ever
lasting rewards, — parting with earth to win heaven;
with things temporal for things eternal, with fading
enjoyments for everlasting glory ; with things with
out you, that Christ (as He has promised to those
who love) may make His abode in you.
Would that God may so stir the hearts of this
ancient, and, as I trust, yet understanding city,
(though it too has partaken of the slumber which
in the last century came over all Christendom,)

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 49
that it too (as others c have in part done) would
consider what is needed to Christianize its inhabit
ants, count the cost and set itself earnestly to the
task, to recover its ancient glory and the favour of
God. But meantime, and to prepare for this,
sacrifices must be made by individuals ; others will
catch the flame of charity, but it must ba kindled
first by the self-denying acts of individuals; think
not then of those who do otherwise, as though to
wish to be of them ; think it not a hard thing, as
if all the burthen fell upon a few, and others were
exempt : they are exempting themselves not from
a burthen, if they saw things truly, but from a
blessing ; they are denying themselves the reward,
which is in store for such as " sow bountifully ;"
they are exempting themselves from the labour of
the seed-time, in order to reap a niggard harvest,
where the harvest is joy and peace with God, their
Redeemer's love, their Redeemer's praise, the joy
of their Lord, eternal, unchanging, never-palling
joy, because the joy of the blessed is no changing
thing, but God the Unchangeable is Himself their
portion and their joy for ever.
With such hopes, self-denial, self-sacrifice, though
hard and irksome in itself, will become itself a joy ;
' e. <". the Ten-Churches-fund in Birmingham and Bethnal-
Green ; in both cases, however, had the population been re
garded, rather than what was hoped from our degree of Christian
charity, they should have been twenty, in Birmingham (as it now
is) probably thirty Churches. D

50 CHRIST, THE SOURCE AND RULE
for what joy, even in this life, is there, like the
hope that, " loving much," our " sins which are
many" shall be "forgiven0' for ever; that for
the sake of the One Meritorious All-atoning Sacri
fice, our petty worthless sacrifices will be accepted
there ? what joy like the hope that we, though all
unworthy, are yet true disciples of our Crucified,
Redeeming Lord ? that we are being here, in what
ever degree, likened to Him ; that being made by
Him partakers of His self-denying love, we are
loved by Him ; that keeping His " new command
ment," we shall be loved by Him with a new love,
an ever new, ever renewing, ever unfading love,
for ever; that being " like Him in this world," we
" shall have boldness" (as is promised) " in the
Day of Judgment ;" that following His blessed
steps, however faintly, unsteadily, unworthily, yet
as upheld by His gracious arm, guided by His
promised Comforter, we are indeed His servants,
and " where I am, there shall My servant be?"
My brethren, who, if he thought seriously on
these things, would not see, that amid the changes
and chances of this mortal life, this is the only true
abiding joy ? who, if he had faith to realize them,
would not willingly part with all that he might attain
it ? Who would not see how this joy must sweeten the
bitterness, if it were such, of any sacrifices, self-
denials, troubles, sorrows, privations? how much
more then, when God gives His faithful servants
' Luke vii. 47.

OF CHRISTIAN LOVE. 51
even in this life instalments and earnests of their
future joys, Himself, by the secret balm of His
Spirit, soothes the sorrows of those " who consider
His poor," strengtheneth them when languishing,
healeth them in their sickness !
My brethren, if the hope of these joys be such,
what must the substance be ? if the thought be so
cheering, as it flashes across our dim eyes in this
our night of heaviness, where our minds are so
dulled by sin, what will it be to behold His un
veiled face, shining in love and mercy upon us, for
having loved those who were His ; what to find all
the poor offerings of our weak love stored up with
Him and accepted by Him, Who gave us what we
had to give, gave us the heart to give, gave Him
self for us, with Whom all things are given us, and
to be repaid in His love, whereby He will fill those
who love in Him, more and more with His own
Divine Essence, which is Love ? If the thought
of these things so raise the soul, what must the
things themselves be, " which it hath not entered
into the heart of man to conceive, but which God
hath prepared for them that love Him?"
God of His infinite mercy give us grace to be
"merciful" that we may "obtain mercy," thatwemay
all hear the compassionate, pardoning words, " For
asmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

Note A, page '29.
The following is the comment of S. Cyril of Alexandria
on the text, which has been followed in the preceding
Sermon, as alone seeming adequately to give the meaning
of the words, which, as is the wont of the Fathers, it presses
very closely.
" Rightly saith the divine Paul, ' so then if any one is in
Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, lo
all things are become new.1 For He reneweth and reformetb
after a manner to newness of life, and this inaccessible
and untrodden by the rest, who love to live after the law
and adhere to the commands of Moses. For ' the law
maketh nothing perfect,' as is written, but the fullest
measure of piety to Godward one may see in the com
mands of our Saviour. For for this cause Himself also
said in this wise, " For I say unto you, That except
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of
the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into
the kingdom of heaven." For we compete not with the
Jewish manners ; nay, unless we exceedingly surpass the
righteousness in the law, never, 1 deem, shall we enter
into the kingdom of heaven. And yet we pronounce not
the law given by Moses altogether unprofitable or useless ;
for it brought in to us what was, although not perfectly,
good; yea moreover it is found to be a schoolmaster to
the instruction of the Evangelic life ; and, through dark
figures and types, introducing an image of the true godli
ness, it engraved in a manner on our thoughts the shadow
of the instruction which is through Christ. For for this
cause Himself also said, ' For I say unto you, that every
scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like a rich
man, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new

54 NOTE.
and old.' For it is in truth spiritual and exceeding riches
for a man to be well versed in the words given by Moses,
and to have the benefits derivable from them treasured up
in his mind, so that he take thereto the beauty of the
Evangelic instruction, and thus be doubly adorned, by
the knowledge both of the ancient and of the new law.
Wherefore our Lord Jesus Christ, shewing that this law is
better than the ancient law, and that the saving preaching
was as yet in a manner inaccessible to those who have their
converse in the law, when about to ascend into heaven, layeth
beforehand as a sort of foundation and basis of all good, the
law of love, — but love not according to the law but above the
law ; wherefore He saith, ' A new commandment I give
unto you, that ye love one another." But one may say, tell
me how He called this a new Commandment, Who said by
Moses, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.'
For lo, having set before all others and placed first, as is
fit, the love of God, He added, as near to it, that to each
other, and conjoined with the love to God, that to each other,
in that neither would the love of God otherwise be of the
right sort, unless that due to our neighbour followed close
by; for we are all brethren, one of another. Wherefore
John in his fulness of wisdom well knowing this, and teaching
others, saith, 'he who loveth his brother, loveth God also.'
How then is it a new command through Christ, although
thoroughly prescribed in the old law ? But observe how
it is guarded ; see what He added; for He was not content
to say, ' A new commandment I give unto you, that ye
Jove one another ;' but shewing the newness of this saying,
and that the love He spake of had in it somewhat far better
than that ancient love one to another, He added straightway,
' as I have loved you.' In order then clearly to know the
force of what He said, we must enquire 'how Christ loved

NOTE. 55
us? For then may we easily take account of the
newness and difference of the commandment now given.
He then ' being in the Form of God, thought it nothing to
be desired to be equal with God, but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of
men ; and being found in fashion as man, He humbled
Himself, becoming obedient unto death, and that the death
of the Cross.' Yea also, ' being rich He became poor,' as
Paul again hath attested to us. Seest thou the newness
of the love to us? For the law commands to love a brother
as himself; but the Lord Jesus Christ loved us more than
Himself ; for neither being in the form and equality of
God the Father, would He have come down to our lowli
ness, nor have endured the so bitter death of the flesh for
us, nor the Jewish buffetings and shame and mockery and
all besides, — not, by enumerating each severally of what was
done to Him, to go on to infinity, but — neither ' being rich'
would He have ' become poor,' unless He had loved us ex
ceedingly above Himself. Thus He bids us also to be
minded, preferring nothing whatever to the love of the
brethren, neither glory, nor wealth, nay, nor shrinking, if
need be, to go even to the death of the body, that we may
gain the salvation of our neighbour, which also the blessed
disciples of our Saviour did, and they who followed in their
steps, accounting the salvation of others better than their
own life, and exhausting every labour and coming into the
extremest ills, that they might save the souls of those
perishing. Whence Paul saith at one time, ' I die daily ;'
at another, ' Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is
offended, and I burn not ?' Our Saviour then enjoined us,
as the root of the most perfect piety to God, to cultivate
this love above the law, knowing that thus and no otherwise
should we be most approved with God, and following out
the traces of the beauty of that love, by Him implanted in
us, should be ever in the greatest and perfect bliss."

56 NOTE.
In like way S. Chrysostom, although not so fully ;
" How did He call it ' a new commandment,' which was
laid down in the Old Testament also ? He Himself made it
new by the mode ; in that He added, ' as I have loved you.'
For I have not repaid you a debt for good deserts, before
wrought by you, but I myself began. Thus must ye
also benefit those ye love, not owing them any thing,"
[i. e. as Christ died for us when sinners, loving us not
according to our deserts, but against our deserts, so also
must we others, not because they deserve and have merited
our Jove, but forecoming and anticipating any thing on their
part, as He towards us.]
Again Isidore Pelus. (lib. iii. Ep. 410.) " If thou
askedst, is it not then said in the Old Testament, ' Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?1 I would say, yea
truly did He Himself sanction this also, but afterwards,
when Himself was manifested in the flesh, He added
somewhat more, saying, ' a new commandment I give
unto you that ye love one another, as I have loved you.'
For the ' loving' lieth in the Old Testament also, but the
' as I have loved you,' He added, wherefore also He called
it ' a new commandment.' "
The same interpretation, with reference to His dying
for -us, is given by Theodorus Mops, and Ammonius,
(in Corderius' Catena in S. Joann.) by Thcophylact and
Euthymius. Maldonat. ad loc. refers also to Theodorus
Heracl. and Leontius, but these do not appear in Corderius
ad loc. Of the Latins he quotes Rupertus. In modern
times this interpretation has been vindicated, at length, by
Knapp, in his scripta varii argumenti, and followed by
Lucke and Tholuck ad loc. It also occurs in Beza ad loc.
and though less prominently, among others, in Bp. Horsley,
Serm. 12.

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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