I

DARWINISM, AND FAITH IN GODPreached in 1871..

WHEN I CONSIDER THY HEAVENS, THE WORK OF THY FINGERS, THE MOON AND THE STARS, WHICH THOU HAST ORDAINED; WHAT IS MAN, THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM? AND THE SON OF MAN, THAT THOU VISITEST HIM? FOR THOU HAST MADE HIM A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS, AND HAST CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOUR. THOU MADEST HIM TO HAVE DOMINION OVER THE WORKS OF THY HANDS; THOU HAST PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIS FEET: ALL SHEEP AND OXEN, YEA, AND THE BEASTS OF THE FIELD; THE FOWL OF THE AIR, AND THE FISH OF THE SEA, AND WHATSOEVER PASSETH THROUGH THE PATHS OF THE SEAS. O LORD OUR LORD, HOW EXCELLENT IS THY NAME IN ALL THE EARTH!

PSALM viii. 3-9.

THE sight of nature affects men differently in different ages and countries. We ourselves receive different impressions from natural scenes when the sun shines upon them and when they are enveloped in mist and storm; and our perceptions of them also vary with the varying moods of our own minds. In the dark December mornings we can hardly remember the delighted feeling with which we welcomed the dawn in spring amid the singing of innumerable birds. In the Hebrew prophets or psalmists likewise may be traced a double feeling about the external world; there is the consciousness of active power in nature, and also of repose, the sense of rest as well as of motion. It is the ‘glorious God who makes the thunder,’ and at whose presence the animals cower and tremble, who ‘bows the heavens and comes down, and there is darkness under His feet’; and then again appears in brightness and light, as in the eighteenth and twenty-ninth Psalms. Yet there is also another tone heard in the language of the Psalmist: ‘The hills stand about Jerusalem; . even so standeth the Lord round about His people’; or ‘He hath set the round world so fast that it cannot be moved.’ While all over the earth and among all nations ‘the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handywork.’

If we turn from the Hebrew prophets to the Greek mythology we seem to find indications of a time before history, before poetry, of which the analysis of language is the only witness, when the Hellenic gods were powers of nature which in the course of ages became individualized and personified. We have a difficulty in believing this, because in the writings or the ages which we know, the traces of such a connexion between the gods and heroes and the Sun or the dawn or the air have disappeared, and the divinities are only magnified men and women, or in a few cases the native gods of the elements. And the Greek or Roman poets, although not wholly wanting in feeling for the beauty of scenery, have much less consciousness of nature than is to be observed in the poetry of most modern European nations. Or perhaps they may have felt as much, but they spoke less; their souls may have drunk in the impressions derived from the deep blue sea, the clear ether, the forms and colours of the landscape, and been moulded by them; but they do not seem to have connected them, as we do, with the thoughts and aspirations of the human heart, or to have found in them the symbols of a world beyond.

In our own century, which seems likewise more than any other to have the power of recalling the past, the sentiment of nature again revives; recollections of childhood are still lingering about the maturity or old age of the world, as we may say, speaking in a figure. The poets of our own age have heard voices in nature which were silent or uninterpreted in the days before them. Scientific discoveries, too, to those who can follow them, give a new interest to ‘the meanest flower that breathes.’ And a portion of this spirit extends to the ordinary observer and the common mind. Every one exults in the fresh air, in the pleasant woodland scene, in the wide prospect, in the illimitable ocean. In nature we find that which we all desire—repose: there one of the best and purest pleasures of life comes to us, healthier than the love of art, which sometimes degenerates into sentimentalism, a pleasure of which we can never have too much, and which seems as we grow older to have a more soothing power over us; there the heart that cannot speak may find the alleviation of a calamity too deep for tears, for into that undisturbed region no trouble or sorrow intrudes; there is a great calm, and the peace and order which reign around us may be transferred to our own erring minds. And through the influence of nature we may rise to think of the God of nature and to rest in Him.

Still, there are thoughts about nature which do from time to time arouse disquietude in our minds. The Universe is so vast and we are so small. It is not the language of hyperbole but of fact when we speak of innumerable stars which exist everywhere in the infinity of space, compared with which the life of any individual man is only like a grain of sand, a leaf of the forest, a drop of water spilt upon the earth. Nor is the overpowering thought at all lessened, but the wonder increased, when some one tells us that the world is infinite in minuteness as well as in vastness. We say with a meaning which could not have been equally present to the Psalmist, and perhaps with a sadder accent: ‘Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him? When, again, we consider the immeasurable periods of time during which the earth was a desert chaos torn by natural convulsions, or the later stages of the world’s history, in which the animals were struggling for existence, and huge behemoths and leviathans moved upon land and water: or, later still, when the first traces of man appear in holes of the rocks or lacustrine dwellings—do we not feel a sort of discouragement? and the consciousness of law in all things which had once comforted us begins to terrify us. We are aware that nature, like art, though more beautiful and glorious far, is not the true image of God, and that ‘not there, not there,’ are the foundations of human life to be sought.

And now we meet with another downfall and discouragement. For we are told in books which are in the hands of every one that man is descended from the lower animals. The whole vegetable and animal kingdoms are affirmed to have originated in some primaeval form, and the different species of plants and animals to have become diversified in infinite ages by the ‘survival of the fittest.’ To understand this theory, I suppose that we must go back in imagination to a time when there was no distinction of birds, beasts, and fishes, or even of plants and animals. As in some ancient Cosmogony (for this is a Cosmogony of a new kind) the forms of life began to move, and organized structures came into being; and then, slowly and ever more slowly (for there is no need of hurry when you have no limit of time), some faded away and disappeared, and others persisted and prevailed, at first abnormal in some of their parts, but in a succession of generations growing into harmony with themselves. Last of all, in countless millions of years, passing through many stages of half human, half animal existence, man was perfected; his coat of hair fell off, and his brain increased in size; his features became nobler and more expressive, and he walked upright upon the earth.

I think we must acknowledge that this theory, whether true or false, makes a painful impression on the minds of many of us. It deprives us of our golden age to which we as well as the Greeks looked back: it seems to take not only individual men, but the whole race of mankind, out of the providence of God: and it touches our pride as well as our higher feelings to be told that we, who in the language of the Psalmist seem to be a little lower than the angels, are really the descendants of the animals. May not man, if he too is only one of the animals, determine to live and die like the animals? Or at least may not his self-respect be impaired and partially lost, as we may imagine to be the case with some scion of a noble house, who is suddenly informed that all his life long he has been mistaken and that he was really of ignoble birth? Such an announcement might have the effect of degrading him, or he might, upon the revelation being made to him, become inspired with a desire to win that honour to which he was no longer born. There would be a considerable risk that he might live indulging his pleasures, as well as hope that he could choose the better part. And this risk besets us at the present moment: while we are discussing the descent of man from the animals, and comparing their bodily structure with our own, may we not insensibly be losing that which distinguishes us from them? That which we see or seem to see, or can represent to ourselves under any form of knowledge or figure of speech, too easily takes the place of that which we do not see and which cannot be similarly represented. All knowledge is good, and all serious inquiry and discussion is good, if we are able to follow them. But there may be a temporary disproportion in the parts of knowledge which has an injurious effect on the characters of individuals and on states of society.

There are different ways in which theories such as I have been describing may be met by those who oppose them. First they may be treated with ridicule; but this, although a natural, is not a good way of meeting them. ‘Fair creature, do you really suppose, or can I suppose, that you are descended from an ape?’ ‘And you man, created in the image of God, which will you have for your ancestor, a monkey or an angel?’ There is no harm in jests of this sort; after dinner, or at a public meeting, they are amusing enough, if not too often repeated. But this is not the spirit in which a serious man likes to meet the observations of scientific inquirers; he will not turn the flood of religious prejudices upon them, but try to consider their arguments upon their own merits. Ridicule is the test of weakness or of affectation, but not of truth. And when we remember that forty years ago the same vindications would have been directed against those who maintained the existence of the earth during untold millions of years, and that less than twenty years ago the same incredulous laugh would have been raised at those who affirmed that man had dwelt upon the earth for a hundred thousand or for many hundred thousands of years, although these two facts are now universally admitted by almost all educated men, experience teaches us caution, and we see that we must treat serious things seriously, or the laugh may be turned against ourselves. Especially when we argue from the pulpit we ought to be careful not to supply the chasm in our reasoning by rhetoric, believing that no one does more harm to religion or tends more to undermine the Christian faith than he who appeals eloquently to our religious feelings on behalf of a scientific untruth, or a conclusion not warranted by facts.

I am not going to ridicule or misrepresent the writings of a great naturalist whose genius and character are deserving of our utmost respect. His speculations are the honest result of studies in which very few of us can follow him. It would be almost as impertinent in me to praise him as to attempt to criticize him in his own field. I only say these few words lest I should seem to be wanting in respect to one of the greatest living Englishmen. But I think that we who are not naturalists may be allowed to view this famous theory in the light of general considerations. We hear it spoken of everywhere; it seems to touch our own lives; we cannot easily shake off the impressions which it makes upon our minds. A discoverer is not always the best judge of his own discoveries; he is apt to become enamoured of them, and is unable to assign them their due proportions. The very intensity of mind which inspired him with the thought of them prevents his placing himself outside them and calmly reviewing them. He is lost in the light of them; he sees them everywhere, and cannot allow himself to anticipate the judgement which posterity may pass upon him. The absorbing influence of one idea is apt to make us regardless or unobservant of facts which lead in an opposite direction. This theory has served to draw into light one class of phenomena; the discovery of some other general law, of which the nature cannot yet be foreseen, may serve to collect facts of another kind. Therefore no true friend of science will be jealous of our hesitating, or perhaps delaying a little, when implicit assent is demanded to a great generalization. We are certainly not wrong in asking to know with some precision what are the limits of this generalization, which is threatening to swallow up all science. We shall do well to consider what it does not explain, as well as what it does. Add to this that general ideas exercise a great power over us; they are very fascinating and attractive; the simplest account always seems to be the truest—one idea is better than two—although there may really be in the working of nature and in the causes of historical events a subtlety and complexity far be yond human thoughts to reach. The attraction is irresistible when the animal or vegetable kingdom is capable or supposed to be capable of being explained in two words. We are very much inclined to believe what we so easily apprehend. Then again our teacher may be an observer of nature, and the general ideas of which I have been speaking may be supported by innumerable minute and curious facts, and thus acquire the name and authority of inductive science. But we must not therefore infer that the minute facts are adequate or sufficient to prove the principle assumed. A theory which is true partially will easily claim to be universal—the ‘may’ soon passes into a ‘must.’ In the void of human knowledge any account is better than none. And I need hardly observe that mere calmness of style, though an admirable quality, is no proof of the soundness of an argument; the greatest fallacies may be most clearly expressed, and the greatest untruths are sometimes found in the most logical and consecutive writings. In what remains of this sermon I shall venture to offer some remarks on the famous theory to which I have been referring, and which I will consider, first of all, from the intellectual side. There are some reasons why we should suspend our judgement, and not hastily decide that natural selection or the survival of the fittest is the sole or chief cause of the diversities of animal life. Secondly, without deter mining whether this theory is true or untrue, or in what degree true, of which we can only judge in a very general manner, I shall endeavour to lay before you some considerations of another kind, which may be placed in the opposite scale, tending to show that, whatever may be the origin of man, when we regard him as a moral and religious being we are concerned, not with what he has been, but with what he is. Whether his history is a progress or a decline, whether he has risen from the animals or fallen from some other sphere, he remains what he was before, endowed with reason and conscience, capable of knowing God and of contemplating His works. When the shock of novelty is over, he resumes the even path of a Christian life.

1. Must we not begin by asking the question: Whether this theory is the whole explanation of the origin of man and animals, or a part only? And if a part, what part—a fifth, a tenth, a twentieth? for we are obliged to recall our minds by numbers from the influence of imagination. In the persistence of the strongest, in the survival of the fittest, we recognize a true cause of change in the forms of animal life: the question to which we have as yet no distinct answer is—How far has the operation of this cause extended? Or, if we are answered that this is the only one, and that there is no other, because in infinite ages the least cause, like the trickling of a stream, may produce the greatest effects—and with due regard to the economy of the world we ought not to assume two causes when one is sufficient—we wonder how there can be any knowledge of this exhaustive nature. May there not have been an adaptation of animals to their circumstances, such as is supposed in another famous theory, which in the course of infinite ages—that unknown quantity has always to be added—may have also modified them? May there not have been latent in the bosom of nature other causes which we are unable to calculate—changes of atmosphere, epidemics, diseases, currents of air or water, rapid alter nations of heat and cold, different proportions of the elements, or perhaps causes the very nature of which is unknown to us, as much as electricity was to the ancients or to the scientific inquirer of two centuries ago? These are the reflections which strike even an unlearned person. The mystery of reproduction is the greatest of all the mysteries of animal life, and most likely to be affected by subtle influences. And may not the instincts of animals, like the reason of man, have had the effect sometimes of preserving the weakest as well as the strongest? When we think of some of the more wonderful phenomena of animal life, of the polities of ants and bees, and of the intelligence of some of the larger animals, we can hardly tell how far nature may have developed instincts of concert and self-defence, which would prevent them from being passive victims of the struggle for existence.

Again, the terms which are used in these speculations are to a great extent ambiguous. When we speak of ‘evolution,’ or ‘development,’ or even of the more familiar terms, force, cause, law, we are insensibly generalizing in a single word processes which may be infinitely various and belong to different spheres of knowledge. The laws of mind are not the same as the laws of external nature; nor the history of the human mind the same as the history of external nature. The evolution of thought is altogether different from the evolution of the animal creation. Are we not transferring the language of physics to metaphysics? Nor is the expression ‘survival of the fittest’ free from ambiguity. For who are the animals fittest to survive? Not necessarily those who are externally most in harmony with their circumstances or framed on the most symmetrical model. In animals, as in men, there may have been some hidden force which would more than compensate for adverse external conditions, like that hidden force in human constitutions which gives longevity, and is partly the same with health and strength, partly different from them. Amid varying circumstances and in infinite ages can any one say what forces may have acted in the regular course of nature?

Passing on to the condition of man, we are ready to acknowledge that man is an animal, and dependent like other animals in his bodily structure on physiological laws. We seem to trace also in animals the rudiments of many human qualities good and bad. There is jealousy and strife and a natural state of war fare among many of them; there is vanity among the birds of the air, like the vanity of dress or of personal attractions among human beings; there is subtlety and craft, which enables them to get an enemy into their power or to defend themselves against him; there are also vestiges of the higher qualities of gratitude, of family attachment, of devotion to a master; and they seem to be capable of a sense of honour or duty, and of distinguishing between hurt and injury. Their likeness to us doubtless gives them an additional claim on our sympathy: as has been well said, ‘Humanity towards the lower animals is one of the best tests of the civilization of a nation.’ Nor can we deny to them a certain amount of progress, any more than we can affirm that man is always progressing. They too have their polities and a sort of society; they imitate one another and learn of one another; they are not without a limited reason which some times enables them to meet new circumstances; and like mankind they have a latent and apparently inherited experience.

II

GREEK AND ORIENTAL RELIGIONSPreached at Balliol, Nov. 1877..

AND OTHER SHEEP I HAVE, WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD: THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY SHALL HEAR MY VOICE; AND THERE SHALL BE ONE FOLD, AND ONE SHEPHERD. JOHN x. l6.

THE teaching of our Lord was originally designed for His own people. It was not a philosophy, but a life—the life of a private man standing in no relation to the political differences or to the religious controversies of his age. He was not a formal teacher who laid down abstract principles, but He went about doing good, and gracious words dropped from His lips which drew men’s hearts towards Him. The lesson was relative to the occasion, called out by some word of His disciples, by some want of the multitude—‘having nothing to eat’—by some incident happening in the temple of Jerusalem, by the changing aspect of His own life as the Jewish nation accepted or rejected His message, by the doom which He saw was impending over them. He went up once or oftener to the national feasts; He sat at meat with Lazarus and his sisters, with Zacchæus, at the house of Simon; He lived habitually among the common people. When men gathered to Him, He spoke to them—out of a boat, in a synagogue, on a mountain, in the courts of the temple; and His words were instinct with a divine love and power; when the eye saw Him it blessed Him, when the ear heard Him it gave witness to Him. He sought to create in men the feeling which absorbed His own being, that ‘they were the sons of God.’ So simple and natural is the life of Christ, like the life of any other man, only greater and better; and yet through this simple and natural life a light is shed which reaches the controversies of after ages and the history of the world. There is no reason to suppose that our Lord had ever passed beyond the borders of Israel or entered into any Gentile city. Hence He did not come across that great controversy which agitated the first century of the Christian Church, the relation of the Jewish to the Gentile converts. He had no occasion to lay down in so many words the general principle which thirty years afterwards was affirmed by St. Paul, that God was not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles; yet by a sort of anticipation or inspiration, under a figure or parable, He implies the same when He says: ‘Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, that there may be one fold, and one shepherd’; or again in a similar spirit, but with a still deeper meaning, carrying our thoughts beyond churches and controversies to the eternal relations of God and man: ‘Be ye therefore the children of your Father which is in heaven, for He maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and upon the good, and sendeth His rain upon the just and upon the unjust.’

Thus we may think of Christ not only as the founder of the Christian Church, but as the uniter or reconciler of many churches to Himself and to one another. We may think of Him also as restoring all men everywhere, the bad and the good, the just and the unjust, to the fatherhood of God. The divisions of Christians have passed into a byword. The hatreds of those who profess to be followers of Christ are deeper and more lasting than any others, handed down from generation to generation like blood-feuds among barbarous tribes. The same spirit of alienation is observable among nations, and among different classes in the same nation, even in our own humane and civilized age. There are not many persons who habitually regard all other men of all ranks, religions, races, as equally with themselves God’s creatures. Yet there is also an uneasy feeling among us that all this is not as it should be. The best men seem to be free from such enmities and narrownesses; in the hour of death there are few who retain them, and we sometimes dwell with satisfaction on the hope that in another world they will have passed away. There will be no more Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic, Dissenter or Churchman, master or servant, but all one in Christ Jesus. We know also that our prayers and aspirations cannot in a day change the customs of society; that the deep lines which separate ancient forms of religion will outlast our lifetime. Nor can we say how far political or ecclesiastical measures may be able to effect the union of different religious communions. But one thing is clear that, if such hopes are to be realized at all, a Christian or Catholic spirit must have prepared the way for their fulfilment; then the walls of Jericho may fall down of themselves. And although the prospects of unity and peace in the Church and the world may be far off, yet every one may cherish them in his own heart; and it makes a great difference in our feelings and actions whether we think of a Church one and indivisible, embracing all ages and all races and classes of mankind, or whether our idea of the Christian Church is confined to that visible portion of it in which we worship, and vainly seek amid all varieties of circum stances to force upon a reluctant world.

I purpose in this sermon to speak to you of the spirit of unity, which I shall consider in two ways. First, as it affects our feelings or attitude towards non-Christian races and religions, whether towards the classical nations of antiquity or to the great religions of the East. Both these are in fact very near to us; the literature and history of the classical nations forming the basis of our higher education; the other constantly crossing our path in foreign travel, in commerce, in the fulfilment of political duties. Secondly, I will consider, but on another occasion, the same principle as it touches our relations with other Christian Churches or sects who, equally with ourselves, acknowledge the Christian rule of faith and duty. These are nearer home; their members live among us, often in the same street or house; and the peace and political well-being of the community depends greatly on the feelings which we entertain towards them, and they towards us. But, lest I should weary you by crowding too many important topics into the space of a brief half hour, I will defer the second division of the subject to another day.

In former ages the religion of Christ was the antagonist of every other. Its attitude was necessarily one of hostility to the Gentile world. It waged an interminable war, not only against the vices of the heathen, but against their literature and philosophy. To the first Christians they were ‘knowledge falsely so called,’ and it was even debated among them whether any of the great teachers of antiquity had been saved. Soon the Church began to fight against the world, not with spiritual weapons, but empire against empire, the Pagan empire against the Christian, the Athanasian against the Arian. The struggle was renewed in what is called the conversion of the barbarians. Once more the banner of the Cross was unfurled against the Crescent, and the Moslem was for a time thrust out of the sacred places of Christians. Then, stimulated by victory, the arms of Christians turned upon one another, and for six centuries and more, in the Albigensian crusade, at the time of the Reformation, during the Thirty Years’ War, the history of Christianity has been an almost continuous tale of strife and bloodshed. And, inherited from these conflicts, which are not yet ended, there has been a sentiment or feeling of antipathy to those of a different faith which has sunk deep into human nature. Men have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much of evil may have mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of themselves with the worst of their neighbours, the ideal of Christianity with the corruptions of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of religion. At every turn such prejudices meet us, and often in this, as well as in former ages, have had a certain influence in our conduct towards half civilized or barbarous races. To make them Christians might be an object worthy of us, but until they become Christians we seem to have no duties towards them. The same narrow spirit has perverted our notions of education. Persons who had to explain the apparent anomaly of the youth of a Christian country being engaged in the study of the heathen writers, have maintained that the real advantage of a classical education was no more than this, that it teaches us by contrast the superiority of Christianity. Even the word heathen, instead of being regarded according to its etymology as the equivalent of Gentiles or nations, has received what logicians would call a bad connotation. Yet how unnatural is all this, and how unlike the true spirit of the Gospel. Christ Himself is the first teacher of toleration when He says of the prophet who was not numbered among His followers, ‘Forbid him not’; or again, looking for ward to the future ministry of His disciples, ‘Pray for them that persecute you.’ In a similar spirit St. Paul says: ‘Bless them that persecute you, bless and curse not’; and, instead of confining the grace of God to the elect or to the Jewish people, he lays down the broad principle that there is no respect of persons with God, but that, as is elsewhere added, ‘in every nation he that feareth Him and doeth righteously is accepted of Him.’ In the Church, too, of after ages there is a better voice heard at intervals; the corruptions of Christians are condemned by the virtues of heathens. When the truth was forced upon the early Christians that among the Gentiles also there was a faith in a divine mind, and a hope of immortality, and a desire to live above the world, then they began to recognize that here, too, there had been the spirit of God working; they found in Greek philosophy, as in the law and the prophets, a second witness to the truth of the Gospel and another schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. And since there has ceased to be a living antagonism between Christianity and the extinct religions of Greece and Rome, the two have ever been silently intermingling and marrying, so that we can no longer separate them, the old philosophy supplying some instrument of thought or some element of politics or ethics to the Catholic system, until in a Christian country we can scarcely distinguish which portion of the truth has been received by us from a Gentile, which from a Jewish or Christian source.

And so with ourselves, when we travel or read the accounts of travellers in any eastern country; our first impression is something like that of St. Paul when he stood upon the Areopagus, that the people are wholly given to idolatry. We see or read of temples full of idols, of cruel and barbarous rites still practised, of licentiousness in the garb of religion, of a shocking and degrading asceticism. But when we look a little below the surface we find, at any rate in all the great religions of the world, a higher witness still present with them. The conscience of men is not dead; they are feeling after God if haply they may find Him. Just as we often remark about individuals from whom distance or .prejudice has estranged us, that they are much better and more like ourselves than we anticipated before we knew them, so we may observe about these strange religions; as we approach them nearer, we find that they bear the lineaments of a common human nature. Many forms of organization, many disputes about doctrine which we fancied to be peculiar to ourselves, reappear in them. The distinctions of clergy and laity, the institution of monasticism, exist in several of them; the opposition of faith and works, the doctrine of a sacrifice for the sins of men, are not wanting in them. They too have their difficulties about necessity and free will, their reconciliation of philosophy and faith, their attempts to harmonize new thoughts with old writings handed down by tradition, their differences about inspiration; like the East in general, a little caricaturing our more sober Western thoughts; and the art of interpretation has been carried further by them than any of our Western commentators. At every turn the student of Brahmanism or Buddhism or Mahometism, or of the ancient records of Assyria and Egypt, with a thrill of interest comes across some striking parallelism with the language or thoughts of the Old and New Testament, or the practices of the Christian Church; and far more interesting than these parallelisms of literary style or ceremonial is the fact that in every great religion there have been a few who have sought to pierce through the outward forms of religion to its true nature, who, like the prophets in the Old Testament, have seen the truth of Christ under other names, who have cast aside the local and temporal, and rested in the invisible and the eternal.

There is probably no cause now working in the world, neither criticism nor the progress of natural science, nor the power of great political movements, which will so greatly affect the future history of Christianity as our increased acquaintance with other religions. Mankind have lived in comparative isolation hitherto; now knowledge coming from the ends of the earth, and from the most remote ages, pours in upon us like a flood, obscuring some of our ancient landmarks, but also creating in us a sense such as we never had before, that we are one family, to whom God has spoken at sundry times and in divers manners, of whom no one member has been altogether banished or expelled from Him. The mere feeling of this leads us to regard the world under a different aspect, no longer as lying under the shadow of His wrath, but as pitied and accepted of Him; no longer as dwelling in darkness, but with a partial light. The basis on which we rest seems to be firmer and wider than formerly: there are many more witnesses than we supposed to the first principles of religion. And there are other ways in which the knowledge of other creeds enlightens us about our own. Who that has his mind fixed on the great forms of religion which have endured for ages in the East can think much of the petty disputes which sometimes agitate the minds of Christians in our own day, and are carried on with such extraordinary heat and bitterness, concerning the use of a word, a vestment, a posture, a colour? Who can think much of these things, if he reflects on the greater differences which have divided the human race during so many ages, and remembers that the same trivialities which agitate ourselves have been rife in other times and countries? For the corruptions of religion, the illusions of religion, the external form of religion, seem in different degrees to be common to all of them; the true light which lighteth every man coming into the world shines only sparingly and at intervals.

The greatest lesson which the religious history of mankind teaches us is that, laying aside the ceremonial and external, we should cling to the moral and spiritual. For this is the high and permanent element of religion; it is also the element to the recognition of which in its fulness very few attain, and from these few a noble rule of life has been imparted to mankind, and the thoughts of many hearts have been reflected in them. Such a view of religion, instead of dividing the world more and more, is a peacemaker between nations and races; men more easily approach those with whose creed they have some degree of sympathy; they are more readily received by them when they can present them with a truth, not antagonistic to their own better thoughts, but in harmony with them. It is hard to transplant our sects and forms of worship to some Eastern land, to carry thither customs and usages which are familiar to us but have no root in other countries, to convey over the sea an ecclesiastical hierarchy and even the history of the English Church. But it is not really difficult, or at least the difficulty is of another kind, to appeal from the worse to the better nature of men, to quicken the higher thought which lies buried in them, to lead them onward through their own feelings of reverence, not in spite of them. This is missionary work in which every one may engage, and not the ordained minister only, which may be carried on by a private person, giving offence to no one, elevating and purifying the circle in which he moves. And if some one says that the distinctive character of Christianity is thus likely to be lost, and that we are approaching too near to the condemned doctrine ‘that every one shall be saved by the sect which he professeth, provided he be diligent to form his life accordingly,’ we may answer that such was in fact the way in which Jews and Gentiles both alike received the Gospel, not as a truth wholly new or antagonistic to them, but as confirmed by their own religion or philosophy. The law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ; and to Him bore all the prophets witness, and the new commandment was an old one. So in other nations there were antecedents of the Christian faith, the growing consciousness of the brotherhood of man kind, the increasing sense of the unity of God. For ideas must be given through something; men cannot in an instant lay aside all their traditions. The old and the new must be harmonized for them; the new wine cannot be put into old bottles, or the new cloth sewed on to old garments. In the second place this wider conception of revelation is forced upon us by a wider experience such as neither the first ages nor any other have possessed hitherto. Thirdly, in what I have said nothing is implied of which the germ is not already contained in many passages of Scripture, such as the words, ‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth God and doeth righteousness is accepted of Him.’

Yet higher and more ideal than any outward or visible Church is the invisible, of which our conception is more abstract and distant, and therefore more vacant and shadowy. It is described in the words of the Bidding Prayer as ‘the congregation of faithful men dispersed throughout the world.’ But who they are no eye of man can discern! For the wheat and the tares grow together in this world, and many are called but few are chosen, and many are hearers but not doers of the word, and the first shall be last and the last first; and there are other sheep not of this fold, and there are those who have not seen and yet have believed. There are nominal Christians who are in no sense real Christians; and, on the other hand, in distant lands there are those to whom Christ in His individual person was never known, who, nevertheless, have had the temper of Christ, and in a way of their own have followed Him: all these are included in the invisible Church. It is a great fellowship of those who have lived for others and not for themselves, for the truth and not for the opinion of men only, above the world and not merely in it. It is a communion of souls and of good men everywhere and in all ages, who, if they could have known one another and the Lord, would have acknowledged that they were animated with a common spirit, and would have loved and delighted in one another. And we, too, feel that in the thought of this there is comfort and strength; we rejoice in the consciousness that here in this congregation, and everywhere to the furthest limits of the world, there are those who stand in the same relation towards God which, as we hope, it may be granted to us to attain; and that, as many have gone before, many are coming after to work out His will in this life and in another.

But sometimes there has been a confusion in the minds of men, and they have sought to clothe the visible Church in the attributes of the invisible, or to narrow the invisible Church to the visible. The kingdom of God, which is without, has been lighted up with the glories of the heavenly kingdom, the Church of history has been transformed into the Church of prophecy. For mankind easily perceive that the true ornaments of a church are not gold and silver or any such thing, but the lives of believers; and they fancy that they can infuse into the outward temple some grace and beauty of another sort. So the ancient philosophers intentionally, and also unintentionally, confused the actual or possible constitution of the state regulated by law and custom with that ideal of the perfect state which existed in a dream only, or in the heart of man. So Plato in a well-known passage of the RepublicPlato, Jowett’s Translation, iii. 306., which reminds us of the transitions of the Gospels, may be said to pass from the kingdom of God which is without to the kingdom of God which is within us. At the end of the ninth book of the Republic he says: ‘Then if that be his motive he will not be a statesman?’ ‘By the dog of Egypt (the strange oath of Socrates), by the dog of Egypt he will! in the city which is his own he certainly will, though in the land of his birth, perhaps not, unless he have a divine call.’ ‘I understand,’ is the reply, ‘you mean that he will be ruler in that city of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only, for I do not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth.’ ‘In heaven,’ replies Socrates, ‘there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and, beholding, may set his house in order.’

III

GROWTH IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GODPreached before the University.

GOD FORBID: FOR THEN HOW SHALL GOD JUDGE THE WORLD?

ROMANS iii. 6.

THE simplest truths of religion are also the deepest and most inexhaustible. They are everywhere around us, like the air which we breathe, and yet we are hardly conscious of their presence. They seem to grow up in us naturally by the light of reason and conscience; they are the established beliefs of the age or country in which we live. All men are agreed in holding them, and there is nothing new to be said about them.

They may be summed up in two or three propositions which nobody would deny, as for example: God is just; God is true; He governs the world by fixed rule; He is the Author of our being; He knows and sees all things. And yet these simple propositions seem to be always in danger of being lost. They become truisms or commonplace. They are laid on the shelf, and exercise no great influence over life. The most trifling controversy of the day has a deeper interest for us than the great question of all religion, the nature and character of God. Few persons have ever seriously inquired into the evidence supplied by their own nature, and by the course of the world, of the manner of God’s dealings with them. And while holding the beliefs of the divine perfection in a lazy, unmeaning way, they have allowed all sorts of other beliefs to spring up in their minds which are practically inconsistent with this. They have not said: ‘No that is impossible, because it contradicts the divine justice or the divine goodness’; ‘That is impossible, because it contradicts the divine truth’; or, in the impetuous language of the Apostle, ‘Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar’; or, ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ These are the tests to which all systems of theology must at last be brought, the human, or rather the divine, ideas of truth and right and goodness and love.

I purpose to speak in this sermon of our simplest conceptions of the divine nature. And first I shall consider what these are, and how far they can be said to accord with our experience of the world; and secondly I shall show how the primary conceptions of God have been violated, not only in the religions of the Gentiles, but in many ideas of the divine nature which have been held by Christian teachers. And thirdly I shall point out how to these we return as the final result of all our knowledge of divine things, and that they are the fixed principles or anchors of the soul which hold us fast amid the waves of time in life and death.

As I have already remarked, there would be no great difference about the language in which we should describe the Divine Being. We should use words derived from human goodness, because we have no other. But while we should admit that they are applied to God in a transcendent sense, transferred from the finite to the infinite, we should insist that they have essentially the same meaning in both uses of them. For example, when we say that God is just, we do not mean to attribute to Him a quality which is the reverse of human justice, but only more perfect, such as is proper to One who knows all the circumstances of every case, and has therefore a sort of infinite equity in dealing with them. When we ascribe any of these epithets to God, we mean to affirm that at any rate He does not fall short of the quality denoted by them in the ordinary human sense of the words. There is no standard to which we can refer the nature of God but our own moral ideas, and if we cast a doubt upon these then we are altogether at sea.

Under the name of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we are worshipping an unknown God, of whom we catch occasional glimpses flashing through the mists and storms which envelop Him. There is a question which the ancient philosophers were fond of raising—Whether there was one virtue or many? They meant to ask whether all the different virtues were derived from a single principle. So we might ask whether there is one attribute of God or many, and we might sum up all in one word—divine perfection. If we were further to analyse this we should attribute to Him, first, knowledge and power, which seem to be different aspects of the same quality, for to know all things is to be able to do them; secondly, we should attribute to Him truth and justice, which are similarly connected, for truth is the foundation of justice; thirdly, we should attribute to Him goodness—not that easy-going temper or character which sometimes passes under this name among men, but the everlasting purpose that all His creatures should be good even as He is good. Though He might judge them and punish them in this life or another (and this might be the effect of the fixed laws by which He governs the world), yet we should feel confident of His having provided that His banished ones be not expelled from Him. We should not doubt that He who had the power would also have the will to restore men to Himself; or, as the Apostle says: ‘So then God concluded all men under sin that He might have mercy upon all.’

The mediæval saints would have spoken of what they termed ‘the enjoyment of God.’ And certainly there is great comfort in the thought of a divine perfection—to the good when they are overpowered by the evil of the world; to the evil, too, as soon as they feel any desire to cast aside the burden of sin, and become conscious of One who wills that they shall be saved. The thought of this perfection might kindle raptures in our minds such as find utterance in the hymns of the Psalmist: ‘I will love Thee, O Lord my strength; I will praise Thee with my whole heart’; or might create in us such a sense of confidence and truth as is expressed in the words: ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation’; or in that yet deeper strain which is heard in Psalm xc: ‘Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from generation to generation; before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were formed, Thou art God from everlasting to everlasting’; or might give us such a sense of peace as is expressed in those pathetic words of Psalm xxiii: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.’ This is the language which the Psalmist uses in all the circumstances of his life; he feels that God is ever present with him; and in all the higher and nobler thoughts which pass his mind he recognizes a divine inspiration. But this is not the language of our hearts; we have not this same joyous confidence in God; at least there are few persons who would be able to find in these words the natural expression of their feelings, partly because we interpose His laws between ourselves and Him, and seem to imagine that He is being hidden from us when He is really being revealed to us. With how much wider knowledge, with how much deeper feeling, can the modern astronomer look up at the stars and say, ‘When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man that Thou art mindful of him?’ We have given up the notion of the human personality of God, and we have not yet mastered this other conception of a personality clothed in laws.

But there is another reason which lies deeper still. For the truth is that our minds are partly clouded by a doubt—the same doubt which pressed upon the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes—the existence of evil in the world. How is this divine perfection reconcilable with the misery of our poor, with the vice of our criminals, with the disease and death which we see everywhere around us, with the crushing misfortunes which sometimes oppress the good, with the tendencies to evil or with the actual evil which we find in our hearts? That is the difficulty which is pressed upon us, and which some persons use as an argument to make us believe everything; which others adduce as a reason why we should believe nothing. Men will often advance the most monstrous doctrines respecting the character and actions of God. And, when reason and nature alike seem to rebel against some of these statements, they reply, ‘How do you account for the existence of evil?’ Here is a difficulty which cannot be lightly set aside either in speculation or in practice: whether a man thinks or feels, there is a dead weight hanging about his neck, darkening his life, which needs to be removed. Is our conception of God to be formed according to that image which exists within us, or to be derived from our experience of evil in the world? That is the question. My brethren, this is an old difficulty which is not now broached for the first time, and to which we cannot expect to have a full answer in this life, because the purposes of God towards us are only revealed in part. But, though unable to wholly remove the difficulty, I think that we may see the direction in which the answer is to be sought. For, first of all, we have no business to say that God either causes or permits evil, but only that He governs the world by fixed laws, within the limits of which good and evil display themselves. He has made the world to be a sort of theatre in which men act their parts. If you say that individuals are sacrificed to the working of these laws, are you not thinking too much of this life only, and not conscious that there may be other states of being in which the meanest creatures here—the cripple, the pauper, the criminal—may have another chance given them, and strike for another goal, and the last become first and the first perhaps last.

Believing in the existence of God, and comparing our own happier lot with that of the poor and suffering whom we see around us, we cannot justify the ways of God to man without maintaining that there is more than appears; and for that reason, as well as for other reasons, we look forward to a future life. But, secondly, we feel that good is inseparable from evil, and that we can form no distinct conception of the one apart from the other. Both seem to flow equally from the free agency of man, and if we were to deny the existence of evil we should be compelled to deny the existence of good. This shows us that we must not be too certain of our own ideas on this subject, and that some part of the difficulty is due to the use of a word. For if, instead of speaking of the existence of evil in the world, we spoke rather of degrees of perfection or of degrees of imperfection (and what do we mean by evil more than this?), that part of terror which is due to the influence of language would be removed. Logic would no longer be able to stand over us like a hard taskmaster asserting the omni potence of God, and the existence of evil, and requiring us to draw the conclusion.

But still, I admit that evil under whatever name is a reality which cannot be got rid of by any new use of language. And, though I am afraid of seeming to carry you too far away from home, there is another consideration to which I should wish to draw your attention. It is not the mere existence of evil, but the amount of evil in the world which really depresses us and seems like a load too heavy to be lifted up. And if we could realize to ourselves that the purposes of God are known to us in part only, not merely as regards another life, but also as regards this; if we could imagine that the evil and disorder which we see around us is but a step or stage in the progress towards order and perfection, then our conception of evil would be greatly changed. Geology tells us of remote ages in which animals wandered over the earth when as yet man ‘was not,’ and of ages longer and more distant still in which there was no breath or movement of living creature on land or sea. So slowly, and by so many steps, did the earth which we inhabit attain to the fulness of life which we see around us. And I might go on to speak of this world as a pebble in the ocean of space, as no more in relation to the universe than the least things are to the greatest, or to the whole earth. But, that we may not become dizzy in thinking about this, I will ask you to consider the bearing of such reflections, which are simple matters of fact, on our present subject. They tend to show us how small a part, not only of the physical, but also of the moral world, is really known to us. They suggest to us that the evil and suffering which we see around us may be only the beginning of another and higher state of being, to be realized during countless ages in the history of man. That progress of which we think so much, from barbarism to civilization, or from ancient to modern times, may be as nothing compared with that which God has destined for the human race. And if we were living in those happier times, we should no more think seriously of the misery through which many have attained to that higher state of being than we should think of some bad dream, or dwell on some aberration or perversity of childhood when the character had been formed and had grown up to the stature of the perfect man.

Well, but some one will say, I would rather not be deluded with the prospect of an indefinite future, ten, or twenty, or thirty thousand years hence, when I see and feel wretchedness at my very door, and in my own home, when at this hour during which we are here assembled there are thousands of suffering, hopeless beings to whom life is a burden. How will the millennium of which you speak profit them? I will not repeat what I have said before, that this world would be the most unjust of worlds if there were no other; but there is another reflection which is nearer than that. The evil, the misery, the moral and physical degradation you, who are so much moved at the spectacle, have the power of mitigating, of relieving, of preventing. This millennium, which is so far off, may be brought by you into your own neighbour hood; there may be a kingdom of heaven in a parish at the present hour, as well as in some remote age or another. From you may flow an inspiration of goodness; a breath from another land which may drive away the pestilence. For God has not left us in this world helpless to contend against the power of evil, but has also endowed us with the capacity of resisting evil, and of removing the circumstances out of which evil grows. And do not let us say, How can we get rid of the difficulty of the existence of the evil? but, How can we get rid of evil? How can we fulfil that purpose with a view to which God has allowed evil to exist? This is the best speculative answer to the difficulty, namely, that we can remove evil; and the best practical answer—for, when we are most actively engaged in doing good to others, then we most strongly feel that the sad experience of evil in the world is really reconcilable with that other image of the divine nature which is presented to us by reason and conscience.

It seems to be a harder task to think of God now than formerly, because we can no longer think of Him as the God of our Church or nation, but of the whole earth, nor of the earth merely, but of myriads of worlds. Yet in all ages, the ages of credulity or faith as well as those of reason and inquiry, the minds of men have been struggling after God if haply they might find Him. The ancient Greek thought that he saw God, first in the likeness of man, not better but greater than himself; then as fate, then as mind; whose providential interference was introduced to meet a difficulty, and who was not so much the just governor of men as the occasional avenger of injustice. Then there came the philosopher who taught that God was good, and the Author of good; that He was true, and could have no occasion to deceive. Yet even he had no conception of a God who was the God of all nations of the earth. Slowly and partially in the decline of Roman and Greek life, when the different streams of human thought were beginning to meet and mingle, the wiser part of the Gentile world became dimly conscious that God was not the God of the Greeks and Romans, but of all mankind.

Even in the Scriptures too, if we read them attentively, we shall find a similar progressive revelation of the divine nature. In the childhood of the world God walked in the garden and talked with Adam. But in the New Testament we are plainly told that no man hath seen God at any time. In the Book of Exodus we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and in the Book of Genesis that He tempted Abraham; but again in the New Testament that He tempteth no man. And once more in the Old Testament itself we find both the earlier and the later notion. First He visited the sins of the fathers upon the children; secondly, in the prophets there occurs the twice repeated contradiction of this. Henceforth there should be no more this proverb in the house of Israel, ‘the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’; but every soul should bear his own iniquity. And our Lord Himself twice rebuked the popular superstition that temporal calamities are the punishment of sin: first, in the words, ‘Think ye that those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all the dwellers in Jerusalem?’ and again, in the case of the man born blind, when the question is asked Him, ‘Master, which did sin, this man or his parents?’

Slowly and gradually, whether with or without Jewish or Christian revelation, have men attained to that degree of clearness of insight into the ways of God of which the human mind seems capable. And again and again they have held the truth in inconsistency, and in the name of Christianity relapsed into Jewish and Gentile error. They have not placed before themselves the attributes of God as the conditions under which they must think of His dealings with man. How, for example, when we speak of God as true, can we imagine that He will see us other than we truly are, or interpose a fiction between Himself and us? Or how can we suppose that He who is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, will make our eternal salvation dependent on some accident of place or time, or the performance of some external act? Or how can a just God punish us for what we never did, for what another did, for the mere tendency to evil which is inherent in the nature which He has given us? How can the most sorrowful spectacle that ever was seen upon earth, at which in a figure we may say that the world has been mourning ever since, have given Him pleasure and satisfaction? Will He remedy one injustice by another? Or again, can He inflict a disproportionate punishment on any of His creatures? The good of society, the improvement of the offender, are the purposes of human punishment. Shall we attribute to the Most Merciful a darker purpose, of which we hardly venture to think or speak? Or shall we not rather thankfully acknowledge that His plans for the improvement of mankind are more perfect, more continuous, than our human schemes of discipline?

The changes which have already taken place in the religious belief of Christians incline us to argue that there will be other changes by which religion and morality may be more perfectly reconciled. Many dark clouds of error and superstition hang about the early ages of the Church, and some of these are hanging about us still; many opinions were held by the best of men in the Nicene Church from which the human mind now shrinks with horror and amazement. Who can believe that the unbaptized infant is consigned to everlasting torments? Yet this was once the orthodox faith of the Christian world. Who can hear without trembling that one mortal sin consciously committed after baptism, almost, if not altogether, excluded the sinner from the hope of salvation? No wonder that men put off baptism until the hour of death. But what a conception both of the nature of God and of the religion of Christ does such a practice imply. Or who is not surprised when he reads that the satisfaction of Christ for the sins of mankind was originally understood to be a satisfaction to the devil, and not to God? And, strangest of all, perhaps the least error in the use of a word seems to have been thought more displeasing to God than the greatest perfidy or cruelty of emperors, or the corruption of cities and churches.

In the ancient Abyssinian Church, which by some has been thought to have retained the primitive faith more than any other, there was a solemn form of words repeated on certain days of the year. The origin of the custom and the name of the author of the words were unknown; they were supposed by some to have been translated out of another language. The meaning of several of the terms employed in this ancient document was uncertain; and texts were quoted from the Abyssinian Scriptures in support of them which were not found in older and better copies. Nevertheless, the use of this form of words, admitted to be of such uncertain interpretation and authority, was guarded by the most tremendous anathemas, which were uttered by the whole people; and all who did not believe what they could not wholly understand were devoted by them to eternal damnation. And sometimes the anathemas were rolled forth in a sort of triumph to the pealing sound of the organ, and sometimes the innocent voice of a child might be heard gently repeating them. The patriarch of the Abyssinian Church had long wished to put an end to this scandal, for he acknowledged that the words were not to be taken in their natural sense. But ecclesiastical customs are very tenacious, and are apt to continue long after they are disapproved by reason and conscience.

My brethren, I want to point out to you that, if we insist on retaining all that we have received from antiquity, we must insensibly impair the divine image in the soul. Religion and morality will part company more and more; and we shall either cease to believe in God and a future life at all, or we shall become the victims of every superstition; we cannot draw near to Him if we think of Him only as a being who watches over us in this world, but leaves us to our fate in another.

I am aware that some persons may be displeased with me for saying this. But they would be equally displeased if I were to describe to them the terrors of hell in the language of Tertullian or some other ancient father, or as they are depicted in the writings of that Spanish friar which some of us may have read translated in the works of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. And still more, and more justly, would they be displeased if I was to apply their own doctrine to some one near and dear to them who had led a careless life and died making no sign of repentance. Yet surely it is a dangerous thing to hold religious truth at a distance which we refuse to realize when brought home to us; to begin by violating our first notions of the attributes of God on some slender ground of tradition or doubtful interpretation of isolated texts of Scripture, and then, as if such doctrines were too dreadful to be entertained, seriously to lay them aside when they begin to be applied to practice.

For indeed the thought of God is awful enough to us without adding terrific and unmeaning consequences. We do not suppose that God is like some foolish father who lets off his children from the punishment which is for their improvement—but rather that ‘whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’ We know that the will and purpose of God is that we should become like Him; that we should put off the garment of self and put on the Lord Jesus Christ in righteousness and true holiness. Nor can we imagine or believe that this is to be accomplished except by the exertions of our own wills co-operating with His will. And, when we think of our own selfishness, of our absorption in the things of this world and our averseness to another, we feel that this is a great and protracted work which cannot be accomplished without many a struggle and many sharp pangs, which might be described in Scripture language as dividing the body from the spirit, us from ourselves. For, whether we speak of a state of probation in which mankind or the majority of them are to have one chance and then to be cast aside for ever, or of an education which is to begin here and to be carried on through countless ages (and there may be those who are saved, so as by fire), yet we are all agreed in this, that ‘without holiness no man shall see the Lord.’ The impure must become pure, the untrue must become simple and true, the thought of God must take the place of the thought of self, there must be no more hatred or party spirit: that ‘last infirmity of religious minds’ must disappear, the tangle of our own character must be unwoven and woven again before we can appear in His presence.

When we think of another life, which is the second great truth of religion, in the light of the attributes of God, we have a feeling of awe and also of comfort. We know that God will see us as we truly are, and that in our way we are not too fit to meet His searching eye. But we know also that He will take into account all the circumstances of our lives. We are conscious that He is infinitely above us, and that no thought of ours can comprehend Him. But, as we would rather be judged by a great and good man than by one of a meaner sort, we would rather fall, as was said of old, into the hands of God than man. We know too that a perfect God can have no other aim or purpose to accomplish but the perfection of His creatures, if this be possible. The systems of men do not terrify us, or their wild denunciations of one another, whether in this or in former ages; they scarcely last a thousand years, and we know that in them is not always to be found the mind of Christ. And we can rise above them into the clear atmosphere of the justice and goodness of God. But what must strike, I do not say with fear, but with awe, the mind of any reflecting being is this, that in that other world of which we know so little we have no one on whom we can rely but God only. Let us sometimes be alone with Him in this world, for the time will come when we shall be alone with Him.

IV

THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF GODPreached at Balliol, April 23, 1876..

HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD.

DEUT. vi. 4.

FOLLOWING the plan which was indicated in a former sermon, I shall proceed now to consider the revelation of the divine nature which is made to us in the Old Testament. This we may hereafter compare briefly—first, with Greek and Roman ideas of religion; secondly, with that wider and more universal conception of God which is given us in history, in science, in our own experience, and in the Gospel of Christ.

I am sensible of the difficulty of doing justice to a great subject in the short compass of a sermon. Such a treatment must necessarily appear superficial, inadequate, fragmentary. I would wish you to consider what I am going to say as hints and suggestions only, which you may carry back with you to the study of the Old Testament and make the beginning of thoughts and studies of your own.

V

CHRIST’S REVELATION OF GODPreached at Balliol, May 21, 1876..

GOD, WHO AT SUNDRY TIMES AND IN DIVERS MANNERS SPAKE IN TIMES PAST UNTO THE FATHERS BY THE PROPHETS, HATH IN THESE LAST DAYS SPOKEN UNTO US BY HIS SON.

HEBREWS i. 1, 2.

IN preceding sermons we traced the idea of God in the Greek and Eastern religions and in the Hebrew prophets. We saw how slowly mankind emerged out of local worship and barbarous fancies, and came at length to a higher notion of the divine nature; how they passed from the Homeric gods to the absolute being and good of Aristotle and Plato; from the childlike innocent vision of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day to the God of justice and mercy ‘terrible in righteousness, mighty to save,’ of the prophets and the Psalms. We have now to consider the further revelation of God in the New Testament, which may be summed up almost in a word: ‘The manifestation of God in Jesus Christ.’

As I was saying in a former sermon, the relation of the Old Testament to the New has been often misunderstood. The New Testament has been read backwards in the Old: an ancient ceremony, a holy place, a number, a word, has been made the symbol of a hidden truth. The old is always entwining with the new both in philosophy and theology, and out of this accidental connexion has been developed a system of interpreting the Old Testament by the New. The practice has had in two ways a bad result. It has fixed the mind upon what is unimportant in the Old and New Testament Scriptures rather than upon what is important; and it has tended, if I may use the expression, to confine the Gospel within the curtain of the Tabernacle. This is one of those theological questions upon which the comparison of other religions has thrown a flood of light. What theologians of the last century would have supposed to be a proof of the divine origin of Christianity, viz. the adaptation of the older form of a religion to its later requirements (‘which things are an allegory,’ as is said in the Epistle to the Galatians), is now seen to be a phenomenon not peculiar to Christianity, but common to all religions in which there are sacred books, if they retain any life or power.

Yet there is also a real harmony between the Old Testament and the New, which will more clearly appear to us when we drop the accidents of time and place and pierce to the thing contained in them. There was no necessary connexion between the Paschal lamb and that other sacrifice which was the negation of a sacrifice; but the Paschal lamb was a natural image under which the disciples, who were Jews at first, spoke of the sufferings of Christ. To us it is a mere figure of speech, consecrated by the tradition of ages. But there is also a deeper harmony between the Old Testament and the New, which is the harmony of good and truth everywhere: when the prophet Isaiah says, ‘Your new moons and sabbaths are an abomination unto me,’ he breathes the same spirit as St. Paul, where he insists that no man shall judge another ‘in meat or in drink, in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath day.’ When again, almost in a strain of passion, he says, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool, if ye be willing and obedient,’ he anticipates the milder and more authoritative words of Christ, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee; go, and sin no more.’ When Isaiah says (xix. 24), ‘In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land,’ in this singular form of words he expresses the same thought which is uttered by Christ: ‘Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, that there may be one fold and one shepherd.’ The evangelical prophet and the New Testament, with a greater or less degree of clearness, teach the same lesson, that there is one God and Father of all, and one Church or Israel of God. Alike they denounce evil, especially in the form of hypocrisy; the prophets not sparing the kings or priests who were their contemporaries, while Christ, in a severer tone than He uses towards other sinners, condemns Pharisaism, which had become more systematized now that the world had grown older and the religion of Israel had been longer established. Such a common basis there is in the Old and New Testaments, and perhaps in the higher parts of almost all religions.

And not only is there this unconscious harmony between them, but Christ expressly derives a great part of His doctrine from the laws of the prophets. In His own mind His teaching seems to have appeared generally to be a fulfilment of them; though one or two isolated passages may be cited, such as that remarkable one in St. John, ‘All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers,’ which have an opposite character. It may be observed that, though He nowhere speaks of the Ceremonial Law as having any relation to Himself, He selects passages both from the Books of Moses and the prophets, and makes them the text of His discourses. ‘This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’ To those who condemn His healing on the Sabbath day He rejoins, ‘Go ye and learn what that meaneth: I will have mercy and not sacrifice’; and He quotes examples of what to the Jews would have appeared the profanation of it, in the Old Testament. To others who made the word of God of none effect by their traditions, He replies, ‘Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying: ‘This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth and honoureth Me with their lips; but in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.’ Or again, speaking of the blindness of the whole people: ‘By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and not perceive.’ There is no more gracious description of the Gospel than that which Christ Himself read in the synagogue out of the Book of the prophet Esaias: ‘The spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.’

So again, probably in His own thoughts, and certainly in the earliest reflections of His disciples, Christ is identified with the suffering servant of God in the prophecies of the late Isaiah—suffering and also rejoicing; for in the Old as well as in the New Testament there is a picture of a suffering as well as of a triumphant Messiah. Every saviour or helper of mankind has a time of suffering as well as of glory, a time in which God seems to have forsaken him, and the meanness or the indifference or the wickedness of mankind are too much for him, and a time when the multitude cry ‘Hosanna’ before him, or he himself in his own inmost soul has a more present vision of a kingdom not of this world. This double thread runs alike through the prophets and the Gospels. Only what is more outward and visible in the Old Testament becomes more inward and spiritual in the New. The kingdom of God is not the conversion of surrounding nations or the subjugation of them to the God of Israel, but ‘the kingdom of God is within you.’ There, in the heart of man, its struggle is to be maintained, its victory won. It does not seek to incorporate the kingdoms of the world, but is rather in antagonism with them. The faithful believer feels the dead weight of sin and of the world, but in himself and in relation to God he is free and lord of all things. Take as the highest expression of what I am saying the remarkable words of St. Paul in 2 Cor. vi: ‘As deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold we live, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as having nothing and yet possessing all things.’ Or again the description of the spiritual conflict in Rom. vii: ‘The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . O wretched man that I am. . . . I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

Of this spiritual conflict there is no trace in the prophets. Neither do they ever speak of God taking up His abode in the hearts of men. Their relation to Him is an external one like that of subjects to a king. They see Him sitting on a throne high and lifted up. They cannot be said to reconcile God to man, or to bridge the chasm which separates them. He is the Sun of their life, and they seem to fear that when their breath passes away the sunshine in which they have lived may be withdrawn from them. They utter His commands; occasionally, awake or in a dream, they hear His voice; but they do not hold communion with Him. He is clothed in the greatness of nature, which like the cherubim veils His face from them. He is still the God of the Jewish race, though in the distance the prophet sees that other races will begin, or are beginning, to partake of the mercies granted to the Israelites. The misery and evil of the people are present; and they are already experiencing the just judgements of God. But the hope of good is future—in those days, in the latter days, at some unknown and distant time; whereas in the New Testament the good is present and immediate; within the reach of every one, if he will renounce himself and follow Christ. For these are ‘the latter days,’ and ‘this day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’

The life of Christ comes after the promises and denunciations of the prophets like the calm after storm, like the still small voice in the Book of Kings after the thunder and the earthquake. It is the life of a private man, unknown to the history of His own time. Very few Romans within a century of His birth had ever heard of His name. To a stranger visiting Palestine about the year 30 He would have appeared the gentlest and most innocent of mankind. Such a one might have been described in the words of the prophet: ‘He shall not strive nor cry; a bruised reed shall He not break, nor quench the smoking flax.’ He would have seemed like any other man, only calmer and deeper. He would not have made that great interval between Himself and other men which we sometimes attribute to Him; He would rather have sought to identify Himself with them. ‘Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but One, that is God.’ What, then, do we mean, and what would He Himself have meant by declaring that He was the ‘manifestation of God’ or the ‘Son of God’?

Suppose that we pause for a moment and ask, first of all, what we mean by the very term ‘the manifestation of God.’

Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him; how, then, can He be manifested to us? He is in one world and we in another: how can we pass from ourselves to Him? We cannot escape from the condition of our own minds. He is in eternity, and we are limited by space and time: what conception or idea can we form of Him? Everything that we think is subject to the laws of our minds: every word that we utter is a part of a human language. But our thoughts are not the thoughts of the universal mind, and language, as we know, is full of defects and imperfections. Are we not, then, seeking to think what cannot be conceived and to express what no words can utter?

VI

THE SUBJECTION OF THE SONPreached at Balliol in 186..

THEN SHALL THE SON ALSO HIMSELF BE SUBJECT UNTO HIM THAT PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIM, THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.

1 COR. xv. 28.

IT is possible for the student of theology to observe through many cycles of human history the growth and development of the idea of God in the heart and conscience of man, passing from the worship of many gods to that of One, with whom mankind are brought into nearer and nearer relation, and of whom they seem gradually to acquire a truer notion. First among the successive stages he would note the rudimentary idea of God which existed among primitive nations, and which still exists in barbarous countries; the vague terror of stocks and stones, the shrinking of men from their own shadows, ascending gradually to a worship of the nobler forms of nature. Secondly, he would trace the idea of God as it grew up to larger proportions in the great eastern religions, and began to be interpenetrated and absorbed by moral elements in the Jewish prophets, not yet disengaged from nature, but struggling to be free from it. Thirdly, as it developed in the light and life of the Greek world, attaining to a superficial harmony in the Greek poets and artists. Lastly, he would reach the revelation of God in Jesus Christ which is contained in the Gospel.

And now the question arises, Is any further enlargement of the idea of God possible? Can we ever expect to know more of Him than we find in the Old and New Testament? Christ has spoken of Him to us as ‘His Father and our Father, as His God and our God.’ Nor was such a relation of God and His people altogether unknown to the prophets. ‘Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not.’ Do we want to know more than is implied by these or the like ‘comfortable words’? Or do we suppose that the feeble brain of man can search into the nature of the Most High? Can anything more be required of us than that we should bring the message of Christ home to our own hearts and lives?

This is a mode of speaking which naturally commends itself to our religious feelings. We are apt to think that we cannot have too much of a good thing in religion, too much reverence, too much humility, too much devotion. We forget how easily these may degenerate into ignorance and superstition, how nearly allied they are to them. We do not remark, when we oppose the words of God to the words of man, that still the word of God is of human interpretation, necessarily changing with the advance of literature and criticism; or that, when we call upon reason to bow before revelation, through reason only revelation can be apprehended by us; for, however we may strive to be more or less than ourselves, we cannot get rid of our own minds. There is the same difficulty in distinguishing between the movements of our minds towards good and the Spirit of God working in us. Who can say where one begins and the other ends? In like manner we may draw lines of demarcation about the Bible which may distinguish it from all other books, or about theology which may separate it from philosophy and secular knowledge; and such distinctions may help us to define our ideas. But we shall soon find them to be unreal. We cannot separate the secular from the religious any more than the human from the divine or God from nature.

Therefore we do not venture to isolate our knowledge of God: we cannot say that there is no truth which is not contained in the Bible, as the Caliph Omar said that all which is not contained in the Koran is either false or superfluous. More than eighteen centuries have passed away since Christ appeared upon the earth. Have they taught mankind nothing about the government of God and His manner of dealing with His creatures? Is there no religious experience to be gathered from history, analogous to that which individuals derive from observation of their own lives? Is there no ever-growing witness of God in nature, but only a vague sense that He is the Creator of all things? Within the last two centuries new sciences have come into existence which have changed the aspect of the world. Can they have left our religious life wholly untouched? The writers of the New Testament were hardly acquainted with any religion but the Jewish; nor did they wholly lay aside the prevalent traditions or opinions of the age in which they lived. But we have learned to compare one religion with another; we see how many truths are common to them all, truths which were once thought to be derived solely from revelation; how many tendencies to error, from which the Christian Church has not escaped. Again, the genuineness of sacred writings is tried by a different method from that of a century ago; and, as criticism advances, as our knowledge of physical science extends, the lines of defence which we draw around Christianity are different and wider. One by one its artificial supports seem to disappear, and it stands before us having no other witness but its own inherent excellence and purity.

It would seem, therefore, that we must go forwards and endeavour to learn what God has taught us in history and nature as well as in Scripture about Himself. There cannot be two truths in the world, but one only; and, if God is everywhere present, and with us in various degrees and ways, every part of truth must throw light upon His nature. I shall not endeavour to combat further the common prejudice that God is only revealed to us in Scripture, but rather proceed to show what it is which the experience of ages adds to the knowledge of God which we find there. I am not speaking of what God is in His own essence, which neither faith nor philosophy can ever penetrate—if indeed the very words which I have used can be supposed to have any meaning—but only of His manifestation to us. Without attempting to strain our eyes beyond the horizon of human vision, it would seem that our conception of the divine nature is really enlarged, chiefly from three sources.

First, from the comparison of other religions of the world, especially the great religions of the East and the influence of Greek philosophy, which have always been mingling with the stream of Christian truth.

Secondly, from the observation of nature, which extends so much further and penetrates so much deeper than in the ancient world.

Thirdly, from ideas and reasonings which present to us in an abstract and universal form what the Scripture for the most part teaches only by precept and example.

1. The study of the religions of the world throws a flood of light on the true nature of religion. It teaches us in the first place that we must not look backward to a primitive revelation, but forward to a final one. The aspiration of some great teacher has lifted man above himself; and then for considerable periods of time he has fallen back again into his old state. The truths of religion seem to have been always in process of being received and being lost. There has always too been a contrast between the principles of men and their practice, between the higher law which the few have imposed upon themselves and the customary religion of the majority of mankind. Yet upon the whole there has been a progress, often interrupted for a thousand years or more; a progress in which we must allow for many steps backward; still there has been a progress from the outward and ceremonial in religion to the inward and spiritual, from ideas of power and fate to ideas of truth and right. If we ask how this progress has been effected, it has been, in the Gentile religions as in Christianity, chiefly by the influence of individual men, who have broken in upon the darkness with new light, who have awakened the dormant elements of truth in the ancient faith, who have given new meanings to old words, who by some method of their own have reconciled the old with the new.

So we are made aware that in their general state and condition other religions are much more like our own than we should have previously supposed. But the parallel does not stop here. For many have had their sacred books, more or less resembling the Jewish or Christian Scriptures. And as time went on they have found the same difficulties in them, and have practised the same methods of interpreting in two or more senses. The Brahmins have had disputes respecting the nature and degree of inspiration which is to be conceded to the Vedas, whether they are wholly inspired or in the proportion of nine-tenths, or of one-tenth, or perhaps not at all. The Buddhists, again, like ourselves, have their controversy respecting faith and works, similar to that which occurred at the Reformation. And in all, or almost all, religions there seems to be a sense of impurity, sometimes unenlightened, seeking to make atonement by gifts and offerings, sometimes, again, enlightened, and proclaiming like the Jewish prophets that the true atonement or sacrifice was holiness of life. In the religions of the East we may trace almost every movement or tendency which is to be found in Christian Europe. There is Puritanism, Monasticism, Scepticism, Formalism, Mysticism; ancient priestly power and the reaction against it, reformation and counter-reformation, ceremonial bondage too heavy for men’s necks to bear; Gnosticism or Pantheism, and Agnosticism or Atheism; only, as the manner of the East is, exaggerated, and sometimes wearing the appearance of a caricature of what we may observe among ourselves. And often we may note among ourselves strange lingering tendencies to Jewish or Gentile fancies or opinions which from time to time revive because they have their origin deep in human nature.

There seem to be two ways in which these and similar facts enlarge our idea of the divine nature.

First, they help us to distinguish the important from the unimportant in religion. We see how many things there are which mankind have falsely attributed to God. The ceremonies of their own ritual even in minute detail have again and again been supposed to be a revelation from heaven, or they have thought only of the power of God, of His right to do as He liked, and not of the justice which He essentially is. They have attributed to Him the wayward caprice and passions of men, which in Him, because He was a superior being, are consecrated or venial. They have magnified in Him the mixed good and evil of human nature without passing the judgement upon them which they would have passed in the case of their fellow-men. The criticism of a later age has some times been that ‘such and such acts would have been wrong if they had not been done by the express command of God.’ Even in Christianity there have been survivals of this mistaken spirit, which distinguishes between God and truth, or between God and right, instead of viewing them as absolutely identical. And one of the advantages of the study of this comparative theology is that it shows us how much of human error is inseparable from all the earlier notions of a Divine Being; how easily such notions become confirmed by tradition, so that even good men often fall under their power, and can with difficulty be freed from them.

Secondly, we see that the religions of the world are not isolated, but are parts of a whole, forming together the religious education of the human race. God is not the God and Father of the Jews only, but of all mankind. The heathen, as we sometimes disparagingly call them, are not His enemies but His children, whom, though at a greater distance from Him and by a longer path, He is guiding into His truth. They too hear His voice and are conscious of His presence. To them may be applied the words in which St. Paul speaks, first of the Jew, secondly of the Gentile: ‘So then God concluded all under sin that He might have mercy upon all.’ And indeed they seem to stand to the future of Christianity in a relation not unlike that of the Jews to the Gospel of Christ. And of them too Christ would have said, as he did of the Gentiles, ‘Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.’ The fatherhood of God, as has been already remarked, is revealed both in the Old Testament and the New. But now it takes a wider scope, extending to all time and all the world. There is realized to us the great family in heaven and earth of which St. Paul speaks. And the principle of religion which might have been once thought to be granted by the favour of heaven to a chosen race, is now seen to be a part of human nature, and inseparable from the mind itself.

These seem to be the principal ways in which our knowledge of God is enlarged by the study of other religions. There is much in our traditional beliefs which is corrected or explained by them; something also is added.

VII

FEELING AFTER GODPreached at Balliol, Feb. 18, 1877..

THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD, IF HAPLY THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM, AND FIND HIM.

ACTS xvii. 27.

IN some previous sermons I endeavoured to trace the growth of the idea of God in the heart of man; as it existed before the Christian religion, in Greek philosophy, or in the great religions of the East; in the Old Testament; as it was revealed to us in Jesus Christ; as it had been perpetually corrected and enlarged by the reflections of great thinkers, by the experience of common life, by the ever-widening circle of natural science. The thought of God has formed the mind of man, and has renewed the face of the world; it is the element of light and life which has united and purified the scattered fragments of the human race; which has moulded wandering tribes into mighty nations; which, like the sun in the heavens over powering the morning mist, has slowly infused into the consciousness of mankind the truth that ‘He hath made of one blood all nations of the earth’; and not only all nations, but all churches, all ranks of society, all forms of religion and of civilization. And, returning from the extremity of the heavens, this principle of light and life shines also in our own hearts: ‘In His light do we see light.’

I had intended to complete this short course of five sermons with a sixth, in which I was going to speak of the application of the thought of God to our daily life; for there would be little use in attempting to trace the workings of a divine power in history or in nature if we did not recognize the presence of it in our own hearts. But it seemed to me, in reviewing the subject once more, that there was still a phase of religion which remained to be considered, not peculiar to any one age or country or state of society, but common to all in which there has been any enlightened knowledge of divine things. There is what may be called ‘the imperfect or half-belief in God,’ which is not untrue, but weak; which has a desire for holiness and perfection, but is unable to think of them as realities. For not only in Gentile but in Christian times men have been ‘feeling after God if haply they may find Him.’ Most persons who have seriously reflected about religion would acknowledge that at times they have felt depressed and were unable to recognize the presence of God in the world, or to justify His ways to men. As the psalmist says: ‘Then sought I to understand this, but it was too hard for me.’ His difficulty, as you will remember, was that old one not yet perhaps completely answered: ‘How could the ungodly be in such prosperity and flourishing like a green bay tree?’ The authors of the Book of Job and of Ecclesiastes seem hardly and with difficulty, amid the appearances of the world around them, to have recognized a light beyond. Whole ages and countries, in the language of Scripture, turn away from God, and He hides His face from them. There have been periods in the world’s history, such as the first century before and after the Christian era, or the tenth or the fifteenth century after Christ, or the eighteenth century terminating in the French Revolution, in which the power of religion has visibly declined and the belief in God almost disappeared, at least in some countries and among the educated classes; and then again there have been renewals and revivals. In some cases this alienation from religion has been almost wholly evil; in others it has been the assertion of some truth or principle supposed to be at variance with religion, or a witness against some religious corruption.

In the opinion of many we are ourselves passing into one of these phases of irreligion. Just as we seem to be arriving at true notions of religion, and long before we have exhausted the great thought of a divine perfection, we are told by some that the belief in God is passing away; not to speak of that short and easy formula in which the history of the human race has been summed up: ‘first we were polytheists, then we became monotheists, and now, after a brief interval of metaphysical confusion, we are atheists.’ Not to speak, I say, of this foolish formula, which is flagrantly at variance with facts, there are some signs that religious belief is not in the same position as formerly. A large proportion, perhaps the majority, of our artisan class are said to be without religion. Our men of science do not for the most part acknowledge the miraculous or supernatural, and with the belief in these all religious truth is sometimes supposed to be bound up. The great additions to our knowledge made in these latter days have been gained chiefly by observation and experience: thus the seen tends to prevail over the unseen, and the habit of men’s minds alters accordingly. The extraordinary change in the religious opinion which has taken place during the last forty years is not favourable to the strength or permanence of religious convictions; for the movement in one direction provokes a reaction in another: when a certain amount of critical or analysing power is applied to it, the via media easily separates into the extremes. Religious bodies, when they become aware of their divergence from the world, instead of attempting to find terms of reconciliation, generally proceed along their own narrow path towards a more extreme dogmatism and a more rigid organization. There are times also when old grounds of belief, such as were supplied by the unreflecting appeal to Scripture, seem to crumble under our feet. Then a great deal of trouble arises in the world, and a great deal of alarm is caused both in our minds and in those of others who care for us. There is also a real danger that we shall not be strong enough to live through these times of transition in which our lot is cast, but may make shipwreck of our morals or of our faith. I think it may be of some use that we should endeavour to understand the state of the world in which we live, for ‘if a man walk in the day he stumbleth not.’ I will therefore propose this question for our consideration—‘Why is there so much less appearance of God in the world than formerly? and how far is this disappearance real, how far illusion?’ Two thoughts may be silently present to our minds in the attempt to analyse these phenomena: first, that whether we like it or not we cannot recall the past, past opinions, past usages, and the like; for they are in the past, and it is not in the past but in the present that we are living, not in the twelfth century but in the nineteenth; secondly, that our belief in God has nothing to do with His actual existence. If all men were blind the sun would be still shining in the heavens. Truths of all sorts have existed from the beginning of time which are either hidden from us or of which we are only just beginning to be conscious.

All human things are imperfect, and the good and evil in them grow together, and are inextricably entwined with one another. There is greater good, and perhaps greater evil, in religion than in anything else, and a more subtle combination of them than in other forms of life and action. In a critical age such as our own this blended mass of good and evil is easily decomposed. Mankind are always turning out the seamy side of religion to the light. They see that the practice of professing Christians in daily life scarcely has any relation to the precepts of Christ. They reckon up the crimes of churches in former ages; the bloody wars, the terrible persecutions, the slavery of the mind, worse than the confinement of the body, which fanaticism and superstition have brought upon the world. They find even now the spirit of religious party clogging the efforts made by statesmen and others for the education and improvement of mankind. They observe that those who make no profession of religion are often more honour able and upright in their dealings than those who are very much under the influence of religious beliefs. Considering all these things, they are tempted to think with the Roman poet of old that the new negation of religion is an emancipation and enlargement of human nature. They are happy in having cast under their feet the traditions of priests, the curious lore of sacred books, the terrors of the world to come. Their text is ‘Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum.’ Without denying the existence of God, they believe that nothing is to be known of Him, and that He can only be connected with us, if at all, by the laws of external nature.

But have they ever considered the other side of the question? Have they ever thought of the influence which religion has exercised in consecrating the ties of the family or of the state in primitive times; or of the sanction which it has given to law and to morality, or of the higher elements which it has introduced into the world? It may be that there are many hypocrites or half hypocrites among Christians, that many more are indifferent, that society generally wears the aspect of business or pleasure, and does not show in any striking manner a regard for religion. But have the words of Christ therefore lost their power? Is the life of self-sacrifice less real in its effects? We might indeed reduce our theory to our practice; but then again our practice would always be falling lower and lower. For the words and the example of the few are the supports which sustain the many in the path of life. To the uneducated especially it is in the language of religion we must speak, of the love of God, of the sufferings of Christ; this is the way in which we can teach them, not by theories of happiness or the newest criticisms on Scripture. As Christians and lovers of truth we do not shrink from the examination of these ancient writings, and many discoveries are being made about them which would have been startling to our forefathers. It is very likely that these inquiries may in the end purify and elevate instead of weakening our faith. But meanwhile let us not forget that these books have been and are the bread of life to the Christian world; the best men have found in them, or derived from them, their highest thoughts; the wayfarer has not erred upon the whole in gathering from them their true lesson; to the uneducated they have been literature and philosophy, their support in life, their consolation in death. The habit of reading the Bible has been good both for the head and the heart; the neglect of it would sensibly lower both the character and the intelligence of a country.

Those who talk in the manner which I was describing take a narrow view of themselves and of their fellow men; they do not understand the depth and capabilities of human nature. They do not consider how much energy for good, how much force of character, how much intellectual life would be lost if religion were to disappear among us. They think of men as they appear in public only—in business or at a festival—and forget their private needs. They see them in the mass only; they have not present to their minds the long internal history of sorrows and trials which many of us have passed through; the times of sickness and depression; the often returning thought, ‘I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.’ They have looked at the surface of life only and not seen within. The time has not yet come when they feel themselves that something more than this world is required by them.

There is another tendency of this analytical age which weakens the hold of religion upon the human mind. Men remark that all our notions of God come to us through what is human, through language, through our own faculties, through our own ideas of right and wrong. This they call ‘anthropomorphism,’ which they would have us cast away, or acknowledge that not God but only a perfected humanity is the object of our worship. But how otherwise can we know God except through our own conceptions of what is holiest and highest? Would they have us get out of our own minds and strive to apprehend Him by some new kind of intuition? The perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the only image which we are capable of attaining of the perfect God. Human ideas when purely abstract are also unmeaning; they can only acquire a meaning when they find an expression in the things which we know. We may describe the divine nature by negatives; we may say of God that He is infinite, that He is without parts or passions, that He is incorporeal and the like. But to say all this of Him is not half so much as to say that He is just and loving and true. For although these words describe human qualities, they are the highest human qualities which we know: we can imagine them existing in a far higher degree than they are found in this world, and through them we dimly see a perfection beyond them in which they rest and unite.

In the third place I would remark that the thought of God is of necessity much greater and more difficult to us than to any former age. Primitive nations had local gods only, gods of the hills and not of the valleys; at last they became the gods of nations; and finally, in Christianity and in the later Greek philosophy, there is one God of all nations of the earth. But we have to think of Him as the God of myriads of worlds far beyond what the eye or telescope can reach, infinite in the extent of His power, and also in its minuteness, in the furthest extremity of heaven, and yet very near to every one of us. The figures of the prophets and of the Book of Revelation, which describe the unseen world as a place above or below us which God and His angels make their habitation, or the powers of evil their stronghold, seem to fade away before the facts of natural science. Then, again, the littleness of this earth, which we once supposed to be the centre of all things, hardly more in the ocean of space than a point or a drop of water, is a very overwhelming thought. Whatever people may say to those who reflect on these things, there is greater difficulty in realizing the unseen than formerly. However we describe or conceive God, whether as the mind of the world, or as the law of the world, or as the Father of the world, we are led more and more to feel that His nature is inscrutable to us, and can be no more expressed in words or figures of speech than in the graven images of the olden time. Again, as the notion of a perfect God becomes more present to us, so also the contradictions which the appearances of the world offer to this perfection strike forcibly upon the mind. Mankind place things side by side now which formerly were not seen to be inconsistent; objections which used to sleep quietly enough now demand a well-considered answer. One perhaps asks to have the law of cause and effect reconciled with the responsibility of man; another repeats the favourite theological paradox, ‘Why, if God is all-powerful and all-wise, does He permit the existence of evil?’ I can very well imagine that the theory of the struggle for existence, of which we have heard so much during the last fifteen years, may produce a very painful impression on the minds of unthinking persons, because appearing to them so contradictory to the love of God towards all His creatures. ‘There is not a sparrow that falls to the ground without your Father.’ The facts or speculations respecting the origin of society, or even of the family, so unlike that Garden of Eden of which our fathers dreamed, are very likely to have a similar effect. These inquiries I mention, not to refute them (they are not to be refuted by the way or in a moment), but simply with one object—to show that religious belief is not so easy a matter as it once was, and that this generation is not to be accused of greater irreligion than their predecessors because they are unable at once to adjust all these marvellous discoveries and novel inquiries in their true relation to their own traditional belief, or even to see how they can be reconciled with very simple truths of religion and morality. That is the task which God has assigned to us, and not to us only, but to every succeeding generation of Christians, to entwine the old with the new, to heal that great breach which seems to have arisen between religion and knowledge, and to some extent between religion and morality.

Once more, this disappearance of God from the thoughts of men, though partly real, is partly also an illusion arising out of distinctions of language and artificial divisions of thought, which oppose one truth or one class of mankind to another when there is no real opposition, or only a partial one, between them. We often speak as if religion was one thing and morality another, as if the conscious recognition of God was the only good or obligation of human life, as if the unconscious service of Him, however sincere, was almost displeasing to Him. Virtue and vice have a different train of associations from holiness and sin: among some professors of Christianity there has been more zeal against good works than against bad ones. A good man in the phraseology of many persons means only some one of their own religious opinion or of their own political party. But is it not true of all that ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’? And is not moral virtue, by whatever name described, the greater part of religion? Again, we oppose God to the laws of the world, and teachers of religion who speak to us of Him from within to teachers of natural philosophy who speak to us of His laws only, and whom we sometimes rate as atheists. But is there really any opposition between God and His laws, between Scripture and nature, between the starry heaven above and the moral law within? Or, again, can a man really be an atheist, whether he will or no, who sees the mind working in the world, who acknowledges the presence of intelligence in the structures of plants and minerals, who reverently meditates on the order of the whole? Is not the term ‘materialist’ or ‘atheist’ a misnomer? For even supposing such an one as I have been describing to allow of no other kind of knowledge than that which is presented to us by the physical world, still he recognizes a part at least of the work of God in nature. In religion, as in life gene rally, the various occupations of men have an effect on their minds; and it is useless to expect that the man of business or the man of science will accept religious truth in precisely the same form with the minister of the Gospel.

To illustrate what I am saying, I will make a supposition which may seem bold, or perhaps even start ling, to those who are unable to rise above words to things. The word God, etymologists tell us, is not connected with good or goodness, but is an old Teutonic word signifying a graven image (so strange is the history of words, ‘the most despised things, and the things that are nought,’ become the expressions of ‘the things that most truly are’). Now I will suppose that the name of God and, shall I add, the word Person, was no longer in use; that in our public services and in our private prayers it ceased to be the symbol or expression by which we described the holiest and highest; but that, instead of using this word, all mankind with one voice worshipped truth and justice and goodness united in a divine perfection, not an idea only, but a power really existing; and that to this perfection they attributed all those qualities which we are in the habit of attributing to God—should we be justified in calling them atheists? Ought they not rather to be included among Christians, since all that is essential to the notion of God they already hold? I might make a further supposition that all mankind agreed about the name of God, and yet ascribed to Him all that is most repugnant to His true nature, as the old Greek philosopher of 600 B.C. said Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all that is detestable in man. Are we to call such worshippers of devils theists any more than we are justified in calling the others atheists? or shall we reply in irony, a little parodying the famous answer of Pascal to the Jesuits, ‘They are Christians who agree in the word and disagree about the thing meant by it; they are not Christians who disagree about the word and agree about the thing.’ It would be absurd to carry out the fancy which I have been supposing, or to banish altogether the name of God from the world while seeking to retain a conception of the divine nature; for words too have a sacredness, and we cannot alter them at pleasure. But it is not absurd sometimes to discard the ordinary use of language and to seek to form a conception of religious truths without employing the technical terms in which theologians have described them. Half the controversies in the world would have been at an end if this condition had been imposed upon them; neither can we really understand religious or any other propositions if we are unable to ‘re-word’ them. We do not know ourselves, nor can any one else know, whether we have pierced beneath the environment of language which encloses them to the truth within. See what follows if from time to time we discipline our minds by the practice of such a method in our judgement of men. We can no longer divide them into theists and atheists, religious and irreligious, or consistent Christians and non-Christians; we must think, not of the name by which they call themselves, or are called, but of the degree in which consciously or unconsciously they conform to the will of God and imitate the life of Christ. They may be eastern prophets or Greek philosophers; they may be men of science of our own day whose minds are absorbed in second causes, as they are termed; the question is no longer one of names. But whosoever loves righteousness and truth is accepted of Him. No principle short of this will reconcile us to ourselves, to God, and to the world. Then a new aspect is given both to theology and life. There is no longer an opposition between secular and religious employments or between secular and religious knowledge, but all who in their several ranks are doing their duty are fulfilling the will of God; all who are discovering and teaching truth are revealing Him. The physician whose pursuits seem naturally to draw his mind to material causes in his unpaid ministrations among the poor may be thought to bear the image of Him who carried our sorrows and healed our infirmities; and so of other classes. The hurry of this world, the struggle for their daily bread, the absorption of thought, may lead some men not to recognize consciously, so much as they should, the Author of their being. Then, in forming a judgement of them, let us remember that their relation to God is not to be measured by words or other external signs, but by the main tenour of their lives.

This is what I will venture to call the doctrine of Christians in unconsciousness—of those who, not having seen, yet have believed—of those who say, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.’ It cannot but be that in times of transition such as the present great confusions and misunderstandings should arise. Many persons are in their wrong places; some who are called Christians having no higher claim than success in life, while others who are setting the highest examples of disinterestedness and integrity are by some accident placed beyond the Christian pale. The doctrine which I have been endeavouring to preach is a very simple one; that we should habitually regard ourselves and others, not according to the names by which we are called or the professions which we make or the party to which we belong, but more and more as we and they appear in the sight of God, and as we believe that one day we shall appear to ourselves; and that of God Himself we should think as existing consciously as well as unconsciously to us in the surrounding world, in the lower things of earth as well as in the higher, that He is the inspirer of the best thoughts too, and that where good is there is God. The times in which we live are said to be liable to peculiar changes, and a note of alarm is often sounded about them, sometimes on very trifling grounds; or again, from a deeper consideration of the tendencies of events men fancy that the world is going to pass into a new era, that the ages of faith have departed, and that some new age of science or sociology is to take their place. There is an excitement in novelty, which gives an attraction to strange forms of religion and to strange notions in philosophy. But experience seems to show that the great principles of human nature change slowly; there is no reason to fear that the heavens are about to descend upon our heads or the earth to swallow us up. One by one we shall pass away, and all things will remain, if not really the same, yet much more the same than we are apt to suppose. Another generation will succeed to our fears and hopes, to our sorrows and joys, to our speculations and intellectual interests. But, though we may banish idle and alarmist terrors, we cannot deny that this age, perhaps more than others, has peculiar trials. It seems as if men required more force of character in this than in former times. More than ever it is impossible that what is wholly or partly conventional should stand. If religion is to be lasting it must be real, a religion of deeds and not of words, or it will be quickly swept away in the tide of new impressions and influences from all sources which daily succeed one another. This is the peculiarity of times of transition, that they test the true characters of men. Some are carried away by every wind; others take hold of deeper principles, and are soon in a safe anchorage. If I were asked, How can a man be shielded or shield himself from the dangers which surround him? I would not in answer prescribe the books which he should read or the opinions which he should hold; but I should say, By the innocency of his life and the quiet and patient fulfilment of his duties here as a preparation for the service of God in after life.

VIII

THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GODPreached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, Oct. 25, 1874..

THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD.

COLOSSIANS i. 15.

THE first principles of religion often seem to retire from view and lose their interest, while lesser questions exert an absorbing hold on the mind. They are put on one side, and when they are wanted can hardly be found; they are supposed to have been settled long ago, and every man, or at least every Christian, is thought to know them by intuition, whatever may have been the ignorance of them which prevailed formerly in the Gentile world. This is especially the case with the truths which relate to the nature of God. They are buried under ground, and no one considers whether this foundation of religious truth is straw or stubble, ingeniously hidden in the depths of the earth, or the divine rock on which the temple is to stand for eternal ages. They are regarded as truisms, about which little remains to be said, and which are of small importance in comparison with the religious topics of the day, the doctrine of Baptism or Confession, or the manner of Christ’s Presence in the Sacrament, or the inspiration of Scripture, or the authority of the priesthood, or the union of the churches which have retained Episcopal ordination, and the like.

And yet, my brethren, it is quite clear that without a great effort both of the heart and of the intellect we can never really attain a knowledge of God. In religion, as in other things, the truths which are simplest are also the deepest. And in the changes of human opinion, amid the storms of controversy, we seem to come back to them as to ‘the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.’ To say that God is just or true, or that He is a God of love, is not difficult; these are familiar expressions to which Christians have been used almost from infancy. But it is very difficult to realize what is meant by them, or to live in the habitual consciousness of them, or to make them prevail over other notions or expressions which are apparently at variance with them. The Jews in old times were constantly relapsing into idolatry because they could not endure the purely spiritual nature of God. The solitude of the desert seemed to be too terrible to them when they were left alone with Him. Might they not at least worship the sun, or the queen of heaven, or the star of the god Remphan? That was the feeling against which the prophets were vainly striving during all the earlier period of Jewish history. And do we suppose that human nature has now changed, or that this worship of idols has altogether ceased among ourselves? The superstitions of all religions—Catholic or Protestant, Christian or Pagan, Jew or Gentile—differ more in name than in reality. For there are idols of the mind which take the place of visible images; idols of tradition, of language, which come between us and God; idols of the temple too, in which good and evil seem to be inseparably blended, and the good is near and present, and the evil is only recognized in some fatal but distant consequences. And this is not the only difficulty in preserving clear as a mirror the conception of a perfect God. Some adjustment is required of His various attributes; and at the same time we must allow for the difference between things human and divine. Even many of the expressions of Scripture in which the nature of God is described, if isolated from other expressions, and from the conscience of man, or not considered in reference to the age and country in which they were uttered, may easily mislead us. If in the excess of reverence or fear we allow the notion of His power to prevail over His justice, we may represent Him as worse than some Eastern tyrant, and ourselves, His creatures, as crouching before Him, hardly hoping to turn away His anger with gifts and flatteries. Or if we think of His justice to the exclusion of His love, then in stead of a God who ‘wills that all men should be saved,’ we have a Being more unpitying, more implacable in His resentments, than the devil himself. Or, again, we may so exaggerate the ignorance of man that we seem to know nothing of Him, and are ready to accept anything which is told us about Him. Hardly, with all our care when addressing Him in prayer, can we avoid attaching to Him the shadow of some human infirmity, such as change of purpose, or particular likes and dislikes of persons or opinions. A good man who lives constantly in communion with God will often fail to recognize that all other men in every nation and in every rank of life are equally His care. The highest privilege of an individual is sometimes supposed to be the right of doing what he will with his own, and even this false maxim of an evil state of society has been blasphemously transferred to the Most High. There is a similar illusion when God is supposed to take a delight in external things, in beautiful colours, sounds, forms, scents, ceremonies, because they are pleasing to us; or in the building of churches after some ancient pattern, and as an end, not as a means, forgetting that ‘the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands’; and that the least things which directly affect a human soul are far more costly and precious in His sight than the highest refinements of decoration and art.

Therefore I shall make no apology for bringing before you this subject, which is at once the first and simplest, and also the most interesting, and perhaps one of the least considered of all subjects of theology—the nature of God. I shall begin with God’s dealings with us in the physical world, and then endeavour to show how we may rise out of that to the moral and spiritual; and that these are not antagonistic to one other as is sometimes supposed—the physical warring against the moral, the moral against the spiritual—but consistent; and the different aspects under which God presents Himself to us, as the God of nature, of men, and also of the world of spirits. And, lastly, I shall endeavour to reflect this argument upon ourselves, and show in what way we ought to worship God and hold communion with Him, as being ourselves a part of the visible order of nature, as conscious of a moral law, and also as having relations to a world of spirits, on the confines of which we are, and which we dimly know to be infinite and eternal.

In the first place, then, we must acknowledge that God governs the world by fixed laws, and does not alter these laws at our wish or request. This is that great truth of the order of nature which science presents to us in every possible form, and with every token and evidence which experience teaches us, if we do but attend to her, in every act of our lives, and which nevertheless we sometimes seem disposed to set aside and ignore, or to which we yield only a forced or reluctant assent. Let us endeavour to put the thought of this clearly before the mind’s eye; let us imagine some one, I will not say ‘a little lower than the angels,’ but a natural philosopher, who is capable of seeing creation, not with our imperfect vision and hazy fancies, but with a real scientific insight into the world in which we live. He would behold the reign of law everywhere, in the least things as well as in the greatest, in the most complex as well as in the simplest, in the life of man as well as of the animals, extending to organic as well as inorganic substances; in all the sequences, combinations, adaptations, motions, intentions of nature, he would recognize the same law and order—one and continuous in all the different spheres of knowledge, in all the different realms of nature, through all times and over all space. Nowhere would the microscope or the telescope reveal to him any spring or interval in which, as in some cracked jar, a hand or finger might be inserted; nowhere would there be an aperture in nature through which the light of another world might come streaming. He would trace the most seemingly capricious of earthly things, such as the winds and the mists, to their ocean home; to us they are the type of human mutability, but he would know that they are really subject to laws as fixed as those by which the stone falls to the ground: in the processes of birth and death he would also recognize the uniformity of causes which could not be set aside. He would confess too that the actions of men and the workings of the mind are inseparable from the physical antecedents or accompaniments which prepare for them or co-operate with them, and that they are ordered and adjusted as parts of a whole. Nor will he deny, when he looks up at the heavens, that this earth with its endless variety of races and languages and infinity of human interests (each one so intense and particular at some time or other to some individual man) is only to be regarded as a pebble on the sea shore, or as a point in immensity, in comparison with the universe. And in this universe, at the utmost limit to which the most powerful instruments will carry the eye of man, there is still the same order reappearing everywhere, the same uniformity of nature, the same force which acts upon the earth.

This is that law of nature, one and continuous in all times and places, which may be truly said to be the visible image of God, and ‘her voice the harmony of the world.’ And in ages to come it is not only possible, but probable, that this reign of law in the world will become much more visible and intelligible to all classes, educated as well as uneducated, than at present; and the natural sciences, which in our own day appeared to sink almost overpowered under the load of facts and details, may attain to much greater unity and simplicity; and the relation of the moral to the physical world be better understood. At present this conception of law is regarded with suspicion amongst us, especially by religious men; they seem to be afraid that the wit of man is devising a plan for shutting God out of the world which He has made. They do not, and indeed cannot, wholly deny the order of nature, but they wish that there might be exceptions to the rule expressly for them. As if God could be seen through chinks and crannies, or might be peeped at with a candle and in a corner, and was not visible in the light of day and in the face of the wide heavens. And yet these are the doubts of good and religious men, and deserve the fairest consideration at our hands. Perhaps these objections may in some degree arise .from want of explanation, or from some illusion of language; and if they could only see that a God was still left them, and that they were not bound fast in chains of fate, they would no longer rebel against the dominion of law.

They ask why we speak of things which are so painful to them and so much at variance with their sense of religion. The answer is because they are true, and no religion can be lasting which does not rest on the truth. And no religion can avoid falling into contradiction and unreality which takes into account one side of human nature only and ignores the other. The story of the Brahmin who was shown through a microscope the detested insects in the water which he had been drinking, and who broke the microscope, is in point here. But that is not the sort of answer which the Christian would like to give to a man of science who told him of the uniformity of the laws of nature. Come, then, and let us reason with this good man who is afraid that the theories of philosophers are banishing him from his God. Has he ever pursued his thought and asked himself what he means by interruptions and interferences in the course of nature? Has he ever considered how many misplacements and rearrangements would have to be made before his prayers could procure for him the advantage of a favourable wind or the desired fall of rain? Has he ever asked himself how the answers to his own request would be reconciled with those of others? Let him not suppose that he is shut up in a prison, or that the philosopher who speaks of fixed laws means to say that the earth is intersected with straight lines, and is not full of forms of freedom and beauty. Would you rather live, we will say to him, in a house, or carry on an employment, in which there is no order, or in which there is order? Or would you rather travel through a country in which there are roads, or in which there are no roads? Or would you have your own life and that of your family conform to certain laws and customs or not? Or, again, would you prefer a condition of life in which you can (for the most part) foresee and calculate the future and avoid evils, or a condition in which you can foresee and avoid nothing? And in which case are you the most free and most the master of your own actions? amid order or disorder? in a civilized country which has roads and laws, or in an uncivilized? in a state of life which is dark and deprived of experience, or in one which is lighted up by history and science? Is there anything in the controlling power of law which prevents your choosing between right and wrong, or which hinders you from holding communion with God and Christ? Cease, then, to make this opposition of words between religion and science, between God and His works. For if there is no reconciliation of them, and if the truths of religion are really inconsistent with the order of nature, then Christianity must inevitably pale away before the advance of natural knowledge.

Therefore we thankfully look upon the world as a scene of law and order, in which the countless multitudes are marching along the highway of God’s providence, and ‘they do not break their ranks,’ but are obedient, as we may say in a figure, to the will of their Leader. Such a view, instead of shutting out God from the world, seems rather to restore the world to Him, and, instead of taking us away from God, to bring us nearer to Him. And if a person comes to us and says that there may be interruptions in the course of nature, and that we cannot see them because we can affirm nothing certainly, and, therefore, cannot be certain that there are not, to him we reply that, while humbly admitting the ‘existence of more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,’ we cannot desert the strong ground of experience or give up the very foundations of knowledge for the sake of an imaginary gain to faith.

IX

GOD JUST, LOVING, TRUEPreached at Balliol, April 20, 1884..

HE SHALL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS.

PSALM ix. 8.

GOD IS LOVE. 1 JOHN iv. 8.

HE THAT COMETH TO GOD MUST BELIEVE THAT HE IS, AND THAT HE IS A REWARDER OF THEM THAT DILIGENTLY SEEK HIM.

HEBREWS xi. 6.

THERE are some truths of religion which seem to retire from view, and others take their place and become the topics of the day. And the lesser often prevail over the greater, the uncertain over the certain, the temporal and accidental over the spiritual and universal. A curious interest is aroused about some matters of controversy, and there is hardly any interest about the first principles of all religion, which seem to drop out of people’s minds as if they had nothing to do with revelation. And this neglect of all proportion in religious truth often leads to consequences quite at variance with the premises from which we started. Thus a sort of conflict appears to arise between faith and reason which is really due to an improper use of reason, drawing out inferences without considering the grounds of them, following not the truth but the tendencies of the human mind, turning rhetoric into logic, and building up probabilities when the limits of human knowledge have been attained, trusting to any fiction or illusion instead of looking facts boldly in the face or seeing things as they truly are.

One great instance will be enough to illustrate this curious tendency of the human race which has been the source of so much error in religion. He who reflects on the history of the Roman Catholic Church will feel quite amazed at the way in which one doctrine has been piled on another until the baseless fabric has been in a manner complete. The willingness of men to believe these doctrines, which is like the willingness of children to believe stories, has been accepted in the place of any real proof of them. And thus out of the words ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved’ has been developed the whole apparatus of Catholic theology, including the priesthood, purgatory, masses for the quick and dead, the infallibility of the Pope, the worship of the Virgin and her assumption into heaven, on to the new and strange dogma of the immaculate conception, which was first authoritatively sanctioned about twenty-nine years ago; and, once more, taking a new form, the infallibility of the Pope, not with, but without, a council, which was a short time ago affirmed by a great congress of the Catholic world. So the ball goes on rolling from age to age, like a snowball, and perhaps like that some day to dissolve away. And beside this, in the development of these various doctrines distinctions have been introduced, and are so minute that the must be looked at through a microscope before they can be seen. A man may almost ‘miss his salvation through an ignorance of grammar or logic.’ I do not say this from any desire to attack our Roman Catholic brethren—the time for such controversies has passed—but because I believe that lessons may be learned from them which are applicable to ourselves. For not only Roman Catholics but all men everywhere are tending to put the ceremonial in the place of the moral, the word in the place of the thing, the local and temporal in the place of what is universal and eternal.

There is a sense of repose and also of security in leaving these disputes and antagonisms of theology, about which mankind are often so greatly excited, and turning to think a little of the greater first truths of religion, such as the love of God, or the justice and truth of God. These are anchors of the soul, sure and steadfast amid the waves of time; they are also measures and standards of our knowledge to which other truths may be referred or recalled. In thinking of them there is something of the feeling which the Psalmist expresses, ‘Under the shadow of Thy wings shall be my refuge, until this tyranny be overpast’; the words and opinions and violences of men are of little consequence while we have the living consciousness that we are in the hands of a good and wise God. Neither is there any satisfaction in raising or ornamenting the superstructure unless we have the foundation, nor in believing in God if our conception of the divine nature is at variance with the sense of right in our own nature; nor in religion at all if religion is at war with morality.

Nor can we maintain that these greater and more simple truths are neglected because all men know them and are convinced of them. On the contrary, they seem to be the truths which are with the greatest difficulty realized in the world, by many not realized at all; and which are constantly in danger of be coming overclouded and obscured. Partly the perversity of the human intellect struggles against the simple notion of God; it is always returning to sense and seeking to veil the nature of God in figures of speech which imperceptibly lead us astray, or in figures of speech once removed, that is to say in analogies. And these veils have to be taken away if we are to see God as He truly is, and not merely as He is represented in the pictures of our minds. Or, if figures of speech are necessary (and indeed language seems to be made up of them), they should be the highest and purest that we can conceive, such as that in which God is described by the prophet ‘as having the body of heaven in His clearness, and not any chance images taken from the chaos of human sense. And when we have used such images we should also learn to dispense with them and to see things as they truly are.

Suppose, now, we had a friend who was true and disinterested, one in whom there was no envy or jealousy or personal enmity, whose mind was always full of all noble feelings towards his friends, having a warmth of affection towards all of them alike, and ready to receive them as a father or an elder brother, willing ever to forgive them for wrongs against himself, yet also pained and grieved at them, not because they really did him any injury, but because of the ingratitude which they seemed to show; and because those who were guilty of them did harm, not to him, but to themselves. Also, I will suppose that this friend whom I am describing was the most generous of men, willing to give all that he had to others, to sacrifice himself for their good, kind even to the ungrateful and evil, and that he was the least ceremonious of men, requiring no etiquette or introduction, but freely admitting all who came to him. Such was his real character: but such was not the opinion which other men had of him; for they were cast in a meaner mould, and they could not understand his nobility and freedom of nature. Moreover, they had formed some strange misconceptions of him, and they fancied him not loving and gentle, but severe and precise, easily liable to take offence and not easily pacified when angry, conferring his favours, as some of them said, on a chosen few whom he selected without regard to their characters, and insisting on their complying with certain conventional rules before he would receive them into his house. Now this misconception of his nature had continued for many years, how originating could hardly be determined; only one thing was certain, that it was due to no act or word of his, but rather to the stupidity or malignity of others.

Hear another parable. In a certain city there was a judge who was also a king; he was the wisest of judges and the greatest of kings. But the men of that city would not understand his greatness or his wisdom, and they imagined that he was just such an one as themselves. Now they were fond of legal disputes and artificial rules, and sometimes they decreed that men should live or die accordingly as they observed these rules of theirs; and if any one remonstrated with them they said no one could challenge their right to make any rules which they pleased, if they gave due notice of them; and that whether the criminal was a bad man or a good man that made no difference; the point to be considered was whether he conformed to their rules, and whether the rules had been duly announced to him. Also, there were many other things that they held, such as the distinction between themselves and strangers; and they said that they were under no engagement to do justice to strangers. The good and wise judge was grieved at their perverseness and folly, and above all at their attributing to him their own corrupt notions of justice. For they pretended that his court, which was the great court of the realm, was governed by the same rules, although he had told them over and over again that he was no respecter of persons, and that ‘he would reward every man according to his works,’ and that ‘in every nation he that did righteousness would be accepted of him.’

Once more: the kingdom of heaven is like a wise man seeking for pearls, and especially for one great and precious pearl, the pearl of truth. But the men of that country said that this pearl was not to be sought for everywhere and at all times; there were certain places, duly pointed out by the officers of the king who kept a guard, in which pearls might be taken. The pearls which were found elsewhere were declared by them not to be true pearls, and those who discovered them were desired to return them to the king’s treasury, although this king himself had never given any such command. But his officers required that they should be issued over again under their authority—none others would pass current. And the wise man knew that he would never find the pearl of truth in this way, and accordingly he went to the king himself, and the king gave him permission freely to seek for the pearl of truth in the whole world, and whatever he found he was to show to his brethren. I venture to offer these three allegories as an introduction to the consideration of the nature of God under three heads—‘God is loving, God is just, God is true.’

First of all, God is loving. Human affection supplies many images of the love of God which tend to quicken and elevate our thoughts of Him. For He is our Father and we are His offspring; we look up to Him and recognize His authority; we converse and hold communion with Him in all that is best of our minds and of our lives; we may make a friend of Him, and may go to Him as a child would go to a parent to give him his confidence; even our faults are only seen by Him in the light of His love. Nor is our regard for Him any measure of His care for us: that may be observed in this world also; the love of the parent cannot be extinguished by the ingratitude of the child, but remains as a sort of pained love without any tincture of resentment to his life’s end. How easily can we imagine the father or the mother coming out to meet their spendthrift son as he returns from a distant land, putting on him the best robe and making entertainment for him and his friends. That is the image by which the Gospel represents the love of God towards His prodigal ones. Once more, you may imagine a parent treating his child with great and deserved severity; commonly sending him to a schoolmaster to receive discipline and education: and in some cases he might be willing that the sentence of the law, imprisonment or some other penalty, might take effect upon him. But you cannot suppose any one who has the natural feelings of a parent doing this except with a view to the good of his child, and in the hope of his improvement: the idea that he should suffer for the sake of suffering, if these words have any meaning, would be quite abhorrent to his mind. Even so (in the figurative language of Scripture) ‘whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son in whom He delighteth.’ But that He is delighted with the sufferings of any man is a doctrine that we had better give back to the heathen, or to the devil from whom it came. And the good and wise among the heathen also would have rejected such a doctrine; the evil, they would have said, of which God is the author must in some way issue in good. And when we hear of actions being attributed to God which are at variance with our conceptions of His goodness or His justice, then, even if it be in some sacred writing, the rule which has been laid down by one of the wisest of men might be usefully applied: ‘Either these things never really happened, or they were not commanded by God.’

I have been representing divine love under the likeness of human love. And some one will perhaps say that ‘His ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts.’ There are two senses in which these words may be applied; the one is very false, the other quite true. First, I will suppose a person saying, ‘You use the terms loving and just and true; but how do you know that these words have any meaning when you transfer them to God? For what is just to you may be unjust to Him, and what is true to you may be untrue to Him, and what is love according to your notions may be favouritism and partiality in His sight. Think of the ignorance of man and the limitations of human faculties, and do not profanely attribute your notions of morality to God.’

This is what I venture to think a wrong mode of reasoning about the divine nature, a sort of argument which overleaps itself, involving what has been well termed that terrible fiction of a double morality, one for God and another for man, which throws all our notions about God into confusion. For consider: if a person says, ‘I know indeed and am assured of the existence of God and of His revelation to man; but that He is a wise God or a good God or a loving God, or indeed a moral God at all, of that I am not certain, because I do not know whether these words have any meaning in relation to God’; then he is in effect doing away with religion under the wish to be religious; he is like a person sitting on some main branch or limb of a great tree and sawing off the branch on which he is sitting. But instead of pursuing this controversy any further, I will rather proceed to show how the word ‘love,’ while retaining the same meaning in reference to God and man, may yet have a more perfect significance in reference to divine love than is possible in regard to mere earthly affection.

First, because earthly love is narrow and limited, arising out of certain natural relationships or friend ships formed by the accidents of time and place. But with God there are no accidents of time and place; His love is an equal love for all men in all ages and countries, a law of love which communicates with the hearts of men. Some one may say, ‘What! am I not the special object of God’s care? Am I not His favourite child? Will He not do for me what He would not do for another—save my life in an accident, or call me to repentance, when He allows another to perish?’ No; that is not the nature of the divine love. Here is a real difference between His ways and our ways. Neither can you yourself desire that He shall do for you what He would not do for another. You have only to put yourself in the place of one who is rejected to see this. Even the human image may teach you a truer notion of God; for the father who has the feelings of a father does not select one of his children to the detriment of the rest; still less can we imagine that when His children are praying to Him that He would save them from death He would deliberately spare one and leave others to perish. Here is a real confusion of His ways and our ways, or rather perhaps a sort of narrowness of vision which makes us concentrate upon ourselves the universal care of all, a feebleness of intellect which fails to understand that the special providence which watches over each one is the general providence which watches over all.

X

SPIRITUAL RELIGION NOT DEPENDENT ON SYSTEMPreached at Balliol..

THE HOUR COMETH, WHEN YE SHALL NEITHER IN THIS MOUNTAIN, NOR YET AT JERUSALEM, WORSHIP THE FATHER.

JOHN iv. 21.

THESE words have a revolutionary sound, and are startling in quiet times and to ordinary minds. Yet they do not stand alone in the Gospel, nor are they applicable only to the age in which Christ lived. There is a great deal more of the same language both in the Old and New Testament. When Christ says, ‘My kingdom is not of this world, else would My servants fight for it; but now is My kingdom not from hence,’ He means substantially the same thing. He does not mean to say that His disciples were not to fight now, and that the time would come when they ought to fight (at the Crusades, for example); but that the Kingdom of God is spiritual, and founded on a belief that God is a Spirit. And when He speaks of His disciples as united with God and separated from the world (‘I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one’), He is certainly not thinking of them as established in a church or united by a priest hood and common form of worship. He is taking another and a higher point of view: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them,’ and ‘Forbid him not; for there is no man that shall cast out devils in My Name that can lightly speak evil of Me.’ And when men, as their manner is, are putting the outward in the place of the inward, the carnal body in the place of the spiritual body, like one grieved at their stupidity and hardness of heart, He says to them, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.’ These are some of the revolutionary sayings of Christ. There are many others, such as those about the rich and the poor; about the Sabbath Day; about the temple; about the immediate coming of the Spirit. And if we pass from the New Testament to the Old we shall hear a similar voice speaking to us in the prophets. We have only to turn to the first chapter of the prophet Isaiah, there to read other words, unlike in form but like in meaning: ‘Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. . . . Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.’ Here indeed is a war against existing institutions, some of which were believed to have been sanctioned by God Himself. Here is a repetition of that lesson which, however old, is always needed in all ages and in all countries, the danger of putting the outward in the place of the inward, the local and temporal in the place of the spiritual and moral.

In this sermon I shall draw your attention to the tremendous import of the words of Christ, ‘The hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father,’ and of other like words which occur elsewhere in Scripture. What is the meaning of them? Are they to be taken literally, and do they refer only or chiefly to the destruction of Jerusalem? Do they not rather express the prophetic feeling in all ages, which is not satisfied with the world or with the things of the world, whether secular or religious, and would fain rise above them and dwell with God only? And this seems to be the general character of the Gospel according to St. John. Such a spirit may be a source of disorder among men, and may also be the higher element of our lives. For we may abide in our appointed sphere and use the means which God has provided for us, and yet we may feel also how different life ought to be, how different religious and political institutions; how differently they must be regarded by God and man. There is some degree of difficulty in reconciling these thoughts if they impress the mind strongly with the fulfilment of our daily duties. ‘How unreal,’ as people say, ‘is all this!’ And sometimes the thought works in our minds that this order of things ‘cannot last; it is too hollow, too much under mined.’ And yet the old order does not change, or changes very little, and, when the desired reform has been made, we are disappointed and find that the result has been less than we expected. The want, whether in politics or religion, lies deeper and cannot easily be satisfied. And long after we are in our graves, yea, perhaps to the end of time, another generation will feel as we do, as the prophets of old did, that our solemn things are unsatisfactory and unreal.

And first I shall venture to remark that the words of the text are not to be taken too literally. For some one may remind us that the smoke of the Samaritan Passover still ascends on Mount Gerizim, delighting the eyes of the English traveller with the living memorial of a former world, and that in Jerusalem, though often interrupted, the worship of the God of Abraham still continues; and, though the hope of the return of the Jews is never likely to be realized, some of the truest representatives of the religion and the race linger in the sacred city. But we need not perplex ourselves with this sort of literalism. For Christ is speaking generally, and is not careful to consider whether the words which He uttered in the spirit of prophecy may not be contradicted at a future time by some isolated fact. In St. John’s Gospel there occurs another passage breathing a similar spirit, not about the future but about the past, which has often troubled commentators and sometimes led them to a mistranslation of the original. Christ says, ‘All that ever came before Me are thieves and robbers;’ yet surely neither He nor the recorder of His words (for I do not think we can clearly distinguish them) meant to imply that Isaiah and Jeremiah and the great prophets of old were thieves and robbers; nor can we maintain with some interpreters of the passage that ‘before’ means ‘instead of,’ and that ‘All who ever came before Me’ means ‘All who ever came instead of Me.’ Christ is not thinking of this application of His words and the past history of the Jews, but of false teachers and false prophets generally, and more especially of those who were living about His own time. The comparison of the passage which I have just quoted with the text throws some degree of light on both of them. And we may assume as a principle of all interpretation, and therefore of Scripture, that we must not introduce logic or require too literal an adherence to fact where the whole style and character of a writing shows that they have not been thought of. And the prophecies both of the Old and the New Testaments are to be taken in the spirit rather than in the letter; not as predictions of facts which may or may not have been verified at a particular time, but as visions of nations appearing in the presence of God; as the revelation of the words and works of men in the light of a higher word; as a history of the world which is the judgement of the world.

The woman of Samaria to whom the words of the text are addressed, when she discovers that Christ is a prophet, is eager to make the most of her opportunity. She wants to have a resolution of the question, In what place ought men to worship? Was Jerusalem the accepted spot, or Mount Gerizim? Which passover was the most pleasing to God? How was the great dispute between Jews and Samaritans to be decided? Our Lord answers in words which there is some difficulty in explaining: ‘Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.’ He seems to mean that the Jews were more right than the Samaritans, perhaps because they had the prophets as well as the law, or because they had a real relation to those prophecies and to that history against which the Samaritans were a sort of rebels; at any rate, because they were as a fact better instructed in religion. But He at once leaves this point of view for a higher one, ‘Neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain . . . for God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ To the question of the woman of Samaria He neither would nor could give an answer. For God was no respecter of places any more than of persons. Men were not to say, ‘Lo here! or, Lo there! for the Kingdom of God is within you.’ And in a similar spirit, as you will remember, when they ask Him on another occasion, ‘Where, Lord?’ He only answers, ‘Wheresoever the carcase is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.’

Let us try to imagine more precisely the feelings with which the words of the text were uttered by Christ. He saw the Jewish world everywhere sunk, not in idolatry, for that phase of religion had passed away, but in formalism, in ritualism, in ceremonial and puritanical observances, which were powerless to touch the heart of man or to purify his life. The Jewish law was not merely the uniting principle which bound men together in the worship of one God (‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord’), but a dividing principle which separated them from the Samaritans and from the rest of mankind. The thought of the nature of God, of His justice, His truth, His goodness, had almost passed away, over loaded by a multitude of details, supplanted as the belief in God always is by men’s belief in themselves, their Church, or their race. They go on saying, not in these exact words but in some other form of words which takes their place in another age, ‘We have Abraham to our Father,’ never considering that ‘out of these stones God is able to raise up children unto Abraham,’ and that ‘many shall come from the East and from the West,’ of no church or denomination, some heathen philosopher, perhaps, or opponent of their own most cherished opinions, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the children of the kingdom may possibly be cast out. This word, ‘We have Abraham to our father,’ has excluded the sense or feeling of the Universal Father. And the temple made with hands, the consecrated church, the traditional spot to which pilgrimages were wont to be made, has obscured and narrowed the thought of Him who dwells not in houses made with hands, and is not contained in the furthest heaven, yet is pleased to take up His abode with us. That which was once a shadow of good things to come is not even a shadow of them now, but a veil, a mist, an impenetrable cloud, coming between us and God.

And sometimes the history of the past weighs upon mankind with an undue power. What was done three hundred or a thousand or sixteen hundred years ago has an effect upon us now, and often cannot be undone. A form of government or society or belief, to which we were not consenting parties, has been settled for us, and we feel that the individual mind is powerless to alter them. Our freedom seems to be impaired by them; in vain we desire something better and truer and more adapted to our wants. Then thoughts begin to arise in our minds that such a world as that in which we live will one day come to an end, that truth must prevail at last; and that the fire which has hitherto slumbered in the earth will burst forth and burn up the chaff. Such volcanoes have really burst forth in the German Reformation or in the French Revolution. But for the most part they burn only in the hearts of men who say to themselves, ‘O Lord, how long?’ or ‘The hour is coming,’ at times seeming to think that the dawn is at hand. They turn away from the signs of decay and corruption which to their eye appears around them, and try to work out their individual life hidden with God and Christ. Many prophets have died unknown; they have desired to see things that they have not seen; they have closed their eyes on a world which was receding from them; they have found that the vision of the Kingdom of God was to be realized, perhaps on earth in the course of ages, but chiefly in themselves, and in another state of being.

Thus the words of Christ find a sort of reflection or analogy in our own day, and in the thoughts and lives of a few persons who have a feeling for the world around them. They should be considered further in connexion with the general character of the Gospel according to St. John; for the character of that narrative is not historical, but spiritual, not descriptive of the outward forms of the Church, but of the inner life of the soul. It hardly ever touches upon the relation of believers to the external world or to society, but only upon their relations to God and Christ. They are withdrawn from the world that they may be one with the Father and with the Son; they eat the bread of life; they drink the water of life; they receive another spirit which is to guide them into all truth. They are not, as in the parable, like the wheat growing together with the tares; nor do they become a great tree under the shadow of which the birds of the air take shelter: they are the branches indeed of which Christ is the Vine, but no outward glory or power is attributed to them. Nor are they bound together by a common external symbol; for, as you will remember, the institution of the Sacrament is not recorded in the Gospel of St. John. Many reasons have been given for the omission; the author of the fourth Gospel has been sometimes supposed to have avoided subjects which were mentioned in the three first. But there is no proof that he was acquainted with them; the more probable reason is, if any is needed, that he is putting forward another aspect of the life of Christ, and that the outward fades away before his mind in comparison with the inward. Christ is not described in the Gospel of St. John as instituting the Sacrament of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper, but as teaching men that He is the Bread of Life. And, if we look closely at the external events recorded, we shall see that they are told for the sake of some lesson or discourse which is appended to them, rather than for the sake of the events themselves. The miracles are very few; one class of them, that of healing the demoniacs, is omitted. For example, the miracle of the five thousand is narrated in the three first Gospels chiefly as a wonder, but in the fourth Gospel with a manifest reference to the lesson which follows concerning ‘the bread of life.’

Returning, then, to the words of the text, and reading them in the light of other passages in the Gospel, I think that we are right in regarding chiefly, or indeed exclusively, their spiritual import. Whether our Lord, or the recorder of His words, did intend to allude to the times of trouble and desolation which were shortly, that is about forty years afterwards, coming upon Jerusalem, we cannot precisely deter mine. But what He chiefly meant to express was an eternal truth and not a particular fact. As when He says ‘the hour is coming, and now is, when all they that are in the graves shall hear His voice,’ He is speaking of a future which is already present, and anticipated in all ages by the consciences of men passing judgement on themselves and their own times. For when we compare our external institutions with the language of prophecy respecting the Church, or our own lives with the requirements of a divine law, we feel that they cannot stand, and we desire sometimes with a longing past expression to become other than we are. For we know, as Christ says, that religion is spiritual, and consists in communion with the justice and truth and goodness of God. But we are living the life of all men, worshipping in a cold and formal manner; repeating words to which we hardly attend; instead of making our whole lives a worship of Him, and seeking to enter into His mind and to do His work.

Nor need we hesitate to apply the words of the text to some of the forms of religion which we see around us. ‘The hour is coming when neither as Protestants nor as Catholics, neither as Churchmen nor Dissenters, shall men worship the Father.’ For a feeling of dissatisfaction will sometimes steal over us at the disputes of our Churches, at the unreality of our preaching, at the unchristian appearance of a Christian country. When we see religious opinion moving strongly in one direction during the last generation, and in entirely different currents among our own contemporaries, and our forms of worship are so much changed that our fathers or grandfathers, if they could return to life again, would view them with extreme dislike, we feel we cannot trust the opinions of men; they come and go, and are phases only, shadows of the past, which revive from time to time and are followed by reaction. We do not wish to live and die in them, for they may fail us when they are most wanted. Neither do we desire to be like chameleons, changing colour from year to year; or to catch the epidemic of religion which happens to be in the air; or to have one half of our lives or of our minds saying Aye and the other No to the same truths (‘Aye and No are no good divinity’). But we desire to have the peaceful and harmonious growth of religion in the soul, which becomes a part of our being, and is not shaken by the accidents of public opinion or the discoveries of science, or the satire of society and the world; which is the same in all ages, and is inseparably bound up with goodness and truth everywhere. For when we find that the world is changing around us, and some things that were once most certain to us are becoming doubtful, then is the time to go back to the simple principles of religion, and not allow them to be interfered with or dethroned by the externals which are always taking their place. ‘To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God’; ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness’; ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself’; ‘Without holiness no man shall see the Lord’: these are the primary principles of religion which can never alter or be superseded; and they are so simple that they can hardly fail to be understood. But, when I proceed to think of churches, of forms of worship, of systems of theology, these vary with the philosophy of different ages, or the characters of individuals; they are not ends but means in religion, and they have given occasion to endless disputes. Yet not because I see that many things which I once deemed to be revealed truths are relative and transient, and that many things which I once deemed characteristic of Christianity are common to other religions, will I give up the faith in God and immortality, or the desire to be a follower of Christ. Hence the importance of not putting the lesser before the greater, the changing before the unchanging, the duty of worshipping at Jerusalem once a year before the great truth that God is a Spirit. I worship God in this consecrated building where there are sounds of music and stained windows, and the architecture of a former age is pleasingly imitated; but if I were on a desert island could I not worship Him still, and perhaps more truly, for there He would be my only hope? And if of the temple of Jerusalem not one stone were left upon another, or if the Churches of Christ in this and other countries were overthrown, should I therefore renounce my belief in Him? Yes, perhaps so, if my belief had been in houses made with hands; but not if I had considered that churches too partook of human infirmity even more than political institutions, and that the truth or word of God, and not the vessel which contained the truth, is the foundation upon which human life must be reared.

When, applying the words of Christ to our own times, we say, ‘The hour is coming, and now is, when there shall be neither Catholics nor Protestants, Churchmen nor Dissenters,’ we do not suppose that these well-known names will cease among us, or that the things signified by them will altogether disappear. But they may become unimportant in comparison with the great truth ‘God is a Spirit.’ For the more the spiritual character of religion is under stood the more external differences will disappear. Can we think of a good man as other than a good man because he belongs to another sect, because he does not believe in the same doctrines which we believe in? Hardly, if we know him; but ignorance is the parent of dislike and estrangement. When we read history we see that these differences have originated in feelings which we no longer share, and which are maintained chiefly by external barriers. And, when we turn from the ecclesiastical history of our own country and of Europe to the larger book of the religions of the world, we perceive that the disputes which have occasioned them are infinitely small in comparison with the greater interests of religion, and we wonder how the human mind can have been absorbed by them. Or again, when we look out on ‘the heavens, the work of Thy hands, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained,’ are not these religious disputes calmed and silenced in the thought, ‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him?’ And when we think of God as a Spirit, must not this great truth absorb the lesser antagonisms or parties which divide us? Just as in politics we have seen towns or districts of the same country which seemed to bear an external enmity to one another, the heritage of former ages, yet contrary to all expectations have been fused or moulded into a single nation and become instinct with a common life. There is Italy, for example, and Germany. And are the divisions of churches to be more lasting than the divisions of nations?

These may seem to be unsettling thoughts, and I ventured to speak of the text as one of the revolutionary sayings of Christ. For we must provide for the religion of the next generation as well as of this, for our whole lives and not merely for the phase of opinion which prevails at the present moment. It is certainly an unsettling thing to try to live in another world as well as this, to want to fly when we are compelled to walk upon the earth. Yet most of the good which has been accomplished among men is due to aspirations of this sort. We may be in the world and not of it, and we may be in the Church and far from agreeing in the temper and spirit of many Church men. Difficulties may surround our path to some extent. But, if there is no difficulty in ourselves, these may generally be overcome by common prudence. The aspirations after a higher state of life than that in which we live may in a measure fulfil themselves. We may create that which we seek after. And although there will always remain something more to be done, and our thoughts will easily outrun our utmost exertions, yet we may find in such thoughts of the changes which may come over the world and the Church not an unquiet or disturbing element of our lives but a sense of repose; they may enable us to see whither we are going, and we may have a satisfaction in contributing to the work which God intended us to do.

XI

CHRIST’S UNITY WITH THE FATHERPreached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, Oct. 22, 1882..

JESUS ANSWERED THEM, AND SAID, MY DOCTRINE IS NOT MINE, BUT HIS THAT SENT ME. IF ANY MAN IS WILLING TO DO HIS WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF THE DOCTRINE, WHETHER IT BE OF GOD, OR WHETHER I SPEAK OF MYSELF. HE THAT SPEAKETH OF HIMSELF SEEKETH HIS OWN GLORY: BUT HE THAT SEEKETH HIS GLORY THAT SENT HIM, THE SAME IS TRUE, AND THERE IS NO UNRIGHTEOUSNESS IN HIM.

ST. JOHN vii. 16-18.

IN the Gospel according to St. John the Jews are constantly asking questions respecting the claim of Christ to be regarded as the Son of God. They require of Him a sign from heaven; and sometimes He answers them in enigmatical language: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again’: or, ‘I, if I be lifted up from this earth, will draw all men after me’: or, ‘Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but My Father giveth you the true bread.’ Sometimes He appeals to the prophets who wrote of Him and foretold the darkness which would come over the eyes and hearts of the Jewish people; or again, to the witness of John the Baptist, who had himself been asked similar questions by the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem. They have strong reasons for doubting the truth of His mission: ‘Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet’; or, ‘Howbeit we know this Man whence He is.’ Some times in a more natural strain they argue: ‘Is not this the carpenter’s Son, whose father and mother we know?’ For mankind are slow to recognize the greatness of those with whom they have been long familiar; as Jesus Himself testified, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own country.’ Then, again, they are puzzled by His words, they do not understand in what sense He bears record of Himself; and they seem to taunt Him with a forgetfulness of His own profession, that His Father bore witness of Him. They do not comprehend how He can be the judge of the world, and yet not the judge of the world; or how they should seek Him and not find Him, and ‘whither I go ye cannot come’; any more than Pilate under stood the word of Christ that ‘He was a king’; or that ‘He came into the world to bear witness unto the truth.’ His inmost and deepest thoughts, ‘Before Abraham was I am,’ and ‘I and the Father are One,’ appeared to them to be blasphemy. They were offended at His breaking the law about the Sabbath day, according to their narrow interpretation of it. They failed altogether to see His meaning when He told them that they ‘must be made free,’ or ‘must be born again,’ or ‘must eat His flesh and drink His blood.’ Some of them wondered, ‘How He could know letters, not having learned.’ Some said, ‘He is a good man,’ and others, ‘Nay, but He deceiveth the people.’ And ‘neither did His brethren believe in Him.’ They wanted Him to show forth His claims to the world, saying, shrewdly enough, ‘There is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly.’ If He would only make a speech, or assert Himself in some way, then the world would acknowledge Him. And they also reminded Him that He was running a risk of being stoned if He went up to Jerusalem. To whom Christ, in the deep stillness of His convictions, only replies, ‘My time is not yet; your time is always ready’; and, ‘Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world’: how much more he who sees always the light of the divine presence!

Even the inner circle of His disciples seem to have found a difficulty in understanding His language and character. They knew that some great and mysterious calamity was hanging over Him and them. But they could not tell what He meant when He said: ‘Yet a little while, and ye shall not see Me, and again a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father.’ They wanted Him to ‘show them the Father, and they would be satisfied,’ not understanding that in Him only would they see the Father. They knew not whither He went, and how could they know the way? They had no conception of a kingdom not of this world; they had rather hoped that He should restore to the Jewish people their own kingdom, and even that some of themselves might be sitting on His right hand and His left, judging the tribes of Israel. They were the personal friends of Christ who were ready to follow Him whithersoever He went, and like friends they were anxious about His safety; they were comforted by His presence, they were conscious that He had the words of eternal life. But of His inner mind, of His real nature, of His relation to the Father, of the purely spiritual mission which He came into the world to accomplish, they seem hardly to have had a conception. They were ordinary men who had no outlook into the world or into history, and who had not yet been transfigured by the power of His character. So the author of the fourth Gospel, which of all the Gospels and of all the books of Scripture is by far the most dramatic, in his own lively manner has pictured to us the feelings which filled the minds, not of the Jews only, but of the first disciples.

And so in later ages and on many grounds, some times lighter, sometimes more serious, men have had their searchings of heart respecting ‘the way, the truth, and the life.’ For not only in His own day was Christ misunderstood, but in all ages there have been those who have put the letter in the place of the spirit, and have perverted what was inward and moral into what was local and outward. Either they have found difficulties in the ancient narrative of the Gospels, which they have vainly endeavoured to meet by pretended reconcilements; or they have wanted to see with their own eyes the miracles of which they have heard by distant report; or they have hoped against hope to witness the Son of Man appearing in the clouds of heaven; or they have formed within the bosom of the Christian Church narrow sects more nearly resembling in externals the congregations of the first believers, until the very conception of the Gospel has vanished into a many-coloured dream, and the truth which was to be the life of man has taken the form of an answer to objections, an apology, a defence, a book of evidences; not the highest and the holiest which the human mind could conceive, a self-evident truth or light, but a full-blown system of theology, and a vigorous polemic against opponents. For the religion of Christ is always being recovered and being lost; and errors, falsehoods, superstitious practices, which He came into the world to destroy, are constantly being reasserted in His name. The men of our own day are not so unlike as we imagine to the contemporaries of Christ; and the difficulties of our own age resemble, in a measure, those difficulties which the Evangelist has put into the mouths of the Jews. Slowly, if at all, do men realize that Christianity is not a church, or a congregation, or a history, or a book, but a blessed and divine life, or communion of men with God, of which he who wills may be a partaker. They have never applied to their own case the passionate exclamation of Christ, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’ If we allow for differences of times and countries, and also for the length of time during which the objections to the Gospels and the answers to them have been accumulating (for the evidences of Christianity have become a great literature), we may fairly argue from one age to the other, or at any rate find in the one the germs of true and useful thoughts which are applicable to the other. Following on the lines indicated by the words of the text, I propose to consider more particularly—(1) the nature of Christ’s answer to the Jews; (2) what did He mean when He said ‘If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine’? (3) what application of these and similar words we may make to ourselves and to our own day.

First of all our Lord appeals to Himself. There is a true witness which a man may give of his own life and actions, and there is a false witness by which he deceives first himself and then others; and lastly, there is a witness, partly true and partly false, by which he perplexes his fellow men, because they see the high and lofty aims which animate him, but they also see that he is the victim of a delusion. The record which is true appeals irresistibly to our highest sense of right and truth; there are a few whose goodness we could hardly doubt without at the same time doubting the existence of goodness itself. The false record is that of an impostor, who is also a fanatic, who can offer no reasonable ground why men should believe him to be sent of God, but yet by a certain positiveness and egotism, by an intense belief in himself, gains an ascendency over the minds of others. And there have been leaders of religious thought, who have been deceived as well as deceivers, who with good intentions have not been aware how much of their own teaching was derived, not from God, but from themselves. Characters of this type are common among men, and they often gain an undue power over their fellows; they insensibly undermine the truth and purity of religion, and create a distrust of it in the world. There have been even saints and righteous men whose witness of themselves was not to be believed; they thought they saw, and perhaps really saw, the true light at times; and at other times they supplemented by self-delusion the faith which was beginning to fail them; and yet they have been good men still in the main, if all the circumstances of their lives be considered. Nevertheless it is obvious that their testimony of themselves must be received with suspicion; for they and their beliefs were what they made them by fastings and religious exercises, by a study of one side of the truth only, by indulging the natural tendency of their minds; or, what they had become by the opposition and antagonism of their age, by the cruelty and persecution of their enemies.

The true witness which a man bears of himself is not positive, not egotistical, not polemical; it is humble, calm, retiring; not what a man proclaims of himself, but what his life and character say of him. His acts are the witness of his words; he himself is the witness of the spirit in which he acts. If you would test a good religious teacher, try him especially in those points in which he is most likely to fail. Is he disinterested, or seeking for his own glory? Is he a lover of all men everywhere, or only of his own sect? Are his ideas of right and truth in politics and religion dependent on the interests of Church or dissent? Is he as careful of means as he is of ends; or is he apt to think that the end sanctifies the means? Is he really living above the world, in communion with God, in love and harmony with his fellow men? There is no difficulty in distinguishing the religion of such an one from the conventional imitation of it; from the ecclesiastical religion which seeks only to exalt the power of the priesthood; from the puritanical religion which would bind up salvation in a theological formula; from the interested and Pharisaical religion which desires to appear well in the eyes of men; from the political religion which converts the words of Christ into the symbols of a party.

XII

CHRIST’S AUTHORITYPreached at Balliol, April 12, 1880..

HE TAUGHT THEM AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY, AND NOT AS THE SCRIBES.

MATT. vii. 29.

WE should like to carry with us in the mind’s eye the form and features of Christ; we would rather have looked upon that face than upon any other among the sons of men. Whether, in the language of the prophet, His visage was marred more than any man’s, either from the conflicts of His own spirit or from His sympathy with the sins and sufferings of men; or whether we may conceive Him to have been the image of a heavenly calm, of an authority which was given from above, of a divine grace and love; we naturally wish that we could have seen Him as He was in this world, and could have preserved the recollection of Him as we might of some earthly friend whom we always remember; and we may imagine that one look from Him, like that given to Peter, would have rebuked our sins and changed the course of our lives. The genius of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had many imaginary visions and likenesses of Christ. After a while the artist breaks through the traditional forms in which an earlier generation had hardly dared to give expression to the sacred features; and finally seeks to embody in the face of the Saviour all the attributes of perfected humanity. We see Him full of sadness and dignity as He sits among His disciples at the Last Supper, when He makes the discovery to them that ‘there is one here who shall betray Me,’ and the eager inquiry ‘Who is it?’ passes from one to the other of them; or as He appears in another picture answering those who asked Him of the tribute money, and seeming by His gentle wisdom to reprove the hardness and fanaticism which are depicted in the faces of His questioners; or as He is seen among the doctors, the image of ingenuous youth, yet having in His mind thoughts to which they were strangers; or as He is painted again and again bearing the likeness of suffering innocence in the judgement hall of Pilate, bound, helpless, scourged, yet having a majesty which shows that He is raised above this world. These are lessons which the painter’s art is able to teach, pictures with which we may fill and people our minds; and thoughts too deep for words are to be found in many of them. For there is a noble use of art which by the help of colour and form raises us to the contemplation of the mind within, as there is also a degraded use of art which aims only at a false ideal of sense and sensuality; and the change which we observe in the art of painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as we pass from the old Byzantine types to the free and noble representations of Albert Durer and Leonardo da Vinci, is parallel to another change which has taken place later in the history of religious thought. For gradually as time has gone on we have learned to think of the character of Christ more simply and truly, more as if He were one of ourselves, but above us; no longer defined by hard dogmatical lines, but speaking to us naturally, heart to heart; whereas formerly men would have hardly ventured to conceive His character at all; they regarded Him rather as an inhabitant of another world, a divine stranger who passed before them for a moment, and of whom they could form no distinct impression. The great physiognomist Lavater is said to have been inspired in his researches into the human form by the hope of recovering this lost image of Christ. This was the eccentric fancy of a great and good man. But may there not be such an image present with us still? not pourtrayed by the fancy of the painter, nor chiselled in marble by the sculptor’s art, nor capable of any outward representation, but Christ in the heart and conscience of man, Christ in the light of our lives, who is ever shining in us if we look inward and have eyes to see; to which image we repair when, like all things in the past, the vision of the historical Christ seems to be in any degree dim or distant to us.

XIII

THE UNWORLDLY KINGDOMPreached at Balliol, Jan. 22, 1882..

MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD; IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, THEN WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT.

JOHN viii. 36.

How far religion and morality should enter into politics is a question not easily answered. There are some who say that ‘what is morally wrong can never be politically right, but they forget how rarely this truth or truism is capable of application. Nor can the question always receive the same answer. For, in different ages of the world, Church and State, as we now call them, religion and politics, the outer and the inner life of man, stand in different relations to one another. In the beginning of history, and in the times before history, they are not yet divided. Religion rather than reason, or reason taking the form of religion, is the light of human existence in the dawn of the world’s day. The founder of the city is the god of the city, the temple of Athena crowns the Acropolis, the forces of nature which are too much for man, the uncontrollable passions or inspirations within him, are also supposed to be protecting or guiding powers. The institutions of the state are received by some legislator from heaven. Though among the Greeks individuals may have been stigmatized as atheists, yet there was no city without gods. At every turn human life was regulated by ceremonies, of which the meaning was often lost in after ages. Religion was the bond of society as well as of the state. In later ages it became divided into two parts—the icy crust and the living stream—the prescribed routine of sacrifice and offering and the better mind of the worshippers rising in almost unconscious thought to a divine power and goodness.

Such was the ordinary progress of the Gentile religions which are best known to us. The Jewish theory was of a higher type and attained to a nobler conception. The Israelites, without losing altogether the national idea of God, yet thought of Him also, though confusedly, as the God of the whole earth, ‘sitting upon the circle of the heavens,’ perfect in justice and holiness and truth. Whether this nobler conception of God was part of an original revelation to Moses, or a new life infused into the decaying nation long afterwards by psalmists and prophets, is a matter of controversy. For the Hebrew religion may be regarded in two ways, either as declining from a more perfect idea, or, like the Greek, progressing towards it. In the latter case the laws of Moses may be compared with similar works of legislators in ancient Hellas, while the Jewish prophets, though so different, would have a certain analogy to the philosophers of Hellas. However this question may be determined, the ideal, whether of the past or of the future (as indeed is ever the case in this world), remained unrealized. The prophets and psalmists are always lamenting over the backsliding of their countrymen. They were a rebellious race, never good for much at any time. After the return from captivity they sank into Pharisaism and Sadduceeism, as their ancestors had fallen into Phœnician and Egyptian idolatry. At length in the minds of good men arose a settled belief, that ‘there remained yet a rest for the people of God.’ Somehow—they could not tell where, whether at Jerusalem or in the distant heaven, a King would reign in righteousness, and there would be a kingdom comprehending all nations. And any premature efforts to establish this kingdom, like those of the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, ended only in disappointment, fanaticism and death. In our own age the outward connexion between religion and politics has been to a great extent given up. Religious observances no longer inaugurate all public occasions, and when they are retained they often partake of the nature of a form. Church and State are more and more divided, and in our own country they abstain to a great extent from interference with one another. The days of Corporation and Tests Acts, of Roman Catholic exclusion, have passed away, and no one wishes to revive them. One distinguished man, Dr. Arnold, living between the old and the new worlds of politics, and forming his opinion too entirely on the study of the Old Testament and of ancient history and philosophy, used to maintain the identity of Church and State; whence he deduced the somewhat perilous inference that none but Christians should be members of a state. The contemporary representation of a some what different school of thought was equally strenuous in asserting that the state was only a machine for the protection of life and property, assuming that if these were secured the interests of religion and morality would best take care of themselves. And the political reformers of that day, probably not from any vulgarity of mind, but because they felt the necessity of having a single and definite principle, based their doctrine chiefly on the philosophy of utility. In the greatest happiness of the greatest number they saw, or thought they saw, the firmest safeguard or bulwark against war, against priestcraft, against the various forms of selfishness and class-interest. Such a principle offered a guiding thread through the tangle of human actions and motives; and many who held it were among the most disinterested of mankind. In our own generation we are beginning to feel that there was a want which this system had not supplied. It was too dry and logical, neither appealing in the right way to the imagination nor touching the heart, though furnishing a useful corrective to many errors and prejudices.

The change from religion and divine right to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, though very real and important, is less important from some points of view than it appears. The best men, though they have different theories about the nature of human actions, and sometimes entertain the greatest dislike to one another, yet come round in practice to the same point. When the question is, What is honest? What is pure? What is true? What is disinterested? though the effect of these general speculations on the human mind may be very different, they will not be found to vary in the answer. For where the sense of duty is, religion is not far off. When men are serving their fellows they are serving God also. The protests against the introduction of religion into politics are really protests against the abuse of it. When religion became a craft, the most subtle of all crafts, and the priest stood behind the soldier, when men saw the best, i. e. the most religious of men, Bossuet and Massillon, defending the massacres and tortures of the Huguenots, can we wonder that they should have wished to banish a religion of which these were the fruits? Nor can we be surprised at the noblest minds revolting from religion, or at whole countries like Italy and France falling into a reaction against it, and not even now recovering their equilibrium. But when we consider how deep and powerful an influence religion has exerted in all ages and countries we can hardly suppose that her power is exhausted, or that the aberration of human nature from itself is destined to be permanent. The day may be coming when a larger idea of Christianity, the true religion of Christ, may win back the hearts of those who have been repelled by the perversions and disfigurements of it.

At this time, when our thoughts are turned more than usually to political events, the question ‘What has religion and morality to do with politics? has a peculiar interest. Must we insist that they are always identical, or shall we admit that they may diverge? Is an answer to be found to great political and social problems in Scripture? or can we solve them by an immediate reference of them to the will of God, or to the conscience of man? There are obviously false ways in which religion and politics are pressed into the service of each other. There must also be a true connexion between them, if we could only find it. And, first, I will consider some of the false modes of connecting them which have prevailed in other ages, and which even in our own day continue to pervert and entangle the natural course of human progress. For ideas remain in men’s minds, and affect parties, when they have ceased to be embodied in noble institutions, and may even be most dangerous when least recognized. Secondly, having examined the false, I will proceed to consider the true connexion, which is not necessarily less real because it is not displayed in outward signs and symbols as was formerly the case in mediæval and other ages. Religion may be the greatest blessing of the human race, and also a curse; it may guide men into light and truth; it may plunge them into darkness and false hood. It may raise them above human nature; it may depress them below it. There is a religion which is the imitation of Christ; there is also a religion which is the incentive to any wickedness, and the disguise of it. And, when we would introduce religion into politics, we must be careful what sort of a religion it is. When I try a public act by this standard, when I ask, Is this declaration of war, this annexation of territory, this protection of slavery, according to the will of God? I must begin by asking what is the true notion of God: Is He a Being to whom war is acceptable or in whose service wars can be waged? Is He the God of Christ, or of Mahomet? Even in the Hebrew Scriptures there are expressions which fall very far short of the conception of Him which is declared to us in the New Testament, and which, independently of the New Testament, receives the witness of our own heart and conscience; and until we have purified our conception of God from every dark shadow of human prejudices, we cannot safely make His will the rule of political action or of our daily life. We must see Him as the prophet saw Him, ‘having the body of heaven in His clearness,’ not the mere reflection of our own religious opinion or of the traditions of our ancestors.

But, supposing the true idea of the divine nature to be ever present to our minds, it by no means follows that it would be a sufficient guide to the conduct of politics or of life. For the greater number of human actions cannot be immediately tried by the standard of truth and right. The great end of all this, the happiness, the elevation of human life, may be clear and plain to us, but the means by which the end is to be attained can be only known from experience. Nor is the end altogether separable from the means: it will often appear to be the sum of the means, or the spirit which animates the use of them. To the question, What shall I do? the answer, both in political and ordinary life, is generally, not ‘what is right’ (this would in most cases be no answer), but what is best. Nor is there any rough and ready way of resolving politics into morals. Take for example the case of temperance: while all men are agreed in denouncing the evil of drinking, yet the particular measure by which the evil may be cured can only be chosen after patient thought and reflection on the facts. The means may not always conform to the supposed les sons of Scripture, they may be even at variance with them. To take an instance: David, in numbering the people, is said to have committed a sin which was punished by a pestilence. In our own day it would be a sin not to number the people, for we should remain in wilful ignorance of the laws by which God governs the world, including the ways of that very pestilence by which He was supposed to have punished Israel. Consider, again, the relief of the poor: How often has an unthinking appeal to Scripture been made on this behalf! It is our duty to do much more for them than we do. But ought we to remedy an evil by increasing it? or alleviate physical suffering at the expense of moral degradation? The whole question of their condition lies deep in the constitution of society, and cannot be got rid of by the distribution of alms, or by indulging the first impulses of pity and compassion. What we do for them must be done wisely, or it will effect more harm than good.

Again, let us illustrate the question which we are discussing by the case of war. Who would doubt that Christianity and all true religion is opposed to war? We do not hold with a recent theologian that the religion of Christ stands by and is only a looker-on when the question of war and peace hangs in the balance, and when men have fought it out there appears on the battlefield, bending over the dead and dying, saint-like, the ministering angel, shedding holy influences in the foul and corrupted atmosphere. For against many wars, that is to say against all wars of selfish ambition and aggression, religion and morality alike lift up their voice. But of other wars, again, we cannot judge in this decided manner. Peace may be only secured by the threat of war, and war may be hastened by the knowledge that another nation is secure in peace. There is more than one illusion to which we are naturally subject on this question—the horror of the war may deter us from considering the duty and necessity of self-defence; the heroism of war may gild the aggression of a tyrant. Who can tell whether the sufferings of one generation may not be compensated by the safety and liberties of another, or by the example which they have bequeathed to posterity? We cannot say of all battles that it would have been well for the world if they had not been fought—the virtues of war tend in a measure to correct the vices of peace. There is no greater responsibility than that of declaring war; but considering the complexity of human affairs and the uncertainty of consequences, this is not a question which can be always decided simply as a matter of right and wrong.

The attempt to form moral judgements on politics is a temptation which naturally besets us, for if we can raise political questions into moral ones we effectually place ourselves in the right and our opponents in the wrong. We elevate ourselves on a sort of moral platform; we appeal to the heart against the head, to the feelings against the reason. We trust to the force of general principles weighed in the balance with doubtful or disputed facts. These are arts which most men unconsciously practise in times of political excitement, and a generous person who has any insight into human nature is apt to revolt from them, because he knows that religion and morality are the disguises of party spirit. I will add one more illustration of the wrong way in which religion may be introduced into politics. I am old enough to remember the time when a respectable section of the community believed that the judgements of God were about to fall upon this country. And for what? For our neglect of education? for the sufferings of the poor? for our toleration of slavery (now happily abolished)? for the severity of our criminal code? For none of these things, but because we had admitted our Roman Catholic brethren to Parliament, or, about twelve years later, because we had given a grant for the education of poor Roman Catholic priests! It was argued that if a nation, like an individual, had a conscience, it must, like an individual, have one conscience; and upon this fallacy of composition or division, as logicians would term it, and under the still greater fallacy that in gratifying their own party feelings they were doing God service, the peace of nations was imperilled, the risk of civil wars was incurred. For, if such a doctrine could be maintained, there would seem to be no stopping until the members of all religions but the dominant and established one were excluded from civil and political rights. We must wade through oceans of blood to an unmeaning uniformity in religion; and, although this religious tyranny is overpast, it cannot be said even now that the sympathies and antipathies of churches and religious bodies have no influence on the enmities and wars of nations. The immediate interests of their own order may often be strong in them, while they have little or no feeling for all that is without.

But is there, then, no rule of right and wrong by which the statesman must guide his steps, no true way in which morality and religion enter into politics? First of all, he has the rule not to do anything as a statesman which as a private individual he would not allow himself to do. A great and good man will not flatter, will not deceive, will not confuse his own interests or those of his party with the interests of his country, will fear no one, will, if he can help it, offend no one. He will feel, though he will not say, that he has a trust committed to him by God, and the greatest of all trusts, for which he must give an account. And sometimes he will need to steady himself in the thought of immortality and eternity against the forces which oppose him, whether the frowns of a sovereign or the dislike of a class or the clamour of the populace. He will sometimes think of another kingdom which is not to be found upon earth. But he will not be fond of arguing merely political questions on moral grounds, because he knows that in this way he is likely to miss their real drift. He will not expect to learn from Scripture whether the authority of princes shall be maintained, whether some tax or tithe shall be imposed or repealed, whether certain regulations respecting degrees of affinity in marriage shall be enforced or not, whether usury laws are good or bad. The example of Christ will not enable him to determine what measures of relief should be taken in an Irish or Scotch famine, or even in the ordinary management of the poor. These are questions of expediency, in which the best thing to be done is also the right thing, and the best can only be discovered by a close and conscientious study of the facts. There is no revelation of this from heaven; but the spirit of Christ may still be the underlying motive of the statesman’s life. And sometimes, amid the piles of statistics, in the hurry and distraction of his work, that motive may be very near and present to him. But he must think as well as feel; he must balance the greater evil which is seen against the lesser which is unseen; he must know how much of a evil must be endured. He has to work through means; he cannot drop out the intermediate steps, or in a mistaken spirit of faith undertake some great enterprise.

Thus he will have to be on his guard against religion out of place. He is, as some would say, the creature of expediency—that is to say, God’s expediency—for he must act according to the laws which God prescribes for him, and which are known to us through experience only. He must understand the world in which he lives. Himself above party and selfish interest, he will seek to inspire the greatest unity among his followers at the cost of the least enmity among his opponents. He will sternly repress in himself all dislike of persons, for the sake of the cause which he has in hand, and also because he knows that, while the struggle is going on, he is no fair judge of them. His religion will be never or hardly ever on his lips, for he fears lest it should become a political engine. But the impress of his character, his seriousness, his patriotism, his elevation, will communicate itself to others and mould the thoughts of a generation.

This, then, is one way in which religion connects with politics—through the lives of statesmen. And there are other ways also. For a state or nation is a living being, not a mere adaptation of means to ends. To a certain extent it is like one man and has the feelings of a man, and is subject to common impulses towards good and evil. No human being can be governed merely on mechanical principles; no nation can be administered according to the rules of profit and loss. The bonds of commerce are but as green withes if it is expected by them to secure the blessings of peace. The poorest and humblest have their attachments and hatreds, their religious belief, their questionings about this world and another. They are inwardly conscious of a truth and right far higher than exists here; they hope, after their long life of labour, for the promised rest; and by the side of this world, in which there are so many things wrong, they place the image of a city whose builder and maker is God. Here, then, is another field for religion in politics—to draw forth the nobler elements which exist in all societies, to express them and to present them to the mind anew, to reflect them through many mirrors on the sight of all men, to infuse them into a parliament or into a nation. This is a religious mission, and the noblest of all religious missions, on which gifts of poetry and eloquence and philosophy can be bestowed.

Once more, politics are limited by morality, and in this sense we may truly say that what is morally wrong cannot be politically right. If cruelty is wrong in individuals, it is wrong in nations or churches; if falsehood is wrong, if injustice is wrong, in individuals, they are wrong also in nations or churches. If the desire to do good should exist in individuals towards each other, it should exist also and be felt in nations towards each other. We ought not to stand unthinkingly by, happy in our island home, while half a continent is being wasted and oppressed. But then at once arises the question how to interfere so as not to introduce evils greater than those which we are seeking to remedy. For in all cases we must consider the imperfect and constrained character of collective action. A nation, like an army, can never have the agility or life of a single man; and sometimes even tyranny may be better than anarchy, and we may hesitate to displace even a bad government when we can only let loose antagonistic forces.

Yet we note also with satisfaction that religion and morality have leavened politics in a very striking manner during the last century. They may have disappeared in words, but they have asserted themselves in the spirit of our legislation. The abolition of slavery and the slave trade, the mitigation of the criminal code, the removal of religious disabilities, are not the result of the utilitarian philosophy, how ever valuable that may have been in its effect on many points of our legislation, but of an increased sense of humanity and justice. Men have felt their common brotherhood more and more; they have been more conscious of their duties to the weak and suffering; the spirit of Christ has had a great hold on their minds; and if there be some who lament a certain appearance of decay in the outward institutions of religion, they should also remember that there is another aspect of religion, under which the nineteenth century will bear comparison with the so-called ages of faith or the traditions of the primitive church. The best fruit of every institution is, not that which is without but that which is within, not the house made with hands, nor the system of doctrine laid down in books, nor the rites of churches, but the spirit which animated them, the better mind, the higher conscience, the sound public opinion, the simplicity of social life: by these they should be judged.

XIV

THE LORD’S PRAYERPreached at Balliol, 1872..

AND IT CAME TO PASS, THAT AS HE WAS PRAYING IN A CERTAIN PLACE, WHEN HE CEASED, ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES SAID UNTO HIM, ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY, AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES.’ AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, ‘WHEN YE PRAY, SAY, OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN.’

LUKE xi. 1, 2.

THE Lord’s Prayer has been the type of prayer among Christians in all ages. For eighteen centuries men have poured forth their hearts to God in these few words, which have probably had a greater influence on the world than all the writings of theologians put together. They are the simplest form of communion with Christ: when we utter them we are one with Him; His thoughts become our thoughts, and we draw near to God through Him. They are also the simplest form of communion with our-fellow men, in which we acknowledge Him to be our common Father and we His children. And the least particulars of our lives admit .of being ranged under one or other of the petitions which we offer up to Him.

XV

PRAYER AND LIFEPreached at Balliol, May 18, 1884..

LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY, AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES.

LUKE xi. 1.

THIS has been thought to be an age in which the Christian religion is beset by great dangers and sur rounded by peculiar difficulties . There is said to be a conflict going on between experience and faith, between the old and the new, between the traditions and doctrines of the Church and the critical spirit of modern times. People ask, What is to become of us or of our children in the next generation, or fifty or a hundred years hence, when the foundations which are beginning to loosen have altogether given way; when the doubts which are now whispered in the closet are proclaimed on the housetop; when, as time goes on, the Christian world is divided more and more into two opposing armies of the maintainers of reason and revelation? Shall we be Christians any longer when the facts of Scripture history have been subject to the same sort of microscopic criticism as the histories of Greece or of Rome? Shall we be able to pray any longer when the sequence and order of nature are more clearly understood; when the wind and the rain, and the life and the death of man, are observed to follow as certain laws as the stone which falls to the ground or the rivers which find their way into the sea? And there will not be wanting those who will apply to this age the language of Scripture about the latter days in which deceivers ‘will wax worse and worse,’ who will, perhaps, hear in the very advance of knowledge the footfalls of a distant antichrist; who, when in the natural course of human things their own sect or party or opinion begins to decline, will imagine that the world too is coming to an end.

This is not the first, and will not be the last, age in which the Christian faith has seemed to be encircled with peculiar dangers. There have been many ‘latter days’ in the history of the Church: in the times of the Apostles themselves, as we gather from the Epistles of St. Paul and the Book of Revelation; in the tenth century, when men began to think that the world, for its misery, its wickedness, its violence, could no longer go on (in the description of which the great Catholic historian uses the remarkable expression, ‘Christ was still in the ship, but asleep’); at the Reformation too, that great earthquake of Europe and of Christendom, the movement of which has hardly yet ceased, and still seems to affect us from a distance; or, in the first French Revolution, when the highest hopes of mankind seemed to be suddenly cast down into the depths of despair. But there is a reflection which may tend to quiet the minds of those who live, or believe themselves to live, in times of trial or difficulty. It is this: All such times of movement and change have appeared different to those who have looked back upon them from afar and to those who were living in the midst of them. They have been seen by after ages more as a part of a larger whole, as having a great, but still only a subordinate, place in the scheme of Providence; the truth that was in them has been separated from the error; the temporary excitement has passed away, and the permanent result has appeared. And, if we could imagine some one living a hundred years hence, and looking back on our own age as we look back on past history, he would certainly see us and our times in a very different light from that in which we regard ourselves. Perhaps he might note that there were some questions which are now deemed very important, and which are not really important at all; he might observe that there were oppositions insisted on by us which were only oppositions of words; he might wonder at the obsolete violence of party spirit with which even good men attacked one another; and still he might recognize that, amid all our errors and divisions, we were being led in a way that we did not understand to something deeper and truer than satisfied former ages.

This is one way of putting the question which may calm excited spirits. Let me suggest also an other point of view which seems to reach deeper: Do we really suppose that the course of religion in the world is a return to darkness, not a progress towards light? Do we imagine that God has been governing the world for eighteen centuries since the giving of Christianity, communing with and inspiring the soul of man, and that during all that time He has given us no increased knowledge of the principles of His government, no wider conception of His purposes towards mankind? Have not history and physical science told us a great deal about Him, which could never have been known to former ages? And is God to be regarded as separable from nature, or the knowledge of Him from the knowledge of His works? Are there not rather clear and manifest instances in which the knowledge of nature has added to our knowledge of God?

For example: That nature is governed by fixed laws; that effects flow from causes, that the order of the divine work is visible, not only, as the ancients might have supposed, in the movements of the heavenly bodies, but also in the least things and the things which appear to be the most capricious (‘even the very hairs of your head are all numbered’). This is a very great lesson which is being taught us daily and hourly by the commonest observation, as well as by the latest results of science. Everywhere, as far as we can see or observe or decompose the world around us, the pressure of law is discernible. And even if there are some things which we cannot see, which are too subtle to be reached by the eye of man or the use of instruments, still we are right in supposing that the empire of law does not cease with them, but that, in the invisible corners of nature, as they may be termed, the same powers rule, giving order and arrangement to the least things as well as the greatest.

And does this recognition of order in external nature teach us nothing also of the divine nature, and of the moral government of the world? Is not God assuring us in this, by every token which He can give to man, that He will not interrupt His laws for our sakes? He will be with us in spirit, and support us and lead us through the valley and shadow of death, and take us to Himself. But He will not in the least degree alter the external conditions in which He has placed us. He will not change the nature or functions of the human frame, or the influences of dead, involuntary matter, to which we may be exposed. Through those conditions and in them, by the use of means and not without them, we work out our life in His service. Neither in what I have called the invisible corners does He act in any way different from His action in His greater works, such as the rising of the sun, or the ebb and flow of the tides: but everywhere He has provided the empire of law, everywhere He is present Himself, in the least things as well as in the greatest, not acting partially or capriciously, but universally, not interfering but ordering; and the same to all men in all ages and countries, though they may have known, or may know, of His natural government no more than of His moral, like helpless children ignorant of the laws under which they live.

I have made these remarks as introductory to the subject of prayer, because prayer is sometimes thought to be inconsistent with any recognition of the order of nature. And, first, I shall endeavour to show that this, which I will not call the most philosophical view, but rather a plain matter of fact, really supplies the only basis of spiritual communion with God. And, secondly, I will consider the nature of prayer, either as the general spirit of the Christian life, or again as contained in special acts of the public and private worship of God. And, thirdly, I will try to say something of the hindrances and difficulties of prayer, whether as arising out of the evil of the human heart, or from peculiarities of temperament or character or education.

(1) What is required for any real prayer to God is not a lower notion of Him, but a higher; first, as the universal Lawgiver who has ordered all things once for all according to His wisdom; secondly, as the universal Father who cannot possibly desire that one of His creatures should be favoured at the expense of another, any more than a human father who had the feelings of nature could desire that one of his children should die and another live. In the courts of earthly sovereigns there may be the preference of one person to another; but there are no such preferences with God. He who would make a request of this nature is already out of the presence of God; for he who comes to God must believe that He loves other men as well as himself. If we could imagine some one among us, some one who might be pointed out in this place, to be the special object of God’s favour, he himself would reject such a notion as unworthy of the Being whom he wished to serve. He would not like to serve a god who had his favourites after the manner of an earthly potentate. Nor, again, could he wish that God should break the laws which He has laid down for him and all His creatures; that He should make an exception in his favour, that He should introduce disorder into the world for the sake of doing him some benefit. For he would consider that this exception to the law which was made on his behalf might be made on behalf of others; and then how could all the individual wishes of mankind be reconciled? And there would be no stopping until the world was framed on some different and other model, and wonders and fancies and special interventions to individuals took the place of the divine order for all. Or how could he venture to ask that God should do for him what He had told him by every sign that He could give that He could not do for him? How could he dare to say, ‘O Lord, make not Thy will to be mine, but make my will to be Thine’? Was ever such a prayer heard from the mouth of any human being, that the laws of the world should be broken for him, that God should do for him what He would refuse to do for any other?

Well, but some one will say, ‘If you will not allow me to go to God with all my wishes and desires, you take away the nature of prayer.’ What! because I cannot go to God and say to Him, ‘O Lord, give me a fine house and estate; ‘O Lord, make that last venture of mine to succeed; O Lord, give me that preferment or office, which I am so well entitled to, and which I could fill so admirably’—until you come down to the prayer of the beggar, ‘O Lord, please give me eighteenpence’—is that really taking away the nature of prayer? Must I not think a bit before entering the courts of the sovereign, whether the petition is one that I ought to prefer; whether I may not be violating the very laws of the realm in asking that such a petition should be granted? Must I not, when I think of the nature of God, be careful that I ask something which is in accordance with His nature? Instead of lifting up earth to heaven, am I not rather seeking to bring down heaven to earth?

XVI

THE PROPHETIC SPIRITPreached at Westminster Abbey, July 2, 1876..

THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS.

GENESIS i. 2.

THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD GOD IS UPON ME; BECAUSE THE LORD HATH ANOINTED ME TO PREACH GOOD TIDINGS UNTO THE MEEK; HE HATH SENT ME TO BIND UP THE BROKENHEARTED, TO PROCLAIM LIBERTY TO THE CAPTIVES, AND THE OPENING OF THE PRISON TO THEM THAT ARE BOUND.

ISAIAH lxi. 1.

LOOKING back on the history of the world, we observe long periods in which mankind appear to have been stationary. Great empires like Egypt or China remain the same for two thousand or for three thousand years; the external framework of their institutions exercises a paralyzing influence on their life and spirit; their religions continue merely be cause they are ancient, their works of art are always cast in the same form, their laws and customs are like chains too strong for the puny arm of the individual to break. Still more true is all this, as far as we can conjecture, of prehistoric times about which we know so little. Though there were wars and migrations among primitive men, they remained for the most part in the same condition; there was hardly more progress among them than among the animals. Even in our own age of industrial and political activity we become unexpectedly aware of times of reaction: the force which seemed strong enough to revolutionize a world is suddenly arrested and brought to a stop in the midst of its career. Countries, like individuals, are always in danger of falling back into apathy and repose. So that, if some persons speak to us of a law of progress in human affairs, others will seem rather to discern in them a law of rest; not everything going forward, but everything standing still—not ‘the new is ever entwined with the old,’ but ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’ And certainly we must admit that the times of progress and improvement have been few and far between: the day-spring from on high has visited mankind at intervals. Every individual who has sought to do good in his generation has probably made the reflection: ‘How little impression he has left upon the forces arrayed against him! hardly more than the husbandman on the solid frame work of the earth.’

Yet there have been also times in which the fountains of the deep may be said to have been broken up; and new lights have dawned upon men, new truths about politics, about morality, about religion, which have become the inheritance of after ages. In general the progress of mankind has not been gradual but sudden, like the burst of summer in some ice bound clime. Still less has it been a common effort of the whole human race. If we take away two nations from the history of the world; if we imagine further that the six greatest among the sons of men were blotted out, or had never been; the peoples of the earth would still be ‘sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.’ The two nations were among the fewest of all people: scarcely in their most flourishing period together amounting to a hundredth part of the human race. The golden age of either of them can hardly be said to extend over two or three centuries. The nations themselves were not good for much; but single men among them have been the teachers, not only of their own, but of all ages and countries. If the Greek philosophers had never existed, is it too much to say that the very nature of the human mind would have been different? We can hardly tell when or how the sciences would have come into being; many elements of religion as well as of law would have been wanting; the history of nations would have changed. So mighty has been the influence of two or three men in thought and speculation—the world has gone after them.

But even more striking, because more familiar to us, has been the influence of the Jewish prophets on the character of mankind. Living on a narrow spot of earth between the great empires of Assyria and Egypt, which seemed so imposing in their antiquity and external greatness, they had the force of mind to see beyond them, and beyond the existence of their own Jewish nation. Great as was the power of Assyria and of Egypt, they knew and were convinced that they were as nothing before the power of God. Already they saw the seeds of ruin in them: ‘their garments were moth-eaten,’ their palaces crumbling in the dust. For they were persuaded that no kingdom could be lasting which was not founded on righteousness and the fear of God. These are what we may call in modern language their principles of politics and religion. They taught men the true nature of God, that He was a God of love as well as of justice, the Father as well as the judge of mankind. They saw Him sweeping the earth with His judgements, and yet ever willing to have mercy on those who bowed to Him. They knew that He could not be pleased with external rites or ceremonies. ‘Lo, O man, He hath shown thee what He requireth of thee; to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.’ They raised their voice against tyranny and hypocrisy, against luxury and vice, against the foreign superstitions which were imported into Israel. And, though confined within the limits of the Jewish people and without experience of the rest of the world, they saw in the distance the vision of a perfect God ‘having the body of heaven in His clearness.’

And now everywhere in Christian countries their words have sunk deep into the heart of the human race. If the logical and intellectual framework of the human mind may be said to have been constructed by the Greek philosophers, the moral feelings of men have been deepened and strengthened, and also softened and almost created by the Jewish prophets. In modern times we hardly like to acknowledge the full force of their words, lest they should prove subversive to society. And so we explain them away or spiritualize them, and convert what is figurative into what is literal, and what is literal into what is figurative. And still, after all our interpretation or misinterpretation, whether due to a false theology or to imperfect knowledge of the original language, the force of the words remains; and a light of heavenly truth and love streams from them even now (more than 2500 years after they were first uttered) to the uneducated and ignorant, to the widow or the orphan, when they read the words, ‘Who hath believed our report?’ and ‘Comfort ye my people.’

I propose to speak to you in this sermon of the Jewish prophets, who are so distant from us and yet so near to us: whose words carry us back to an ancient and forgotten world, and also come home to the heart and conscience of each of us. And, first, I shall consider the character of the prophet regarded as a teacher of mankind; secondly, I shall inquire how far in modern times, and even in ordinary life, there may be anything akin to the spirit of prophecy. For the same things sometimes exist under different names, and moral or intellectual gifts take different forms in different ages. There have been a few in all ages who have felt themselves irresistibly impelled to utter the truths of which they were persuaded; who have fought hopeless causes; who seem to have lost all feeling of themselves in their devotion to their country or to mankind. The term ‘prophet’ is no longer applied to them; they are not distinguished from their fellow men by any external note in their way of life. We hardly recognize the analogy until after they are dead, and then we sometimes find that they have received a ‘prophet’s reward.’ Such men have been the leaders of movements among ourselves, on behalf of the prisoner or the slave, or the extension of education, or the spread of religious truth. They have been found equally among the clergy and the laity. The characteristic of them has been that in one direction at least they have seen further, and that their moral sense has been higher, than that of the community at large.

And now, returning to the Jewish prophet, we may begin by setting aside a common error in the conception of him, viz. that he was a foreteller of future events in that lower sense in which a Roman soothsayer would have been supposed to foretell them, or as in modern times indications of the future are some times supposed to have been made by ‘second sight.’ Whether in any instance he passed the horizon of his real insight into the future; whether there are any prophecies which remain unfulfilled, as, for example, the siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, is a question which we cannot determine certainly. For, though we may interpret prophecy by history, we must not interpret history by prophecy. Doubtless many applications were made of the prophet’s words, both by the writers of the New Testament and the early Fathers, which never came within the range of his thoughts. I notice this chiefly that we may set it aside as unimportant. The prophet was, and he was not, a foreteller of future events. He was, in so far as he saw more deeply into the laws of the world around him: he was not, in the sense which excites the vulgar credulity and admiration of man kind. At least, if there is anything of this kind observable anywhere in particular passages, it is not the essential element of Jewish prophecy. And the connexion of the Old Testament and the New is not one of types and words, but the identity of the truths contained in them—Isaiah and Micah in the Old Testament declaring that there should be ‘no more vain oblations,’ our Lord and St. Paul revealing the spiritual nature of God in the New.

There are some other points belonging to what we may call the externals of prophecy which may now be briefly noted. In the first place, the prophets as they have come down to us form a literature which goes back to a time when there was no written prophecy. Their utterances were gradually committed to writing; and in after ages the sayings of different prophets were collected in the same volume and bore the same title. In the Book of Zechariah the traces of at least two authors are universally admitted; in the Book of Isaiah the traces of several appear; for we can no more suppose that the words ‘Thus saith the Lord unto my well-beloved Cyrus’ were composed before the Captivity, than we can imagine, as was the belief of many of the Fathers, that the Psalm beginning ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down’ was the writing of David. In the second place, the later prophecies are to some extent formed upon the earlier. The latest of them all, the Book of Revelation, or the Book of the day of the Lord, as it has also been called, is largely made up of words and symbols taken from the older prophets, as the marginal references abundantly testify. Even the prophet Isaiah contains a repetition of Micah; Amos refers to Joel, and the Book of Joel, probably the oldest of the extant prophecies, has a reference to still earlier writings which are now lost. And perhaps we shall not be far wrong in supposing that the prophets who are only known to us from the historical books, Elijah and Elisha, as they left a deeper impress in Jewish history, were also greater than any of those whose writings have come down to us. On the other hand the later prophets seem to be less bound within the horizon of Jewish thought, and to be uttering truths in form at least more universal and more adapted to all ages and countries. Probably they began to write down their words in a book or roll when they were rejected by their own generation.

And now let us endeavour to form an idea of the prophet in his true character, stripped of the literary accidents which surround him. He is the revealer of the will of God to man. And the will of God is in one word ‘righteousness’—holiness of life in the individual, the triumph of right in the world. He is the voice of one crying, sometimes in the wilderness, sometimes in the city, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord’; he is possessed, inspired, with the word of God. He does not reason about the truths which he utters, for they are self-evident to him. He is fulfilled with the power and goodness of God, with the greatness and with the gentleness of the divine nature. Take for example the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah: after the judgements of God, as elsewhere, immediately follow His mercies. ‘Thou hast made of a city a heap; of a defenced city a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city’; and yet in the following verses, ‘Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat’; and then come the words, ‘He shall swallow up death in victory; the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces’: so near do His judgements and loving-kindnesses lie together. This is the lesson which the prophets are always teaching, that there is no end of His justice, and there is no end of His mercy. They present the divine nature almost in the form of contradictions, now entreating, now threatening, now consoling, now punishing; and the human heart bears witness to both aspects, and both seem to appear in the order and government of the world. And so too in later ages men have spoken of the love of God as opposed to His justice; or as though, if I may use such an expression, God were just with one part of His mind and at one time, and loving with another part of His mind and at another time. Yet there is also a higher view which may be gathered from the prophets themselves, that His justice is ever regulated by His love, and His love by His justice, and that these two are in reality identical and inseparable. But we, seeing through a glass darkly, and able only to look at one side at a time, imagine the opposition, instead of reflecting that His justice and mercy, one and indivisible, encircle us both in this world and in another.

The justice of God is seen by the prophets in His judgement on Israel and on the world. The history of the world is the judgement of the world. ‘The day of the Lord’ is the burden of prophecy; from Joel the earliest of the prophets, to Malachi the latest, the prophets are still waiting for ‘the great and terrible day of the Lord,’ as in the New Testament the first believers are still waiting for the coming of the Lord. They watch the great empires of the old world passing into ruin; in these are anticipations of the greater judgement which is to come; as again in the New Testament the second coming of Christ is blended with the destruction of Jerusalem. But still the great day of all is at a distance; and one by one the prophets, like other men, pass from the scene. The judgement is begun but not completed here, and has an anticipation in the consciences of men. There remains therefore a more perfect justice for all mankind.

So the mercy of God is also shown by the prophet in His dealings with His people Israel. The Jewish religion was national; Israel had not arrived at the point of seeing that all men equally, Gentiles as well as Jews, were in the hands of God and subject to His laws. So individuals in modern times have imagined themselves to be the chosen servants of God, and, indeed, it is hard for any of us to realize that another is equally with himself the care of a divine providence. The vision of the Jewish prophet was limited in like manner. Though in one or two passages Israel makes a third with Assyria and Egypt, yet in general the love of God is concentrated on His chosen people. They alone say to Him, ‘Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not; Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer, whose name is from everlasting.’ Yet it is to be observed also that the relation of God to Israel is not one of favouritism. When they sin He visits them with His judgements, when they return to Him He has mercy on them. When His arm is heaviest upon them still a remnant are left, for ‘He will not destroy the righteous with the wicked; that be far from Him.’ And so the prophets, reflecting on the nature of God, arrive at last at the conclusion, not that ‘the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children,’ but that ‘henceforth there shall be no more this proverb in the House of Israel, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge, but every soul shall bear his own iniquity,’ and that, ‘when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness he shall save his soul alive.’ Even the very judgements which are affirmed to have been executed by the command of God are in some in stances corrected, as for example the massacre of Jehu, in Hosea i. 4, where it is said ‘Yet a little while and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel,’ that is, of Jezebel and the sons of Ahab, ‘on the house of Jehu.’

The prophet lives with God rather than with his fellowmen; and he is confident that the word which he speaks is the word of God. Suddenly he feels an irresistible impulse to declare that which he knows. Naturally we ask the question, how he could be sure that the voice of God speaking or seeming to speak within him was not a mere illusion. For we some times ask ourselves too, how we can be sure that such and such actions or such and such beliefs are the truth and will of God. How do we distinguish them from the fancies of our own minds? And the answer in both cases is the same, that we know them to be the truth and will of God in proportion as they express the highest idea of truth, of justice, and of love which we are capable of forming in our own minds. But in most men there is but a feeble sense of the power and goodness of God; they do as other men do, seldom deriving any light or strength from their knowledge of His nature or character. They do not live in His presence, or refer their actions to His laws, or judge of the world, of other men, and of themselves by the standard of His perfections.

Once more: the Jewish prophets were the first teachers of spiritual religion. In all ages and countries the outward has been tending to prevail over the inward, the Law over the Gospel, the local and temporal over the spiritual and eternal. The world takes the place of the Church, or rather the Church becomes a new world, an earthly kingdom, a system of discipline and government, in which the old foes appear under new names, and ambition and avarice are as rife as in kingdoms of the world. Then comes an individual conscious of a mission from on high, and seeks to restore the lost purity of religion, such as St. Bernard, the reformer of the Monastic Orders, or John Huss and Savonarola, the forerunners of the Reformation, or Luther in the century that followed, or at a later time our own John Wesley. Then a voice is heard in Europe saying: ‘Let us have no more penances or indulgences or priestly absolution or masses for quick and dead; we are justified by faith only, without rites and ceremonies.’ Or again, ‘We will have no more formalism or lip-service, we feel that we have sinned against God and have need of reconcilement with Him.’

So we might translate into modern language the first chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah.

‘To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?’ saith the Lord, ‘I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.’ ‘Your hands are full of blood.’ ‘Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’ This is the very spirit of prophecy, and the spirit of true religion, that we should cease to do evil and learn to do well, that we should not only repent but bring forth fruits meet for repentance, that we should make clean not that which is without, but that which is within, that is to say the heart and conscience of men.

And ever and anon the prophet looks forward to a future which is not, but always is to be, a vision of the kingdom of God in distant ages, in far-off lands, whether in this world or in another he cannot tell. This is the day when ‘the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be exalted in the top of the mountains’; when ‘the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.’ But as yet the justice of God and the love of God are but half revealed. The world is distracted between good and evil, the evil seeming often to preponderate over the good. And in this mixed scene of good and evil the prophet beholds the image of a Saviour, a Redeemer, the servant of God, who partakes of the sufferings of man, who ‘has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,’ who ‘is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb’; who is exalted of God because ‘he is despised and rejected of men.’ There is one in whom the struggle and the final victory is impersonated, in whom all the sins and sorrows of mankind are represented, who shall justify them and himself. In such manner is described the life of Him ‘to whom bear all the prophets witness.’

And now, leaving the Jewish prophets, I will briefly consider the second head concerning which I proposed to speak: ‘whether anything akin to the spirit of prophecy can exist among ourselves. For naturally we think of the prophet as an extraordinary man, gifted with strange powers of language and insight. And perhaps some of us would shrink from saying ‘Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets.’ Yet something like prophecy seems to enter into all true religion.

For in all true religion or philosophy there must be a willingness to resist the evil customs of men, whether in the church or in the world, an insight which enables individuals to see through them, and a courage which will fight against them even though they may be a part of the established order of society in which we live. He who is independent in thought and mind, who knows no other rule but the divine law, who habitually thinks of the world and of himself and other men, of the ranks of society, of the opinions of parties, of the trifles of fashion, as they appear in the sight of God, he who in politics knows no other principles but truth and right, and is confident that amid all appearances to the contrary they must triumph at the last, has in him the spirit of a prophet.

Again, in all true religion there must be a zeal against hypocrisy and oppression, on behalf of humanity and justice; and if the fire burns within a man he must at last speak with his tongue. He who cannot remain silent when any injustice is being done, who feels irresistibly impelled, perhaps in ordinary conversation, to lift up his voice against some pernicious or immoral sentiment; who, when other men are struggling in some cause of justice or humanity, becomes their natural leader; into whose ears the crying of the prisoner or the slave first enters; who will spend a lifetime in the detection of some wrong done to the fatherless and widow; or who is convinced that he must speak out some truth which all the world are either denying or veiling in ambiguities, no matter at what cost to his worldly fame or prospects; he too has in him the elements of a hero and of a prophet.

Once more, in all religion, at least in any deeper kind of religion, there must be isolation from the world, that we may be alone with God. The religious thinker or teacher is no longer liable to be persecuted for his opinions, he is not like the olden prophets wandering about in sheep skins and goat skins; yet any man who thinks or feels deeply is always liable to find himself more or less estranged from his fellow men. They cannot enter into his thoughts, nor can he join always in their trivial and passing interests. Like the prophet he has to go into the wilderness that he may be alone with God. And through God he is brought back to his fellowmen with higher motives and aspirations for their good; he feels them to be his brethren, and is bound to them, not merely by earthly ties of family or friend ship, but by a Divine love for them because they are God’s creatures, to whom he is bound to impart the truth which he knows and every other good gift which he has received. He who is thus reunited in God to his fellow-men; who from some eminence of thought or knowledge or position has come down to be the servant of all that he may be the saviour of all, and who not without suffering has carried out this endeavour to his life’s end (if there be such an one), has in him the spirit not of a prophet but of Christ Himself.

Lastly, my brethren, all things in this world are so imperfect that it sometimes seems as if the promises of the future were never realized. Many form ideals in youth—for that is the time of hope and prophecy; and at forty or fifty, when they see that their ideals were not attainable, they lose faith and heart, because they appear to have failed. Even those who have succeeded to the utmost in the worldly sense of success will sometimes tell us how small the whole result is—‘Vanity of vanities’: a few years spent in education, a few years in preparation for a profession, a few years of disappointment or of brilliant success and fortune, and then the end: such is the life of man. But all this is no reason for relinquishing our ideals, or imagining that we have been mocked by them. They have been the best, the eternal part of our lives, and are not to be deemed failures because they have been only partially realized. For without them human life would be lowered, and we ourselves and men in general would be sensibly degraded. They are not failures, but efforts after perfection, necessarily involving some degree of imperfection. If ever the hopes and ideals of youth are combined with the wisdom and experience of maturer life, such a union is fraught with blessings to mankind. Enthusiasm is a gift of God, not to be repressed, but to be dissected and purged of its lighter and weaker elements. Even the folly of the enthusiast is generally wiser than the wisdom of the cynic. We know too that the work which begins here is not ended here. He who in later life retains the ideals of his early days; who has not ceased to hope and believe because he has ceased to be young; who deems that the next generation will be better than his own, having more experience and fewer prejudices; who looking back on the imperfections of his own life looks forward to another in which he will see the ways and do the works of God more perfectly; who, when darkness is closing in upon him, has his eye fixed on the light beyond, has in him the mind and spirit of a prophet.

XVII

THE LORD’S SUPPERPreached at Balliol, 1869..

HOW CAN THIS MAN GIVE US HIS FLESH TO EAT?

IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKEN ETH; THE FLESH PROFITETH NOTHING: THE WORDS THAT I SPEAK UNTO YOU, THEY ARE SPIRIT, AND THEY ARE LIFE.

JOHN vi. 52, 63.

THE sayings of our Lord seem to have been often misunderstood by those who heard Him. When He spoke to them of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, they either scoffingly said, or really imagined, that He was going to give them His flesh to eat; at least, such is the impression conveyed in the narrative of St. John. When He told the woman of Samaria of the water of life, her thought reverted only to the water of the well of Jacob, which she and others were drawing for daily use: when He cautioned His disciples against the leaven of the Pharisees, they supposed that He was referring to the leaven of bread; when He urged upon Nicodemus the necessity of being born again, the ‘Master of Israel’ was puzzled and could only answer, ‘Can any man enter again his mother’s womb and be born?’ These instances are taken from the Gospel of St. John, who intends to show by them how near the commonplace interpretation of the sayings of Christ was to the minds of men, how difficult the spiritual one; and not only in the Gospel of St. John, but in the other Gospels, there are sayings of Christ, such as ‘Let the dead bury their dead’; or the intimation of the resurrection given by God to Moses at the burning bush; or such precepts as ‘Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness’; or the awful warning, ‘Whoso sinneth against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven’; the meaning of which must have slumbered in the ears of those who heard them.

The words originally narrated and figuratively applied in the Gospel of St. John, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again,’ are afterwards repeated again in the other three Gospels at the trial before the chief priests, and are taken by the witnesses in the literal meaning. Many other sayings were evidently misunderstood by those who heard them; and for this reason among others, many, or rather I should say, perhaps the greater part of them, have perished.

And not only during the life of Christ have His sayings been misunderstood, or wilfully misinterpreted, but in a still greater degree in later ages of the Church. One age after another has added to them, until they have been buried under a heap of misrepresentations, and the meaning which is assigned to them has been in some cases the very reverse of that which they originally bore; and then some one has arisen who has dug them up again, and they have still been found capable of giving life to men. The great sayings of the world seem to be always in a process of being lost and being recovered.

Two or three words are a little instrument with which to stir an age, and yet the world has been stirred by them—such words, for example, as ‘Believe on Me,’ or ‘We are justified by faith without the works of the law.’ And then they have soon become a form again, and have no longer found the answering note in the heart of man; because, instead of interpreting them naturally, mankind have brought to the interpretation of them their own impressions or the tendencies of their age or Church or their party in the Church, or the authority of some Father or favourite teacher; or they have overlaid the New Testament with the Old, or gone back from the spirit to the letter. If any tenet has previously taken possession of their minds, they have found in some oriental figure, some chance coincidence, some remote analogy, the assurance of that which they had always determined to believe. I propose to consider in this sermon a subject about which there has been almost more misrepresentation of these simple words of Scripture than about any other, the Communion of the Lord’s Supper. Without entering into the controversy which has prevailed respecting this great rite of the Christian Church, I shall inquire whether a simpler notion of the Communion may not be more in accordance with the Spirit of Christ, and more really satisfying to the wants of human nature; secondly, I shall speak of the thoughts which naturally arise in our minds on those solemn occasions when we meet together at the table of the Lord, and recall the memory of Him whilst He was on earth.

In every Christian congregation there are a few to whom the participation in the Communion is the life or centre of their religious being; while the greater number (and there may be among them many who are equally the followers of Christ), either from awe or shyness, or the fear of unreality, or from their sense of the great change which has been made in the nature of the act, appear to be unable or unwilling to fulfil the last request of Christ, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’

The words ‘This is My Body,’ ‘This is My Blood,’ have occasioned controversies and speculation such as no metaphysician can ever explain. Who can tell us the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation unless he can first analyse the meaning of the words ‘substance’? Who can give the faintest conception of a real presence, or a real spiritual presence of a divine nature in a material object?

Behold! He is present everywhere, and especially in the heart and reason of man. Are not such distinctions like lines drawn upon an imaginary surface, or a picture painted in space? and they lead us on by a sort of dialectical process immediately to raise other questions which are not less difficult. In what manner, and by what means, is the change in the elements affected, and at what time is their nature altered? at their consecration, or after we have partaken only? And do all partake of them, or the worthy recipients only? And has the minister, who is a man like ourselves, the power of granting or with holding the greatest of spiritual benefits, of making, and offering, (I hardly dare use the words) the Body and Blood of Christ? Then follows the transfer of all the powers of the life to come to a human being, and you have a lever long enough to move the world.

Owing to a corruption, beginning you can hardly say when, in an excess of religious feeling, the moral character of religion is lost; and the Sacrament, instead of being the simple bond which unites Christians to their brethren and to Christ, becomes the bond of a great ecclesiastical power.

Some persons may be inclined to feel angry or aggrieved at the plainness of these statements; and certainly we should do injustice to the maintainers of these views (of whom there seem to be many among the clergy of our own Church) if we did not admit that there was another side to them.

In tracing the decline of good into evil we should be wrong in not observing that the good inseparably clings to the evil, and yet is somehow not infected by it. Certainly it is with strange and mixed feelings that we read such books as the Life of St. Bernard, or St. Theresa, or the meditations on the Sacrament in the fourth book of the Imitation of Christ. For, although we know that to ourselves individually, and still more to the world at large, goodness is a very dear bargain when purchased at the expense of truth, yet we see something in the lives and thoughts of these men and women which we would gladly transfer to our own lives, and for which, in this degenerate age, we vainly seem to look; and to them the very spirit and essence of religion was felt to be concentrated in the Eucharist. From the act of partaking of the bread and wine the rest of their spiritual life appeared to flow; they were full of rapture and fear, of sorrow and joy, at the same instant; they saw and heard things of which they could hardly speak to others, seeming to lose the sense of mortality in the immediate presence of Christ. This was the food of men leading a superhuman life, taking no thought of this world or of themselves, but caring only for the good of other men, and for the service of Christ. There is a great deal for us to sympathize with and to reverence in this; and, although we feel that no good, or rather great evil, would arise from the attempt to revive the feelings of the fourth, or the eleventh, or the thirteenth century in the nineteenth, yet we shall do well also to separate these ideals of Christian life, these higher types of character and feeling, from the accidents which accompanied them, or the fantastic thoughts in which they clothed themselves. Men are apt to think that they cannot have too much of a good thing, too much piety, too much religious feeling, too much attendance at the public worship of God. They forget the truth which the old philosophy taught, that the life of man should be a harmony; not absorbed in any one thought, even of God, or in any one duty or affection, but growing up as a whole to the fulness of the perfect man. That is a maimed soul which loves goodness and has no love of truth, or which loves truth and has no love of goodness. The cultivation of one part of religion to the exclusion of another seems often to exact a terrible retribution both in individual characters and in churches. There is a nemesis of believing all things, or indeed of any degree of intellectual dishonesty, which sometimes ends in despair of all truth; there is an ecstasy of religious devotion which has not unfrequently degenerated into licentiousness. And in the same city, and in the same church in which the streaming eyes of saints have been uplifted to the image of Christ hanging over .the altar, there have been ‘acts of faith’ of another kind, which are not obscurely connected with these ardours of divine love, in which the voice of pity and of every other human feeling is silenced.

XVIII

IMMORTALITYPreached at Balliol, 1869..

IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE.

1 JOHN iii. 2.

THERE are some parts of religion which we are unable to verify by experience, and which seem to be on the uttermost limits of human knowledge. The deepest thoughts in the soul of a man are often those which he can neither define nor express. And some times we put them away from us lest they should disturb the balance of our lives, or we speak of them in reserved and conventional formulas, or we describe them in figures of speech or texts of Scripture which convey no meaning to our minds, or we allow imagination to wander and attribute a sort of inspiration to every feeling and fancy which plays around them, as matters long settled, proved by a thousand arguments, and laid upon the shelf, but not to be taken down or reconsidered.

In this way some of the first truths of religion, and especially the two greatest of all, the nature of God and the faith in immortality, pass out of sight and are in process of being lost. Some present interest of controversy, some question of Church politics which is a thousand miles and a thousand years away from them, takes the place of them in our minds. The proportions of religious truth are inverted; the transient phase of opinion is all-absorbing for a time. But at the approach of death, or in any great crisis of our lives, we return to first principles; then we want to have our faith confirmed about one or two important matters. If we are to live again in another state of being, if those who are taken from us are still alive in some other place or manner, we must think about these things. Though ‘we see through a glass darkly,’ though we know in part only, we cannot help asking ourselves what the apostle meant by the words, ‘It doth not yet appear what we shall be,’ and what we mean by repeating them.

Teachers of religion have often spoken of the resurrection under imagery derived from external nature. The various transformations of the vegetable or animal world, the birth of creatures, the chrysalis that opens and spreads its wings in the sunlight, the seed that is not quickened except it die, the sudden burst of all nature into life in every recurring Spring, have often been used both as symbols and evidences of that greater change which, as we believe, will one day pass over us all. Regarded as figures of speech they have their use; and yet we must not press them or argue from them, or we shall lay ourselves open to the objection that the sensible evidence of renewal of life which is present in the one case is wanting in the other, and that we do not see the difference between them. But, like other figures of speech, they clothe our thoughts; they teach us to realize what otherwise would be vague and abstract to us. Ideas of an invisible world must be rendered by earthly images; there is no tongue of angels in which they can be expressed. The wonders of nature may lead us to suspect that even in the visible world there is more than we know or can conceive. There are many hidden secrets there too, about the beginning or end of the world and of the human race; about the causes of life and death, which have not yet been, and perhaps never will be, unlocked. But this is not the foundation on which our hope of immortality reposes; and we must not be altogether surprised or shocked if some one points out that in this, as in so many other theological questions, what we mistook for argument was really an illustration.

There is another way in which mankind have been naturally led to think of another life—through the influence of their own circumstances—‘I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.’ The spirits and forms of the dead seem to hover around us and to be about our bed and about our path, sometimes for a shorter, sometimes for a longer period, after they have been taken from us. Their kindness, their loveliness, their pleasant ways still encircle us; we seem as if we should never see the like of them again on earth. The staff of life, or the comfort of life, or the light of life has been taken from us, and we are left to finish the journey in cold and solitude. And we have heard of those whom the loss of a mother or a friend has won over to the belief in immortality. These are not merely Christian feelings, they are natural to man. The ancient Greek had the same aches and pains about his departed ones. The worship of ancestry is one of the oldest and most universal parts of religion; and many books have been written to prove that ‘we shall see and know our friends in heaven,’ and that those ties will be renewed in another world which have formed the best part of our lives in this. But, if we reflect, we shall see that it is a train of thought which we cannot trust ourselves to pursue; our sorrows will not allow us to be impartial about those whom we love. There is a better comfort and a deeper truth in the answer of Christ to the shrewd question of the Sadducees—‘In the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven’: for the dead are ever fading out of sight; for a few weeks or months, or perhaps years, they may be very near to us, and after a time we feel their loss in a less degree, not from any loss of constancy on our parts, but because this is the appointed order of God and the nature of our minds. Beyond the last generation, or the one before, we hardly know them; their names are venerated on tomb stones, and that is almost all. And yet it is a strange thought that they who are so little to us now, though bound to us by ties of blood, had affections and interests and sorrows and joys as strong and vivid as we now have. They are at a fixed point in the far distance from us, while we are floating further and further away from them down the stream of time. We cannot, even in thought, reconstruct the relationship which once subsisted. There are a few, perhaps, in that innumerable company who still detain our longing eyes; whose voice, whose look, whose character, remains with us to our life’s end; and who, if after a long absence they could revisit the earth, like friends returning from India or some distant land, would find themselves not forgotten in the hurry of the world; and we should welcome them to the accustomed place which had always been vacant for them. But this is not the way in which we commonly regard the souls of the departed: we leave them in the hands of God, who is able to take care of them, who is as near to them as He is to us, who is their Father and our Father, and their God and our God.

Nor, again, should I be disposed to rest the belief in immortality on any past fact, once happening in the course of the world’s history, for this reason: Some one may point out to me that all past events necessarily rest on testimony; he may show me discrepancies in the narrative of the event; he may ask whether we refuse to apply to our narrative the same principles of evidence which are applied to another. Can I venture to answer him by appealing to authority, still less by denying to him the name of Christian? And I think that we have a strong and just feeling that the first truths of religion cannot be rocking to and fro with successive schools of criticism, and that whatever does rock to and fro in this way is not a first truth of religion. We cannot suppose that anything important in human life is really affected by the date or mode of composition of a book, except in so far as our mistaken opinion has made it so.

And the same persons may go on to ask, ‘Why should we trust to the lower sort of arguments, against which historical criticism and physical science in their present stage seem to combine, when we have other and higher ones? Why should we depend on evidences which are external, and have no connexion with our moral nature, which cannot be the same to all persons and in all ages and countries (for the uneducated, and in the East I may say whole nations, cannot understand the nature of historical evidence), when we have a truer and deeper witness, and nearer home, in our own reason and conscience?

Leaving, then, such associations and figures of speech, as only accidentally connected with our faith in immortality, let us consider the subject anew; first, in reference to the nature of God; secondly, in relation to ourselves; thirdly, in relation to our fellow-men.

THE CHOICE OF A VOCATIONPreached in 1881..

NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS, FERVENT INSPIRIT. SERVING THE LORD.—τῇ σπουδῇ μὴ ὀκνηροί, τῷ πνεύματι, ζέοντες, τῷ Κυρίῳ δουλεύοντες·

ROMANS xii. 11.

THE latter clause of this verse is remarkable for a various reading older than any of our ancient Greek MSS., and widely spread in the oldest Latin copies. Instead of “serving the Lord,” there were some in the time of Jerome, and probably even of Cyprian, who read “serving the time,” not κυριῷ but καιρῷ. I may remark in passing that the difference of writing would be very slight, for both words would be contracted, and the first, κυριῷ, would be spelt in the ancient MSS. with two letters, having a line written over them, and the second, καιρῷ, with three.

The first of these two readings, that which is followed in the English Version, is supported by nine-tenths of the most ancient authorities, the second by not more than one-tenth. Yet this preponderance of authorities is not wholly decisive, for there are passages of the New Testament in which an almost universal consensus of MSS., Fathers and versions is certainly mistaken, as in the well-known words of John i. 28, “Bethany beyond Jordan,” early noted by Origen, where in the Authorised Version the word Bethany has been changed into Bethabara. Bethany, as we all of us know, was a place near to Jerusalem, consecrated by many associations, but there is no trace of any other place of the same name either beyond Jordan or elsewhere. Thus we see that in the text of Scripture there is an element of accident which even in the very oldest copies is not wholly eliminated, and in these and similar cases we have sometimes, though rarely, to appeal from the external evidence to what is inaccurately termed the internal; that is to say, from the letter of the MSS. to the context of the passage, to the spirit or style of the writer in other passages, or to our knowledge of some fact (as in the instance which I have just quoted) inconsistent with the common reading.

Let us repeat the text once more in its connection, and ask of ourselves the question, Which is the more natural reading? “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another.

“Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.

“Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer.”

Which agrees best with the general sense, “serving the time” or “serving the Lord”?

The first appears at first sight not to be a precept of the Gospel at all, for how could the Apostle exhort Christians to be “time servers”? We have to find some curious meaning for the words, perhaps an allusion to the day of the Lord which the early Christians supposed to be near at hand; we might also compare St. Paul’s injunction that we should become “all things to all men,” which has passed into a proverb; or we might be reminded of the advice which he gives to his Corinthian converts, that it was better not to marry because “ the time was short.” Still, the term “serving” (δουλεύοντες) is not suited to express this nobler “service to the time”; the idea intended would hardly be described in such a passing and ambiguous manner. It is a hasty catching at a parallel passage—that error which has been so often the bane of interpreters—when one of the Fathers quoted in support of this reading the words, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

So ancient an error, however, is not to be hastily set aside like the chance miswriting of a copyist. It is interesting and instructive to trace its probable origin in the writings of the Fathers who have preserved it. They stumbled, as we do, at the words, “serving the Lord.” “Why,” they asked themselves, “amid so many particular precepts should this general one, which includes them all, be inserted?” “Diligence,” “Hope,” “Patience,” are Christian virtues, but why add to these the whole sum of Christian duty—“Serving the Lord”? It is like adding an eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt do no evil,” to the other ten. The difficulty which arose in their minds is a very natural one, and there are two answers to it. First, that the words, “serving the Lord,” have a special reference to what has preceded, and modify the other precepts. As if the Apostle had said, “Doing these things as a service to God”; or in words which he addressed to the Ephesians, “Not with eye service as men pleasers, but as the servants of God.”

And there is another reason why this objection, though a very natural one, is not well founded: for in many passages of the Epistles the particular is inter mingled with the general; and when there appears to be logical order and arrangement, out of place, according to our ideas of style, there comes in some sacred but familiar thought, such as the love of Christ, or the service of God, which seem to the Apostle as though they could never be inopportune, because his mind is filled with them.

I have dwelt thus far upon the letter of the text because several principles both of textual criticism and of interpretation may be illustrated from it. First, there is the great principle of all, that the text of the New Testament must be based on the earliest MS. and versions, and on citations of the oldest Fathers; a principle in which critics of every school of theology may be said to be now agreed. Secondly, where these external authorities all err, as they very rarely do, or when they are divided, as is not unfrequently the case, we must have recourse, though doubtfully—for there are some things in ancient writings which can never be accurately determined—we must have recourse to the context, or the use of language, or the modes of thought in the same writer. Thirdly, in the matter of interpretation we observe that parallel passages are a very precarious help, and may easily be made to sustain a foregone conclusion; it is a nice judgment which can compare truly one passage with another, or balance the immediate with the remote context. Fourthly, I would remark that in Scripture we must not expect the same logical point or the same precise use of terms which we find in classical Greek. The meaning of language in the New Testament is upon the whole not uncertain, but it is different; and its peculiar nature must be gathered almost entirely from the study of Scripture itself, and the usage of each writer of Scripture from himself.

And now, leaving this question of the text, let us proceed to the general subject. I will not stop to inquire whether the first words, “Diligent in business,” are quite correctly translated—they are more intelligible, at any rate, than the Revised Version, “In diligence not slothful,” and are a fair equivalent for the Greek. Even if there be a slight inaccuracy, the same meaning is to be found in many other passages of which the translation is undisputed. On this familiar expression, “Not slothful in business,” then I propose to hang the consideration of our future lives. As we are standing on the threshold, and before the door is opened to us, there are some questions which must often pass through our minds. Both our duty and our interest seem to demand of us that we should look forward a few years.

What profession or calling in life are we thinking of? Which are best suited to our own characters? The days of our youth are pleasant they pass unheeded by—and our University career comes to an end before we are well aware. At its conclusion we should not be helpless and feeble, now entertaining one fancy, now another, with a good deal of pain and anxiety to ourselves. But we should have a definite plan of life based upon the best knowledge and advice which we can obtain, as well as upon our own experience. It is a great step which we shall one day make from the University, which is a kind of home to us, into the outer world, and it should be firm and decisive, long considered by us; it is the final step from youth to manhood; we should see the way clearly before us, and there should be no looking back; we should have courage and energy. We should not stand shivering in the cold before we take the plunge. The text speaks of diligence in business. I will begin by asking, What are the qualities which make a good man of business? We may divide them into the qualities which are concerned with things, and the qualities which are concerned with persons. There is the clear and faultless handwriting, the neat and symmetrical arrangement of figures, the unerring addition, the tabulated page, the disposition of all things in their places so that they may be most easily seen or found; these are among the outward signs of the man of business. There is again punctuality in answering a letter or keeping an appointment, clearness in giving a direction, courtesy, good temper, readiness; these, too, are parts of business. And there are higher qualities than these, such as judgment, coolness, the habit of distrusting ourselves in trans actions with which we are not familiar, the selection of right instruments, the power of organisation, the knowledge of mankind and of the world. The man of business must have some social qualities also; he must be kindly, popular, willing to make friends with others, not silent or reserved; he must know what to say and when to say it; he must be “neither in the way or out of the way,” but in his place always; and he must be up and doing. In our small way of business—for the term is of wide application, and has a certain place in the lives of all men—some of these qualities will be required. A few minutes a week should be devoted by each of us to seeing how we stand in the matter of money; a few simple rules, which need not be particularised, for we all know them, will be enough to keep us straight; then we shall have no unpleasant surprises or concealments, no necessity for excuses. One great source of anxiety in life will be removed. And we shall acquire a habit of business which will be lasting, and may be of great value to us hereafter when we are called upon to in important affairs.

Most young men are desirous of achieving independence or distinction, of not being a burden to their families, of accomplishing some good work in the day and generation. But few comparatively are aware of the qualities upon which success depends; of the defects of character which render it impossible. There are some faults which pass unnoticed in youth, for affection is not very critical, and there is no one to tell us of them in later life. Some men are always wondering why others succeed, why they are doomed to failure and disappointment. They complain of the times, of the want of opportunities, of the indifference of friends, of the overcrowding of professions, of the injustice of the world, not seeing that the manly and courageous spirit makes opportunities for itself, and asks for no help but its own. If they are married they drag down others with them; their life is not the less a tragedy because it is so very commonplace; until in the final scene the pathetic words of the poet are realised:—

Now, one of the principal causes of these miserable failures in life is the want of habits of business. A young man has no method or conduct. He is, perhaps, economical, or, at any rate, not extravagant; but he is always behindhand in his accounts, or irregular in his payments; he has good abilities, but he has no systematic knowledge; he is always at work and always losing time. With twice the labour—for order is, indeed, a rest which nature has provided for all of us—he produces half the result. He may have many virtues and gifts, but he gets the reputation of being a bad manager of his life and of his time, perhaps of having an ill-regulated mind, and then he finds, unaccountably to himself, that he does not succeed. If there is a vacant place in a school or an office, he is not promoted to it; the client passes his door; if there is some work to be done he is not commissioned to undertake it. No one tells him the reason why, and self-love long holds out against the logic of facts. Few things are sadder than these silent disappointments in middle life of good and accomplished men who have failed to gain the confidence of their contemporaries; they have often good nature and good intentions; they may have gained high University distinction. And yet almost at a glance the experienced eye sees that they are not fit to be trusted in a responsible position; they learn too late the meaning of those singular words of the Gospel, “If ye be unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, who shall commit to your trust the true riches?”

Some qualifications such as I have described are needed in every calling or profession; without habits of business no man can walk safely or thread his way through the maze of circumstances. But now a further question arises, What profession shall we choose? What is the best for us? And for which are we best suited? A large proportion, perhaps a majority of those here present, are looking forward to entering one of the two great professions, the Church or the Bar; they are the two most opposite ways of life, and in England they both have a peculiar character. The thought of one or other of them is probably present to the minds of most of us. And as it would be impossible to pass in review all the various callings to which an educated man may devote himself, instead of attempting to do so I think that it will be more instructive to consider the relative advantages or disadvantages of these two only, not looking at the prizes which they are supposed to offer, but at their effect on the character. Either of them has its own trials and difficulties which we must face; either of them, besides the regular and direct good which an honest and able man effects by the mere practice of his calling, offers subsidiary paths of good and usefulness. He who is in a profession should also be above it, above its narrowness, above its worldliness, above its prejudices and party spirit. The lawyer will be none the worse for sometimes looking at the world with the eyes of the clergyman, or the clergyman for possessing some of the worldly knowledge of the lawyer. In this place it is a great advantage that we should go out of ourselves and hear what others say or think of us. Are we aware that while some of us are uneasy and ill-content, fancying that Oxford alone is unfavourable to study, the world would tell us that here in these ancient seats of learning, in the quiet and comfort of our college rooms, living in comparative affluence, surrounded by libraries and museums, amid fair buildings and gardens, we possess a combination of advantages such as can never exist in the bustle of a great city, such as hardly ever existed before, for teaching, for thought, for self-improvement, for growth in every kind of knowledge? Let those of us who find our profession here enjoy these blessings and be grateful for them.

First, then, let me speak to you of the law, which seems to require the greatest effort and ability, and is generally supposed to offer the highest rewards. No one should choose such a profession who has not considerable vigour both of body and mind; who has not the gift of accuracy and the power of mastering facts; who cannot see his way clearly through an argument. These qualities must either be implanted in us by nature, or we must acquire them. Nothing is more adverse to legal study than what may be called the slovenly habit of mind which is sometimes found even in intelligent people—the habit of mind which knows nothing correctly, which remembers nothing distinctly, which cannot be depended on to state a fact truly, or to carry a point from one case to another. The lawyer does not require genius or originality—rarely will any philosophical powers he may possess be called into exercise; but he requires judgment trained by long habit

He must not dissolve the law in dreams of his own imagination, nor can he always reduce its necessary technicalities to the rules of common sense. He can not succeed by any mere trick of speech, nor can he ever be a lawyer worthy the name without very great and continuous labour. His first principles are not general ideas of morality or of politics; they are based on a profound study of his own subject. Ignorant persons often scoff at him just because they do not understand this unavoidable complexity of human affairs; he is striving, as far as it is possible, to reduce them to rules; that in this labyrinth of the world man kind may with some degree of certainty be able to know and apply the law under which they live. He has to dwell in the “dry light” of absolute impartiality, to be on his guard against any motive or mental tendency which may interfere with his judgment the love of paradox, his own ingenuity, the habit of anticipating a conclusion. He will wait until all the facts are sifted, and all the provisions of the law clearly present to his mind.

THE PERMANENT ELEMENTS OF RELIGIONPreached in 1879..

IF THEY HEAR NOT MOSES AND THE PROPHETS, NEITHER WILL THEY BE PERSUADED THOUGH ONE ROSE FROM THE DEAD.

LUKE xvi. 31.

THE teaching of Christ is always recalling us from the letter to the spirit, from the outward to the inward, from the narrower to the wider view of the Divine nature. He reveals to us what everybody in their secret soul acknowledges to be the truth; He reminds us of what we are always forgetting; He appeals to principles which are old as well as new; He seeks to restore us to ourselves and to God What can be more simple, or of more universal application, than the words, “Believe,” “Repent,” “Do as ye would that men should do unto you,” “Love your enemies,” “Be pure in thought as well as in act,” which is the high argument of the Sermon on the Mount? “Not that which goeth into a man defileth a man.” “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” “The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor yet in this mountain.” “Forbid him not.” “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold.” “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself—this is the law and the prophets.” “Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Except a man receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” “Go and learn what that means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” “That they all may be one, as Thou Father art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.”

This is the religion of Christ; not the religion consistently taught by any section of the Christian Church, nor practised by any considerable number of Christians. But it is the religion in which Christ lived and died—the religion of a person whom we believe to be Divine. No one will say that the words just quoted contain only a vague Deism, or that any other words of Christ or of His disciples more truly represent the character of His teaching. They make no claim to literary excellence; some of them are taken from the Jewish prophets; a few probably may be detected in contemporary Rabbinical writings. Yet they have a power of touching the heart which is possessed by no other words. They seem to begin where ordinary religion ends, where the teaching of Churches is apt to fail, where the witness of general councils has been found wanting. They are the voice of God Himself asserting the moral and spiritual against the ceremonial and outward. Some of them are too much for us, and we fear that they may be rashly used against existing institutions. But though they rise above the level of religious communities, which are necessarily made up of mixed elements, they may still have an abiding place in the hearts of individuals, and through them infuse a portion of the spirit of Christ into the Church and the world.

As men are always tending to put the letter of religion in the place of the spirit, so they are always tending to put the outward evidences of religion in the place of the inward In the last century it was generally maintained by English theologians that the Christian religion rested on the evidence of miracles. This is the argument which Paley has summed up in two famous propositions. But is this the teaching of Christ Himself? Does He not rather lead us back from the extraordinary to the ordinary, from the supernatural to the common? “Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.” This is a proof not of their faith, but of their want of faith. The lessons which He draws from nature are of another sort. “Behold the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin”; and “He maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and upon the good, and giveth rain upon the just and upon the unjust.” Or again, “Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing, and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father.” Here is the still small voice of ordinary life more potent than the thunder and the earthquake. And so in the parable from which the text is taken, when the case is put, “Nay, father Abraham; but if one went to them from the dead they would repent”—that is to say, if a miracle had been wrought for their salvation—our Lord, speaking in the person of Abraham, replies, in words which admit of many applications, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.”

So simple is the religion of Christ: it might be summed up in the saying, “He went about doing good,” and bidding us be like Him. He does not place Himself at a distance from us; He rather seeks to create in us the feeling that, equally with Himself, we are the sons of God. He speaks to us of His faith and our faith, of His God and our God. If we would confine the Christian faith to the spirit and words of Christ, there would be an almost universal agreement about it. We should have no need of apologies and defences; for the words of Christ would be their own witness, and the witness of the human heart would confirm them. The difficulties which present themselves to our minds seem never to have occurred to the writers of the Gospel; they are not perplexed about the truth of the accounts, or the reconciliation of science and religion. The only explanation which either the Evangelists or Christ Himself give of the unwillingness to receive His message is “the hardness of men’s hearts.”

The essentials of Christianity remain the same, “Yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” Yet, from another point of view, the Christian religion appears to have been always changing, not merely in forms of worship and government, but in spirit and doctrine. The Nicene Church is not the same as the Church of the Apostles; nor the Catholic as the Nicene, nor the Protestant as the Catholic. So that if we could imagine a single individual living from the Christian era until now, he would have been, not of one religion, but of several, and several times over would have anathematised and excommunicated himself. Already within three centuries after the death of Christ there were pages of Christian history written in crime and in blood. So quickly had the Christian world de parted from the simple faith of Christ. And the contrast between the teaching of Christ and the development of it is not less startling when regarded from within than from without. What connection is there between the religion of Him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not,” and of those who maintained that unbaptised infants, without doubt, perish everlastingly? or between Him who said of one who was not His follower, “Forbid him not,” and those who would confine salvation to the Church, and the Church to the regularly ordained descendants of the Apostles? Or what is there in common between the robber Synod of Ephesus, or the tumultuous assembly of Nicea, and Him who is described, in the words of the Prophet, “a bruised reed shall he not break, nor quench the smoking flax”? And yet, perhaps, there was more in common than we might at first sight imagine. For the good in human beings is strangely mingled with evil. And the bigot and the zealot may have in them a touch of human kindness, or even of Divine love, which has sometimes lent a power to evil.

Between the fourth and the sixteenth century the Christian Church underwent greater and greater changes. New ideas arose, new powers were claimed, new battles were fought between the Church and the world, in which the right was not all on one side, but the Church, too, might be found struggling in the name of Christ against Himself. There were wonderful lives of saints and kings, who, by their faith and power, changed the face of countries, and may be truly reckoned among the benefactors of mankind. Yet even in the lives of these men we seem to trace something not in harmony with the spirit of Christ. Their zeal and courage could hardly be exceeded, but they lack the reasonableness, the charity, the moderation of our blessed Lord. Then came the great moral earthquake of the Reformation, which threatened utterly to destroy the ancient faith. In one generation the European world found itself Protestant; the fathers had been of one religion, the children were of another, and even in a single lifetime the early education of the same person had been Roman Catholic, his later years Protestant. The suddenness of the change is strikingly brought home to us by Hooker’s gentle plea, that God might have had mercy on some of our fathers, inasmuch as they sinned through ignorance; or by the amusing story of Archbishop Leighton, who, when he was attacked by his adversaries because he was himself an Episcopalian, his father a Presbyterian, and his grandfather a Roman Catholic, replied, “Yes, sir, and he was the honestest man of the three.” In the middle of the sixteenth century the spirit of the Reformation would probably have taken hold of every country in Europe if the popular voice had not been suppressed by the strong arm of Governments and Princes.

And yet we know that before the close of that century which gave birth to the Reformation, the tide had already turned and was sweeping in the opposite direction. The slumbering past of mediævalism in alliance with a sort of spurious classicalism again awoke, and nearly half the ground gained by the Re formers was recovered by the Roman Catholic Church. Education passed into the hands of their opponents; churches in a new style of architecture covered the land; in all the cities of Europe to this day are found the traces of that remarkable order, which for a time saved the Papacy. Their strict discipline, their untiring zeal, their seeming union of the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove, were, for a time, too much for the world. But the world was in the end too much for them. They governed countries; they kept barbarous races in a sort of tutelage; they accumulated wealth; they monopolised education; they whispered in the ear of princes; they used the conscience as a lever by which they subjugated men and women to themselves. To truth, to morality, to enlightenment they added nothing. No man of genius, no scholar or philosopher of the first class, was ever allowed to develop his powers within their borders. They appear to have been the authors of the greatest calamity which has befallen the nations of Europe, the Thirty Years’ War. They were all but conquerors, and then the natural feelings of mankind rose up against them and drove them out. And whatever hopes or fears may be entertained in this or in other countries of a similar revival of priestly authority, we must remember that much greater fears and hopes were justly entertained about that earlier counter-Reformation which covered the continent of Europe with schools and churches; in which more than in any other historical struggle the greatest virtues and the noblest and finest natures were called into the service of the greatest evil. Who can judge them fairly? The saintly lives of many of them, their regardlessness of self, their willingness to cast themselves away and be trodden under foot, “perinde ac cadaver” in their Master’s service, have gone up for a memorial before God. The evil that they did lives after them to be a warning and a terror to other generations.

And we ourselves, who have been watching the progress of events during the last thirty or forty years, have had experience of changes of opinion which would have been thought incredible a century ago. Many of us can remember the evangelical homes in which we were brought up, and still retain a feeling of gratitude and reverence towards good and simple persons, who first taught us the elements of religious truth. And we can remember, too, how these first impressions of religion came into collision with the beginnings of the movement which has since over spread the English Church; how we were told that we ought to believe much more or much less; and how, in obedience to this illogical logic, some of us went forward and some backwards; and some may be said to have passed a lifetime in going to and fro. Those who have lived long in Oxford can remember a day more than thirty years ago, when a small band of distinguished men, after much inward conflict, throwing aside the traditions in which they had been brought up, knocked at the door of a small despised chapel in the suburbs of this city, and humbly asked for admission into the bosom of the universal Church They were separated from us by a strange fate, and we lamented the loss of their virtues and their talents; there were persons among them who should always be remembered by us with kindness and respect, for they gave up all their worldly prospects in exchange for what they believed to be the truth. Of the state of feeling in which that movement originated, there is no trace remaining among us now. It had effects which the authors of it never appreciated; for they did not calculate on the reaction which would follow. They did not see that in drawing the clergy around them they were alienating the laity; so that the unsettlement of received opinions in one direction would lead to a far greater unsettlement in another. The chief lesson which we gather from that tale of bye-gone days is the danger of allowing ourselves to be carried away by such movements, which at the time are never seen in their true proportions: “Call no man master on earth,” if it tends to impair your own independence of mind, or to attach you to a person rather than to the truth.

And still the conflict continues, though fought in a broader manner and with different weapons. And many persons are busy in decomposing the world; or rather, perhaps, the world may be said to be decomposing itself (as in foreign countries, so also in this) into two extremes, the one preaching to us the authority of the priesthood, the necessity of the sacraments, the duty of uninquiring faith; the other speaking of evolution, development, the reign of law, the sequence of material causes. And often the extremes seem to have a greater sympathy with one another than they either of them have with the mean; they say one of another that they alone are consistent, and that if you are not with them, you had better be at the furthest point from them. And sometimes, in ways of which they are not aware, they meet. For what is a merely outward religion but another form of materialism? The eye may be satisfied with seeing and the ear with hearing, while no light of Christian life or love penetrates into the heart.

Having in view this succession of beliefs in the history of the Christian Church, and this distraction and division which affects our own contemporaries, among whom all opinions, the oldest as well as the newest, seem to co-exist, we are led very seriously to ask, “What is the permanent element in religion?” Is there any rock upon which we can stand while these shadows of the clouds fly around us—any foundation upon which we can rest in life and death, any truth about which good men are agreed? Especially as we advance in years and begin to see the end, the disputes and controversies of Churches grow increasingly wearisome to us. We think to ourselves, “O that it had been possible from the days of our youth until now for us to have had a few simple principles of truth and right, and that we had kept them apart from controversy and criticism, and simply fought a good fight against evil and falsehood to our life’s end.” Then we might have had a regular and perfect growth to Christian manhood.

This is the subject which I proposed to introduce by the brief sketch which I have given of ecclesiastical history. What is that which contrasts with all this movement, and turmoil, and change of opinion? Of course, we see that it is likely to be more akin to practice than to speculation. It may be something which is very near to us, which we all know or seem to know, and of which every man may be his own teacher. It may be a kind of truth in which good men of all religions are more nearly agreed than they are apt to suppose. It may be contained in one or two of those short sentences with which I began this sermon. And, first of all, I shall consider what it is not, and, secondly, what it is.

In the first place, it is not any political or ecclesiastical organisation. For these are relative to the age and state of society which gives birth to them, and there are few greater evils in the world than are caused by the perpetuation of the old forms of them under altered circumstances. They are the body, and not the soul; they supply the mechanical means by which we act together and co-operate with one another, but the first spring of life and motion is not contained in them. We are always disappointed in them when we compare them with any high standard of holiness, or truth, or right. We may imagine “the new Jerusalem descending from Heaven, like a bride adorned for her husband,” but the Churches which we know are very different, composed of men like ourselves, neither much better nor much worse. When they meet together in Synods and in general Councils, they are often actuated by private motives, and are subject, like other assemblies, to many political and personal considerations. We hardly expect of them that they should make a bold or united effort in the cause of truth or of freedom, should these ever come into competition with ecclesiastical interests. And, therefore, not there, not there is the permanent element of religion to be sought, not in any succession of Presbyters or Bishops, nor in any claim of universal authority, nor in any variously interpreted rule of faith or life. The authority of Churches seems rather to be derived from the great and good men who have adorned them. A St. Bernard, St. Anselm, St. Thomas-à-Kempis are to us the witnesses for the Mediæval Church; not the Church for them.

But neither is the permanent element of religion to be sought in the internal certainty which good men have of the truth which has been vouchsafed to them. For these internal convictions may often contradict one another; nor can we be sure that the faith of one man is stronger than that of another; the faith of a Christian more intense than that of a Mahometan or Hindoo. If another says to me, “I have an inward light or evidence,” and I reply to him, “I have an inward light,” who shall decide between us? “If,” a third adds, “this can only be decided by the authority of the Church,” again the question arises, To what Church shall we go? And very often the best of men have seen visions and dreamed dreams; they have made God the author of their own fancies, and, owing to some warmth of temperament or enthusiasm which possessed them, have been able to impart their belief in themselves to others. And sometimes the bent of their own moral character towards severity and asceticism, or the bent of their own intellectual character towards casuistry and over-refinement, has led other men into ways of life for which they were unfitted, or has induced them to desert the high road of truth and right. Their faith has given others faith in them, and yet what they mistook for the will of God was their own will. And, therefore, without any disrespect for the Fathers of the Church, whether ancient Fathers, such as St. Augustine, or modern Fathers, such as John Wesley, we cannot accept them as authoritative teachers. For we see that they often erred, and that in many of their conclusions they were deter mined by their own character and circumstances.

Neither can the permanent element in religion be supposed to consist in historical facts. For they soon fade into the distance; even if the record of them is preserved, in a thousand or in two thousand years they are apt to be seen in new lights; add another thousand, and we can hardly imagine how they will appear in that remote future. The historian in our own day insists on a higher standard of verification, and is reluctant to accept evidence which cannot be traced up to contemporary witnesses. It is not that we are really more sceptical than our forefathers, but a wider knowledge, and a greater command of materials, have modified our judgment. Any one who has read the histories of Rome and Greece by the light of Niebuhr and Mommsen, or Curtius and Grote, cannot help applying the lamp of criticism to the New Testament. He must ask himself and honestly answer the question: What is the date of the books in which the narrative of our Lord’s life is contained? How did they receive their present form; how are the discrepancies which occur in them to be explained? Now, the answer to these questions in our own day will be somewhat different from that which would have been given in the last generation. With the advance of knowledge we have to shift our ground, and most of the old defences of Christianity, and many of the objections to it, have gone out of fashion, and are no longer convincing to the mind But we are seeking for principles which are not assail able by criticism, and do not change in successive generations. We cannot believe that religion depends upon minute questions of words and dates, when there are so many things in life to be done, and so short a time in which to do them.

And if this degree of uncertainty which affects all early history affects the ordinary facts narrated in the Old and New Testament, it must equally affect the extraordinary. Whatever a priori arguments may be urged in their favour, we cannot help seeing that they must be judged of, like other facts, by the rules of historical evidence. We cannot say, with some writers, that they are more probable than other facts; or, with Butler, that all facts are antecedently so improbable that the difference between the improbability of the ordinary and extraordinary “cannot be estimated, and is as nothing.” Nor can we require the evidence for them to be supplemented by belief in them; for this would destroy the very nature of evidence. The certain knowledge that in the universe there is a fixed order makes a great difference in our manner of regarding them. If we saw them with our own eyes and in the full light of day, we should have a difficulty in verifying them or appreciating their import; how can we see them more clearly when they are far away in the distance? In one age of the world it is almost impossible to conceive them; in another age of the world the belief in them is the natural, almost the necessary, accompaniment of in tense religious faith. The wonders of other religions are only acknowledged by the professors of them; the Protestant does not accept Mediæval or Roman Catholic ministers; the Jesuits deny those of the Portroyalists. The pious Catholic often imagines that a great revival of religion is about to be effected by the increased diffusion of miraculous gifts, such he has himself witnessed in these latter days with wonder and thankfulness, but this is a hope which can hardly be entertained by us. And all Christians would agree in rejecting the miracles of those who are not Christians. Neither can any connection be traced between the inward grace and spirit of the Gospel, and the admission of facts of history, whether ordinary or extraordinary; and, therefore, I think that we had better put aside this vexed question of miracles as not belonging to our time, and also as tending to raise an irreconcilable quarrel between revelation and science. As a distinguished prelate of the English Church has wisely said, “If you cannot come to us with the miracles, come to us without the miracles.” For not there, not there, is the permanent and universal basis of religion to be found.

These, then, are the negatives, which, looking to the future as well as to the present, we cannot venture to regard as the groundwork of our belief. What, then, are the foundations which cannot be shaken? I may remind you in passing that in confining religion to essentials we are only imitating the Spirit of Him who said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets”; and “This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it.” Not a word which I have spoken is inconsistent with the practice of those precepts with which this sermon began. If Jesus Christ were to come again upon earth, can we imagine Him saying to us not “Forasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me,” but “Forasmuch as ye did not accept what was written or said of Me in after ages, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of Heaven.”

The first of these unchangeable truths is the perfection of the Divine nature. Mankind are always disputing about the precise form in which doctrines are to be stated, but they do not really differ about the nature of holiness, or right, or love, or truth; there is no party spirit about it. This is a very significant fact which we shall do well often to consider. Nor, again, can these graces or virtues ever be in excess; that is another point to be carefully noted. A man may have too much attachment to a person, or a sect, or a Church; but he cannot have too much holiness, or justice, or truth; too much of the love of God and man possessing his soul. These are the great and simple forms of faith which survive all others in which good men of all religions agree, and which connect this life as far as it can be connected with another. They are the true links which bind us to one another, which bring together in one communion different bodies of Christians, different countries and ages. They are the mirrors in which we behold the nature of God Himself; the highest and best which we can conceive, and which we, therefore, believe, and, in the Apostle’s language, seek to fashion them anew in ourselves. We may sum them up in a word, “Divine perfection,” to which theology and life must alike conform. He who is possessed or inspired by this thought will need no other rules of faith or of practice; by this he will test all doctrines and will regulate all his actions; he will ask himself from time to time what is the will of the Perfect, the Divine. And, seeing also the beginnings of a Divine perfection, amid much imperfection in the world around him, he will strive to co-operate with them, and begin to understand that there is no opposition between God and nature, but that through the order of nature God is working out the good of all His creatures. And when he becomes conscious that there is a real good in the world, of which God is the author, and of which he himself may be the partaker, he will not be greatly troubled with the old puzzle about the existence or origin of evil, or the meta physical conception of the Divine nature. His own life will be the answer to his doubts, and in the hour of death he will not be cast down, for he has created in himself the faith which can never fail in holiness, in justice, in truth, in love.

“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall abide for ever.” The world changes, the Churches of Christ differ from one another—they are in a state of transition, but the truth, the justice, the goodness of God, and His will that all mankind should be. saved, remain for ever. The opinions of men vary, but the moral truths upon which human life rests are unchangeable. And from them, as from some fountain of light, the Divine image may again and again be recovered whenever the veil of the physical world becomes too thick for us to penetrate.

Secondly, among the fixed points of religion is the life of Christ Himself, in whose person the Divine justice, and wisdom, and love are embodied to us. It may be true that the record contained in the Gospels is fragmentary; and that the life of Christ itself far surpassed the memorials of it which remain to us. But there is enough in the words which have come down to us to be the rule of our lives; and they would not be the less true if we knew not whence they came, or who was the author of them. They appear to run counter to the maxims both of the Church and the world; and yet the Church and the world equally acknowledge them. To some who have rejected the profession of Christianity, they have seemed equally true and equally Divine—may we not say of these, too, that they have been “Christians in unconsciousness,” if, not knowing Christ, like Him they have lived for others, infusing into every moral and political question a higher tone by their greater regard for truth, and more disinterested love of mankind? For this is what gives permanence to the religion of Christ as taught by Himself alone—its comprehensiveness; it leaves no sort of good or truth outside of itself to be its enemy and antagonist. “He that is not against us is for us.” Or, to put the same thought in other words, it remains because of its simplicity. The teaching of Christ is not like the teaching of some scribe or commentator who can eke out a few simple words to a tedious length; or of some scholastic divine who elaborates the particulars of a system: it is summed up in a word or two, “Believe,” “Forgive,” “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” It is not only common to different sects of Christians, but unites different classes of society, those who have and those who have not education in our brotherhood And if we could imagine the world ever so much improved it would be still tending towards the kingdom of Christ, still falling short of His maxims and commands. Amid all the changes to which, during centuries to come, the Christian faith may be exposed, either from the influence of opinion or from political causes, the image of Christ going about doing good, of Christ suffering for man, of Christ praying for His enemies—this, and this alone, will never pass away. And if any body asks, Where, after all these assaults of criticism and science, and the concessions made to them, is our religion to be found now? We answer, Where it always was—in the imitation of Christ.

Thirdly, among the fixed points of religion, we must admit all well-ascertained facts of history, or science. For these, too, are the revelation of God to us, and they seem to be gaining and accumulating every day. And they do not change like mere opinions; after an interval of years we come back to them and find them the same. No declaration of Popes or Churches can alter by a single hair’s breadth any one of them any more than it can alter in any degree the present or future lot of a single person. It cannot make that which is false to be true, or that which is improbable to be probable. And, amid the shiftings of opinions, the knowledge of facts and the faith in them, whithersoever they seem to lead, has a tendency to stablish, strengthen, settle us. There are a thousand ways in which they bear upon human life, and, therefore, indirectly upon religion. And there is also a more direct connection between them; for we may regard truths of fact as acceptable to the God of truth, and the discovery or acquirement of them as a part of our service to Him. And when we give up our own long-cherished opinions or our party views to the power of fact; or when we seek to train our intellectual faculties in accuracy, in attention, in the conscientious love of truth—in this, too, there may be something of the sacrifice which is well pleasing to Him.

This, then, is what we believe to be the sum of religion: To be like God—to be like Christ—to live in every true idea and fact. This is the threefold principle which we seek to fashion in ourselves, to be our guide amid the temptations of the world, amid the changes of opinion which go on around us, or the doubts which beset us from within. The time is coming when we must be Christians indeed, if we are to be at all; for conventional Christianity is beginning to pass away. If we are to have any strength in us, or to do any good, we must have real principles harmonious with one another; and we must do what we have to do with all our might as unto the Lord, and not to men. There would be little to dread in the disappearance of orthodox beliefs (as they are some times called) if it were accompanied by a deeper consciousness of the Divine nature, by a more habitual imitation of Christ, by a more disinterested love of truth, and those who find the difficulties and distractions of the day press hardly upon them will do well to turn away from them and seek to quicken in themselves the sense of the great truths of religion and morality. The minister of the Gospel who sometimes asks uneasily, “What am I to teach now?” need be under no real apprehension because a few of the common-places of theology are taken from him. The essentials of Christianity strongly and personally felt, not mere vague abstraction, but holiness and unselfishness, the living sense of truth and right, the love of God and man, have greater power to touch the heart than anything else. The good life of a clergyman is his best sermon; and the doctrine by which he will most affect others is the fresh and natural expression of it. To have a firm conviction of a few things is better than to have a feeble faith in many, and to live in a belief is the strongest witness of its truth.

Index of Scripture References

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

Index of Pages of the Print Edition