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Mapa, plataa. charta, ate, may ba fiimad at diffarant raductlon ratioa. Thoaa too larga to ba antiraiy included in ona axpoaura ara fiimad baginning in tha uppar laft hand comar, laft to right and top to bottom, aa many framaa aa raquirad. Tha following diagrama iiiuatrata tha mathod: l.aa cartaa, planchaa, tablaaux. ate, pauvant Atra fiimto A das taux da rMuctlon diff Grants. Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour Atra raproduit an un aaui cllchA, 11 aat film* A partir da i'angia aupAriaur gaucha, da gaucha k droita, at da haut an baa, an pranant la nombra d'Imagaa nAcassalra. Laa diagrammas suivants iliuatrant la mAthoda. rrata o >elure. Id J 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 a^ 7-->^^ RECORDS OF A YANISHED IIFE. y--> w .y Ul vX MoLiiaH k Co., Piiiirms, 102 Bay Street* Toronto. j|ecor!bs of e ^anisheti fife. LECTURES, ADDRESSES, ETC., 0? JAMES COLTON YULE. M.A., Late Prqfeaior qf New Testament IrUerpretaiion and Evidences, in the Canadian Literary InstUute: A MEMOIR, BY HIS WIFE : A PUNERAL SERMON, BY REV. R. A. FYFE. D.D. . AND SOME ADDITIONAL PAPERS. TORONTO : BAPTIST PUBLISHING CO. 1876. 6x 115- f\S2 \ To Young Men, especially the Students of the Canadian Literary Institute, to serve whom, had it been the Father's will, he would gladly have remained for many years\ these brief Records, of one who loved them much, are respectfully inscribed by the , AUTHOR. \ CONTENTS. Memoir op James Colton Yule, M.A. Memorial Stanzas . . . , Cowper and Shelley A Grace for a Grace Human Gods and the Divine Man - Baptist Claims and Baptist Duty • The Dignity and Worth of Labor The Sinner's Friend Funeral Sermon Death of Prof. J. C. Yule Preamble and Resolutions adopted at a Meeting of Y.M.C.A. University Col., Toronto - - - - - % - Beyond the Shadows PAai. 4 • 9 3« 35 69 81 107 119 131 H5 167 171 173 MEMOIR or JAMES COLTON YULE, M.A. In preparing this brief memoir of my dear, departed husband, my purpose is not so much to enter into the details of a life which, in its earthly aspects, boast? few specially distinguishing events, as to endeavour to gather from it some simple lessons of the power of Divine grace to lift its possessor up into the light of a new life, whose secret forces are with Christ in God, — of that grace which ensures the victory over earthly corruptions and besetting sins, and which gilds the sunset of mortal life with a glory in which earth has no share. Such lessons, those who knew and loved Mr. Yule will find it sweet to trace, and from their study some, for whom he laboured and prayed, may gain an im- pulse towavds those high ends he kept so constantly in view. Possibly, by perusing these simple records, some yet unsaved one, tired of sin, and longing for release from its cruel bonds, may be encouraged to 10 MEMOIR OP JAMES COLTON YULE. place the hand of faith in the loving hand of Jesus, and be led up by the same shining way to the attainment of the same blessed inheritance. Mr. »Yule's early life, in its main features, did not .differ very widely from that of others born in the country, reared by conscientious Christian parents, and educated in the rural "district schools" of Canada. Naturally studious, and of a quick, ready mind, he soon ran the round of the subjects taught in those schools ; and, when little more than fifteen years of age, armed with the requisite " certificate of qualification," he began the work of common-school teaching, in which, with varying success, he con- tinued for about five years. This was a portion of his life upon j^hich he ever after looked back with mingled regret ani^ satisfac- tion. It was a period in which much was learned that in after years had to be wearily unlearned, some habits formed which '^ost him years of pain- ful effort: to overcome, and some mental traits strengthened and intensified, which the most per- ^ fiistent self-discipline never brought to the exact level he himself desired. But, on the other hand, there was much gained during those early years, which he regPurded as of inestimable value. Those habits of carefulness and frugality in which he had been reared, and which inadequate wages made at ♦ this time a stern necessity, w^nt with him through life, and to his latest day were matter of deep thank- fulness to God. A certain quiet confidence, too, in his MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 11 own mental powers, partly the result of being forced during this period to grapple with difficulties into which he usually carried an unflinching determina- tion to conquer, lay at the foundation of much of his subsequent success in scholarship, and furnishes an explanation of that contempt of mediocrity which, as a student, so strongly characterized him. Those years had their influence, too, not wholly adverse, nor yet altogether favorable, upon his religious development. He became a Christian not far from the time he commenced teaching, but it is doubtful if his spiritual growth kept even pace with his mental. Yet it was during this period that the great question of giving himself to the Christian Ministry forced itself upon his mind, and became matter of serious and prayerful consideration ; and it was in hopes of being better able to decide this momentous question that, in the winter of 1861, he came West, and enrolled himself as a student in the Canadian Literary Institute. On that memorable night, when, with all a young man's ardent hopes and daring plans he was nearing Woodstock, around which, as a centre, gathered in after years the highest ambition and the fondest hopes of his life, and where were put forth his latest efforts for usefulness, — at that very hour the re- morseless flames were devouring the Institution he sought, and his first glance at it revealed only a blackened and shapeless ruin. But proAdsions for re-opening and carrying on the school were speedily 12 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. made, and he was enabled to enter at once upon his work. It is generally, and perhaps justly, thought a hard matter for a student to maintain spirituality of mind while engrossed with study. If poor, he is specially tempted. He feels that he has but little means, and that little must be made the most of. His object in seeking an education is a laudable one — possibly nothing less than the Christian ministry — and he easily persuades himself that everything else should bend to the attainment of that object. Every hour of time costs money, for the next supply of which he must, perhaps, quit his books and go out to teach, or labor with his hands. At first, probably, a small portion is taken from the time usually devoted to the study of the Scriptures, then that for secret prayer is trenched upon, until, little by little, these precious moments are sacrificed ; then needful exer- cise is given up, and finally sleep; and thus both soul and body, cut off from their proper sources of strength, become enfeebled, and react upon each other with deplorable effect. Mr. Yule, with others, felt this tendency of study to repress religious growth, and in after years realized painfully that in himself spiritual progress had not been in the proportion to intellectual he could wish it had been. Hence, the frequent and earnest appeals he made to young men entering upon a course of study to watch their own spiritual tendencies with most jealous care, and guard against the earliest symptoms of decline. MEMOIR OP JAMES COLTON YULE. 13 From 1861 to 1865, he was engaged in study, either at the Institute or in Toronto, or else in teaching to gain means for prosecuting his studies. The last winter he studied in the Institute he taught a few classes, at the same time carrying on his own work; and from that time his powers of physical endurance were never the same. Several of his friends noted with serious anxiety his excessive toil, late hours, and inadequate exer- cise; yet, though often warned of the possible con- consequences, he flattered himself, like most men accustomed to the fearless exercise of their own powers, that there was no risk. Heretofore he had always r^ied after severe effort — what possible reason could there be why he should not still do so ? Thus too often it is: while honestly believing we are only removing obstacles to our progress, we are unwittingly, but really, preparing our own graves. In the Spring of 1865, he received an appointment to a Mission field in the Eastern Townships of Canada. Up to this time he had never fully de- cided to enter the m* ^istry ; but he readily ac- cepted the appointment, d accordingly, with much trembling and self-distrust, proceeded to his work. His success, on the whole, encouraged him ; he loved the work, and felt his spirit strengthened by it and his zeal increased. His letters of this period evince a growing consciousness of the magnitude and im- portance of his work, a deepening humility, and an increasing earnestness for the salvation of souls. 14 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. But the weakness of his voice, and the difficulty he at this time experienced in extempore preaching, left him in the Fall still undecided in regard to his future course. He returned to Toronto, at the close of his labours as a Missionary, to prosecute his studies ; but in the following winter he engaged again in teaching, and in the succeeding Spring, immediately after his marriage, opened a private Grammar School in Brantford, where he remained for about two and a- half years. His little school in Brantford was one in which he took great delight. His " boys," as he proudly and affectionately termed them, under his strict and careful training, made rapid progress; and he soon found that the work he began with doubt and hesitation had become a real success. Here he entered upon a closer and more syste- matic study of the Greek Scriptures than he had ever before been able to give them ; and, until about two weeks before his death, no matter how sorely taxed with other work, whether travelling, or visit- ing from house to house, he made them his daily study. Even when burdened to the utmost during the weeks of his University examinations, they were never neglected. The lesson for each, morning was usually prepared the previous day; and when, as rarely occurred, this preparation was not made, the next day he taxed himself with double duty. But in Brantford, too, he worked too hard. From early morning till bed-time he gave himself no rest. In MEMOIR OP JAMES COLTON YULE. 15 addition to his regular pupils, he usually had one or two night or morning classes, besides occasional pupils whom he met at their own homes ; while, at the same time, he devoted every spare hour he could command to hard study, preparatory to matriculation in the University of Toronto. \ At length, on the first day of October, 1868, after many difficulties surmounted, but with health sensibly impaired, he took possession of his new home in Toronto ; and with a glad heart entered at once upon his longed-for work. This was the beginning of a new era in Mr. Yule's Christian life ; and during • those years he carried on a struggle for self-conquest, for highei* attainments in the knowledge and experience of Divine things, and for purity of heart and aims, such as few Christians even attempt. It was a struggle he never gave up, a conflict from which he never swerved, until he realized that the victory was won. Then, with rest full in view, and with his countenance radiant with the joy of a warfare successfully accomplished, he told me much I had never suspected, of this " fight of faith," this conflict with a depraved nature, and of the victory he had achieved " through the blood of the Lamb." Before entering upon his University course, he greatly desired to secure some religious work to do in connection with it ; for he felt unwilling to devote so many years as he intended to spend in study, wholly to himself. He felt that those years belonged 10 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. i m to God. If spared to accomplish the work of self- culture he planned, the remnant of his days would be wholly given to the Master's service ; but, if cut down in the midst of that work, what good account of his stewardship would he be able to render, if, in the meantime, he had attempted no work for Christ? At first he thought to find something to do in the Sabbath-school in connection with the church cf which he became a member ; but there the different departments seemed already filled with able and efficient workers. He next turned his thoughts to a city mission. To discover a locality where such a mission was specially needed, he traversed miles and miles of the city, studied the wants, and weighed the relative advantages and disadvantages of different localities, finally mapped out a section of the city, and, with some of his brethren, had already formed prospective plans of work, when circumstances arose to change or modify those plans ; and, after several months of anxious seeking he found himself still with no clearly-defined religious work before him. " Will you join me for one week in prayer that God will give me some definite work to do ? " Such was his almost sorrowful request one day, when, after long seeking and much prayer, what he sought seemed long withheld and hard to find. The request was complied with, the " week of prayer " was observed, and in His own time the Master answered the peti- tion. Some six or seven miles from Toronto is the old MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 17 Baptist Church of York-Mills. Its house of worship had become weather-beaten and dilapidated, its membership had dwindled down to seven, and for some time its pulpit had only been filled as supplies were sent by the city churches. To this field his attention was directed. He visited it, and felt that something could be done there. A generous Christian brother in the city off*ered him a horse and convey- ance for Sabbath use. Some self-denying students, like-minded with himself, consented to assist him in Sabbath-school work ; and, accordingly, in the Autunm of 1869, he opened a Sabbath-school in the old York-Mills Chapel, and in connection with the same faithful brother above-mentioned, undertook to see to the regular supplying of the pulpit. An interesting Sunday-school was soon gathered, God blessed the faithful presentation of His own truth. Sabbath-school instruction began to bear fruit, and young persons who were converted and added to the church became teachers in the school and helpers in the work. The old chapel was removed and set upon a new, strong foundation, the whole edifice renovated and remodelled, with class-rooms and baptistry added, the adjacent grounds enlarged by the purchase of more land, a substantial fence put round them, and a temporary sidewalk from the chapel to Yonge Street made it possible throughout the year, as it had scarcely been before, for all who wished, to attend Divine service. , But these brief statements comprehend a work 18 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YCJLK which extends over about five years of time, and in- clude labors, on the part of Mr. Yule, as arduous, and vigilance as untiring, as usually fall to the lot of most settled pastora. In addition to occasional preaching, he superintended the school, taught a Bible-cia^s, led the prayer-meetings, and carried on a monthly "Young Men's Meeting," besides not un- frequently working with his own hands upon the chapel, or at some other necessary work in connec- tion. Often and often, with his Greek Testament .i^ his pocket, and probably a University Text-Book in his hand, he traverse;! the country where his Sunday- school scholars and church members were widely scattered, dropping into their houses for a few minutes in a place, to read, converse, and pray, and at the end of the long weary day returned on foot to his home in the city, to resume, early in the morning, his usual task of study or Sabbath preparation. Many times my own heart sank with dreary mis- givi'^g as I saw all this heavy toil superadded to regular work of alarming proportions; but the recollection of that " week of prayer," the thought of all that earnest secret pleading with God, in answer to which this special work had been given, the con- stant prayerfulness with which I well knew every step in it was being taken, would check the rising remonstrance, and I could only say, "It is for the Master, He himself will see to results." At length those long six years of toil were ended^ MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 19 Scholarships, prizes, and medals had been won ; but what were they ? — Nothing, and l^s than nothing, in comparison with the fact that he was now fully equipped, intellectually, for the great work to which he looked longingly forward ; and withal, his health, as we fondly trusted, was unimpaired. He was tired, a great deal run down — so we reasoned — but a few months' rest would set that all right, and then, long quiet years of uninterrupted work for Christ. But he was not satisfied. With regard to intellectual preparation for his work, he expressed no misgiving ; but he began to long more earnestly for a deeper spiritual preparation. He often spoke of this, and the time he spent in secret prayer showed he was in- tensely in earnest. Often have I unthinkingly opened his study door to find him on his knees. One night he lingered long in nib study. He did not wish for a lamp — the night wag beautifully clear, and he seemed disposed to meditate. I left him early, and retired to rest, for I saw he wished to be alone. After a long time I awoke, but he was not with me, the house was strangely still, and I felt a vague fear creep over me that he was ill; but at length, ascertaining that ho was still engaged in his study, I composed myself again to sleep. Hours passed by, and the night was wearing on towards the dawn, when, thoroughly alarmed, I rose and spoke to him. He came quietly and sat down be- side me on the sofa. " Don't distress yourself about me," he said, very gently, in reply to my anxious 20 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON TULE. inquiries; " I am quite well, but I wanted to be alone with Qod. What ! have I spent so many days and nights in study, and shall I now feel one night too long to spend in wrestling with Qod for the blessings I need ? " I saw before me a soul awfully in earnest, what could I say ? A solemnity like that of eternity filled the house, — he was dealing with Qod, and Qod with him, how dared I interfere or remonstrate ? I left him ; and retired to my room to weep and pray alone. Towards morning he retired to rest. The secret of that night's struggle was never told., but its effect was seen in his life. '* During the period of his University work he had only preached occasionally. He resolved that, for the remainder of the time previous to his going to Woodstock, he would supply the pulpit at York- Mills himself. In the early part of June, as he was preaching from the text, 1st John, iv. 10 : " Herein is love, not that we loved Qod, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins," he suddenly experienced a difficulty in speaking, and soon discovered that a slight hemorrhage of the lungs had set in. He finished that sermon, and it was his last. During the week another and more copious dis- charge took place. This fully aroused our fears, and he resolved to attempt no more work that should tax his lungs, but endeavour to get a thorough rest pre- paratory to taking up work in the Institute in Sep- tember. Strictly adhering to this resolution he found himself gaining strength and vigor, the tendency to MEMOIR OP JAMES OOLTON YULE. 21 hemorrhage seemed quite overcome, and, when he reached Woodstock, in the end of August, he seemed about as well as ever. But here a sudden calamity darkened all his pros- pects ; and the shadow that in an instant fell upon his heart and his. home, was never lifted. It con- tinued to wrap him more and more closely in its heavy folds, until, after weary months of battling with disease, he passed from it into the ineffable glory where there is no more shadow. A few days before his work in the Institute was to commence, while cutting some wood, he gave himself a severe wound in the foot. This, though in itself serious, would not probably have produced any last- ing injury, but for the confinement and heavy work that followed. As there was no one to do the work assigned to him, he at once made arrangements with his classes to come to his house for their recitations ; and, for about nine weeks, taught them and prepared his work while unable to get out, or take any exer- cise except on crutches. Considerable of his work was either new or had been studied years before; he scorned to meet his classes with insufficient pre- paration, and thus, between teaching and preparing for it, he so undermined his strength that, when at length he was able to walk about, his vigour was im- paired, his lungs gave unmistakable signs of increas- ing weakness, and before the winter was past the tendency to hemorrhage was alarmingly increased. In the low state of his system it seemed, too, im- w 22 MEMOIR OF JAMES GOLTON YULE. possible to avoid colds; these were invai'iably at- tended by a cough, and the result was, that his work in the Institute had to be given up at the end of the second term. It seemed now that some special effort for the re-establishment of his health must be made at once ; and, accordingly, he resolved to go to Mani- toba as soon as navigation opened, hoping to be, as many others had been, invigorated and strengthened by the bracing atmosphere of the North-west. This decision some have regarded as imprudent and ill- advised, but there were others who strongly urged it ; and his own judgment, influenced by the favor- able reports that were continually reaching him, decided him upon it as his best and wisest course. He reasoned that, if he built up his constitution in a warmer climate, he could never hope to be again able to endure, for any length of time, the climate of Canada ; hence, iu seeking health at the South, he must also seek work there, — whereas, if he succeeded in re-establishing his health in a cooler climate, he might reasonably hope soon to be able to resume the work here, upon which he had so set his heart that no effort or sacrifice seemed to him too great, if it might enable him to perform it. His students, the young men of his own denomination, the cause of Christ here, — how could he think of another field, another country, another people ? No ! here was his work, and he must do it, — he must live and be strong ! — there was so much to do, the field was so vast, and earnest, willing labourers, so few ! MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 98 In the latter part of May, while visiting the In- stitutiouB in RochoRter, he became indisposed. This indisposition became serious while in Toronto, a few days after, passing the examination for his degree of Master of Arts ; subsequent colds brought on pleurisy and inflammation, and by the time he was sufficiently recovered to undertake the journey to Manitoba, it was near the middle of July. Not, however, to be diverted from what he believed the only proper course for him, he set out, and reached Winnipeg on the 2nd of August. But soon after — and, indeed, throughout his stay in the Northwest — he found he. had been widely astray in his calcula- tions. The season there, as here, was exceptionally cold and damp, it was already drawing well on towards the early autumn of that country, and after a few hot, debilitating days in August, he began to find the prairie winds too bracing ; he shrank from them, and could only endure the open air by sitting in the shelter of the houses, or basking in the sun in some place wholly protected from the wind. But here it is useless and painful to particularize. Probabiy'no one ever struggled more persistently or more naanfuUy to build up a shattered constitution than he did, during the time of his stay in Manitoba. Whatever his slender purse could procure, which he thought would facilitate this 6ne end, was obtained^ but all in vain. The inevitable fever, the cough, the fatal night-sweats, would not be bribed or turned aside. As the autumn advanced, the e'fFort to bear w 24 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. up against the increasing cold and the pitiless prairie winds, became more and more hopeless. He saw it was useless to prolong the struggle ; and, weak and weary, yet still undaunted, he turned his face home- ward. He left Winnipeg late in October, and after a journey of two weeks, replete with hardships, and which it would almost seem the weary longing for home alone enabled him to perform, he reached Woodstock. Home ! — how he had longed to be there ! How he had battled with fatigue, privation, and hardship to reach it ; and never did weary wanderer sit down with sweeter content by his own fireside than he. That old familiar! arm-chair — how gladly he cast him- self into it, and folded his thin hands to rest where he had rested so often in brighter, happier years! His own bed — how sweet to stretch his tired limbs upon it, and rest his hot temples on the cool pillows as of old, when those temples throbbed only with aspirations of health and hope! His own table, spread by hands of whose ministries he had been so long deprived — his books, those dear, old companions, every page of which was like a long-loved face — how precious they all had grown to him 1 " 0, it's good to be here ! it's good to be at home!'' he would often exclaim, opening his eyes after a long quiet sleep in his arm-chair, with a smile of most child-like content upon his face. " How I've wearied for this old chair ! " he would sometimes exclaim, MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 25 nestling down among its cushions, as thought wan- dered back to Manitoba, and recalled the sick crav- ing of those lonely months for his far-off home. Is it childish recalling all this ? Is it weak thus giving it a place among memory 'h sorrowful records ? Oh, how a glance lives in the mind long after the eye from which it beamed is quenched in darkness! How a word — an utterance — thrills along the chords of memory long after the lips that uttered it are silent and cold ! and those subtle chords will, with countless vibrations, repeat and re-repeat it, till the sad, sweet melody stirs the soul to agony. Home, care, restoratives, the unwearying kindness of friends, the generous solicitude of all who knew him, and of many who did not know him personally, — these were all his, but all were unavailing. Day after day he grew paler and thinner, yet the hope of recovery seemed almost to strengthen as the flesh failed. True, he would often talk of dying, but it was usiially rather like one who expected to live than otherwise. He wanted to live — wanted to do his work. Eternity, was long, and rest would be sweeter after toil. God's word was a deep mine, he wanted years and years to revel in tts treasures, and bring up its untold wealth to the gaze of others. Oh, those young men ! there was so much he wanted to tell them ; so many fields of hallowed investiga- tion into which he dfesired to lead them ; such exalted aims he longed to set before them ! How his eyes would glow and his countenance brighten, as he c 26 MEMOIR OS* JAMES COLfON YULE. would unfold his plans for future work, and revel in the hope of doing it. Oh, it was hard to undeceive him ; but a day came when it must be done. The eyes that were turning so longingly towards his loved work on earth, — the mind, reverting so constantly to the Institute, the church, the cause of the Redeemer here, must now turn to the undivided contemplation of those eternal realities lying so near, and with which alone he would soon be occupied. It was Sabbath afternoon, a little less than t?^o weeTcs before his departure, that Dr. Fyfe very ten- derly and carefully informed him there was no hope of his recovery, and that death was possibly very near. He listened quietly, making few remarks, but one who knew him well could see that the announce- ment had taken him a little by surprise; not but that many times already he had set the prospect of death before him, and talked of it as probable, yet he had not expected it so soon ; he had not yet given up the hope of possible recovery. After engaging in prayer Dr. J^yfe left him, and he closed his eyes as if to sleep. For a long time he lay thus ; but at length looking up he remarked, " I feel strange," and asked me to feel his pulse. It was a strong, bounding pulse ; and I remarked, supposing the conversation had agitated him somewhat, that I thought he had an increase of fever. "No," he answered, "it is not that; it is exultation! I thought I would not tell you till morning, fearing it might i MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 27 of he up he lay feel as a sing at I he aght light not last; but I think it will. I feel that I have developed very fast in the last two hours. I seem to stand on a higher plane than 1 did. Oh ! how I have fought for life; but God is showing me that it is death ! Now the long struggle for life, the planning and hop- ing, and fearing, by which I have been held, as on a balance, are over. Now I know my father's will, and it's good ! — iCs good! — it's good ! Why," and his countenance grew radiant as he spoke, " I'm going to be free— forever free ! " Then, taking up as a familiar thing the thought of death, he at once and for ever gave up his dream of life on earth, and turned with sweet composure to the contemplation of eternal realities. And there, in the twilight of that Sabbath afternoon, he talked long of the past, review- ing the trials, temptations, and victories of his Christian course, until both our hearts glowed with gratitude to God, who gives his people the victory of faith, and makes them more than conquerors through Christ. The remaining days of his life were, when able to speak, occupied mostly in religious conversation. He lacked the joyous emotions many experience in the dying hour, and it was in reference to this that Satan made his grand, final assault, endeavouring to found upon that fact a terrible doubt of his accept- ance witii God. But here, following the example of his tempted and victorious Lord, he met the foe with " the living word," and the baffled monster left him to return no more. w 26 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. The day before he died' we all thought he would talk with us no more; but he roused up from the lethargy of approaching dissolution, and, for about an houT, conversed with his pastor and others upon Scripture themes, with a logical exactness of reason- I ing, a depth of insight, and a perspicuity of diction, equal to the most studied efibrts of which he had been capable in health. His message to the church of which he was a mem- ber was deeply impressive; and a subsequent mes- sage which he gave to Dr. Fyfe, for the students, was uttered with a solemnity and earnestness never to be forgotten by those who heard it. Early in the morning before he died, he had a sink- ing turn in which he believed himself dying. It, however, proved otherwise ; and he felt that, in giv- ing him this experience, God had pennitted him to realize the victory over death, even before being called upon to pass through the stiTiggle. "T believed myself dying," he said to his pastor, later in the day, " but God allowed me to come back, to tell you that I met the monster face to face and felt no fear." At another time, when realizing that death was very near, he remarked to those standing around him : " This all seems very natural. I used to have a great shrinking from death. The thought of the grave, — its silence, its darkness, its chill, — ^eemed very terrible; but that is all gone, death has no terrors now." To a kind neighbour who placed a bouquet of very MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 29 fragrant flowers upon his pillow, he remarked with a bright smile: "Ah, Mrs. P — — , I am soon going where the flowers never fade." The night he died he seemed much worn out by nervousness and difficulty in breathing; and his mind, as at some previous times, wandered a little. Sometimes, after a short sleep, he would look up eagerly, exclaiming, " I must do my work ! " and when urged to try and rest again, would repeat with still stronger emphasis : — " But 1 must do my work!" About an hour before he passed away, he repeated slowly and earnestly, — " ' I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications ; . . . . therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.'" After waiting a moment, he asked if we could not sing it. The Scotch metrical version of the Psalms was brought, and it was sung to the old air, " Bal- lerma," his parents, sisters, and brothers, all of whom were with him, joining him in this last expression of his deep love to Cod. After listening, with evident satisfaction, to the singing of another hymn, he fell into a short sleep from which he woke suddenly, looked eagerly around him, and ejaculating: "Oh, for breath!" passed quickly away. A momentary struggle, and the tired head was at rest : ** It's thinkiug and aching were o'er," and his freed spirit had gone to be " for ever with the Lord." \\ 30 MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULK. At this point it may not be unprofitable to pauce and look back, and with reverent gratitude record the inexpressible goodness of God to his servant, in answer to special prayer. While in the Northwest, it became evident from Mr. Yule's letters that he was receiving no real benefit from his stay. Prayer, such as could only come from a heart burdened with an agony of solicitude, was offered that, if he must die, it might be at home, surrounded by home-comforts, and sustained by home-care. Many almost marvel how, in his extreme weakness, he made that terrible journey alone. It was in answer to prayer. Again, as the shadows deepened, and his intense desire to do his earthly work seemed aim ost to neutralize every other desire, the cry went up to God that, if it were His will to remove him. He would so prepare him by Divine grace, that he might not only acquiesce in that will, but rejoice in it ; accepting it as not only the best, but the most to be desired. That prayer, as ,the foregoing statements show, was richly answered; so much so, that he himself re- marked, in surprise at his own calm satisfaction in regard to the event, that it seemed to him there must have been "an accumulation oj prayer" whose gracious answers were being poured upon him at the last. Again, in agony at the thought of the suffering many endure who die of con'; «n^ption, a great and bitter cry had gone up to God that he might be spared that intense suffering, so far at least as might be consistent>with his good, and the Father's glory. MEMOIR OF JAMES COLTON YULE. 81 God graciously heard and answered that petition. Few suffer so little. Seldom, indeed, does any one fade away so gently and painlessly to his rest. And thus it was, also, in respect of temporal things. Qod, in evident answer to prayer, touching the hearts of His dear people with a most tender interest in him, through them as the faithful stewards of His own bounty, lavished upon him abundant comforts, and crowned his last days with distinguishing favor. In compliance with his own request, he was borne • to his last resting-place by the students over whom his heart had yearned to the last ; and there, with his beloved Greek Testament upon his breast, and his cold finger pointing to his last text — " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins," he is resting from his labours in the sure and« certain hope of a blessed resurrection. MEMORIAL STANZAS. Droop low, oh mournful April skies ! And let your sad tears wet my cheek ; My heart is faint, my hands are weak, And Qrief sits speechless in my eyes. Oh, sorrowing Month ! oh. Month of tears ! Oh, grieving Month that weepest slow ! My heart would bring the heavy woe Of this, the saddest of my years. 32 W MEMOIR OP JAMES COLTON YULE. And, baring thus my aching brow Beneath thy slowly dropping rain, Would feel its coolness soothe the pain That throbs along my temples now ; And, spreading forth my empty hands, Would feel each burning hollow fill With drops thy pale, sad clouds distil, O'er sadder wastes of wintry lands. I know each pensive tear of thine Hath gladness in it for the earth. To wake her myriad flowers to birth. To swell the bud or green the pine. Till all her echoing bowers ring With melodies of happy life. And all. her meadow-lands are rife With purple messengers of Spring. Yet not for him, and not for me. Whatever change the years may bring ! For us, no other earthly Spring Shall paint the flowers or call the bee. He shall sleep on, nor stir, nor wake. While changeful seasons bloom and die. And Autumns sadden earth and sky. And birds the shivering groves forsake. And I — no after years that rise Shall chase from earth's new-opening bloom The pallor of the dreary tomb, The funeral shadow from the skies. Yet from beyond, and from above. Past burning suns and rolling spheres, Streams down o'er all my blighted y^ara The light of God's unchanging love II MEMOIR OP JAMES )LTON YULE. 88 With which one human love is blent, — My own erewhile, and mine to-day ; And, sitting thus beneath the ray, I fold my weary hands content. Then weep your tears, sad April skies. And lov'er droop in tearful gloom ! Earth waits her promised bud and bloom From out your shadows soon to rise. So I in tearful silence wait Beneath the shadow of my loss. Nor murmur at my heavy cross. Nor name his bliss the better fate. Be mine the toil and his the rest. Mine, all the poverty and pain; Be his the everlasting gain. The unfading crown, the mansion blest. For good, I deem, the Father's will. His patient love. His changeless grace ; And, though dull sight may fail to trace That goodness, faith can trust it still, — And wait with patience till the day Dawn, and the mournful shadows fly ; And Love, with calm uplifted eye. Descry her home not far away ! COWPER AND SHEllEY; OR, THE HUMBLE HEART AND THE PROUD INTELLECT. A Lecture delivered h^ore the Judson Missionary Society of the Canadian Literary Institute, Woodstock, April 3rd, 1867. We are more than willing that Christianity should be judged by its effects. The religion that does not affect the life is no religion. Of two men in the same circumstances, subjected to the same tempta- tions, the one whose heart has been changed by God's Spirit must have a purer nacu^e and lead a holier life than the other, or else Christianity is a delusion. We go even further than this. Take any two men, place the one above poverty and its temptations, sur- round him with friends of culture and morality, give him a poetical mind that will deck every thing in the beauty of its own creations, lay at his feet all the treasures of the past, — let him have, in short, every- thing but the gift of Jesus Christ. 36 OOWPER AND SHELLEY. Place the other where you please, take from him what you please — culture and comfort, health and wealth — only leave him a heart made new by the love of God, and however marred his character may be by unconquered sin, it will have a nobility and purity the other cannot have. The fruit on which the Sun of Righteousness has shone, must have a sweetness that the sunshine of this world can never give. The fruit may have grown in the Frigid Zone of neglect, it may have been blown upon by the cold wind of scorn, it may have been ripened by the froat of persecution ; but, if the beams of Heaven's Sun have been its life, it will have a richness, a heavenly flavour, that no human culture, no hot-house of senti- mentality, ever can impart. It is with full faith in this principle that we pro- pose to place these two men side by side, and let their words and acts bear testimony. We might spend an hour very pleasantly, to ourselves at least, in comparing the writings and genius of these two men. We might show you Shelley carried off by his imagination to the ends of the earth, yes, and far beyond; while Cowper's imagination runs submis- sively by his side. Shelley's meaning has to be dug for through metaphor and type ; Cowper's meaning lies always on the surface. In reading Shelley, you see everything in a magnificent mistiness, a dreamy indistinctness, thai i lakes you think of the polar regions, where a little sunlight and moonlight and starlight make you doubt whether it is night or day. COWPER AND SHELLEY. 87 But though CowpSr's landscapes have not the volup- tuous beauty of Shelley's, yet they are clear and dis- tinct ; there is no mistaking cloud for mountains, or mist for water. Cowper's muse might be compared to a practical English housewife who is content to do her home- duties and enjoy her home-comforts. Her c .n sorrowflji^re hid away under the smile of kindness she we^Eft for every one. She is ever ready to wel- come the needy to her snug home that she has made bright with real flowers, and warm with real love. But Shelley's muse is no woman, but a fairy. She will not live in this hum-drum world of ours, but builds for herself an air-castle in the clouds. Siie lights this airy home with the sunlight of ^beauty, or the moonlight of fancy. But the poor and the homeless never go there for shelter, for it is too far above human paths and human hearts. We might gratify ourselves thus by weighing the intellects, and balancing the talents of these two writers, or ,by setting choice passages over against one another ; but we must forbear — we have a more important work. "We would have you see Shelley commencing life by ridiculing God and Christ, and striking at everything we count holy and good. We wish you to see Covvper bowing his head humbly before the cross of Christ, and consecrating all his talents to God and holiness. We would like you to see that those two lives were as diflerent as their begin- 38 COWPER AND SHELLEY. nings ; that Shelley's rebellious "bpirit begat a re- bellious life; that Cowper's submissive spirit worked itself out in holy humility. We would like you to see that Shelley was law- less and violent when he had fame, and love, and everything good to win; but Cowper was humble and holy when health was gone, when life was going, when the future was all dark,j|nd he thought himself lost for ever. "ff^ We wish very much that some master-hand would draw the portraits of some of our great scoffers, and some of our godly men and women, and set them up face to face, that we might see the black scowl of hatred on the one, and the bright smile of love on the other. There is no scarcity of subjects even in our British Christianity. There is that profligate Bolingbroke, sitting down in his barren old age to cheat the world out of its God, as he had cheated his country out of its honour, and himself out of his happines-3 and hope. And here is the great Newton coming back fron^ his travels in the heavens, to sit reverently down at the feet of Jesus and learn heavenly wisdom. There is Mary Wollstoncraft, the so-called wife of Godwin, defending the French Revolutionists, talking Atheism with Tom Paine, ridiculing mar- riage, following the father of her child from France to England, from England to Holland, and then marrying herself to Mr. Godwin after her own fashion ; and here is Lady Huntingdon, belonging COWPER AND SHELLEY. 39 wife ^riists, mar- ' ranee then own iging both to the nobility of Earth and the nobility of Heaven, making herself the guardian angel of Whit- field and his friends, and preaching Christ by a holy life. There is Robert Burns, vainly striving to extin- guish the fires of passion in his heart by wallowing in the mire of sensuality, and then leaving to the world and his young wife the blackened character of one who might have been the kingliest of men ; and here is Robert PoUok, all on fire with love to God and man, with but time to sing one rapt song before he was consumed. There is liord Byron, enthroned on the dunghill of his own filthy thoughts, sneering at his fellows, scowling at his wife, and cursing himself*; and here is John Milton, climbing the mountains of hid own lofty thoughts, up, up, until the light be- comes too strong for him, and then sitting down in his blindness to wait for the heavenly sight and heavenly light of a real "Paradise Regained." But we have chosen Cowper because he is very often misunderstood,— because we know he was not made crazy by religion, as some have said, — be- cause he was not a misanthrope, as we have heard him called, — and because, quiet and unimportant as his life was, it was yet one of the noblest in its real heroism. We have chosen Shelley, that we might see that a bad belief begets a bad life ; that to reject God is to be rejected by God ; and that to reject God is to reject the only beauty, the only 40 COWPER AND SHELLEY. nobilitv. And in these irreverent times of ours, when the patient submission of Cowper is so rare, and when the boyish impudence and irreverence of Shelley are bursting up in the flippancy of our fast young men, it may not be unprofitable to let the light of God's trutji down on these two lives, that we may see the worthlessness of the one and the nobility of the other. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792, eight years before Cowper died. As the French Revolu- tion was then in its rage, we can almost fancy that a portion of the spirit of wild license of that period became incarnate in our young poet. His father was a polished man of the world, whose creed might be told in few words — nothing can be wrong unless it brings disg.race with it. . Although Shelley inherited these loose principles he was a boy of noble impulses ; and until he de- serted God in his early manhood, there was much in him to admire and love. He was old beyond his years. While other boys were playing ball or robbing bird's nests, you would find him on the sunny side of some hill, playing with his own fresh thoughts — the children of his own mind. We can imagine we see the shy, dreamy boy going out on a bright May morning, as he tells us, and, sitting down by himself, build a bright future out of the bright sunshine. But his fine structure comes tumbling down at the sound of harsh voices from a school close by, and as he weeps in his dis- COWPER AND SHELLEY. 41 iples de- Luch rond lI or the •esli [boy us, ture ture iices dis- appointment he makes this vow: "/will be wise and just, and free and mild, if in me lies such power." At the age of thirteen we find him at the public school at Eton, where we cannot help admiring the courr that prompted a delicate boy to refuse to *' lag " for the older boys, as was the custom. He resolved not to run errands, or to be a warming- pan, or a shoe-black for any one, — and he kept his resolution. But innocent and justifiable as this resistance was, we see in it the breaking out ol that proud spirit which controlled his life. Shelley hated all uestraints, all obedience. To him a coimnand was a signal for rebellion. His maxim was : " Obedience makes man a slave." He would not submit to be under the elder boys, trom that it was but a step to disobedience of teachers, and finally he chafed under all restraint, sneered at all superiors, rebelled against all authority. When he went to Eton he was several vears older than his equals; and when he went to Oxford, at the age of eighteen, he was already a man in feeling and in boldness. Going to study at Oxford in the new, busy, nineteenth century was, to Shelley, like going down from the brightness of an Italian summer, to hunt for old lamps and statues in the darkness of Herculaneum. To Shelley the college halls seemed musty with age. The profes- sprs seemed like walking mummies of three thou- D 42 COWPER AND SHELLEY. sand years ago. To him they were nothing but. old fogies — old fossils. Their theories, their argu- ments, their principles were fossils like themselves. Grey-headed men, and hoary laws, and revered opinions were all met with a flippant sneer. Upon God and Christianity was laid the blame oi all that was wrong in professing Christians. They were proud and overbearing, therefore their God was cruel and relentless. Teachers might lay before him the collected wisdom of the past, public opinion might lay down its principles of right and decency, conscience might talk of higher claims, but it was enough for him that his passions, or his pride, or his will, pointed in another direction. Society imposed restraints — then it wa^a glorious thing to cast off those restraints, and laugh in the ' face of society. Christianity demanded a life of obedience — then Christianity was a lie. God re- quired service — then God was a tyrant. As the result of all this, he wrote a treatise to prove the necessity of Atheism ; and soon after he wrote "Queen Mab," his first long poem, in which he sets forth his upstart ideas concerning God and ' man. When he speaks of faith, he cannot restrain the expression of the intense disgust he feels ; and his blasphemy of God and Christ is too vile to be repeated. Thus he goes through this world and the world above, and the higher and holier any- thing is, the more of his venom does he spit upon it. The wife in the home is called a slave, Ch^-^- 'y < COWPER AND SHELLEY. 43 1 on the cross is reviled, God on His throne is blasphemed. For this defiant, unblushing Atheism, he was expelled from College; and from this time he was like a wandering Ishmaelite, warring and warred against, sneering alike at law, and custem, and marriage, and religion. At this period of his life he made a practice of opening a correspondence with whatever young lady his fancy suggested. In this way he became intimate by letter with Miss Browne ; but her mother interfered, and the correspondence was broken off. No one need regret this, for we can- not doubt that, unhappy as Miss Browne's mar- riage was, she sang sweeter songs as the neglected wife of Captain Hemans, than she ever would have sung as Mrs. Shelley. Shelley's history, so far, would not do discredit to any fast young American. He had rebelled against his teachers at school, written two novels, made love to his cousin, corresponded with Miss Browne, looked down upon his prof-iors at college, quarrelled with his father, cursed religion, defied God, been married twice to Harriet Westbrooke, — and all before he was out of his teens. The next two or three years of his life he spent in roving about, taking with him his wife and child ; but with his loose theories of marriage it was to be feared their union and happiness would w 44 COWPER AND SHELLEY. not last. With him marriage was but an accom- modation. It is true he had said to his wife : "Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow '! Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, And loved mankind the more ? Harriet, on thine ! — thou wert my purer mind, Thou wert the inspiration of my song. ... And know, though thine may change, and years may roll, Each flow'ret gathered in my heart Is consecrate to thee." Everything seems to indicate that Mrs. Shelley was true to him ; but he met with a pretty face, a smarter tongue, and a keener wit, — and so his professions of love and constancy, his marriage, its endearments, its sacred pleasures, might all go to the winds. Mary Godwin was a deaconess in the Church of the Elective Affinities, and though Shelley had no religion, he ought to have been a deacon in such a church. He was the oxygen, she was the hydro- gen — the election was indisputable, and unite they must. Neither society, nor friends, nor children, nor a double marriage, could prevent their union ; and so the daughter of the godless Godwin and Mary Wollstoncraft, consented to elope with Shelley, who had been married only three years. But this is only one side of the story. The poor young wife, deserted by her husband, deserted by her own sweet hopes, sought a shelter from her disappointment and reproach in the darkness of a V OOWPER AND SHELLEY. 45 '^j> by , I suicide's grave. Shortly after his wife's death Shelley married his mistress, who remained his wife during the remaining six years of his life. These years he spent in travelling for his health, principally in Italy. He was an exile from his own country, — there was nothing there* that belonged to him but his two children and his wife's grave, — his violent passions, rebellious spirit, and undis- guised contempt of religion, had alienated his countrymen, and so he wandered. But Italy's fine skies, and bright sun, and his- toric grandeur, and his own creative genius, could not make him happy. In Mrs. Shelley's words he "shielded himself from memory and reflection behind a book." There is something very sad in the closing drama ot this wasted life. Leigh Hunt had just come to Italy, and Shelley must go to give him welcome. As Shelley, was living on the shore of the Mediterranean, he under- took the journey in a small boat he had just received. He reached Leghorn in safety, enjoyed a few days' pleasure, and started for his home where his wife and child were awaiting him. But the moaning of the waves and the whispering of the winds, were the only tidings of the expected husband. Days and nights dragged themselves into weeks, and then the sea gave up its dead, and the. body of Shelley was found on the shore. This death-scene seems to us but a picture- parody of his whole life. The glittering water and I 46 COWPER AND SHELLEY. bounding freedom of the sea of life dazzled his imagination, and captivated his lawless will. He embarked on a frail boat called Human Reason, but he had cast aside the Bible— the chart of truth ; the compass of love was not there to point to the Centre of all things ; a storm of passion gathered and burst, — and Shelley, and his boat, and his sun- sl;iine, and his hopes, were swallowed up in that treacherous sea. The last thing from Shelley's pen was written on that frail boat in which his last voyage was undertaken, as it lay in the bay near his Italian home. He calls the poem the " Triumph of Life; " but it should be called the "Disappointment of Life." It's last words are, "What is Life?" and to us it seems but a sad wail over his own blasted hopes. In this poem the poet visits a beautiful valley, and sits down to watch the crowds bustling past on their business or pleasure. Soon a rumb- ling noise is heard, an unearthly chariot approaches from which a light flashes that puts out the sun. A rainbow encircles the glorious car, its splendor dazzles all eyes, its heavenly music enchants all ears. Young and old dance around the new sun, sing their rejoicings, and chant their worship. But the wonderful car is a mockery. It soon sweeps past, and leaves behind it only broken hearts, and blinded eyes, and grey heads, and sad faces, and dreary dreary darkness. And so, in Shelley's youth there danced before him a bright 1 I COWPER AND SHELLEY. A1 "> phantom called "Human Progress," so bright in its beauty as to hide the Sun of Righteousness, and when it passed away it left him blinded to the Heavenly light, — * "An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light. And with no language but a cry." In his dreamy youth he thought to reform man by human reason. He would proclaim the worth of Freedom, he would sing the beauty of Truth, men would listen and be transformed. Earth would become a heaven. Science and poetry would bring knowledge, knowledge would bring peace, and peace would bring happiness. The, force of custom would extract the teeth from the lion, and the claws from the tiger. The angel babe would share his breakfast with the green basilisk. There were to be no rich, no poor. Each man was to have the same sized purse containing exactly the same number of dollars and cents. Man would then be — ** A monarch clothed with majesty and awe, His mind a kingdom, and his will his law, Grace in his mien and glory in his eyes. Supreme on earth and worthy of the skies, Strength in his heart, dominion in his nod. And, thunderbolts excepted, quite a god." And how was all this to be effected ? — Simply by man's standing up in his regal dignity, and swear- ing that he will despise faith, that he will be free \ \ 48 COWPER AND SHELLEY. from law and pure from crime. But alas for poor weak man, and poor weak Shelley! — his heart was at once better and worse than his head. •In imagination he was a richly-gifted poet — far more so than Cowper, — for that we admire him; he loved man much, for that we give him all credit ; but that pride of intellect, that haughtiness of will, that strange alienation of heart from God and holiness, blinded him to all the light and all the beauty that came from Heaven. All that was grand or beautiful in Switzerland or Italy, all that was rich or lovely in ancient Art or song, had exerted on him their refining power. He had walked in the grove with Plato, he had groped through Hades with Dante, he had sung on the Jewish mountains with Isaiah, he had sat in Rome at the feet of Raphael, — he had, in short, gone through the world of nature and of letters, and yet he came back with a blind eye and a col'd heart, because he took with him the " light of reason," instead of the lamp of God's truth. We charge Shelley with deserting his two children ; and his friends tell us he was so affec- tionate as to curse the law and the lawyers that afterwards prevented his getting hold of those very children. We lay at his door the death of his wife ; and they tell us he was so full of love, so unselfish, so benevolent ! We charge him with blaspheming God, and they tell us he was very devout, very religious! COWPER AND SHELLEY. 49 Turning from Shelley's life and writings to those of Cowper seems like leaving a dense jungle to walk in a beautiful garden. The jungle may have flowers, but they lack the sweet odor of the violet and the rose. There is growth in the jungle, — growth so luxuriant that the sun cannot penetrate it, — but it yields little that is valuable; it is a place where the toad may spit, and the serpent may hiss, and the tiger may crouch for its prey. But Cowper's life and writings are a garden whose flowers give back heaven's sunshine in their beauty, and earth's richness in their fragrance, where love blushes in the rose, and purity whitens in the lily; and, although it is often under the cloud, there is nothing there to hurt or to destroy. William ^ Cowper was born in 1731, and lost his mother when he was six years of age. Like Shelley, he was connected with the nobility of England; and like him he was a very delicate, sensitive boy. Instead of a mother's tenderness to help him over his boyish troubles, he had only the rough or careless treatment of strangers. Some natures would have grown sturdier under the treatment he received and the hardships he endured, but they seemed only to render him the more sensitive, the more delicate, until this sensi- tiveness grew into an incurable malady in his later life. In the year of his mother's death he was sent from the nursery to a public school, where he endured persecutions from the older boys which 50 COWPER AND SHELLEY. he could never think of afterwards without shud- dering. One boy, especially, treated him so roughly that he dared not look up to his face, but knew him best by the buckles on his shoe ! At the age of eighteen he left school, as ignorant of religion, he says, as the satchel at his back. From school his father sent him to study law in that nest of London lawyers — the Temple. In the schools he had attended, Christ had been crucified, as Leigh Richmond says, between classics and mathematics; and now twelve years were wasted in a continued round of pleasure, in ^'giggling and making giggle." All this time his conscience was becoming seared, and his pocket was becoming empty. To provide for the wants of his pocket, he applied for the office of Clerk in the house of 'Parliament, which was at the disposal of a friend ; and at the same time God was preparing the treatment that was necessary to soften his conscience. But no sooner did he get the promise of the appointment than he was seized by a host of fears arising from his mental sensitiveness. As this seems to be the beginning of that insanity that afflicted him for a great part of his subsequent life, let us here notice the cause of it. Imagine, if you can, that the whole surface of your body is as tender as your eye. In that state, to touch anything, to sit, or stand, or lie, or walk, would be continued torture. But you would need to feel something analogous to this before you would know how to sympathise COWPER AND SFELLEY. 61 . with Cowper. He seemed to be but a bundle of fears and anxieties. He was always brooding over some imaginary danger, — always fearing some imaginary calamity. In the presencj of a few strangers he was like a timid eh 1. In his later life he would get a stranger invited to tea, and then could scarcely be coaxed to the table. A journey of a few miles across the country in a carriage was looked forward to, and dreaded for weeks. Such was the nature that was to be sub- jected to an examination at the bar of the Lords, as to his fitness for the office in question. The thought of the coming trial kept him in a fever of excitement for months. Tie went to the office every day to study, turned over the leaves, but saw nothing — learned nothing. He ran off to the seacoast, but did not run away from his fears. Coming back to London was only coming nearer the furnace. In his chambers he lifted up his voice, and cursed the day of his birth. The day of the trial drew near. He had wished fbr madness, but it did not come. Anything — death itself — be- fore the disgrace of a failure. Great men com- mitted suicide and they were still called great. His life was his own, and could he not do as he pleased with it? The story is told that he engaged a cabman one dark night to drive him to London bridge, intending to throw himself into the Thames. Although the cabman knew the city well, he drove and drove, but could not reach the bridge. Stop- 1 i S2 COWPER AND SHELLEY. ing at length, he said he believed the devil was in the cah; and as Cowper was by this time coming to the same conclusion, he ordered him to drive home; and thus, what the cahman had thought was the devil's work, was really God's interfer- ence to save Cowper. Up to this time Cowper's sins had sjiven him no concern. He had thought he was not fit to live — he now saw he was not fit to die. He loathed him- self for the meanness of his crime. He opened his Bihle, and the first words he saw were: " Cut it down, why cumhereth it the ground?" He opened a volume of Beaumont and Fletcher, and saw these words : " The justice of the gods is in it." Everything preached to him, and everything preached the curse of the law. He tri^d to exer- cise what he thought was faith, by endeavoring to repeat the Creed ; but he could not remember a sentence of it. His heated brain seeftied literally o flash fire, through his eyes. He paced his room expecting the earth to open and swallow him up. At length the wearied brain could endure it no longer, — he was taken down to St. Alban's quite out of his mind. For more than half a year he remained in this state, two thoughts having pos- ■ession of him, — conviction of sin, and despair of mercy. All the doctor's prescriptions, and his own at- tempts to be cheerful, only made him " as much \'' COWPER AND SHELLEY. 53 better as despair could make him." Sin, working on a weak constitution, had brought him to the mad-house. God only could deliver him. A train of little incidents — Providence, rather — led him to turn to the Bible that he had cast aside. The first verse he saw brought him deliverance: Eom. iii. 26, '* Whom God hath set forth to be a propitia- tion through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past; through the forbearance of God." His own words are: "Immediately I received strength to believe it, I saw the sufficiency of the atonement, and my pardon sealed with his blood. Unless the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have died of gratitude and joy. For many weeks the tears were ready to flow if I did l>ut speak of the Gospel, or mention the name of Jesus. To re- joice day and night was all my employment." But the future must be provided for. If he would return to London he could have an office that would bring him X60 a year. But he never again would visit that scene of suffering and temptation. He cast himself on his Heavenly Father's care, and well was he cared for. He prayed for a home where he could serve God, and God sent young Mr. Unwin to meet him as he came out of church, to invite him home to tea, and, ultimately, to instal him as a member of his family, where he ever after continued to live. God touched the hearts of Cowper's friends to \\ 54 COWPER AND SHELLEY. provide for his wants. He now sends Lady Austin back from France to settle near Cowper, and divert him with her lively conversation and her musical voice. A young man is catching and chaining slaves on the coast of Africa, terrifying even his wild companions by his shocking profanity. But God's Spirit comes to him, renews him, and sends him back to England to become to Cowper and the world all that John Newton became : and thus God cared for Cowper. At Olney he spent eight very happy years. Every day he enjoyed the society of the holy Newton. His letters are full o Jesus. His whole song was: "to God be tl glory of my salvation." When he wrote that sweet hymn: "There is a fountain filled with blood," — he did not write — "there may I," but he wrote: "there haoe I, though vile as he, Wia«Acrf all my sins away." In those happy times there was no doubt of his aoceptance. To read God's Word, to sing His praises, to visit and pray with the poor, and to tell God's goodness to every one, were his daily em- ployments. But it was not to be always summer with him. The climate of Olney was sure to injure a weak frame like Cowper's. Ho was com- pelled "To shake with cold, and see the plains In autumn drenched with wintry rains.' COWPER AND SHELLEY. 55 As he paddles through Olney mud you may hear him saying, — " But should we get there, how shall we get home ? What a terrible deal of bad road we, have passed, Slipping and sliding ; and, if we should come To a difficult stile, I am ruined at last ! Come, wheel around, The dirt we have found " Would be an estate at a farthing a pound ! Slee, sla, slud, Stuck in the mud. Oh ! isn't it pi-etty to wade through a flood ! " For months of the year he would be living over a cellar full of water. Most of the people of the village had chronic fever ; and he, too, contracted a fever that settled upon his nerves — the most vulnerable part of his delicate frame. As he said himself, — "Other diseases batter the walls, but nervous diseases creep silently into the citadel, and put the garrison to the sword." From this attack he never fully recovered. The burden of a diseased body was more than his mind could bear; and, to add to his depression, his only brother was taken from him by death. He had just seen that brother adopted into God's family, and become doubly his brother by a new love. Many happy years might have been enjoyed, but it was not to be so, — Cowper was to walk down the hill alone. And just as the mind of a sleeper will dream of the work and the pleasures of its waking hours, so Cowper's mind went astray -on 56 COWPER AND SHELLEY. religion, the very subject that had occupied his mind most. That mind was always to him a prophet of evil. It was ever conjuring up gloomy phantoms to mock and scare him. These phan- toms told him that the future was all sufferiijg and shame. They told him that his golden age- was past, that this was his iron age, and that the barren clay was yet to come. Cowper believed that the child of God would never be lost; he believed he had been an adopted child, — and yet he believed he was lost ! He knew and praised God's mercy, and yet he believed that God would lay aside all mercy in his case ! He thought himself cast off, — and for what?. For a reason so preposterous, as to remove all doubt of his insanity in this matter, — because he had not taken away his own life when he was in London. This second derangement, lasting the rest of his life, is a sad, marvellous chapter. In reading it we cannot help exclaiming, in his own words, — "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform ! ** Blind unbelief is sure to err, And dean Hid works in vain ; God is His own interpreter. And he shall make it plain." The Providence that permitted this doubt and fear to possess him has long since been made plain to Cowper. The bud had a bitter taste, but the COWPBR AND SHELLEY. 5"? flower that bloomed in eternity gave its sweetness to him long since. His wail has been turned into a song of gratitude — gratitude no less for the sorrow and the darkness than for the joy and the light; and it is high time that the world, espe- cially the Christian world, ceased to regret the sorrow of that life. But for that sorrow we would not have some of our gayest rhymes, most natural poetry, and soundest morality. He is sitting one day gloomily brooding over himself Lady Austin gives him the Sofa for a subject. Straightway, with more truth and poetry than Darwin himself, he tells us how a three-legged stool became a quadruped, how the quadruped got a spinal column and a pair of arms, how the arm-chair opened its arms, stretched its legs, and became a sofa.. He hears the story of a runaway-horse, laughs half the night over it, and gets up the next morning with his "Johu Gilpin," that sets all England into roars oi laughter. To amuse his friends and us, his fancy has set the birds courting and marrying, sent his nightingale and glowworm to teach us brotherly-love, and gravely informed us that — " Between Nose and Eyea a strange contest arose, — The spectacles set them unhappily wrong ; The point in dispute w:*s, as all the world knows, To whom the said spectacles ought to belong." A great load of anguish lay upon his heart, yet it crushed out no groan of complaint ; but, rather, E 58 COWPER AND SHELLEY. many a song of mirth welled up in spite of it. God had denied him gladness of heart, but He had •left him the power of pleasing ; and so Cowper sat down, and took his har^ griefs, his black sorrows, and his pearly tears, and wrought them intor jewels and ornaments that still please children of ten, and men of four-score years. But all this mirth did not restore to him his spiritual enjoyment. We often repeat the words of his own plaintive hymn, but we cannot feel them as he could out of whose heart they were wrung : ** What peaceful hours I then enjoyed, How sweet their memory still ! Sut they have left an aching void The world can never fill." He had tasted the world's pleasures and found how bitter they were, he had drunk of the cup of salvation and knew how sweet it was ; but now he was not allowed to taste the cup for which his soul panted. God could have delivered him from all this great sorrow if he had so willed it, but only, it seems to us, by working a physical miracle. But as Cowper himself had said long before, — " The path of sorrow, and that jJath alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown." - > That path was a long one to Cowper. For nearly thirty years he travelled on, and drearier and darker the way was ever getting. Sometimes there would be a gleam of sunshine, COWPER AND SHELLEY. 00 IT id i 1 but it was soon swallowed up in thicker gloom. In 1787 he had a fiercer attack of fever, — it left him worse than ever. The three tamed hares — Puss, Tiney, and Bess — that had once diverted him with the. aroU antics, had died one by one. His carpenter's tools and his sketch-book, with which he had -once amused himself, were laid away like children's toys. Friends were failing one by one. His foster-father, Unwin, had been snatched from him. His loving brother had gone to the heavenly home. His tried friend, Newton, had been removed to London. Mrs. Unwin had been more than a mother to him, between them had grown up one of the holiest and tenderest of friend- ships, but now he was forced to say of her, — ** Thy spirits have a fainter (low, I- see thee daily weaker grow, 'Twas my distress that brought thee low. And should my future lot be cast With much resemblance of the past, Thy worn-out heart will break at last." In his youth he had given all the wealth of his heart to his cousin, Theodora Cowper; but her father interfered, they were never allowed to mfjfry, and now they were l)otli struggling on alone. Had she been allowed to come to him, with her true affection and tender sympathy, it might have been very different with his life. But with all these blanks in the world, with all the home- fires of his life dying out, he yet feared to die. w 60 COWPER AND SHELLEY. I I To him death meant everlasting punishment. Sad as his life was, he would endure anything rather than die. !N'ow was the time to defy God, to hate holiness, and plunge into sin. But Cowper held fast his integrity. The poor weather-heaten ship was driven before the storm, the mght was dark, unknown breakers were ahead, but down on the deck the needle, with all its quivering, pointed " still to the polar star; the Holy Spirit was at the helm, the rocks were cleared, the breakers were shunned, and Cowper was saved. ^ For nearly thirty years Satan had been permitted to strike this human harp with his rough hand, and although it gave out many a note of woe, yet never a note of complaint. "Curse God, and die," said Satan; "I will bless God while I live," said our English Job. " God gave you your experi- ences in derision, and took them away in ven- geance," said Satni; "Here I am," said Cowper; "let Him do as seemeth good to Him ! " "When that Protestant Pope, Henry VIII. was persecuting Protestants, a young painter was thrown into prison for painting verses of Scrip- ture. His wife came to see him, and the jailor killed her and her infant with a kick. The poor prisoner was fed on sawdust, he was loaded with chains, and finally, , after being kept three days without food, he was brought to trial. But although' his reason was gone, his love remained ; and the only answer they could get from the poor* '■ COWPER AND SHELLEY. 61 ras ran ip- jor lor th maniac, as he stared around, was : •' My Lord is a good man; my Lord is a good man." And so Cowper stood in this drear world, — his health gone, his reason gone, his friends gone, his hopes gone; and yet, to every attack of the enemy he had but one answer: "My Lord is a gdod man; the Cfod whom I serve is righteous and merciful even to me. * Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him.' " A friend once sent Cowper a portrait of his mother, and the filial love that forty years of ab- sence and sorrow could not quench, burst out in a song which will live as long as love for mothers shall live. God had once adopted Cowper into His family, made him His son, giving him the witness of His Spirit that he was born of God, — and now He seems to desert him. But although nearly thirty years have passed away and no Father appears, yet the desefted child still sings songs that will continue to be sung as long as human tongues ring with God's praise, and human hearts swell with the Father's love ; and all this time he is going deeper down into the valley of the shadow of death. Winter had always been Cowper's dread, — but now his life was one long winter. Birds might sing, and forests wave, and fields bloom, and rivers dance; the Bible might be bright with promises, , and earth radiant with beauty, but it was all in 62 COWPER AND SHELLEY vain ; the sun had been wiped from his sky, and it was all to him one bleak December night. There was a weird, ghastly daylight behind him, but it was night all around him, — it was dark, dark night ahead. So completely was he blinded by the darkness that he scarcely noticed when Mrs. Unwin lay down by the wayside to die; he saw not that his nephew, Johnson, and his cousin, Lady Hesketh, were angels of mercy sent from God to take care of him. They took him from Dunham to Mundsley, from Mundsley to Dereham, from the family-seat to the sea-shore and back again ; but it was only travelling alone in the darkness. Once his nephew ventured to comfort him with the hope of speedy deliverance, but he begged him not to mock him in that way. In the last poem he ever wrote, "The Castaway," he compares himself to a sailor washed overboard in a storm. Its concluding words are : "We perished, each alone. But I beneath a rougher sea, And Vhehned in deeper gulfs than he." His last words, uttered when refusing food, were : " What can it signify ? " Yes, what could it signify ? — a few more wild throbbings of the brain, a few more quakings of the heart, a little more shrinking from the cold river — and then, what will it all signify? " Poor, poor Cowper ! " the world has been saying for eighty years ; but let us say rich, rich Cowper ! Rich in the restored light of his father's smile, rich , COWPER AND SHELLEY. U3 ^2 in his completed deliverance, rich in his treasure of sorrov/ that has become an inheritance of joy. His sorrdw had held even his countenance firm in its unyielding grasp ; but the look of glad surprise left on that face after death, told of a double deliverance — the deliverance of soul and body. We cannot forbear quoting a few stanzas from •' Oowper's Grave," a wondrous monument erected by Mrs. Browning at the grave of a brother poet : — "It is a place where Poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying, It is a place where happy saints may M'eep amid their praying ; Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish, Earth snrely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. " poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing ! O Christians, to your cross of hope a ho[)eless hand was clinging ! - O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while you wcic smiling! "Like a sick child that kuoM'eth not his mother while she blesses, And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses, — That turns his fevered ayes around — 'My mother! where's my mother ? ' As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other ! "The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him. Her face all pale with watchful love, the unweary love she bore him! — Thus woke the poet from the dream his life-long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes which closed in death to save him. "Thus? oh, not thml — no type of earth can image that awaking, Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breakinj-, Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted ; But felt those e>je.s alone, and knew — 'My Saviour! not deserted ! ' " 64 COWPER AND SHELLEY. Shelley began life by rejecting God and His reli- gion, then he deserted his wife and children, and then cast himself away on the barren coast of a Godless, Fatherless world. Cowper gave up worldly prospects, youthful friends — all he had — for Christ, and with Him received all he needed. Shelley sang very beautiful praises of love, and sympathy, and brotherhood ; but for faith or Christi- anity, he had only bitterness and scorning. Cowper had a heavenly love engrafted on his earthly love — he loved because his God is Love. With all Shelley's professed love of liberty, lie never had a word of praise for the country that has done more for liberty than any other; but he held up England to ridicule, called its kings tyrants, and its people brutes. Cowper's loyalty was no blind ser- vice. He laid bare his country's faults and crimes ; but he could say in words that pass current all round the globe, — " England, with all thy faults, I love thee stiU!" Shelley degraded himself by bowing down to the finite, the human, himself Cowper rose with heavenly honor from prostrating himself before the Divine, the Infinite, the Only Wise God. Shelley said he preferred "Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven." Cowper showed that the higher the Master, the nobler the service; and that the highest of all is the service of God. Shelley was putting on the airs of a man, when he was only a boy, — lifting up his head to heaven in I COWPER AND SHELLEY. 6i I defiance and brazen pride. Cowper showed by his life thi^t a man is noble only when a man in intel- lect, and a child in feeling ; and his struggle was ever downward and backward from the heights of folly and pride, to the noblest position of all, — a reverent, trustful childhood. Shelley's life seems to us like a fiery Etna. Its base is covered with vine" and loaded with fruits, rich grains cover its sideK, but there are desolating fires within, and its bar.on top beltlies smoke and ashes, and sends up fierce fi . aes. into the pure heavens and against the brigiit sun. But Cowper's life is the rich, humble ^ nil )y, hidden oicentimes from the sun by clouds and mist, but calm in its Imroility, and ever lifting its fruits as a thank-offering to heaven. And what have all Shelley's poetry and arguments done for the world ? Perhaps he contributed to the political reform forty years ago — but nothing more. Nothing more, did we say ? would it were so ! Every year he is seducing some of the finest minds among our youth by O! religion of beauty and sentiment. He has thrown the charms of poesy around the gate- way of error; he has covered the pitfalls of crime with iho) dowers of fancy. ^ He has called license liberty, obedience slavery, humility /jowardice, reli- gion a sham, Heaven a myth, and God a tyrant. We will not wait to tell you what graceful letters Cowper has written, or how he has freed English poetry from the straight-jacket in which Pope had 66 COWPER AND SHELLEY. bound it fast. We could not tell you how often "John Gilpin" has convulsed us with laughter, as we have followed him " From London town to Edmonton, From Edmonton to Ware." We i.eed not tell you how Cowper has held the writhing hypocrite aloft on the point of his pen, until foppish preachers, and bloated pedants, and all other shams, have shrunk back at the thought of such an ordeal. You know well how Cowper's hymns have given voice to the praise, or love, or mourning, or jay, of Christians wherever the English language is spoken. We will not try to estimate, for we cannot; how much he has done for the slave by his manly appeals. Wilberforce and Curran have spoken for liberty with a new enthusiasm, nations have risen to loftier prin- ciples, and the pulse of statesmen and of school-boys has risen to a warmer temperature under the inspira- tion of these words so familiar to us all :— " I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinev/s bought and sold have ever earned. !N o ! dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Ji. at estimation prized above all price, I would much rather be myself the slave. And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We cannot and wc need not tell you all this ; but even if Cowper had left us nothing of all this treas- ure, had he left nothing but that patient life, what a COWPER AND SHELLEY. 67 miracle of Almighty power is its purity, its sublime patience ! What do we see ? — A reverent child lov- ing the Father that seems to desert him; a loyal subject , driven to a far-off land, still singing the praises and obeying the laws of his king ; a weeping pilgrim, whose tears spring up in iiowei's at his feet ; a blind traveller, keeping the narrow way by the in- stinct of love ; a weak man, learning the weight of " the world to coipe " by the help of Omnipotence ; and, like his Master, made " peifect through suffer- ing. We wish you to learn from Cowper's life that a new heart is the strongest and holiest, and a humble spirit the noblest thing on God's earth ; — we wish j^ou to learn from Shelley's life, that the light of fancy is not the light of life, that beauty is not holiness, that poetry is not religion, and that man will not, cannot, satisfy man. . \ A GRACE FOR A GRACE. EXEGESIS OF JOHN I. 10. ''BAPTIST quarterly;' JANUARY, 1871. "And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." , "Grace for Grace." What is the meaning of this rare expression ? Bengel, taking " grace " in the sense of " gifts of mere}''," says, " Each grace, though when given large enough, is, as it were, overwhelmed by the accumulation and fulness of that which fol- lows." Alford says, " continual accessions of grace, new grace coming upon and succeeding the former." Such, in substance, are the views of several others ; but, with all respect for such authority, we think this interpretation smothers the real thought of the whole passage. * * For the discussion ot'the Greek text, see " Quarterly," January, 187X. .....J 70 A GRACE FOR A GRACE. The phrase "grace for grace," translated literally, would be, "grace over against grace," or freely, a grace or excellence of character received by the Christian, corresponding to each grace or excellence in Christ. That this natural translation is the correct one seems abundantly shown : — I. By the words themselves. Grace, as in several other places, has its simple meaning, — excellence, moral beauty of character. "For" almost always means " over against," " corresponding to," as " an eye for an eye." II. By the demands of the context. God " gave " through' Moses the lifeless, unproductive law that was powerless to produce in man a single moral excellence, a single beauty of character. But in Christ there " came " before the world's eyes a real, living excellence ; in Him there existed the radiant grace of beauty anrl. worth. In Him it was not abstract truth in words and precepts, but truth in the concrete, truth written out in the shining glories of his character, truth living in his living features. Of these excellencies He is " full," of that " fulness " we receive, and a grace for a grace. III. By its harmony with other Scripture. Christ is " the image of the invisible God," " the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person ; " to as many as receive Him He gives " power to become the sons of God ; " they are renewed in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after the image of \ \ A GRACE FOR A GRACE, 11 Him that created them ; in Him dwells all the " full- ness of the Godhead bodily ; " of that fulness have all that are "born of God" received, and "grace for grace" — an excellence corresponding to each excel- ienee in Him, a beauty, a moral worth, " over against " each one in Him. Such is the precious truth foldfed up in these simple words. Doubtful classical ex- amples can scarcely justify a departure from the literal rendering of this unique phrase. This creation of sons in the likeness of their Elder Brother, may be viewed in three aspects. I. The Likeness is Heal. Darwin has not yet shown us a man developed from a brute, or a brute from an atom. And the God of the physical world is the God of the spiritual. He does not develop a sinneif into a saint by any foster- ing process, but His creative power fashions at once the " new creature." Development is not attempted until the new life is there in its real presence. To our eye the resemblance may appear very faint, but if there has been a creation in the image of Christ, every feature is there in some degree of resemblance. Perhaps not even the large eye of charitj'', perhaps only the eye of Him who " knoweth them," can de- tect each feature, yet there they all are in undoubted reality. God's power and God's time will make visible each lineament. Cut open a rosebud, examine it with a microscope, and you find every organ of the perfect rose provided w 12 A OfRACE FOR A GRACE. for. The materials for petals and seed are folded up ready to develop. Subject a similar bud to the powers of sun and rain, and these elements will show their presence in expanding life. In the swelling acorn, too, the root, stem, and branches of the future oak are substantially represented. Or more perfectly still, the father is a more perfect man than the son only in the degree of his development. In the child every organ of the future man has a real existence. Some of those organs and parts may not be needed for years, but in nature's time they will show that they had all been really there. As soon, also, as the healthy child comes to think, he shows that he pos- sesses every human mental faculty, reason no less than imagination, memory no less than will. As this is the law iu the vegetable and animal life, so is it more perfectly the law in^the Christian life. The likeness formed in the Christian embodies the features of Christ's character. They are the same in kind, but differing in degree. The joy that swells the heart is such joy as when Jesus "rejoiced in spirit." The pity that yearns for the sinner is the same that melted into tears as it looked from Christ upon Jerusalem. The forgiving spirit that, perhaps, is detected only in a resentment less keen than for- merly, is the same spirit that said, " Father, forgive them." By no means equally perfect, but equally real, are the filial obedience and love that prompt Christ and the Christian to say, " I delight to do thy will." The analysis of sunlight shows to us that 1 A ORACE FOR A GRACE. 73 elements are found in the sun of the same kind as are upon our earth. And so in those who "shine as lights in the world" are often found, — in dim reflec- tion it may be, — elements of nature and character such as beamed out in glorious brightness from the " Sun of rijGfhteousness." Ihe likeness is a growing likeness. The child of God is *' predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son." That Son has been formed within him " the hope of glory." Every day, that hope grows up towards its glorious reality, and thus in this sense also, "grace is glory begun." Such, perhaps, is the full significance of "grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ," and " be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." By a look of faith on Christ that image was formed, by the same looking the work of assimilation is carried on. '* We all, with open face beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory." The likeness which the sculptor slowly carves into the marble, has the character and features of his ideal — beauty or baseness, grandeur or giief. But in this spiritual likeness the features are not carved in from without, but wrought out from within. They are already there in substantial power. The character of the features is determined as abso- lutely as though written in the rock with a diamond pen. Not with the rigidity of a passive statue, but with the decision and permanence of an energetic life. 74 A GBACE FOR A GRACE. However varied in their manifestations, their very variety depends on the unity, the actuality of that inward life. And where life is it will develop. The higher the kind of life the more surely will its power be felt. Sin is destructive in its nature and fatal in its tendency, but its very power for death has in it a wondrous life. The en'-^^y of its destructiveness yields only to some gtronger power. That destruc- tiveness has an aggressive power that clutches any- thing it may touch. Put sin away down in the most remote comer of a human soul, and, like the leprosy in the bones, it will work all through, upwards, out- wards. It will wield every power, it will master every impulse. Put it in an angel and it will make him a demon. But with all this energy of power sin is weaker than life. Sin cannot destroy the soul it has ruined, — God alone can annihilate the life that God alone gave. As life is thus mightier than death, as the higher the kind of life the more surely is it supreme, and as our new life is the highest of all life, — for we are " made partakers of the divine nature," — so surely will the living image grow. That new nature is in the highest sense aggressive, — aggressive with the energy of God. It can permit no rival. As surely as God is the mightiest power, so surely will each feature, instinct with God's life, grow and subdue and triumph. The growth may not always be unilbrm; like physical or mental development it is promoted by means. The heavenly breath of prayer, the manna of the " Word," the Christian labor that i A GRACE FOR A GRACE. 15 lew dve Ival. rely lud [ays It is I gives a ruddy completeness to the whole character, these, and a hundred varying circumstances, may vary the rapidity and uniformity of the growth. The mind of the healthy child not only posses^as every faculty of the cultivated man, but each faculty is surely developing. So with the spiritual charac- ter. Knowledge may grow faster than humility. Gentleness may not unfold as quickly as courage. But undue growth there will not be, monstrosities there cannot be. No grace is dormant ; the growth of other graces implies its growth. Whether we can detect it or not, it is laying up resources of power that will need but a word or an incident to cut the re- straint and free the swelling life. Omnipotence is present and it cannot be idle. The child must grow ^like th0 father, because the all-absorbing. Christian, divine, life has been put within, and reign it must, and reign it will. The likeness will be ultimately ^perfect. Here all comparisons fail us. They fail because God's truth is grander than human metaphor, more perfect than earthly symbol. The growing likeness of the child in his physical and mental features may in some degree represent to us the assimilation of the spiritual man, but only up to a certain point of development. We see men grow physically and men- tally, and when maturity comes we find that it is but decay, and decay is death. All comparisons fail also because the imperfect, the finite, cannot conceive 76 A GRACE FOR A GRACE. ;\' the perfect. We know, we see, we feel somewhat of the growing man, but nothing of the perfect man in Christ Jesus. We have never seen a man physically or mentally perfect, mur ^^ I'^ss one spiritually perfect. If Christ had remained on ea^ oh, if his many-sided char- acter had been studied by the millions of eyes that have read his life, perhaps our ideas of that character would be much less inadequate than they are. But we very much doubt it. He himself, no less than his truth, are essentially understood, not by sight but by faith. Even the disciple who "saw and handled," and trusted Christ in Patmos, as well as in Palestine, could not reach the grandeur of the conception, could only say, " it doth not yet appeal* what we shall be." The reality of that "shall be," will tower far above our conception, it is true, but it will reach the* height of God's ideal. God's icjeal is for us — for any ere? ture— rperfection. No impeifection is found in his purpose ; the product will be equal to the purpose. The work will be as perfect as the design ; the deisign partakes of the perfection of the designer. To sup- pose that out of even a sinful creature God cannot make a man as perfect as his ideal, equal to his design, is to limit the power of him who is " able to present you faultless." I know not, and I care not, whether man or angel will stand higher in God's sight. I do not " want to be an angel," for then I would not be a man as God intended. Apart from the glory and honor of being what Christ is, — a perfect man, — to be what God would have me, in other words, A GRACE FOR A GRACR 77 Ids, what God will make me, is for me glory, honor, perfection. Ood is the only judge of excellence. He alone can furnish the measure, rather He alone is the measure by which to test the worth or realize the finiieness of anything or any one. Christ is that ideal revealed, Christ is that standard set up. In the creation of these "new creatures" in the image of Christ, the fancy of the Greek philosopher is more than realized. The type here has its arche- type in the heavens. But both type and archetype surpass in their glorious reality the grandeur of the philosopher's conceptions. Even the human type far transcends in likeness to God, the vague, earthly "divinity" with which modem visionaries fancy themselves endowed, — more surely is Christ, the archetype, infinitely beyond it. Gradual assimilation to that archetype is the law here, but Eo will cut it short in righteousness. He will finish the work as He began it, by a sudden, divine transformation. He will lift us up " unto a perfect man, unto the mea- sure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," for " when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Then the graces will no longer be in bud, but in flower, yea, rather in rich fruit. The finite will in one sense body forth the infinite. A piece of broken glass from the street, or a dew drop on the grass, may not give as grand, but it gives as perfect and as brilliant a reflection of the sun as the mighty ocean can give. So the finite, limited character of man may be as perfect and brilliant a IS A GRACE FOR A GRACE. reflection of Christ as the character of the loftiest spirit on high. Physically we shall be " fashioned like His glorious body." Morally we shall not have " spot or wrinkle or any such thing." Intellectually we shall have such perfection as befits creatures, a capacity for growth limited only by the bounds Qod has set. That capacity and limit are /or lis perfection, because they satisfy the idea and purposes of Qod. Perfec- tion that admits no growth belongs only to the infinite I AM. To suppose that we can know all the facts of knowledge that now exist, is to suppose us gods in- stead of creatures. And even if the universe should be blown into i^othing by the breath of the Almighty, and we should be the only created life in His presence, the infinite Father, the omnipotent Saviour, the eter- nal Spirit would still be our everlasting study, our increasing wonder. Worship would ever bow lower, and adoration would rise higher, and even finite intel- lect would grow broader, as our loving, reverent thoughts climbed towards the infinite heii^lits, and gazed down towards the depths, and stretched out over the breadths of the character and ways of Him who is '' past finding out," To make creatures that could not, that would not thus expand as God unfold- ed himself, would be to make mere machines. The perfection that God bestows is no such limited gift as that. Such perfection would be imperfection. It would unfit us for the work and the worship and the revelations of the place prepared for us. Our like- >■ A GRACE FOR A GRACE. 19 ness to Christ demands no such cramped lifelessness of character as that. The power of growth in know- ledge and work and wornhip enhances rather than mars our resemblance to Him who is infinite in His perfections. But in all the moral features of our Christian char- acter the resemblance must be complete. The obedi- ence that works in every movement of body and soul will be as constant as the " eternal life," which is the constant power within. The whole being will be transparent with purity, for we shall have " become the righteousness of God in him." " My peace" will sit a queen over an undisturbed heart. Humility, — which is nobility in God's sight, — will encircle the bowing, exalted head as a kingly crown. Love, God's love, Christ's love, will give a glow of warmth and life to the whole complexion. And then all these bright graces, — like the prismatic colours blending together into light again, — will shine out in the "glory of His grace," as seen " in the face of Jesus Christ." Here and now the likeness is imperfect. We are acceptable only by looking through faith for worthi- ness to Him who " is worthy." God can see us per- fect, only, as it were, by imputing to us the graces he sees in " our shield." But faith will give place to sight, and imputation give place to reality. Then " we shaJl be like Him for we shall see Him." Then, too, God will have wrought in us Christ's righteous- ness, nay, rather, Christ himself. The liknesswill be 80 A GRACE FOR A GRACE. SO real and so perfect that Christ " will be admired in all them that believe." Now there is much sin in them, thep there will be Christ's righteousness. Now there are traces of the foul blots; then over the whole being will shine Christ's beauty. Now shame clouds the glory ; then His glory " shall be revealed in us." Now it is blind, weak man ; then it will be Christ himself. The grace, the beauty, the glory that God and angels will admire will be Christ's, — will be Christ. Each one of " that multitude whom no man can number," will be, as it were, a new manifestation of Christ, with a grace for a grace, a beauty for a beauty, a gloiy for a glory. I i aired in in rthe lame 3aled U be that 11 be man ition for a HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. A Lecture Delivered be/ore the Allumni of the CANADIAN LITERAKY INSTITUTE. It was the month of May, 415 before Christ. The whole city of Athens was astir with preparations for the expedition to Sicily. Almost every citizen had invested in the undertaking. Oracles and prophe- cies were in every one's mouth, promising golden success to Athens. But in a single night these hopes were destroyed. By one act of sacrilege, the courage of the people was taken away, the minds of the gods were averted, and the expedition be- came a failure. At every corner in the city, beside almost every door, in front of every public build- ing, stood a square pillar surmounted by a bust of the god Hermes. In one night unknown hands broke them all to •pieces. The next day the people were wild with suspicion and fear. No one person could have done it; there must have been a conspiracy. Some judg- 82 HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. u ment would befal the city. The gods would surely visit them with vengeance. All eyes turned on one man. He was the ringleader of a set of wild youth, the terror of quiet citizens, the reck- less, daring, capricious Alcibiades. But no proof was ever found. All we know is, that such a deed was done, and that, from his known character, Alcibiades was capable of doing it. Supposing, for the present, that he did it, we must see more in the act than a mere fact in his- tory. When he and his companions laid irreverent hands on these sacred images, they were doing what never had been done, what could not have been done before. Ulysses, "wicked Ulysses," "the inventor of evil," could not have done what Alcibiades did. Ulysses carried off the Palla- dium because he coveted it as a precious sacred treasure, and he guarded it reverently. The very possibility of such a deed's being committed, showed the change in the minds of, at least, part of the people. Alcibiades was more than a wild youth sporting in his lawlessness. He was even more than the young America of Greece, lifting up his hand against his Father's gods. When he over- threw the images, he did in act what the philoso- phers did in word. He was but anticipating what the people would slowly do to the gods seated on" Olympus. Thoughtful men had begun to lose faith, not ' HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. 83 n only in brazen and marble images, but in the gods themselves. He was — perhaps not the first — but the most reckless of a long line of doubters that stretched down beyond the Apostles. He com- menced by violating the images ; Lucian ended by making the world laugh at the quarrels and foibles of the gods themselves. Aicibiades was thus, at once, the growth of his own age and a prophecy of the next. In one respect, his impiety and the wisdom of the sages of Greece, were doing a good work. In shaking the confidence of the people in their gods, they were preparing the way for Him whom the Father was soon to send, to whom the '* gathering of the people" would be. One morning in December, at the " darkest hour before the dawn," I was hurrying off to a five o'clock triiiii. But just aIi* ad of me, down the street, ran a ii.an putting out the lamps, and leav- ing me to rt ake my way, as best I could, through the slipper;^ streets of the dismal city. But, after all, he wtis preparirig for the daylight and the sun ; and I only longed the more for that sun that would be better than ten thousand flickering lamps. And just so it was in that period of the history of the world. The nations were travelling in a darkness that seemed to be growing denser ; and yet human hands were casting down their only gods, human hande were putting out the only lights by which they guided their steps. Left thus in a double darkness they were the more ready to 84 HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. h:, ■ welcome the morning, and turned their waiting eyes to the East, to see the first glimmer of day- break — to see the first brightness of His coming. And now, who and what were the gods of those ancient Greeks, the Roman form of whose names has become incorporated in our language ? In one respect, the religion of the Greeks was a religion of nature. Instead of being housed up, as we are, for several months in the year, they lived for a great part of the year under the open sky. Our sunniest sky is never so sunny and so real as the sky which the Greek could, seemingly, almost touch from the tops of his purple hills. Our balmiest June air in never so balmy as the crystal air in which the child frolicked, the maiden sang, and the grandfather gossipped all day, and often far into the night. Nature was thus very familiar to him, but it was also very sacred. As the Greek looked around, his creative iriiagi- nation saw gods moving everywhere. He was a real Pantheist. Everything he saw was full of God — ^was God. It required the genius of a Shake- speare to fill a midsummer night in England with such fairies as Cobweb and Blossom, and charming Puck ; but the fancies of every Greek made nymphs sport and fairies dance by night or by day. We talk of the sun's rising anil of the sun's setting — he was dazzled every morning by the sun driving his glorious chariot up the hill of the sky ; and at evening Night spread her black wings over a sub- HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. 85 diied world. We say the West wind blows ; but he did not doubt it was Zephyrus sporting with the leaves. Every drop of rain was to him a tear which the Hyades shed for their lost brother. To the Greek, it would have been sacrilege in Herschel to take the moon in his hands, to tell her weight, to count her mountains, and to metisure her valleys. To talk of lightning as electricity, to talk of cork- ing it up in jars, and of sending it off on telegraph wires to New York, to find out the price of green- backs, or pork, or butter, would have been more than an electric shock to the Greek — it would have been rank blasphemy. To him, lightning was the gleaming thunderbolt of Jupiter, hurled tor plea- sure or for vengeance. Juj)iter nhook his shield, and there was a tempest. The ea spai'kled, but it was a Nereid that sported herself A .spring gushed up, but a Naid leaped up to the light ; Persephone s:^>rang up in every flower ; some god looked down from every twinkling star; and so through all nature. A Greek poet was a real poet, for his living fancy created life, liunian ajid divine ; and if he had looked only at the bright and pure side of nature, if he had looked only at the life that enriches and the goodness that blesses, his gods would have been good, and beautiful, and benevolent. But he saw fruits and crops blasted or destroyed, and straightway he })ictured to himself a terrible god of Famine. Turn where he would he saw a god with \\ 86 HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. k ife b ; a thousand faces, and on every face some fiendish sneer, and that was his great enemy, Disease. Every vio- lence was caused by some god or some demon. Scylla and Charybdis were ferocious monsters. A volcano was a fire-breathing giant, — an earthquake was a stroke of Neptune's trident. But the Greek saw more than all this. He not only looked around and outside of himself, but he turned his eyes within. He saw, not only the world that can be touched, but he saw, I had almost said, a vaster and more varied world than that. Like our own Bunyan, he saw that man's soul was crowded thick with wondrous life. For every passion of hiy own heart, he created a god. Every thought became a deity ; every mental power was sublimed into a divinity. A bright thought flashing into his mind, was the flashing of the wing of a heavenly muse. Poetic inspiration was to him a divine breathing. The power of thought, that power which is peculiarly human and nearest the divine, stood before him as a majestic goddess, having leaped in full armor really from his own brain. Mischief and strife became two gods who were continually raising brawls and squalls evoj in the Olympic Mansions. C'arelessness wis Epimetheus, and foresight was Prometheus, the best friend of man. Indeed the whole soul was to him a lovely maiden captivated and en- snared by love, but made happier and better by her drudgery. Now, of all the systems of theology which man has J >. ■ i¥; -aw--.-- « J ^ Is le HUMAN GODS AND THE DIVINE MAN. 87 J created, this is by far the most attractive. No other race of man-made gods had so many charms; no other gods were clothed with such gilded, kingly trappings, were crowned with such a diadem of poetry. This continued consciousness of a divinity, this child- like familiarity with what they thought to be God, is more than poetic — more than merely beautiful. Whatever life the Greek saw, whatever life he felt, was to him a present, living god. To him every wood swarmed with gods. The sky sparkled with them. They danced in every sunbeam, floated in ev