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 1 1 
 
 i 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
THE CHILDREX OF WISDOM 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED IX CANADIAN PULPITS. 
 
 I!V THE 
 
 REV. JOHN DE SOYRES, M.A., 
 
 liector 0/ St. John's Church, St. John, New lirungm^-k; formerly 
 Jliilsean Lecturer in the I 'nicergity of Cambridge. 
 
 r^l 
 
 TORONTO: WILLIAM BRIGGS. 
 CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. 
 
 1897. 
 
Kntrrkd accordint; to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year 
 one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by John i>k 
 SOYRBS, at the Department of Agriculture. 
 
5n 'Wccc06aru0 'dnltas : 
 
 5n noil •Weccseariis Xibcrtaa : 
 
 3n ©miUbua Caritaa. 
 
I I 
 
PREFACH. 
 
 A WORD of exphin.'itioii umy fitly precede 
 tliis selection of .serinons, preached by an Enj--- 
 lish clero:ynian during a ten years' ministry in 
 ('anada, both as concerning the topics chosen and 
 those which find no place here. The Church of 
 England in Canada has her own great qualities 
 iind their defects. As a voluntary Church, 
 virtually without endowments and entirely free 
 from State control, she presents a noble record 
 of devotion among her clergy and of generous 
 co-operation on the part of her laity. But the 
 present conditions of the Canadian Church, the 
 narrow though increasing scope of theological 
 education, and other circumstances connected 
 with parochial appointments, tend to the de- 
 velopment of a somewhat contracted spirit, 
 foreign to the true catholic breadth of the' 
 Church of England. This will account for the 
 exposition, from different points of view and in 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 reference to different subjects, of the origin of 
 English Churcli parties, witli tlieir reason of 
 existence and claim to recognition. 
 
 It will explain also the earnest plea for the 
 brightest accessories of public worship in con- 
 junction with the sober teaching of the Reformed 
 Church of England. 
 
 The custom of funeral sermons, more fre(]uent 
 in the colonies than in the motherland, affords 
 opportunity for depicting two contrasted char- 
 acters in the late ^Ir. T. W. Daniel, a noble repre- 
 sentative of the Evangelical school of tliought, 
 and Bishop Medley, the friend of Keble and 
 Pusey. 
 
 It remains to be added that, in the sermon on 
 
 the " Understanding Prayer " (p. 25), the writer 
 
 owes great obligations to a paper read many 
 
 years ago at Leeds by his friend, the Rev. J. A. 
 
 Cross, Rector of Holbeck. 
 
 J. DE S. 
 
 St. John, New Brunswick, 
 Advent, 1897. 
 
 i)l 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. -THE CHILDFIKN OF WISDOM. 
 
 PAdK 
 
 "Hut wisdom is justified of all her children."— St. 
 
 Luke vii. lio 9 
 
 II. -THE UNDKRSTANDINO PRAYER. 
 
 "I will pray with the spirit, and I will i)ray with the 
 under.staudingalso.'— 1. Cor. xiv. 15 - 
 
 25 
 
 III. -THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 *• Remember the former things of old."— Isaiah xlvi. 9 34 
 
 IV. -CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 "0 praise God in his holiness," etc.— Psalm cl. 
 
 47 
 
 v.— THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 •• And the king said unto his servants, Know ye not 
 that there is a prince and a great man fallen this 
 day in Israel ?"- 2 Samuel iii. 38 - 
 
 55 
 
 VL —RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 " As long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord."— 
 1 Samuel 1. 28 
 
 71 
 
t • • 
 
 vin 
 
 ("OXTENTS. 
 
 VII.— THK IIKAIIY OF MOLINKSS. 
 
 I'AOK 
 
 " Worship I lu! I^onl in the ln'iuity of lioliiioss."' Psalm 
 
 xcvi. \\ 80 
 
 VIII. PATIKNCK. 
 
 ** In your iiiitionco yo shall win your scnils." — Lukk 
 
 xxi. 19, R.V. 92 
 
 IX.— THK CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUl':STlONS. 
 
 ' Hut if the watchiniin sci; tlu; sword conio, and hlow 
 not till) trumpet, and the people he not \varne<l, 
 and the sword eonie, and take any person from 
 among them, his hlood will I recpiirc at the wateli- 
 nian's hand."— Ezkk. xxxiii. G - - - - 98 
 
 X.— THK PEACEFUL END. 
 
 " Mark the perfeet man, and hchohl the upright : for 
 
 the end of that man is peace." — Psalm xxxvii. 37. 1 10 
 
 XL— YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 " There is but a step between mo and <leath." — 1 Sam. 
 
 XX. 3 117 
 
 XIL— "NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 •* And Hczekiah brake in pieces thel»rasen serpent that 
 Moses had made : for unto those days the chihlren 
 of Israel did burn incense unto it : and he called it 
 Nehushtan."— 2 Kinmjs xviii. 4 - - - - 128 
 
 XIIL— THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 **I have finished my course." — 2 Tim. iv. 7 - 
 
 141 
 
THE ClIILDKEX OF WISDOM. 
 
 Pnnchcd at St. John's Church, on the .'I'th of 
 May (W'hitftundau), /'>'"<•>'• 
 
 "hut \vis(l<»iii is jiistiHed «>f nil her oliildrou."-- St. 
 LiKK vii. .*i5. 
 
 It is not my puri)OHo to (Hhcuss the textual 
 (juestions, iuteivstin<^ unci important thou^li 
 tliey are, attachinf^ to this verse and tlie parallel 
 passa<(e in St. Matthew. There, as you remem- 
 ber, the last Revision has substituted the words : 
 WMoin is justified inj her works; and the 
 latest editions of the Greek text of the New 
 Testament have thou<(ht it needful to place a 
 mark of «loubt a<(ainst the concludin<( words in 
 St. Luke. But apart from textual doubts, there 
 have been varieties of interpretation among 
 those even who hold, as I hold, that the authen- 
 ticity of the words cannot be shaken. Some 
 connnentators of repute, both in early and 
 modem times, have taken the words in an 
 ironical sense. Tlie Jews are the "children of 
 wisdom," in their own estimation ; but, the true 
 wisdom, the Word, is justified from their mis- 
 conceptions, and also the lesser wisdom embod- 
 ied in John the Baptist. Other commentators 
 
10 
 
 THE CHILDREX ()F WISDOM. 
 
 have more correctly interpreted the words as 
 meaning that the Children of Wisdom, those 
 who have attached themselves to her, and are 
 Christ's disciples, give cause and proof in their 
 lives to justify the wisdom they possess. 
 
 But two elements of sadness, even in this view, 
 are obvious : Firstly, wisdom is impeached by 
 mankind and is in need of justification. Secondly, 
 to effect this justification, she nuist needs gene- 
 rate sons who achieve it. Yes, there was a tone 
 of sadness running through the whole address 
 of Jesus to the multitude. It was a sad occasion, 
 if we accept the view that the Baptist's question 
 meant a momentary wavering of faith, though 
 this is not certainly established. It was sad to 
 confess that, against the resistance of the w^orld, 
 the Kingdom of God must manifest itself with 
 violence, breaking through the external cover- 
 ings of the old dispensation. It was sadder to 
 deplore that neither teacher — neither the Fore- 
 runner, nor the greater One wdiom he proclaimed, 
 could escape the contradictory scorn of their 
 methods. But we must understand the situation 
 of the Jews before we condemn. 
 
 It was indeed a hard and puzzling ordeal for 
 the Jews to hav^e to judge, at the same time, two 
 charact«>rs so diverse, and to their minds so 
 contradictory, as those of John the Baptist and 
 Jesus Christ. Let us place ourselves in their 
 position. When they had, to some extent, over- 
 come their repugnance to John's unconventional 
 
THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 11 
 
 life and words, ha<l reconciled themselves to 
 his inconvenient directness in commanding un- 
 pleasant sacrifices, their troubles were not over. 
 Instead of establishing them as his disciples, 
 their work to pace w4th him a theological 
 academy, the privileged sharers of an esoteric 
 faith, he tells them that they are but at the 
 threshold ; that he himself cannot guide them 
 further ; that a higher and greater teacher must 
 now be theirs. And the new Instructor seemed 
 to reverse all that had been learned. Where John 
 had abstained, He enjoys. Where the old teacher 
 had left liberty, He imposes new and stringent 
 mandates. Where John had answered (questions 
 of casuistry with specific instruction, Jesus 
 leaves them to their owai conscience. He declines 
 to be a judge or a divider, He refuses to be 
 named one of the prophets, He retires when they 
 would fain make him king. 
 
 What wonder that some, against John the 
 Baptist's desire, made themselves his sect rather 
 than his disciples : just as, later, Paul and ApoUos 
 and Peter were to be distressed by partisans 
 who regarded them not as teachers, but as the 
 figure-heads of their factions. 
 
 And others solved the difficulty yet more 
 expeditiously by rejecting both teachers, rejecting 
 at once that burdensome baptism which involved 
 repentance, and the discipleship which claimed 
 the Cross. No far-fetched excuses were needed; 
 a very moderate measure of ingenuity sufficed. 
 
12 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 The one teaclier could be rejected because he 
 separated himself from mankind ; the other 
 because He shared its joys and sorrows. " For 
 John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor 
 drinking ivine, and ye say, he hath a devil. The 
 Son of Man is come eating and drinhing, and 
 ye say, Behold, a ghdtonous man and a ivine- 
 hibber, the friend of jndjlicans and sinners. 
 But wisdom is justified of all her children." 
 
 She is justified from them, from their own 
 personal insufficiency and weakness which sink 
 into oblivion, while that which is her gift 
 remains eternal. For the children of wisdom 
 are many, and are but sharers in her heritage. 
 Sometimes they misuse the gift ; sometimes they 
 do not even comprehend its value till late, nor 
 their own responsibilities. Nevertheless, sooner 
 or later the jewel shines out, in spite of the rude 
 setting. And wisdom is justified in and by her 
 children, for, though they meet with disdain 
 at first, then opposition, then, perhaps, a 
 seductive and deceptive rush of favor, followed 
 by neglect; yet at last, long perhaps after their 
 death, they are recognized in their true character, 
 scions of the royalty of truth. 
 
 That difficulty of choice between different 
 ideals and different systems has lasted through 
 all ages of the Christian Church. Parties have 
 changed their names and their watch-words, 
 but in essence they are continued in unbroken 
 descent. It is easy to denounce parties, and 
 
 1 
 
 1-*.- 
 
 I 
 
 % 
 
 3. 
 
 i 
 
THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 18 
 
 most easy to denounce those which are not our 
 own ; but it is better to understand their reason 
 of existence, and the forces which maintain 
 tliem. " There must he heresies (or factions) 
 among you,'' said St. Paul, " that they which 
 are approved may he made manifest;' and 
 mucli more must there be one-sided conceptions 
 of Truth, earnest, sincere efforts to maintain and 
 propagate that which we know to be Truth, and 
 beheve to be the wliole Truth. 
 
 From the time of the Reformation there have 
 been certain great divisions of Protestant Chris- 
 tianity, regretable as having caused so much 
 of controversy and bitter misunderstanding, but 
 each from its own side having striven for some 
 important truth, neglected, or opposed, or mis- 
 conceived by the contemporary Church. First 
 of these, in order alike of chronology and 
 importance, is that section (at first indeed 
 representing the whole spirit of the Reformation 
 itself) whose glorious function it was to state 
 once more to a deceived and ignorant world the 
 true source of salvation in Jesus Christ. To 
 narrate the history of that movement is to 
 describe once more the most memorable chapter 
 in the history of the Church of England. It is 
 to tell once more the well-known story of 
 Latimer bidding Ridley play the man; of 
 Cranmer expiating a moments weakness by a 
 martyr's heroism; Jewell in his great Apology, 
 demonstrating the agreement of the Reformers 
 
14 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 '"In; I 
 
 with the Scriptures and the Primitive Church ; 
 Baxter and Howe, in a later age, proclaiming 
 the same message ; in the last century, Wesley 
 and Whitefield, outside at last (but never in 
 hostility to the Church), Romaine and Toplady, 
 Venn and Newton and Cecil within, raising a 
 needed protest against the utter spiritual dead- 
 ness of the age, when tlie pulpit seemed to have 
 no function but to discuss abstract questions of 
 religious evidence, and to inculcate outward 
 morality without experiencing or communicating 
 one spark of that love to God and the neighbor 
 which alone can generate it. 
 
 Who but will thank God for the work of these 
 men, a glorious page in the history of Christi- 
 anity ? But, while the excellence of that work 
 needs no proof, we ai'^ not blind to the danrei-s, 
 the exaggerations and the deficiencies which 
 sometimes followed in its train. For that is the 
 inherent weakness of human nature and human 
 intelligence, that rarely can we grasp more than 
 one truth, and sometimes only but a part of it. 
 
 Just as, only in the rarest instances of genius 
 — to a Homer, a Dante, or a Shakespeare, the 
 whole world of human nature has been revealed; 
 so in theology, only to a few chosen minds has 
 God given that wide and sober grasp, that calm 
 and still zealous energy, which preserves the 
 balance of seemingly antagonistic truths, the 
 need for freedom and the need for government ; 
 faith as the source, holiness as the result of life 
 
 I 
 
THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 15 
 
 ill Christ ; above all, and in all, the teaching and 
 the practice of charity, " the very bond of neace 
 and of all virtues!' 
 
 Now, the dangers and shortcomings which fol- 
 lowed in the train of this movement were not 
 wanting. The intense emphasis laid upon the 
 need of a [)rofessed and personal faith, led some- 
 times to a carelessness about outward organiza- 
 tion, to a neglect sometimes of practical religion, 
 and often, alas, to the admission of hypocritical 
 followers, who professed with their lips what 
 was utterly absent from their hearts. Mere 
 voluntary assemblages of Christians, gathered 
 round some eloquent personage, though often, for 
 a "time, the centres of real spiritual life and help 
 to others, arc transitory, depending on the life, 
 and sometimes on the character and teaching of 
 one man. And so another party had arisen in 
 the Church, not disregarding the great funda- 
 mental teachings, but believing that the faith of 
 Christ needs an outward organization, in order 
 that the great deposit of revealed truth may be 
 preserved inviolate, that all things may be 
 done decently and in order, that the existence 
 of the Church should not depend on the life and 
 strength of individual ministers, but should have 
 the aid, under God's spirit, of those organic helps 
 so clearly recognized in St. Paul's epistles to 
 Timothy and Titus. 
 
 That this party has also a noble record of good 
 work, it is impossible to deny. It was from 
 
 • \ 
 
1 
 
 10 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 I'!': 
 
 II'm 
 
 r >i 
 
 I'll 
 I '1 1 1 
 
 tlieir ranks, at tlie bef^inning of the last century, 
 that Robert Nelson and his friends established 
 the first great Missionary Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel in foreign parts, as also the 
 sister association for promoting Christian Know- 
 ledge. It was by their efforts that irreverence 
 in divine worship was gradually removed, and 
 that, now, every section of Christendom recog- 
 nizes that to worship God in a neglected build- 
 ing and with slovenly performance of the 
 Church's ordinances, is not a proof of a spiritual 
 worship, but rather of its complete absence. 
 
 But here again the shadow is found with the 
 light. Ignorant followers, zealous without dis- 
 cretion, unable to exercise the true balance, made 
 all Truth and all Holiness to consist inob'dience 
 to authority, and pei'formance of rubrical ordi- 
 nance. The outward sign alone was magnified : 
 the element of personal faith in the inward and 
 spiritual grace was ignored. And so, from one 
 side as from the other, came bitter words of 
 recrimination: " You are not preaching the pure 
 Gospel !" said one party. " You are making the 
 Word of God of none effect through your tradi- 
 tions." " And you," exclaimed the opposite side, 
 " you are faithless to your vows of ordination. 
 You are despising those ordinances and sacra- 
 ments which Christ commanded." 
 
 And thus, in bitter strife, the crowning virtue 
 of charity was lost. And worse than this. Ex- 
 aggeration and one-sidedness have this terrible 
 
 
 
THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 17 
 
 pure 
 
 
 after-eftt'ct, tliat they generate an equal exag- 
 geration oil the other side. Because one side 
 seems to neglect, on tlie other, the excess will be 
 increased, and the guU* widened between those 
 who claim the same eternal Father, the same re- 
 deeming Saviour, and the same sanctifying 
 Spirit. And so there was need for another teach- 
 ing, though not another party, to uphold the 
 principle of charity — that new commandment, 
 " that we love one another." No doubt the ab- 
 horrence of controversy, of mere verbal ortho- 
 doxy, or of mere machine-like correctness of 
 ritual, has caused on this side also errors as re- 
 gretable as in the others. The knowledge that 
 empty phrases had been substituted for God's 
 truth has led some of them to neglect the due 
 exposition of fundamental doctrines; and the 
 consciousness that Church order has sometimes 
 been made the cloak of sacerdotal tyranny, has 
 led at times to neglect of organization divinely 
 approved. But still there was need for the 
 counterbalancing force, and among these last, as 
 among the others, the children of wisdom have 
 been found. 
 
 In our own century, among the worthy repre- 
 sentatives of the first movement I have described, 
 who has not heard of the character and work of 
 Charles Simeon, at Cambridge ^ Coming there 
 when all religious life seemed dead, when theo- 
 logical learning was at its lowest ebb, he strove 
 against an opposition which would have daunted 
 
18 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 i; 
 
 tlie stoutest heart. Actual violence, bitter attacks, 
 then contempt, nicknames — tlie easy substitute 
 for arguments — fell to his lot, but he pressed on, 
 gathering around him from students and towns- 
 people a small but gradually increasing body of 
 hearers for the Gospel of Christ. At last he 
 lived to sec the battle won ; and when, fifty years 
 ago, he passed away to his rest, there are those 
 still living who remember the universal grief, 
 how those who once had been opponents joined 
 in the great procession to the historic chapel of 
 King's College, and all recoijnized that here 
 Wisdom was justified by her offspring. 
 
 Nor shall we forget another figure from that 
 sister university, which has been said to have 
 been more fruitful in movements than in men, 
 but still boasts a great calendar of sons who 
 have done service to Church and State. John 
 Keble, at Oxford, led that movement which at 
 first intended to restore reverent service, and to 
 inculcate neglected truths, passed in later hands 
 far beyond the intentions of its creators. But 
 the union of an apostolical simplicity with per- 
 fect scholarship and culture, made him a figure 
 so personally attractive that all bitterness ceased 
 around him — the weapon of the controversialist 
 fell as that gentle face appeared. And when the 
 professorship at Oxford was exchanged for the 
 quiet vicarage of Hursley, and he who had ex- 
 pounded the principles of the Church put forth 
 those Hymns of the Christian Year, which are 
 
 I 
 
 M 
 
 I 
 
 ■i 
 
 ■I 
 
 
THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 19 
 
 now the lieritage of all Christians, sung by Dis- 
 senter as by Churelnnan — tlien men who (littered 
 most widely from his opinions on some vexed 
 <|uestions felt that here also was a child of wis- 
 dom, and they learned of him later because they 
 had loved him first. Keble was no lukewarm 
 character, no temporizing adherent of his cause, 
 he could speak strongly and with warmth. But 
 those dead controversies have left no echo, and 
 the living voice speaks to all our hearts, when 
 
 we smg 
 
 " Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, 
 It is not night if Thou bo near ; 
 () may no earth-born cloud arise 
 To hide Thee from Thy servant's eytis." 
 
 And if, lastly, I may speak to you of one with 
 whom, in former years, I came in personal con- 
 tact, I would claim, as for Simeon and Keble, so 
 also for Frederick Denison Maurice, the same 
 sonship of the heritage of wisdom. Sixteen 
 years have passed since he was laid to rest, and 
 already he is only a name to many people. But 
 some here, doubtless, have heard or read of his 
 early struggles, the alternations of fame and 
 obloquy, the fierce attacks, the sufferings, neither 
 feigned nor protruded; at last rest, rather by 
 sufferance than recognition. And to the younger 
 generation of those who came under his influence 
 at Cambridge, who remember what they learnt 
 from look and voice as well as from definite 
 
20 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 teacliings, wliat lessons of truth aiul reality 
 shown forth like the fjood priest of Chaucer: 
 
 " And Christe.s wny, find His Apostlos Twelve 
 He taught ; l>ut first he followed it himself ;" 
 
 that influence was unspeakable. 
 
 Maurice was broutrht to the Church of Enj(- 
 land not by education or hereditar}'^ connection, 
 but by mature conviction that her ordered liberty 
 affords the best framework for spiritual pro<^ress, 
 and that she reconciles Protestant freedom with 
 fidelity to the universal Church. Once in her 
 ranks, and after dedicating himself to her work 
 as a minister, he consecrated his life as solemnly 
 as ever a monk of the Middle Ages cut himself 
 off from the world's temptations. He was one 
 of the first to feel, and to excite in others, that 
 intense synlpathy for the poor which must be a 
 faith, though sometimes it is only a fashion. He 
 it was, with colleagues one in spirit, who pro- 
 claimed that the Gospel blessing on the poor was 
 no mere phrase. He taught prudence and self- 
 help to the working-man ; explained the prin- 
 ciples of co-operation ; pressed on them the 
 need for higher education ; offered himself as 
 their teacher. His voice was drowned in the 
 uproar of the year 1848 ; it was overwhelmed by 
 the party cries of those who resisted all change 
 and all improvement, or who disdained his pro- 
 posals as insufficient. But the voice was not 
 silenced, nor were its words forgotten. Who 
 
THE flllLDHEN OF WISDOM. 
 
 21 
 
 reality 
 cer: 
 
 A'O 
 
 f;" 
 
 lection, 
 liberty 
 I'ot^ress, 
 ni with 
 in her 
 r work 
 >lemnly 
 himself 
 as one 
 L's, that 
 st be a 
 )n. He 
 lo pro- 
 )or was 
 d self- 
 e prin- 
 m the 
 5elf as 
 in the 
 led by 
 hange 
 is pro- 
 is not 
 Who 
 
 does not remember the Laureate's invitation, 
 and the lines : 
 
 . . . " Till you should turn vo dearer matters, 
 
 Dear to the man who is dear to God ; 
 
 How hust to help the slender store, 
 
 How mend the dwellings of the j)o(»r ; 
 
 How gain in life, as life advances, 
 
 Valor and charity, more and more." 
 
 At last came the end of the combats, and Cam- 
 bridf^e, the place of his first choice, received him 
 as a teacher and as a parish priest. Never will 
 those w^ho then, for the first time, heard him, 
 forget that voice which made the reading of the 
 Scriptures a commentary, and the oft-heard 
 Liturgy a new devotional discipline. Never will 
 they forget, who had the privilege of meeting in 
 his house, the magical influence of a nearer per- 
 sonal access ; those classes, almost like a family 
 circle, in which the narrow light of Locke's 
 Essay was made the text of conversation that 
 opened to our eyes the first glimpses of that true 
 philosophy — 
 
 " Which is not crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute. " 
 
 And when but a year later, he w^as taken from 
 us, in the midst of work for the world, in the 
 beginning of recognition by the world, it was as 
 when the tidings came that Elijah had departed, 
 the silencing of a great voice, — but no, that 
 
22 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF WISDOM. 
 
 Ill I 
 
 voice was not silonct'd, " he being dead, yet 
 speaketh." 
 
 And for eacli and all of these men the Church 
 of England has room in her wide fold. She 
 is not a sect, born out of some minute dif- 
 ference, and ending with some transient popu- 
 larity; but a Church, built upon the broad 
 and firm rock of Christ's teachings, ordinances, 
 and promises. Those great and wise statesmen, 
 who stood around the throne of Edward and 
 Elizabeth, and framed the substance of our for- 
 mularies, endeavored not to contract, but to 
 enlarge. They wished to retain, if it were pos- 
 sible, the whole nation ; they strove to include, 
 not only those who were capable of grasping the 
 full teachings of the Reformation, but those 
 thousands in the North and West who had not 
 yet severed the ties of affection to the old forms, 
 and who now found so many of the old prayers 
 and praises, as well as the old creeds, faithfully 
 translated in the new Liturgy. 
 
 Our Cliurch admits, she recognizes the three 
 great sections I have described to you ; and he 
 is not a wise son who should desire to diminish 
 her Catholic scope, even by retrenching some 
 practices and some opinions which he does not 
 share. For to what tribunal can he appeal ? To 
 the Articles ? We all subscribe them readily, 
 and we are bound to accept them in their simple 
 grammatical sense. To the Prayer Book ? All 
 parties may desire in private some alterations 
 
THE CHILDHKN OK WISDOM. 
 
 23 
 
 yet 
 
 wlit'ther of luUlition or abbreviatioiiH. but all 
 accept it loyally, and prize it as our iiiestiinablo 
 treasure. To our History ^ There have been 
 Calvinistie Archbishops, an<' Arniinian and 
 Hi<(h Church Archbishops, anl Latitudinarian 
 Archbishops : an<l who shall venture to pro- 
 nounce upon any of them a posthumous de- 
 position i 
 
 Let us thank God, then, that all efforts to 
 narrow our Church into a sect have failed, and 
 let us hope that all future efforts may similarly 
 fail : 
 
 For any such victory would be, whether to 
 the victors or to the whole Church herself, 
 
 . . . " that dishonest victory, 
 Of Chit'i'onoii, fjitul to lil)erty ; " 
 
 and the party which gained it would speedily 
 feel the Nemesis of its suicidal policy. 
 
 For the Church to which we belong is Catho- 
 lic and Protestant, and, above all things, Na- 
 tional. She claims no infallibility for herself. 
 She denies no hope for others. Her motto is 
 found in those noble words, the authorship of 
 which is unknown, but which surely the spirit 
 of God inspired : In things necessary, Unitv ; 
 
 IN THINGS NOT NECESSARY, LIBERTY ; IN ALL 
 
 THINGS, Charity. 
 
 One last word : if we realize that the Spirit 
 is given, not to this or to that section of the 
 Church, but to every man to 'profit withal ; if 
 
24 
 
 THE Cnii.DllEN OF WISDOM. 
 
 we remember tliat to the back-sliding^- Galatians, 
 and to the restless and divided Corinthians, the 
 same apostolic salutation came as to the beloved 
 of Ephesus and Philippi ; if we remember the 
 divine blessing on the peacemakers : if we feel 
 that to preach even truth wrat^^fuUy and bit- 
 terly poisons the very truth itself; that our 
 satisfaction may be the Pharisee's pride, and the 
 object of our dislike may enjoy the Samaritan's 
 blessings ; then surely the seeming difficulty of 
 Diversity in Unity, and Unity amid Diversity, 
 will cease to perplex us. We shall Avelcome, we 
 shall honor each child of Wisdom, accepting the 
 measure of his gift ; we shall " %ualk worthy of 
 the vocation wherewith ive are called, luith all 
 lowliness and rieekness, vnth long -suffering, 
 forbearing one another in love; endeavoring 
 to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
 peace" 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 Sermon preached fore the Deanery of St. John, in 
 Trinity Church, October Sth, 18S0. 
 
 "I will jiray with the spirit, and I will pray with the 
 understanding also." — 1 Cor. xiv. 15. 
 
 In St. Paul's character nothing is more remark- 
 able than the union of enthusiasm and common 
 sense. Usually we have come to regard these 
 qualities as contradictory ; the reasonable man 
 despises tlie enthusiast, the ardent devotee re- 
 gards the other as lukewarm and lialf-hearted. 
 And yec these attributes can be, ought to be, in 
 harmony one with another ; they can and ought 
 to be in some measure represented and united 
 in each well-developed mind. 
 
 Never does St. Paul manifest this union so 
 conspicuously as in his dealing with the delicate 
 topic of the regulation of public worship. He 
 dealt with circumstances and conditions hard 
 for us even to conceive. Instead of an elaborate 
 system of inherited liturgical forms, as we possess, 
 they had but the simple ordinances of Christ, 
 which many added on to the practice of the Jewish 
 ceremonial law. But instead of our modern 
 spirit, calm and critical, rather accepting than 
 
26 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 seeking Christ and His words, there was a pas- 
 sionate zeal, there was the possession or the 
 claim of spiritual gifts, there was an intense 
 feeling of spiritual democracy, where not even 
 an apostle could urge a direct command, but 
 could only counsel and exhort. 
 
 Not for a moment would the great apostle 
 have seemed to quench the Spirit, or to despise 
 prophesying ; never would he have discouraged 
 even the unskilful utterance of a devout soul, or 
 the earnest striving of a loving spixit. But he 
 knew that an intelligent principle must pervade 
 even that service which springs from the heart's 
 impulse ; and he strove to urge such regulation, 
 and such methods, that all things might be done 
 with decency and order. 
 
 Again and again, since those days, the subject 
 of the best methods of divine service has been 
 discussed. The slow development of liturgical 
 forms was followed later by a disastrous obscurity 
 and complication — not merely the admixture of 
 spurious legend with the inspired Scripture, not 
 merely the patent abuse of saying service in 
 what had become, little by little, a dead lan- 
 guage and an unknown tongue, but those diffi- 
 culties of arrangement, admitted even by the 
 clergy, of which the Preface to our Prayer Book 
 says, " That many times there ivas more business 
 to find out what should be read, than to read it 
 when it was found out" 
 
 And now, after three more centuries, the 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 27 
 
 thought of a necessity for further revision is be- 
 fore the Christian Church. The matter has 
 repeatedly occupied the attention of the sister 
 Church of the United States. Indeed, it is a 
 most serious and solemn question I do not envy 
 the man who approaches the matter with a light 
 heart, still less one with any feeling of superiority 
 or of scorn for opposition. With regard to the 
 liturgy, two words, alteration, adaptation, have 
 oeen brought into prominence. As to the first, 
 if I dwell upon its possibilities or necessities, I 
 do not speak from any present or personal feel- 
 ing. The minister of an educated congregation 
 speaks shame to himself if he has not been able 
 to make clear to old and young the archaic 
 words, and trains of thought, or forms of ex- 
 pression, found in the liturgy. But this is a 
 question, not for individual congregations, but 
 for the whole Anglican Church. And those 
 who have ministered in the mother country in 
 large cities or in rural parishes, who know what 
 is the condition of an English artisan or an agri- 
 cultural laborer, know that the memories of a 
 few years in the Sunday-school will not fit 
 them, however zealous are the clergy, to under- 
 stand fully the words read and prayed. And our 
 Church's words, in her Twenty -fourth Article, 
 against the use of prayer " not understanded of 
 the people " should be applied, by all reasonable 
 force and inference, not only to the use of a dead 
 language, but to any conditions where the words 
 
T 
 
 28 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 uttered do not convey to tlie liearers a direct 
 and intelligible meaning. Let us remember that 
 this is no burning question ; no party conflict is 
 here apprehended. It is a simple question of 
 method. How are we to achieve the end incul- 
 cated by St. Paul, " I wdll pray with the under- 
 standing," for all those schools of religious 
 thought which claim a place within the broad 
 field of the Church of England are eager in pro- 
 fessed loyalty to our book of Common Prayer ? 
 
 Yet each of these sections confesses that there 
 are some points which admit of beneficial altera- 
 tion. Indeed, there would be scant prospect of 
 united action if such modification even remotely 
 touched upon doctrinal differences. One party, 
 for instance, now representing a large numerical 
 proportion, may regard our communion service 
 as meagre, and may view the concluding rubric 
 with a dislike that only varies in the candour of 
 utterance. Others may deplore the ambiguous 
 use of the w^ord " regeneration " in the service 
 of baptism, and might desire that the absolution 
 in the service for the sick should have been ex- 
 pressed in a declaratory form. Another party 
 might exclude, or leave in a very solitary back- 
 ground, the so-called creed of Athanasius. But 
 it is remarkable, that in every quarter, the abso- 
 lute need for simplification of divine service has 
 been recognized, and simple mission services, 
 under different names and with varying elements 
 of method, are now the indispensable machinery 
 of all organized work for Christ. 
 

 THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 29 
 
 No ; this demand for liturgical revision is no 
 feverish party cry ; no utterance of crude theor- 
 ists, or of seekers after notoriety. " / should 
 think" (wrote the martyred Bishop Patteson) 
 " that three-fourths of luhat clergymen say is un- 
 intelligible to the mass of the congregation. We 
 assume an acquaintance with Bible and Prayer 
 Book thought, and a knowledge of the meaiiing 
 of words, rvhich few, alas ! possess." Those who 
 have been trained, by long use and teaching, to 
 take an intelligent part in the ordinary public 
 services of the Church can have no notion of 
 the difficulty which these services present to 
 those who have not been so trained. The orderly 
 succession of confession and absolution, of prayer 
 and praise, Scripture and creed, so edifying to 
 the well-instructed Churchman, are often in- 
 soluble problems to those are without his educa- 
 tion. Even amongst regular churchgoers the 
 power of intelligently following the course of 
 the service is more rare than is commonly sup- 
 posed. But to the class I am now describing 
 there are other difficulties — that of even finding 
 the place, of hard and unusual words ; and every 
 word is unusual, and therefore hard, which is 
 outside the ordinary vocabulary. 
 
 Then there is the religious and historical 
 knowledge that is requisite to the proper under- 
 standing of almost everything that is read and 
 sung. How much of such knowledge is neces- 
 sary to take in the meaning of some of the 
 
 I 
 
80 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 
 Psalms, of the canticles ; the Te Deuw,, for 
 example, or the Nunc Dimittis ? Some of the 
 lessons, many, indeed, are simple and beautiful ; 
 but others are almost unintelligible without 
 comment, as the prediction of Isaiah was to the 
 Ethiopian officer. Some which are clear in 
 themselves depend for their proper understand- 
 ing on a context, which the ordinary hearers 
 cannot supply, or on a knowledge of the Bible, 
 which few now possess. And so many who 
 have come to our churches, not out of mere 
 curiosity, but with a fervent desire to worship 
 and to learn, pass away to other places, or cease 
 to attend any. Of course it is easy to blame 
 them, to bring texts of Scripture against them. 
 They are "forsaking the assembling of them- 
 selves together, as the ntanner of some is " — the 
 manner, alas ! of many millions in our greater 
 cities, and almost the whole of the artisan class 
 in England. But there is another text which 
 must sometimes come to our recollection, and 
 which comes with terrible significance to the 
 mind of a Christian teacher who strives to do 
 his work loyally, and within the lines of his 
 Church— the text (I mean) about ^ the key of 
 knowledge," and the "kingdom of God," and 
 " hindering them that luould enter in." Who 
 but will admit that in all our services there are 
 portions as clear and intelligible as when first 
 translated or composed, and that in none is there 
 any such serious obscurity as that the willing 
 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 31 
 
 and devout hearer is sent empty away. Who 
 does not confess that our burial service, in its 
 perfect and incomparable adaptation of means 
 to ends, is a " creation for ever," and claims in 
 but a slightly qualified sense the supreme title 
 of an inspired work of man. And those who 
 have listened, whether as participators, or merely 
 as devout spectators, during the rite of Confirm- 
 ation, will admit that every feature of that 
 service, its brevity and simplicity, as well as the 
 solemnity of its question and pledge, make it 
 worthy of consecrating the vow of manful 
 Christian service and the utterance of fervent 
 conviction. 
 
 In some of the occasional services, indeed, 
 loyal and reverent students of our liturgy have 
 admitted that abbreviation and simplification 
 would, at the present day, add largely to their 
 power as a means of devotional exercise even in 
 the case of educated worshippers. And this has 
 been more than once stated with regard to the 
 service for the public baptism of infants. It is 
 not the case of a divinity lecturer and his class 
 that we are considering; it is not that of an 
 educated congregation in a land where education 
 is universal, but of those cases known to every 
 clergyman, in a large city or in a hamlet, where 
 the service, with all its transcendent truths and 
 its unutterable and solemn beauties, is yet " not 
 understanded of the people." How often does a 
 minister under these circumstances long, as he 
 
m\ 
 
 32 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 sees the bewildered sponsors anxiously following 
 the whispers of the parish official, to lay down 
 the Prayer Book, and quietly ask the godparents : 
 "Do you, acknowledge that, token tJtis child 
 grows up, he is hound to believe in God, and in 
 our Lord Jesus Christ ? Do you wish him to 
 he haptized in this faith ?■ Will you promise to 
 see that he is properly taught his religion and 
 hi'ought up in the fear of God ? " 
 
 Perhaps the answers to these plain questions 
 would be blunt and unconventional, but better 
 such questions and answers as these, when they 
 mean soniething, than the finest in the world, 
 when they mean nothing. 
 
 It may be urged against this plea for the 
 simplification of some of our services that it is 
 the Church's duty to educate the people up to 
 the requirements, and not bring the services 
 down to the level of the people. Ah ! that 
 objection would be weighty, indeed, were there 
 the faintest hope of our being able to educate 
 the mass of our poor in great cities to an intelli- 
 gent and appreciative use of our present Prayer 
 Book. But it is not needful, nor would any 
 reasonable Christian desire, to displace or modify 
 all the services in present use. Among them, 
 and in place of some of them, sometimes, with 
 permissive and alternative use, might be placed 
 services which the people could understand 
 without education ; services which would be 
 themselves a step in the religious education of 
 
 \, 
 
 ! 
 
I 
 
 THE UNDERSTANDING PRAYER. 
 
 33 
 
 those wlio came to tliem. Surely that Church 
 wliicli twice in tlie last three centuries has 
 sanctioned a complete revision of the text of the 
 Bible itself, might find among her sons those in 
 whose wisdom and sober judgment she could 
 place an equal trust, who might with reverent 
 care remove from our beloved liturgy obsolete 
 expressions and repetitions no longer helpful. 
 
 And, indeed, the Church has already ap- 
 proached the threshold of this needed reform by 
 the free and unorudtrinfj admission of services 
 suited for children, and simple mission services, 
 whether within the fabric of the Crmrch itself, 
 or even in the open air. Her temples stand 
 amongst a great people, a people not hostile to 
 religion, w\o need its influences, and would 
 welcome its consolations. Her Gospel has not 
 changed since the days when it was first 
 preached to the poor, and the common people 
 heard her Master gladly. Surely she has now 
 glad tidings for other classes tlian the educated 
 and the prosperous. Surely her only want — it 
 is a want now fully recognized and within our 
 power of supply — is for the right words to speak 
 the old message and the old truths; to speak 
 them to the heart and understanding ; so that 
 her voice may be, indeed, a living voice to the 
 world, giving no uncertain sound, and aiding 
 the utterance of the Spirit's striving in the 
 
 hearts of men. 
 3 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 Preached at St. John's Church on the Anniversaru of the 
 landing of the Loyalists, May ISth, !3'J0, at the request of the 
 Loyalists' Society. 
 
 "Roniombor the fornior things of old." — Lsaiah xlvi. 9. 
 
 ; ?!*'' i 
 
 Man stands upon a narrow istlimus, as it 
 were, between two dark immensities, the future 
 and the past. He has the li^ht of God's rev^ela- 
 tion, partial but sufficient, which shows him the 
 path before him, teaches him the present dan- 
 gers and responsibilities, and gives him con- 
 fidence as to the final goal. But, on the other 
 side, there is also light — the light of history and 
 example. That light is of God also, for all 
 truth comes from Him, although it comes to us 
 through different channels, and needs our exact 
 study and our patient research. 
 
 There was a mighty truth symbolized in that 
 ancient fancy which created a Muse of History, 
 the voice of Divine beauty irradiating the 
 records of life. 
 
 But mightier is the truth, greater the dignity 
 to us, who receive the foundations of our faith 
 in history, written by the finger of God. Nor 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 85 
 
 do we draw hard boundaries and impassable 
 limits between the history of the Jewish race or 
 of the Christian Church, and that of other races 
 and otli^r phases of the world's evolution. The 
 true student of history, knowing that God is in 
 the world, recognizes the finger of God in all 
 creation, in the vicissitudes of every century; 
 and to him the study and delineation of any 
 epoch is a solemn thing, it is a priesthood and 
 ministry, it is the utterance of TRUTH, without 
 fear and without reproach, for the benefit and 
 instruction of mankind. 
 
 The true student of history can look far be- 
 yond the special period of which he may be 
 treating; he perceives forces at work, greater 
 than the skill of generals, the diplomacy of am- 
 bassadors, the experience of statesmen, or the 
 elocjuence of demagogues. He discerns that 
 reigns and dynasties are but the chapters and 
 verses in one great book, inseparable parts of 
 one mighty whole. For these periods of time 
 and movements of national life are not like so 
 many isolated lakes, joined merely by the slen- 
 der stream of a succession or a conquest, but 
 are waves in one might river, whose winding 
 course draws its tributaries from every land 
 and every clime, whose first beginnings are lost 
 beyond our view among the cloud-clapped moun- 
 tains of antiquity, and whose irresistible progress 
 bears us onward, unhasting, unresting towards 
 the boundless ocean of the future. 
 
m 
 
 36 
 
 THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 But though we recognize this great truth of 
 the Unity of History, we cannot ignore the 
 superiority, both in attraction, and indeed in 
 importance, of those periods and those past 
 events which are bound to us with our own 
 ancestry and the Hnks of personal feeling. 
 
 To the Jew, the descendant in direct course of 
 Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the appeal of the 
 prophet Isaiah came as a trumpet call : " Rcnicni' 
 her the former things of old ! " He recalled, as 
 if in one long vista of remembrance, a history 
 that never will know its parallel ; beginning with 
 the first creative word of God, with the dim and 
 awful memories of forfeited bliss, tempered by 
 promised help and salvation. 
 
 Then pass across the stage of memory the 
 stately figures of patriarch, and judge, and 
 king, and prophet ; the escape from Egyptian 
 bondage, the wilderness and the promised land ; 
 the periods of anarchy and the growth of mon- 
 archy ; David's victories and Solomon's glories ; 
 the sad decaj'^ after the disruption, when Isaiah's 
 burning words smote upon their ears. 
 
 And do not similar feelings, associations 
 hardly less vivid and pathetic, arise in the hearts 
 of many other families in this world of ours ? 
 If pride in achievements which have left their 
 indelible mark upon the annals of the world, 
 which claim the willing echo of other nations' 
 recognition, may be granted utterance, then 
 
 
 m 
 
 nil 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 37 
 
 niicrht our fatherland and her sons boast, in the 
 poet's strain of old, of 
 
 "This royal throne of kings, tliis sceptred isle, 
 This fortress built by Nuturo for liorself— 
 Against infection and the hand of war . . . ; 
 This precious stone sot in the silver sea . 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, 
 this Encrland!" 
 
 Nor would the children of other nations lack 
 causes of proud recollection, whether of present 
 or past glories; none would refuse the call, 
 none would endeavor unmoved to "remember 
 the former things of old!'' But though the 
 recollection of past triumph is sweet, it is meas- 
 ured by our present condition. In the most 
 pathetic scene which ever poet's imagination 
 conceived, the victim of jealousy and cruel 
 vengeance says, 
 
 " There is no sadder lot, 
 Than to remember happy days gone by, 
 In misery now." 
 
 But a memory of past sufferings, undergone for 
 conscience or loyalty's sake, conveys a glow 
 which is not that of mere pride, mere self- 
 satisfaction. 
 
 When the Protestant of France recalls the 
 days when his forefathers relinquished all that 
 makes life dear in their well-loved country— for 
 conscience' sake, he thinks not of the lands and 
 
38 
 
 THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 'Ill 
 
 ilii 
 
 wealth abandoned, but of the crown of joy en- 
 sured. All bitterness of recollection has van- 
 ished ; he can review dispassionately the politi- 
 cal causes which inevitably led to what was, in 
 itself, the crowning error of the great monarch, 
 the cruel and self-inflicted wound in the pros- 
 perity of the nation. Even in the time of bitter 
 separation itself, love of the country could sur- 
 mount and suppress all vengeful feeling, all 
 sense of personal wrong. 
 
 And so we read how the great preacher 
 Saurin, himself an exile for the sake of Jesus 
 Christ, preaching to a congregation of exiles, 
 could pray for the king himself who had driven 
 them from home and country; could pray for his 
 prosperity as well as for his conversion, could 
 implore from the Throne of Grace that he who 
 had been the instrument of its wrath might 
 become the minister of its grace and bounty. 
 
 And if, when the two greatest principles of 
 humanity, religion and loyalty, were seemingly 
 brought into conflict., it was possible to maintain 
 the one without abandoning the other: how 
 much more conspicuous are the examples of 
 loyalty, when faith and country are the same ; 
 when, in spite of disaster, they remain 
 
 " True as the dial to the sun, 
 Although they be not shined upon." 
 
 This day our thoughts are called to " remem- 
 ber the former things of old — events which 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 39 
 
 occupy a bright page in our country's liistory, 
 and which, to all inhabitants of this province, 
 and to many away, you with a still more inti- 
 mate and personal feeling, come with a sense of 
 solemn remembrance and bright example. 
 
 More than a hundred years ago your ancestors 
 gave up home, and all its associations, for the 
 sake of a principle ; not a mere political theory, 
 about which men may argue for victory, but a 
 belief which was a Faith, that which embodied 
 itself in consistent action, which surmounted all 
 self-interest, and consecrated the purpose of life. 
 
 It would be easy, it would be tempting to use 
 the words of simple panegyric. These would 
 be no mere platitudes, they would be truth. 
 
 But history has a higher function than the 
 distribution of praise and blame : she searches 
 out the Causes, so far as they are discoverable, 
 of those mighty unseen forces which move the 
 world and make our annals. To paint the Loy- 
 alists in monotonous hues of praise ; to im])ly 
 that their opponents were actuated by evil 
 motive, disloyalty for its own sake, would be as 
 unworthy of this place as of the good men and 
 brave citizens whom we commemorate to day. 
 " Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell to 
 the flattering artist who would fain have soft- 
 ened his rough outlines and destroyed all his 
 individuality. 
 
 And we, looking back through the vista of an 
 eventful century, are able to dissociate ourselves 
 
40 
 
 THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 I I 
 
 from its passion." and its party-cries, and to 
 recognize how here, as ever, there had been noble 
 purpose and truth on both sides of the conflict, 
 like the fabled conflict of the knights about 
 the shield with its golden and silvern sides. 
 Remember that the noblest minds in our father- 
 land were always opposed to that suicidal 
 policy which alienated the American colonies. 
 A month before hostilities began, the greatest 
 Englishman of his age, Edmund Burke, in that 
 oration on *' Conciliation \vith America " which 
 stands as an imperishable monument of elo- 
 quence and political foresight, said : 
 
 "Our hold of the colonies is in the close affection 
 which grows from common iiiimes, from kindred blood, 
 from similar privileges, and ei^ual protection. These are 
 ties which, though light as air, are strong as links of 
 iron. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the 
 sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of 
 liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common 
 faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England 
 worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. 
 The more they multiply, the more friends you will have ; 
 the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect 
 will be their obedience." 
 
 But his was the voice of one crying in the 
 wilderness ; scorn and contempt were hurled 
 upon the colonists whose English blood impelled 
 them to demand English constitutional liberties. 
 Their arguments were ignored, their protests 
 regarded as sedition. No one listened when 
 Burke exclaimed : 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 41 
 
 "Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest 
 wisdom ; and a great empn'e and little minds go ill 
 together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow 
 with zeal to till our phice as becomes our station and 
 ourselves, we ought to ausjjicate all our public proceed- 
 ings in America with the old warning of the Church : 
 Sursum corda ! Lift up your hearts ! We ought to 
 elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which 
 the order of Providence has called us." 
 
 Alas, the hearts of men were not lifted up, but 
 were debased by pride, and ignorance, and hatred. 
 But the crime was to bring its penalty. 
 
 " Those tvhom God iviJt destroy," ran the old 
 adage, " He first deprives of reason." And so 
 England paid the penalty of her ignorance, of 
 not having known the time of her visitation, by 
 the loss of an empire. That is the bright side 
 of American independence, that which is recog- 
 nized now by every candid thinker. It was that 
 which caused Chatham to declare that, were he 
 an American as he was an Englishman, he would 
 never lay down his arms. It is that which 
 enables us, now to view the marvellous growth in 
 power and prosperity of the great American 
 Republic with no narrow jealousy, no retrospec- 
 tive grudges. To them, our brethren in blood and 
 faith, we look with sympathy and affection ; and 
 if the American citizen who worships in our 
 churches hears no specific prayer for his country 
 and its rulers, yet for them as for all constituted 
 authorities in other lands, our supplication is 
 raised : " That it may please Thee to bless and 
 
!| 
 
 42 
 
 THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 
 keep all Thy people : that it may please Tliee to 
 give to all nations unity, peace and concord." 
 
 So much then, for the impartial voice of his- 
 tory on one side. What has she to say for those 
 on the other ; those who did not snare, or would 
 not carry to the bitter end, the aspirations for 
 independence ; those above all, who — like Non- 
 Jurors and Royalists of olden times, would suffer 
 any wrong, any oppression, rather than infringe 
 the lightest prerogative of the crown. 
 
 What were their sufferings ? With that same 
 candor with which we have acknowledged the 
 justice of the claims they opposed, we must admit 
 the bigotry from which they suffered. The Puri- 
 tanism of the seventeenth century, which had 
 vindicated religious liberty against Bancroft 
 and Laud, experienced the unusual fate which 
 too often attends a change from suffering to 
 power. A contraction of character, acquired under 
 oppression, too often breeds tyranny, when force is 
 at command ; the lesson of mercy was not learned, 
 nor the example of forgiveness. Thence came 
 cruel persecutions of ministers and other mem- 
 bers of our Church, not to be dwelt on bitterly, 
 but not to be forgotten. 
 
 Thence arose those outrages, nameless and 
 numberless, which an able writer, • himself an 
 American in birth and sympathy, denounces in 
 language which does honor alike to his candor 
 and wisdom : 
 
 "On whose cheek," concludes this writer, 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 43 
 
 " should have been the blush of shame, when the 
 habitations of the aged and feeble were sacked, 
 and no refuge was left but the woods ! When the 
 innocent luere outraged, and foul words spoken 
 to women ? " And the wild outrages of mobs 
 and lawless individuals were sanctioned, alas ! 
 by the acts of legislative bodies; confiscation, 
 imprisonment, and even death, being inflicted 
 for acts which, at any period of sober fairness, 
 would have been regarded as venial or innocent. 
 
 But we turn gladly from the sadder pages, to 
 those where nothing of recrimination is implied, 
 and where we ca:i recount actions of which we 
 may indeed be proud, and of which those friends 
 who once were adversaries will echo the appro- 
 bation. 
 
 May not the Church of England remember 
 the name of Inglis with honor, who, threatened 
 with violence, yet hesitated not to read the 
 prayers for the King he honored and wad bound 
 to serve, although armed soldiers filled the 
 church ? 
 
 May not you, also, recount the sufferings, 
 endurance and earnest purpose of your ances- 
 tors, who bade farewell to a land where they 
 had worthily filled high oflSce and noble station, 
 and prepared to seek the new home in the 
 unknown land ? 
 
 Might they not apply to such men of pure 
 loyalty, and steadfast faith, the words of our 
 second lesson of to -night : 
 
44 
 
 THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 " And if indeed they had been mindful of that 
 country from which they went out, they would 
 have had opportunity to return. But now they 
 desire a better country, that is, a heavenly ; 
 wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be 
 called their God ; for He hath prepared for them 
 a city." 
 
 If there be one principle which can find a firai 
 and consistent anchorage in the precepts of Holy 
 Scripture, it is that of loyalty. 
 
 The kingdom which Christ came to establish 
 was not of this world ; He stood outside the 
 turmoil of national aspirations and regrets ; He 
 enjoined and even provided for the payment of 
 the hateful tribute ; He commanded that all 
 should render unto Caesar the things that were 
 his ; He fled when His followers, with misguided 
 enthusiasm, would have made Him an earthly 
 king ! 
 
 And St. Paul uttered no uncertain sound, in 
 his more abstract teaching. Though at that 
 time, a Nero was on the throne of the Caesars, 
 though all personal attraction to the principle of 
 loyalty was impossible ; though cruelty and lust 
 and oppression were the rules of government, — 
 genius and probity in disgrace and danger, yet 
 no word of hesitating loyalty escaped the lips of 
 the great apostle, no syllable from which riot or 
 sedition, or lukewarm fidelity even, could 
 extract the faintest support. 
 
 Other maxims, indeed, unknown to the earlier 
 
THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 45 
 
 civilization, are accepted alike by rulers and 
 subjects in lands which enjoy the benefit of 
 constitutional government. Supplementary, not 
 contradictory, are these truths; abolishing 
 primeval errors, amending imperfect concep*^ 
 tions, profiting by the experience of ages, but 
 never abrogating the ancient truths of faith and 
 constancy and loyalty. 
 
 " My son," said the wise teacher of old, " fear 
 thou God and the king," and when St. Paul 
 quoted the words to the Thessalonians, it proved 
 that their truth had borne the test of many 
 centuries. 
 
 Much has changed, much will change in 
 time to come, customs of men, and forms of 
 thought; systems of government and laws, as 
 even the hills and valleys experienced an unseen 
 change under the unceasing influences of the 
 elements. " All things change;' it has been said, 
 " and we are changed ivith them," but like the 
 mariner's compass in the stormy night, there is 
 for us a point of ^xity, a rule of conduct, a path 
 of safety, and that is in what Scripture calls 
 the "single eye," the faith which God can bestow 
 and by which alone man can be saved. 
 
 We are making the history of our own age, 
 as those your ancestors made the history which 
 you remember. In days to come, this age will 
 be past, and itself the subject of judgment. 
 
 The children yet unborn will pnss judgment 
 on your lives, on your actions. May it be ours 
 
46 
 
 THE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
 SO to work while it is day, so to render their 
 just due to God and Caesar, that our posterity 
 may recall with pride the example of their 
 ancestry, and our children shall arise and call 
 us blessed, when they remember the former 
 things of old. 
 
 Note. — It is gratifying to find that the more recent 
 American historians are doing full justice to the merits 
 as well as the difficulties of the Loyalists. In Professor 
 Tyler's * ' Literary History of the Revolution, " the following 
 significant passage is to be found: "Even yet in this 
 last decade of the nineteenth century, it is by no means 
 easy for Americans — especially if, as is the case with the 
 present writer, they be descended from men who thought 
 and fought on behalf of the Revolution — to take a dis- 
 interested attitude, that is, an historical one, to those 
 Americans who thought and fought against the Revolu- 
 tion, Both as to the men and as to the questions 
 involved in that controversy, the rehearsal of the claims 
 of the victorious side has been going on among us, now 
 for a hundred years or more, in tradition, in history, in 
 oration, in song, in ceremony. Hardly have we known, 
 seldom have we been reminded, that the side of the 
 Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as 
 they were scornfully nicknamed by their opponents, was 
 even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and 
 sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacri- 
 fice not an unheroic one " (p. 296). 
 
CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 Preached at Christ Church, Susfiex, N.B., on the occasion of 
 the annual service of the Kingston Deanery Choral Association, 
 June 10th, 1890. 
 
 **0 praise God in his holiness : praise him in the firma- 
 
 nient of his power. 
 Praise him in his no})le acts : praise him according to his 
 
 excellent greatness. 
 Praise him in the sound of the trumpet: praise him upon 
 
 the lute and harp. 
 Praise him in the cymbals and dances : praise him upon 
 
 the strings and pipe. 
 Praise him upon the well-tuned cymbals: praise him 
 
 upon the loud cymbals. 
 Let every thing that hath breath : praise the Lord." 
 
 — Psalm, cl. 
 When we accurately survey the principles 
 of divine service; when we realize the two 
 great objects to which that service owes its 
 reason of existence, namely, the duty of worship 
 and the need of spiritual food ; when we under- 
 stand that all outward form and ceremonial has 
 and can have but one legitimate principle, 
 ordained and approved by God, namely, the 
 attainment of decency, order and edification; 
 then we can advance further to the consideration 
 of those accessories, such as the choir and the 
 
48 
 
 CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 i.i 
 
 h ; 
 
 pulpit, seokin<^ to estimate their due place, their 
 real proportion and vahrj in the fabric of divine 
 .service, so that we may use them duly, to the 
 glory of God and the benefit of our own souls. 
 And to-day I would speak of music. What 
 does music give us ? Is it a mere food for the 
 senses, a pleasing irritation of the ears ? Surely 
 more, far more. For between sensation and 
 expressed utterance there is an interval, and 
 there music has her sphere. There are feelings 
 too deep for words, and there she speaks. There 
 are what St, Paul called unspeakable words, and 
 she can convey them to our souls. Aristotle 
 drew the acute distinction between the things 
 seen as objects of perception, and things heard, 
 which are objects of similitude ; and so from 
 music we can learn by similitude some of the 
 joys of the heavenly places. Never has music 
 lost her place in worship, since the days of the 
 Psalmist, since the days when Jesus and His 
 disciples " sang a hymn," since the days when 
 St. Paul bade his beloved Ephesians " sing and 
 make melody in their hearts," since the days 
 that St. James, most practical of teachers, bade 
 his hearers express their joy in the singing of 
 Psalms. 
 
 Detached utterances in early writers tell us of 
 congregational music, set to words of the ver- 
 nacular, and this music of the people was organ- 
 ized by the great Ambrose of Milan. And it 
 survived even the reactionary efforts of Gregory, 
 
CHURCH MISIC. 
 
 40 
 
 wliose .system, cjirriod to a logical extroine, would 
 liave deprived the con^re<]fation of its birtliri<jht, 
 and reduced it to tlie position of mere audience. 
 But tlie popular element could not be suppressed, 
 and the Middle A^^es gave birth to innnortal 
 hynnis, such as the Stahnf Mtitev, and that 
 famous hymn by Thomas of Celano, which is tlie 
 possession of all churches. But it was the Refor- 
 mation which reinstate<l the work of Ambrose, 
 and "sang itself into the hearts of the people." 
 Next to the open Bible, the hymn-book was the 
 weapon of Luther. And the advance in musical 
 art, above all the discovery of harmony and its 
 functions, added infinitely to the treasury of 
 dev^otion. And so church music advanced ; its 
 history is the history of music, for each great 
 comjioser has reached his zenith in the dedication 
 of his genius to the service of religion. So John 
 Sebastian Bach, the Leipzig organist, and later 
 the patriarch of music, covering the whole field 
 of his art, and adorning all that he touched, like 
 the Venetian school of painting conjoined perfect 
 color to draughtmanship, so he allied melody to 
 strictest counterpoint ; and he reached his high- 
 est point in the Passion Music, a true people's 
 oratorio, in which chorales for the assembled 
 multitude were interspersed amid the master- 
 pieces of scientific execution. So Handel, given 
 by Germany to England, after he had absorbed 
 all that Italian education could furnish, turns 
 
 at last to oratorio, and leaves his imperishable 
 4 
 
60 
 
 CIIUIICII MUSIC. 
 
 111! 
 
 1 1 
 
 inonuiiH'nt in "I.smol in E<^'ypt," tlio " Mensiah," 
 " Jiulas JMaccabous," and " Jephtluili." 
 
 And Mozart, most wonderful genius, wlio liad 
 exhausted with liia masterpieces every form of 
 musical composition, came at last to the Requiem^ 
 written in reality for himself when the ancient 
 words were clothe<l with a new life, and " Dona 
 vohis pacevi " was a prayer the fulfilment of 
 which God granted soon to the child of genius. 
 And so Haydn culminates with his " Creation," 
 and Beethoven with the " Mount of Olives," 
 and Mendelssohn with " Elijah." And if, in 
 some respects, English composers seem to occupy 
 a lower rank, at least in church music, the names 
 of Boyce, and Purcell, and Tallis, and Samuel 
 Wesley worthily maintain the noblest traditions 
 of accurate science and true devotion. 
 
 And now we turn to our special topic: the 
 place of music in public worship. At once the 
 old antagonism of Ambrosian and Gregorian 
 systems is evoked — choral or congre ' ' ^nal. 
 
 "Let all be done to edifyinp^'' .at is the 
 rule : not my personal taste, (, .rs. Are we 
 
 not to give good gifts to God ? Then why not 
 the trained singer or organist his skill, acquired 
 by patient labour upon original aptitude ? Look 
 at the place of a minister in the Protestant ser- 
 vice. He is the representative of the people. 
 He utters many prayers alone ; yet who com- 
 plains because all do not repeat with him ? At 
 the confession, and in some churches at the 
 
n^fSH 
 
 CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 51 
 
 general thanksgiving, all join. But at times lie 
 prays alone, and alone he expounds from the 
 authority of his appointment. And so, in the 
 ideal service there is a place, in due proportion, 
 for the choir, for the chorus, the (piartette, and 
 even the solo. If a trained and perfect voice 
 chants * I know that my Redeemer liveth,' it 
 will not add devotion to the effect if I destroy 
 art by joining my own untutored strains. The 
 Beauty of Holiness does not mean the mere 
 chaos of universal utterance. But with that 
 admission, admitting that there is a place in the 
 Church for musical art, and for restriction, so 
 that we sing with our souls for a time, listening 
 to those who sing with voice, yet there is also 
 place for the song of all the people. No church 
 music has reached its ideal if that be neglected ; 
 for even on artistic grounds that means to sacri- 
 fice the effect of background and of foundation, 
 without which the more delicate work of the 
 choir will lack relief and substance. Bach and 
 Mendelssohn recognized this in those oratorios 
 which are essentially religious. And it is for us 
 to elevate this essential branch of church music 
 by aiming at true musical education of our chil- 
 dren. It should accompany, if not precede, the 
 alphabet. Then we might well restrict the choir 
 in narrower limits, since the congregation could 
 be a choir itself, harmonizing the strains of 
 heartfelt hymns in melody ascending to the 
 throne of God. 
 

 11 II 
 
 ! 1 
 
 
 '": 
 
 52 
 
 CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 And one more argument for the separated 
 choir is that it recognizes the place of woman as 
 an active minister in the service of God. Not 
 merely on artistic grounds, not merely because 
 the boy can seldom, if ever, realize the emotion 
 or possess the requisite skill, but becau ^ the 
 admission into our chancels of God's daucrhters 
 witnesses to their right to devote their gifts to 
 Him, their right to aid in public worship, their 
 sphere, which can be sanctified into a fit prepara- 
 tion for that other choir where the new song 
 shall be sung before the Lamb of God. 
 
 Let us not fear criticism or derision, while 
 we cultivate this gift of God, and endeavor 
 that the offering we make shall be the richest 
 that our powers can offer. But guard against 
 any separation of the artistic from the devo- 
 tional. For t!ie penalty is certain and disastrous. 
 It was upon his knees that Bach sought inspira- 
 tion for his great works ; and he prayed by the 
 side, of his organ stool before he performed his 
 might}^ fugues. It was in tears that Mozart 
 composed his Regit ie'tn, and God was very near 
 him, as he caught the inspiration of more than 
 human strains. As an infinite gulf separates the 
 sermon which is mere exercise in rhetoric from 
 the heartfelt exhortation ; so if you sing from 
 lips only, or for admiration only, or even 
 artistic temperament only, it is but an in- 
 ferior standard that ever can be yours. Make 
 melody in your hearts unto God ; and then He 
 
CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 53 
 
 who bestows His perfect gifts, shall give you 
 strength more than your own, and a jwwer that 
 shall enter and subdue our hearts. 
 
 And if that be true for the choir, how much 
 more for the congregation ? If you demand a 
 greater scope for this element, see that it comes 
 forth from your very heart of hearts, We cannot 
 always enter into every thought and aspiration 
 of a hymn ; but we can feel what we sing. How 
 terrible a mockery if we have neither the attrac- 
 tion of art nor the plea of religion ; if we aing 
 neither with understanding nor devotion, a mere 
 recital of words we do not trouble to understand, 
 to notes that awake no answering emotion. But 
 it is not so with us ; indeed, that would be a 
 disastrous state where the hymn was an artificial 
 proceeding, where no sense of devotion followed 
 such lines as : 
 
 '• Teach )iie to live that I may dread 
 TJie grave as little as my bed ; 
 Teach me to die, that so I may 
 Rise glorious at that awful day." 
 
 In our plans of reunion there are many diffi- 
 culties yet, and many battles to fight. But 
 surely there is encouragement when we remem- 
 ber that if teachings differ, and liturgical 
 theories, so many strains of solenm praise are 
 common to all worshippers. There high church- 
 man and low churchman agree, Calvinist and 
 Arminian, even to some extent, Rome and the 
 

 54 
 
 CHURCH MUSIC. 
 
 Reformation. Examine the hymn-books. There 
 was never a narrower Calvinist than Toplady, 
 yet show me the liymn-book, which does not 
 contain, which would dare to exclude " Rock of 
 ages, cleft for me ; " Keble, even in these latter 
 days, would be deemed an advanced High 
 Churchman, yet show irr the collection which 
 has not the magnificent " Sun of my soul, thou 
 Saviour dear." Perhaps we might say that their 
 authors were lifted out of themselves, as they 
 wrote those almost inspired strains, above them- 
 selves, into a purer atmosphere, a deep;.T sphere 
 of conception and faitli. 
 
 Yes, it is a good gift, a perfect boon for which 
 we praise God. Received from Him in His 
 mercy, the gift of utterance and the gift of 
 harmony, we lay them this day at His footstool. 
 " All things come of Thee (so teaches the Old 
 Testament, as the New), and of Thine own have 
 have we given Thee." Our feeble efforts will be 
 accepted by God. He will strengthen us, and 
 prepare us for the great scene of praise and 
 harmony, when we shall join in the music of the 
 songs of heaven, with angels and archangels, 
 saints and martyrs, and every creature in heaven 
 and earth and sea, singing : " Unto Him that 
 sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb, be 
 blessing and honor and glory, and dominion, for 
 ever and ever." 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 A sermon preached at St. John's Church, on September 7th, 1S90, 
 after the decease of Cardinal Neicman. 
 
 *' And the king said unto his servants, Know ye not 
 tliat there is a prince and a great man fallen this day 
 ni Israel ? "—2 Samuel iii. 38. 
 
 One by one the great men who heave illus- 
 trated the nineteenth century are passing away, 
 and soon that century, with all its achievements 
 and failures, will be the historian's material. 
 One poet and one statesman alone remain of the 
 great names which made history before some of 
 us were born, and soon the Laureate of Eng- 
 land will have joined the singers who have 
 gone before, will rest with Shakespeare and 
 Milton and Wordsworth. And in another field 
 of thought and labour, here also the great 
 ones are gone before. Of the leaders of the 
 Evangelical school, the men who had shared in 
 the great revival of the last century, few lived 
 into the next age. Newton and Cecil hardly 
 saw the dawn of the new century. Wilberforce, 
 the champion of liberty and piety; Hannah 
 More, teacher and example of Christian sim- 
 plicity; Henry Venn, third in generation of an 
 
il 
 
 56 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 i m 
 
 i 
 
 1,! l!l 
 
 ii,- 
 
 honored family,— these survived to witness the 
 painful reaction towards worldliness and spirit- 
 ual deadness, and to realize the new forces 
 which from different sides of the field, endeav- 
 oured to fight the battle of truth. But even 
 these later champions of the new causes have in 
 their turn passed away. Whately's sterling 
 sense, Arnold's catholic spirit, Thirwall's philo- 
 sophic insight, Kingsley's burning sympathy 
 for suffering and indignation against wrong, and 
 Maurice, to so many the prophet of his age, all 
 these have passed away and left the speaking 
 witness of their words and works. And in that 
 other camp, so different in claims and conclu- 
 sions, so powerful for good or for evil in our 
 century, the great ones are also at rest. Keble, 
 the sweet singer of the Church, is joined to the 
 choirs invisible ; and his friend Pusey, after a 
 life of controversy, leaving behind the censures 
 of opponents and the enthusiastic praise of par- 
 tisans, has entered into peace. 
 
 Last of all there has passed away in these 
 days one who was endued with many talents, 
 talents in their combined scope perhaps un- 
 equalled, blessed with that supreme magnetism 
 of character which forces admiration from foes, 
 and love — almost adoration — from friends, and 
 yet one whose career, viewed now as a whole, 
 leaves oit the mind an impression of splendid 
 failure, of solutions sought with every sacrifice 
 and never found, of a personality which con- 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 57 
 
 quercd as with a magician's cliarm, but which 
 has spoken no message that could teach the 
 world, and has left no example to give it 
 strength. 
 
 Although the life of Cardinal Newman has 
 but lately closed, we are in a better position to 
 judge it than in the case of many men long after 
 death. For nearly a generation he had passed 
 from the scene of active affairs, and of the early 
 period, when his name was on every lip and his 
 career seemingly the very crisis of E. glish 
 Church history ; of this epoch we have almost 
 a literature at hand, and above all, the autobi- 
 ography of the central figure himself. 
 
 When John Henry Newman came into tlie 
 world, wars and rumours of wars overpowered 
 every other cause and claim. Religious ques- 
 tions seemed cast into the background. The old 
 antagonism of the parties in the Church had 
 calmed. If any theological influence can be 
 said to have been then effective, it was that of 
 the Evangelical revival, still claiming some of 
 its famous representatives and still speaking 
 forth its great message with something of the 
 old fervour and faith. 
 
 But the gradual departure of great leaders of 
 thought, and the weakening of definite opinion, 
 led too surely to the preference of supposed 
 " safeness," and a moderation which was the 
 result rather of mental limitation than of the 
 heart's expansion. Newman did not overstate the 
 
I 
 
 I m 
 
 1 
 
 t i 
 
 1 
 
 
 II)!' 
 
 ! . 
 
 1 
 
 58 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 case when, in a famous passage in his later writ- 
 ings, he declared : " A man who can set down 
 half a dozen general propositions, which escape 
 from destroying one another only by being 
 diluted into truisms, who can hold the balance 
 between opposites so skilfuly as to do without 
 fulcrum or beam, who never enunciates a truth 
 without guarding himself againgst being sup- 
 posed to exclude the contradictory — this is your 
 safe man and the hope of the Church, this is 
 what the Church is said to want, not party men, 
 but sensible, temperate, sober, well judging per- 
 sons, to guide it through the channel of no- 
 meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of 
 Aye and No." 
 
 But there were still in the world those who 
 feared not the alternative of Aye and No, and 
 it is significant that, of these, it was Thomas 
 Scott, the once famous commentator, of whom 
 the future Cardinal declares that " to him I al- 
 most owe my soul." The boy was deeply in- 
 fluenced by Scott's resolute unworldliness, and 
 by the " minutely practical character of his 
 writings." His was a receptive mind, for we 
 find him eagerly drawn, when a student at Ox- 
 ford, to the teaching and personality of Richard 
 Whately, and yet full of veneration for the 
 almost opposite character of Keble. The one 
 acute, logical almost to hardness, using irony in 
 support of faith, and as much offending as pleas- 
 ing by his humor; the other gentle, retiring. 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 59 
 
 e 
 
 preferring the holy satisfaction of his pastoral 
 life in the country to all that the university 
 could bestow in honor and emolument, loved by 
 the most opposite minds, respected by all, and 
 yet from his lips was to proceed the first cry of 
 the new party. 
 
 It was a time in the history of religion that a 
 new movement was unavoidable, was necessary. 
 Anything is better than stagnation, for stagna- 
 tion in religion means death. Anything is 
 better — better even the Crusades, or the wander- 
 ing Flagellants, or the barefooted friars, or the 
 eccentricities of Shakers and Ranters, than the 
 reign of time-servers and hypocrites, of supposed 
 " safe men " who ever fight with the bigger bat- 
 talions, who never espouse an unpopular cause, 
 nor aspire to that special blessing which belongs 
 to those persecuted for righteousness' sake. 
 
 It was a time when neglect in the out- 
 ward decency of divine service had reached 
 a degree incredible and disgraceful, when 
 pluaralities were common, when absentee rec- 
 tors lived in ease in Italy and delegated to 
 starving curates the souls of thousands; when 
 Bishops were appointed by the Prime Min- 
 ister as a reward for political zeal, and the 
 Church seemed to be the herald of comfort- 
 able doctrine, and to furnish a passport to a 
 rich man's heaven. The Evangelical School had 
 witnessed against these evils boldly and unceas- 
 ingly, and had in many respects mitigated them; 
 
60 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 
 V ■■ III 
 
 lli! 
 
 but their efforts concentrated upon the work of 
 savini^ souls, liad ahnost disref^jarded the coni- 
 parativ^ely less important matters So when at 
 the memorable Conference at Hadleigh in 1833, 
 Hugh James Rose, Keble, Newman, Froude and 
 Percival met to discuss the needs of the times 
 and the action to be taken, they had a field and 
 a work before them which might well have 
 enlisted the combined enthusiasm of the whole 
 Church. Unhappily, it was a party and not the 
 whole Church that undertook the work, and of 
 that party Newman was soon the recognized 
 and absolute chief. He had passed already 
 through many phases of opinion. He had left 
 behind the first evangelical influences of Ro- 
 maine and Scott ; he had passed beyond the 
 sober and old-fashioned churchmanship of Haw- 
 kins, the great Provost of Oriel. There was no 
 one to whom he could look as a leader, all who 
 inclined to the side of political liberty were his 
 abhorrence, and yet he was to be the revolution- 
 ist of his Church. Never was man so much in 
 need of tolerance, and yet so devoid of possess- 
 ing the quality. In one of his first sermons he 
 said : " It would be a gain to the country were 
 it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more 
 gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at pres- 
 ent. In the first page of the first " Tract for 
 the Times" he declared that he "could not 
 wish for the bishops a more blessed termination 
 of their course than the spoiling of their goods 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 Gl 
 
 and martrydom." Not even Torquemada could 
 have improved upon another statement, that the 
 " Heresiarch should meet witli no mercy . . . 
 to spare him —a false and dangerous pit}'," and 
 these views were expressed with a vigour that 
 alienated friends as much as it inflated adver- 
 saries. 
 
 Hurrell Froude, one of the leading spirits of 
 the movement, denounced the Reformers of the 
 sixteenth century as miscreants. The whole 
 Reformation had been a fractured limb so badly 
 set that it needed to be broken again. There 
 was no conscious approximation to Rome as yet. 
 Xewman himself still believed the Pope to be 
 anti-Christ, and wrote and spoke bitterly of 
 Rome for many years ; indeed, nearly till the 
 great surrender itself. So little do we know 
 our future. 
 
 But for a time, it seemed that a halting place 
 and firm ground was reached. It seemed that 
 the Church of England could be proclaimed the 
 via media, removed by impassable chasm from 
 Rome and Protestantism. There had been 
 bishops of the Church, like Andrewes and Laud, 
 who had believed this possible and logical. It 
 needed only some industry and much boldness. 
 It needed only to ignore the history of the 
 Reformation and the writings of the Reformers. 
 It needed only to construct a patchwork the- 
 ology, composed of this fragment from the hom- 
 ilies, and that from the Prayer Book, ignoring 
 
h\ 
 
 If' 
 
 i . 
 
 
 r 
 
 62 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 all that went before and beside and after; it 
 needed only to select from illustrious writers 
 passages which agreed, and to omit the context. 
 And so, Newman, when at this stage of develop- 
 ment, could claim (as he says) " with Bramhall, 
 the right of holding a comprecation with the 
 saints ; and the mass, all but transubstantiation, 
 with Andrewes, or with Hammond, that a 
 general council, truly such, never did or shall 
 err in a matter of faith ; or, with Thorndike, 
 that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal 
 sin." That is, that the obiter dicta of these 
 writers, speaking without any other than per- 
 sonal authority, could override the direct teach- 
 ing of the Articles and Prayer Book, the clear- 
 voiced custom of three centuries of Anglican 
 practice, and could furnish a satisfactory ground- 
 work for reasonable men. That it was not 
 sufficient, even for its upholders, the issue of the 
 Tracts proclaimed. The earlier numbers of this 
 famous publication excited little suspicion, for 
 nothing was asserted beyond what the Prayer 
 Book, especially the Catechism and Ordination 
 services of our Church, maintained, nothing con- 
 trary to the Articles. Bishops rejoiced over the 
 proclamation of an apostolic succession, and the 
 representatives of the old High Church party 
 applauded the attacks upon evangelical views 
 which they had vainly discouraged. 
 
 In vain Evangelicals raised a warning cry that 
 this new " middle way " was only the way to 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 63 
 
 Rome. But in the be^innincj of the year 1836 
 the theories of the new seliool found expression 
 in practice and opportunity of testing their 
 strength. The strenuous, though futile, attempt 
 to convict Dr. Hampden of heresy, and later to 
 hinder his appointment to a bishopric, showed 
 the extent of the movement and its acquired 
 force. 
 
 Arnold came into the lists with his famous 
 essay on the " Oxford Malignants," comparing 
 the Tractarians to the Judaizing opponents of 
 St. Paul. But the Tracts continued. From the 
 71st, came selections from the Fathers con- 
 cerning Baptismal Regeneration and the Apos- 
 tolical Succession, while the preface to the 
 " Library of the Fathers " declared that although 
 the Old and New Testaments are the source of 
 doctrine, the Catholic Fathers are the channel 
 through which that doctrine comes to us. The 
 75th Tract recommended the partial use of the 
 Roman Breviary as full of devotional value. 
 Still more significant was the utterance of Tract 
 80, where the practice of Reserve in communi- 
 cating religious truth was inculcated. Keble, 
 in the 89th, advocated the mystical interpre- 
 tation of Scripture favoured by the Fathers. 
 But still there was one obstacle in the path hard 
 to remove. 
 
 At that time not only ordained ministers, but 
 graduates of our universities were expected to 
 sign the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of 
 
04 
 
 THE LOST LEADEH. 
 
 li 
 1 
 
 England, and to express "assent and consent" to 
 all the teacliin<^s contained in tlieni. Notwith- 
 standing tlie most cynical hint expressed in the 
 ])eclaration appended in the days of Laud, that 
 only the grannnatical and literal sense, not the 
 intended force and scope were to he regarded, 
 no conscientious mind but realized that here a 
 mighty barrier was reared right across the way 
 to Home, that here opinions were expressetl, some 
 indeed (as in the 1 7th Article on Predestination) 
 very guardedly, and admitting of more than one 
 explanation; but elsewhere, and everywhere con- 
 cerning Roman errors, as clear, palpable and 
 unmistakable, as the rugged English of a plain- 
 spoken age could make it. Against that barrier 
 it needed, indeed, a mighty effort. Newman 
 himself might have shrunk from the task. But 
 in February, 1841, came forth the famous Tract 
 XC, and the astonished Church of England 
 learned that this supposed Protestant bulwark 
 was worse than useless. It admitted every one 
 of the tenets it was supposed to exclude. 
 
 It was not known indeed then, as we now 
 know from the "' Apologia,'' that at the time of 
 publication of Tract XC, Newman was not con- 
 fident about his permanent adhesion to the 
 Anglican creed. But even while appalled by 
 the supremely ingenious dialectic which ex- 
 plained aw^ay each difficulty, the common hon- 
 esty and common sense of England rose indig- 
 nantly in protest. In our Mother Country, as 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 65 
 
 in the «l}iu«^ht('ri'.ationH, we know that Ji minor- 
 ity always lias sympathy and fair play. Had 
 the Tractarians boldly ])roteyted against the 
 Articles, ha<l they dared the law as their de- 
 scendants in our times have done, the wider 
 public would have looked on with an amused 
 surprise, not luimixed with a sort of sympathy. 
 Or had they pleaded the wide area of a national 
 Church, and conceded the liberty on other sides 
 which they claimed on their own, the noblest 
 minds would have enlisted on their behalf, or 
 at least would have pleaded for their innnunity. 
 
 But the Tractarians, as well as their suc- 
 cessf>rs, have always claimed the in(|uisitors 
 rif^hts as well as the martyr's glory. Men who 
 could only justify their position in the Church 
 by expedients like the logic of Tract XC, were 
 ever the first to persecute and the last to be 
 silent. 
 
 But their great disaster was at hand. Their 
 leader, he who had just given them a sure title 
 deed, as they claimed, in the Protestant Church ; 
 he who had proved that when the Articles de- 
 chired that a general council may err, that meant 
 that, if rightly summoned; it was infallible ; that 
 an Article, which declared the "sacrifices of 
 masses to be blasphemous fables and dangerous 
 deceits," clearly admitted the Mass, and the 
 doctrine of sacrifice ; that the Article which de- 
 clared the Invocation of Saints to be a "fond 
 thing vainly invented," only deprecated its 
 5 
 
M 
 
 l! 
 
 66 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 excess ; he, himself, the contriver of this proof, 
 he, the champion of the party, was already 
 doubtful, already was abandoning his theory of 
 a via media, already had meditated the possi- 
 bility of his future step. 
 
 Some have urged that a kinder and wiser 
 policy on the part of the rulers of the Church 
 might have averted the crisis and saved New- 
 man from his course. Even if this be true, as it 
 is possible of the minor lights of the Trac- 
 tarian movement, it could not have availed for 
 him. Like Turnus, in his last combat, it was 
 not the lethal weapon of the adversary, but the 
 evil destiny in the air. And as it was neither 
 cowardice, nor rankling spite at supposed in- 
 justice, nor disappointed ambition that prompted 
 his departure, neither was it any mere superficial 
 attraction in the church he joined. It was no 
 attachment to mere outward ritual, for at that 
 time questions of ornament were hardly debated 
 in the controversy, and later Newman himself, 
 in his trenchant phrase, disavowed the slightest 
 attraction for what he styled the " gilt ginger- 
 bread of ritualism." No, there were deeper 
 causes at work, it was the great primordial ques- 
 tion which lies at the root of all religion, after 
 we have assured ourselves of God and Heaven, 
 authority or private judgment. 
 
 All the previous labours of the Tractarians 
 had been the efforts of private judgment to con- 
 struct a seeming external authority which might 
 
 I 
 
THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 67 
 
 
 Ins 
 In- 
 
 enable them to repudiate the real external claims 
 of the law regulating an established church. 
 Only Rome could offer a refuge for a mind 
 which sought to abandon its birthright of private 
 judgment and seek the anodyne of external in- 
 fallibility. And so he went to Rome. 
 
 Not here shall one word of controversy be 
 uttered against the communion that gained then 
 a mind so richly gifted. Macaulay was a Pro- 
 testant to the backbone, but his honest historical 
 insight taught him how great a fact is the 
 Cliurch of Rome, how deeply its roots are yet 
 fixed in the instincts, needs, and aspirations of a 
 vast portion of the human race. Whatever we 
 hope and strive for, the weapons of our warfare 
 shall not be the empty clangour of abuse. Is 
 it not a fact for us Canadians to ponder on, that 
 the power of Rome seems to increase its sway 
 in the new world, even though losing it in the 
 old ? Is there not something which extorts a 
 silent tribute, as we see the poor in their thou- 
 sands hearing in those temples an obscured and 
 fettered gospel, but still at times the name of 
 Jesus Christ? 
 
 Or when we have visited Italy and stand at 
 the threshold of that mighty fane, the triumph 
 of Michael Angelo and Bramante, whe the 
 spectator sees his fellow-man dwindled to a 
 speck in the distance, and above him, around the 
 dome, the great inscription Tu es Pctrus, words 
 so often quoted at Rome, so little understood. 
 
ill 
 
 68 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 Who has not fallen under the spell ? But Rome 
 is more than this. 
 
 There are some rivers taking their source 
 amid the ineffable purity of Alpine snows, fer- 
 tilizing and helping for navigation vast tracts of 
 country, but at last gaining no fresh tributaries, 
 and losing their volume and force in branches, 
 they end in muddy flats and foetid marshes. 
 So the Church of Rome, sprung from divinest 
 origin, its history the most enthralling, its cata- 
 logue of saints and martyrs innumerable, its 
 civilizing work in the Middle Ages an immortal 
 title to the world's gratitude, but now decaying, 
 having lost the weight and power of Germanic 
 thought, having almost lost the keen instincts 
 and energies of the Latin races, having lost 
 at last the old confidence of Baronius and 
 Bellarmine, having abandoned the appeal to 
 history, all her greatest men lost — Dollinger 
 exiled before he died, Strossmayer silenced or 
 gazed at askance with veiled suspicion, left in 
 Rome, at least, to intriguers and obscurantists; a 
 Pope liberal and enlightened, forced into com- 
 pliance by his camarilla with precedents which 
 he must despise. And there lived Newman for 
 nearly fifty years. 
 
 What is the achievement of that period ? 
 What but the labored retractation of all that 
 had gone before. When one thinks of the 
 splendid genius, one asks what might it not 
 have performed ? " Sed Dis aliter visuin." 
 
; 1 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 69 
 
 He published a " Gr«ammar of Assent," which it 
 has been recently said " furnishes an apparatus 
 for quieting your belief of things of whicli there 
 is not sufficient evidence, and of the truth of 
 which you do not at heart feel assured." Once, 
 and only once, he stirred the sympathies of the 
 world in repelling the unwise and uncharitable 
 taunt which Kingsley, in an unhappy moment, 
 cast upon his character. The taunt was, perhaps, 
 not unjustified, but the world rightly felt that it 
 was not " meet to be set down." 
 
 The " Apologia " is not only an English classic, 
 but a treatise of human psychology most won- 
 derful, most true, and he who reads it will 
 realize what a heart was buried in the Oratory 
 at Edgbaston, and how much love is breathed in 
 those last words of dedication to the friends of 
 time present and time past, " those familiar 
 affectionate companions and counsellors, who in 
 Oxford were given to me, one after another, to 
 be my daily solace and relief, and all those 
 others of great name and high example, who 
 were my thorough friends, and showed me true 
 attachment in times long past, and also those 
 many younger men, whether I knew them or 
 not, who have never been disloyal to me by 
 word or deed." And shall we not, Protestants 
 as we are, join in the final words, including 
 himself, in our orisons ? " And I earnestly pray 
 for this whole company, with a hope against 
 hope, that all of us, who were once so united, 
 
70 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 and so happy in our union, may even now be 
 brought at length, by the power of the Divine 
 will, into one fold and under one Shepherd." 
 
 Yes, we echo this prayer, each Sunday we 
 pray God for " all who profess and call them- 
 selves Christians," and surely our prayer goes 
 out in sincerity to the throne of grace. Outside 
 our churches, outside the limits of our com- 
 munion, even while recognizing vital difference 
 and plainly denouncing erroneous teaching, yet 
 our faith cannot exclude love, yes, love unreci- 
 procated and unanswered. The Church of 
 Cassander and of Carlo Borromeo, and Pascal, 
 and Fenelon, and Father Matthew shall have 
 our prayers. For that "kindly light," which 
 hovered before Newman's gaze, and which he 
 ever sought, if in most wandering path, that has 
 led him now 
 
 " O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent till 
 The night is gone, 
 And with the morn those angel faces smile, 
 Which he had loved long since and lost awhile." 
 
EELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 Preached at St. John's Church, on Huncla^, September 
 
 0th, 1800. 
 
 " As long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord."- 
 
 1 Samuel i. 28. 
 Every great period and movement in history 
 IS summed up by a character which combines 
 and illu3trates its best qualities ; decay may be 
 apparent, but that only makes the contrast more 
 conspicuous. The age of chivalry ends with 
 Bayard, the knight " without fear and without 
 reproach," when Cervantes was soon to take pen 
 m hand to write its satiric epitaph. And so 
 passmg to a greater instance, we may say that 
 the period of theocracy in Israel is summed 
 up in Its last great champion, Samuel. That 
 direct rule of God over His people has never 
 indeed become a realized ideal. In its essence 
 utterly removed from a priestly or clerical 
 government, it finds its true definition and 
 motto m the exclamation of Moses, " Would God 
 that all the Lord's people were prophets, and 
 that the Lord would put His spirit upon 
 them ! " Moses was, indeed, their leader and 
 governor, Joshua their general, Gideon and 
 
I i 1 1 
 
 72 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 Samson their heroes, Samuel tlieir prophet and 
 judge ; but never do we find the tendencies of 
 personal ambition and secularizing force wliich 
 so soon dragged down tlie primitive Church 
 from its first spiritual liberty. It is a nation 
 inspired directly by God that He desired, in 
 which each individual should be in personal as 
 well as federal relation to Himself. Samuel 
 represents this ideal. From the first, not merely 
 in obedience to the Levitical law, but by the free 
 outpouring of gratitude, he is " lent," or granted, 
 to Jehovah. The firstborn, as such, might be 
 redeemed from the responsibilities of the vow, 
 but no such compromise entered into Hannah's 
 thoughts. Lent to the Lord from the first, edu- 
 cated in the very tabernacle itself, familiarized 
 with all the devout usages and solemn obser- 
 vances of the holy place, sitting at the feet of 
 priests, like a greater successor, " he did minister 
 before the Lord, being a child." 
 
 And then there came to him that supreme 
 vision and voice, without which the tabernacle 
 and ark would liave been meaningless symbols, 
 and the priesthood a worthless calling. Samuel 
 received divine ordination into the true " succes- 
 sion " of prophets in the church on earth. "And 
 all Israel from Dan even to Beer-sheba knew that 
 Samuel was established to be a prophet of the 
 Lord." It is no mere historical picture that this 
 bring before us. It is the eternal truth, the per- 
 manent teaching of Old and New Testament, 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 73 
 
 there in sliadowed symbol, here in all the bright- 
 ness of the day, that God demands of us nothing 
 less than original, constant consecration to His 
 name and His service. Of one and all it must 
 be said : " As long as he liveth he shall be lent 
 to the Lord." 
 
 The topic that our text suggests is very near 
 us at this time, and cannot fail to be in our 
 minds. A few days ago we witnessed in this 
 building a gathering which no man can behold 
 unmoved, a vast congregation of children, raising 
 to God their joyful song in the old chorale : 
 
 " Now thank we all our God, 
 With hearts and hands and voices." 
 
 We listened to that heart-stirring appeal, 
 spoken from this pulpit, giving forth that "defi- 
 nite teaching " about which there is nowadays 
 so much talk, and so little practice -teaching 
 that, first of all, God must give to all of us a new 
 heart. I could wish that it had been possible to 
 bring into nearer juxtaposition that most im- 
 pressive service, and the important meeting of 
 Sunday-school teachers to be held in our city 
 during the present week. The one would have 
 been the fit introduction to the other. But it is 
 the teaching, not only of those hundreds who 
 worshipped here last Thursday, but of the 
 thousands in our province, that will now be the 
 question. No more momentous occasion, no topic 
 more vitally important, can be conceived. It is 
 
 'M 
 
 11 
 
 I ^ 
 
 
74 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 not an affair of mere church organization, it is 
 not an academical symposium upon methods and 
 appliances — it is the greatest question in the 
 world — Shall our children be lent unto the 
 Lord ? This is a question, concerning which 
 those who speak should do so in fear and trem- 
 bling. " Who is sufficient for these things ? " 
 What teacher in our Sunday schools, really 
 competent for his work, but returns each Sunday 
 with some new lesson learned, or it may be, a 
 sad sense of incomplete aspiration and unsatisfied 
 effort? 
 
 Self-complacence is confessed incompetence ; 
 and, indeed, we may apply St. Paul's words here : 
 "If any man thinketh that he knoweth any- 
 thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to 
 know." For the concurrent possession of the 
 three indispensable gifts : The love for souls, the 
 knowledge of God's truth, and the power of 
 communicating it to the young, is so rare. Of 
 the two first requisites I will not speak now. 
 We know that they constitute the foundation of 
 all work. But we know also that God's grace 
 helps on the weakest efforts for His glory ; that 
 the simplest truths, felt as well as known, are 
 mighty ; and that love, that " charity which 
 never faileth," can surmount weakness and 
 obstinacy and indifference. These are God's 
 gifts ; but God also consecrates the use of human 
 effort, of human skill and science. And teach- 
 ing is a science, to which man and woman must 
 
KELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 75 
 
 devote themselves earnestly and solemnly. But 
 there is this especial difficulty and danger about 
 it, that in none other are ignorance and failure 
 so easily disguised and concealed, even from 
 one's own consciousness. There are teachers 
 who will deliver the most eloquent orations 
 upon the blunders which (unknown to them- 
 selves) they habitually commit, or the principles 
 which they constantly transgress. Surely any 
 congress should open its deliberations by the 
 words of our general confession . " We have left 
 undone those things which we ought to have 
 done ; and we have done those things which we 
 ought not to have done." And in that confes- 
 sion the best, the most experienced, will join. 
 It is so hard to maintain the electrical connec- 
 tion of continuous interest ; it is so rare that we 
 can do equal justice to the keener and to the 
 less gifted pupils, to the diligent and to the 
 slothful. And that is why so often the best 
 qualified shrink back from the pressure of first 
 failures. They deem that to be want of aptitude 
 which is merely the want of experience. Heaven- 
 born teachers have been few indeed— perhaps, 
 unlike the poets, they are made and not born.' 
 Even an Ascham, a Pestalozzi, or an Arnold 
 could look back to a vista of first failures from 
 the altitude of later success. 
 
 Work on, then; fight against each special 
 weakness; learn to read the open page of 
 human nature, the child's soul disclosed atmost 
 
 1./ (N 
 
76 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 in the face ; learn the words wliicli they know 
 in the senses wliicli they use ; learn the modes of 
 illustration which they can grasp, and the nar- 
 row limits of abstract tliou<^ht to which they can 
 attain. And let this be our watchword, brother 
 and sister teachers, this our t^olden text: "Icount 
 not myself yet to have apprehended .... 
 but I press on toward the goal unto the prize of 
 the high calling of God in Jesus Christ." But 
 what shall we teach ? That should not be hard 
 to decide, and yet what conflicting voices greet 
 our ears, and what varied methods are submitted 
 to our choice. "Teach church doctrine," say so 
 many. "Give them definite teaching." Most 
 heartily we will echo these appeals. With God's 
 help we will be definite in our teaching ; we will 
 give our children that church doctrine which is 
 defined by the Sixth Article to be contained, 
 read, and proved in the Holy Scriptures alone. 
 But God save them from Shibboleths, of what- 
 ever party, whatever color — God save them from 
 mere dry formulas, fixed in the memory at best, 
 conveying no life and producing no fruit. The 
 Church's highest claim, we know, is to be the 
 " witness and keeper of Holy Writ " (Article xx.) 
 She bids the sponsors at infant baptism take 
 care that their charges shall "hear sermons." 
 There is one sermon which stands before all 
 others, the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher 
 was Jesus Christ ; the congregation is the world 
 and all its inhabitants unto the last day. Can 
 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 77 
 
 we be in doubt whicb first to teach — the abstract 
 doctrines of the Nicene and Athanasian creeds, 
 or the divine commands of the Sermon on the 
 Mount ? Look at the example of God's own 
 method both under the old and new covenant. 
 First, the simple teaching by precept, then the 
 revelation of principles by the prophets. Jesus 
 reveals the higher law of love. St. Paul is per- 
 mitted and inspired to proclaim the justifying 
 force of faith — though " greater than this is love." 
 We have to bring our little ones to Jesus first, 
 and then we can teach them theological infer- 
 ences about Him. We have to explain to them 
 first the " great commandment " and the golden 
 rule, and afterwards we can tell what we know 
 about the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the 
 resurrection of the body. Above all let us strive 
 to make them Christian, children of God, and not 
 slaves of party. Let us bring them up, whether 
 we are parents or teachers, in " the nurture and 
 admonition of the Lord." Let us remember and 
 practise the old bidding of Solomon : " Train up 
 a child in the way he should go, and when he is 
 old he will not depart from it." W^e thank God 
 then, for the coming congress of Sunday-school 
 teachers, and we implore God's blessing on 
 their deliberations Our Church of England, 
 with all her wealth of historic glory, stands 
 to a certain extent now on her trial. The old 
 limits are being seriously strained, the prece- 
 dents of three centuries are openly and with 
 
 i V 
 
I r 
 
 78 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 impunity disregarded. Where lies the fault ? 
 To what fatal principles, to what ill-starred 
 leaders, should we direct the indifjjnant appeal 
 of the Roman Empei'or : " Varus, Varus, give 
 Ijack the legions ! " But not to recrimination, 
 not to useless moanings over the irreparable 
 past, shall we devote our energies. " Forget- 
 ting the things which are behind, we stretch 
 forward to the things which are before." We 
 have work enough before us, dangers enough to 
 be encountered, hope enough for our encourage- 
 ment. And that hope is in the dedication of our 
 children to God. Vain Avill be the prosperity 
 of churches, if our pews contain mechanical 
 worshippers and secular minds. Vain the hope 
 of the future, if the solid virtues of the fathers 
 are to give place to flippant mediocrity and pre- 
 tentious ignorance; if the old vigorous faith, 
 with all its limitations and its bigotries, shall be 
 succeeded by an era of credulous scepticism, bred 
 of half-educated minds and undisciplined souls, 
 never turned to God, never amenable to the 
 counsel of superior age and superior station, 
 tending only to the sad descent, so easy, so 
 disastrous : 
 
 '* Smooth is the downward path that leads to hell ; 
 The infernal gates stand open night and day ; 
 But upward to attempt the steep ascent, 
 This — this is pain and labor." 
 
 My brethren, the appeal to parents, the coun- 
 sels to teachers, which so lately were uttered 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 79 
 
 
 fvoin this place, were surely not uttered in vain. 
 Those faithful, hurnin^r words will not be for- 
 ^'otten. The future of the Church-indeed we 
 ini^dit say, the future of the nation its If-de- 
 pends on their efforts, upon their determination 
 to give the children to the Lord. He will re- 
 ceive the gift. He who said. "Suffer the little 
 chddren to come unto me, for of such is the 
 knigdom of God," repeats that invitation, re- 
 peats that declaration, from the throne of ' His 
 ascension. For those whom He receives He 
 guards forever. The Good Shepherd will never 
 forsake His sheep. If they stray. He will seek 
 them out; if they faint, He bears them in His 
 arms. " My sheep hear my voice, and I know 
 them, and they follow me ; and I give unto them 
 eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no 
 one shall snatch them out of my hand." 
 

 THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 
 > f 
 
 Preached at St. Luke's Church, S'. John, N.B., on the occasion 
 of its rc-opening after restoration, Sept. Slst, 1S90. 
 
 "Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." — 
 Ps. xcvi. 9. 
 
 I DO not propose to dwell u^ on the textual 
 questions concerned in the exact interpretation 
 of the last words of this verse. The words are 
 found, as you know, in several otlier places ; 
 twice in che Books of Chronicles, and twice in 
 other Psalms, probably indicating a technical 
 phrase. But whether that phrase should be 
 rendered as the mar^nn of our Revised Version 
 suggests — " in holy array," that is, in reference 
 to the priestly ritual of the Jewish service ; or, 
 as the margin of the Auhorized Version gave 
 it, " in the glorious sanctuary ; " or finally, as 
 the verdict of both revisions decided, in a more 
 abstract and general sense, as " the beauty of 
 holiness," these all coincide in one great prin- 
 ciple, the authentic place of beauty in the wor- 
 ship of God. 
 
 The reading of the 9Gth Psalm can help us to 
 realize the glories of the temple service. Wliat- 
 ever the date of the psalm, it is pregnant with 
 
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 81 
 
 )n 
 
 las 
 
 )re 
 
 of 
 
 in- 
 
 to 
 
 ith 
 
 all the vital questions and ardent enthusiasms 
 of the Jewish race. We seem to see the vast 
 assemblaf;*e thronging the outer courts and pre- 
 cincts of the temple. We hear the mighty 
 chorus rising, re-echoing the appeal to " all the 
 earth," 
 
 " Sing unto tho Lord, l)less His n.anie ; 
 Shew fcjrth Hi.s salvution from day to day : 
 Declare His glory among the nations, 
 His marvellous works among all the peoples. 
 For great is the Lord, and highly to be praised ; 
 He is to be feared above all gods. 
 4fr * -x- >;; -jfr -it- 
 
 Honour and majesty are before Him, 
 Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. 
 Give unto the Lord, yo kindreds of the peoi)les. 
 Give unto the Lord glory and strength. 
 Bring an ottering, and come into His courts. 
 O worship the Lord in the ])eauty of holiness : 
 Tremble before Him all the earth ! " 
 
 Every aspect of the Hebrew character and 
 religion is displayed in this magnificent psalm ; 
 and yet the divine inspiration pcvading it 
 makes it so superior to the mere local circum- 
 stances that each verse and each word can shapo 
 themselves upon the lips of Christian wor- 
 shippers. 
 
 Not all precepts, indeed, of the Old Testa- 
 ment, not all rules of conduct, or niodes of 
 service are binding upon the Christian Church. 
 Our Seventh Article reminds us of the impor- 
 tant distinction, in this respect, between the 
 6 
 
 I . H I'- I, I 
 
 m 
 
 
cS2 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 
 moi'al and cerenionial legislation ; and our 
 reason would convince us that much, very 
 much, of that service, not only details but prin- 
 ciples, were once and forever abolished when 
 the perfect High Priest had accomplished the 
 one sacrifice for the whole world. Some have 
 believed that the elemenv. of beauty so indis- 
 solubly connected with Old Testament worship, 
 in spite of all the sombre terrors of dying 
 animals, and smoking sacrifices, was abrogated 
 with them. Some have understood such pas- 
 sages as the great utterance of Jesus to the 
 woman of Samaria, as definitely confirming this 
 opinion ; as visiting with an equal disapproval 
 the worship of the temple and the mountain, 
 and holding up as the ideal a system in which 
 the mind unaided by any adjunct of praise, or 
 rather avoiding every sign of joy and reverence, 
 comnumes in solitude or silent assemblage with 
 the Unseen Creator. 
 
 It is true that when we turn to the New 
 Testament, we find few references to this aspect 
 of worship. It might seem as if the melody of 
 Scripture was transposed into the minor, as if 
 all or at least some of the energy and joyous- 
 ness and life of religion had passed away. No 
 word ecjuivalent to " beauty " is found except 
 in the terrible description of the Pharisees as 
 whited sepulchres, appearing beautiful out- 
 wardly, but inwardly full of uncleanness. Alone, 
 as an exception, might be deemed that earnest 
 
1 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 83 
 
 w 
 
 3Ct 
 
 of 
 
 if 
 
 is- 
 [o 
 
 as 
 lut- 
 ine, 
 
 lest 
 
 exhortation of St. Paul to take account of 
 " whatsoever things are lovely." 
 
 But we are not to conclude that beauty, in 
 whatever way created or embodied, is disowned 
 and repudiated by the Christian scheme. We 
 are not to conclude that all religions are becom- 
 ing more corrupt, more distant from God and 
 light, because all churches, however divided in 
 creed or practice, are united in a stronger effort 
 to bring aspects of beauty and comeliness into 
 the worship of God. We are not reverting to- 
 wards heathenism in proportion as we make the 
 dark places of the world more bright and beau- 
 tiful, the models of perfection more accessible, 
 the strains of highest music more familiar. 
 
 Why, then, were all these features conspicu- 
 ously absent in the records of the Christian 
 Church ? It was a time of mourning. Just as 
 in a house recently bereaved of some beloved 
 inmate, no object of beauty can give pleasure ; 
 no music can charm, save the strains of some 
 old familiar hymn ; no picture attract, save the 
 portrait of the lost one. And so with the 
 Church. It was not only the pressure of per- 
 secution ; it was not only the natural repulsion 
 from any attribute, any seeming participation 
 with heathenism, it was the mourning for the 
 lost Jesus ; it was their slow perception of the 
 truth that the work of the Christian Church 
 was to enter, to con(|uer, and to Christianize tlie 
 world. They did not remember " that all things 
 
 ;!!i 
 
 m 
 
 'k 
 
 V. 
 
Vi 
 
 11 
 
 I. 1 
 
 il! i 
 
 I .1 
 
 84 
 
 THE llEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 were lawful," nothinj^ unclean of itself. And 
 liiHtory has repeated itself in later a^es. 
 
 After the tra<^edies of the lleforniation canie 
 the time of moral tension, the revulsion of all 
 things seemingly of thci world. It is not with 
 a sneer that we should study history, and jud<^e 
 the annals of the j)ast. Puritanism was a iKsces- 
 sary i)has(! of national life;, a nobhi protest; but 
 was not a final verdict, it was not the full voice 
 of (Jhristianity. And so it will ever be, as the 
 world progresses in its cyclic develof)ment. It 
 forgets for a time that while "all things are 
 lawful," we are not to be "brought under the 
 pow(3r of any." And so it givers itself up to 
 mere cinjoyment, like a truant child d(;s<3rting 
 its lessons for a perjx^tual playtimi;. And th(!n 
 must follow stern [)eriods of rep(.'ntance, when 
 things of joy and beauty must ])e laid asi<le. 
 And then man sp(!aks despitefully of g(!nius, 
 when he should rather condemn his own weak- 
 ness, his own folly, not knowing how to use the 
 gifts of (Jod. 
 
 But not from the chan<»:in<!: verdicts of man- 
 kind, rather from the unchanging truth of (iod, 
 we tak<; our authority, from Him who " made 
 ev(!rything beautiful in its time," fi'om II im who 
 bids us worship in tin; beauty of lujliness. We 
 vindicate; the llefoi'ination from the false; cliajgi; 
 that it d(!ni(Ml the; place; of beauty in woi'ship. 
 Each gr(;at historical movement is to be; ju<lged 
 by its nol)ier, nejt its baser aspects ; by the 
 
THE IJEAUTV OF IIOLrNESS. 
 
 S5 
 
 10 
 
 .11- 
 do 
 
 lip. 
 
 utt(3rancos of its ^reatost roproHcntativoH, not ])y 
 tin; froiizy of its fanatics or the ignorance; of its 
 inferior camp- followers. It is not tlnireforo hy 
 tho iconociasni wliicli disfigured English catlic- 
 drals that we jud^c; the <;reat Puritan inove- 
 nient. History I'ecords that page of spiritual 
 life now dispassionately and faitlifully. We 
 see, we un(h)rstand th(; necessary revulsion from 
 a merely mechanical and ext<;rnal service ; from 
 abusers which a Hernard and a Peter ]){imiani 
 had exposed and condemned centuries before. 
 Times of strife cannot be times of sobcirly 
 balanced thought ; it is not then that the multi- 
 tude can be stayed at the golden mean. 
 
 Nor is it then, alas, that spiritual rulers dis- 
 play always that foresight, catholic spirit, prac- 
 tical gras[) of th(! situation, which might turn 
 the n(;w force into useful channels. Tim narrow 
 bigotry of Whitgift and Bancroft, of Laud and 
 Sheldon, not only di'ove from the Church those 
 who would hav(; been her most faithful and 
 ardent sons, Imt int(;nsiHed and exaggerated, by 
 the natuj-al result of pers(5cution, the charactej'- 
 istics of the movcMiient itscdf. J^ut the gi'eater 
 Puritans, men like Andrew IMarvell and Milton, 
 outgi'ew the narrow limitations of their party. 
 And when, in the luixt century, tliat which may 
 b(; called a second an<l iiTcattjr Puritan move- 
 ment ha<l reasserted tlu^ piMueiph's of Pi'(jt(!starit- 
 ism in a period of moral laxity ; an<l whc^n .-ncc; 
 more it seemed that narrow and one-sided con- 
 
 i ! 
 
 1 
 
86 
 
 THE 15EAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 i:< ' 
 
 I'l 
 
 coptions iiii^ht hariisli tli(3 rocot^nition of joy jind 
 beauty and dignity in tlio worsliip of God; tli(;n 
 it was that tli(3 (^reat Chfistian j)0((t Wordswoi'th 
 uttered luH immortal plea, taking' as his Hubject 
 that same glorious IIousi; of (lod of which 
 Milton liad Hun<^ in Htrains even moi't; celebrated, 
 tliat chapel foun<led by Ib'ury V^I, " the royal 
 and relij^iouH foundation," which lives in the 
 nunnoiy of all those who have worshijjpiMl under 
 its roof : 
 
 '"^Ffix not l.hu royal Huint, with vuiii ex|tonH(!, 
 With ill-iiiiitchud .liiiiH the architect, who ])lfmm!(l, 
 Albeit laboiiii!^ for a scanty hand 
 Of whii-u-rol)0(l schohirs (tnly, tliis innnunso 
 Aiul gh)rious work of hne intulli'cnco I 
 (iivoall thou canst ; hij^h Hcivon rejects the lore 
 Of nicely calculated less or more. 
 So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense 
 These lofty pillars, si)read that blanching roof 
 Self-i)oised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, 
 Where light and shade re[)ose, whei'e nnisic dwells 
 Lingering, and wandering on as loath to die ; 
 Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
 That they wore born for immortality." 
 
 That is the utterance of Protestantism rightly 
 understood, and he who will .jud<^e the ultimate 
 results of Puritanism, will find its partial views 
 and imperfect C(jnceptions (gradually developinj^ 
 into full reco<i^nition of "reasonable service" and 
 the "beauty of holiness." 
 
 And in the same way, surely, with equally 
 dispassionate method, we should estimate the 
 
1 
 
 TUK MKATTV OT FIOLIXKSS. 
 
 87 
 
 LtC 
 
 {if 
 
 lUl 
 
 
 chanictc!!' of the; otlujr and iiion! mothirii iiiove- 
 ]ii(;nt in tht^ ()[)])()Hiti3 (lirc^f^lion, vvhieli may siu^ni 
 to Komo oi' us to liav«! lu'conio in its oxtr(!in<'S 
 tho caricatuiv, I'atlicr tlian tlio cultui'o of beauty 
 in worship, and the hin(h"anc(^ I'atlior tlian tho 
 lielp to any s[)iritual insjo-ht and <lovcjlopnM'nt. 
 liUt il* we study th(! ho^inninos ol' the; nio\M»- 
 mont, at first an ahnost imperative reaction 
 a<(ainst slovenly and nenlirrcnt vvoi'shi[), at a 
 time when the evanf»"(!lical I'evival ol* tli(5 I'ormer 
 century had s])ent its force, vv(! remeiidnrr liow 
 youuf^ and ardent minds, eaocr for trutii, atid 
 only necidinj^ wis(; ^uidancci and j^(3ntl(! restraint, 
 were harshly silenced, whethin' by incompc^tent 
 bishops or the viol(;nc(; of mob law. Surely a 
 a wise; statesmanship mi^ht have chan<;(Ml the 
 histoiy of our tinxis ! A statesmanship which, 
 in the; foi'mer centuiy, should have places! John 
 Weshy on tlie throne; of (>anterl»ury, and White- 
 field in the j)ulpit of St. Paul's, could have 
 preserved to tlu; (Jhurch of England, in th(i 
 nineteenth century, many of her sons not less 
 distin<^uished for nu^ntal and spiritual <;ifts. A 
 treatment more kindly and more jjjenerous, could 
 have found arguments better than lawsuit and 
 imprisonment, to restrain breaches of (eccle- 
 siastical law, to secuj'c! cheeMl'ul obedience to 
 episcopal mandatc^s, and more considei'ation for 
 the many who still pnd'i'n'ed simpler forms of 
 worship. And now that o-(;iitl(M' counsids and 
 practice have prevailed, we s(m; that pa<^e of 
 
 "I 
 
88 
 
 TiiK |{Kai:ty ok iioijnkss. 
 
 n 
 
 in()(l(!iri c.liurcli liislory wliicli iian;it(;s IIk; pi'o- 
 ^TCHH of h()-C{iII(m| " Ivitualisiii " in l^jioiaiid 
 aliHiJidy n!('oi'(ls vvliat may pi'ovc to Ix' its ciwl- 
 iri^j; .siiitM', tlio M()l)l<!.st and ablest r<'|)i'(iS<Mitativ('S 
 ol" tli(! party ai'o \vithdravvin<;' tln^inscdvcis IVoiii 
 tlio p<!tty stl'ii'(^s coiKMirniiin- di'css and attitude, 
 an<l in spit(^ ol' tli(i hitter attactks of tlieii' own 
 coil<'{i,^ues, liav(! devot(!(l tlieniselve-s to tlie 
 s(!i'ious .'ind scicintilic* study ol' Holy Sc,ri|)tureH, 
 and have (jualilicti theinscdviis, if not yet as 
 t(ia(;h(!rs, y(!t .'is fit ))Upils oi' these; masters in 
 tli(5oIo<^y \vhos(! coiKjIusions tln^y actcepl,, and hy 
 whose researches tlusy pi'olit. 
 
 Sur(dy 
 
 a ti'U(; via, tiwdhi, eai 
 
 l)e I' 
 
 OUIK 
 
 I Ix-t 
 
 ween 
 
 th(; two (!xtrem(!S, th(! S(;ylla and (Jharyhdis of 
 Puritanism and Ritualism. VVc ean uniti; in our 
 foi'Ui ol' woi'ship all joy and spN^ndor and Ix^auty, 
 and y(;t pi'<\serve in our t(;a(;hin^ tin; utmost 
 ii<lelity to primitive and ovan<4elical truth. iJut 
 nieri! tlieori/in<^ on such a suhji^ct av.'iils little, 
 whethei' the upholdin*;' ol' ideals or the i-ecount- 
 in;;- of past liisl-ory. The [)ossil)ility, and the 
 
 in(!stimabl 
 
 e vaUu; o 
 
 i' tl 
 
 us union nnist he exoeri 
 
 t h 
 
 V 
 
 cnced, and that (experience is poss(!ss(Ml, tliank 
 God, by many and many a connn^oation at tlu; 
 
 pi 
 
 esen 
 
 t<l 
 
 ^y- 
 
 It is not for ^\\v to discuss the methods of 
 Hervic(e in the; church whi^re I have Imm'U called 
 
 to 
 
 sy 
 
 )ea 
 
 Is tl 
 
 lis <l;i,y. 
 
 Y( 
 
 ou vourselves. (!ven wn(!n 
 
 you had attaine(| youi" a-bsolute i<leal, wouM not 
 seek to sterecjtype it, or to impose it by authority 
 
Tlin MKAHTY OK IIOI.IXKSS. 
 
 SO 
 
 1)1' 
 
 i)t 
 
 (ilHiiwlna'c^, liud you tlio powM^r. Von yourHclvcs, 
 1 (l()iil)t not, rejoice, UH I i-cjoice, that in this our 
 city, (iV(!i'y sluulc of opinion in niJittcr.s ccr*;- 
 monial lias its full and IVcc; oxpi'cssion in our 
 cliurclicH, sjin(;tion(!(l )»y due authority, and hy 
 th(! rr<'(! clioi(;(; oF indivi<lual con^^r'c^^at-ion.s. May 
 tliat (•onsinnniation Ixi attained throUi»Iiout tins 
 li^n^th and hreadtli of tli(! (yhui'cli oi' Kn^lund. 
 ]>ut you may well rc^joicc^, i'oi- yourselves, without 
 tliouf^ht of comparison or ci'iticism outsid(!, tliat 
 your (iflorts to " vvorsliip ({od in the ])eauty oi' 
 holiiuiss" hav(! been so zinUous, and, I doul)t not, 
 HO iinich ))less(ul. Vou have not (hicmed your 
 onerin;i;s \vaste<l oi* misspent, in Ixiautiryin;^; tliis 
 huildinii". You have not i-(^Jected the I'ulhist aid 
 of nuisic, thai, nohlest, divin(!st (^ift, vvhicli Cliris- 
 tianity accej)ted as a h<'i'i(a^'e of (U'eek civiliza- 
 tion, and laid hefore tin; sanctuary of (iod. 
 
 And this diiy you de<licai<' to His servi(*(! 
 another ofrei-inii-, those,' twofold UK'Uioi'ials — 
 pictur(^s of (yhi'isl/s lil'e, whicli shall help tin; 
 youn^' (o i'ealiz(3 th(! story which this pulpit so 
 ol'tciu recounts to them, an<l memories ol" <(o()d 
 and true men, sejrvants ol* (Jod in dillerent licdds 
 of work', of whom, inde»Ml, th(i wis*; kind's woid 
 is I'uHllled: 
 
 " Tho iiicniory of (ho just, is hlossod." 
 
 Not, inde(id, iVom our canonical Sci-i])tures, hut 
 in ()n(M>r those writini'S which stainl just outside 
 the i'rontier, an<l which the Church reads, " i'or 
 
 m 
 
 i 
 
90 
 
 THE HEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 # 
 
 example of lii'u and instruction of* niannoi's;" 
 tliere arc nicniorablo words which this day may 
 well recall to your minds: 
 
 "Lot UH now pniiso f.iinous men, uiul our ffithois tlmt 
 bug.'it UH. . . . Thc'io 1)0 of tljoni tluit luivo loft a 
 naniu holiiml thoui, that thoir praisos niij^ht bo ropctitod. 
 . . . . Thoir bodios aro buriod in ])oaco, but thoir 
 nauio livoth for ovorinoro. Tho poojilo will toll of thoir 
 wisdom, and tho oongrof^ation will show forth thoir 
 praiso."— (/iVci. xliv. J, «, 14.) 
 
 lietter than conventional e])ita])hs, these me- 
 morials will recall their work and their example. 
 The faithful ministers of Chiist who, in this 
 parish, preached His word and live<l after His 
 example, these being- dead, will yet speak to 
 you as you gaze on these memorials; the older 
 among you will recall their living presence, and 
 the young(3r will he stirred up to ennilate their 
 well-doing. 
 
 And so your worship in this house shall be 
 blessed and accepted by God. Each time you 
 enter these walls you will be aroused, not to 
 feelings of mere satisfaction at work completed, 
 but by a noble longing to persist in the " race 
 that is set before us," and to attain to the incor- 
 ruptible crown. 
 
 These words of Jesus above your Communion 
 table will call you to participation in His greatest 
 gift, that sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which 
 is not only a sign of our mutual love, but also 
 the sacrament of our redemption by Christ's 
 
 III II iM. 
 
THE HEAUTY OF IfOLINESS. 
 
 91 
 
 •loath. And those othor iriHpired words wliicli 
 stand over yonr entrance grates shall be win<red 
 words of strength and life, so that 
 
 "Hu may run that roadoth it." 
 
 Yes, the Lord wlio shall be ever with His 
 Church, even to the end of the world, in spite of 
 all her divisions, her errors, her short-coniinrrs 
 her fadures, shall fulfil His pronn'se to us. His' 
 blessing shall enrich your worship, His grace 
 attend your steps; and, wliether in the act of 
 worship, or in that labor which a noble saying of 
 old declared to be itself a prayer, " He shall 
 preserve your going out and your coining in, 
 ironi this time forth for evermore." 
 
 in 
 

 
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(.: 
 
 ii .11 
 
 i! 
 
 m 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 Preached at St. John'' a Church oil Sutuluj/, Novcmher 10th, 1S90. 
 
 " In your {mtience ye shall win yrmr souls." 
 
 — Like xxi. 19, 11. V. 
 
 Why is it that so many human characters 
 around us give to the observer a sense of incom- 
 pleteness, of imperfect growth ? Is it that they 
 could not have developed moral faculties more 
 fully, and so were destined forever to remain 
 mere sketches of what human nature can be, 
 sketches with blurred, suggested outlines, defi- 
 cient in due light and shade, just sufficient for 
 an artist to recall the scene which attracted him, 
 and which he will commit with patient skill to 
 his canvas ? If we could convince such charac- 
 ter of imperfection, and ask them the reason, 
 they would plead lack of opportunity : ' If I only 
 had a part to play on the arena of the world, I 
 could rise to great occasions.' 
 
 So the man who fails from lack of effort and 
 tenacity in some small field of work, dreams that 
 he could succeed in greater difficulty and on 
 sublime occasions. He scorns to exercise the 
 virtues of self-control, patience, resolution, in 
 
PATIENCE. 
 
 93 
 
 mcl 
 Ihat 
 
 on 
 I the 
 
 in 
 
 the humble sphere, and fancies that he could 
 command these qualities at an instant, could his 
 ambitious imagination convert its day-dreams 
 into reality. But man makes his own opportu- 
 nities in proportion as he renders himself capable 
 of them. The history of famous men, indeed, is 
 full of these supposed "chances," eagerly grasped, 
 and successfully used. But if we could read the 
 biography of failure, as we read the biography 
 of success, we should read of just as many open- 
 ings overlooked or wasted. 
 
 The lives which seem so colourless and unin- 
 teresting, so tedious to the individual and his 
 surroundings, so lacking in energy, so barren of 
 usefulness and charm to othei's — these arc the 
 lives, the souls, which have not been won ; these 
 are the buried talents, these the untilled, un- 
 cleared lands which cannot bear fruit. 
 
 And it is not energy alone, a ([uality rather of 
 temperainent than mind, that can develop a 
 character, can win our souls for us. As Jesus 
 tells us, it is patience, and if patience were the 
 one tiling needful for the saints in the age of 
 Christ's presence and pentecostal outpouring, 
 how much more for these latter days ? 
 
 It is said that the very highest test of mili- 
 tary discipline and efficiency in battle is won 
 when troops on the battle-field can remain 
 exposed to fir'., and yet not suttered to attack. 
 They call on their officei*s to lead them to the 
 charge, but the general knows the right occasion 
 
ii 
 
 94 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 II 
 
 I M 
 
 II;; 
 
 M 
 
 for advance, he gives them all the cover that the 
 situation can furnish, and he bids them be 
 patient till the time comes for action. 
 
 The experience of active life is a great thing. 
 It gathers for us not only the actual knowledge 
 of affairs, but builds up a trained instinct of 
 promptitude to seize hold of the occasion and 
 profit by it. But not less, indeed, for the 
 spiritual life, far greater is the gain of patience 
 in the growth of character, since what we do 
 is done in the grace of the Lord, but what 
 we suffer is granted for the trial of our souls. 
 For patience in the free agent is no mean and 
 timid virtue. If it was sai<l once that the 
 " dignity of the slave is silence," when fear 
 and prudence might act as incentives, surely 
 it is much more the dignity of free men (who 
 can complain and protest), if they wrap them- 
 selves in silence where speech cannot be an 
 effective force. 
 
 We are ashamed of the cry of physical suffer- 
 ing, but that is not more a sign of weakness than 
 the querulous complaint, of what ? of some cer- 
 tain inexorable consequence of our own action, 
 some harvest that our own imprudence has 
 sown. 
 
 I know that this is hard to learn, harder to 
 practise, far harder than to accept an abstract doc- 
 trine. When our life and future seems wrecked, 
 when all the golden hopes we once entertained 
 seemed dashed to the ground, and life seems a 
 
PATIEXCE. 
 
 96 
 
 to 
 
 loc- 
 
 :ed, 
 
 ined 
 
 IS a 
 
 future of dull suffering, worse than a prisoner's, 
 because tantalized by the joys of others so near 
 and yet so impossible to us, then it is hard to be 
 patient, that is, it is hard to complete our 
 characters, to " win the soul." 
 
 And yet that may be the supreme opportunity 
 afforded to us. That may be tlie occasion, the 
 only way of building up a true character, puri- 
 fied, strengthened, made receptive and tenacious 
 of what is received. Then, when the atheist 
 thinks of suicide as an escape from cares and 
 pain; then, when the weak Christian exhales 
 his sighs and moanings, and alienates perhaps 
 the very friends who feel most deeply for his 
 sorrow — then comes the Christian's great occa- 
 sion ; then the crown of victory, though not yet 
 near, is seen in the far distance. It is not the 
 stoic's mere sense of personal dignity and self- 
 dependence, it is the sense of being Christ's 
 follower, entering on the path of Christ, find- 
 ing the fulfilment of His words, trusting in the 
 certainty of His help. 
 
 And then the pain of our situation, the bur- 
 then of environment, the ties which only God 
 can loose, and which may be so fraught with 
 agony, these become the wholesome medicines of 
 the Great Physician of souls. We become con- 
 scious that the pain is less, that the effort is no 
 longer so exacting, and God knows that it is 
 because our soul, our living personality, has 
 gained in strength. 
 

 96 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 m 
 
 
 Then we know what religion means: not a 
 mental exercise for Sun«biy, not an intellectual 
 luxury for leisure, and the stock-in-trade of 
 churches and ministers ; but one of the very 
 elements of human life, the breath without 
 which the very soul is torpid, without which 
 the spirit is dead. 
 
 Happy the man who lives to feel his need. 
 Unhappy the man who, baskin*^ in all pros- 
 perity, never feels his need till he whispers, with 
 failincr faculties, a half mechanical assent to 
 deathbed consolations. 
 
 Unhappy the soul which has always been full 
 and satisfied, never has suffered contradiction, 
 never has suffered wrong, which has developed 
 itself just us circumstances helped, and has 
 passed down the stream of life with favoring 
 breezes, and the congratulations and envy of 
 beholders. 
 
 I do not say that such a soul is lost ; God 
 forbid. But it is not fully gained, it is not 
 fully possessed, in the sense of Christ's promise. 
 
 A character in a famous work of fiction is 
 made to exclaim, " How easy to be good on ten 
 thousand a year ! ** But Christ does not say 
 this. He says it is difficult, though not impos- 
 sible, for those who have en joyeo all eathly bliss 
 to fit themselves for heaven. 
 
 But He knew, as indeed most of us know, 
 that sorrow and the need for patience do not 
 belong solely to the poor and destitute in this 
 
PATIENCE. 
 
 97 
 
 of 
 
 not 
 
 lise. 
 
 m is 
 
 ten 
 
 say 
 
 lipos- 
 
 1 bliss 
 
 worM. He knew that pan^ifs of sufferinfjj more 
 than en<lurance can conceive, may be found in 
 tlie palace as often as the cottage, tliat not only 
 the lack of brea<l, but the lack of love and es- 
 teem an<l joy can poison the wellsprings of life ; 
 that amon<^ the wealthy and cultivated classes, 
 they are the golden opportunities for self-know- 
 ledge, self-conunand, self-contiuest, which shall 
 win the soul. 
 
 In the end of his epistle to the Romans, St. 
 Paul speaks of that " patience and comfort of 
 the Scriptures," words embalmed in one of the 
 most treasured prayers in our Liturgy. And 
 then, inspired by the use of the Word, he gives 
 utterance to a suljlime benediction, ** The God 
 of patience and comfort grant you to be of the 
 same mind one with another, according to Christ 
 Jesus. ' 
 
 The God of patience ! Surely a strange attri- 
 bute for omnipotence. But no, God is our ex- 
 ample even here. '* Never hasting, never rest- 
 ing," goes on the course of Providence. And 
 we, in our little world of life, can so follow in 
 the steps of that patience that we shall find Him 
 also the God of comfort. 
 
 [now, 
 not 
 this 
 
iff! 
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 Prrachal nt St. John's Church, on the 'ird Sumlaif in 
 Advent, 18U1. 
 
 (Tlie fourth in a series of sermons on "The Duties of the Church.") 
 
 " But if the Wiitchinaii seo the sword come, and blow 
 not the trumpet, and the })eo|)le be not warned, and the 
 Hword come, and take any i)erson from among them, . . . 
 his blood will I require at the watchman's hand." 
 
 — EzKK. xxxiii. 6. 
 
 Tliis eveninc; we approach a question wliere 
 serious objection may meet us at the very 
 thresliold. Can the Church of Cln*ist, whether 
 as the whole, in the ideal character, or in her 
 different sections, claim to ^ive counsel in social 
 problems ? And I take these words in their 
 fullest and broadest signification. Excluding 
 only the matters which belong to the mere 
 machinery of politics — but including matters 
 upon which the great issues of the world's wel- 
 fare depend — the question is : Has the Church, 
 not any one section or office in it, but the whole 
 Church embodied in ministers and laity — as a 
 Church — has it a right to an articulate voice of 
 
THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 99 
 
 jial 
 
 counsel, ami will that counsel be of benefit to 
 the world at larjije ? 
 
 At once the objection is obvious, founded on 
 division of labour, upon the advantage of special- 
 ized skill. Should not the Church, as a Church, 
 confine itself to the exposition and teaching of 
 theology, and leave the world's problems to the 
 world's solution, for better or for worse ? 
 
 But there would be more force in that objec- 
 tion if it expressed a loyal and consistent prac- 
 tice. Do those who deny to the theologian a 
 voice upon such a topic as labour disputes, for 
 instance, do they refrain from confident opinion 
 upon theological topics ? Everyone knows that 
 those who utter the most trenchant criticisms 
 upon theology, the pronounced and loud-voiced 
 party-men, are not the cjualified students, are 
 not the experts trained by long and laborious 
 discipline, but either speak from the blissful 
 unconsciousness of complete ignorance, or else 
 exemplify strikingly in their own pei*sons the 
 proverbial danger of a little knowledge. Special- 
 ization implies the skill of the expert, and that 
 does not always follow the barriers of a profes- 
 sion. 
 
 There have been laymen whose opinion upon 
 vexed questions of theology w^as more authorita- 
 tive than that of bishops. Selden, in the seven- 
 teenth century, although a layman, was in learn- 
 ing far above the divines whether of his own 
 church or of the Westminster Assembly ; Grotius 
 
 ( 
 
 tl 
 
"I 
 
 IH 
 
 i) 
 
 I;'' 
 
 i 
 
 f^: i 
 
 100 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 as a commentator surpassed all his clerical con- 
 temporaries. More recently, when (some yeara 
 ago) the difficult (luestion of the permissibility of 
 divorce was under discussion, it was from a 
 layman, Professor Conington of Oxford, that 
 emanated the decisive judgment which ended 
 argument, if not controversy. 
 
 And an ecjual number of important exceptions 
 might be named, showing that among the clergy 
 have been found experts in subjects not theolo- 
 gical. 
 
 I do not turn my back to remoter periods 
 when education was almost monopolized by the 
 clergy. In modern days we find cases more 
 numerous than time would allow to name. 
 Butler and Mansel are not less renowned as 
 metaphysicians, or Sedgwick and Buckland as 
 pioneers in the study of geology, or Malthus 
 as the enunciator and expositor of a profound 
 law of sociology, or Pritchard and Father Secchi 
 as astronomers, or Bishop Stubbs as the first 
 living authority on English constitutional history 
 — because they were by profession ministers of 
 religion. 
 
 And when the questions at issue contain 
 aspects of morality, (and what social problem 
 excludes them ?) then surely the watchman bears 
 not his trumpet in vain, and woe be to him if it 
 give forth an uncertain sound ! What, then, are 
 some of the problems upon which the Church of 
 Christ has not so much the claim only, but the 
 
THE CIIUUCII AND SOCIAL t^UEsTlONS. 101 
 
 Lin 
 
 jm 
 irs 
 
 it 
 ire 
 
 of 
 the 
 
 absolute duty, to utter eouiiHt'l, witliout fear or 
 favor { 
 
 Tlie first of tlieso, let us thank God, is no 
 burning; question on this continent. Whatever 
 burthens may be submitted to, there are no vast 
 armaments crushing the vital activities of our 
 nation, eripplinj^ its finances, poisonin*^ the well- 
 sprinj^sof international brotherhoo<l. But this 
 terrible evil is the present plague of Europe. 
 All the continental powers are (like the kni<^hts 
 of the Middle Ages) in danger of suffocation from 
 their own armour. All policy has to be directed 
 with a view to military alliances, to the dreadful 
 eventualities of a future war, which each year 
 seems to render more certain and more formid- 
 able. Should not ministers of religion in 
 Germany, in France, in Italy and Austria raise 
 their indignant protest ? It may be said that 
 emperors and statesmen would pay but scanty 
 heed to pulpit utterances, or even the protests 
 of By nods. Believe me, I do not exaggerate 
 their effect. It may be nothing more than the 
 dropping of water on the rock, but at last the 
 rock is worn away. The protests of Wilberforce 
 or Channing for long years seemed to avail little 
 against the curse of English or American slavery; 
 but their trumpets sounded not in vain. It was 
 like the assault of Israel on the fortress of 
 Jericho; the trumpet of warning and defiance 
 sounded and again resounded. Six times the 
 defenders listened and despised ; and doubtless 
 
! -^»- 
 
 I'. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ! I 
 
 102 THE cm J IK 'II AND SOCIAL (QUESTIONS. 
 
 the iisHailants wore sa<l and weary and dispirited; 
 but at the seventh sound the walls fell. 
 
 But turn to dangers and ditticulties which 
 immediately beset our western civilization, and 
 indeed are the social epidemic of all civilization. 
 I mean the jealousies and conflicts of labour and 
 capital. Turn whither you will, there is war 
 between man and man. Sometimes the victory 
 inclines one way, sometimes the other. In the 
 great colonies of Australia, rejoicing in their 
 abundant strength and infinite resources, the re- 
 presentatives of labour hold majorities, and seem 
 inclined to legislate for their sole interests regard- 
 less of the body politic. Elsewhere the reins of 
 government are in the hands of the capitalist, 
 and gigantic trade- combinations for a time are 
 successful. " From whence come wars and fight- 
 ings among you ? " cried St. James — " ye covet 
 and cannot obtain ! " A voice has been lately 
 uttered, the first official voice from a Christian 
 church. I wish it had come from our own. As 
 a Protestant minister, speaking in a Protestant 
 church, I say, all honour to him who conceived 
 the " Encyclical Letter on the Condition of 
 Labour." It is true that with some things in 
 that remarkable document we may not agree. 
 The philosophical system of Thomas Aquinas 
 (mighty name as that is in the history of 
 thought), is not the weapon that can pierce 
 the triple armor of self-interest ; it will not stem 
 the rushing torrent of modern party rivalry. It 
 
Till-: ciiriifii AND sociAi. grKsTi(»Ns. lO.S 
 
 mi^lit, p^'rhapM, ha saM that the propo.salH aiv too 
 gi3ucral, and that Uuto are not onouj^h spt'cilic 
 sugfrcstions tanj^ihly iloahng witli iiiatterH of 
 immediate actuality. But a manifeHto must state 
 general principles, and lay d(j\vn broad propor- 
 tions. What maxim nobler than this : " It is 
 one of the greatest blessings to be able to look 
 at things as they are, and at the same time to 
 look upwards for help from above to mend 
 them." All honor, I say it again in the midst 
 of vital difference, all honour to that body of 
 fellow Christians which, through their official 
 head, has sounded the trunjpet of warnirig, has 
 cried to the strugirlinirand contendiuir multitude: 
 " Sira, ye are brethren, but why do ye wrong 
 one to another ? " Biu if the claim of uttering 
 counsel in a church's corporate capacity has yet 
 to be vindicated by our own communion, 've can 
 justly boast that many individual teachers have 
 spoken words of wisdom, based upon exact 
 scientific knowledge, and conveying the most 
 timely and helpful counsel to the needs of the 
 present age. When James Fraser, the great 
 bishop of Manchester, was called upon to act as 
 arbitrator in the great cotton " strike," and his 
 arbitration obtained acceptance for many years — 
 this was not because he was a clergyman or a 
 bishop, but because by unanimous consent of 
 those hardheaded Lancashire mill o\vners and 
 operatives, his position guaranteed his imparti- 
 ality, and his reputation guaranteed his ability. 
 
'' 
 
 ■«ia«a»*Ma 
 
 m 
 
 ilJ! 
 
 f 
 
 I. ! 
 
 if:li 
 III 
 
 fli| 
 
 ! I 
 
 ■! t 
 
 104 THE CIIUIICH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 What is the root of the evil ? This morning 
 we learned it fron\ the uncompromising pen of 
 St. James : It is the lon<j^ing of the present day 
 to be rich at any cost, the cost of others' happi- 
 ness, or the cost of one's own soul. The capital- 
 ist desires to increase his thousands or millions ; 
 the workingman, whose whole capital is his 
 strong arm, desires to diminish his hours of 
 labour and increase his wages. There are times 
 of prosperity. England knew them about a 
 generation ago, when all the commercial world 
 was still at her feet, when her operatives could 
 not suffice, nor her looms be worked rapidly 
 enough for the overflowing demand. It was the 
 dream of Pharaoh realized, and the lean years 
 must follow, years of hard and eager competi- 
 tion, years of depression, years of misery, and 
 worse — of class hatred and class conflict — the 
 strike and the lock-out alternating, now the 
 artizan triumphing, now forced to accept the 
 masters' terms, but ever and ever increasing 
 that terrible chasm of divided sympathy, di- 
 vided interest, which left the two halves of the 
 population enemies at heart, natural enemies 
 as Englishmen and Frenchmen once supposed 
 themselves, as Germans and Frenchmen seem 
 to be at present — and this is in a Christian 
 land, a land sending out its missionaries, a land 
 where religion is established by law, a land 
 which boasts the open Bible and iti teachings 
 as a national heritage. 
 
THE CHUIUH AXJJ SOCIAL QUESTIONS 105 
 
 ^g 
 
 You may, my bretlircn, thoufjli God forbid it, 
 liave seen more painful sit^hts than wliat I 
 vividly remember, many years at^o, durin<^ a 
 strike in a Lancashire town. The very contrast 
 of silence and inaction, in a city meant for busi- 
 ness, was appallinj^. Nothing to relieve the 
 bleak dreariness of the surroundings : the tall 
 chimneys smokeless ; no busy hum from the 
 factories. At the street corners groups of men, 
 dispirited, aimless, hopeless ; gaunt-eyed women 
 passing with step so changed ; and from the 
 children even, all life and joy gone. One could 
 not but respect those who battled for what they 
 thought a principle, w^ho showed fidelity — almost 
 to the very jaws of starvation— to the leaders of 
 the trades' union. Suffering was not all on one 
 side ; for a strike meant bankruptcy to many a 
 cotton manufacturer. And yet — " th . pity of 
 it ! oh, the pity of it ! " The thought would rise 
 up in one's heart : Is there not a prophet among 
 us, will not God appoint a teacher who shall say 
 with Paul, " Behold, I show you a more excel- 
 lent way." 
 
 The present condition of things is a state of 
 war : no other term can describe it. And not 
 only war between capital and labour, but bitter 
 though bloodless strife between countries which 
 speak the same tongue and own the same an- 
 cestors. Some will tell us this is a part of Free- 
 dom, it is inevitable. But if it be a truth (which 
 
i-i iwvm 
 
 106 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 is a truism) tliat " union is strength " every- 
 where else, why is it a fallacy here ? If co- 
 operation means mutual benefit in every other 
 sphere of existence, why should not it be the 
 solution here also ? It will be said, " Oh, these 
 experiments of co-operation and profit-sharing 
 have been tried, and they have failed." Yes, 
 here and there, on a small scale, they have been 
 tried, and pressure from without, or apathy from 
 within, has choked the seed before the harvest. 
 But is that not the history of every great move- 
 ment ? Is it not the fact that these experiments 
 have always been encouraged by the soundest 
 economists, and the most experienced statesmen ; 
 that at the present time co-operative farms and 
 co-operative factories are working and prosper- 
 ing ; '^hat it is no mere Utopia of the theorist, 
 but a bright glimpse of hope which promises, 
 not indeed a universal solution, but an important 
 palliative of present evils ? 
 
 And then there is another practical suggestion, 
 not indeed novel, but which needs earnest re- 
 commendation at the present day. The Ency- 
 clical Letter from which I quoted, contains 
 some excellent remarks on the subject of Work- 
 men's Associations, as they once were, and as 
 they still might be : 
 
 "History attests that exceMent results were 
 effected by the Artificers' Guilds of a former 
 day. They were the means not only of many 
 
THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 107 
 
 [ere 
 ler 
 my 
 
 advantages to the workman, but in no small 
 degree to the advancement of art, as numerous 
 monuments remain to prove." (E. L., page 31.) 
 
 Whether we trace the origin of trade guilds 
 from the Rhodian Eranoi, or the Roman Col- 
 legia, or from Germanic assemblies, all students 
 are agreed that they owed all their practical 
 development to Christianity, for the " spirit of 
 association received a mighty impulse, and the 
 guilds spread themselves rapidly under the in- 
 fluence of Christian doctrine.' — "(L. Brentano, 
 "History of Guilds," 1870.) 
 
 Students of earlier English history know how 
 great a part is played by these guilds, in every 
 phase of social and even of political life. It is 
 not too much to say that to them England owed 
 her supremacy in manufactures and skilled 
 workmanship. Like all human institutions 
 indeed, these also degenerated ; the larger socie- 
 ties became wealthy and tyrannical, those that 
 now survive contribute nothing to the activity 
 of the nation, for they represent much wealth 
 only, and not the original principle of labour. 
 We do not expect the working man to neglect 
 his personal profit, but we do want him (for his 
 country's sake and his own) to take a pride in 
 his work. He is hindered by the large demand 
 for the cheaply pretentious rather than the 
 solidly excellent article — but here the trades' 
 union, if it rose to the highest conception of its 
 
If: ^- 
 
 ■wiittr^' m 
 
 w 
 
 * 1 
 
 III: . , 
 
 ■ 
 
 108 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 power, might effect much, even if it only im- 
 pressed upon its members the dignity of labour 
 and the superiority (from every true aspect) of 
 the man who creates and makes to the man who 
 can only consume. 
 
 I have indicated briefly some of the points 
 upon which our churches have the claim and the 
 duty to speak ; but here once more it is obvious 
 that only the undivided voice of a united Chris- 
 tianity could carry decisive weight in influencing 
 the world. If only for that purpose alone our 
 differences could be forgotten ! For men would 
 listen to that united voice. Not merely with 
 conventional civility, but from conviction that 
 these men speak that they do know. That voice 
 would reach across the world. It would speak 
 as no popular assembly can speak. No party 
 spirit, no class interests, no person- 1 bias, would 
 influence its counsel. 
 
 Once, in a distant age, the voice of Christian- 
 ity called upon the world to liberate the holy 
 places of Palestine from Saracen rule. And 
 when the first appeal was made at Clermont, 
 in the year 1095, from the lips of the assembled 
 multitude there burst forth the cry, " It is God's 
 will ! " 
 
 Better than a crusade for a romantic idea 
 would be an effort for the elevation of humanity. 
 Better than the extermination of Islam is the 
 purification of Christianity. For our own holy 
 
THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 109 
 
 places are defiled if selfishness and class-hatred 
 dommate among nations which invoke the name 
 
 fu '■! „ ^' """ "''"'"''« ^ proclaimed, and 
 there shall be no lack of warrion,. Our war- 
 cry shall be the same, " God wills it i " our 
 banner shall be the same, the cross of Christ 
 and our triumph (if victory come not in ou^ 
 time) shall be this, that we have taught our 
 fellow-man to love his neighbor for the sake 
 ot the love of God. 
 
/ 
 
 I' i 
 
 THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 Preached at St. John's Church, on the 0th of January, 1893, at 
 the funeral of the late Thomas Wilder Daniel, 
 . Churchwarden. 
 
 •* Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright : for 
 the end of that man is peace." — Ps. xxxvii. 37. 
 
 Funeral sermons are burdened with unfor- 
 tunate memories, not only in the past, but even 
 in the present time. Whether we think of the 
 rhetorical orations of antiquity, or of obsequious 
 court-preachers in later days, uttering their 
 flatteries over royal graves ; or even, in our 
 own time, of the usage in some places of making 
 the death of every prominent church-member 
 the topic of laudatory discourse, one is almost 
 constrained to regard the custom as more 
 honored in the breacTi than in the observance, 
 "Nil nisi honum mortuis*' — that well-known 
 saying, born of natural and kindly feeling, 
 seems to be a barrier against truth, even in a 
 place where truth above all things should be 
 spoken. 
 
 The Bible records no eulogium upon de- 
 parted saints. Jesus spoke at the grave of His 
 
THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 Ill 
 
 )er 
 
 )re 
 ice, 
 Iwn 
 
 a 
 be 
 
 Ide- 
 
 [is 
 
 friend ; but His text was "Lazarus, come forth !" 
 Peter was called to tlie house of death, and he 
 summoned Dorcas to arise. Of Stephen it is 
 only said that " devout men carried him to his 
 burial, and made great lamentation over him." 
 A few brief words relate that James, the son of 
 Zebedee, was slain with the sword. But are we 
 to suppose that the departure of faithful 
 disciples, whether after bitter trial, or in the 
 calm maturity of life, dieted no spoken me- 
 morial, no testimony to example given, and to the 
 evidence of faith unfeigned ? 
 
 Brethren, we know that such utterance, the 
 outpouring of mingled gratitude and grief, has 
 ever been the custom of the Church, for it is the 
 very instinct of our better nature. And now, 
 when Christianity seems to stand upon her trial, 
 when authority is called to proof, and the world 
 demands the result of our labour and the worth 
 of our professions, then surely the evidential 
 value of our personal character becomes of the 
 highest importance. 
 
 For the evidences of Christianity are mani- 
 fold, and now one feature or aspect, now an- 
 other, needs illustration or defence. All are 
 true, all are essential to the instructed Christian ; 
 but that which seemingly is least important 
 may become, and at the present time does be- 
 come, the most valuable. It may be said, and 
 said riglitly : Christianity is true, even though 
 every professing Christian were unworthy of 
 
 » 
 
 %\ 
 
 l\ 
 
h ,ii^S 
 
 112 
 
 THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 m 
 
 Nil 
 
 
 i^i i 
 
 his high profesHion. But how much better to be 
 able to urge that Christianity is true because we 
 can point to a type of character, more lofty, 
 more consistent, more humble, more self-sacri- 
 ficing, than any other system of philosophy of 
 life has produced. 
 
 Outside our churches, outside the furthest 
 frontier of Christianity, there may have been 
 lives of beauty and self-sacrifice, lives which in 
 some mysterious way the Holy Spirit may have 
 guided, as some of the earlier fathers believed 
 that the wisdom of Socrates and Plato had been 
 partially inspired. But only there where practice 
 harmonizes with theory, and life with faith ; 
 only there where the believer must work out 
 his own salvation through a Deity which works 
 in himself ; only there where the believer 
 ascribes all power to grace and all merit to an 
 Atoning Sacrifice, where divinely appointed 
 mysteries become realities through personal 
 faith, and works of love flow instinctively from 
 the bountiful source of a transformed nature — 
 there is that sitmmum bonurn which alone 
 conceives as her ideal, and which sometimes — 
 alas, so seldom ! — is manifested in human life. 
 And when that character is found not cloistered 
 and secluded, not even shielded by the privileges 
 and preventive checks of the ministerial office, 
 but living in the world, amid all its activities 
 and all its temptations, yet unspotted, living the 
 creed it professes, — shall we not bless God for 
 
THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 IV] 
 
 me 
 
 Ife. 
 :ed 
 ;es 
 [ce, 
 lies 
 Ihe 
 for 
 
 tliis greatest proof of His crraoe, sliall we not 
 treasure to our last days the priceless exaiujjle ? 
 
 Such an example' we have had among us in one, 
 who though dead, yet speaks to us, an example 
 that shall live and shall bear fruit. There are 
 others who, with better right, could speak of the 
 life of our departed brother, and of its many- 
 sided excellences ; of the spotless integrity which 
 gained his eminence in the connnercial world ; of 
 the munificence of his generosity, whether in re- 
 sponse to the cry of distress or to the need of 
 religious and philanthropic effort ; of the dignity 
 with which trials were borne; of the forbearance 
 towards those who injured ; of the encoiu*age- 
 ment to the many whom he had helped to rise. 
 But even to one who only knew him in these 
 later years, and who now mourns the loss of the 
 loving counsels of a fatherly friend, some aspects 
 are vividly conspicuous, and these I comrfiend to 
 myself, brethren, and to you, for our imitation. 
 
 Firstly, his unity of character. There was 
 no frontier of religious profession and worldly 
 nature. He was totally unlike the many whose 
 creed is mere Shibboleth, and their practice con- 
 ventional propriety, — it was that " single eye " of 
 which the Scripture speaks. If he spoke of 
 religion, he spoke naturally ; there was no altered 
 tone, no parade of devotional phrase and gesture. 
 One saw that it was an applied Christianity, a 
 religion which circulated like life-blood through 
 every portion of his mental and moral nature. 
 8 
 
114 
 
 THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 W" 
 
 The second feature tliat one could not fail to 
 note was the luiion of strenj^th of principle with 
 a perfect charity to others. And that union is 
 so rare ! Indeed, its very elements sin^^ly are 
 rare ; for the bigotry of inherited prejudice 
 claims to be "principle," and careless indifference 
 masquerades as " charity." But principles and 
 charity were his possession — the principles 
 tenaciously held, because rooted by experience in 
 conviction, — the charity wide and deep, because 
 learned of his Divine Master. Staunchly, 
 strongly, he maintained those evangelical princi- 
 ples which were to him the essence of all creeds, 
 and the precious inheritance of our Church, 
 never abandoned or weakened without injury 
 to the faith, and peril to the soul. ^Tet he was 
 no narrow partisan. His soul was truly catholic. 
 For him the church of Christ had many mansions 
 and the flock had many folds. It was not made 
 by statute, nor limited by vote of synod, or 
 anathema of ancient council. Fully loyal to the 
 formularies and teachings of his own communion, 
 yet his Christian fellowship went forth like the 
 great apostle, " to all them that love our Lord 
 Jesus Christ in sincerity." 
 
 And the last aspect of which I shall speak is 
 one that rarely finds mention in connection with 
 religion, and yet is its significant supplement. 
 When a modern writer exclaimed that St. Paul 
 was above all things a gentleman, he uttered 
 
THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 115 
 
 neither irreverence nor incongruity, but a pro- 
 found truth which well needs to be taken to 
 heart. That grand old English title of honor, 
 which knows no superior indeed but sovereignty 
 — that title M'hich none can claim rightly who 
 possesses but the veneer of social custom, manner 
 and phrase, that which means the outward form 
 of an inward nobility of soul — that title was his 
 by right of every attribute. To him might well 
 be applied the words of our great living poet : 
 
 "Not being less, but more than all 
 The gentleman he seemed to be ; 
 Best seemed the thing he was, and joined 
 Each office of the social hour 
 To noble manners, as the flower 
 And native growth of noble mind. " 
 
 ide 
 or 
 
 ion, 
 the 
 lord 
 
 IS 
 
 rith 
 mt. 
 faul 
 tred 
 
 It is a character such as this, a character 
 which fulfils the precepts of the famous text, 
 chosen as our Church's motto for this year, and 
 inscribed around our walls, " Love the Brother- 
 hood ; fear God ; Honour the King." For he loved 
 the brotherhood of the Christian name, as he gave 
 due esteem to all men ; his fear of God was that 
 of a loving child for its parent ; his loyalty was 
 the chivalrous attachment of one who never was 
 stained by party strife nor the unscrupulous 
 bitterness of conflict. 
 
 And now he is at rest; and which of our- 
 selves, here assembled, but will say, " May my 
 
!ll 
 
 116 
 
 THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 80ul l)e with his ! " Not for him do we pray, for 
 our Church knows nothing of such orisons, but 
 prayer we utter fervently. We pray for those 
 left behind, for one above all whose life suffers 
 the irreparable voirl of bereave<l companionship; 
 we pray for a blessed reunion in due season, 
 for ourselves also. And since this funeral 
 service of our Church knows no <jflooni even in 
 bodily death, but only the Resurrection and the 
 Life, let our prayer end in praise and blessing to 
 Hiin who <jave and who has taken away : 
 
 " Wc hless Thy lu>ly name for all Tliy servants de- 
 parted tliis life in Thy faith and fear, beseeching Thee to 
 give us grace so to follow their g()()d examples, that with 
 them wo may he })artikers of Thy heavenly kingdom. 
 Grant this, () Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only 
 Mediator and Advocate." 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 A sermon prcffrhcd at St. JohiCa Church, ou Sundai/, Januartf 
 Uth, after the death of the Duke of Clarence. 
 
 * ' Thoro is but a step hetwoen mo aiul death. ' ' 
 
 1 Sam. XX. 3. 
 
 David's character has been a difficulty to 
 many C/hristians in all times. It has been a 
 stumbling-block to the weak, and a supposed 
 occasion for the enemy. It presents to us the 
 career of a strong, expansive nature, richly en- 
 dowed in every respect, a man of genius (if ever 
 that word possessed a true signification), and a 
 man of action — two characters rarely united, 
 and never in such superabundance. That 
 nature is chosen by God, and the call is obeyed. 
 Yet at times David falls back, and his fall means 
 that he acts like an Oriental despot, which is 
 the very opposite of the action of the servant of 
 God. If there be difficulty — and that difficulty 
 is chiefly in regard to David's later years — it is 
 due to the fact that we are apt to measure the 
 conditions of other people's lives by our own 
 circumstances. But when we turn to David in 
 his bright and glorious youth — pure, strong, 
 
118 
 
 YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 !i 
 
 M 
 
 1.1 i . 
 
 ardent, God-fearing — then we have an ideal 
 character for every period of the world's history, 
 for every rank of life. 
 
 Is there a more beautiful incident than the 
 story of the friendship of Jonathan and David, 
 a friendship which bridged over tribal jealousies, 
 and the chasm which even in feudal days separ- 
 ated the monarch and the subject ? Saul's un- 
 happy nature has overcome his real nobility and 
 his affection for the young Bethlehemite. David 
 has fled for his life, and Jonathan comes out to 
 meet him, and the two friends hold counsel to- 
 gether. David feels the full horror of his 
 position. Saul's enmity is increased, rather than 
 lessened, by his son's friendship. It is jealously 
 redoubled; the jealousy of warlike success, 
 anr" of personal attraction. And David said: 
 " Thy father certainly knoweth that I have 
 found grace in thine eyes ; and he saith. Let not 
 Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved ; but 
 truly as the J ord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, 
 there is but a step between me and death." 
 
 He knew this, and the thought steeled his 
 will, and strengthened his character. He knew 
 also, for the Psalms show it, that not only when 
 a fierce foe pursue s, but at every moment of life 
 we stand close — very close — to the threshold of 
 death. 
 
 Brethren, these last days should have made 
 this consciousness of David's our own. It was 
 but two weeks ago that we bewailed (though 
 
YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 119 
 
 lave 
 not 
 but 
 
 reth, 
 
 his 
 :new 
 rhen 
 
 life 
 Id of 
 
 lade 
 
 was 
 
 lough 
 
 with the knowledge of his own joyful deliver- 
 ance) the departure of one to whom this Church 
 owed so deep a debt for his work and for his 
 exemplary life. Now we have hardly heard one 
 death-knell, when another sounds in our ears. 
 It is as when the greatest of modern English 
 orators, during the Crimean war, exclaimed : 
 " The Angel of Death is abroad ; one can hear 
 the beating of his wings." 
 
 We have heard of the death, at a great age, 
 of one who once seemed destined to the highest 
 place in our communion, but, swept along by a 
 great wave of religious feeling, not now our pro- 
 vince to discuss, passed over to the Church of 
 Rome, of which he became the most distinguished 
 figure. Not now the time to consider the les- 
 sions of the strange divided career of Henry 
 Edward Manning. Suffice it to remember that 
 however ill-advised and disastrous his theologi- 
 cal change may seem to us, we can pay a tribute 
 even in a Protestant church to the memory of 
 one who labored consistently for the cause of 
 temperance and for honorable agreement be- 
 tween the employer and the labourer. 
 
 But a career significant and memorable as 
 this is hardly noticed when the funeral bell 
 announces that the heir to England's crown, in 
 the very prime and bloom of youth, is suddenly 
 taken away. A stroke so sudden, so unexpected, 
 has not been known in English history since 
 that sad November day in 1817» when the 
 
120 
 
 YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 i 111 
 
 tj 
 
 m 
 
 i I 
 i 
 
 V I' 
 
 heiress of the English throne, Princess Char- 
 lotte, the darling hope of the nation, died with 
 her infant in childbirth. Then indeed political 
 circumstances, the possibilities of foreign in- 
 heritance of the British crown, enhanced the 
 gloom of the bereavement. But even when 
 this element is absent, when the succession is 
 firmly and assuredly established, there is a pang 
 that only the cynic and the selfish can repudiate. 
 Death is not gentler in the palace than in the 
 cottage ; there is so much more to lose. Even 
 those who care not for the institution of mon- 
 archy, from the great republic of North Amer- 
 ica came heartfelt sympathy. And who could 
 think unmoved of the scene, whether it had taken 
 place in cottage or in palace — the mother, that 
 graceful figure which never has lost the aflfection 
 of Englisnmen since the time, nearly thirty years 
 ago. when our laureate welcomed the 
 
 "Sea-king's daughter from over the sea," — 
 
 of the father who himself knew what it was to 
 enter into the very pains of death, and now haa 
 another lesson and w^arning. And of one other, 
 the affianced wife, maid and widow alike, whose 
 betrothal had called forth such unanimous ap- 
 proval and joy — one thinks of the words of 
 Shakespeare, which with such slight alteration 
 seems to be uttered by a whole nation : 
 
YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 121 
 
 to 
 
 her, 
 ^ose 
 |ap- 
 o£ 
 tion 
 
 "I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife ; 
 I thought thy bridal to have decked, sweet maid. 
 And not have strewed (his) grave. " 
 
 I have said that in this event, political in- 
 terests are but slifjjhtly at all concerned. Per- 
 haps that enhances the true effect of the lesson, 
 and the simple tragedy of the event. The con- 
 nection of family ties with the institution of 
 monarchy has its advantages as well as dis- 
 advantages. Theorists may express preference 
 for the ideal of a single figure, like that of the 
 great Antonines, untrammelled by such ties, leav- 
 ing to adoption the future of the empire. But, 
 even if that method ensured all the virtues of 
 selection, it had the signal and fatal flaw of 
 running counter to natural feeling. The few 
 might have welcomed it, the many might yield 
 allegiance, but not that fervent love which springs 
 from sympathy. Granted all the evils whicli 
 unworthy descendants bring with them, granted 
 the increased expense, and the possible social 
 anomalies, yet the sight of a pure family life 
 around the throne is better for a nation than a 
 thousand victories. The sight of George III. 
 and his wife and children walking on the ter- 
 race at Windsor, and the knowledge of their 
 homely life, did more for loyalty than even 
 Chatham's eloquence or Wolfe's immortal vic- 
 tory. It had been the first spectacle of the sort 
 since the ill-fated Charles bade tearful farewell 
 
 I 
 
122 
 
 YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 m^ 
 
 ■ .1 
 
 ■ ■ i 
 
 1 ■ 
 
 i 
 
 !| 
 
 to his children after receiving the sentence of 
 death. The second Charles had no children ; 
 his successor was virtually dethroned by his 
 daughter's consort. The two next monarchs 
 were childless, or left no offspring. The first of 
 the Hanoverians was separated from his queen, 
 and the second estranged from his eldest son. 
 But then came a truly English king, and the 
 loving simplicity of an English home as a 
 spectace and an example. And we have seen, 
 both old and young, the more recent spectacle 
 of a family reared by a wise father and a vir- 
 tuous mother, not indeed without its shadows 
 and omissions, but at least without any of the 
 hideous tragedies which ended the Bavarian 
 reign with a maniac's suicide, and covered the 
 imperial throne of Austria with irreparable 
 mourning. A nation's opinion is the opinion of 
 its majority; and I believe that this majority 
 would rather serve under an idealized and ele- 
 vated reflection of their own life, than under 
 the most enlightened ruler whose personal life 
 was isolated and self-contained. 
 
 But surely these sad and inevitable reflections 
 are not the only lesson from a young man's 
 sudden death ! Who can dare to say that his 
 vigor of constitution, his youth, his joy of life, 
 can guarantee him fifty years of existence, or 
 twenty, or ten, or one ? Not only David, dread- 
 ing the assassin's sword, not only the patient, 
 
 '1 ■■ , I 
 
YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 123 
 
 longing for and yet fearing his physician's ver- 
 dict, but all of us, down to the very youngest, 
 must confess : " There is but a step between me 
 and death." 
 
 The soldier knows it as the bugle sounds the 
 advance, and the hurtling shot, and comrades 
 falling on either side warn him, but he sees the 
 colours before him, and remembers that it is 
 sweet and honourable to die for one's country. 
 The sailor goes alertly to his work, but he 
 knows that only a plank or a thin iron plate is 
 between him and an unfathomable ocean. The 
 engine-driver knows that one error of memory, 
 one failure from intemperance or sleep, may 
 hurl the passengers into the great unknown 
 future. Yes, every man and woman, however 
 retired their life, must know, if they are not 
 " more brutish than any man," if they are not 
 
 "Duller than the fat weed 
 That roots itself in ease on Lethe's wharf," 
 
 that for us all, for the young man as the old, 
 for the rich as for the poor, for th^ retired as 
 for the active, for the pious as for the sinner — 
 " there is but a step between me and death." 
 
 Do our young men realize this ? Will the 
 death-bed of this young man, not bowed by 
 debility, trained in diligence and simple habits 
 of life, inured by wise counsels even in the 
 labours and fatigues of a seaman's life — will not 
 
' f. 
 
 I 
 
 124 
 
 YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 if 
 
 III 
 
 
 this speak to some a message that has not yet 
 been grasped. " Remember also thy Creator in 
 the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days 
 come." 
 
 If you will be ready should a call come to 
 you, what must you do now ? There are four 
 duties of youth, four ordeals, which must be 
 surmounted if you will emerge from the mere 
 animal and mechanical life, if you will aspire to 
 fulfil your high vocation. 
 
 Firstly, to obey. There are some who are 
 startled at this despotic sentiment. " That may 
 be very well for the old country, with its aris- 
 tocracies and relics of feudalism, but it is not 
 for us. One man here is as good as another !' 
 How far the foolish indulgence of parents may 
 nourish this theory, I will not discuss, but I 
 challenge it. I deny it altogether. 
 
 No, one man is not as good as another ! There 
 is superiority and inferiority in character, there 
 is superiority and inferiority in ability, there is 
 superiority and inferiority in birth even, though 
 I do not mean by the rules of the Herald's Col- 
 lege, but the descent from pure and strong and 
 God-fearing ancestry. If a young man cannot 
 obey, he will never be fit to command, for he 
 will not command himself. One of the greatest 
 of German writers left this maxim, worthy of 
 being inscribed in letters of gold, and of being 
 the motto of each young man's aspiration : 
 
YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 125 
 
 !'' 
 
 lere 
 re is 
 
 and 
 mot 
 he 
 itest 
 of 
 iing 
 ion : 
 
 "Only under resfriction can a master prove 
 himself; and law alone can bring us freedom" 
 Obey then the authority which an educated 
 reason acknowledf^es. Obey — because it is pro- 
 fitable. Obey — because it is noble. And then, 
 even before you are aware, the call will come 
 to you : " Take thou authority ! Thou hast 
 been faithful in a small thing, enter into the 
 joy of the Lord." 
 
 And the next word is learn. "What have I 
 to learn ? (say some) and what use is learning 
 to me ? Will it make me richer, or more pow- 
 erful in any community ? I have been at school, 
 and perhaps at college. What more do I want ?" 
 
 The teaching of school and college, even when 
 every honor is obtained, means just one drop in 
 the ocean of knowledge. The youth worth 
 anything, the youth who will make a man in 
 time, is always eager to learn. Life is not half 
 long enough for his diligence, and only eternity 
 could suffice for his aspiration. But how often 
 we see ignorance, not merely contented but 
 supercilious and conceited. Yes, conceited of a 
 knowledge which is a minus quantity, not even 
 enough to discern its own ignorance. And true 
 knowledge is so humble, for its far sight dis- 
 cerns the distant mountain peaks, the passes not 
 yet traversed, the plains yet unsurveyed. 
 
 And the third ordeal is suffering — endurance, 
 the patience of the saints. Will you point to 
 
m 
 
 ii 
 
 :\ 
 
 i 
 
 "7 'I 
 
 i.j ; 
 
 126 
 
 YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 some who have never suffered, and I will show 
 you those whose moral stature is yet incomplete. 
 " Why need I suffer ? Let the weak suffer and 
 submit, and let me hold my own ! The fittest 
 survive and the weaker fail in the struggle of 
 life. A general might as well prefer and pray 
 for defeat as a man prefer suffering in the 
 world." I do not say that he shall pray for it ; 
 the concern is that when it comes he shall bear 
 it, and when it is past he shall thank God for 
 it. You cannot escape suffering, except by 
 making others suffer for you. And if that be 
 your lot, will there not be a future when the 
 memories of a selfish and sensual past shall be 
 the torture of an eternal present. 
 
 And the last word is conquer, and if you have 
 obeyed, and learned, and suffered, the rest is 
 clear — first to conquer oneself, then to conquer 
 evil around us. Then all is yours, and you 
 stand secure amid failure and calamity, and 
 death itself. You know then how near death 
 is — that there is but a step between you and 
 death, and you do not fear it. For it is not 
 darkness in the horizon, but (as the pilgrim in 
 the allegory found) a bright land visible beyond 
 the gloomy river. That river must be passed, 
 but it has no terror for the Christian. Only 
 through it can he be perfected. Only by that 
 passage can lie throw off all his weakness, and 
 obtain all his heritage. Only by the body's 
 
YOUTH AND DEATH. 
 
 127 
 
 death can he come to know fully what here 
 he knows but in part, to know the Truth as 
 now he is known of G«I. 
 
 And if that spirit be oure. we have learned 
 
 he lesson of life, and can teach it to oZ. 
 
 Life we are to live, to utilize, and even to enjoy 
 
 (when such .s our Father's will), and then- 
 
 though the cup may be bitter, and we pray that 
 
 and peace, and even triumph, when we exclaim : 
 
I r J 
 
 if 
 
 ! I 
 
 II ' 
 
 I I 
 
 II '< 
 
 ''NEllUSHTAN." 
 
 Preached at St. John's Church, August 7th, isu:; 
 
 ".And Hozukiah braku in pioci^s tlie bia.suii surpont 
 that Moses had mado : for unto those days the cliihlren of 
 Israel did l)urn incense unto it : and he called it Neliush- 
 tan."^ — 2 KiNiJS xviii. 4. 
 
 The liistoiy of Israel is the history of the 
 supernatural. Bil)lical scholarship can aid us ; 
 it can sift and classify, comment and interpret ; 
 it can furnish illustrations ; it can settle matters 
 of literary style, chronology, and authorship, or 
 at least mark out what is knowable at present 
 on these matters; but soon the boundary is 
 reached when the commentator is silent, the 
 oracle is dumb — the human intelligence has 
 spoken all it can, and it remains but to say, as 
 we ponder over the narrative of wonder, 
 
 "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous 
 in our eyes." 
 
 There is no incident more wonderful than the 
 story of the Brasen Serpent, which we read in 
 the Book of Numbers. Wonderful in the miracle 
 
 * Margin, "A piece of brass." 
 
" NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 129 
 
 isent 
 
 y '^'^ 
 
 , tlie 
 has 
 w. as 
 
 UB 
 
 m 
 
 the 
 
 [ead in 
 
 iracle 
 
 itself, more wondorful, if possible, in the Divine 
 method of the miracle ; wonderful, almost inex- 
 plicable to us, as surely much nun'e to the 
 Israelites, in the seemin(^ r3versal of the strict 
 prohibition a<jjain.st the " makin<^ of an image or 
 similitude ; " wonderful in the selection of the 
 serpent, the cause of the plague, associated also 
 with the first temptation and sin of mankind. 
 
 Israel was near the end of the wandering in 
 the wilderness. They left Mount Hor, where 
 Aaron had died, and they marched southward in 
 order to avoid entering the land of Edom, which 
 had refused their request for passage. They were 
 almost in sight of the Red Sea, where associa- 
 tions of old should have aroused confidence in 
 God, but here the national weakness once more 
 obtained the upper hand. Once more the old 
 nmrmurs were heard, the spirit of mutiny arose. 
 It was the old cry : " Wherefore have ye hrowjht 
 us up out of Egypt to die in the ivllderness ? fur 
 there is no bread, neither is there any water; 
 and our soul loatheth this light bread." Their 
 contempt for the miraculous food so freely given 
 to them was soon to be punished. A swarm 
 of saraphs appeared, a species of peculiarly 
 venomous serpents, terrible from the burning 
 agony of their poison, which gav^e the epithet 
 of " fiery " or " burning " to them, and " much 
 people of Israel died." Terror bred remorse, or 
 at least the need for appeal. The people confess 
 their sin, and Moses pleads for them. And then 
 9 
 
if 
 
 f| 
 
 hill 
 
 130 
 
 " NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 the command is received to make a brascn 
 8araj>h, and Hot it upon a pole. ''And it shall 
 covie to pusH thai every one that is bitten, when 
 he seetk it (or, looketh upon it) shall live." The 
 promi.se was fulfilled, the wounded were healed, 
 and so the history ends. 
 
 But we are enabled from a later narrative to 
 complete the history of the Brasen Serpent. It 
 was preserved and held in natural veneration. 
 It was carried into the Promised Land. We 
 know not in what hi^h place or shrine it was 
 preserved. We know not what protests were 
 mmxle, or by what means it survived the vicissi- 
 tudes of those troubled centuries 
 
 There are connnentators who endeavour to 
 explain away the narrative, and would persuade 
 us that the original brasen serpent could not 
 have been thus preserved ; that Samuel would 
 not have permitted its existence, or that it 
 woukl have been mentioned expressly in the 
 enumeration of the relics preserved in the ark. 
 There are difficulties here as elsewhere, but to 
 me at least there is greater difficulty in rejecting 
 a plain statement of an occurrence not anteced- 
 ently impossible. 
 
 When the good king Hezekiah ascended the 
 throne, he began by a thorough reformation of 
 existing abuses. " ffe removed the hii/h places" 
 — that is, the unlicensed shrines and local sanc- 
 tuaries; "/w brake the 'pillars" — monuments 
 which tended dangerously to similarity with 
 
alt 
 len 
 Che 
 led, 
 
 I to 
 
 It 
 
 iion. 
 
 We 
 
 was 
 were 
 cissi- 
 
 ur to 
 
 ijuade 
 
 d not 
 ould 
 at it 
 
 In the 
 
 [e ark. 
 lUt to 
 |ecting 
 Lteced- 
 
 id the 
 lion of 
 
 places" 
 II sanc- 
 
 iments 
 with 
 
 " NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 131 
 
 Baal-worship, as the Asherah or groves to the 
 kindred worship of Astarte. And Inst of all, 
 greatest act of testimony to the purity of divine 
 worship — act of sacrilege to superstitious minds 
 — he laid hands upon that venerable relic which 
 for eight centuries had enlisted the worship 
 of successive generations. What an jistonish- 
 ment, what a pang of horror must have been 
 excited when the relic to which the people were 
 accustomed to burn incense, was brouglit forth, 
 and by the king's command broken in pieces ! 
 And his wonl completed and explaine<l the act. 
 " He called it Nehushtan " — " a piece of brass." 
 He shamed them from the past idolatry. He 
 recalled them to the worship of the Living God. 
 
 And so the Brasen Serpent seems to vanish 
 from history with its destruction; but once 
 more, after lapse of time, it is recalled to mind. 
 Jesus Christ, in his colloquy with Nicodemus, 
 refers to it as a type of the elevation of Christ 
 upon the cross. "As Moses lifted up the serpent 
 in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man 
 be lifted up : that whosoever believetk in him 
 should not perish, but have everlastin<i life." 
 
 We must now turn back to the original story, 
 if we are to unravel the multifarious difficulties 
 which attend an effort to realise its lesson to 
 ourselves. There is the positive salvation, con- 
 nected in the past with the Brasen Serpent, as 
 with its antitype the Cross. There is the nega- 
 tive danger of superstition attaching to a symbol 
 
i 
 
 ' 1 t 
 
 j 
 
 
 ,;:|ill 
 
 J ( 
 
 ^ ! i I 
 
 '|:i:| 
 
 132 
 
 « 
 
 NEHUSHTAN. 
 
 the most venerable and holy, and corrupting the 
 worship of God into idolatry of thft creature. 
 . At the very first sight there are difficulties. 
 Those commentators who have striven to show 
 that the original brasen serpent was not pre- 
 served, are not merely actuated by the possible 
 inclination to defend the use of the crucifix, 
 which even Lutherans do not exclude altogether, 
 but the fear of connecting the Jewish lapse with 
 Egyptian serpent-worship. 
 
 The U80 of an image in spite of the general 
 prohibition, and that image' the serpent, is a 
 mystery in itself. When Justin Martyr pressed 
 his Jewish opponent in the Dialogue for an 
 explanation, the reply is that the Teachers 
 cannot account for it. But we find light and 
 instruction in one of the so-called Apocryphal 
 Books. In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon 
 we read (xvi. 5-7) : 
 
 "For when . . . they perished with the stings of 
 crooked serpents, thy wrath endured not forever. But 
 they were troubled for a small season, having a sign of 
 salvation, . . . for lie that turned himself toward it 
 was not saved by the thing that he saiVy but by Thee, that 
 art the Saviour of all." 
 
 And this is followed by the Talmud, which 
 explains the words in the Book of Numbers 
 thus : " It shall come to pass that if one bitten 
 look upon it, ha shall live, if hi^ heart he directed 
 to the Name of the Word of the Lord" 
 
" NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 133 
 
 he 
 
 les. 
 
 ow 
 
 )re- 
 
 Ible 
 
 ifix, 
 
 her, 
 
 jvith 
 
 leral 
 is a 
 essed 
 »r an 
 .chers 
 b and 
 phal 
 Lomon 
 
 ^ings of 
 But 
 
 I sign of 
 \oard it 
 tee, that 
 
 which 
 imbers 
 bitten 
 iirected 
 
 But a new aspect is introduced by Philo, who 
 makes this serpent the opposite of the serpent 
 of the temptation. " The serpent of Eve" he 
 says, ''was pleasure, hut the serpent of Moses 
 was temperance and endurance." Some of the 
 Christian writers took up this view. Ambrose, 
 for instance, speaks of the " good serpent which 
 sheds not poison, hut its antidotes." But here it 
 is impossible not to recall the fact that good 
 qualities were symbolised by the'serpent in that 
 curious form of pagan worship included in the 
 Indian and even the Greek and Roman mytho- 
 logies. 
 
 The serpent represents life and force, some- 
 times even eternity, and the quality of wisdom 
 sometimes included reminds one of the words 
 of Jesus : " Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless 
 as doves." 
 
 In other places it represents the local deity ; in 
 fact, there is no evil principle symbolised in any 
 pagan religion. It is only the religion of Israel 
 which proclaims the serpent was "more suhtil 
 than any beast of the field," and the source of 
 man's disobedience. - 
 
 For the Scripture presents the Serpent as the 
 symbol of the personal power of evil. So it was 
 in the miracle in the wilderness, where the evil 
 by which the people suffered is shown openly 
 as overcome. He who, looking upon the symbol, 
 recognized in it the sign of God's conquering 
 power, found in himself the effects of faith. 
 
1 
 
 \l 
 
 
 
 
 V . 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 i 
 
 pi 
 
 ; 
 
 • 
 
 ! 
 
 i .' j ■■ 
 
 mi ^ ^ 1 
 
 
 m 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 Hili 
 
 iii 
 
 liiin! 
 
 134 
 
 NEHUSHTAN 
 
 » 
 
 The evil was represented as overcome in a typi- 
 cal form (a brasen serpent), and not in an 
 individual form (a natural serpent), and there- 
 fore the application of the image was universal. 
 Let us then place the two incidents together, 
 as the Scripture does— the elevation of the 
 serpent and the elevation of Christ on the Cross. 
 We admit the curious analogies which might 
 convey a favourable symbolism to the serpent. 
 The author of the epistle ascribed to Barnabas, 
 and even Origen, inclined to this view, which 
 enlists the ingenuity of interpreters. But true 
 Biblical interpretation draws a firm line of 
 demarcation between the region of certainty 
 and the region of edifying possibility. We are 
 safe, and only then safe, by confining the analogy 
 to the matter of elevation and of faithful appeal, 
 even that of "looking unto Jesus, the author 
 and finisher of our faith." Great stress is laid in 
 this Gospel upon this " lifting up." " When ye 
 have lifted up the Son of Man," said Jesus, " then 
 shall ye know that I am he." And again, in 
 language still more prophetic : " And I, if I be 
 lifted up from the earth, shall draw all men 
 unto me." It is used also in reference to the 
 Ascension. Thus the words imply an exaltation 
 in appearance far different from that of the 
 triumphal king, and yet in its true issue leading 
 to a divine glory. For this [passage, through 
 the elevation on the Cross to the elevation on 
 the right hand of God, was a necessity arising 
 out of the laws of the divine nature. 
 
" NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 135 
 
 of 
 
 iiogy 
 
 )peal, 
 ithor 
 id in 
 ^n ye 
 then 
 
 |in, in 
 I be 
 men 
 ,0 the 
 iation 
 »f the 
 lading 
 irough 
 Lon on 
 .rising 
 
 The great lesson, then, which unites Old and 
 New Testament, uttered in different words and 
 b^ means of different symbols, but essentially 
 the same, teaches that a Saviour at all times has 
 been lifted up for the salvation of men, and that 
 those who turn with faith to that Saviour shall 
 not look in vain. 
 
 That is a relatively simple lesson, though sub- 
 lime in its glorious message of grace. Now we 
 turn to the other side. The danger that attends, 
 like a dark cloud near the light, upon the very 
 borders of truth. 
 
 If ever there was a historical monument 
 which merited to receive the wondering admir- 
 ation of posterity, it must have been that 
 Brasen Serpent, which once had been God's 
 chosen symbol and effective sign of grace. Who 
 could look upon it unmoved, as he remembered 
 the terrible days of old — the fiery serpents, the 
 agonizing deaths, the frantic, piteous appeal, and 
 the pardon and rescue given by miracle ! Could 
 any behold without an inclination to worship, 
 to regard the past history as a present attribute, 
 the Divine appointment then as a magical charm 
 inherent in the object now ? Could they look 
 on it, and not worship ? 
 
 To the Jewish race, then, the idea was con- 
 tagious and the temptation irresistible. If the 
 deities of other nations could allure to a div' Jed 
 worship, to conciliate a possible force and hosti- 
 lity, why not an object known to have been an 
 
 I 
 
i 
 
 F I 
 
 ! - ' i 
 I 11 
 
 t i 
 
 
 fri 
 
 i 
 
 H *•' 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 " NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 instrument of power, and presumed to contain 
 that power in some latent form ? So we find 
 that, together with the pillars and the groves, 
 this venerable relic became a snare and even a 
 cause of sin. And therefore Hezekiah, in the 
 first fervour of his zeal, condemned it to the 
 same destruction. " He brake in pieces the 
 brasen serpent that Moses had made : for unto 
 those days the children of Israel did burn in- 
 cense unto it: and he called it Nehushtan," — 
 (sc, " that piece of brass.") 
 
 What lesson does this teach us applicable to 
 present times and present temptations ? The 
 great purifying work of Hezekiah finds a re- 
 markable parallel in the Reformation of the 
 sixteenth century. Then, as twc thousand years 
 before, false shrines were destroyed and evil 
 methods of true worship restrained. The mass 
 became a communion, the altar a table, images 
 and pictures were destroyed. Most significant 
 of all, the pictured cross was removed from the 
 walls of churches. This must have caused a 
 pang CO many minds. It must have been a 
 breach with old associations. " Can there be 
 harm in it?" many must have exclaimed. "Are 
 we not told that from the Cross comes our salva- 
 tion ? May we not then adore the Cross, or the 
 image which pictures the Saviour extended 
 upon it ? " 
 
 Those who have travelled in Koman Catholic 
 countries and have seen the large crosses erected, 
 
(( 
 
 NEHUSHTAX. 
 
 137 
 
 in 
 
 ncl 
 
 es, 
 
 I a 
 
 the 
 
 the 
 
 the 
 
 into 
 
 in- 
 
 j> 
 
 ^, — 
 
 le to 
 The 
 
 a re- 
 
 c the 
 ears 
 evil 
 mass 
 iages 
 
 Ificant 
 the 
 [sed a 
 
 leen a 
 sre be 
 "Are 
 isalva- 
 lor the 
 .ended 
 
 itholic 
 :ected, 
 
 with the figure representing in crude outline 
 and colours the aofonies of death, have seen that 
 against wliich the Reformation protested. Tht^^ 
 have seen its logical sequel also. For, as with 
 Israel, the almost excusable veneration for the 
 Brasen Serpent led on to the worship of Baal 
 and Ashtoreth, so the crucifix is almost lost 
 amidst the innumerable objects of worship — 
 pictures of saints, the symbols of their suffer- 
 ings, relics of their bodies, dress, and habitation. 
 Where was the barrier to be erected ? What 
 adoration of a creature was right, and what was 
 wrong ? And the Reformation answered, as 
 Hezekiah had answered of old, that all creature- 
 worship, and all that tended to creature-wor- 
 ship, was of evil. 
 
 There is no symbol more glorious to the 
 Christian than the Cross. From childhood, 
 engraven upon the heart, there are pictures 
 which need no human pencil. We see Jesus 
 fainting under His cx'oss, on the way to death ; 
 we see that cross erected, and the divine figure 
 there extended ; we hear, as if spoken now, the 
 gracious words of pardon to enemies and of love 
 to His own. We hear the voice that tells us 
 that salvation is completed, that the work of 
 Christ is finished. We know for what purpose 
 the Saviour was lifted upon the Cross — " that 
 ivhosoever helieveth^'may in Him have eternal 
 lifer 
 
 Do we need, ought we to desire, to leave the 
 

 W' 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 ' i 
 
 : > i 
 
 4 1 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 ri 
 
 BssBBoaataHi 
 
 ;-! 
 
 138 
 
 " NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 person for the instrument — the crucified Saviour 
 who should be in our hearts for the emblem 
 which can be touched and handled ? One ser- 
 vice of our Reformed Church, it is true, retains 
 once, as a curious survival, the use of the manual 
 sign of the Cross, but the Rubric apologetically 
 refers to a canon of the Church which expressly 
 disavows and condemns all adoration of the 
 symbol ; and all should be aware that this inci- 
 dent of the baptismal service forms no part of 
 the sacramental sign, which has for its abso- 
 lutely indispensable criterion that it should be 
 " ordained by Christ Himself !' 
 
 There have been times in the history of the 
 Jewish, as of the Christian Church, when there 
 was need to teach the duty and value of out- 
 ward signs of devotion. In those disorganized 
 days when Samuel was prophet and judge, he 
 had more constructive work to do than to 
 repress any nascent feeling of veneration for 
 the Brasen Serpent. When men were hardly 
 to be brought to worship Jehovah at all, it was 
 not the time to teach an unnecessary lesson. 
 And so, in modern days which some of the 
 oldest can faintly remember, when the services 
 in village churches, and often in cities also, were 
 performed negligently, carelessly, irreverently — 
 there was need for the minister of God to incul- 
 cate reverence in outward things ; as even now 
 there are too many who, in the name of Protes- 
 tantism, furnish the most efficient weapon to the 
 
" NEHUSHTAN.' 
 
 139 
 
 em 
 mer- 
 lins 
 lual 
 
 ally 
 issly 
 the 
 inci- 
 ft of 
 Bibso- 
 Ld be 
 
 ,f the 
 there 
 : out- 
 mized 
 
 enemies of Protestantism, by neglect of decency 
 and order. 
 
 But wlien the tide runs the other way — when 
 superstition is the religious epidemic, and the 
 outward symbol obscures the inward grace — 
 then the need is different. Then Hezekiah 
 destroys that national monument which has be- 
 come an idol, and calls it " that thing of brass." 
 Then the faithful minister warns against the 
 insidious growth of that erroneous devotion 
 which mistakes the shadow for the substance, 
 the symbol for the reality. He teaches that 
 God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must 
 worship in spirit and in truth. 
 
 The Cross of Christ, brethren, should have no 
 need of outward aid to imprint it on the mem- 
 ory of Christians. Jesus tells us that unless we 
 take up the Cross we cannot be His disciples ; 
 but that means far other and far more than to 
 place a crucifix on our table. St. Paul will not 
 glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 by whom the world is crucified unto him. Even 
 if we take the alternate reading — " by which" 
 i.e., by the Cross itself — that will not obscure 
 the meaning for an instant. The Cross is the 
 efficient instrument for Christ, and Christ for 
 us. By this He reconciled us, and "abolished 
 in His flesh the enmity, even the law of com- 
 mandments contained in ordinances;" by this 
 He "reconciled them both in one body unto 
 God." Or, as he says elsewhere, "He hath taken 
 
 % 
 
iMi 
 
 ' i i 
 
 m 
 
 'III! 
 
 Ill 
 
 ^ ii 
 
 ! I 
 
 I !• 
 
 Jl I 
 
 I '^} 
 
 II! 
 
 140 
 
 " NEHUSHTAN." 
 
 it (tliis law of ordinances) out of the way, nail- 
 ing it to the Cross." 
 
 That Cross has done its work, once and for 
 ever, and for us now the Saviour is our glorified 
 Intercessor. The cross which we have to take 
 is the life of humility, patience, perseverence in 
 well-doing. We cannot picture it except in the 
 struggle of daily life. To fancy tliat we can 
 attain the same end by looking at a symbol, 
 even with a sense of worship, or that we can pay 
 off the service of our heart by some outward 
 discipline of the body, is the most fatal of delu- 
 sions. Our object of worship will prove, at the 
 last, to be mere Nehushtan, the piece of brass 
 or wood, as helpless as the pagan idol, and 
 without its plea of ignorance. But to those 
 whose life has been the Cross, and their gaze 
 fixed upon the Saviour, the promise is sure — 
 * They shall not perish, but have eternal life." 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 J'reackea at St. John's Church, September nth. im. after tk, 
 death of BUhop Medley. 
 
 "I have finished the course."— 2 Tim. iv. 7. b v 
 
 The force of an illustration varies with the 
 m.ncl of the receiver. " He that hath eara to 
 
 but e pecially the teaching by metaphor and 
 parable. To some, in this age of florid and 
 reahstic description, St. Paul's words mil seem 
 colorless and tame; but to the masters of language 
 to those who weigh the value of each word as 
 of a com fresh from the mint of thought and 
 expression, above all to those who u„de,.tand 
 St. Pauls use of condensed imagery, these few 
 and simple words carry a deep and a pathetic 
 meamng The course was his life, the L that 
 now lay behind him. " I ar. no:, ready tX 
 offerea he says, "tU time of ,ny departure is 
 at hand. I have fought a good fight ; I have 
 finished my course." 
 
 He looked back, from the time of that second 
 Koman imprisonment, upon the vista of pa^t life 
 h.s childhood, education under Gamaliel, his eager 
 
■ 
 
 1 
 
 ll 
 
 i ■ 
 
 :'i 
 
 1 
 
 
 : ( i 
 
 I'hU 
 
 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 (;. 
 
 1 , 
 
 i 1 
 
 '^! 
 
 I:! 
 
 I I 
 
 I i 
 
 
 
 ii . 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 n 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 ' i 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 ! 
 
 
 142 
 
 THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 devotion to the national cause and faith, his zeal 
 against Christianity, the persecution and stoning 
 of Stephen, the fateful journey to Damascus, 
 the conversion, probation, first ministry, trials, 
 travels, failures, succcesses: "In weariness and 
 painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and 
 thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." 
 And what after ? The sword of the Roman 
 executioner, and then — the Master's welcome. 
 
 All lives are not like this, but every Christian 
 life has and must have the element of combat, 
 and, above all, of completion. The course must 
 be entered, and it must be finished. It is the 
 faint human echo of the great proclamation 
 from the Cross, which our lips may utter. But 
 not all can utter it. So many sink exhausted 
 in the course. So many turn aside to what 
 seems easier competition, and a more attractive 
 reward. But to those that continue there is 
 the certain reward. "He that endureth unto 
 the end, the same shall be saved." 
 
 Many of you have heard that one whose life 
 from any point of view was noble and memorable, 
 has " finished the course." Already from many 
 quarters (the columns of the press, that daily pul- 
 pit of the nineteenth century, with its myriad 
 congregations and its boundless choice of topic), 
 words of generous acknowledgment, of merited 
 recognition have gone forth. Praise almost un- 
 mingled, and yet truth, for there are lives where 
 the old and abused maxim, "nil nisi honum 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE 
 
 143 
 
 eal 
 
 iiig 
 
 cus, 
 
 ials, 
 
 and 
 
 and 
 
 ess. 
 
 »inan 
 
 stian 
 nibat, 
 must 
 
 is the 
 
 :\atioT^ 
 But 
 bUsted 
 what 
 •active 
 lere is 
 unto 
 
 )se life 
 
 iorable, 
 
 many 
 
 lily V^^' 
 Imyriad 
 
 topic)* 
 
 lerited 
 
 lost un- 
 
 Is where 
 
 honii'ni 
 
 mortuiti" can bo exchanijfcd for the better ren- 
 dering, " nil n'm verum." But we can do more 
 tlian eclio the words of praise that are on the 
 lips of all, irrespective of creed and party. At 
 the end of a course so long and so eventful we 
 can judge, we can anticipate posterity itself, for 
 many of us are the posterity of that generation 
 which gave birth to John Medley, Bishop of 
 Fredericton. • 
 
 To understand a man rightly, we must under- 
 stand his generation, its passions and aspira- 
 tions. We cannot yet judge our own age, and 
 therefore our ephemeral verdicts will often be 
 refuted by the logic of later experience. But 
 we can judge the generation of the First Reform 
 Bill of 1830, the men who longed for a liberty 
 which, if to modern views meagre and inade- 
 quate, then meant almost a legal revolution — 
 the generation of Brougham and Rom illy, of 
 Russell and Grey, when Carlyle and Tennyson 
 were but hopeful youths unknown to fame; 
 . when Jeremy Bentham was the political prophet 
 of the new generation, and Wordsworth its poet; 
 when Cobbett's pen was still keen and dreaded ; 
 when Canning's silvery eloquence had but re- 
 cently been silenced in the grave That was 
 an age of force and hope and action ; an age 
 when the leaders of men were kings, and even 
 the humble followers shared the heroic spirit. 
 And what of religious life ? Every vigorous 
 generation finds its best force reflected here. 
 
144 
 
 THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 IP 
 
 i 
 
 V 
 
 '! I 
 
 r 
 
 I 
 
 ir' 
 
 Fifty years. before it was the evangelical revival 
 which lifted up the Church of England from 
 sloth and inditterence, which enlisted the ardent 
 championship of laymen like Wilberforce, and 
 the sympathy of those who approved the good, 
 v^ven /hile they nejijlected its practical precepts. 
 So it was again in 1830, but the tide was 
 turning. Another aspect of religion occupied 
 the minds of leaders, and was preparing 
 to arouse the enthusiasm of their followers. 
 Around these leaders, men of great aljility and 
 singular personal force, John Henry Newman, 
 Hurrell Froude, Wm. Palmer and John Keble, 
 recruits flocked from every quarter. Fifty 
 years before the Gospel had been the cry. Now 
 it was the Church and her services. Many have 
 endeavored to estimate the nature and results of 
 what is named the Oxford or Tractarian or High 
 Church movement Whatever be the verdict 
 upon late^ aberrations of inferior successors, 
 there is jeption here to the invariable rule 
 
 tha+ ^ great and durable movement is 
 
 noVj. .1 its beginnings. How else could it have 
 attracted the sympathy of all that was best of 
 young England, even those who never became 
 active disciples ; even at first those who after- 
 wards became hostile ? Not only eminent law- 
 yers like Phillimore and the elder Coleridge, 
 statesmen like Sydney Herbert and the present 
 prime minister of England ; scholars like Mark 
 Pattison (who obediently translated " Lives of 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 H.-) 
 
 ival 
 
 roiu 
 
 lent 
 
 and 
 
 ;oo(l, 
 
 epts. 
 
 was 
 ipied 
 aring 
 )wers. 
 f and 
 vman, 
 Keble, 
 
 Fifty 
 
 I^ow 
 
 y have 
 
 iults of 
 
 High 
 verdict 
 
 cessors, 
 ble rule 
 ent is . 
 it have 
 best of 
 became 
 o after- 
 ent law- 
 oleridge, 
 present 
 ie Mark 
 Lives of 
 
 Saints" at the bidding of Newman); brilliant 
 literary men like the younger Froude, afterwards 
 t(» pass to a position of direct antagonism — all 
 these swelled the movement for the revival of 
 church life, and the emphasis upon those tenets 
 which were supposed particularly to represent 
 doctrine. Not only in themselves, but by con- 
 trast with other religious parties at that time, 
 the Tractarians had the advantage. A cold 
 officialism prevailed among the bishops; the 
 survivors of the older evangelicals had become 
 narrow and had lost their former enthusiasm ; 
 the liberal school of Jeremy Taylor and Tillot- 
 son was represented by hard and meagre teachers 
 like Hampden, who did not make up by scien- 
 tific eminence for personal unattractiveness. In 
 a word, all that was generous, earnest, of high 
 aspiration, and of over-mastering zeal, was then 
 on the side of the new movement ; as before 
 with the evangelicals, and not long afterwards 
 with the school of Maurice and Trench and 
 Charles Kingsley. But what is description coiti • 
 pared to personal knowledge? The inhabitants 
 of my own ecclesiastical province have known 
 the spirit of the original Oxford movement 
 better than any history could teach you, in a 
 man who reflected what was best in it. I said 
 that in the epochs of great movements even the 
 lesser warriors are heroes; but our lamented 
 bishop in any period, under any conditions, 
 would have gained far more than a mere name 
 10 
 
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 ii 
 
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 146 
 
 THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 in the catalogue of obscure subordinates, more 
 than a mere mention, as of the " brave Gyas and 
 the brave Cloanthus" who fill up a line but 
 hardly leave a memory. We knew the man of 
 fixed opinions, fuUv assured in his own mind, 
 and speaking thai mind without fear or favour. 
 He may not have practised, he may not even 
 have conceived the modern philosophical toler- 
 ance based upon a historical comparison of dif- 
 fering theological views. But his intolerance, 
 if it deserved that stigma, was simply the intol- 
 erance of Martin Luther against Erasmus and 
 Zwingli, the intolerance of John Knox against 
 prelacy, of Calvin against Servetus — that is to 
 say, the repugnance felt and expressed for 
 opinions which a man only partly understands, 
 and wholly dislikes. 
 
 But the people of his diocese knew him in 
 other aspects than as a staunch upholder of one 
 school of thought in the Church of England. 
 We knew him, and I know that all respected and 
 were proud of him, as the many-sided man, the 
 man whose entrusted talents had not been few, 
 and had been richly increased — the man who in 
 many, if not all intellectual qualities, stood above 
 those who met him and opposed him. Holiness 
 and spiritual zeal, we know, are the first and 
 greatest qualities in a minister of religion. 
 Their presence will condone and even transfigure 
 mental deficiencies; their absence reduces all 
 talents and capacities to mere sounding brass. 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 147 
 
 )re 
 md 
 but 
 
 of 
 ind, 
 our. 
 sven 
 iler- 
 
 dif- 
 Eince, 
 ntol- 
 1 and 
 rainst 
 
 is to 
 1 for 
 tands, 
 
 Lim in 
 )f one 
 land, 
 edand 
 |in, the 
 few, 
 who in 
 above 
 oliness 
 st and 
 eligion. 
 isfigure 
 ces all 
 brass. 
 
 Nevertheless, and this is especially true in a 
 democratic age and in a voluntary church, the 
 power of personal force and of intellectual ac- 
 quirement is mighty. Laymen respect doubly 
 the man who, in their own professions, could 
 have been their equal or superior, could have 
 easily amassed fortune instead of the precarious 
 competence of his lot. 
 
 A man whose knowledge of art would have 
 made him an authoritative critic, who could have 
 been a successful architect, who was a musician 
 in the highest sense, creative as well as receptive, 
 such a man is the living exception in an age of 
 narrow specialisms and borrowed opinions. But 
 two gifts were especially his, powers which, if not 
 indispensable for a minister of God, are invalu- 
 able helps, the one for the work of rightly di- 
 viding the word of truth, the other as the means 
 of making its teachings clear, intelligible, and 
 felt by the heart. I mean scholarship and elo- 
 quence. When we speak of a " scholar " we 
 comprise two distinct types in one descriptive 
 word. The scholar par excellence, indeed, is the 
 man who can levote all his life not only to study, 
 but (in these days) to one particular branch of 
 learning; who has access to every work of 
 reference or means of illustration ; who receives 
 and notes almost each day the results, dis- 
 coveries or conjectures of other students in other 
 parts of the world ; who grudges not a month's 
 incessant labor (if needful) to verify a single 
 
148 
 
 THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 I ' i 
 
 I! ' 
 
 thi 
 
 >:' i 
 
 n ' 
 
 i 
 
 reference, or correct a single verbal error. Learn- 
 ing is a hard task-mistress, and her votaries 
 must sacrifice at her shrine joy and strength and 
 life itself. But there is another class which may 
 claim the epithet " scholarly," and indeed, in a 
 s ^ondary degree, the title of " scholars" them- 
 selves. Those, namely, who, while engaged in 
 some active profession, are always aiming to in- 
 crease their stock of knowledge ; who having 
 enjoyed the advantage of a sound education 
 regard it not as a stock for life, but the mere 
 commencement of a life-long increase. Then it 
 is that we find taste pure, and judgment sober, 
 and reasoning sound, and above all these quali- 
 ties something of a sweet reasonableness which 
 comes only to those who have compared the 
 thoughts of many minds, and know how much 
 is open to question and has been questioned even 
 by competent intelligence. Far from such think- 
 ers is the cheap sneer of the sciolist or the bla- 
 tant assertion of the controversialist who has 
 drawn his recent learning from the encyclopaedia. 
 They recognize, like Newton, that knowledge is 
 a vast ocean, and students but the children 
 gathering pebbles on its infinite shores. 
 
 And the other great gift he possessed was 
 utterance, both by voice and writing. Not his 
 the popular eloquence which is advertised and 
 sent to market ; not his the power, and far less 
 the inclination, to startle and puzzle and excite 
 to laughter in sacred places, or to the vulgar 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 149 
 
 m- 
 
 ies 
 
 md 
 
 aay 
 
 n a 
 
 em- 
 
 l in 
 
 3 111- 
 
 ving 
 ition 
 mere 
 
 len it- 
 sober, 
 quali- 
 wbich 
 d the 
 
 inucli 
 deven 
 think- 
 
 ebla- 
 
 has 
 )p8edia. 
 [edge is 
 
 lildren 
 
 jd was 
 iNot his 
 led and 
 
 1 far less 
 |cl excite 
 
 vulgar 
 
 admiration which demands a coarse sustenance. 
 But his was that true eloquence which depends 
 upon accurate thought and exquisite fitness of 
 language, pulsating with true feeling, like the 
 gentle rise and fall of billows in a summer sea. 
 And when that true eloquence is aided by the 
 inflections of a voice like his, by an utterance 
 simple, distinct, earnest, and coming from the 
 heart, it is a power of God, which even oppo- 
 nents admitted with ungrudging admiration, and 
 friends look back upon now with the sad con- 
 sciousness that no Elisha will receive his mantle. 
 Let me quote to you two passages taken (almost 
 at random) from the volume of sermons he pub- 
 lished on his coming to this country. In one 
 he is speaking of church music, a subject in 
 which none possessed greater competence. He 
 is urging the duty of making music the fit hand- 
 maid of the sacred words of chant and psalm 
 and hymn : 
 
 " Shall we," he says, " sing the subjects of the 
 Psalms, or the birth, the sufierings, and the vic- 
 tories of the Son of God, the conflicts of His 
 church, the mercies of His covenant love, the 
 dread realities of an approaching judgment, the 
 glories of heaven, the terrors of hell, in strains 
 of light and earthly festivity ? These surely 
 require a severe and masculine style, a sober, 
 dignified, awful devotion. The strains which 
 delight the world are foreign to the Church, 
 and should be banished from her walls. The 
 

 Mil 
 
 r i 
 
 I'M 
 
 li 
 
 
 i i 
 
 150 
 
 THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 sententious gravity, solemn grandeur, and rich 
 fulness of the words to be sung, dictate beyond 
 all question the kind of music to which those 
 words are to be set ; a kind which is as distinct 
 from all other music as the Bible is distinct from 
 every other kind of writing. Happily, there is 
 no lack of such music in the works of our older 
 masters, and never was the saying of our Saviour 
 more appropriate than in reference to this sub- 
 ject, that 'no man having drunk old wine straight- 
 way desire th new ; ' for he saith, * The old is 
 better.' "— [" Sermons," 1845, p. 388.] 
 
 Or this passage from a harvest sermon upon 
 the parable of the Wheat and Tares : 
 
 " To us who live in the midst of a careless, 
 sinful world, eternity seems at so vast, so im- 
 measurable a distance, that it is as if it would 
 never come. Men die and pass away from the 
 scene of their earthly pilgrimage, but the world 
 forgets them ; the sympathy of the world is 
 brief, its friendship is hollow and selfish, its 
 cares are many, its business is pressing, its plea- 
 sures are multiplied, and in the midst of this 
 bustling, noisy life, it seems as if it would never 
 come to an end. 
 
 " Responsibility is forgotten ; the account 
 which each of us shall give of himself is hid 
 and out of sight ; life seems the reality, but eter- 
 nity an unreal and shadowy thing, a tale of 
 priests, a jest, a dream. Such is too often our 
 view of life ; but this shadow (as we term it) 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE. 151 
 
 lengthens upon us, and draws nigh in spite of 
 all ; life, though it grows busier, waxes feebler ; 
 character is rapidly formed and fixed, and ere 
 we are aware of it, we ripen for etp- :ty and 
 pass rapidly into it. Our trial :., : .,,nger— 
 our fixed state begins:'— [Ibid, p., 2bc^.j 
 
 That clear statement in the last words of the 
 Scriptural doctrine of the Church of England is 
 most valuable, coming from those lips which 
 still speak to us even in o> nth, and, in the face 
 of the dangerous teaclnngs which now are beintr 
 introduced. 
 
 That with death trial ends, and the "fixed 
 state " begins, or, in St. Pauls words, that the 
 course is finished, and the reward is then " laid 
 up" - that is at once the dread warning to the 
 sinner, and the consolation of the righteous. 
 And his " fixed state " is begun now, and it is a 
 state of rest and joy. We know not, brethren, 
 the mysteries of the future state, nor can we 
 describe the consolation of those who rest in 
 Abraham's bosom with Lazarus, or who enter 
 into the Paradise where it was promised once 
 that a penitent sinner should enter on the very 
 day of his confession of faith. But whatever 
 incrrase in happiness may succeed the final con- 
 summation, to which martyrs and saints look 
 forward- that "day" when the Lord, the right- 
 eous judge, shall bestow the "crown of right- 
 eousness," the same Apostle Paul declares that 
 to depart is to " be with Christ." 
 

 i 
 
 §iin 
 
 i; 
 
 ! ■! 
 
 III! 
 
 I :|:t 
 
 r. 1 ! 
 
 152 
 
 THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 With Christ, his beloved Master, rests our 
 good Bishop and pastor. He has bequeathed us 
 an example, to all of us. Not in this opinion or 
 that practice, but in the scheme of his whole 
 life. He has left to Canada an example of a 
 type which, whether in the Mother Country or 
 the colonies, tends sadly to diminish — that of 
 the gentleman who needs no lavish surroundings 
 to prove his position and maintain his dignity, 
 who is equal to himself in all circumstances, the 
 chivalry of modern times which does not need (as 
 the knights of old) imprisoned heroines or fabled 
 giants in order to prove fidelity and prowess. 
 
 He has left us the example of a citizen who was 
 an honor to his adopted country, avoiding no duty, 
 grudging no obligation, but knowing that it w^as 
 in the due performance of his own work that he 
 best proved his citizenship. Rarely he offered 
 counsel, more often it was asked of him, and 
 then he gave the ripe fruit of a keen intelli- 
 gence, a wide knowledge of the world, and a 
 profound sense of wdiat was due to a country's 
 or a city's honour. And to us, his subordinates, 
 his spiritual children especially, he has left an 
 example most precious and yet most exacting. 
 Though he never concealed his own firm and 
 strong convictions, no one could have been, in 
 his later days as I knew him, more tolerant 
 of legitimate difference, more courteous to 
 adverse opinion within the limits of our Church. 
 What that example was in munificent generosity 
 
THE FINISHED COURSE. 
 
 153 
 
 in anxious care for his subordinates, in en- 
 couragement to young ministers, in scrupulous 
 performance of duty, that is known to us all. 
 May it be ours to follow in his footsteps. May 
 his constant prayers for this his beloved diocese 
 be heard. May the good providence of God 
 help us at the present time ; assist our present 
 bishop, the successor of a historical episcopate, 
 the mheritor of difficult responsibilities. 
 
 May we, one and all, so fight the good fight 
 that with the end of life we may also say with 
 him, " I have finished the course, I have kept 
 the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me the 
 crown of righteousness." 
 
i ! 
 
 f I 
 
 ' I 
 
 '.H. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 MONTANISM AND THE PRIMITIVE 
 
 CHURCH, 
 
 A Study in the Ecdesiastical History of the Second Century. 
 8vo. Price, $1.00. 1878. 
 
 (( 
 
 • • • ^'Xt" ^^, ^^^^ ^"*^ *^®^® we are not quite of the same 
 opinion as Mr. de Soyres. we must admit that he ha' To 
 duced a work which no future student of the second century 
 Review "«g^^«<^- ""S- Cheetham, in Contempo^Zl 
 
 tiJePtrSf ^"i!''' ^" w^^^hem der Verfasser diesor tiich- 
 tigen Arbeit gekommen . . . ist nicht neu ; es ist von G 
 
 ^esS %'prvr/' ^'r^'S "•.^- -S^^^-hnt, resp.lst: 
 gestellt. Der Verfasser hat das 8einige dazu gethan, um es 
 
 '•The task has been performed with careful research 
 united with a broad outlook and the preservatLii of a 
 catholic spirit, which make the volume, comparatively small 
 as It IS, one of real va\uG."~Theolog{cai Review. ^ 
 
 V The little work is a storehouse of varied, well-selected 
 and digested learning on the subject. "-JB/a^a^nJr ' 
 
 PASCALS PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 8vo. Price, $1.50. 1881. 
 
 "Der gelehite Herausgeber hat sich eine zweifache Auf- 
 gabegestelt . Der eis ti Theil dieser Aufgabe kaun als 
 wohl gelost gelten. Die historischen und kritilchen Aumor 
 kungen zu den einzehuen Briefen verdicuen votter Auer- 
 keannuf."— Z2^ Centrcdhlatt. 
 
 "This is a sumptuous critical edition of Pascal's immortal 
 eighteen letters. The editor gives an accurate text, wi th aU 
 necessary historical notes, besides introductory essays and 
 indexes of persons and subjects. It is surprising that this 
 
i 
 
 f 'i 
 
 m 
 
 II 
 
 Ml! 
 
 Il 
 
 I- I 
 
 i 
 
 [jfi . 
 
 Ihi i ! 
 
 task has not been executed before. Mr. <le Soy res, already 
 known by his essay on • Montanism,' has done his work very 
 well." — Church Quarterly Hetnew, 1881. 
 
 "A book which aims, and may justly claim, to bo a 
 scholar's edition." — Mark Pattison, in Academy. 
 
 " An excellent edition of Pascal's celebrated letters . . . 
 illustrated by ample and scholarly notes." — The late Dean 
 Church, in the Ouardian. 
 
 CHRISTIAN REUNION, 
 
 Being the HULSEAN LECTURES for 1886. 
 Price, $1.00. 1888. 
 
 8vo. 
 
 "The valuable and learned lectures, to which Bishop 
 Westcott has called my attention." — Archrishoi' Benson. 
 
 "Hier beweist der Verfasser seine umfassende geschieh- 
 tliche Bildung, weiss bei aller gedriiugten Klirze eine Fiille 
 von vStoff zu bewiiltigen, mulhet den Leser durch die Vor- 
 nehmheil seines Stils wie seiner Gedauken an, und wirkt 
 zugleich eihebend durch die freudigo Zuversicht mit der er 
 eine StofF behandelt, der duich zahllore unerfullte Hoff- 
 nungen uns fast zu einein uuliebsan\en geworden ist," — S. 
 EcK, in Theol. Lilt. Zeitung. 
 
 "With wide knowledge and with sympathetic apprecia- 
 tion, Mr. de Soyres has briefly sketched in these lectures 
 some of the efforts for the reunion of Christendom which 
 have been made in the last three hundred years." — Ouardian. 
 
 A WORD-BOOK FOR STUDENTS OF 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Second Edition. Price^ 25 cents. 1891 . 
 
3ady 
 very 
 
 bo a 
 
 Dean 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Bishop 
 
 SON. 
 
 jchieh- 
 ! Fiille 
 ie Vor- 
 wirkt 
 der er 
 i Hoff- 
 it."-S. 
 
 jprecia- 
 lectures 
 I which 
 lardian. 
 
 OF