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CONVOCATION HAUL, IN 1891,

PUBLISHED B^- THE STUDENTS.

C- » - '^

PREFATORY NOTE.

The students of Queen's University who undertook the pub-
lication of the present pamphlet did so out of a desire to have the
addresses which it contains in a permanent form, for their own
future reference, and to extend to the public outside of University
circles, some of the benefits in suggestion and inspiration which
were received in listening to them. While the printed page can-
not convey the full life and momentum of oral delivery, yet it
gives the advantage of that repeated perusal which is necessary to
grasp the full significance of the addresses.

With the patronage of the thinking public, and the co-opera-
tion of the Professors, the students would like to make such a pam-
phlet as this an annual publication. The delivery and publishing
of a series of such addresses on vital religious questions would not
only be of great benefit to students, but would also be an impor-
tant step in line with University Extension Work.

The Publishing Committee.

,1.

41 .

^o\JJ to I^ead the Bible.

No. 1.

The Bililo is not. road in onr day as it was in the sixteenth and
seventeenth coutunes. Tluiii, in consequence of the invention of tho
art of printinj.% it first became possible to multiply copies with ease,
while a mighty poptilnr and religious movement made it the peoples'
book in Germany and Britain. Men were charmed to find that they
could not only understand its stories, but that it was far more
interesting than the discourses which they had been accustomed to
hear from Monks or even Bishops. It had, also, the great charm of
novelty. In the parish church, to the book-board of which a copy
was chained, crowds gathered every day of the week and listened for
hours, when they were fortunate enough to secure a reader. That
popular eagerness lasted for a century or two. The Scottish covenant
was signed by peers and peasants, sometimes with blood instead of
ink. The English Squire of the same date, Carlyle says, " wore his
Bible-doctrine round him as our Squu-e wears his shot-belt ; went
abroad with it I'othiug doubting." The language of the day was
Biblical and it came from the heart. The sermons of the Pnx'itau
Divines were filled with quotations from Scripture, and the hearers
liked those parts the best, and when the hour-glass had run out, they
rejoiced to see the preacher turn it up ttgain.

It is not so now, either in home, or church, or any where else.
The eagerness now is to read the daily and weekly newspaper, tho
last periodical, or the new book that a popular novelist, poet, historian
or man of science gives to the world. If you wish to see a crowd of
men eagerly reading, you need not look for it in a church. You
must go to the reading-room of a public library, a Mechanics'
Institute, or a Young Men's Christian Association, and there— in all
alike — you find men, young and old, at any hour in the day, poring
over — not ne Bible -but the daily newspaper or other scrappy
literature. If you wish to see a crowd eagerly listening, you must go
to an election meeting in city, village or country, where not very
eloquent speakers discuss the tariff to multitudes, who are willing to
stand in crowded passages or round the doors till midnight, without
showing the least sign of weariness.

The changed condition of things is undeniable. And, whenever
there is an effect, depend upon it there is a cause adequate to produce )
the effect. If the Bible is not read as eagerly and generally as it was
three liundred years ago, the reason is not that people are less

-va.-xnii

— 4—

intelligent, lens anxious for guidance, or less christian than they were
then. Quite the contrary. The nineteenth century is far more truly
christian in spirit tlian the sixteenth or seventeentli. The language
of the J^ible does not enter into our sermons or daily speech as it did
in the days of the Puritans and Covenanters, hut the ordinary Can-
adian clergynum is surely as good a christian as Pound-tex*, Kettle-
Irnmmle or Macliriar, and the christiaii laynuiti of to-day is quite
up to the average Cavalier or lloundheud of the Cromwellian epoch.
The reason of tlie change must he, eitl/er that the people get from
other sources what they then got from the liihle, or that the IJible is
not felt by them to be as truly related to their every day life as it was
by the men who signed the Solemn League and Covenant. I believe
that we must seek for the reason along both of these lines. You ask,
is the ]iible then not to have its old place as the great factor in popular
education and life '? I believe that it will never stand comparatively
alone as it did three centuries ago. But, if its ideas mould character
more thoroughly and extensively, its supremacy is the more complete.
That this may be the case, and that the Bible may be read universally
with interest and profit, men must feel that it bears upon their
individual and national concerns as truly as it was believed to do in
the days of the Reformers. I believe that another day of power for
the JUble is dawning, and that it will be again read and studied, not
as a religions duty merely, but with eager interest, as the great guide
of life, by intelligent people and by seekers after God in all lands. 1
shall try to answer the question, how is this to be accomplished, or
what is to be done that we may read the Bible with most profit /
This afternoon I shall point out what we must not do.

We must not— on pretence of honouring God's word — place it
out of relation to reason. The Bible is not a mystery, but a revela-
tion. Depend upon it, when you tell men that a book is mysterious
and that their reason is quite inadequate to its consideration, they
will very soon put it on the shelf and allow the dust to accumulate on
its venerable binding. When we study the Word of God, reason
should be at its best and conscience most tender. When we refuse
to investigate fearlessly, when we muffle or mu/zle our intellect, we
dishonour that in us which is highest and holiest, that which links us
to God and is intended to raise us to Jlim.

Again, we must not put the Bible in a position that it does not
arrogate to itself. It does not profess to be the end, but simply a
means. It takes a subordinate, not the supreme, place. If we put it
first instead of second, we are guilty of the sin of Bibliolatry. By
this I mean that to many people the Bible is valuable because it is a
book. Now, that is what makes the Koran so valuable to the
Mahometan. He believes that the Koran is word for word what God
dictated verbally to Mahomet, what Mahomet wrote down in Arabic,

—6—

what believers still have in the Arabic that Mahomet wrote, and what
therefuro ought not to bo trannlated into any other language. Thin
in the conception that Konie christiaun have of lUblical inspiration.
They believe that the Hebrew con.sonantH were dictated to the Hrst
writers of the Old Testament, and that the Hebrew vowels, added by
unbelieving Scribes centuries after Christ, were also inspired. This,
they call a high view of inspiration. It is not oidy a low view, it is
simply destructive of inspiration. The Bible is most valuable,
because, unlike the Koran, it is more than a book. As a book it has
liuman elements as well as the Divine element, and — so far as it is
human— there must be limitation, imperfection, localism, growth,
and the possibdity of erroi . The liible is a record of the revelations
of Himself that (lod nade to many men in widely different times and
circnmstances. This record is a glass through which we are to see
how the living God guided men of like passions with ourselves, and
guided a very imperfect community in former days. It is thus a
signpost, pointing not to itself, but to Him who is as ready to reveal
Himself unto men now as He was forty, thirty or twenty centuries
ago, and who not only revealed Himself fully in His Son, but gave us
the spirit of His Son to dwell with us forever.

" Mahomet's truth lay in a Holy liook,
Christ's in a sacred life.

So while the world rolls on from change to change,

And realms of thought expand.
The letter stands without expanse or range,

Stitl' as a dead man's liand.

While as the life-blood fills the growing form,

The Spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,

More felt than heard or read."

A man is a Bibliolater who confines his view to the Book.
When he does so, the Bible is just as effectual to intercept God and
keep Him out of the soul as any other sacred idol. I wish to give
very emplmtic waining on this point, because men are born idolaters.
Take one idol away from them and they soon substitute another, more
subtle it may be, but all the more dangerous on that account. Even
doctrine which men specially call "the Gospel" has been used as a
club to strike down others and a screen to hide God from the soul.

Perhaps the best way in which to deliver ourselves from Biblio-
latry is to reflect for how short a time in the history of the world or
even of the Church, the Bible has been accessible to the people. We
goraetiraes speak as if it were indispensable to the existence of religion

-«—

and tliG Htndy of it esHciitial to nnyoiio lioing a christian. Kvidontly,
(iod did not think HO, Where was the liihie diirinj^ the inilloniunis
before Abraham, and the centuries l)etween Abraham and MoseH ?
The Father of the faithful had three Inindred and eighteen trained
men of war, born in his house. That great liousehold or tribe had not
the nible, but it had (iod. J)nrn)B the tlionsand years between Moses
!ind Ezra, with liow much of the Hibh; in its present shape was the
Churcli bhissed ? In the next five hundred years, the three divisions
of the Old Testament were codified, transcribed over and over again
and lovingly studied, but notwithstanding, that was the least original
and the most poverty-stricken time in the history of Israel. The most
important New Testament period includes the ministry of .Jesus, the
Pentecostal days of the Jerusalem (Miurch. and the extension of Chris-
tianity to the great centres of civilization. How much of the Now
Testament was written in those wonderful fifty years? None of it.
During the fourteen centuries after the first century, the (iospel gain-
ed its two great triumphs, — the conversion of the Korann Empire and
the conversion of the nations that constitute Modern Christendom.
Through all that long history the Hiblo was in existence, but was not
generally accessible. Since the lleformation if. has been in the hands
of the people, but what great work has Protestantism as yet done ?
Net a single nation has been won for Clirist. America, is, of course,
only the overspill of Europe. But the Asiatic civilizations with their
teeming millions, and the continent of Africa remain, religiously,
pretty much as they were in the sixteenth century. I do not depreci-
ate what has been done in the last three or four hundred years, but I
point to an outstanding startling fact in order that we may not l^e un-
duly puffed up. Christendom is preparing, I believe, for a great
advance all along the line, but for that, something more is neet^ed than
simply the possession of the Bible or the use of traditional watchwords.
Why have I given this brief historical sketch '? To impress upon
you that we must use the Bible aright and that in order to do so we
must not put it in a place in which God has not put it, but must allow
it to do freely the work that He has intended it should do for our souls;
The Bible does not profess to be indispensable. It does not arrogate
to itself the first position. The God of grace, the God of redeeming
love, is alone indispensable. He alone must have the first place. On
Him the soul lives and without Him it does not live. The supreme

\Nfact of religion is that the spirit of God can touch the spirit of man.
The Bible reveals Him as doing so in past ages, and He is the Eternal,
living and dealing with the world of men and things as truly now as

I then. It reveals Him us inflexible righteousness in the Old and ex-
haustless love in the ^ew Testament, as Jehovah in the Old and Jesus
in the New. Hence its value, its altogether unique and extraordinary
value. Hence too the fact that it ceases to be valuable when it is used

-7—

otliorwiso than aw a rIrsh through whidi to see the ovor-HviiiR Ood.
On pretence of honouring', men soiuntinieH degrade it ; and wo who
are Hving in the di.-<penHation of the Spirit, with all the immense tid-
vantages that accrue to us from the gains and experiences ol previous
generations, may thereby make ourstilves poorer than the people who/
lived with Abraham, Moses or E/.ra in the dim twilight of revelation.
Whenever we exalt the letter at thf ex])enso of the spirit, whenever wo
attach more nnportance to the Bible tlian to the great ideas it trans-
mits, W(! dishonour it and put ourselves at it disadvantage with those )
who had it not, but who had a glimpse of (iod. The Hook as the joint
product of paper, ink and leather makers, of prmters, binders and
publishers, is nothing more than a pii'eu of handiwork. The spiritual
truth it contains is what nnikes it precious, and that is precious only
as it is received into the soil of honest hearts and so becomes to them
living truth. Let me quote to you from one of the letters of Fletcher
of Madeley, a passage very remarkable, when we consider the theolo-
gical surroundings of thiit saintly controversialist, as showing how
spiritually minded men prolest against the tendency of the unspiritual
to exalt the dead letter. '* If," he writes, "because we have the let-
ter of Scripture, we nnist be deprived of all immediate manifestations
of Christ an.i His Spirit, we are great loj-ers by that blessed book, and i
we might reasonably say, ' Lord, bring us back to the dispensation of(
Moses ! Thy Jewish servants could formerly converse with Tliee face /
to face, but now we can know nothing of Thee but by their writings, j
They viewed thy glory in various wonderful appearances, but wo are
indulged only with black lines telling us of thy glory. They had their
bright Shekinah, and we have only obscure descriptions of it. They
conversed familiarly with Moses tlu^ir Mediator, with Aaron their high
priest and with Samuel their prophet ; these holy men gave them un-
erring direction in doubtful eases ; but, alas I the apostles and in- ,
spired men are all dead ; and thou, Jesus our Mediator, Priest and
Prophet, canst not be consulted to any purpose, for tliou manifestest
thyself no more. As for thy sacred book, thou knowest that some-
times the want of money to purchase it, the want of learning to con-
sult the original, the want of wisdom to understand the translation,
the want of skill or sight to read it, prevent our improving it to the
best advantage and keep some from reaping any benefit from it at
all. Lord ! if because we have this blessed picture of Thee, wo (
must have no discovery of the glorious original, have compassion on
us, take back thy precious book and impart thy more precious self to
us, as thou didst to thine ancient people.' "

The sacred history lets us see, again and again, that it is God's
way to take from us even the things that He has given to testify of
Him when we put them in the place of Himself. Precious to the
Church in young Samuel's day must have been the Ark, with Aaron's

-8—

rod and tho pot of manna, rnoinorialH of its marvollous wildoiiuias
lifo ; but whoii it tinstod to thorn, what happened V The Ark was
captured and the budded rod and golden pot dJHappearcd for over.
Dear to many generatioiiH niUHt have been tliat bra/en Hinpent that
MoHeH had made by Ood'H order, and to whiuli their dyin^ forefatherH
had looked in faith and lived ; liut when tho children of Israel burned
iriceuKC to it, Uezekiah, no doubt under tho teaching of Isaiah, said,
" it is only a piece of braHH," and he brake it in pieces. Most precious
to the Jews were the Courts of (lod's House, and above all the Holy
of Holies with tho recovered Ark and tho two slabs of red granite
engraven by the finger of (led, and the 8hekinah, visible symbol of
His presence, shining down on the mercy seat. It seemed blasphemy
when Jeiemiah declared that they were trusting in lying words, when
they trusted in these. But, as He had done to His place in Shiloh
where He set His name at tho first, so did He, not many years after
His word had come to Jeremiah, to His place on Mount Zion. Tiie
holy and beautiful House was burned up with fire by the Chaldeans.
The Shekinah disapi)efired for(>vor, and what became of the Ark and
the Cherubim and the tables of stone, no man knoweth. Centuries
after, Stephen told all this to the Supremo Court of the Jewish
Church, when be stood biforo them accused of speaking blasphemous
words against the Holy Place and the Law ; and their answer wus to
gnash on liinj with their teeth, and cast him out of tho city and ^itono
him. Such an answer sutticed for Stephen, but it availed nothing
against the legions of Titus. The teaching of Isaih, of Jeremiah, of
Stephen is needed still. Whenever we identify God with anything of
His handiwork, when we iliink that His presence and power are
1 limited to any shrine, relic, law or book, we materialise Him and
become idolaters. This does not mean that it was not a good thing
to have in its day brazen serpent, ark, tabernacle, temple or torah,
j but it does mean that the presence of God is not limited to any one
i symbol or shrine. Wo still need to hear the lofty words of the
prophet addressed to the exultant Jews wlio had left Babylon with
the pious but proud intention of rebuilding the house of Jehovah — •
" The heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool ; what is this
for a house that ye are building me, and what is this for a place for
my rest ? Yoa, all these things my hand hath made, and so all
these things came to be, saith the Lord ; but to this man will I look,
even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth
at my word." Only to men of such spirit does God look now. Only
with such does He dwell, miey may not own a Bible, they may not
be able to read, but if they know that God is love, and look up to
Him crying, Abba Father, He hears them, floods their souls with life
and light and leads them in a plain path from day to day. As in
days of old, He took away from His people those precious things that

]■■

— 1>—

tcHtify ot'lliin, so will lie l.ilio from iih tlic Itililc if wv. do not iiHt; it
ariKlit. Ilo Ih Inking it away, wlii'ii we iiHti it in tlio Hpirit of tlio
Scril)os, wlion wo lutiipiet it in tlm Hliivish Hpirit of tuKlitioniiliHui,
when we r«'f,'Hr»l it as a Htorchoust! of texts wln!r<!witli to biittri-ss
Ki'ctarianisni, instead < f the living Word of tliu living God to our
hnnguiing and tliii'Hting houIh.

(r. M. Ohant.

{

f^ow to f^ead tfpe Bible.

NO. 2.

Chillingwortli'H maxim, " tli 'tible and the l»il>lo only is tho
religion of I'rotestants," cannot bi docepted without explanation ;
but tluTe is no doubt that tho llefu'-ners exalted the Scripture codo
to a position which it had never i ;cup'otl hefore. and that i* has been
accepted ever since us of p;irai fUnt anthoni^ ny the great l'rot*sNiut
Clinrches. The greater is tho no- I inoreforo that it should be
universally read, indorstood and •X" ronced ; and that all j)os.sible
m'jans should be taken to ascer'ain flie fullness of its meaning. That
was the position of the Jieformors. They wero the scholars of their
day, in every country in iMiropc. They studied the Scriptures in the
original Hebrew, Aramaic aiul (ireok, taking advi' igo (»f all tho
light and all the helps that the sixteenth contary atTorded. Attempts
were made to prejudice the ignorant and tho devout -igainst them on
this very nccount. (Jreek was repres; ntcd to bo a dangerous bin<'uagc,
and as to Hebrew, it was well known, sai*! i>no preacher tf> his con-
gregation, *' that all who learned it became Jews." l]ut then.'
soon came Lutheran's who had littlo of Luther's spirit. As tho Duko
of Wellington put it, " there is many a red-coat who is not a soldiov."
•* The innovations of one ago are always in danger of becoming tho
traditional fetters of tho next," Dr. Hainy lately remarked. No
better illustration of tliis can be found than in the attitude of tlie
seventeenth or eighteenth as contrasted with that of the tixteonth
century. In their very anxiety to exalt the Bible, many of tlr fol-
lowers of the Reformers refused to seek further lis:ht as to its moaiiir ;>;,
and they confused the two ideas of a code and the interpretation of a
code. The Hible is the source of doctrine, but it can no more bo the
interpreter or judge to say what the doctrine is than the civil law can
exercise the functions of a judge. Wo must ascertain the meaning of
the Bible, not by authority but by the exercise of the faculties of
human knowledge, quickened, as Christ has ))romised they shall be, i)y tho
Holy Spirit. We must use the same laws and principles of interpretation
that we apply to the sacred books of other religions and these arc
simply the principles used in the interpretation of all ancient docu-

—10—

ments. But, it may be said, the Bible is so plain that he who runs
may read. To this, the a priori or, as Mr. Gladstone calls it, the

/'domineering" arguraeut is sometimes added, that a book containing a

I revelation from God must as a matter of course be easily understood.
If all that is meant is that tlio great truths of the Bible, whether its
fundamental facts or ideas, can be readily grasped by all, the state-
ment is not only true, but one to be gladly insisted upon. That is
the very reason why we give it to the people. As Arnold well

I observes, if it is " hopelessly obscure," it is mockery to call it the

' "rule of faith." But if more is meant, then it must be pointed out
that all parts of the Bible cannot be easily understood and cannot be
read with profit by people who have no aids but their ordinary
intelligence. It is not the fact that even skilled interpreters or great
Churches have always understood its meaning. For centuries, every-
one believed that the Scriptures taught that the earth was ^xed in the
centre of the universe. They werf^ as sure of that as they were that
Moses wrote the Pentateuch. We know how the Roman inquisitors
treated Galileo for demonstrating the falsity of the geocentric theory,

I but we may not all know that the Protestant theologians of Germany
would have treated the old monk Copernicus in the very same way, if
they could only have Inid their hands on him. The Church also inter-
preted the Scriptures as teaching that men who held erroneous views
concerning God should be fined, imprisoned or killed. Men fighting for
liberty, like the Presbyterinns of Scotland and the Puritans of Eng-
land, induced the Long Parliament to pass persecuting laws that we
now read with wonder u,nd horror. Only a century ago, it was con-
sidered a good reason to dissent from the Church of Scotland, that

'I the Church had become so lukewarm that it no longer petitioned
Parliament to put in force tlie laws against witchcraft, in clear
defiance of the Scripture which said " Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live." So, too, men implicitly accepted as religious truths, that the

j universe was created in six days, that the earth was made six or

' seven thousand years ago, that man had existed on it only for that
period, that creation took place by catastrophes rather than by dcvel-
opement, that the flood was universal, and other dogmas which science
has disproved or on which it alone can speak decisively. Savages,
children, and illiterate people are quite sure that they come into
immediate contact with external objects by their eyes, that they know
distance by means of sight, that the sun revolves round the earth,
j ) that the firmament is a solid vault, that the earth is a great plain,

|! and that a great many other things are just what they seem to them
to be. Their ignorance is not fatal. Their knowledge is sufficient for
all the purposes of daily life. But, if they are willing to learn, they
can be taught gradually that much of their so called knowledge is
made up of illusions. And, as their old mistakes are corrected and

•^

— n—

,1
)

discoveries of truth are made by them, their conceptions of the
universe and of the wissdom, power and goodness of God are enlarged.
Does not this suggest to us that ihere may be popular illusions also/if
regarding the Bible. While knowing all that it is necessary to know^
in order to be saved, may nut portions of our fancied Scripture know-
ledge be equally superficial, incomplete or erronoous, and, would not
the truth widen our views, strengthen our faith and inspire our hearts
with increased reverence and love ?

At any rate, this is clear, that Protestantism must welcome
scholarship and investigation in every direction as a condition of its A
lii'e, and that a fearless Biblical criticism is the best proof that can be j
given of our reverence for the Bible. We have rejected Christian
tradition as a source of authority in opposition to evidence external
or internal, and we cannot implicitly accept Jewish tradition. We
know from the New Testament what kind of men the Scribes and j
llabbis were and we cannot accept them as trustworthy critics or in- ;
falhble witnesses, especially with regard to events that happened in '
times far removed from their own or concerning matters on which they
had strong preconceptions. Our minds must be open to trutli from every
side. We must be infinitely tolerant of theories that we dislike, when 1-^
they are put forward by scholars as the best explanation they can offer '
of facts. The facts must be explained. Let us master th.-m and sug-
gest better theories. In this great work of truth-seeking, the lead is \
still held by Germany, that glorious land where truth is valued for its [
own sake as it is valued nowhere else. Germany, that gave us the Re-
formation, still steks for truth with marvellous industry and honesty,
and scouts the notion that truth needs any man's lie or enforced
silence. Even destructive ratioiuilistic theories, let us remember,
were the inevitable recoil of the human mind against attempts to sup-
press it, to disrupt man into a thinking and believing being, and to in-
sulate the truths of theology from thought and life, and .^Uow them to
lie bedridden in the memory. Wheu th.o Jiible is regarded as
a collection of mysterious oracles to be received in unquestioning
silence, then ratiouflism is the swing of the pendulum to the other ex-
treme, an extreme, .00, less degrading to man and less dishonouring to
God than the other. We ask only that God's Word be left to its own in-
herent strength and that we should be allowed to take away all that binds
or obscures it or otherwise prevents it from exerting its full power on our
souls. All through this c^niury new evidence has been coming into
court that we never expected to get. We are becoming better acquaint-
ed with Hebrew and the cognate languages and dialects. We are able
to study other religions in their original sources. Ancient history is t
being rewritten. Archaeological allusions, that once were riddles, are 1
understood. Criticism of language, style and thought has acknowledged
canous. Allowance is made for the moral and literary ideas and cus-

-12-

toms of other times and lands. The mistakes an ^ errors of editors, rab-
bis, transcribers, translators, interpreters and o.'er well-meaning but
very fallible people can now be discounted. Dr. iiarper, editor of the
Old and New Testament Student, referring to the raisfortunen of the
Bible from this last source, says " of all unfortunate books m the his-
tory of literature, m all respects, the most unfortunate is the Bible."
Nothing shows the infinite strength of the divine element in it so
strongly as the fact that it has survived those misfortunes. The evi-
dence, moreover, that enables us to understand its full moaning, is be-
ing added to from day to day. We are in consequence on a vantage
ground that no former age occupied. Thousands of investigators are
working for us. England, Scotland and America have as yet made
little use of the new sources of light, but they are awakening. It is
high time ; for as Dr Flint points out, '• during the last fifty years,
theologians in other lands have been building "P almost from the
foundation, entire theological sciences or disciplines. Not to speak of
what they have done in biblical linguistics, exegetics and criticism,
and in ecclesiastical history, they have raised into independent exis-
tence such sciences as Biblical theology. Comparative theology and
Christian Ethics, which have perhaps almost as materially changed
and increased theological knowledge, as geology and biology have dur-
ing the same period changed and increased physical knowledge."

Thank God for all this. The Bible will become a greater power
than ever it was before. We shall distinguish between the human in
it and the divine, and the divine will, in consequence, shine with purer
rays. We shall distinguish between the local and the universal and
while that which is human or local will have value for us, just as every
province of history has, the universal will be a priceless possession for
ever unto humanity. We shall distinguish betwean the eternal idea
1 and the temporary dress which the prophet borrowed from his own ex-
' perience or the experience of his nation, and while we preserve the
dress reverently in our museums, we shall enshrine the ideas in our
souls, as the light and life which God in His great love has given to
make earth like Heaven and human life sacred as the divine.

The general principles which I have laid down with regard to the
duty of using every possible means and sparing no pains to ascertain
what Scripture teaches will probably be accepted readily enough, but —
that you may understand what is involved — it is only right that I should
go more into detail and give examples of the gains that have accrued
in consequence of recent critical and historical study. There is an
I ^uneasy feeling in some quarters that instead of gain there has been
• loss, and as I am profoundly convinced of the contrary, I shall select,
from all three divisions under which the Scribes classified Old Testa-
ment literature, examples in connection with which this feeling is
strongest. And first, — the Law. The traditional view is that the

». I

-id-

Pentateuch, in the form in whicli we have it was written by
Moses, wliereas the view of the vast majority of competent critics is
that the first six books of the Bible existed originally as four indepen-
dent liarratives, and that these were codified, probably by Ezra and
his fellow- Scribes during the exile, into the one account that we now
have. Suppose that this is established, an illustration from the possible
fate of the Gospels is sufficient to prove that we have in consequence
gained enormously. How often have we been thankful that, instead
of one life of Christ, no matter by whom written, we have four ! Well,
what happened in the second century shows that we might have had
only one. Tatian, a teacher of rhetoric, composed what we would call
a Harmony of the four Gospels, known as the Diatessaron, and in
writing it, he of course followed the literary niothods of the East. He
cut up and pieced together his four sources, adding words and phrases
of his ow)i so as to make one continuous story, and in doing so he
paid little attention to the diversities, to chronological arrangement or
other matters that a modern author would think of great importance.
We learn too, from Theodoret, that he mutilated his sources to suit
his Gnostic views. In spite of that, " the work was used not only by
his own party, but also by those who followed the teaching of the
Apostles, as they had not perceived the mischievous design of the
composition, but in their simplicity made use of the book on account
of its conciseness." Theodoret found more than two hundred copies
in the churches of his diocese. He removed these and replaced them
with the works of the four evangelists. Now, if the church in the
second century had been like the church in Ezra's day, confined pretty
much to one city and language, if the literary class had been confined
to one guild of scribes, if Tatian had been a chief member of that guild
and compiled his harmony honestly, in all probability his work would
have been universally accepted and in consequence we would have had
only one composite Gospel. Would that have been a gain ? Certain-
ly not. If, then, in the nineteenth century, scholars detected the
patchwork and pointed out the differences between the four docu-
ments and in the main restored them, how would it have been possible
to consider that a loss? This illustration seems to me conclusive.
The Mosaic character of the Pentateuch as a whole is not lost by the
discovery of its composite character, and tbe books will continue to be
called " the books of Moses." The Psalms are " the Psalms of David,"
though according to the best modern judges most of them were written
by other authors. The Proverbs Avill always be " the Proverbs of
Solomon," though a cursory examination is sufficient to show that the
book is composed of eight different sections, some, perhaps all of these,
subsequent to Solomon's day. In each case the name of the man who
was the original creative force, of the Law, the Psalter and the Wis-
dom Literature of the people of revelation, is rightly stamped on the

■14-

ultiraate ibvm into whicli eacli code or collection was cast ; and par-
ticularly as regards the Peutateuch, the Mosaic authorship of portions
of it, and what is called its Egypticity, are acknowledged by all sober
critics.

In the second place, take an example from ono of the prophetic
books. The traditional view is that Isaiah wrote all the sixty-six
chapters in the book called by his name, whereas the vast majority of
scholars believe that there is conclusive internal evidence to show that
the author of the greatest part of the last twenty -seven chapters was a
prophet who lived in Babylon during the exile. If Isaiah of
Jerusalem wrote the sections that describe the political and social
condition of the Jews during the captivity, their various phases of
faith and unbelief, the hopes excited by the appearance of Cyrus on
the stage of history, the prophecies of his success iigaiust the hitherto
resistless Babylon and of Israel's return to rebuild the city and temple,
the object of Jehovah in raising up Cyrus and the different pictures of
the Servant of the Lord, we can only stand dumb before a miracle out
of all relation to the prophet himself, to the time in which iie lived
and to our own reason. It may be said that God can make a man
write history in advance or do anything else that He pleases. No
4 one denies that, but Jehovah is not like the gods of the heathen. He
yis wise, Isaiah tells us, and does nothing in vain or for mere display.
When a missionary points out to a Hindoo, how capricious and use-
less are the miracles that Ram is said to have performed, the answer
is an appeal to the power of Ram or any other Incarnation of Vishnu.
, The Maliommedau, too, silences the unbeliever by the pious phrase,
j Allah ife great ! In both cases, reason is ruled out of court. On the
' other hand, rea 1 any of the modern works on Isaiah, such as Cheyne's
or Driver's, or, better still for popular reading, George Adam Smith's
two volumes lu the Expositor's ]iible, and see how luminous the
whole book becoinos, It is brought into relation with our reason and
our spiritual nature, as well as with the experience of the writer ;
with our own time and all time ; and its inspiration has not to be
dogmatically asserted, because it is felt. It is felt, liowever, not as
something magical, but as the power of Jehovah working out His
great purpose of redeeming love, through a chosen people in whose
experiences inspired prophets saw the deep things of God and man.
i Cold indeed must the Christian be who can read such volumss without
} thanking God for the new ti'uth that He is making to break forth out
of His word.

With regard to the third collection of Old Testament literature,
the part specially called the Scriptures, modern scholarship has
thrown a flood of light on every book and roll. As an example of the
gain to us, take the one little roll of the Song of Solomon. According
to the Rabbis, it is an allegory teaching the mutual love of Jehovah

■

—15—

and Israel. According to Christian Rabbis, it is intended to teach the
spiritual relations of Christ and the Christian. It is really a drama,
celebrating by means oi a story the power of true love. A peasant
girl of northern Israel has been offered a place in Solomon's harem,
and at hist the King even offers her marriage. Without a mother and
with unkind brothers, she is faitnful to her betrothed, and Solomon in
all his glory is baffled by pure love. The fact that such a poem
was a product of the ninth century before Christ shows the influence
that the r<'hgion of Jehovah htid on Israel, the purity of its home life
and the dignity of womanhood, which was understood at the time in
no other corner of the world. What a tribute, too, to the comprehen-
siveness of (lod's b(>ok, that no false delicacy makes it overlook that'
mightiest passion .,f the heart which has been the inspiration to
innumerable heroisms, and which when perverted has inflicted
innumerable woes on mankind !

It may be asked here whether the novelties of interpretation to
which I have been referring may not rob the plain man of the old
Bible that has hitherto sustained his spiritual life ? He is not
acquainted with history or criticism, and how can he study the scores
of volumes in wiiich its results are found ? I answer that ho still has
the old Bible and that there is nothing but gain for him besides.
For instance, when he reads in the Pentateuch two accounts of the
creation or of the deluge, or praises of Moses which Moses could not
have written, or a list of the dukes that reigned in Edom " before
there were any kings in Israel," cr of places with names that were
given to them after the conquest by Joshua, or other passages that
once puzzled him, it is surely something that he can bo now told that
there is a satisfactory explanation of these things that he had formerly
to accept, though they were unintelligible. Or again, let him master,
as he can very easily, the book of Isaiah, with the helps that I have
mentioned, and he will be so filled with joy at the new discoveries
made to him of its beauty and power, that he will go on to study
every other book in the Bible in the same way. He may not have
time to investigate critical questions for himself, but that is no reason
why others should not investigate or why he should not profit by their
labours. The ordinary working man knows nothing of Physics and
Biology, but it never occurs to him that therefore the book of nature
should not be studied night and day. He knows, too, that in one
way or another, he and all men will got some advantage from every
discovery. Emphatically is this true of that marvellous literature
which is called God's book because it is man's book. It must be
studied fully and fearlessly, no matter what disturbances may result
or may be feared. Those who drink its spirit most deeply know that
they owe supreme allegiance to truth alone, that they dare not be
false to it because they are told that temporary interests may suffer,

-10-

and that truth can be betrayed by mental shivery or by silence as
truly as by speech. They know, too, that it is a mockery to call upon
the politicians of the country to rise superior to party and smistor
influences, and to dare to speak out when policy bids th( ni keep
silence, if the teachers of the Churcii of God do not show something of
the same spirit.

I ask you then, my young fritnds, to use every moans that
this wonderful century puts in your power for ascertaining the full
meaning of the Bible, to study it with intellects wide awake ami hearts
eager to commune witli God, to ropioduce the spirit of the holy men
of old in your lives, and — as you have opportunity — to teach to others
all the truth that you have made your own. I would not conceal
from you that most men are impatient of now truth or new points of
view ; but if you liave patience, reverence, self-control, as well as
knowledge, they will listen, nnd in the end they will love you ; for,
dei)end upon it, truth, after all, is what the people in their inmost
souls cry for, and the minister of truth will be reverenced by them as
the true minister of God.

' . M. Gkant.

^ow io f^ead tJpe Bible.

NO. 3.

We must avoid that idolatry of the letter to which human nature
is always prone. We must fearlessly encourage historical and
critical stuily and frankly accept their best results. I have tried to
impress those lessons upon you. And now I can understand some
one saying, all that you have told us is important, but is tliere not
something more important '? There is. Why should men study the
Bible at all ? Only in a minor degree for literary, historical or pro-
fessional pui'poses. The all important question to nsk them, is, have
you sought to fiTid God ? If not, you have missed the mark. The
great object of the Bible is to reveal the true God, the God of grace
and judgment. It does this as no other book, no other literature does.
Hence its altogether unapproachable value. Hence, too, the obiect
you should keep before you every time that you turn to its pages.
The one thing needful for a man is that he should find God. Uhtil
he finds Him, self will bo the centre of his existence ; and it would be
little less absurd for a worm or a midge to fancy itself the centre of
this wonderful universe than it is for the greatest king or queen on
earth to indulge that fancy. Man is like to a breath. His days are
as a shadow tluvt passeth away. But when he finds God, he learns
his greatness and the glory of the universe. He rises above the
bondage of self and the imperious demands of passion ajid desire.

—17—

1 •

Ho finds spiritual iloliverance, pardon, strength, life and joy. This
then is the lesson that I am roost anxious to teach. In studying the
Bible, bring your souls into contact with the living God whom it
reveals.

The God of the Old Testament and of the Now is one. It is the
fashion to-day to distinguish between Jehovah and Jesus, as Sir
Edwin Arnold, in " The Light of the World," does. He distinguishes
between — " that God of Abraham mild to His own, but smiting
enemies," " that Lord of Moses" or " that dread Jah," and the
universal Father, reveal 3d by -Tesus. If this means that men from
the time of Abraham conceived of (rod either as tribal or national, no
one disputes it ; but if it means more, it is not true. In revealing
Himself to raon, God must either raise those whom he chose as his
organs or media of revelation to His level, or suit His communica-
tions to their faculties, and also to their times, conditions and circum-
stances. As He did not do the former, we know that H. did the latter.
But from first to last. He is the same, not yet fully understood, any
more than the ordinary revelation that He gives of Himself in nature
is fully understood. The God of Abraham, of Moses, of the prophets,
and of Paul is one God, revealed in the Old Testament, by divers
portions and in divers manners, and fully revealed in the Son of Man,
who is the brightness of His glory and the express inuige of His
Person. Stndyitjg the record of those revelations, we find that God
has always been the Saviour and the Friend of man, and the lifting
power in human history. There is not an epoch, from the beginning
of that long historical movement which is the mirror of universal
history and universal law to its consummation m Christ, in which our
souls do not burn within us as we cjme in contact with Him. We
know from the records on the Assyrian monuments, copied from much
more ancient Akkadian inscriptions, that the Hamites who inhabited
Babylonia up to the mountains of Armenia had attained to a high
degree of civilization before Abraham's day ; and old eastern stories
tell us that the migration of the Shemite Abraham and his tribe from
the head- waters of the Euphrates to the south-west was because of the
idolatries of the people among whom he had lived. That is the human
side of the movement which was the origin of the Churcti of God.
The divine side is given in the Book of Genesis. Abraham "went
out, not knowing whither he went." He had God as his Saviour and
Friend, and so that far-off, dimly-discerned epoch had implicit with-
in it the Messianic or Christian. " Your Father Abraham," said
Jesus to the Jews, " rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw it and was
glad." Centuries pass away and the high thought that the God of
their fathers is their Friend possesses a nation, so taking the only
form in which, in those days, the idea could live. " That the Eternal
God is the true deliverer is the fundamental thought of the Mosaic

—18-

economy," says Ewald. He is the deliverer because Ho is both loving
and righteous. '• Whereas, among all the other nations, there was
not as yet one nulividnal who grasped this thought of the divine
spirit become the deliverance and life of the human spirit, here it not
only exerts a living force over Moses, but becomes at the same time
the possession and the innermost life of a whole people." This is the
key to all that is best in the subsequent history of Israel. As chris-
tians, we cannot sympathise with Deborah's exultation over Sisera's
murder, or with the blessings she lavishes on Jael, the wife of Heber
the Kenite ; but none the less, Deborah's faith in Jehovah preserved
the light and the life of the world. Strange Saviours some of the
judges between the days of Joshua and Samuel seem to us, but none
the less they had the root of the matter in them and they did save
Israel. For centuries, Jehovah had a conti'oversy with Israel, for as
He says, " Thou thonghtest that I was altogether such an one as thy-
self" ; butthedivine features of His character cameout to them more and
more clearly, and at last were wrought into the spiritual life of that
saving I'emnant of the people of whom the prophets were the con-
summate flower. Each step in that long process in which He *' drew
them with cords of a man, with bands of lovo," each stage of that
I marvellous development is worthy of the most patient study. All the
time we are in a school in which God is the patient and perfect
teucher of erring children. When we come to tiie pages of the evan-
gelical prophet or to Pf-alms in which still later singers rapturously
recite the loving-kindness of Jtliovah, it seems impossible that the
heart of man can know, or his tongue tell, moreof the essence of God's
character or of His wondrous identification of Himself witli His
people. He trusts these poor children with the heroic confidence with
which love refuses to believe any ill of its object— " For He said,
surely they are my people, children that will not deal falsely ; so he
was their Saviour. In all their aflliction, He was afilicted, and the
angel of His presence saved them ; in His love and in His pity He
redeemed them ; and He bore them and carried them all the days of
old." And yet, all this was only preparatory to the full revelation of
God. We have to wait till we come to the Incarnation and the Cross
/before we know the heart of God, all that He is and that Ho is willing
to do for us, all the depth of our siu and our spiritual weakness.
" When we were yet weak, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."
It is from this high point, from this observatory of the universe,
that we have to review the past and look down the long aisles of the
future ; that we have to study the Bible and the history of the church
and the work that lies before ourselves. Deliverance from the life of self
which is death, spiritual light and stroiij^th are what man has always
needed and what he needs to-day as much as ever. The Bible is the
record of how God has given these with Himself to man. and of how

—ID—

Ho has given tons 11 is Son, in wljom dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily. He who studies the Hiblo from any lower point of
view than this is Hkoly to miss that which makes it of mestimablo
value to seekers after Clod. It may be tiiat we have here the reason
why some scholars, who have investigated the diJlicult questions of
Biblical Introduction with admirable truth-loving spirit and taught us
much in consecpicncc, have themselves failed to find Him to whom
the whole volume point-, and who is found readily by the meek and
lowly in heart.

Before closing thia series of addresses, I must endeavour to give
you a glimpse, for I can do little more, of how it is that Christ's death,
more than anything else, infuses spiritual strength into the weak and
delivers, them from the power of sin. Suppose that the Queen of our
world-wide Empire had constitutionally all the power of the C/ar, and
having purposed to do somethuig great for this land, had invited us to
co-operate with her ; but that we disbelieving her, or not caring for
her wishes, or not thinking that our prosperity could be advanced by
anything she could do, went on in our old way of life, each engrossed
with his own little matters, glad when things turned out as we had
planned and grieved when they went against us. Now, if at this time ;
she did something that captivated our hearts and made us sympathise j
with the object she was cherishing, the result would be that we would
fall in with her ideas and make them our own. We would be filled
with her aims and thoughts and all our resources would be thrown in-
to the common stock. We would be raiseJ out of self-seeking to a
higher plane of life. We would have faith in her, and that faith would
be one with love, and we would hope with a strength proportioned to
our faith and love for the accomplishment of that high object on which
her heart and ours was set. Does this illustration help you to con-
ceive of the way in which the death of Jesus drew to God the great i
apostle of the (Jentiles and lifted him out of the dead religiosity in '
which he had spent his life ? Previously, he had been apparently a
profoundly religious man, but he was self-seeking to the core ; ap-
parently enlightened, he was in darkness ; apparently zealous for Je-
hovah, he was a blasphemer. He had practised self-denial, to the
extent of doing violence to the best instincts of his nature, because he
believed that duty so ordered. What was the motive with him all this
time ? His thoughts never went beyond self. His object was to ac- \
quire for himself God's favour, and the best way of securing that was j
to advance the interests of the church. He was faultless in the eyes
of others and for a time his own conscience was at rest, lulled by the
zeal and activity of a life that fancied itself in accord with God. But
he had a noble nature, notwithstanding the self-seeking natural to
man. The higher law asserted its claims, and a discord arose between
it and the lower law that he had been obeying. It was *' hard for him

-20—

to kick nf^'iiinst tlie f,'()atlH." In tliiH way lio wah prepared for that re-
voliitioi) of the Christ to and in him that made him a new man.
Tlicreaftor, (vhriHt was to hnn the centre of the world's hintory and of
his own hfe. Ilis different epistles sliow developments in his theolojjy
into which I caimot enter now ; but at all times he could suy from the
heart, " Tlio life that l live in thi! flesh, I live hy the faith of the Son
of (lod who loved me and f^ave Himself for me." To Paul, as truly
as to John, Christ was seen to mediate from all eternity the unseen
God to the universn. Man, therefore, being sick, it became Him in
the fulness of time to reveal (rod as a physician. Man beinp; sinful,
it was necessary t'nat he should come as a Kedeemer. He is a perfect
Mediator between (iod and man, because Ho has the natures of both.
As our Head, He takes upon Him all our sickness and sin. And not
only does the head receive all the pains of its members, but it also
communicates its life to them. The truth of His headship explains
His death and our life, His atonement and our repentance. His love
and the strength we receive. All this is not only what is called a truth
of faith. It is susceptible of verification whenever and wherever the
conditions are complied with. It is the central fact of every christi'in's
life. Our life reproduces His. We are, through our union to Him,
redeemed from self and sin, and there is in each of us "a well of
water springing up into everlasting life." This view of the work of
Christ, along with his insight into the incurable weakness of his
own spiritual nature, enabled Paul to present in his epistle to the
Romans the first philosophy of universal history that we have. All
men are sinners and unable to save themselves. Man can never puri-
fy his nature by making self-culture the final end. But God has come
to seek and save him in Jesus Christ. United to Him by faitli we have
a new life, the characteristics of which are hope and love. Even if
losses and crosses come, we rejoice. These trials test us and give us
experience and hardihood. Each new victory makes our hope increase,
and so we are gradually emancipated from the bondage of self-seeking.
Here is the secret of existence— a man finds himself when he finds
Christ.

What happened in Paul's case has been reproduced in every
generation suite in the experience of millions. We find in the cross
the pardon of sin and the removal of the sense of guilt. We receive
a life that is a daily repenting and a daily rising to newness of life.
And what the Lord does for us now, we know to be only an earnest of
what He will do, for hope is always combined with faith. Strictly
speaking, hope has reference to the future and faith to the past and
! present. We are accustomed to associate uncertainty alike with hope and
faith, because in the ordinary affairs of life both rest on probable evi-
dence. But, make God the witness as to what He has done and is,
and make Him the Promiser of what He will do, and all uncertainty

—21-

JH romovod, Fftitli tlioii bocomcfl tlin iinclior of the soul and Kivcs ua
victory ()\(>r i\w world. We are saved liy hop(! and hope twwv puts
to Hliamo, iiovor di.sappoint.s, hecauHO God's love is poured forth in our
heartn. Tims furiiished internally, every cliristiaii oiit,'lit to l)e filled
with calm coiitidenco and <iuenchless entlnisiasm as tlu; f^ieat Apostle
himself. There is a j^reat work for him to do in life, hnw«!ver obscure
his position may he. His languajjfc, as he looks forward, should be
that which so often inspired General Gordon in moments of
gloom : —

" I go to prove ray soil I

I see n)y way as birds their trackless way.

I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit lirst.

I ask not : but

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;

He guide.s me and the bird. In ilis good time."

But, how many christians have this strong, buoyant faith ? As
far as I see, the majority, even of ministers, elders and church ■
members, are still where Paul was in his days of bondage. There is '<
no spiritual strength, no joy, no hope in them. They are apparently
religious. To use an expression which may be heard in some circles,
they have " got religion," but it is a religion of fear and constraint, of j
protitle.ss strivings and observances. The great motive with a
christian of this type is to have his soul saved, not a holy sympathy
with God's heart that springs from believing that God has saved hira
and will have all men to be saved, and from the sure hope that He
will finish His work. His hope is not a hope that purifies, that
ennobles, that makes hira hate everything low, mean and base, that j
inspires to heroic waiting, suflfering and doing, but a hope that he |
shall not be punished in the fulure. His faith is not that which
makes him mount up with wings as eagles, but a faith that makes
him serious. True faith is based on the love of God to us, and it
causes a man to sing at his work and stay himself oh the promises in the
hour of sorrow and trial. True hope is based on the love of God, and
having tlnr, hope, we anticipate our own perfection and the purity of
heaven with eager longings. We open our hearts wide for the
entrance of that spirit which is the earneot of our glorious inheritance.
All thoughts and systems of selfishness are swept away. While
patiently waiting for the glory that is to be revealed, we occupy the
present like men to whom such hopes' are dear, and our hearts will
never be satisfied until God's great object of the final reconciliation of
heaven and earth is fully accomplished.

The Church, too, is often like the Jewish Church of which Paul j
was so distinguished a member. It may show vehement zeal. It ;
may have a proud orthodoxy that induces something like contempt

—22—

for otiior cliiirohoH. Uh chief aim thou iHto tniiko |)roH(4l.ytos, to bo tlin
firHt in thu laud, to multiply c(>nf{ru){utiuiiH, HtutiuiiM and luiiUHtuiH,
aixl to havo Hatisfactory HtatiHticH.

(io(i natnod Lovo, wIjoho powor Thoii art I
Thy crownlc'HH ohnrch before Thoo staiids,

With too much hating in its luMirt,

And too ranch Htriving in its handH.

for loftior aims on tho part of tho individual and tlio (<hurch !
To rcali/o the hi<,'h(mt that la in us, to ho a salt to tho luition and tho
world, until tho nation's hoart throhs as tho heart of its most high-
Houled son or daughter, and tho world thankfully acl<iu)wlodgoH its
debt to tlio nation, — with no lower ambitions than those can wo bo
Hatistiod. Hut alas I how can tho Church, as it is at present, do
anything ? Instead of being that whicli unites, it is that which
divides tho nation. No wonder that so often it is satisfied with seek-
ing its own, and with giving letters of credit on tho next world
instead of fitting men for citizenship in this world where alone it is
appointed to do its work. People fancy that they can buttress, that
they can make impregnable tho Church, with numbers, political sup-
port, groat buildings, wealth, orators, music, culture, and what not I
All these can bo honey-combed and a gust of infidelity can sweep
them away. Hpiritual reality alone will stand. When wo have that
strengtl.'. men will believe in us and in the Lord. When men aeo
christians giving heed to and craving after tho external, even should
tho external objects on which their hoart is set havo a religious
aspect, thev see only human nature. But the faith that tho prophets
had, tho faith that tho Apostles and Martyrs had, the faith and iiope
of tho Master, this is not of the earth. It is aoraething that " was
before tho elements and that owes no homage to the 8un." It is a
force that id microscope, no crucible can detect, but a force absolute,
unqualified and illimitable. Oh ! let the world see this, and it is
dumb — or when voice is given, it cries, " this is the great power of
God," and it bows its head and does homage.

G. M. Grant.

—28-

\ . . ^

She Ideal Cife."

NO. 4.

Miitthcw V, 48: " Ho yo thcrtfor-j pcrfett, ovon im your Father which In In
Hvtivvii IN pcifuot."

TliOHc W(»r(ls cxprcHK tlio ideal of the ('IiriHtiaii life. Tlioy Hot he-
foro our minds a Htaiidurd of duty that Herins to ho ahsohitoly and for
ever beyond our reach. Consriotis as we all an* of our sins and liini-
tations, how can we dnro oven to aspire; after it? Will not the intinito
altitude to he scaled call up in us an emotion of hopelessnoss and dos-
|)air, and paralyze our host efforts ? Were the ideal set before us
finite ; were we simply told to make the most of our natural powers,
to equip ourselvoH at all points for tho work of life, to acquire the
knowledge and the practical experience that go to make the good citi-
zen, and to adorn ourselves witli the graces of culture; and relinement;
we should feel that, although nuich was expected of us, we yet were
not commanded to reah/o the unrealizable. But no such limitod
ideal is presented to us. To he perfect is to attain tho infinite, in it
not, then, worse than [)resnmption for a weak and erring mortal to
aim at infinity ? In tho idea of tho faultless perfection of (lod are em-
bodied all the highest elemoiits wliich tho united thought of our race,'
has boon able to conceive ; and not only so, but we are conscious that |
in our best moments we cannot grasp ovon in idea all that infinitude j
which is Slimmed up and realized in Him. Tho perfection of God in-
cludes the idea of an absolutely holy will — a will in which there is no
conflict, uo (lisiiiirmony, no evil, but only tho free and spontaneous ex-
pression of goodness. It implies an infinite tenderness, that admits
no faintest taint of selfishness, no liursh or discordant note to mar its
faultless harmony. It means an intellectual vision that tlashos over
all tho heights and depths of being; a vision that sees the whole uni-
verse at a glance, and is free from the haze of the past, and the un-
realized vacuity of the futiue. The realization of perfection, as thus
conceived, is manifestly impossible for man.

Yet, is there not a sense in which tho ideal of infinite perfection
is not altogether unattainable ? Nay, is there not a sense in which it
is attainable just because it is infinite ? The ideal of the Greek was a
finite ideal. It consisted in the perfect flexibility, grace and symme-
try of the body ; in culture and refinement ; and in simple devotion to (
one's own country. Such an ideal is not to be despised. It contains y
in germ the higher ideal of Christianity, for it is the glory of our re-
ligion that it has absorbed into itself all the higher elements of tho

*Thi8 address was delivered three years ago.
present scries by refjuest.

It has been included in the

-24—

ethnic religions, and expiuuled them to infinity. What thu best minds
of Greece conceived to be the .true hfe of man Christianity accepts, but
it gives to it a new and higher meaning. The Greek was not wrong
in attaching importance to tho perfection of the body, and in viewing
physical training as essential to the production of the efficient citizen.
He was not wrong in saying that knowledge and culture aud refine-
ment help to lift a man above the grossness of sense. Nor was he
wrong in his devotion to the state. The weakness of Greek civiliza-
tion lay rather in this, that it put culture in place of duty, the life of
refinement for the life of the spirit ; and therefore it never graspc d the
principle which enables man to be a " fellow-worker with God." Not
every one has by nature a strong and healthy body, which he can
train to lloxibility and grace. Not every one can live the life of the
scholar, or throw himself untrammelled into affairs of state. There-
fore the civilization of Greece, with all its brilliancy, raised up an im-
passable barrier between the strong and the weak, the rich and the
poor, tho cultured and the uncultured, between master and slave, man
and woman. The very same people that has bequeathed to the race
faultless products of art, and that first taught the world the meaning
of a political constitution, degraded the sacredness of womanhood, and
desecrated humanity in " the slave, the scourge^ the chain." And all
this arose from its finite ideal of human life — an ideal that was attain-
able, not by all men, but only by the few who were privileged in birth,
in culture and in the possession of worldly goods. The wisdom of the
Greek was, in St. Paul's language, " in word, not in power." Even
the universal benevolence of later Stoicism, which m form seems so
similar to the Christian idea of universal brotherhood, Avas in its spirit
essentially different ; for tlie Stoic was tainted with a personal pride
in his own righteousness, and a haughty disdain of others, liis cos-
mopolitanism arose rather from self-isolation, indifference and con-
tempt than from love. Christianity, on the other hand, strikes at tho
roots of all self-rigbteousnoss by presenting, as what the divine man
in us deraai:ds. the standard of absolute perfection. Thus it breaks
down the middle- wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, Greek
and barbarian, bond and free. Whether free or in chains, a man may
be the Lord's freeman. The ideal is not to be found realized in the
princes of this world, but in him who is of a humble and contrite
spirit. The work of a man is not to be measured by his attainments
or social position, but hy the measure in which the Holy Spirit dwells
in him. The ideal is not culture and refinement, but "holiness unto
the Lord." A man whose bodily presence may be weak and contemp-
tible, and whose language may be rude and ungraramatical, may yet
be realizing the ideal ; while the man of culture, in his pride and vain-
glory, is immersed in the life of the flesh. Have we not all experi-
enced a saving feeling of humiliation in the presence of seme simple,

-25-

self-deiiyiiij.; Christian, who unconsciously showed us by liis example
what it is to " wnlk in the spirit ?" It is not what we do or acquiiC |-
that ooiistitvites true veh'jrion, bat the spirit in which we live. Thus
we get f.ome idea how the chasm between the intinito and finite is
bridged. We become 'perfect even as our Father which is in heaven
is perfect," just in so far as we abandon our self-seeking, natural self,
and give entrance into our hearts to the spirit of God, so that it m'ly
'•How through our deeds and make them pure." Is it not true, that
it is our sins, ana nothing else, that separate us from God *? When
we open our ears to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit, with what a
sense of completeness we are visi;,ed ! Light from heaven pours its
radiance into our souls, and summons into being the consciousness of
what in our inmost nature we really are. Then it is chat the veil of
sense is rent in twain, and we have a vision of that perfection which
is summed up and realized in (irod.

The perfection, then, of which our Lord spoke consists in a sane- 1
tiMed will. The simplest taL'k that is done in the right spirit is a
means of realizing it. lint while this is true, we must not make it a
pretext for sitting down in indolence, is. if we had attained or were al-
ready perfect. Eesponsibility grows with privilege. The ideal is com-
plete realization, perfection, and nothing short of that must be our
constant aim. He who means to take his place iti the community as
a leader or teacher of men, must test hiriself by a more exacting stan-
dard than others. More is demanded of us, with our exceptional ad-
vantages and privileges, than can be expected from those who share
less in the gitts of God. We are in a great measure free from the
anxieties and cares, that furrow the brow and sadden the heart of
many ; we are free to appropriate the garnered wisdom of the ages ;
and therefore it is our duty as well as our privilege to " search for
knowledge as for hidden treasure," and to aim at the development of
the higher faculties which minister to the good of others.

Mr. Matthew Arnold has told us that " conduct is three-fourths
of life." From this proposition I am compelled to dissent. Conduct
is not iliree-fiitirths of life, but the whole of life. There is no form of
human activity that may not minister to the growth c the spiritual
life ; there is none tliat may not lead to spiritual death. Religion takes
hold of man at iill points. It must not be limited in its sovereignty to
what is called practical life ; in fact the distinction of the theoretical
from the practical life has no basis in the nature of things. There is
uill present in all the modes in which man realizes himself ; will, in
fact, is the man himself. Tlie man of science is not turning away .
from God because he is engaged in the study of what we call nature.
The visible world is not the highest manifestation of God, but it does
manifest Him. "0, God," said the reverent Kepler, "I think
Thy thoughts after Thee! " The material universe is not a dead

-26-

V — —~\

machine, but, to him who has a mind to think and a heart to
feel, it is saturated with the hfe and love of the Father. It was
one of the false ideas of the middle ages, that to study nature was to
turn away from the life of holiness. The separation of nature from God
( is but a disguised form of atheism. Nature is His visible garment. It is
' the great temple which enshri'^es the living God. This "cathedral of
immensity" has been fashioned by Our Father, and its use is not to
hide but to reveal Him. The iimumerable host of heaven, which he
has " hung aloft the night," reflect the radiance of His countenance.
The perfect harmonj and law which join together in the nicest bonds
the infinitely small and the stupendously great, the nearest with the
most remote, are but the outward form which His shaping intelligence
has imposed. In the immeasurable stretches of space, thick with
stars, and in the eternal procession of the years, are reflected the
infinity of the Ancient of Days. To him who stands with bowed
head, in the contemplation of this spectacle of infinite sublimity, comes
an emotion of awe and reverence which testifies that \ s in the
presence of the Most High. Nature does not conceal Gv... :rom the
devout mind, but reveals His majesty. And the perfect o'"ganic unity
which pervades all nature is a type of that perfection of bodily
organism at which it is our duty to aim. Our bodies must be made a
" temple of the Holy Ghost." The Greek erred in making perfection
of bodily grace an end hi itself; our religion demands that we should
take all due pains to fashion our bodies into more perfect instruments
of a sanctified will. The discharge of our higher duties is interfered
with if our bodies are weak and ailing. As our heavenly Father ex-
, presses His will in the infinite nicety with which all parts of the visible
I universe are linked together, so ought we to keep our bodies in the
utmost health and strength. No doubt some higher call of duty may
demand the sacrifice of our health, as it may call upon us to give up
even life itself ; but, in the absence of such unusual claims upon us,
religion demands the utmost care for our physical well-being. The
perverted piety of the mediaeval monk is contrary to the ideal of
the Christian life. It was but a refined form of egoism, or at least a
misconception, which led him to practise self-mortification for its
own sake. At any rate, it is a higher form of Christian faith to
reverence that delicate instrument of the spirit which is one of the
precious gifts of God.

But if perfection of the body is an end which we ought diligently
to seek, how much more ought we to strive for a true insight into the
nature ot things. Here again we must get rid ot the mediaeval taint
that is apt to infect our idea of the Christian life. Keligion is not
limited to the symbols of Christian fellowship or to the performance
of certain ordinances, although these are important in helping to keep
alive its sacred flame. We must learn to include in our conception

-27—

all the activities by which, in reahzing ourselves, we seek to attain to
perfection. Christianity does not allow of any opposition of secular
and sacred. None of the modes in which, in the true spirit, we
realize our self-consciousness are " common or unclean." The
mediaeval idea, for instance, that to devote oneself to the study of
society and the state is to turn away from the religious life, is a j
blasphemy against (lod, who in the selt'-conscious intelligence of man '
expresses His essence. In every discovery of a law of nature we
deepen our consciousness of the infinite wisdom of God. The more
thorouglily we comprehend the constitution of the state, the better are
we able to love our brother, and to promote his well-being. At no
time perhaps in the history of the world has it been so incumbent
upon us to study the laws of society. The reign of cast and privilege
is over, happily never to return. The voice of God, speaking in
thunder through civil wars and revolutions, or gently in the gradual
and peaceful development of industry and commerce, has at last
convinced all men who thi ik and feel that the foundation of a per-
manent state is the Christian law of love. Theoretically at least we
admit this truth, however we may violate it in practice. In the earlier
ages, and especially in the far East, it seemed to be of divine appoint-
ment that one man should enslave a whole people, and use them as
instruments of his selfishness and lust of power. Greece and Rome
taught our race that some at least must curb the despotic sway of one,
and that every citizen had his inalienable rights and privileges. The
Teutonic race, accepting our Christian faith, grasped the idea that the
state is for the good of nil, not of one, nor even of some. But very
much yet remains to be done in the practical application of this idea.
It is only now that the claims of those who toil and spin, spending
their strength to supply us Avith food and raiment, and all the
appliances that set us free to devote ourselves to other tasks, have
begun to receive the attention they deserve. It is to the shame of us
all, that we have been /'ortwi to listen to their claims; and even now
we think much more of the means by which we or our party are to be
kept 111 power, than of the ends of government. Too often, in reckless-
ness or selfishness, we legislate for a few, not for all. We forget that
the end of the state is to enable every man— not the •' greatest
number," but ererif man — to realize the best that is in him. If it is
necessary, for the highest development of our race, that so many men
should be devoted to hard, wearing, mechaincal occupations, at least
our religion demands of us that we who aspire to lead and to teach
should spare no pains to understand the structure of society, and to
devise more perfect forms of social and political life where the present
forms are decaying or effete. In securing such knowledge, provided
only we hold it, as we ought to hold all things, as a sacred trust to be
used in furthering the well-being of all, we shall be preparing our-
selves for the crisis when we are called upon to act.

-28—

In the same spirit of love let all our studies be carried on. If we
come to them in the right way. literature and art will hriiig us ever
nearer to a comprehensive view of the mind of God. For, iu tracing
the growth of these delicate products of self-conscious oiergy, we shall
find that, taught of God, men have been attaining an ever greater ful-
ness of spiritual utterance. But here, as in all other cases, indolence
and vanity and indifference may destroy all the value of the lesson.
Let us be rid of the superficial notion, that the only use of literature
and art is to give us more agreeable sensations. Dante tells us that
the writing of his Didna Cowniedin " made him lean for many years."
Every great work of genius is the fruit of immense toil, immense
patience, and unselfish devotion. How then can we, with our feebler
imagination and our immature intellect, expect to learn without
effort the lesson which the masters have toiled so hard to acquire ?

But it cannot be too strongly insisted upon, that the Christian
ideal cannot be realized at all unless in all our seeking we are '-eoking
after God. WiUiout the spirit of Christ the care of the body will be
used as a cloak for self-indulgence, and for the neglect of our higher
duties ; without it increase of knowledge will only minister to self-
conceit, and put in our hands a more powerful engine of evil. The
study of social laws we may wrest to our own destruction and the

J injury of others, by using our knowledge to play on the passions, the
weaknesses and the follies of others. Literature and art may become
for us but food for an all-pervasive vanity, or they may be employed
to titillate our mental palates, as the epicure dallies with the delicate
bouquet of a rare and choice wine. Thus we shall sin against the
Holy Ghost, and crucify the Lord of Glory afresh. When the higher
gifts of God are made panders to selfishness, a man's soul becomes
the home of unclean spirits. Hold ever before your eyes the cross of
Christ. " He that loveth his life shall lose it." Strive in the
strength of God to keep yourselves free from vice, free from self-indul-
gence, free from self-righteousness. Do not forget that we may be
weak and selfish in our thinknig as well as in our ordinary duties.
We are all agreed that no man can live the higher life who sins
against the great moral laws, and violates the " tender charities of
husband, son or brother." But we are apt to under -estimate the
more subtle temptation that comes to the solitary thinker in his

/ search for truth. Here, as always, we must be scrupulously veracious.

/ We must follow truth wherever it may lead us, not adopting rashly
any new or popular view, but trying all things and holding fast that
which is good. Then " you shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free." Beware of insincerity in your thinking, no less than
in your doing. No untruth, however venerable it may be by age or
with whatever false brilliancy it may shine, can ever really
tend to the glory of God. Such perplexities as are incidental to the

—20-

quest for truth, especially in a critical age like this, you luuat be
prepared to face manfully, as you would face the other trials of life.
They cannot touch the centre of spiritual life. As time goes on you
will find that life in some ways grows ever sadder and more solemn,
but you will also find, I hope, that it holds in it the sacred joy of a
life that is " hid with Christ in God."

These week and stammering words, as I well know, are all too
inadequate to the high theme of which I have, perhaps rashly,
ventured to speak. I can only hope that I have been able to suggest
to you in some measure the conception of life which I believe with my
whole soul to be in essence the eternal truth of-God. We who are
older do not expect you to look at things with the graver eyes of
those who are so much your seniors, but it is a comfort to us who
have the privilege of guiding you by paths of knowledge that vve have
ourselves traversed before you, to see how impressed you are with the
supreme importance of a self-surrender to the service of God and
your fellow-men. I hope I shall not be accused of desiring to quell
your religious ardour if I remind you, that no man can permanently
influence others for good unless he has put away from him all vanity
and vain-glory and self-righteousness. Eemember that we have no
right to teach others if we are not ourselves taught of God. At the
immature stage of thought and experience in which at present most of
you are, your duty, as a rule, is silence. Ilemember the fate of John
Bnnyan's Mr. Talkative. Every man who aspires to teach must first
go away into the wilderness, there to commune with God and his own
soul. Take' infinite pains to equip yourselves worthily for the battle
of life. Be not too easily satisfied. Now is the time to prepare your
armour ; soon enough you will be called upon to try it in active war-
fare. Be sure that in what you choose for your life-work you have
not only zeal, but zeal according to knowledge ; be sure that you have
the peculiar gifts, without which your energies will be misdirected and
wasted ; and, above all, be sure, if you adopt one of the higher call-
ings, that you do not allow yourselves to become the slaves of routine
and habit, or to be debased by egotism in proportion to your outward
success. Let it not be said ;

" His honor in dishonor rooted stood.
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

May our Father which is in heaven be with you always, and give
to you abundantly of the infinite perfection of His spirit !

' John Watson.

■80—

'•

Gfppi?)tianitg and ^odepr^ Cifc.

NO. B.

An eminent EngliHli man of science is reported to have said that
if he were about to introduce a new rehgiou into the British Islands
he did not think that Christianity would be that religion. I confess
that on first reading this remarkable confession, of faith, I was struck
with surprise. I had been accustomed to think of Christianity as the
central fact of all time. In it, as I believed and still believe, all the
scattered rays of religious truth were concentrated in one intense
point and flashed forth over the whole history of man. I had
imagined that to the Christian religion might be applied the sublime
words of the old Hebrew prophet : " And it shall come to pass in the
latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established
on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and
all nations shall flow unto it." And now I was asked to believe that
the rising tide of modern thought threatened to carry it away.
Evidently, to this enlightened man of science, Christianity meant
something very dift'erent from what it meant to me.

What then was in his mind when he said that he would hesitate
to introduce Christianity into the British Islands ? Perhaps it may be
suggested that exclusive devotion to the study of nature had dimmed
his eyes and dried up the currents of religious emotion in his breast,
or that by an illegitimate extension of natural law to the spiritual
world he had reduced the life and thought of man to a dead play of
mechanical forces '.* I shall not venture to deny that either, or both,
of these explanations may be partially correct ; but I think that the
main explanation of his opposition to what he regarded as Christianity
must be sought in a dift'erent direction. For a similar view has been
taken by two thinkers whose lives were devoted not to science, but to
those studies which are usually supposed to make men quickly re-
sponsive to the spiritual interests of their kind.

In the earlier phases of his faith, Goethe, the great representative
of the modern spirit, felt what he called with a certain exaggeration a
" truly Julian hatred of Christianity." And Hegel, the greatest of
modern philosophers, was in his youth inclined to hold that Christian-
ity had obscured and hindered the spread of the true conception of
life which had been presented to the world by the people of Greece.
And as the greatest poet and the greatest philosopher of modern times
1 have charged Christianity with hostility to the onward march of mo-
dern thought, so the greatest living novelist maintains that the march
of modern thought is hostile to Christianity. The religion of .Tesus,
eays Tolstoi, demands submission to evil, self-efiacement, simplicity of

—si-

re-

life ; wlioroas the whole edifice of modern society is hjised upon resent-
rnent of evii, self-assertion iind luxury, it cannot therefore be wrong
to assume that there is at least an apparent antagonism between the
modern spirit and the spirit of (!ln'istianity, and perhaps I cannot bet-
ter fulfill tlie task which you have assigned to me than by asking
whether the alternative of Christianity or modern civilization is not
false ; whether it may not be that so far from being hostile to tlie
great movement of modern thought, Christianity is in rtality its in-
forming and ennobling spirit.

I am not aware that the man of science to whom I have referred
ever revised his hasty judgment, but it is significant that the maturer
creed of the two great representatives of modern literature and modern
philosophy was a criticism of the earlier. In the Wttnih'rjtiluv, Goethe ■
recognizes in Christianity, as the religion which teaches "reverence for
that which is beneath us," the highest of all religions. The recan-
tation of Hegel was still more decided. Not only did he come to re-
gard the Greek spirit as lower than the Christian, but in an applica-
tion of the Christian principle, "Die to live," he found the solution of
every problem of modern thought. Of Tolstoi we cannot say that he
has returned upon himself, but we may say I think that he has at
last developed his creed to the point at which we can see it accom-
plish its own destruction. IJy a narrow and uncritical interpretation
of the New Testament he has constructed a theory which is hostile
not merely to modern life, but to all life. First denying all the bonds
which hold society together, he has at last attacked the sacred institu-
tion of the family. Only one more step remains for him to take : to
counsel the existing race of iiKUi not to wait for their inevitable ex-
tinction, but to follow at once the example of the Gadareue swine. A
race that has no right to exist, should not continue to exist. It can
only be from weak irresolution that men cling to life themselves, after
seeing it to be their duty to abstain from having successors. From
the pages of a book, which in every line breathes the spirit of joyous
confidence in the goodness and love of God, Tolstoi has contrived, by r
a method that would make nonsense of any literary product in the ;
world, 10 extract the most dismal of all creeds. Once again the di-
vorce of religion from life has demonstrated its self-contradiction and
nullity.

I have said that Goethe and Hegel in their first mind conceived
of Christianity as antagonistic to that great movement of modern
thought, which, unlike Tolstoi, they believed to be onward and up-
ward. Wherein they conceived the antagonism to consist they have
not left lis in doubt. Christianity, they said, with the rash doctrin-
airism of youth, is essentially a religion of the other world ; it tells
men to despise all earthly interests and to think of nothing but how to
save their souls ; it conceives of God as an external creator and

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Pfovenior, roiuovod from tliu whole sphoro of man's lifo iiiid activity.
Such a rehgi-^n, thoy maintained, must be hostile to the whole pro-
greKs of the raoo. If it were reduced to practice it would put an end
to all individual, sociiil and political development; for men whose
entire interest is m another world cannot take seriously the concerns
of this world. A religion of this typo can only produce a morbid and
unhealthy spiritualism. It may tench men liow to die, it can never
teach them liow to live. It is the religion of the mystic, the dreamer,
the fanatic, not the religion of men with a firm hold on facts. Can it
be seriously believed that a life of honest industry is a life of degrada-
tion ; that enthusiasm for truth, the unwearied cultivation of the
higher faculties, unselfish devotion to one's country and to humanity,
rank lower in the sight of God than the enervating transports of a
sentimental piety ? How much more grandly did the ancient
Greek conceive of life ! His energies were not wasted in a morbid
bn^oding over the joys and terrors of a future world, but he gave the
best proof of spiritual sjinity in his public spirit and his enthusiasm
for all that is great and beautiful and true. For him religion was but
the idealized picture of a noble human life ; here and now he found
enough to inspire him with resolution and to call Dut his highest
energies.

I think wo must admit that if Christianity were what it is here
assumed to be, its antagonism to the modern spirit would be absolute
and invincible. For of that spirit it is characteristic that it is in dead
earnest with the things of this world. To the conscientious artizan
who feels a glow of triumph when he has done a good honest piece of
handiwork ; to the groat captains of industry who direct the instru-
ments by which thousands are enabled to triumph over the material
forces that are over working for man's destruction ; to the man of
science, conscious that by wresting from nature the secret of her laws,
he puts into the hands of his follows weapons which help to subdue
misery and vice ; to the literary man, the poet, the artist, who by
hard toil penetrate to the deeper meaning of human life ; to the lonely
thinker, intent on formulating a consistent theory of the world that
shall destroy the paralyzing inflnence of doubt and dissipate intellect-
ual chaos ; to each and all of these, that must seem a false and hateful
creed which proclaims unselfish devotion to the cause of humanity to
be a blunder and a sin, and the ideal life of man a sheltered quiet and
seclusion remote from the storms and tempests of the work-a-day
world.

But does Christianity give any countenance to what Goethe well
calls "the blasphemous doctrine that all is vanity ?" Does it tell us to
despise the active lifo of industry, the no less active life of scientific dis-
covery, artistic creation and jihilosophical reflection ? The exact op-
posite is the truth. No religion has affirmed with the same energy

?P«T:*««W.W!«ff'^B!5Byyi

■88—

■

atid (leciHivoiio«H iu< Christianity, that, in the oiitlmsiasm of linnianity
hcs the H(!i!iot of tloUvoranco from the crushing weight of inilivitUial
responsihility. It tells men that the misery, the vice, the spiritual do-
gradatioii of tlu! whole race is their own misery, their own vice, their
own spiritual dcigradatioii. lie who seeks to save his life shall
lose it. It IS l»y taking upon himself, in the energy of faith, the sms
of the whole world that the individual is freed from the consciouriuess
of guilt. He no longer goes ahout to establish his own righteousness.
The joys and sorrows, the triumphs and failures of his hretinx-n
are his. Thus is he crucified, raised and exalted with Christ. For-
getting himself ho finds himself; strong in the faith that " all things
work together for good to them that love the Lord " he hecomes a
" fellow worker vvith (lod," and in devotion to the commonweal he
" fills up the sufferings of Christ."

The false assumption that Christianity is a religion only of the
other world has arisen from a confusion of one aspect of it with the
whole. This was the radical weakness of the mediaeval spirit, lieli-
gion, it was then supposed, had no concern with secular life : 0)dy in
the passionless tranfjuillity of the cloister could men be liberated from
evil ; trade and commerce, scientific investigation, independent specu-
lation, even patriotism, were all luiholv. The middle ages was an un-
happy period in the history of the world. It was a time of sharp and
abrupt contrasts. A fierce and lawless nobility, contimially at war
with each other, obstructed the peaceful development of industry and
commerce ; the violence and caprice of the master had as their coun-
terpart the slavery, the subservience, the wretchedness of the serf; in
the laity religion was a superstition, in the clergy an instrument of
spiritual domination, or an unreal pietism. But we must not forget
that even in this period of lawless violence, abject submission and
spiritual slavery, the power of Christianity coiild not be entirely sup-
pressed. It was not ill vain that to the turbulence of a factious no-
bility was opposed the gentleness and unworldliuess of a St. Francis.
The one extreme was a criticism of the other. The industrious burg-
her learned that in every-day life there was a lower and a higher, and
m devotion to his trade or calling he planted the seeds of patriotism
and of a healthy civic life ; the monk, by his simple and self-denying
life, was a living protest aganist the brutalizing infiuence of a purely
material ideal. Yet it remains on the whole true, that religion in
divorce from secular life did not transform the world into its own im-
age, but let it go its own wise way, and occupied itself only with the
visionary and unreal. The noble, looking upon religion as a thing
apart, could one day stab his friend to the heart, and the next com-
pound Avith heaven by an external penance ; the clergy too often per-
verted religion into a dead formalism and a superstition. All this had
to be changed, and with the modern spirit the change has come.

—84—

And how hiiK it coino, but by a revorHion to the pure teaching of
(Jhristianity which in tho niiddli.' ages had been obHcnrcd or lost ?
The Christian faith is most simply expressed by sayiny that it aflirmn
tho infinite) love of (iod to nuin and the blessedness of a correspondent
love of nn\n to (Iod. This was an absolutely now revelation. The
fierce and savage gods of the early Celt or Toutoii, tlij vague and
shadowy infinite of the higher Hralnnanisni of India, tho refined but
cold and unloving gods of Greece, the austere national god of tho
Jewish people, differ fundamentally from the Christian God of love.
The Colt or Teuton, engaged in a mortal combat with an enemy as
truculent as liimself, naturally conceived of the (Jod of tho tribe as
exulting in the bloody trimnphs of his worshippers. The speculative
Brabnum, contemplating life from the unsym.pathetic standpoint of a
spectator, seemed to see in the restless flux of all terrestrial things, in
the ceaseless tread of generation after goneiation on its way to dusty
death, tho nothingness of all niovemoni, life and thought ; and there-
fore he imagined that all things were but phantoms and shadows,
concealing tlie great unchangeable Unity of which nothing can be
said but that it is. The Greek, with his <|uick artistic temperament,
his passion for all the arts that refine and beautify life, his enth'^siastic
devotion to bis own little state, faslnonod his gods after his own
image and conceived of them as calm, rational, beautiful, but never
with a heart of love. And the Jew, touched as no other ancient people
over was touched with the infinite value of moral rectitude, and there-
by separated from the sensuous and pleasure-loving nations by witieh
it was his sad fate to be successfully overcome and politically
enslaved— the Jew conceived of God as the righteous Judge of tho
earth, who took stern vengeance on the enemies of Israel, though to
his chosen people he displayed even in his cluistisemeiits tho com-
passion of a Father. In Christianity alone is the idea of God freed
from all the limitations of particularism and separate nationality. To
it, God is a spirit, present in the least and tho greatest, manifest in
the fall of a sparrow and in the ordered harmony and law of the
celestial bodies, revealing himself in the formative power of the plant
and the instinctive tenderness of the animal for its young, and dis-
closing himself without reserve in tho perfect self-sacrifice of the Son
of Man. Thus in the religion of Jesus the central idea is that the
informing principle of the whole universe is love, a love of which tho
intensest human afl'ection is but an adumbration and a prophecy. A
religion which starts from this idea of God must inspire men with a
faith in the triumph of good over evil. But Christianity does not
shut its eyes to the facts of life. It knows that in his first or natural
state man is in alienation from God. " There is none righteous, no,
not one." It is bound up with the finitude of man that he should
assert his evil individual self and thus fight 8,gaiust the eternal

^ja a u

-85—

principle of lovo. Ileiico (livisioiiH, strifoM, ciiinitioH ; hoiico tho falHo
jii(l}^iiunits of onliiiaiy life, which Hot a viiliio, not upon tlu' nieasuro
in which nu ii havo in tnom tho active principle of lovc!, i)ut upon the
accident of i-ace or position or inati'rial splendour. J?y the divine
touchstone of love, (!hristianity reveals the true worth of men. All
exteriuil and superficial distinctions vanish away, and they stand
forth without dis<,Miist! a'^ in the transparent other of the eternal
world. The prince may take a lower place than the meanest of his
subjects ; the noble, divested of all outward pomp and circumstance,
is revealed as la; is, not as he appears ; the despised Sanuirilan is
exalted above the unlovinf^ Jew ; the hard, unsympathetic elder
brother gives place to the repentant prodi;^'al ; th.' self-rij^hteous,
avaricious, unpatriotic Pharisee ranks far beneath the liumblo publi-
can with his heart of gold ; and the poor (trring wonum is forgiven be-
cauge she loved much, Thus Christianity produces a complete revolu-
tion in all the ordinary ideas of man. It humbles tiie exalted and up-
lifts the men of low degree. Its one unfailing tost is that of faith in
the infinite love of God, a faith that is expressed in the (iod-liUe life
of love. This is the open secret of (!hristianity ; marching under this
banner it has achieved all its triumphs in the past, and marching
under this banner it shall yet aubduo the whole world to itself.

Now, if I am right in believing that Christianity fixes the -ipiritual
rank of men by the measure of their genuine devotion to tho race, it
is evident that the mediieval conception of religion is only redeemed
from other falsity by its apprehension of the truth that the michasten- i
ed desires of men are at war with the Christian principle of love. Tho
medijDval saint, we may say, saw one aspect of Cln-istianity, but failed
to see the other and complementary aspect. He recognized that the
natural man is enmity against God, but ho did not recogni/o that the
way to the blessed life is not by suppression, but by transformation, of
the natural man. Mediiuvalisra taught men to shun tho temptations
of wealth and refinement, not seeing that in fleeing from tho world the
saint was leaving its baser elements to reign unchecked ; it sought
to raise men above the temptation to lose all wider interests in tho j
absorbing interest of the family, by counselling a life of isolation, j
instead of helping them by influence and example to make the family I
an organ for the creation of wider interests ; it shrank from the jar
and conflict of political life instead of allying itself with genuhio pat-
riotism ; it turned against the free spirit of scientific enquiry, uncon-
scions that every new insight into nature is a further revelation of the
perfect mind of Grod. Against this false opposition of the secular and
the religious life, the whole modern movement of humanity is certain-
ly directed ; and if the mediaeval were the true conception of Christian-
ity, we must either be false to religion or return to the ideal of the ages
called of faith. But it is not so : Christianity does not conceive of

— 8fl-

tli(! fiituro world as dilYoroni from tliiw, but uh tlio proHoiit world in itH
ideal aspect ; what a man is then he is now ; itnd what he is nijW is
determined hy the dej^Ttii' in whiehhis hie hreathes of the spirit of love.
Christianity is ahovo all tlnn^'s a roli^'ion of this world. Whatever
tends to hreak down tho artilteial harriers which prevent tho nnity of
mankind from heinj^' realized, whatever tends to put every one ni the
position of a fre(> man with all his cai)a(Mties in full play, the spirit of
CJn'istianity imperatively demands. Its idttal is tho perfect develop-
ment of all, not of a few favored individnals. It is nothing,', if not
social. 'I'herc! is no department of hnnum life or thouf^dit which lies
beyond the sphert* of its inlhi(>noe. The [tractical prohh^m of our time
is to make all sorts and conditions of men responsive to its touch.
'J'he busy life of industry and connnerce must feel its inspii-ation, the
economist and statesman nnist solve their [trohlems undctr its guid-
ance. Christianity recpiires us to surrender even our prejudices, and
to come to the study of natui'e with no other desire than to know the
truth. It counsels us to make om'selvos at home as far as may be
with the great pioducts or literature and art, the most inestimable
gifts of (J od to man. To be familiar with the creations of Homer,
Dante, 8hakes])eare, Goethe, in which liuuum life is presented as un-
der the foiui of eternity and therefore detached from the complica-
tions which in actual life conceal its true nature, is the duty of every
man who aspires to bo a guide to others and to reach the full stature
of the Christian. Nor can anyone who, from indolence or l)a:-<3r mo-
tives, remains indifferent to tlie struggle of his fellows for a higher
social and national life be called a good Christian. The great poet of
the middle ages reserves his supreme contempt for those who are too
weak and indolent to merit either praise or blame. Untouched by the
eternal conflict between light and darkness they never truly live. They
turn as the wind blows, that their self-indulgent repose may not be
disturbed. Having no convictions, they follow any standard. " Not
a word of them," says Dante, " let us look and pass."

It cannot be hard to stc Mie spirit which Christianity enjoins upon
us in these days of progreiiu to -ards higher forms of individual, social
and political life. Whatever imkes for the elevation of the race is
sacred. There is a tenduKc.'. in each of us to undervalue what is not
obviously connected with his own vocation. The man of busiiioss is
apt to imagine that the .scholar is simply a drone in the busy hive of
life ; to the politician the abstract thinker may seem at best a harm-
less visionary ; to the plain man the lover of art is apt to appear
frivolous and unpractical ; the social reformer cannot understand how
men can pass their lives in fruitless speculation with the agonized cry
of the poor and the miserable going ever up to heaven ; the theologian
has been known to look with suspicion at the "dangerous" tendency
of science or philosophy. Thus is engendered a " spirit of watchful

-87-

jflalouHy," which forces oacU man hack upon hiiuKtilf. All this Ih iiii-
ohristiaii. Wc aro all tnomhoiH of one hotly ; noue can alford to
(IcapiHc the lahoiirH of othcrH, hocausc all a«^niuM«'s aro iicodctl to hiiild
U|) the oiKi great ((dilice of society. From you who have an opportunity
within Ml 'He walls of gaining a wi(l(! and free proHpect over human life
weliop* f.r hetter thingH. We expect you to cultivate the widest
sympathy for all that malats for the improvement of man's estate, the
growth of a rational j)atriotism, the Hpr»;ad of culture and reHnement,
the discovery and diss(!mimition of truth in all its forms, Kciontific,
historical and philosophi(!al. And while you cidtivate tMs Christian
catholicity, we expect you to exhihit each in his npecnil vocation the
spirit of the true " religion of hunnmity." Material prospj'rity is all
too dearly purchased at the cost of spiritinil degradation. In the
solemn drama of human life, it is not sulV.a-ing and death, or even the
dissolution of our air-drawn visions of success, that constitutes its true
pathos, hut ignoble ideals, the arrest of s|)iritual development, the
p(dlution of those whose youth was full of promis((. Our earm'st
desire and hope is tluit in this awful sense you will not fail, hut will
tak(! your places in the chivalry of God,

*' The soldier saints who row on row
Burn upward each to his point of hliss."

John Watson.

-88-

So0 Eate.
NO. e.

He found no place of repentance, thougli lie sought it carefully with tears. —
Hkbrkvvs xii, 16.

These are very sad words. They seem to cut off all hope. We
seem to hear iu their woeful syllables the harsh sound of the closing
gate, which shuts out finally into everlasting gloom ; the despairing cry
of a shipwrecked soul. For if we do not repent we know that it is
irapossUde for God to forgive us. It is self-evident that he who does
not turn liis back on evil can never attain to good. And certainly at
firfi sight it does seem to be here implied that a man may seek most
earnestly - with an agony of earnestness — to repent and yet seek to
repent in vain. Is this possible ? Can it be that such a depth of
hopeless misery can be reached by any human soul, that although
smitten to the heart and humbled into the dust by the sharp stings
and intolerable overwhelming weight of conscious guilt, he may
struggle in the evil net and yet find no deliverance for ever; in spite
of all his frenzied efl' ''ts to climb up the steep sides of his pitfall he
slips back every time with the loose and treacherous earth, and
remains there fast imprisoned, an abject prey to the destroyer beyond
all reach of hope ?

We read the parable of the prodigal son — that gracious tale of
love and forgiveness. Are we to think that according to this verse
there might have been another version of that story which unlike the
first should end unhappily, in which the prodigal, though yearning with
all his heart to return to his father, should find himself unable to stir
a foot on the homeward way ? He is lying there in his rags hungry
among the satisfied swine, who are well-content with the husks on
which he finds that he cannot feed. Visions of his father's home, the
plenty, the secure quietness, the sweet orderliness of it rise vividly
before his blood shot eyes. So the Scotch traveller in the African
desert saw in his feverish dream the fresh green and the purple
heather of his native glen, he heard the streams trickling down the
hill-side, and the rush of the bold river chafing its brown to white
as it tumbled over the rocks, and the ghost of a smile played about
his baked lips. But he awoke to find that many a weary stretch of
burning sand and many a restless league of rolling sea still lay be-
tween him and his native land. Thus it is with the poor prodigal.
How desirable and dear his liome now seems to him lying yonder
behind the mountains that bound tiie horizon — so far — alas, so hope-
lessly far away. How beautiful the gentle and hallowed memories of
that happy morning time when his mother heard him say his prayers

—89—

at her knee, and his father would reprove perhaps with the suspicion
of a hirking smile the boyish sallies of his impetuous blood. Once
in his foolish eagerness for a life of keener excitement he had despised
it all as monotonous and slow. H^ had hated its wholesome restraints ;
longed for liberty, which has proved bondage ; for untraniraelod life in
which he'has found more than the bitterness of death. But now he
comes to himself ; now he sees how fatal was his error. In a flash of
thought beating through his fevered brain every step of the whole
miserable steep descent by which he has come to this stands clearly
revealed to him. A rushing tide of shame and regretful love stirs in
him and drives his whole soul the entire energy of his will and
thoughts and affections irresistibly homewards. That is the place lie
must reach, though it be to do the most menial offices and take the
place of the lowest servant when he was once a favoured son. Nay,
though it were but to die, he must roach it ; though it wore but to die
and be buried in a dishonoured grave, where his father it may be or
some kind soul that Knew him in the promise of his youth may shed
a tear of relenting pity over him ; where at least his native skies will
not withhold their tearlike rain from the lowly sod that covers him,
and the winds from his native hills will sigh a dirge to mourn him.
Must we then understand it to be possible that all his desires are vain ;
that though he gathers all his force into the effort and tries to spring
up from the ground to arise and go to his father, his limbs are
palsied and refuse their otHce ; a death-like frost has fallen on his
powers of motion, like a limed bird whose wildly fluttering wings
beat vainly to disengage the fetters from its feet ; his heart may
flutt3r and beat its wings in passionate homeward aspirations, yet
all the fire of wish and yearning that consumes him cannot move him
forward one step on the way. He has taken root, it seems, in the
tenacious rairc- '>f tlud far country. He has grown into his sins till
they have becoii 3 a vital part of him ; he can no more escape from
them than from his own skin and bones. These sins v/ere pleasant
onco ; such is the irony of time. He took their gilded chains upon
liin:'. as l.f]htly as though they hrd been threads of gossamer, from
wh.ch he eould break away at any moment. The gilding has gone
long ago, !ind the remorsolesp grip oi .'.. ' ?avy metal has rusted its
way into his very flesh. But thougl; he loathes them he cannot leave
them. He has chosen his portion amoAg tlic swine, and among them
he must remain forever, (^nly in dream» can he revisit his happy
home and be blessed hy his fati^er's welcoming smile. The brief
brightness of the dream is followed always by the i}ope!css squalor of
the waking reaJity. The goldou past is gone, faded like the glory of
morning from the mountains toivi ; all that remains of it is but the
haunting phantom of what ,vas and what miglt have been to vex him
with its torturing bei.'.oy. Miserai'le man — loving the good and yet

40—

tied fast to the evil. Can it be that there is no deUverance for liim
and no forgiveness ? That he can find no place of repentance,
though he seek it carefully with tears ? Is this the meaning of these
terrible words that the poor prodigal may thus strive time after time
with his whole soul to arise and go to his father, and yet fall back
prostrate every time a hopeless outcast for ever from love and good-
ness, doomed to wail and gnash the teeth in outer darkness ?

That IS quite impossible, thank God. That cannot be the true inter-
pretation of these words. It would he in flat contradiction to the whole
substance of Christian Faith, which is a Faith of boundless hope.
God is ever waiting to be gracious we are told. "Let the wicked forsake
his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return
unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he
will abundantly pardon." " Come now and let us reason together,
though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow ; though they
be red like crimson they shall be as wool." To see Him is to find Him ;
the will to retr.rn is already a returning. The prodigal may have
gone very far from home ; the backward way may be long and rough
nnd thorny ; to be retraced only with bleeding footprints ; but if the
heart be truly set homewards, the feet can follow. The help of
strong invisible arms will bear up the tired wayfarer ; healing waters
will spring up in the desert to refresh him; and heavenly voices will
sing songs of comfort in his ear. Jesus Christ came to seek that
which was lost. He despaired in no man or woman. Sinners, whom
all the world had given up as irreclaimable, were drawn to Him to
find the rest which he oftered to the weary and heavy laden. He did
not turn away even those who came to Him at the eleventh hour, but
gave them work to do and full wages. His wonderful love, His divine
audacity of faith, did not distain even tue poor remnants of a life
whose best and most vigorous hours had been devoted to the cause of
the enemy. He accepted the last moments of the dying thief ; that
belated service— so paltry as it seemed ; a single golden grain among the
dust and ashes of a life-time spent in wickedness. But yet he accept-
ed it ; the ignorant and imperfect praise ; the dim broken words of
vague and unintelligent prayer. And so the malefactor's cross was lit
up by a x*ay from the setting sun of our Lord's earthly life, which has
made it glow to the eyes of all the many generations since that time
like a beacon of immortal hope. It is never too late then to seek the
mercy of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Whosoever deligently
seeks a place of repentnice in this sense shall find it ; his tears shall
assuredly be wiped away from his eyes and God will give him laugh-
ter for tears and the oil of joy for mourning.

What then is the meaning of our text. It does not pro-
nounce on any living soul the doom of irretrievable despair ; but
yet it bears a pregnant and a stern message to each of us. It

-11-

does not assert that a man may find it impossible, though he
earnestly will, to repent. It does say that his repentance by
no means puts him into the same position as though he had
not sinned. We have here not a sentence of doom, but a
weighty warning. We are warned of the limits of repentance, lest
trusting too much to its virtues we should delay it one instant. We
are told there are somethings that even repentance cannot do for us,
in order that there may be the more in our lives that needeth not to be
repented of. Repentance is indeed the key that opens to us the future,
but it has no magic to change the past ; or to turn aside all its con-
sequences. Esau was truly grieved for his folly in having yielded so
far to the appetite of the moment as to sell his birtbright ; but all his
grief could not bring the birthright back. He found, to use a homely
phrase, that he could not eat his cake and have it. That which is
once done cannot be undone. The most heartfelt contrition of to-
morrow can never recall for us the chances of to-day. God will forgive
us even at the eleventh hour if we turn to him sincerely ; but he will
not give us our life to live over again, and he will not spare us from
reaping a heavy harvest from the seeds we have sown to the flesh so
plentifully and gaily it may have been, in many a sorrow, many a
dark despairing liour which might have been avoided, and many a
sharp struggle with temptation which our own evil habits have made
all but overmasteringly strong. It is good to repent, but how mucli
better, how incomparably easier not to have formed the habit of sin-
ning. Late is certainly better than never ; it remains nevertheless
a shrivelled, halting second best compared with the fulness of blessing
once within our reach. For we muot not forget this — that although
repentance makes us better than we were, it can never make us
all we might have been. If the man who received five talents
had squandered three on riotous living before he began to trade
in his Master's service, do you think when the day of reckoning
came he could have had ten talents to show ? Again, everyone will
acknowledge how ditticult it is to learn any art or dexterity after a
certain time of life. Few persons would be bold or foolish enough to
determine that they should wait till they had passed their fortieth
year and then begin to learn to paint or to play some difficult
instrument. Apart fioni the obvious fact that no one can tell what
space of time is slill remaining fur him, we all know that the eye or
hand or ear must be moulded while still plastic and unspoilt by perverse
bias — while still there is little to unlearn — if they are ever to attain
the exquisite delicacy and sureness needed for any considerable attain-'
uieut in thosvj difficult arts, and that an elderly person cannot hope to
become at best more than a very indifferent performer. Now the art
of living to God, that is, of making the most of ourselves, as it is the
noblest, so it is also the most difficult of ail the arts. As much as any

42—

other it needs to be learnt ; to be learnt well it requires of those who
aspire to be great in it that they submit to training at the earliest
possible age. It is hard to enter in at the straight gate ; the older
one grows the harder it becomes. It is no easy walking along the
narrow way ; and young feet take to it much the most naturally.
Our life here is a school ; the various ages of it are classes in
ascending grades. Failure to profit at any one stage is doubly
disastrous ; the unlearnt lessons are not likely to be taken up
after the proper time for them is past ; and since the later stages
presuppose the training of the earlier, neglect at one point
means incalculable loss all along the line. If as boys we do
not learn reverence and truth telhiig ; we are not likely ever fully to
learn the '^ lessons — indispensable as they are, not only in themselves
but as tilt ^Jn\y b9f>is for so much else. Our days are linked together
in an indis- ' ji';.. chain. What we can be now and hereafter is
limited by \x' -a. we have been and done, erenow. The heaviest
burden of our piesent is always the superincumbent pressure of our
past.

And yet, however obvious all this is, it is in practice like many
other obvious truths, more commonly forgotten than remembered.
Men talk of sowing wild oats in one's youth, as if that were almost a
laudable, certainty a very venial kind of husbandry ; as if it were not
as certain as that two and two make four, that what a man soweth
that shall he reap; and the crop that springs from a wasted youth is a
useless maturity, at least comparatively useless. Almost everybody
intends in a vague way at some indefinite time to mend his ways, as
tliough it did not matter much when. They will turn over a new
leaf when nearly all the book has been blotted ; it all comes to the
same thing if as of course they mean to, they do reform some day or other.
All this is one of the many legitimate consequences of that abject super-
stition which was clearly exposed for you last Sunday— that religion
is in the main an ingenious device by slight-of-hand substitutions, and
so forth, for cheating the gallows at the last and securing a prepos-
terously comfortable position in the next world. If it were so, then Mrs.
Quickly's view of the matter would admit of defence, when she
advised the reprobate knight to patch up his old body for heaven.
Be not deceived ; God is not mocked. What a man soweth he shall
also reap. It does matter when. It is very far from coming to
the same thing. There is the greatest, nay, there is all the difference.
It is the most infatuate folly to delay if ever we mean to enter on the
Christian life, that is on the truly human life at all. 1st, each day's
postponement makes it by so much the more unlikely that we ever
shall begin ; 2nd, the more difficult for us if and when we do. Think
of the labor and regret we are so laying up for ourselves, the dreary
tracts of waste and desert past we shall have to look back upon, the

—48—

miserably shrunken present and fntiiro wo shall then have to hear and
fear. To put otl" is to tie weights to our limbs before entering on an
arduous race ; wherein only thoy who so run that they may obtain,
can hope to obtain ; it is to doom ourselves to an impoverished
Christianity, to a dwarfed and stunted manhood. Those who begin thus
late are little likely to attain to great things ; they cannot hope to be I
otherwise thnn poor scholars in the great school of God ; indifferent
artists in the greatest and noblest of all the arts.

The great danger for us is that we thiiik too meanly of our own
life. The significant ephemeral noises that are perpetually dinning
into our ears distract us from the grandeur and awfulness of our
eternal destiny. We dwell in corners, and do not lift our eyes to the
everlastmg hills. Wo do not withdraw ourselves that we may know
how the sileut stars are over us and silent graves under ; how it
behoves us to make well that choice which though brief is endless. ;
Like Esau, we despise our birthright. He came home hungry from !
his hunting, and in the rage of his appetite it seemed to him — great
child— that he could not live without the smoking mess of pottage
which he saw in his wily brother's hands. At tiiat moment, what
was to him the value of his birthright ? It seemed so visionary, so
unreal a thing beside the unmistakeable reality of his hunger. And
so for the momentary gratification he bartered it away, and only
when it was too late he awoke to the bitter sense that he had been
fooled ; that he had exchanged substance for siiadow ; what had seemed
unreal was the enduring and true, and what had seemed near and
sure was mere semblance and vain show, a passing vapour, the
shadow of a smoke. That is what happens to all of us. We are in
bondage to the things that are seen and temporal ; the blinking dupes
of the deceptive shows which seem to our week eyes the only real
things ; our shining birthright — our inheritance in God— our por-
tion in that which endureth for ever, is as nothing beside the
clamorous hunger or thirst of the passing hour. How noble a thing,
how happy our life might be if we could only live a little in earnest,
and with wider views, realizing our true gains, appropriating ever more
and more our true inheritance— all that we can make our own by the
strength and clearness of the heart's hand and eye, by knowledge,
sympathy and love ; learning the lessons of each day and doing its
work ; growing always in power of will ; in relish and capacity for pure
enjoyment ; in manliness, in charity. But alas ! the pitiable thing,
the wretched squalid tragedy of human life is that so few men do make
any approach to attaining their birthright. So few arrive at the full
stature of their manhood ; so many, instead of realizing their possi-
bilities, remain dwarfs and slaves, when they might have been kings
and giants. Their hearts are darkened that they believe a lie. They
go after vain things and spend their money on that which is not bread,

44—

. /

their labour on that which profiteth not. They pass thoir time in
frivolous and seltish ways ; and fritter awr.y their stock of thought
and feeling on shallow pleasures and insigniliant pursuit and ephem-
eral excitements. So when the parting of the ways come, and the
crisis that decides the quality of the life, there is no accumulated re-
serve of resisting power to meet the onset of strong temptation ; the
wrong turning is taken and the descent begins henceforth to be de-
finite and unmistakable down that steep slope which it is so terribly
hard for those who would retrace their steps to ascend again. The
ascent is hard, but it is not iinpossible. God forbid. It is hard to
unwind the coils of evil habit, to tear out an evil that has become in-
corporate in our flesh. Yet it can be done and has been done. Even
at the eleventh hour the love and mercy of God may reach and lighten
the seif-darkened soul. But the anguish of regret that sighs over the
ruins of a wasted life shall not be opened to such an one ; the blessing
he might have had shall never more be his ; he shall find no place of
repentan"! aough ho seek it carefully with tears.

Let i.s carry this text away with us and its warnings deeply
graven on our minds. The past may be forgiven ; it cannot be un-
done ; tl'^ iron i^'^n's are shut upon it; it is irreparable, irevocable.
God HiiiirfLif cannot change it now. We may regret it bitterly ; we may
look back wistfully on many doom-fraught hours, which we recklessly
squandered, hours pregnant, had we but known it, with the seeds of
future weal or woe ; on many golden opportunities offered once, but
not once more, which we lightly wasted. We may drop salt tears
for all that might have been ; the love which our own fault
lost for ever ; the friends our hasty spleen drove from us ; the
knowledge that we might have gained ; the health and vigor
burnt out in riot and excess ; the steady will become irresolute
and flaccid ; hard and callous from the induration of selfishness and
evil passions, the heart that was once so soft ; the keen edge of our
delight in all that is good and fair, blunted by low indulgences ; dulled
and coarsened that sensitiveness of the pure heart which thrills in
musical response to the lightest breathing of God's spirit, in the sweet-
ness and beauty of the lowliest and commonest things— a wayside
flower, the light of a child's eye, a bird's song, the kindly greeting of a
passing voice along the hawthorn -scented country roads in spring.
When once the ravage of the sins that war against the life has robbed
a human soul of these things, the jewels of its crown, its royal birth-
right, tears are of no avail. They are gone ; no repentance, though
we bathe in floods of it, can ever bring them back. Well for many of
us here that we can still cleave to the hope of life and immortality,
brought to light by Jesus Christ, and look towards that land beyond,
where under more genial suns and in a larger air the soul so dwarfed
and stunted and deformed by the waste of sin and time, may grow at

last to th
which has
but the fi
us attain
what Goc
past and
ours will
that there
inexhaust
less seed
sought hi
even nie
is rich in
on the m(
But :
aspiration
full birthr
you as m(
Many unl
Keep thei
aims and
you prept
sharpest s
self-disgui
even raori
Creator in
the years
in them '

-46—

last to tho fair proportions of God's plan, and flower into the bloom
which 1ms heen nipped and mildewed here. The past is gone for ever,
but the future is our own. Never perhaps in this world can some of
us attain our full birthright, never become what we might have been,
what God meant us to be. The spring time of our mortal life may 1)6
past and many powers of heart and will that once might have been
ours will quicken no more on e^rth. Jiut we are encouraged to believe
that there is still time for us, if we seize upon it, to lay hold of the
inexhaustible possibilities of growth that lie for us in the bound-
less seed field of eternity. If wo seek to God, as the repentant Esau
sought his earthly father, with the exceeding bitter cry : " Bless me,
even me also, my father," we shall find that our Heavenly Father
is rich in reserves of blessing, and that he still has one to bestow even
on the most unworthy.

But you who are young, whose sprijig time is
aspirations high, be content with no second best.
full birthright, your full freedom as sous of God.
you as men and gain the full stature of your manhood in Jesus Christ
Many unblotted leaves of the book of life seem still to be before you.
Keep them unstained by sordid blots, write pure records there ; of high
aims and earnest striving and fair achievment. So, and only so, vdll
you prepare for yourself a bright future, secure at least from the
sharpest sorrows, that bitter sorrow that bows the head in shame and
self-disgust. So you will enter on the path of the just which shineth
even more and more unto the perfect day. " Remember now thy
Creator in the days of thy youth ; while the evil days come not, nor
tho years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure
in them "

John Macnaughton.

now, pitch your
Enter into your
See that ye quit

—40—

NO. 7.

If I woi'G to chose a text tlo-day it wonlcl jirobably be, *' All
power is givei) unto mo in heaven and in earth, go yo there-
fore and make disciples of all nations," illustrated by such other
passages as, " As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you," and
" Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous
things." The topic which naturally rises out of this is, that the
evangelization of tlie whole world is tlie supreme duty of the church
as an organized body, and of the individual christian at tha present
hour and ever has been. I do not say that the conversion or regener-
ation of the earth is our duty. That is retained in the hands of
Omnipotence. But evangelization, that is, telling the story of re-
deeming love in the ears of every human being, is clearly within the
resources of the church to-day, and for this the Giver of all our gifts
may well hold us responsible. It is always well to use such language
as shall keep clearly before us that tlie Divine Being is asking no more
from us in the region of Christian activity than our own consciences
witness that we are v/ell able to perform. To believe that God is re-
4uiring impossibilities from us is a sure way to lull our sense of duty
to sleep. To recognize that our powers are thoroughly adequate to
the task imposed, and that the performance of it will be a blessing is
to possess ourselves of strong motives towards undertaking the duty.

If we keep before us the broad import of the Master's commission
to gospelize the world, we will not draw any hard and fast lines be-
tween the various departments of missionary activity, into which for
convenience sake the church has divided her work. The work is one,
and we need to emphasize this trite observation because the tempta-
tion to forget it is often very strong. Our Divine Master has laid
upon us the responsibility for all sorts and conditions of men ; for the
savages and the barbarians who have only a rudimentary civilization
or none at all ; and for the polished member of modern society whose
veneer of culture often steels his heart against God.

The importance of maintaining our Home Mission work in the
utmost possible degree of efficiency cannot be overestimated, in this
land at the present time. The old lands are making this continent a
dumping ground for a good deal of their rubbish, and the question is,
can we assimilate the heterogeneous material into good healthy soil
for the growth of the bread of life for the nations. I must not be mis-

•17—

uiidorstocHl horc. A most important olomoiit of our ccaiitry's ^Towtli
und prosperity iti tho past has Inicui tlic stream of sturdy and indus-
trious cmif^rauts from Kuropoan shores. When we compare the
general character of our emif,'iauts with the general typo of those who
pass througli " Castle Ciarden," we have reason to be profoundly
tliankful. liut in the formation of a now country, with the comlitioiis
under which wo live now, there must bo elements of peril, and to
grapple successfully with these the gospel alone has power. J3ut
Jerusalem and Judea must not exliaust all our efforts. We must
preach the gospel in the regions beyond ; yea, in the very uttermost
parts of the earth. Wo need the peculiar inspiratioji of foreign mis-
sion work, of establishing now centres of activity, of breaking virgin
soil. I also wish to nuike it clear that responsibility for publishing
redeu)ption to the earth does not rest exclusively upon any class of
men. In speaking of the church we must not understand that it
means the clkugy. No, it means every man, woman and child whoso
heart has been touched witli Divine love, and who has found strength
to venture upon the foundation which cannot be moved. I am not
speaking therefore to-day, merely to those who liave felt themselves
called to the Christian ministry, and who are holding themselves in
readiness for any sphere of labor to which the Divine Being in his
Providence may direct them. They do not need the exhortation,
except that they may be advised that some humble and contracted
field of work at home may afford as grand scope for heroism and
labour as the most attractive congregation, and might be a choice as
pleasing to Jesus as China, India, or the islands of the sea.

I am speaking' to-day to the students in training for so-called
secular positions and to the Christian men and women, our
neighbours, assembled with us here. To all who bow at the name of
Jesus comes the command, " Go Ye." The Eev. J. Fraser Campbell,
one of our missionaries in India, spoke like a true minister of the New
Testament when he said to the Enjah of Indore, " The Founder of
Christianity made it a part of our religion to tell others about it and
we feel that we luive not liberty to exercise our religion, unle.'^s we have
freedom to explain to others its plan of Salvation." But how many
Christians have this freedom in the highest degree and do not care
to use it ! How ready we are to forget that the burden of souls ought
to press upon our hearts as much as it does on the Salvationists who
kneel in the street. You do not believe in their methods ! Well,
adopt wiser ones, but the icsn which they are seeking to reach should
be striven after with ardent zeal by every soul which has the breath of
life. It disgusts one to hear people, declaiming against the sensation-
al methods of the Salvation Army, who never moved a finger nor open-
ed a mouth to commend Jesus Christ to men.

What mighty resources for the evangelization of the earth are

—48-

lying uiitk'volopoil ainoiig us ! 1 am not thinking now of wniwy, al-
though it is iniportimt. I am thinking of the talents for dcahng with
men, tin; culture, tho knowledge of human nature, the leiwuro time,
and the social inilucnce which mkiht i)e consecrated to God, but which
has not yet been laid on his altar in tho highest service of man. Wo
luivo heard that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Wo have
perhaps heard it iUustrated by the running stream and the stagmint
pool. The clear limpid rivulet gives ungrudgingly, it gives its all, a
blessed boon to man and beast, as it Hows free and open by the high-
way. WitJj beauty on its banks, health .)n its bosom and gbidsouK}
music in its rippling sound it flows on to bless many homes, and at
last to pour its tiny volume into the sea, wliose fulness it cannot swell
and from whose cavernous depths it hears no murmur of applause.
Contrast with this record tho stagnant pool, type of the niggard selfish
30ul wherever found, which keeps all its blessings within its own breast
and has no outlet for the spontaneous overflow of spiritual life. The
pool no more than the soul can reverse nature's unchangeable laws,
and as the light and life-giver rises higher and higher in the summer
sky, clothing all the earth in radiant beauty, he brings to the pool a
life which is only death. It shrinks green and loathsome from its de-
serted shores, to biecd pestilence and sorrow in the whole neighbour-
hood.

But I desire to speak of somk ok the knooukagkmknts which we

HAVK, to I'ROHKCUTK THE PUMLICATION OF RKDKMPTION ; for I am au Op-
timist and not a pessimist.

1. CoNHinKH THE FACILITIES OF THE AoK IN WHICH WE MVE, FOR

GospEM/iN(} THE WoRij). Let luc ask you a ques'tiou : What age of
the world would you have liked best to live in, if you had had your
choice ? Would you have chosen the long centuries of the antedilu-
vians, in days when earth was young and knowledge small, in days
when individual might was right, and the fierce hunter, he of the
strong arm and the swift step, ruled over men? Would you rather
have lived on some grassy hillside of Judea in the palmy days of her
Kings, passing the narrow circle of your life in the hope of a deliverer
who was yet to a[)pcar, visiting the Holy City three times a year at
the set feasts and then passing into darkness you scarcely knew where?
Or, would you rather have lived in the golden age of Classic Greece
when her wonderful literature was forming, when the constitutions of
her states were growing amid the clamour of the agora and the clash
of arms, and when her appreciation of the majestic beauty of nature
and the nobility of duty were poured forth in such inimitable strains
by the singers on the blue ^-Egean ? If you had lived there, you would
have found her civilization barbarous and the comforts of life few.
Would you have chosen to appear amid the military and legal triumphs
of Kome, that you might have imbibed her insane desire for conquest,

-40—

that you might hiivo hncklcd on (irniour to pass Hfo in tlic turmoil
of camps and aiuid tho shock of battle, haviiitf no will and knowinf- no
law but the caprice of the rudo savage above you, commissioned to
treat you worse than the brutes that perish ? Surely no one would
have voluntarily chosen the dull sleep of the Middle Ages, when all
enterprise except art vanished from the earth, when superstition
enthroned on ignorance took the place of religion and the growth of
the human mind stood still. Some, perhaps, would have chosen the
era of the IJeforraation with its fresh spiritual life, its stirring contlicts,
its heroic triumphs. But surely it is better to enjoy peacefully a boon
like religious liberty than to have our whole life consumed plucking it
out of the hon's jaws. There are some in every Protestant congre-
gation who look upon tlie Puritan period as the golden age of religious
life and thought. But if these could turn back the hands of time and
take their seats to-day iu the congregations of Baxter, Howe or
Jonathan Edwards they would be deeply disappointed. They wouli
fiiul that in the apprehension and enjoyment of divine truth the saints
of the Most High have been ever marching on.

Mr. (rladstoiib, who is no mean student of history, declares that
in no half century of the world's life would he rather have chosen a
career than in that in which lie has been a prominent figure. Whether
we judge of an age on the low plane of material comforts or on the
higher one of individual }iap))iness, or on the highest of all, the
triumphs of spiritual truth, thee has never been an age like the pre-
sent. Especially in heathen hands has the glory of the redeeming
Christ been seen. Doors that wei'e fast barred a generation ago have
been opened as if by magic in most wonderful ways. The fiercest war-
riors, the wildest tribes, the lowest races have been brought to the
confession of the dying Julian. After striving for years with no com-
mon ability to revivify expiring Paganism he fell, mortally wounded, on
the Phrygian plain. Taking a handful of his clotted blood, he flung
it towards the skies exclaiming, Theodoret tells us, " Thou hast con-
quered, O (lalilean !"

But what do such uiii(iue opportunities demand of us ? With
India and China at our doors, with almost every land open to the gos-
pel, with appliances for spreading intell',;. ije and ministering comfort
such as put the fairy tales of our fathc o shame, with old preju-
dices broken down, a friendly brotherly feeling prevailing among
nations, what may the Divine King of Sion reasonably expect of his
pledged servants '?

2. Consider thk imi'Ulsk givkn to our own Spikitual like by
ENDEAVOURING TO LEAD MEN TO CuRisT. To be luoving ill liarmoiiy
with Christ's will must be a blessed thing to any soul. What a
privilege to be able to join in Paul's prayer and to labour along its
lines — " That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the

followHliip of his Huffoi'iDf^H, l)oing raad«' confornmblo unto his (loath. "
Jiut not to 1)0 too genoral, I may tnontion a specific hoiiofit to tlioHo
who arc invcHtigatiiif,' the probloms of lifo and tlio toiindations of truth.
Such arc hablo to ho disturhod. Some of the old formw under wliich
wo have heon accustomed to apprehend truth will he Hwept away.
Tliis applies particularly to the present time, v/hon we fii '"elvcH

face to fac(! with an entirely new conception of the phynic .niverso,
and to a large extent with new methods of thought, trained by the
investigation of this fresh seientilic knowledge. Theology and even
divin.e philosophy soem to ho carefully feeling their way in trying to
adjust themselves to a new condition of things. In such a period,
similar in sorao respects to the lieformation, some traditional beliefs
will " get a shog that'll maist ruin them a'." It would be easy to
publish an Tntle.v Expiin/tdDriiis, to fix. upon Thomas Aquinas as the
lie jilim iillni of speculative thought and settled belief, and curse all
further investigation, but this would soon be moat disastrous to the
true spiritual life of the soul. Its health, to bo vigorous, must be
nourished in the fresh free air, and m the full light of the noon day
sun shining upon every certain conclusion of criticism and every de-
partment of thought. But it is very important that we maintain a
strong full current of si»iritual life, while the intellect is f hng its
final position. How is it to be accomplished '? I>y keepnig ( 'ves in
living contact with the personal Christ in leading seekii-r, uls to
Him. By plunging amid the sins and sorrows of the world, tilled with
the a.^surance of the love and compassion of that great heart upon
whoso loving-kindness our spirits repose, and laying the very best
that is in us on this altar of God and humanity, that the Crucified may
see of the travail of his soul and bo satisfied.

8. CoNHn)EU THE gloiuous pkoofs, kuunisheu in the histokv of

MISSIONS DURING THIS CENTUKY, THAT THE GoHPEL IS THE POWER OF GoD

UNTO Salvation. Men seek to-day the verification of doctrine in the
region of experience, hut the Gospel has no rival in its readiness to
submit to the ordeal. Just as the Peruvian bark tree grows amidst
the malarial exhalations whose baleful influences it is intended to
cure, so, side by side with the determined attacks of the most radical
unbelief of to-day, ww have the most wonderful conquests of the
cross among the heathen. I can remember the time when a Fiji
Islander was the synonym for the lowest and cruelest type of savage.
But, within fifty years from the landing of the first Missionaries
among them, there was not an open and avowed heathen on any
island of the group. A much larger proportion of them attended
worship every Sabbath than of the citizens of Kingston ; one-fourth
of the entire population are in full communion, and they are volun-
tarily carrying the gospel to their neighbours of New Guinea at the
risk of their lives.

-1 r

■HPP

—51—

What an illnhliulioii of the powt-r of Divine truth We have in tho
history of Mndiij^'iiscar. The MisMi()nari«*.s, after OHtabhshin^ a OhriH-
tian nucleus mid translating/ tho Uihle, w<mo forced to luavo tho
iHhinderH to face more tlian twenty years cruel persecution alone.
Yet they were not alone. God waH with theiu. Although a very
large nuinher suffered .(h^ith, and the survivors endured every onorniity
that th(^ nn>i;ht of thi; stroiii/ and ei lud could inllict, thu Missionaries
lifter an ahHcnco of twiiity-ono years found more ('hristianH on tho
Island than when they had left. 1 saw iiiblos in Jiondon whose
conuirs were all mouldered away hy havin;/ heen long hin'ied in tho
ground from the persecutor's raj,'e, and others with numy of their
leaves ghied together by the hlood of thoir former owners, on whose
persons tlmy were concealed when they were speared lor tl; faith.

Our eyes have lately heen much turned to ('gau'Ui. Since
Ilannington fell and MacKay died, it has heou much in tho woild's
thought. And there, illustrations of tho gospel's iransformina; power
have not been wanting. Among a race so low that ethnologists have
doubted if they would over ho susceptible of civilization, oven ohildreu
have furnished martyrs. Some of the pages of the royal household,
with their arms cut of!', \ re hound over a slow lire and mockingly
told to sing of Jesus now. 'J'liey took up the challoiigo in .<i hynm
they had learned :

" Daily, daily sing to Jesus, , '• " '"■

Sing my soul his praises due.
All he does d( serves our praises,
And our deep devotion too."

And so they continued, until their lips, cracked and shrivelled by
the flames, refused to utter a sound. Are not these dusky child-
ren of Africa worthy to be set side by side with the ancient (!iiris-
tian martyrs, who poured forth their blood on the sand of the
Roman arena for Christ's Crown and Covenant ? Ought we not
to turn from the contemplation of such scenes with now courage
and new faith in the gospel of the grace of God ?

4. Consider tuk DisTiNomsHKo Kxamplkh of Christian Hkko-

ISM AND ZkaI, which THK FikI.U OK THK WoKM)'S KvANOELIZATION HAS

PRODUCKo. The Church needs examples — not only tho Great Exemp-
lar whose life was lived long ago under conditions somewhat different
from ours, but living epistles known and read of all men, produced
amidst the temptations of to-day. No doubt there are multitudes of
humble Christians whose lives would be very inspiring were they
known. But they live and labour and suffer and are faithful, where no
eye sees them except the eye of Him who apportions their heavenly
reward. The worker in the foreign field stands forth before the eyes
of all the Christian host like Aaron, Hur and Moses on the mountain

—52—

top. They are placed in positions of peculiar clifficult.y, and these
often by the blessing of God make them great. When I ascend my
pulpit stairs on Sabbath morning, sometimes with an ill prepared
mesaage and a cold heart, I catch sight of a householder here and
there who has borne me and my work on his supplications at the
family altar before the throne of grace. T know that many a heart is
winging its way to the ear that is so ready to hear, for a blessing on
the word. That strengthens me. But the foreign missionary stands
up to preach the cross before a crowd, some of whom are thirsting for
his blood, while others are ready with hostile arguments. The folds
of their robes are filled with weapons and their hearts with hate. No
other Christian is near him. Dependent solely on God, the sense of
need drives him closer, than we are driven, to the source of power.
The blacksmith's arm is developed by the daily exercise of hard
blows on the anvil and the missionary's soul is developed by the
liard blows of his environment ami his deep draughts at the fountain
of grace. It does us much good to read the lives of such heroes.
They supplement the book of the Acts, and the Eleventh Chapter
of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Charles Simeon of Cambridge kept
the portrait of Henry Martyn hanging before him in his study and he
used to look up and fancy it was saying to him, "Be in earnest, don't
trifle, don't trifle." And he often replied, "Yes, Henry, I will be
in earnest, 1 will not trifle, for souls are perishing and .Jesus is
to be glorified." Such an inspiration, the lives of the heroes of the
world's evangelization are to the church of*to-day:

"The tidal wave of human souls
Into our inmost being rolls.
And lifts us unawares
Above all meaner cares."

Surely we ought not to allow the difficulties in our way, be they
large or small, to daunt us from the performance of our duty, when
we see that they have been so overruled and blessed in the his-
tory of the past to those who faced them and to all beholders.

5. CONSI.OER HOW ATTEMPTING THE EvANGELlZATION OF THE WoRLD

HAS Broadened and Deepened the Church's Conception of truth.
In the foreign field the Church is learning the true doctrinal per-
spective, or the relative importance of the various truths of the
gospel. The first missionaries carried all the controversies of the
Fatherland among the heathen. Even a man like Narayan Shes-
liadrai could not at first believe it possible that there could be sincere
Christian men in the Church of Scotland, because he had been trained
by an ardent Free Churchman, who, as he communicated to his con-
vert a Scottish accent, also insensibly communicated to him an animus
against the Establishment. But a more excellent way has been dis-

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covered. I daresay you have heard the story of that shipwreck on the
EngUsh C^ast on a stormy Sabbath afternoon. The villagers gather-
ed to see a vessel which had been flung by the storm upon the reef
and was fast breaking up. The stump of the mast stood above the
waves and to it several sailors were clinging with rapidly decreasing
strength. The violence of the storm precluded any measure of help, bui
an old sea captain pushed his speaking trumpet into the village minis-
ter's hand, that he might give a word of comfort to the souls that were
passmg away. The minister paused an instant — wh^fc should he say ?
Not the principal points of the morning sermon ! No, he shouted, "Are
you looking to Jesus ?" and back with the wind came the ready
answer, "Aye, aye, Sir !" And immediately there followed the well-
known strains of

"Jesus, lover of my Soul."

The Missionary among the heathen is like a minister in the pre-
sence of death. He must send home, if possible, vital saving truth. And
the truth which has proved its power in the huts of savages will be
powerful in the palaces of Kings. The first missionaries who went to
Greenland began to leach the natives, as they themselves had been
taught in the Seminary, the truths of Natural Theology, the proofs ef
the being of a God, and other truths ; but they made no impression.
One of their number undertook one day to tell a chief named Kajarnak
the story of the incarnation and crucifixion. The savage was moved,
he sprang to his feet, and striking his spear deep into the earthen floor
of the hut, exclaimed, "Tell me all this again !" The missionary re-
peated the narrative. "Did he die for Kajarnak's sins?" said the melted
savage ! It was the beginning of a brighter day in Greenland. And
when the story was told from the pulpits of the 18th century it came
like the breath of a new spring to the dull formal life of the day. It
seemed like a fresh revelation of the power of Divine love.

Are any of us looking for a niche in which to set up an image
of ourselves before which future generations as well as the present
may fall down and worship. Are we seeking great thmgs for our-
selves ? Let us not seek them ! The desire of glory is laudable,
but what is glory? What is the glory of a King ? Is it his crown,
his robes, the gilded carving of his throne or the incense of adula-
tion in which he moves ? Does it spring from the number of his
armies, the wisdom of his councillors or the splendour of his court ?
Does it not rather consist in turning a deaf ear to the solicitations of
pleasure and selfish ambition, and consecrating time and mental power
to the amelioration of the woes of the meanest subjects in the realm ?
What is the glory of a scholar ? Is it the lustre of his gown or the
hood of his degree or the thunder of applause which greets him as he
goes forward to take some new honour from the Chancellor's hand ?
Is it not his power of interpreting nature and mind ? His devotion

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in scorning delights and living laborious days that humanity may be
blessed and the poorest in future years may have that which the
wealthiest cannot now obtain ? What is the glory of God ? Not his
mechanical skill, or physical strength, or the splendour of the place
where his throne stands, or the hosannas of the beings who minister
around Him there. The glory of the Divine love is that he stooped
down to lift sinners from the mire to a place near his heart. This is
what the angels desire to look into. This forms an unfolding of
Jehovah's soul such as the principalities and the powers in heavenly
places have not elsewhere seen. To enter fully into this desire of the
divine heart, to allow it to possess us wholly and to give it effect in
such forms of self-denying labour as may come jin our reach will
be our highest glory and our deepest peace.

James Ross.

INDEX.

PAGE.

How to Read the Bible, Nos. i, 2, 3, by Prin. Grant, D.D., 3
The Ideal Life, by Prof. Watson, LL.D., - 23

Christianity and Modern Life, by Prof. Watson, LL.D., 30
Too Late, by Prof. Macnaughton, M.A., - ■• 38

The Evangelization of the Earth the Supreme Duty of the
Church, by Rev. James Ross, B.D., • - 46

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WHIG PRINT, KINGSTON.

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