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PERKERAPIA LIMBIENTEISTOM
E.E.BROWN
BOSNA NASSA PERKUNNIAN

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1837
VERITAS
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
LE PLURIBUS UNUM:
SCIENTIA
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SPARE MINUTE SERIES.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
FROM THE Writings of DEAN STANLEY.
SELECTED BY
E. E. BROWN.
INTRODUCTION BY
-----
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
BOSTON:
D. LOTHROP & CO.,
FRANKLIN STREET, CORNER OF HAWLEY
·
Copyright, D. LOгHROP & Co.,
S
1.
}
197
Ladines
INTRODUCTION.
ONE who has been enlightened and helped by the work of
any fellow man finds no expression of his gratitude so pleas-
ant as the effort to make others still the sharers of the light
and strength which have been given him. This is the feeling,
I suppose, which has led to this attempt to collect some of
the wisest and most helpful words from the writings of Dean
Stanley, and certainly no form of thanks would be more
acceptable to him than such an effort to extend the influence
for which so many people are already his debtors.
The character of those writings of the Dean of Westmin-
ster which are best known among us makes them perhaps
especially suitable for the purposes of such a volume. They
are historical. They are full of the vivid interest which be-
longs to the most sacred or the most romantic scenes in the
history of our race. At the same time, no books are richer
in the assertion and illustration of those principles of thought
and action which are universal and eternal. This union of
definiteness with universalness, this opening of the temporary
and local and special into the eternal and general is always
293303
vi
Introduction.
full of fascination. It is like the power which a great por-
trait possesses to interpret human nature as no ideal picture
ever can. The appeal to principle or the statement of uni-
versal truth which is made in connection with some event in
history or some question of present life will always have a
clearer vividness and a stronger influence than a purely
abstract utterance of wisdom. To those who know the
writings of Dean Stanley, it need not be said how largely his
character pervades them, and the power which this character
involves will be felt in these extracts, even separated, as they
are, from the historical events by which they were suggested,
as a great portrait makes its power felt even by those who
never saw the living face which it portrays.
Long before his welcome visit of last year, Dean Stanley
had been counted their friend by multitudes of quiet readers.
who had been led by him through delightful regions of
history, through countries full of the most sacred interest,
and through the inspiring and instructive life of his great
teacher whose name is almost as familar in our land of
schools as it can be in Rugby. The opportunity which
many enjoyed of looking into his face and listening to his
wise and cordial words enlarged the number of those who
knew and honored him. No doubt this little book will give
to others still the pleasant sense of personal friendship and
gratitude to one of the wisest and most helpful teachers of
our time.
P. B.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
THE
HE materials for the life of Arthur Penrhyn
Stanley have been left entirely in the hands of
literary executors, who, for the present, can allow no
reference to them. But I have been asked to tell from
recollection, and from the scanty materials at my own
disposal, what I remember of a cousin who was the
most intimate friend of my childhood and boyhood, and
whose life was long interwoven with my own.
There are few country places in England which pos-
sess such a singular charm as Alderley. All who have
lived in it have loved it, and to the Stanley family it
has ever presented the ideal of that which is most
interesting and beautiful. There the usually flat past-
ure lands of Cheshire rise suddenly into the rocky
ridge of Alderley Edge, with its Holy Well under an
overhanging cliff, its guarled pine-trees, and its storm-
beaten beacon tower ready to give notice of an invasion,
looking far over the green plain to the smoke of Stock-
port and Macclesfield, which indicates the presence of
great towns on the horizon. Beautiful are the beech
woods which clothe the western side of the Edge, and
feather over mossy lawns to the mere, which receives a
vii
viii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
ہے
reflection of their gorgeous autumnal tints, softened by
a blue haze on its still waters.
Beyond the mere and Lord Stanley's park, on the
edge of the pasture-lands, are the church and its sur-
roundings a wonderfully harmonious group, encircled
by trees, with the old timbercd inn of “The Eagle and
Child" at the corner of the lane which turns up to
them. In later times the church itself has undergone
a certain amount of "restoration," but sixty years ago
it was marvellously picturesque, its chancel mantled in
ivy of massy folds, which, while they concealed the
rather indifferent architecture, had a glory of their own
very different to the clipped, ill-used ivy which we
generally see on such buildings; but the old clock-
tower, the outside stone staircase leading to the Park
pew, the crowded groups of large square, lichen-stained
gravestones, the disused font in the churchyard over-
hung by a yew tree, and the gable-ended schoolhouse
at the gate, built of red sandstone, with gray copings
and mullioned windows, were the same.
Close by was the rectory, with its garden the
"Dutch Garden," of many labyrinthine flower-beds -
joining the churchyard. A low house, with a veranda,
forming a wide balcony for the upper story, where bird-
cages hung amongst the roses, its rooms and passages
filled with pictures, books, and the old carved oak
furniture, usually little sought or valued in those days,
but which the rector delighted to pick up amongst his
cottages.
This rector, Edward Stanley, younger brother of the
Sir John who was living at the Park, was a little man,
active in figure and in movement, with dark, piercing
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
ix
eyes, rendered more remarkable by the snow-white hair
which was his characteristic even when very young.
With the liveliest interest on all subjects — political,
philosophical, scientific, theological; with inexhausti-
ble plans for the good of the human race in general, but
especially for the benefit of his parishioners and the
amusement of his seven nieces at the Park, he was the
most popular character in the country-side. To chil-
dren he was indescribably delightful. There was noth-
ing that he was not supposed to know and indeed
who was there who knew more? - of insect life, of the
ways and habits of birds, of fossils and where to find
them, of drawing, of etching on wood and lithographing
on stone, of plants and gardens, of the construction of
ships and boats, and of the thousand home manufac-
tures of which he was a complete master.
M
In his thirty-first year Edward Stanley had married
Catherine, eldest daughter of Oswald Leycester, after-
wards rector of Stoke-upon-Terne, of an old Cheshire
family, which, through many generations, had been
linked with that of the Stanleys in the intimacy of
friendship and neighborhood, for Toft, the old seat of
the Leycesters and the pleasantest of family homes, was
only a few miles from Alderley.
At the time of her engagement Catherine Leycester
was only sixteen, and eighteen at the time of her mar-
riage, but from childhood she had been accustomed to
form her own character by thinking, reading, and digest-
ing what she read. Owing to her mother's ill health
she had very early in life had the responsibility of edu-
cating and training her sister, who was much younger
than herself. She was the best of listeners, fixing her
X
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
،،
eyes upon the speaker, but saying little herself, so that
her old uncle, Hugh Leycester, used to assert of her,
Kitty has much sterling gold, but gives no ready
change." To the frivolity of an ordinary acquaintance,
her mental superiority and absolute self-possession of
manner must always have made her somewhat alarming;
but those who had the opportunity of penetrating be-
neath the surface were no less astonished at her origi-
nality and freshness of ideas, and her keen, though
quiet, enjoyment of life, its pursuits and friendships,
than by the calm wisdom of her advice, and her power
of penetration into the characters, and consequently
the temptations and difficulties, of others.
In the happy home of Alderley Rectory her five chil-
dren were brought up. Her eldest son, Owen, had
from the first shown that interest in all things relating
to ships and naval affairs which had been his father's
natural inclination in early life; and the youngest,
Charles, from an early age had turned his hopes to the
profession of a Royal engineer, in which he afterwards
became distinguished. Arthur, the second boy, born
December 13, 1815, was always delicate so delicate
that it was scarcely hoped at first he would live to grow
up. From his carliest childhood, his passion for poet-
ry, and historical studies of every kind, gave promise
of a literary career, and engaged his mother's unwearied
interest in the formation of his mind and character.
A pleasant glimpse of the home life at Alderley in
May, 1818, is given in a letter from Mrs. Stanley to her
sister, Maria Leycester :-
"How I have enjoyed these fine days — and one's pleasure is
doubled, or rather I should say trebled, in the enjoyment of the
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xi
three little children basking in the sunshine on the lawns and pick-
ing up daisies and finding new flowers every day - and in seeing
Arthur expand like one of the flowers in the fine weather. Owen
trots away to school at nine o'clock every morning, with his Latin
grammar under his arm, leaving Mary with a strict charge to unfurl
his flag, which he leaves carefully furled, through the little Gothic
gate, as soon as the clock strikes twelve. So Mary unfurls the
flag and then watches till Owen comes in sight, and as soon as he
spies her signal, he sets off full gallop towards it, and Mary creeps
through the gate to meet him, and then comes with as much joy to
announce Owen's being come back, as if he was returned from the
North Pole. Meanwhile I am sitting with the doors open into the
trellice, so that I can see and hear all that passes."
In the same year, after an absence, Mrs. Stanley
wrote:
"ALDERLEY, Sept. 14, 1818.—What happy work it was getting
home! The little things were as happy to see us as we could
desire. They all came dancing out, and clung round me, and
kissed me by turns, and were certainly more delighted than they
had ever been before to see us again. They had not only not for-
got us, but not forgot a bit about us. Everything that we had
done and said and written was quite fresh and present to their
minds, and I should be assured in vain that all my trouble in writ-
ing to them was thrown away. Arthur is grown so interesting, and
so entertaining too—he talks incessantly, runs about, and amuses
himself, and is full of pretty speeches, repartees, and intelligence;
the dear little creature would not leave me, or stir without holding
my hand, and he knew all that had been going on quite as much
as the others. He is more like Owen than ever, only softer, more
affectionate, and not what you call, 'so fine a boy.'
"
When he was four years old, we find his mother writ-
ing to her sister:
As for the children, my Arthur is sweeter
than ever. His drawing fever goes on, and his passion for pictures
"January 30, 1820
xii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
and birds, and he will talk sentiment to Mademoiselle about le
prin temps les oiseaux les fleurs, when he walks out.
When we
went to Highlake, he asked quite gravely-whether it would
not be good for his little wooden horse to have some sea-bathing !"
And again, in the following summer:
"ALDERLEY, July 6, 1820.—I have been taking a domestic walk
with the three children and the pony to Owen's favorite cavern,
Mary and Arthur taking it in turns to ride. Arthur was sorely puz-
zled between his fear and his curiosity. Owen and Mary, full of
adventurous spirit, went with Mademoiselle to explore. Arthur
stayed with me and the pony, but when I said I would go, he said,
coloring, he would go, he thought: 'But, mamma, do you think
there are any wild dogs in the cavern?' Then we picked up vari-
ous specimens of cobalt, etc., and we carried them in a basket, and
we called at Mrs. Barber's, and we got some string, and we tied
the basket to the pony with some trouble, and we got home very
safe, and I finished the delight of the evening by reading Paul
and Virginia to Owen and Mary, with which they were much
delighted, and so was I.
You would have given a good deal for a peep at Arthur this
evening, making hay with all his little strength - such a beautiful
color and such soft animation in his blue eyes."
"C
It was often remarked that Mrs. Stanley's children
were different from those of any one else but this was
not to be wondered at. Their mother not only taught
them their lessons, she learnt all their lessons with
them. Whilst other children were plodding through
dull histories of disconnected countrics and ages,
of which they were unutterably weary at the time, and
of which they remembered nothing afterwards, Mrs.
Stanley's system was to take a particular era, and,
upon the basis of its general history, to pick out for
her children from different books, whether memoirs,
chronicles, or poetry, all that bore upon it, making
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xiii
{
/
it at once an interesting study to herself and them,
and talking it over with them in a way which en-
couraged them to form their own opinion upon it, to
have theories as to how such and such evils might have
been forestalled or amended, and so to fix it in their
recollection.
To an imaginative child, Alderley was the most
delightful place possible, and whilst Owen Stanley
delighted in the clear brook which dashes through the
rectory garden for the ships of his own manufacture-
then as engrossing as the fitting out of the Ariel upon
the mere in later boyhood-little Arthur revelled in
the legends of the neighborhood-of its wizard of Al-
derley Edge, with a hundred horses sleeping in an
enchanted cavern, and of the church-bell which fell
down a steep hill into Rostherne Mere, and which
is tolled by a mermaid when any member of a great
neighboring family is going to die.
Being the poet of the little family, Arthur Stanley
generally put his ideas into verse, and there are lines
of his written at eleven years old, on seeing the sunrise
from the top of Alderley church-tower, and at twelve.
years old, on witnessing the departure of the Ganges,
bearing his brother Owen, from Spithead, which give
evidence of poetical power, more fully evinced two
years later in his longer poems on The Druids and on
The Maniac of Betharan. When he was old enough to
go to school, his mother wrote an amusing account
of the turn-out of his pockets and desk before leaving
home, and the extraordinary collection of crumpled
scraps of poetry which were found there. In March,
1821, Mrs. Stanley wrote:
xiv
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
"Arthur is in great spirits and looks well prepared to do honor
to the jacket and trousers preparing for him. He is just now
opposite to me, lying on the sofa reading Miss Edgeworth's Frank
to himself (his lesson being concluded) most eagerly. I must tell
you
his moral deductions from Frank. The other day as I was
dressing, Arthur, Charlie, and Elizabeth were playing in the pass-
age. I heard a great crash, which turned out to be Arthur running
very fast, not stopping himself in time, and coming against the
window, at the end of the passage, so as to break three panes. He
was not hurt, but I heard Elizabeth remonstrating with him on the
crime of breaking windows, to which he answered with great sang-
froid, 'Yes, but you know Frank's mother said she would rather
have all the windows in the house broke than that Fran should
tell a lie; so now I can go and tell mamina, and then I shall be
like Frank.' I did not make my appearance, so when the door
opened for the entrée after dinner, Arthur came in first in some-
thing of a bustle, with cheeks as red as fire, and eyes looking
as his eyes do look - saying the instant the door opened,' Mamma!
I have broke three panes of glass in the passage window! — and I
tell you now 'cause I was afraid to forget.' I am not sure whether
there is not a very inadequate idea left on his mind as to the s'n
of glass-breaking, and that he rather thought it a fine thing having
the opportunity of coming to tell mamma something like Frank;
however, there was some little effort, vide the agitation and red
cheeks, so we must not be hypercritical."
After he was eight years old, Mrs. Stanley, who knew
the interest and capacity of her little Arthur about
everything, was much troubled by his becoming so
increasingly shy, that he never would speak if he could
help it, even when he was alone with her, and she
dreaded that the companionship of other boys at
school, instead of drawing him out, would only make
him shut himself up more in himself. Still, in the
frequent visits which his parents paid to the sea-side
at Highlake, he always recovered his lost liveliness
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
XV
of manner and movement, climbed merrily up the sand-
hills, and was never tired in mind or body. It was
therefore a special source of rejoicing when it was
found that Mr. Rawson, the vicar of Seaforth (a place
five miles from Liverpool, and only half a mile from
the sea), had a school for nine little boys, and thither
In
in 1824 it was decided that Arthur should be sent.
August, his young aunt wrote:
"Arthur li ed the idea of going to school as making him
approach nearer to Owen. We took him last Sunday evening
from Crosby, and he kept up very well till we were to part; but
when he was to separate from us to join his new companions he
clung to us in a piteous manner, and burst into tears. Mr. Rawson
very good-naturedly offered to walk with us a little way, and walk
back with Arthur, which he liked better, and he returned with Mr.
R. very manfully. On Monday evening we went to have a look at
him before leaving the neighborhood, and found the little fellow
as happy as possible, much amused with the novelty of the situa-
tion, and talking of the boys' proceedings with as much importance
as if he had been there for months. He wished us good-by in a
very firm tone, and we have heard since from his Uncle Penrhyn
that he had been spending soine hours with him, in which he
laughed and talked incessantly of all that he did at school. He
is very proud of being called 'Stanley,' and seems to like it alto-
gether very much. The satisfaction to mamma ard auntic is not
to be told of having disposed of this little sylph in so excellent
a manner. Every medical man has always said that a few years
of constant sea-air would make him quite strong, and to find this
united to so desirable a master as Mr. R., and so careful and kind
a protectress as Mrs. R., is being very fortunate."
M
In the following summer July, 1825-the same
pen writes from Alderley to one of the family:
"You know how dearly I love all these children, and it has been
such a pleasure to see them all so happy together. Owen, the hero
}
xvi
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
upon whom all their little eyes were fixed, and the delicate Arthur
able to take his own share of boyish amusements with them, and
telling out his little store of literary wonders to Charlie and Cathe-
rine. School has not transformed him into a rough boy yet. He
is a little less shy, but not much. He brought back from school a
beautiful prize book for history, of which he is not a little proud;
and Mr. Rawson has told several people, unconnected with the
Stanleys, that he never had a more amiable, attentive, or clever
boy than Arthur Stanley, and that he never has had to find fault
with him since he came. My sister finds, in examining him, that
he not only knows what he has learnt himself, but that he picks
up all the knowledge gained by the other boys in their lessons, and
can tell what each boy in the school has read, etc. His delight in
reading Madoc and Thalaba is excessive."
In the following year, Miss Leycester writes:
STOKE, August 26, 1826.— My Alderley children are more
interesting than ever. Arthur is giving Mary quite a literary taste,
and is the greatest advantage to her possible, for they are now
quite inseparable companions,
companions, reading, drawing and writing
together. Arthur has written a poem on the life of a peacock-
butterfly in the Spenserian stanza, with all the old words, with
references to Chaucer, etc., at the bottom of the page! To be
sure it would be singular if they were not different from other
children, with the advantages they have where education is made
so interesting and amusing as it is to them. . . . I never saw any-
thing equal to Arthur's memory and quickness in picking up
knowledge; seeming to have just the sort of intuitive sense of
everything relating to books that Owen had in ships - and then
there is such affection and sweetness of disposition in him. . .
You will not be tired of all this detail of those so near my heart.
It is always such a pleasure to me to write of the rectory, and I
can always do it better when I am away from it and it rises before
my mental vision."
"(
X
The summer of 1826 was marked for the Stanleys by
the news of the death of their beloved friend Reginald
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xvii
}
Heber, and by the marriage of Isabella Stanley to
Captain Parry, the Arctic voyager, an event at which
"his mother could not resist sending for her little
Arthur to be present." Meantime he was happy at
school, and wrote long histories home of all that took
place there, especially amused with his drilling ser-
jeant, who told him to "put on a bold, swaggering air,
and not to look sheepish." But each time of his return
to Alderley, he seemed shyer than ever, and his mother
became increasingly concerned at his want of boyish-
ness.
“January 27, 1828.— Oh, it is so difficult to know how to manage
Arthur. He takes having to learn dancing so terribly to heart, and
enacts Prince Pitiful; and will, I am afraid, do no good at it.
Then he thinks I do not like his reading because I try to draw him
also to other things, and so he reads by stealth, and lays down his
book when he hears people coming; and having no other pursuits
or anything he cares for but reading, has a listless look, and I am
sure he is very often unhappy. I suspect, however, that this is
Arthur's worst time, and that he will be a happier man than boy.”
In January, 1828, Mrs. Stanley wrote to Augustus
W. Hare, long an intimate friend of the family, and
soon about to marry her sister:
"I have Arthur at home, and I have rather a puzzling card to
play with him-how not to encourage too much his poetical tastes,
and to spoil him, in short- and yet how not to discourage what
in reality one wishes to grow, and what he, being timid and shy
to a degree, would easily be led to shut up entirely to himself;
and then he suffers so much from a laudable desire to be with
other boys, and yet when with them, finds his incapacity to enter
into their pleasures of shooting, hunting, horses, and theirs for
his. He will be happier as a man, as literary men are more
within reach than literary boys."
xviii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
In the following month she wrote
"ALDERLEY, February 8, 1828.- Now I am going to ask your
opinion and advice, and perhaps your assistance on my own account.
We are beginning to consider what is to be done with Arthur, and
it will be time for him to be moved from his small school in another
year, when he will be thirteen. We have given up all thoughts of
Eton for him from the many objections, combined with the great
expense. Now I want to ask your opinion about Shrewsbury,
Rugby and Winchester; do you think, from what you know of
Arthur's character and capabilities, that Winchester would suit him,
and vice versa?"
In answer to this Augustus Hare wrote to her from
Naples:
66
March 26, 1828.— Are you aware that the person of all others
fitted to get on with boys is just elected master of Rugby? His
name is Arnold. He is a Wykehamist and Fellow of Cricl, and
a particular friend of mine a man calculated beyond all others
to engraft modern scholarship and modern improvements on the
old-fashioned stem of a public education. Winchester under him
would be the best school in Europe; what Rugby may turn out I
cannot say, for I know not the materials he has there to work on."
A few weeks later he added-
“FLORENCE, April 19, 1828.—I am so little satisfied with what
I said about Arthur in my last letter, that I am determined to
begin with him, and do him more justice. What you describe him
now to be, I once was; and I have myself suffered too much and
too often from my inferiority in strength and activity to boys who
were superior to me in nothing else, not to feel very deeply for any
one in a similar state of school-forwardness and bodily weakness.
Parents in general are too anxious to push their children on in
school and other learning. If a boy happens not to be robust,
it is laying up for him a great deal of pain and mortification. For
a boy must naturally associate with others in the same class: and
i
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xix
consequently, if he happens to be forward beyond his years, he is
thrown at twelve (with perhaps the strength of only eleven or ten)
into the company of boys two years older and probably three or
four years stronger (for boobies are always stout of limb.) You
may conceive what wretchedness this is likely to lead to, in a state
of society like a school, where might almost necessarily makes
right. But it is not only at school that such things lead to mortia-
cation. There are a certain number of manly excrcises, which
every gentleman, at some time or other of his life, is likely to be
called on to perform, and many a man who is deficient in these,
would gladly purchase dexterity in them, if he could, at the price
of those mental accomplishments which have cost him in boyhood
the most pains to acquire. Who would not rather ride well at
twenty-five, than write the prettiest Latin verses? I am perfectly
impartial in this respect, being able to do neither, and therefore
my judgment is likely enough to be correct. So pray during the
holidays make Arthur ride hard and shoot often, and, in short,
gymnasticise in every possibic manner. I have said thus much to
relieve my own mind, and convey to you how earnestly I fcel on
the subject. Otherwise I know Alderley and its inhabitants too
well to suspect any one of them being what Wordsworth calls an
intellectual all-in-all.' About his school, were Rugby under any
other master, I certainly should not advise your thinking of it for
Arthur for an instant; as it is, the decision will be more difficult.
When Arnold has been there ten years, he will have made it a good
school, perhaps in some respects the very best in the island; but
a transition state is always one of doubt and delicacy. Winches-
ter is admirable for those it succeeds with, but it is not adapted
for all sorts and conditions of boys, and sometimes fails. How-
ever, when I come to England, I will make a point of seeing
Arthur, when I shall be a little better able perhaps to judge."
In the summer of 1828 Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, with
her sister Maria and her niece Lucy Stanley, from the
Park, went by sea to Bordeaux and for a tour in the
Pyrenees, taking little Arthur and his sister Mary wite
them. It was his first experience of foreign travel, and
XX
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
most intense was his enjoyment of it. All was new
then, and Mr. Stanley wrote of the children as being
almost as much intoxicated with delight on first landing
at Bordeaux as their faithful maid, Sarah Burgess, who
"thinks life's fitful dream is past, and that she has, by
course of transmigration, passed into a higher sphere."
It is recollected how, when he first saw the majestic
summit of the Pic du Midi rising above a mass of cloud,
Arthur Stanley, in his great ecstasy, could say nothing
but "What shall I do! What shall I do!"
In the following October Mrs. Stanley described her
boy's peculiarities to Dr. Arnold, and asked his candid.
advice as to how far Rugby was likely to suit him. After
recciving his answer she wrote to her sister:
*
"October 10, 1323.- Dr. Arnold's letter has decided us about
Arthur. I should think there was not another schoolmaster in his
Majesty's dominions who would write such a letter. It is so lively,
agrccable and promising in all ways. He is just the man to take
a fancy to Arthur, and for Arthur to take a fancy to."
It was just as his mother had foreseen. Arthur
Stanley went to Rugby in the following January, and
was immediately captivated by his new master. His
parents visited him two months afterwards as they
were returning from Cheshire to London. Mrs. Stan-
ley wrote to her sister:
(C
March, 1829.— We arrived at Rugby exactly at twelve, waited
to see the boys pass, and soon spied Arthur with his books on his
shoulder. IIc colored up and came in, looking very well, but cried
a good deal on sccing us, chiefly I think from nervousness. The
only complaint he had to make was that of having no friend, and
the feeling of loneliness belonging to that want, and this, consid-
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxi
ering what he is and what boys of his age usually are, would and
must be the case anywhere. We went to dine with Dr. and Mrs.
Arnold, and they are of the same opinion, that he was as well off
and as happy as he could be at a public school, and on the whole
I am satisfied — quite satisfied considering all things, for Dr. and
Mrs. Arnold are indeed delightful. She was ill, but still animated
and lively. He has a very remarkable countenance, something in
forehead, and again in manner, which puts me in mind of Reginald
Heber, and there is a mixture of zeal, energy and determination,
tempered with wisdom, candor, and benevolence, both in manner
and in everything he says. He had examined Arthur's class, and
said Arthur had done very well, and the class generally. He said
he was gradually reforming, but that it was like pasting down a
piece of paper as fast as one corner was put down another
started up. 'Yes,' said Mrs. A, 'but Dr. Arnold always thinks
the corner will not start again.' And it is that happy sanguine
temperament which is so particularly calculated to do well in this
or, indeed, any situation.”
Arthur Stanley soon became very happy at Rugby.
His want of a friend was speedily supplied, and many
of the friends of his whole after life dated from his
early school-days, especially Charles Vaughan, aíter-
wards his intimate companion, eventually his brother-
in-law. His rapid removal into the shell at Easter, and
into the fifth form at Midsummer, brought him nearer
to the head master, at the same time freeing him from
the terrors of prepostors and fagging, and giving him
entrance to the library. So he returned to Alderley in
the summer holidays well and prosperous, speaking
out, and full of peace and happiness, ready to enjoy
"striding about upon the lawn on stilts" with his
brother and sisters. On his return to school his mother
continued to hear of his progress in learning, but
derived even more pleasure from his accounts of foot
xxii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
at a
ball, and of a harc-and-hounds hunt in which he "got
left behind with a clumsy boy and a silly one"
brook, which, after some deliberation, he leapt, and
“nothing happened."
In September, 1829, his mother writes:
"I have had such a ridiculous account from Arthur of his sit-
ting up, with three others, all night, to see what it was like? They
heartily wished themselves in bed before morning. He also writes
of an English copy of verses given to the fifth form Brownsover,
a village near Rugby, with the Avon flowing through it, and the
Swift flowing into the Avon, into which Wickliffe's ashes were
thrown. So Arthur and some others instantly made a pilgrimage
to Brownsover to make discoveries. They were allowed four days
and Arthur's was the best of the thirty in the fifth form, greatly
to his astonishment, but, he says, 'Nothing happened, except that
I get called Poct now and then, and my study Poet's Corner.' The
master of the form gave another subject for them to write upon
in an hour to see if they had each made their own, and Arthur was
again head.
What good sense there is in giving these kind of
subjects to excite interest and inquiry, though few would be so
supremely happy as Arthur in inaking the voyage of discovery. I
ought to mention that Arthur was detected with the other boys in
an unlawful letting off of squibs, and had one hundred lines of
Horace to translate!
""
The following gleanings from his mother's letters
give, in the absence of other material, glimpses of Arthur
Stanley's life during the next few years:
February 22, 1830.- Arthur writes me word he has begun
mathematics, and does not wonder Archimedes never heard the
soldiers come in if he was as much puzzled over a problem
as he is."
(C
66
June 1, 1830.—We got to Rugby at eight, fetched Arthur, to
his great delight and surprise, and had two most comfortable hours
with him. There is just a shade more of confidence in his manners
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxiii
which is very becoming. He talked freely and fluently, looked
well and happy, and came the next morning at six o'clock with his
Greek book and his notebook under his arm."
“June 22, 1830.- There was a letter from Arthur on Monday
saying that his verses on Malta had failed in getting the prize.
There had been a hard contest between him and another. His
poem was the longest and contained the best ideas, but he says
'that is matter of opinion;' the other was the most accurate.
There were three masters on each side, and it was some time in
being decided. The letter expresses his disappointment (for he
had thought he should have it), his vexation (knowing that another
hour would have enabled him to look over and probably to correct
the fatal faults) so naturally, and then the struggle of his amiable
feeling that it would be unkind to the other boy, who had been
very much disappointed not to get the Essay, to make any excuses.
Altogether it is just as I should wish, and much better than if he
had got it."
"July 20, 1830.- Arthur came yesterday. He begins to look
like a young man.
""
(C
December, 1830.- Arthur has brought home a letter from Mrs.
Arnold to say that she could not resist sending me her congratula-
tions on his having received the remarkable distinction of not
being examined at all, except in extra subjects. Dr Arnold called
him up before masters and school, and said he had done so per-
fectly well it was useless."
“December 30, 1830.—I was so amused the other day taking up
the memorandum books of my two boys. Owen's full of calcula-
tions, altitudes, astronomical axioms, etc. Arthur's of Greek idioms,
Grecian history, parallels of different historical situations: Owen
does Arthur a great deal of good by being so much more attentive
and civil; it piques him to be more alert. Charlie profits by both
brothers. Arthur examines him in his Latin, and Charlie sits with
his arm round his neck, looking with the most profound deference
in his face for exposition of Virgil."
66
February, 1831.- Charlie writes word from school: 'I am
very miserable, not that I want anything, except to be at home.'
Arthur does not mind going half so much. He says he does not
xxiv
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
know why, but all the boys seem fond of him, and he never gets
plagued in any way like the others; his study is left untouched,
his things unbroke, his books undisturbed. Charlie is so fond of
him, and deservedly so. You would have been so pleased one
night, when Charlie all of a sudden burst into violent distress at
not having finished his French task for the holidays, by Arthur's
judicious good-nature in showing him how to help himself, entirely
leaving what he was about of his own employment."
“July, 1831.—I am writing in the midst of an academy of art.
Just now there are rthur and Mary drawing and painting at one
table; Charlie deep in the study of fishes and hooks, and drawing
varieties of both at another; and Catherine with her slate full of
houses with thousands of windows. Charlie is fishing mad, and
knows how to catch every sort, and just now he informs me that
to catch a bream you must go out before breakfast. He is just
as fond as ever of Arthur. You would like to see Arthur examine
him, which he does so mildly and yet so strictly, explaining every-
thing so à l'Arnold."
“July 17, 1831.-I have been busy teaching Arthur to drive,
row, and gymnasticise, and he finds himself making progress in
the latter; that he can do more as he goes on a great encour-
agement always. Imagine Dr. Arnold and one of the other masters
gymnasticising in the garden, and sometimes going out leaping
as much a sign of the times as the Chancellor appearing without a
wig, and the king with half a coronation."
Mag
ALDERLEY, November 11.—We slept at Rugby on Monday
night, had a comfortable evening with Arthur, and next morning
breakfasted with Dr. Arnold. What a man he is! IIe struck me
more than before even, with the impression of power -energy,
and singleness of heart, aim and purpose. He was very indignant
at the Quarterly Review article on cholera - the surpassing sel-
fishness of it, and spoke so nobly was busy writing a paper to
state what cholera is, and what it is not . . . Arthur's veneration
for him is beautiful; what good it must do to grow up under such
a tree."
My
"December 22, 1831.-I brought Arthur home on Wednesday
from Knutsford. He was classed first in everything but composi-
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
XXV
tion, in which he was second, and mathematics, in which he did
not do well enough to be classed, nor ill enough to prevent his
having the reward of the rest of his works. I can trace the im-
provement from his having been so much under Dr. Arnold's
influence; so many inquiries and ideas are started in his mind
which will be the groundwork of future study. . . . Charlie is very
happy now in the thought of going to Rugby and being with Arthur,
and Arthur has settled all the study and room concerns very well
for him. I am going to have a sergeant from Macclesfield to drill
them this holidays, to Charlie's great delight, and Arthur's patient
endurance. The latter wants it much. It is very hard always to
be obliged to urge that which is against the grain. I never feel I
am doing my duty so well to Arthur, as when I am teaching him
to dance, and urging him to gymnasticise, when I would so much
rather be talking to him of his not books, etc. He increasingly
needs the free use of his powers of mind too as well as of his
body. The embarrassments and difficulty of getting out what he
knows seems so painful to him, while some people's pain is all in
getting it in; but it is very useful for him to have drawbacks in
everything."
<<
May 22, 1832.- We got such a treat on Friday evening in
Arthur's parcel of prizes. One copy he had illustrated in answer
to my questions, with all his authorities, to show how he came by
the various bits of information. In this parcel he sent An
Ancient Ballad,' showing how Harold the King died at Chester,'
the result of a diligent collation of old chronicles he and Mary had
made together in the winter. Arthur put all the facts together
from memory."
"December 26, 1832.- Arthur and Charlie came home on
Wednesday. Arthur has not shaken off his firs tfit of shyness
yet. I think he colors more than ever, and hesitates more in
bringing out what he has to say. I am at my usual work of
teaching him to use his body, and Charlie his mind."
"April 13, 1833.- I never found Arthur more blooming than
when we saw him at Rugby on Monday. Mrs. Arnold said
she always felt that Arthur had more sympathy with her than
any one else, that he understood and appreciated Dr. Arnold's
xxvi
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
character, and the union of strength and tenderness in it, that Dr.
A. said he always felt that Arthur took in his ideas, received all
he wished to put into him more in the true spirit and meaning
than any boy he had ever met with, and that she always delighted
in watching his countenance when Dr. Arnold was preaching."
"July, 1833.- At eight o'clock last night the Arnolds arrived.
Dr. Arnold and Arthur behind the carriage, Mrs. Arnold and two
children inside, two more with the servant in front, having left the
other chaiseful at Congleton. Arthur was delighted with his
journey said Dr. Arnold was just like a boy-jumped up,
delighted to be set free - had talked all the way of the geology of
the country, knowing every step of it by heart so pleased to
see a common, thinking it might do for the people to expatiate on.
We talked of the Cambridge philosophers — why he did not go
there he dared not trust himself with its excitement or with
society in London. Edward said something of the humility of
finding yourself with people so much your superior, and at the
same time the elevation of feeling yourself of the same species.
He shook his head-'I should feel that in the company of legisla-
tors, but not of abstract philosophers.' Then Mrs. Arnold went
on to say how De Ville had pronounced on his head that he was
fond of facts, but not of abstractions, and he allowed it was most
true; he liked geology, botany, philosophy, only as they are con-
nected with the history and well-being of the human race. . . .
The other chaise came after breakfast. He ordered all into their
places with such a gentle decision, and they were all off by ten,
having ascertained, I hope, that it was quite worth while to halt
here even for so short a time.
It was in November, 1833, that Arthur Stanley went
to Oxford to try for the Balliol Scholarship, and gained
the first scholarship against thirty competitors. The
examination was one especially calculated to show the
wide range of Arnold's education. Stanley wrote from
Oxford to his family:
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxvii
“November 26, 1833.- On Monday our examination began at
IO A. M. and lasted to 4 P. M.- a Latin theme, which, as far as
four or five revisals could make sure, was without mistakes and
satisfied me pretty well. In the evening we went in from 7 P. M.
till to and had a Greek chorus to be translated with notes and
also turned into Latin verses, which I did not do well. On Tues-
day from 10 to I we had an English theme and a criticism on
Virgil which I did pretty well, and Greek verses from 2 to 4
middling, and we are to go in again to-night at 9. I cannot the
least say if I am likely to get it. There seem to be three formid-
able competitors, especially one from Eton."
•
“Friday, November 29, 7 1-4 P. M.- I will begin my letter in the
midst of my agony of expectation and fear I finished my exami-
nation to-day at 2 o'clock. At S to-night, the decision takes place,
so that my next three-quarters of an hour will be dreadful. As I
do not know how the other schools have done, my hope of success
can depend upon nothing, except that I think I have done pretty
well, better perhaps from comparing notes than the rest of the
Rugby men. Oh, the joy if I do get it! and the disappointment if
I do not. And from two of us trying at once, I fear the blow to
the school would be dreadful if none of us get it. We had to
work the second day as hard as on the first, on the third and
fourth not so hard, nor to-day- Horace to turn into English verse,
which was good for me; a divinity and mathematical paper, in
which I hope my copiousness in the first made up for my scanti-
ness in the second. Last night I dined at Magdalen, which is
enough of itself to turn one's head upside down, so very magnifi-
I will go on now. We all assembled in the hall and
had to wait an hour, the room getting fuller and fuller with Rugby
Oxonians crowding in to hear the result. Every time the door
opened, my heart jumped, but many times it was nothing. At last
the Dean appeared in his white robes and moved up to the head
of the table. He began a long preamble—that they were well
satisfied with all, and that those who were disappointed were
many in comparison with those who were successful, etc. All this
time every one was listening with the most intense eagerness, and
I almost bit my lips off till-'The successful candidates are — - Mr.
cent.
xxviii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
Stanley' — I gave a great jump, and there was a half shout amongst
the Rugby men. The next was Lonsdale from Eton. The Dean
then took me into the chapel where the Master and all the Fellows
were, and there I swore that I would not reveal the secrets, disobey
the statutes, or dissipate the wealth of the college. I was then
made to kneel on the steps, and admitted to the rank of Scholar
and Exhibitioner of Balliol College, 'nomine Patris, Filii, et Spir-
itus.' I then wrote my name, and it was finished. We start to-
day in a chaise and four for the glory of it. You may think of
my joy, the honor of Rugby is saved, and I am a scholar of
Balliol!"
Dr. Arnold wrote to Mrs. Stanley –
"I do heartily congratulate you and heartily thank Arthur for the
credit and real benefit he has conferred on us. There was a feel-
ing abroad that we could not compete with Eton or the other great
schools in the contest for university honors, and I think there was
something of this even in the minds of my own pupils, however
much they might value my instruction in other respects, and those
who wish the school ill for my sa e were ready to say that the boys
were taught politics and not taugi.t to be scholars. Already has
the effect of Arthur's success been felt here in the encouragement
which it has given to others to work hard in the hope of treading in
his steps, and in the confidence it has given them in my system.
And yet, to say the truth, though I do think that with God's
blessing I have been useful to your son, yet his success on this oc-
casion is all his own, and hundred times more gratifying than if it
had been gained by my examining. For I have no doubt that he
gained his scholarship chiefly by the talent and good sense of his
compositions, which are, as you know, very remarkable."
Arthur Stanley remained at Rugby till the following
summer, gaining more now, he considered, from Dr
Arnold than at any other time, though his uncle
Augustus Hare, who had been applied to, discouraged
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxix
his being left at school so long, because "though most
boys learn most during their last year, it is when they
are all shooting up together, but Arthur must be left a
high tree among shrubs." Of this time are the fol-
lowing letters from Mrs. Stanley:
((
February 3, 1834.-I have just lost Arthur, and a great loss he
is to me. The latter part of his time at home is always so much
the most agreeable, he gets over his reserve so much more. Ile
has been translating and retranslating Cicero for his improvement,
and has been deep in Guizot's essay on the Civilization of Europe,
besides chiefly engaged in a grand work, at present a secrct, but
of which you may perhaps hear more in the course of the spring.
I have generally sate with him or he with me, to be ready with
criticisms when wanted, and it is delightful to be so immediately
and entirely understood - the why and wherefore of an object-
tion seen before it is said. And the mind is so logical, so clear,
the taste so pure in all senses, and so accurate. He goes on so
quietly and perseveringly as to get through all he intends to get
through without the least appearance of bustle or business. He
finished his studies at home, I think, with an analysis of the Penin-
sular battles, trying to understand thereby the pro and con of a
battle."
"C
May 21, 1834.—I have taken the opportunity of spending
Sunday at Rubgy. Arthur mct us two miles on the road, and
almost his first words were how disappointed he was that Dr.
Arnold had influenza and would not be able to preach! However,
I had the compensation of more of his comp ny than under any
other circumstances. There were only he and Mrs. Arnold, so
that I became more acquainted with both, and altogether it was
most interesting. We had the Sunday evening chapter and hymn,
and it was very beautiful to see his manner to the little ones, indecd
to all. Arthur was quite as happy as I was to have such an unin-
terrupted bit of Dr. Arnold—he talks more freely to him a great
deal than he does at home."
The spring of 1834 had been saddened to the Stan
XXX
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
""
leys by the death of Augustus Hare at Rome; and
the decision of his widow-the beloved "Auntie
of Arthur Stanley's childhood-to make Hurstmonceaux
her home, lcd to his being sent, before going to Oxford,
for a few months as a pupil to Julius Hare, who was
then rector of Hurstmonceaux. Those who remember
the enthusiastic character of Julius Hare, his energy in
what he undertook, and his vigorous though lengthy
elucidation of what he wished to explain, will imagine
how he delighted in reopening for Arthur Stanley the
stores of classical learning which had seemed laid aside
forever in the solitude cf his Sussex living. I cannot
speak of the blessing it has been to have Arthur so
long with you," his mother wrote afterwards. "He
says he feels his mind's horizon so enlarged, and that a
foundation is laid of interest and affection for Hurst-
monceaux, which he will always henceforward consider
as 'one of his homes, one of the many places in the
world he has to be happy in.' IIe writes happily from
Oxford, but the lectures and sermons there do not go
down after the food he has been living on at Hurst-
monceaux and Rugby."
In this brief sketch we do not dwell upon Arthur
Stanley's happy and successful career at college, upon
his many prizes, his honors of every kind,' even upon
his Newdigate poem of "The Gipsies," which his
father heard him deliver in the Sheldonian Theatre,
and burst into tears amid the tumult of applause which
The Ireland Scholarship and a First Class in Classics, 1837;
the Chancellor's Latin Prize Essay, 1839; the English Essay,
1840, etc.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxxi
followed. It may truly be said of him that he “applied
his heart to know, and to search, and to seek out
wisdom."
In the autumn of 1839, Arthur Stanley was ordained,
though full of mental difficulties as to subscription. He
was decided by a letter from Arnold, who urged that
his own difficulties of the same kind had gradually
decreased in importance; that he had long been per-
suaded that subscription to the letter to any amount of
human propositions was impossible, and that the door
of ordination was never meant to be closed against all
but those whose "dull minds and dull consciences"
could see no difficulty. In deciding to remain at Ox-
ford as a tutor at University College, where he had
obtained a fellowship, Stanley believed that his ordina-
tion vows might be as effectually carried out by making
the most of his vocation at college, and endeavoring to
influence all who came within his sphere, as by under-
taking any parochial cure. To his aunt, who remon-
strated, he wrote:
(C
February 15, 1840-I have never properly thanked you for
your letters about my ordination, which I assure you, however, that
I have not the less value, and shall be no less anxious to try, as far
as in me lies, to observe. It is perhaps an unfortunate thing for
me, though as far as I see unavoidable, that the overwhelming con-
siderations, immediately at the time of Ordination, were not difïì-
culties of practice, but of subscription, and the effect has been that
I would a ways rather look back to what I felt to be my duty before
that cloud came on, than to the time itself. Practically, however, I
think it will in the end inake no difference. The real thing which
long ago moved me to wish to go into Orders and which, had I not
gone into Orders, I should have acted on as well as I could without
xxxii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
?
Orders, was the fact that God seemed to have given me gifts more
fitting me for Orders, and for that particular line of clerical duty
which I have chosen, than for any other. It is perhaps as well to
say that until I see a calling to other clerical work, as distinct as
that by which I fell called to my present work, I should not think
it right to engage in any other; but I hope I shall always feel,
though I am afraid I cannot be too constantly reminded, that in
whatever work I am engaged now, or hereafter, my great end
ought always to be the good of the souls of others, and n.y great
support the good which God will give to my own soul.”
Two years before this, in 1837, the Rector of Alderley
had been appointed to the Bishopric of Norwich, and
had left Cheshire amidst an uncontrollable cutburst of
grief from the people amongst whom he had lived as a
friend and a father for thirty-two years. Henceforward,
the scientific pursuits, which had occupied his leisure.
hours at Alderley, were laid aside in the no-leisure of
his devotion to the See with whose interests he now
identified his existence. His one object seemed to be
to fit himself more completely for dealing with ecclesi-
astical subjects, by gaining a clearer insight into
clerical duties and difficulties, and though he long
found his diocese a bed of thorns, his kindly spirit, his
broad liberality, and all-embracing fatherly sympathy,
never failed to leave peace behind them. His employ-
ments were changed, but his characteristics were the
same; the geniality and simplicity shown in dealing
with his clergy, and his candidates for ordination, had
the same power of winning hearts which was evinced in
his relation to the cottagers at Alderley; and the same
dauntless courage which would have been such an
advantage in commanding the ship he longed for in his
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxxiii
youth, enabled him to face the Chartist mobs with compc-
sure, and to read unmoved the many party censures
which followed such acts as his public recognition in
Norwich Cathedral of the worth of Joseph Gurney, the
Quaker philanthropist; his appearance on a platform,
side by side with the Irish priest, Father Matthew,
adovcating the same cause; and his enthusiastic friend-
ship for Jenny Lind, who on his invitation made the
palace her home during her stay in Norwich.
Most delightful, and very different from the modern
building which has partially replaced it, was the old
Palace at Norwich. Approached through a stately
gateway, and surrounded by lawns and flowers, amid
which stood a beautiful ruin the old house with its
broad old-fashioned staircase and vaulted kitchen, its
beautiful library looking out to Mousehold and Kett's
Castle, its great dining room hung with pictures of the
Nine Muses, it picturesque and curious corners, and its
quaint and intricate passages, was indescribably charm-
ing. In a little side-garden under the Cathedral, pet
pee-wits and a raven were kept, which always came to
the dining-room window at breakfast to be fed out of
the Bishop's own hand the only relic of his once
beloved ornithological, as occasional happy excursions
with a little nephew to Bramerton in search of fossils,
were the only trace left of his former geological
pursuits.
"I live for my children and for them alone I wish
to live, unless in God's Providence I can live to His
glory," were Bishop Stanley's own words not many
months before his death. He followed with longing
interest the voyages of his son Owen as Commander in
xxxiv
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
the Britomart, and Captain of the Rattlesnake, and
rejoiced in the successful career of his youngest son
Charles. These were perhaps the most naturally con-
genial to their father, and more of companions to him.
when at home than any of his other children. But in
the last years of his life he was even prouder of his
second son Arthur. The wonderful descriptive power
and classical knowledge of his (unpublished) letters
from Greece had given his family a foretaste of what
the world received twelve years later in Sinai and Pales-
tine, and, in 1844, was published that Life of Dr.
Arnold (whose funeral sermon he had been selected to
preach in 1842), which has translated his character to
the world, and given him a wider influence since his
death than he ever attained in his life. Perhaps of all
Stanley's books, Arnold's Life is still the one by which
he is best known, and this, in his reverent love for his
master to whom he owed the building up of his mind,
is as he would have wished it to be.
For twelve years Arthur Stanley resided at Uni-
versity College, as Fellow and Tutor, undertaking also,
in the latter part of the time, the laborious duties of
secretary to the University Commission, into which he
threw himself with characteristic ardor. In 1845, he
was appointed Select Preacher to the University, an
office resulting in the pnblication of those Sermons and
Essays on the Apostolic Age, in which he especially
endeavored to exhibit the individual human character
of the different apostles.
The year 1849 was marked by the death of Bishop
Stanley, which occurred during a visit to Brahan Castle.
in Scotland. Arthur was with him in his last hours,
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
XXXV
Ι
and brought his mother and sisters back to the deso-
late Norwich home, where a vast multitude attended
the burial of the Bishop in the cathedral. "I can give
you the facts," wrote one who was present, “but I can
give you no notion of how impressive it was, nor how
affecting. There were such sobs and tears from the
school-children and from the clergy who so loved their
dear bishop. A beautiful sunshine lit up everything,
Arthur
shining into the cathedral just at the time.
was quite calm, and looked like an angel, with a cister
on each side."
From the time of his father's death, from the time
when he first took his seat at family prayers in the
purple chair where the venerable white head was ac-
customed to be seen, Arthur Stanley seemed utterly to
throw off all the shyness and embarrassment which had
formerly oppressed him, to rouse himself by a great
effort, and henceforward to forget his own personality
altogether in his position and his work. His social
and conversational powers, afterwards so great, in-
creased perceptibly from this time.
It was two days after Mrs. Stanley left Norwich that
she received the news of the death of her youngest son
Charles in Van Diemen's Land; and a very few
months only elapsed before she learnt that her eldest
son Owen had only lived to hear of the loss of his
father. Henceforward his mother, saddened though
not crushed by her triple grief, was more than ever
Arthur Stanley's care: he made her the sharer of all
his thoughts, the confidante of all his difficulties, all
that he wrote was read to her before its publication,
and her advice was not only songht but taken. In her
xxxvi
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
new home in London, he made her feel that she had
still as much to interest her and give a zest to life as in
the happiest days at Alderley and Norwich; most of
all he pleased her by showing in the publication of the
Memoir of Bishop Stanley, in 1850, his thorough inward
appreciation of the father with whom his outward inter-
course had been of a less intimate kind than with her-
self.
In 1851 Arthur Stanley was presented to a canonry at
Canterbury, which, though he accepted it with reluc-
tance, proved to be an appointment entirely after his
own heart, giving him leisure to write Sinai and Pales-
tine, and to complete his Commentary on the Corinthians,
and leading naturally to the Historical Memorials of
Canterbury, which, of all his books, was perhaps the
one which it gave him most pleasure to write. At
Canterbury he not only lived amongst the illustrious
dead, but he made them rise into new life by the way in
which he spoke and wrote of them. Often on the anni-
versary of Becket's murder, as the fatal hour five
o'clock on a winter's afternoon - drew near, Stanley
would marshal his family and friends round the scenes
of the event, stopping with thrilling effect at each spot
connected with it-"Here the knights came into the
cloister-here the monks knocked furiously for refuge
in the church"-till, when at length the chapel of the
martyrdom was reached, as the last shades of twilight.
gathered amid the arches, the whole scene became so
real, that, with almost more than a thrill of horror, one
saw the last moments through one's ears, the struggle
between Fitzurse and the Archbishop, the blow of Tracy,
the solemn dignity of the actual death.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxxvii
Stanley had a real pride in Canterbury. In his own
words, he "rejoiced that he
rejoiced that he was the servant and
minister, not of some obscure fugitive establishment,
for which no one cares beyond his narrow circle, but
of a cathedral whose name commands respect and
interest even in the remotest parts of Europe." In his
inaugural lectures as professor at Oxford, in speaking
of the august trophies of Ecclesiastical History in
England, he said, "I need name but one, the most
striking and obvious instance, the cradle of English
Christianity, the seat of the English Primacy, my own
proud cathedral, the metropolitan church of Canterbury."
Those who remember Stanley's happy intercourse
with his mother at Canterbury; his friendships in the
place, especially with Archdeacon and Mrs. Harrison,
who lived next door, and with whom he had many
daily meetings and communications on all subjects;
his pleasure in the preparation and publication of his
Canterbury sermons; his delightful home under the
shadow of the cathedral, connected by the Brick Walk
with the cloisters; and his constant work of a most
congenial kind, will hardly doubt that in many respects
the years spent at Canterbury were the most prosperous
of his life. Vividly does the recollection of those who
were frequently his guests go back to the afternoons
when, his cathedral duties and writing being over, he
would rush out to Harbledown, to Patrixbourne, or
along the dreary Dover road (which he always insisted
upon thinking most delightful) to visit his friend Mrs.
Gregory, going faster and faster as he talked more
enthusiastically, calling up fresh topics out of the
wealthy past. Or there were longer excursions to
xxxviii
ARTHUR PENRIIYN STANLEY.
Bozendeane Wood, with its memories of the strange
story of the so-called Sir William Courtenay, its blood
stained dingle amid the hazels, its trees riddled with
shot, and its wide view over the forest of Blean to
the sea, with the Isle of Sheppey breaking the blue
waters.
Close behind Stanley's house was the Deanery and
its garden, where the venerable Dean Lyall used daily
at that time to be seen walking up and down in the
sun. Here grew the marvellous old mulberry, to pre-
serve the life of which, when failing, a bullock was
effectually killed that the tree might drink in new life
from its blood. A huge bough, which had been torn
off from this tree had taken root and had become far
more flourishing than its parent. Arthur Stanley called
them the Church of Rome and the Church of England,
and gave a lecture about it in the town.
His power of calling up past scenes of history,
painting them in words, and throwing his whole heart
into them, often enacting them, made travelling with
Arthur Stanley delightful. His mother, his sister
Mary, his cousin Miss Penrhyn, and his friend Hugh
Pearson usually made up the summer party. For
several years their tours were confined to France and
Germany, Switzerland and Northern Italy. But in
1852 the family went for several months to Italy, seeing
its northern and eastern provinces, in those happy days
of vetturino travelling, as they will never be seen again,
studying the story of its old towns, and eventually
reaching Rome, which Mrs. Stanley had never seen,
and which her son had the greatest delight in showing
her. It had been decided that when the rest of the
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xxxix
party returned to England, he should go on to Egypt,
but this plan was changed by circumstances which
fortunately enabled him to witness the funeral of the
Duke of Wellington. By travelling day and night, he
arrived in London the night before the ceremony.
Almost immediately afterwards he returned to take
leave of his mother at Avignon, before starting with
his friend Theodore Walrond and two others on that
long and happy tour of which the results have appeared
in Sinai and Palestine -- a book which, without any com-
promise of its own freedom of thought, has turned all
the knowledge of previous travellers to most admirable
account.
In 1854 the attention of the family was concentratcd
on the east, as Mary Stanley escorted a body of nurses
to Constantinople, and took charge of the Hospital
of Koulalee during the war in the Crimea, gaining
much experience at this time, which was afterwards
useful in her self-denying labors for the poor in London.
In 1858, Arthur Stanley gave up his happy home at
Canterbury, for a canonry at Christ Church, Oxford,
attached to the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History
to which he had been appointed two years before. His
three “Introductory Lectures on the Study of Eccle-
siastical History," delivered before his residence, had
attracted such audiences as have seldom been seen in
the University Theatre, and aroused an enthusiasm
which was the greatest encouragement to him in enter-
ing upon a course of life so different from that he had
left; for he saw how a set of lectures, usually weari-
some, could be rendered interesting to all his hearers,
how he could make the dry bones live.
xl
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
Henceforward, for some years, the greater portion of
Stanley's days was spent in his pleasant study on the
ground floor (in the first house on the left after entering
Pcckwater from Tom quad); looking upon his little
walled garden, with its miniature lawn and apple-trees
between which he was delighted to find that he
could make a fountain; attended to by his faithfu
married butler and housekeeper, concerning whom
when some one remarked disparagingly upon their in
creasing family, he is recollected characteristically to
have exclaimed, “I do not know if they will have many
children, but I do know one thing, that if they have a
hundred, I shall never part with Mr. and Mrs. Waters."
Here he is always to be found standing at his desk,
tossing off sheet after sheet, the whole foor covered
with scraps of papers written or letters received, which,
by a habit that nothing could change, he generally tore
up and scattered around him. Here were composed
those Lectures on the Eastern and afterwards on the
Jewish Church, which Stanley's "picturesque sensi
bility," as Lord Beaconsfield called it, so exactly fitted.
him to do justice to — Lectures which have done more
than anything ever written to make the Bible history a
living reality intsead of a dead letter, which, while with
the freedom which excited such an outcry against Dean
Milman, they do not scruple to describe Abraham as a
Chaldean Sheykh of the desert, Rachel as a Bedouin
chief's daughter, and Joseph as the royal officers are.
exhibited in the Theban sculptures, open such a blaze
of sunshine upon those venerable histories, that those
who look upon them by the new light, feel as if they
had never seen them before.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xli
It was a great pleasure to Stanley in the years of his
Oxford life, to take up the threads of many old friend-
He also
ships which years of separation had relaxed.
took advantage of introductions from Rugby, and of
the acquaintances made in college by a young cousin
residing in his house, to invite many Undergraduates to
his canonry, by seeing them again and again to be-
come intimate with them, and in many cases to gain a
permanent influence over them. Those he was really
at home with, will always retain a delightful recollec-
tion of the home-like evenings in his pleasant drawing-
room, of his sometimes reading aloud, of his fun and
playfulness, and of his talking over his future lectures
and getting his younger companions to help them with
drawings and plans for them. The Prince of Wales,
then an Undergraduate, was frequently at the Canonry,
and Stanley had many more visitors from the outside
world at Oxford than at Canterbury-Germans, Ameri-
cans, and the friends he had made during a tour in Russia.
In the early spring of 1862, in fulfilment of a wish
which had been expressed by the Prince Consort,
Arthur Stanley was desired to accompany the Prince of
Wales in his projected tour to the East. In looking
forward to this journey he chiefly considered with joy
how he might turn the travel to the best account for his
royal companion, and how he might open for his service
the stores of information which he had laid up during
his former Eastern tour. But he combined the duties
of cicerone with those of chaplain, and his sermons
preached before the Prince of Wales at Tiberias,
Nazareth and other holy sites of sacred history, were
afterwards published in a small volume.
xlii
ARTHUR PENRIIYN STANLEY.
66 It
"Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing
be lost," was his constant teaching in Palestine.
is by thinking of what has been here, by making the
most of things we see in order to bring before our minds
the things we do not see, that a visit to the Holy
Land becomes a really religious lesson." To Stanley's
delight, one great event marked the royal tour in the
East: the Mosque if Heborn hitherto inexorably closed,
was thrown open to the travellers.
It had not been without many sad and anxious
misgivings that Stanley had consented to obey the
desire, not command, of his Queen, in being a second
time separated from his mother for so long a time and
by so great a distance. He never saw her again, yet
he was the only one of her children who received her
farewell words, and embrace, and blessings. A few
days after he was gone she became ill, and on the
morning of the 5th of March, in painless unconscious-
ness, she died.
It was as well perhaps, that the dear
absent brother was not there, that he had the interest of
a constant duty to rouse him. He returned in June.
Terrible indeed is the recollection of the piteous glance
he cast towards his mother's vacant corner, and mourn-
fully, to those who were present, did the thought occur,
what it would have been had she been there then, especially
then, with the thousand things there were to tell her.
Sad indeed were the months which followed, till, in
the autumn of 1863, Arthur Stanley was appointed to
the Deanery at Westminster, and soon afterwards sun-
shine again flowed in upon his life with his marriage, in
Westminster Abbey, to Lady Augusta Bruce, fifth
daughter of the seventh Earl of Elgin.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xlii
Of all that his marriage was to Dean Stanley, it is
too soon to speak now― of the absolute completeness
with which Lady Augusta filled the position of his wife,
of mistress of the Deanery, of leader of every good
work in Westminster. "By her supporting love
he was comforted for his mother's death, and her
character, though cast in another mold, remained to
Lim, with that of his mother, the brightest and most
sacred vision of earthly experience."
Congenial, as all Stanley's other homes, were the
surroundings of the residence under the walls of the
Abbey, decorated by much of the old oak furniture,
inanimate friends, which had already travelled from
Alderley to Norwich, Canterbury, and Oxford. Most
delightful was the library, at the Deanery, a long room
surrounded by bookcases, with a great Gothic window
at the end, and a curious picture of Queen Elizabeth let
in above the fireplace. Here, all through the mornings,
in which visitors, with very rare exceptions, were never
admitted, the Dean stood at his desk and scattered his
papers as of old, while Lady Augusta employed herself
at her writing-table close by. The Address on the three
Irish Churches, his second and third volume of his Jewish
Church, his Lectures on the Church of Scotland, his Ad-
dresses as Lord Rector of St. Andrew's, and many articles
for the Quarterly, the Edinburgh, the Nineteenth Century
Good Words, and Macmillan's Magazine, flowed from
lis pen in this room and lastly his Christian Institu-
tions, which seem written chiefly to disabuse people of
the fancy of Roman Catholic and High Church divines,
that they can discover in the early Church their own
theories concerning the papacy, the hierarchy, and the
xliv
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
administration of the sacraments. It was a necessity
to Stanley to be always writing something. He often,
latterly, returned to the pursuit of his earliest days,
and expressed himself in verse, much of which has ap-
peared in this magazine.
More than ever did his friends gather around
Stanley during his life at the Deanery; as much as
cver was he able to enjoy the pleasures of society,
growing every year more full of anecdote, of animation,
of interesting recollections. And the visitors whom the
Dean and Lady Augusta delighted to receive comprised
every class of society, from their royal mistress and her
children to great bands of working men, whom it was an
especial pleasure to Arthur Stanley to escort over the
Abbey himself, picking out and explaining the mon-
uments most interesting to them. Every phase of
opinion, every variety of religious belief, above all those
who most widely differed from their host, were cordially
welcomed in the hospitalities of the Deanery; and the
circle which gathered in its drawing-rooms, especially
on Sunday evenings after the service in the Abbey,
was singularly characteristic and unique. At the same
time the spare rooms of the house were ceaselessly
filled with a succession of guests, to meet whom the
most appropriate parties were always invited, or who
were urged by the Dean unrestrainedly to invite their
own friends, especially the now aged aunt, his mother's
sister, long the survivor, as he expressed it, "of a
blessed brotherhood and sisterhood."
Greater, too, than the interest of all his other homes,
was that which Stanley found in the Abbey of West-
minster—“the royal and national sanctuary which has
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xlv
for centuries enshrined the manifold glories of the
kingdom".
"—of which he was now the natural guardian
and care-taker. There are those who have smiled at
the eagerness he occasionally displayed to obtain the
burial of an illustrious person in the Abbey against all
opposition. There are those who have been incapable
of understanding his anxiety to guard and keep the
Abbey as it had been delivered to him; wisely object-
ing even to give uniformity to a rudely patched pave-
ment, on account of the picturesqueness and the
human interest attached to its variations of color and
surface; delighting in the characteristics of his choir
projecting into the nave, like the coro of a Spanish
cathedral;' carefully, even fiercely, repelling any attempt
to show more deference to the existing monuments of
one age than of another, each being a portion of history
in itself, and each, when once placed there, having
become a portion of the history of the Abbey, never
to be displaced. The careful collecting and replacing
of the fragments of the reredos of St. Michael's altar,
the curious bringing together of tiny fraginents of lost
screens and altars in the Chapter House, are marks
'It was painful to those who knew the Dean well to see a letter
in the Times a few days after his death, urging that the destruction
of the choir the thing of all others he most deprecated— should
be carried out as a memorial of him! Those who wish to know
what he really desired for his Abbey have only to read the preface
to his Memorials of Westminster, expressing his anxious sugges-
tion of a cloister for the reception of future monuments, inclosing
the Jewel Tower, on the present site of Abingdon Strect, to face
the Palace of Westminster on one side, and the College Garden
on the other.
—
xlvi
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
of his tender care for the minutest details of the
Abbey, which it was his great object to preserve, to
enrich, but never under any false pretext of "restora-
tion" or improvement to change. How enraptured he
was to discover the monogram of Izaak Walton
scratched by the angler himself upon the tomb of
Isaac Casaubon; how delighted to describe the funeral
of Henry V., in which his three chargers were led up
to the altar as mourners behind his waxen effigy; how
enchanted to make any smallest discovery with regard
to those to whom the more obscure monuments are
erected, to trace out the whole history of "Jane Lister,
dear childe," who is buried in the cloisters, and upon
whom he preached in one of his sermons to children;
how pleased to answer some one who cavilled at the
space allotted to the monument of Mrs. Grace Gethin,
with the quotations referring to her in Congreve and
D'Israeli. One of his last thoughts connected with
outside life was the erection of a monument to mark
"the common pit" into which the remains of the
family and friends of the great Protector were thrown
at the Restoration.
At Westminster Stanley preached more often than
he had ever done before; but two classes of his ser-
mons there will be especially remembered
those on
Innocents' Day to children, so particularly congenial to
one whose character had always been so essentially
that of the "pure in heart," and those on the deaths of
illustrious Englishmen, often preached in the Abbey,
even when those commemorated were not to icpore
there. "Charity, Liberality, Toleration," these became
more than ever the watchwords of his teaching, of his
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xlvii
i
efforts to inculcate the spirit that would treat all who
follow Christ as brothers, by whatever path they might
be approaching Him, and by whatever hedges they
might me divided. His last utterance in the Abbey, on
Saturday, July 9, was on the text, "Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." One of his
course of sermons on the Beatitudes. In everything
his precept was that of the aged St. John-
"Little
children, love one another."
The thought of the Abbey recalls the Jerusalem
Chamber and the meetings within the walls of the Lower
House of Convocation, in which the Dean so frequently
spoke, cften perhaps in too vehement defence of a
cause or a person he thought to be unjustly oppressed,
often perhaps incurring the silent censure of many a
remote country parsonage by the expression of his
opinions, but ever with kindly feelings towards those
from whom he differed the most, and who when they
knew him well, seldom failed to love and appreciate
him. Through life the exemplification of Christian
catholicity in his own person, Stanley could hardly help
taking part with those who were attacked, whenever he
saw that religious animosity was excited. "Charity
suffereth long and is kind" was never absent from his
thoughts, and led him to be ever the champion of the
persecuted, of Tractarians in early life, as afterwards of
the writers in Essays and Reviews, and of Bishop
Colenso.
- Next to the immediate concerns of his Abbey, was
Stanley occupied by the welfare of the poor around
him, whom he tried without ceasing to raise, cheer, and
xlviii
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
enliven, sending many a mental sunbeam into a dismal
home by the thought of his annual flower show and its
prizes, and taking great personal interest in the neigh-
boring hospital and its work. In all his efforts for the
people at Westminster, the Dean was ably seconded
by Lady Augusta. His desire to benefit the working
classes was also shared by his elder sister Mary, who,
in a direction quite independent of his own, was un-
ceasingly employed in trying to find employment for
the poor, to teach them provident habits, and to
improve their homes. At one time she undertook the
anxiety of a large contract to supply the army with
shirts in order to give employment to a great number of
poor women. Latterly her wonderful powers of organi-
zation always enabled her to deal with vast numbers,
but it had taken long years of personal work amongst
the people to acquire her experience, as well as the
respect and confidence which contributed so much to
the success of her schemes for their good. Of all these,
the most important was the Penny Bank, opened once
a week in a little court at the back of a house in York
Street, Westminster, and managed personally by Miss
Stanley for more than twenty-five years; having as many
as 1,000 depositors at a time. The undertaking was
indescribably laborious, especially during the annual
audit week in December, when every single account
had to be compared with that in the ledger. In itself,
this ledger was a study the dates for the whole half
year on one page (to save turning over), the blotting
paper stitched in between each leaf (to save blotting),
for in dealing with such large numbers every instant of
time saved was of importance. No less remarkable
G
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
xlix
was the simple but ingenious device by which the visits
of her numerous clients were distributed equally over
the three hours that she sat at the receipt of custom, so
that each should be speedily served, and that there
should be no undue crowding at one time. Mary Stan-
ley would invite four or five ladies, before the people
arrived, to come and tie up flowers for them in
bunches. Many hundreds of nosegays were thus pre-
pared, and it is remembered how anxious she was that
they should be prettily arranged, for "I want to give my
people what is beautiful, and what is worth doing at all
is worth doing well." Her invariable patience, quick-
ness, and good-humor with the people rendered what
would have been impossible to many, comparatively
easy to Mary Stanley; but a brave heart was also
required, and a friend who thought of starting a similar
bank in another part of London, and came to her with
all its dangers and difficulties, recalls the energy with
which she closed the discussion: "My dear, if you
stand counting the difficulties when there is a good
work before you, you will never do anything that is
worth doing all your life! Only begin, begin, begin,
and the difficulties will all disappear." Under other
superintendence and in another house the Penny Bank
founded by Mary Stanley still flourishes in Westmin-
ster, a memorial of her energy, kindliness, and wisdom.
Dean Stanley's marriage with the devoted attendant
of the Duchess of Kent, whom the Queen honored
with unvaried kindness and friendship, had brought
him into constant communication with the Court, to
which the outward tie had been drawn closer by his
appointment of Deputy Clerk of the Closet, Chaplain
1
ARTHUR PENRIIYN STANLEY.
to the Queen, and Chaplain to the Prince of Wales.
He was summoned every year to take part in the ser-
vices which commemorate at Frogmore the death of
the beloved Prince Consort. It was after representing
her royal mistress at the marriage of the Duke of
Edinburgh in the Litter Russian cold of January, 1874,
that Lady Augusta Stanley received the chill from
which she never recovered. A long interval of hopes
and fears, another year of sad forebodings and fare-
wells, and, on Ash Wednesday, 1876, one of the happi-
est of earthly unions was severed by her death at
Westminster.
<
"The sunshine of the heart was dead,
The glory of the home was fed,
The smile that made the dark world bright,
The love that made all duty light."
For five years Arthur Stanley was left to fulfil his
appointed task alone. After a time he was full of in-
terest still, his mental activity was as great as ever,
and he was always full of work. Sometimes when he
was in the society of those whose thoughts met his,
scme of his old animation and cheerfulness returned;
for a few months the kindly welcome and friendship
shown to him during a visit to the United States
almost seemed to make him happy; and he ever grate-
fully recognized and reciprocated the loving attention
with which his home was cared for by his wife's sister
and her cousin, who had been more than a sister.
But his friends saw him change more and more every
year his hair became gray, his figure became bent,
ARTHUR PENRIIYN STANLEY.
li
his voice became feeble; and after the death of his
dear sister Mary, in the spring of 1880, had loosened
another of his closest ties of earth, he seemed to be
only waiting for a summons which could not be very
far off. In speaking of what he would do in the future,
he now always said, “If I am still here," and he looked
at places as if for the last time.
،،
On Good Friday he preached upon the words,
Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." He
said he had preached the same scrmcn in the same
pulpit at that season ten years before, and he would
like to preach it once again. The way in which he
said once again" sent a thrill of sadness through all
who heard it.
66
On Saturday, July 9, during one of his sermons on
the Beatitudes, he was taken ill in the Abbey, and
though there were few who believed in danger till
within some hours of the end, all through the week
which followed he was being led gently and painlessly
to the entrance of the dark valley, and, on July 18,
just before the Abbey clock struck the hour of mid-
night, surrounded by almost all those he most loved on
earth, his spirit passed away.
In speaking of his dear Westminster, the sense of
his last words was, "I have labored amidst many
frailties and with much weakness to make this institu-
tion more and more the great centre of religious and
national life in a truly liberal spirit.”
This was the characteristic of his existence; thus,
in most loving reverence, should he be remembered.
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
I will hарит рание она
It
в
tiny work of mine can assist the
prope
rising gezention of the
Kaited Wites to fulfill the duties
a seher the hooters of th
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in bil ur hine



a. P. Starday
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=
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
In that memorable hour - memorable in the life
of every man, memorable as when he sees the first
view of the pyramids, or of the snow clad range of the
Alps in the hour when for the first time I stood be-
fore the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision
of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight,
the moon was full, and I saw from the suspension bridge.
the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos,
which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense
central chasm which divides the American from the
British dominion; but as I looked on that ever chang-
ing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I
saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless,
restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United
States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud
of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, silent,
13
14
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
majestic, immovable. In that silver column, glittering
in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of
American destiny, of the pillar of light which should
emerge from the distractions of the present — a like-
ness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which character-
izes the Americans both as individuals and as a nation.
(C
,
I.
Pray for me," said an eminent French pastor on his
death bed, “that I may have the elementary graces."
Those elementary graces are to be found in the great
moral principles which lie at the bottom of the barbar-
ous phraseology in which the sentiments of the poor,
living or dying, are often expressed. It was but recent-
ly that there was recorded the sayings of an old Scottish
Methodist, who in his earlier years had clung vehe-
mently to one or other of the two small sects on either
side of the street: "The street I'm now travelling in,
lad, has nae sides; and if power were given me, I
would preach purity of life more, and purity of doctrine
less than I did."
"Are you not a little heretical at your journey's end?'
said his interlocutor.
66 I kenna. Names have not the same terror on me
they once had, and since I was laid by here alone, I
have had whisperings of the still, small voice, that the
footfalls of faiths and their wranglings will never be
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
15
heard in the Lord's kingdom whereunto I am nearing.
And as love cements all differences, I'll perhaps find
the place roomier than I thought in times by-past."
That the theology of the Bible is something beside
and beyond, something greater and vaster than the the-
ology of each particular Church or age, is proved by
the fact that on the one hand it has never been found
sufficient for the purposes of tests and polemics; and,
on the other hand, that whenever the different schools of
theologians have been brought together on its platform,
either for selecting extracts for the public service of the
Church, or for revising its transactions, the points of di-
vision have fallen aside, the points of union have come
to light, and the points of discussion have for the most
part had no bearing on the divisions of the theories of
Christendom. It is in the various aspects of the theol-
ogy of the Bible
which is also the theology of Euro-
pean literature, the theology of great men, the theology
of saints, and the theology of the poor and of little
children — that we may hope to see the face of God.
C
II.
"I looked around my audience," said the old Grecian
orator, "and they had dwindled away one only re-
mained. But that one was Plato, and this was enough
for me." The heroes of mankind are the mountains,
the highlands of the moral world. They diversify its
16
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
monotony, they furnish the watershed of its history, as
the Grampians, or the Alps, or the Andes which tower
over the lowlands and fertilize the plains and divide
the basins of the world of nature. They are the "full-
welling fountain-heads of change" as well as the serene
heights of repose. To be blind to this superiority, to
be indifferent to these eminences, to think only of their
defects or their angularities, is as depressing to the in-
tellectual sense of beauty and worth as was that strange
unconsciousness of physical grandeur, which, in the last
century caused Oliver Goldsmith to prefer the continu-
ous plain of Holland to the hills and rocks of which he
complained as intercepting by their deformities the
view of the unfortunate traveller in Scotland. To
appreciate the glories of Shakspeare, or Newton, or
Luther, or Wellington, to discriminate between the
nobler materials of such natures as these, and the poorer
stuff of which common mortals are composed, is as
bracing to the moral and intellectual nerves as the
newly awakened enjoyments of Ben Nevis or of Mont
Blanc is to the opening minds and active limbs of our
latest born generation.
It is the delight of a well-stored library that it brings
us into direct intercourse with the great characters of
the past; and it is a most useful corrective to confront
the subtle speculations of our own brains with the great
books which permit us to hold communion with the
mighty dead, even more closely than had we been their
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
17
•
contemporaries.
"Surely," once exclaimed Sir John
Herschel, "if the worst of men were snatched into Par-
adise for only half an hour he would come back the
better for it." Surely, we should also be the better, if,
like Thomas the Rhymer, we were snatched away as
we are in the brighter moments of our intellectual pur-
suits into the fairy land of the poets of old, or, like
Danté in his vision, into those Elysian Fields, where we
behold "the Kings of those we knew."
When we converse with those "who saw life steadily
and saw it whole," we rise insensibly above ourselves,
and "prop our souls in these bad times" with an un-
ailing support. The study of the most famous authors,
even the minute detail
even line by line and word by
word—is amongst the most nourishing of intellectual
repasts. The attempts to clothe the dry bones of phil-
osophic theories with the flesh and blood which they
wore in other days is the best mode of understanding
both the difference and the likeness of ancient and
modern times.
A
Insist on reading the great books, on marking the
great events of the world. Then the little books may
take care of themselves; and the trivial incidents of
passing politics and diplomacy may perish with the
using.
III.
"With Samuel Rutherford, the bitter and bigoted
18
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
controversialist," says an excellent divine of Scotland,
"let us have no fellowship. To Samuel Rutherford,
the devout and spiritual pastor, let the full sympathies
of our soul be given."
That is a judgment which must be often and often
repeated. Milton, the sublime, unearthly poet, and
Milton, the savage antagonist of Salmasius; Wesley's
Christian wisdom, and Wesley's eccentric folly; Bos-
suet, the magnificent Christian orator, and Bossuet, the
persecutor of the Huguenots; the grace of the Middle
Ages, and their hideous atrocities; the splendour of
the Reformation, and its deplorable failures; Benedict
Arnold the hero of Saratoga, and Benedict Arnold, the
traitor of West Point; Napoleon Bonaparte, the re-
storer of order in France, and Napoleon Bonaparte,
the mean and selfish despot; all these we must alike
recognize, alike admire, and alike lament. Avoid that
dismal fatalism which insists on accepting the crimes
and follies of men as though they were the indispensa-
ble conditions of great deeds or great characters. And
there is yet one final reflection which occurs to us when
we contemplate the possibilities of human nature, and
its capacities of conquest over its meaner self. We
sometimes are tempted in despair-teachers and
taught alike to imagine that as the child, the boy,
the youth is born, so he must grow up to the end, that
Jacob will be always Jacob, that no force of circum-
stance or education can ever change the spots of the
40U
G
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
19
T
human leopard or the skin of the moral Ethiopian. To
a certain degree, no doubt, this is true.
The stamp of
individual character is ineffaceable; there are many
innate qualities and gifts and passions which can never
be either given or taken away in later life. Look — if,
out of the wide course of history, I may select two as
occupying conspicuous places in the annals of man-
kind, and as having been described by the most power-
ful delineator of historical characters that perhaps the
world has ever seen - look at the characters of the
Regent Orleans, and of the Second Dauphin, as por-
trayed by the Duke of St. Simon. The one with a dis-
position so generous, so easy, so upright, destroyed,
enervated, petrified before the very eyes of his despair-
ing friends by the debasing, scoffing, cynical influences
of him who was the shame of the Church of France,
and of the Court of Rome, Cardinal Dubois. The
other, in his early years, so ungovernable, so self-willed
one might almost say brutal growing under the
influence of his pure-minded and faithful advisers, the
Duke of Beauvilliers and the Duke of Chevreuse, his
high-minded and excellent servant Morcan, and the
best moods of his enlightened, noble-minded precep-
tor Fénélon, to become the model prince of all times
modest yet self-possessed, deeply religious yet con-
stantly becoming more and more liberal, more and
more tolerant; who, had he been spared to ascend the
throne, might in all human probability have arrested
20
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the occasion of the French Revolution. I have named
these two famous examples, because actual examples.
are worth a thousand nameless allusions. But it is not
necessary to go to past history, or to the courts of
Princes, in order to prove that it is possible even
with all the fixity of human character, with all the fixity
of general laws that the rising, growing, changing
generation of the youth of England, and the youth of
America, may, under God, be converted, born again, by
a conversion, by a regeneration not less complete be-
cause its wrestlings and convulsions are not visible, or
its origin marked by any outward material sign.
IV.
In the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel there is a
striking passage made to some of us yet more strik-
ing by the music of Mendelssohn in which it has been
enshrined — where the young lad attendant on the
Prophet ascends the highest point of the long ridge of
the mountain, and whilst his master remains on the
lower level, looks out over the wide expanse of the
Mediterranean sea. It is a scene of which every step
can still be indentified. The boy gazes, in the hope
that the Prophet's earnest prayer may bring down
the long-desired rain. The sun had sunk into the
western sea. But after the sunset there followed the
long white glow so common in the evenings of East-
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
21
ern countries. Seven times the youthful watcher went
up and looked, and seven times he reported: "There
is nothing." The sky was still calm.
The sky was still calm. At last out of
the far horizon there arose a little cloud, the first
that for days and months had passed across the
heavens. It was no larger than an out-stretched
hand; but it grew in the deepening shades of even-
ing, and quickly the whole sky was overcast, and the
forests of Carmel shook in the welcome sound of
those mighty winds which in Eastern regions pre-
cede a coming tempest. The cry of the boy from
his mountain watch had hardly been uttered when
the storm broke upon the plain, the rain descended,
the Kishon swelled and burst over its banks, and
the nation was delivered from its sufferings.
This is one of those parables of nature which we
may apply in many directions. It expresses the truth
that often out of seeming nothingness, there arises the
very blessing most desired.
"There is nothing." So we think as we look into
the wide world, and see no visible trace of its eternal
Maker and Ruler. There is the infinite space, and
nothing, as far as we can see, beyond it. There is the
perplexity and misery of mankind, and nothing to re-
lieve it. We say, "O that Thou wouldst rend the
heavens and come down!" and no voice answers to us.
But the absence of any especial presence is itself an
expressive indication of the spiritual nature of things
22
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
divine. The things which are seen are temporal; it is
the things that are not seen which are eternal. Even
the dry light of critical analysis has thrown a flood of
knowledge on the Bible. Even the philosophers of the
last century quickened and freshened the whole atmos-
phere of religion with a nobler influence. Science, if
it cannot increase our faith, has at any rate purified and
enlarged it. Even in the drought of the latter part of
the seventeenth century, there is, if we look for it, the
promise of a great rain. Even in the silence of death,
even in the darkness of the unseen world, we have the
assurance that there is One to whom the darkness and
the light are both alike. Let us hold on "knowing,
fearing nothing; trusting, hoping all.'
"
"There is nothing." So we say to ourselves as in
the blank desolation of sorrow we look on the lonely
work that lies before us. The voice that cheered us
is silent, and the hand that upheld us is cold in the
grave. So has thought many a one, like Elijah's lad,
orphaned, bereaved, left desolate, who is left to work
his own fortune, who feels that he is alone in the world.
But out of that tender memory comes at last a cloud of
blessings. There descends upon our dry and parched.
souls a dew as of the night of sorrow; on that barren
and dry land where no water is, there comes an abun-
dance of rain, and again we are refreshed, and feel that
the very solitude in which we are left calls forth new
vital energies.
A
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
23
"There is nothing." So it would seem as we look at
the small materials with which we have to carry
on the conflict with the great powers of nature.
The little tube with which Galileo, like the boy on Car-
mel, looked from the heights of Fiesole on the starry
heavens how slight, how feeble it seemed; yet it was
enough to reveal an unknown universe, to disclose the
secrets unknown from the beginning of the world. The
electric spark discovered by an American printer, so
subtle, so imperceptible, what has it not produced, of
which Benjamin Franklin never dreamed? How vast
are the forces which the indomitable will energy of this
generation has drawn from it - the annihilation of time
and space, the girdle around the world, which to Shaks-
peare seemed the wildest of fairy dreams, but which in
our day has become the solid chain on which hangs the
grandest enterprises of commerce, and the sweet bond
of natural concord! .
Gregg,
Had the forefathers of this mighty nation not strug-
gled to reclaim the wilderness, and convert the savage,
and build us the Church of God by river and by forest
— had there not been men like the gallant soldiers who
guarded these frontiers, to catch, in the intervals of war
and bloodshed, visions of a happy and peaceful future
and to lay the foundations on which learning and relig-
ion might freely flourish and abound-this nation would
never have been born, this empire would never have
arisen. And this truth is but the likeness of all human
}
24
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
existence. It is a likeness of the way in which much
grows out of little. It is a warning not to despise the
day of small things. "The great events of history,"
says an acute French writer, "like the mysterious per-
sonages in old romances, come through a door in the
wall which no one had noticed." We cannot tell what
immense issues may depend on our public and our pri-
vate duties.
V.
When the most majestic divine of the English Church,
Richard Hooker, was on his deathbed, he was found
deep in contemplation, and on being asked the subject
of his reflections he replied:
"That he was meditating upon the number and na-
ture of angels, and their blessed obedience and order,
without which peace could not be in heaven; and Oh!
that it might be so upon earth."
It was a meditation full of the same grand thought
which inspired his great work on " Ecclesiastical Polity"
the thought of the majesty of law, "whose seat,” as
he says, "is the bosom of God, and whose voice is the
harmony of the universe." The very words by which
the angelic intelligences are described" thrones
principalities, and powers"- the connection into which
they are brought with the universal laws of nature
"He maketh the winds his angels, and the flames of
M
i
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
25
fire his ministers"— bring before us the truth that by
law, by order, by due subordination of means to ends,
as in the material, so in the moral world, the will of
God is best carried out.
This truth gives a new meaning to those researches
through which the students of nature are enabled, by
working with those laws, to work out the will of their
Maker. But it also gives a fresh force and interest to
those other manifestations of law in the government of
states by which there also the will of God must be
done on earth as by those higher laws in heaven; by
the law of duty in the human conscience; by the laws
of nations; by the laws and constitutions which Divine
Providence has, through the genius of man and the
progress of arts, raised up in our different common-
wealths.
44
By such laws, the stars are kept from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens through it are fresh.
and strong."
By such order and by such law may the whole of mod-
ern society, on this side of the ocean or the other, be
maintained in the stress and strain now laid on every
part of its complex organization.
Let justice, which is the soul of law, prevail, though
heaven itself should fall; or, rather as heaven cannot
fall, if only justice, be done let justice which is
God's will in heaven, on earth have its perfect work.
Sp
26
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
VI.
I remember when in Russia, that a Russian states-
man was speaking of the important effects to be hoped
from the endeavor to give more instruction to the peo-
ple, "but " he said, "there is one process of education
which has been more effectual still, and that is the
reform in the administration of our courts of law and
the introduction of trial by jury. This by bringing the
peasants into the presence of the great machinery of
the State, by making them understand their own re-
sponsibility, by enabling them to hear patiently the
views of others, is a never-failing source of elevation
and instruction." Trial by jury, which to the Russian
peasant is as it were but of yesterday, to us is familiar
by the growth of centuries. It is familiar and yet it
falls only to the lot of few. I have myself only wit-
nessed it once. But I thought it one of the most impres-
sive scenes on which I had ever looked. The twelve
men, of humble life, enjoying the advantage of instruc-
tion of the most acute minds that the country could
furnish; taught in the most solemn forms of the Eng-
lish language to appreciate the value of exact truth;
seeing the whole tragedy of destiny drawn out before
their very eyes, the weakness of passion, the ferocity of
revenge, the simplicity of innocence, the moderation of
this is
the judge, the seriousness of human existence
an experience which may actually befall but a few; but
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
27
to whomsoever it does fall, the lessons which it imparts,
the necessity of any previous preparation for it that
can be given, leap at such moments to the eyes as
absolutely inestimable.
*
*
*
*
***
*
Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart were not above
their contemporaries in learning or in wisdom; but
when Hamilton died in front of St. Salvator's College,
and Wishart under the walls of Beaton's Palace, their
deeds were above their characters. "The dead which
they slew in their deaths were more than the dead which
they had slain in their lives." Such acts of splendid
generosity, and of heroic sacrifice for conscience' sake,
have not been unknown to modern Scotland. But still,
in the face of the increasing temptation to contract mu-
nificence to the narrow limits of our own party or neigh-
borhood or family, or to ally the Pilgrim Faithful with
the false companions Byends and Facing Bothways,
it is well to look back to those shining lights of the
heroic times. And without speaking of such wider and
more visible manifestations of what in old English was
styled the spirit "exceedingly magnifical," is it not pos-
sible that some other group of college friends may bind
themselves together by a resolution like to that of a
circle of German students in the university of Gottin-
gen, who in the year 1814, on a certain cheerful even-
ing, made a vow to each other, that they would effect
،،
28
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
something great in their lives." All of them did more
or less fulfil that early vow, and one of that circle, in
whose biography the incident is recorded, was Bunsen,
that marvellous example, in our times, of what an eager
and resolute student could achieve. None can foretell
for himself or for others what great possibilities may be
wrapt up in his future years. When Andrew Melville
was a student at St. Andrews, John Douglas, who was
rector of the university, used to take the puny orphan
youth between his knees, question him on his studies,
and say, "My silly, fatherless and motherless boy, it's
ill to witt what God may make of thee yet.”
I do not presume on the same familiarity; but I vent-
ure to say to the youngest, humblest of students, "It is
hard to know what God will make of thee yet."
VII.
When we look on the desolation of war, its necessary
horrors, its unnecessary but too often concomitant sins
Can any good, we are sometimes tempted to say,
come out of this Edom, this Golgotha, this vast con-
fusion of misery? For what end has been this waste of
blood, of energy, of precious lives, of noble souls, of
high intelligence?
Often, indeed, in the course of human history, we
must say with grief, none none whatever. In one
sense they belong to that outward frame of old Hebrew
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
29
prophecy, that dismal imagery of vengeance and de-
struction and carnage which Christ came not to fulfil,
but to destroy. But, nevertheless, here also the inward
principle of the prophecy still holds its course. There
is something even in the remembrance of former wars,
something in the very heat of the turmoil of civil or
national conflicts, which braces our nerves, which clears
the atmosphere, which dispels frivolity, which restores a
just balance of things important and things trivial,
which compels us to look into ourselves, which sifts and
tears to pieces the false pretences and false arguments
of every party. There is something, also, in the profes-
sion of a soldier which keeps alive before the world the
inestimable value of some of the greatest Christian
virtues courage, discipline, and honor. A soldier's
temptations may be beyond the temptations of other
men, but for that very reason the example of a good
soldier, pure and just and noble-minded, is beyond all
other examples a city set on a hill, a fortress that can-
not be taken, an encouragement to the weak and waver-
ing everywhere. In the midst of that burning, fiery
furnace of war, there appears a divine form walking
with us; we know not whence he came, or how he is
there; but He will at last prevail, if only we have grace
to recognize him, to seize the opportunities which, out
of these excandescent heats, fly off as sparks from the
anvil. As iron sharpeneth iron, so is man to man.
30
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
War and conquest are amongst the woes of God's heav-
iest judgments; but how often have the finest and
noblest results grown out of them.
How vast has been the moral impulse given to na-
tional life by such struggles, whether from within or
from without. Look, for instance, at the history of
Quebec. How closely has the memory of later years
bound together the names of the two heroic rival chiefs
who perished on the same day, almost in the same hour,
beneath the walls of Quebec! How strong an incentive
to the best and most generous feelings of human nature
is the joint tribute which we all involuntarily pay to
Wolfe and to Montcalm! And again, how singular is
the providence which, out of those long conflicts be-
tween England and France on these Western shores,
has worked out the peculiar result of the Dominion of
Canada, where the language and the manners of the
two great civilizing races of Europe flow together, as
hardly anywhere else, in one harmonious stream, and
sustain the influence and image of the ancient mon
archies of Europe, side by side with the great republic
of this New World.
VIII.
A friend of mine, at Oxford, once paid a visit to a
very old man, who was regarded as a kind of oracle, for
he lived to his hundredth year; and the longer he
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
31
lived, the more people went to inquire of him, as if he
were an infallible oracle. My friend went to him and
said:
"Would you kindly give me some advice in regard
to reading theology?”
And he was rather discomfited at the old man's
saying, after a long pause:
"I will give you my advice. It is, Verify your refer-
ences.
Well, I will not confine myself to so homely a piece
of advice as that, although it was very good; but I will
say, Verify your facts.
This accuracy, this verification of facts, this sifting of
things to the bottom, is a thing which all students.
ought to cultivate, and which theological students ought
especially to cultivate, because it is something which
theological students are especially apt to neglect. Do
let me entreat of you to look facts in the face, whether
the facts of the Bible, or the facts of science, or the
facts of scholarship.
It is also very desirable to keep before your minds
the necessity of distinguishing between what is impor-
tant and what is unimportant; what is essential and
what is unessential, what is primary, and what is sec-
ondary. I once knew a very distinguished Italian lay-
man who said that, if he were to sum up the faults of
the theology of the Roman church in one word, it
would be that they confounded the instrumentals with
32
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the fundamentals.
There are times when we likewise
are prone to confound instrumentals with fundamentals ;
to confound things which are of no importance at all
with things which are of the utmost importance.
IX.
The guiding spirits of the early and of the middle
ages were theologians of obscure sees, or students with
no ecclesiastical rank; not an Innocent, or a Gregory,
or a Pius, but Augustine, the pastor of a small African
diocese, and Jerome, a secluded scholar in Palestine,
and Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican professor of Naples,
and Thomas a Kempis, an unknown canon in an almost
unknown town of Germany. In the School of Theol-
ogy, as represented in the frescoes of the Vatican, there
is no single prelate or doctor whose voice reaches from
pole to pole with anything like the same universal
power as that of the great lay poet of the "Divine
Comedy" whom Raphael, by a touch of genius as saga-
cious as it was bold, has there introduced amongst
them.
It is indeed true that the high offices of Church and
State may help to moderate the passions of their occu-
pants, and to fill even ordinary men with a force be
yond themselves. But still, the voice which touches
the heart and consciences of men with a persuasive and
constraining authority is not that which speaks ex cathe
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
33
dra, but that which speaks from the far higher inspira-
tion of personal gifts, of an heaven-sent grace or wis-
dom. We are not left in ignorance or uncertainty
where to seek for such utterances. The concurrent
voice of the civilized world has, for the most part, ai-
ready pointed them out and accepted them. Securus
judicat orbis terrarum.
X.
When in a banquet given to him by the chief states-
men of Italy, Mr. Gladstone addressed them in a pow-
erful speech on the glories of their country, in that
beautiful Italian tongue of which he is so complete a
master, he suddenly exclaimed :
"But there is an enemy in the midst of you.”
They started, they turned to each other; they whis-
pered :
"He means the Pope."
But for once Mr. Gladstone was not running on eccle-
siastical controversies. He was thinking of an enemy
in the heart of the Italian kingdom, familiar to the
mundane experiences in which his transcendent finan-
cial powers made him more completely at home. He
said:
"His name is Deficit."
May I apply this saying, not to the deficiency of rev-
enues, or receipts of which he spoke, but to the de
ficiency of young men of promise and power entering
34
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the ranks of the Christian ministry, whether in our
church or yours, or any of the other numerous churches
of either world.
If you or we can be kept on a level with the energy,
the science, the nobleness, and the genius of the times
in which we live, however dark may be the passing
cloud, there will be no fear either for Liberal Theology
or for the Christian Church in the age which is yet to
come.
XI.
No operation in the way of external impulse, or stim-
ulus, or instruction, in our passage through this mortal
existence, is equal to the impression produced upon us
by the contact of intellects and characters superior to
ourselves.
If we look for a moment at the record, on the one
nand, of aspirations encouraged, of great projects real-
ized; or, on the other hand, of lost careers, of broken
hopes, how often shall we find that it has been from the
presence or from the want of some beneficent, intelli-
gent, appreciative mind, coming in among the despond-
ing, the distressed, the storm-tossed souls of whom this
world contains only too many.
To take the example of two poets; how striking and
how comforting is the reflection of the peaceful, useful,
and happy close of the life of George Crabbe, the poet;
for eighteen years the pastor of Trowbridge. All that
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
35
happiness, all that usefulness, he owed to the single fact
that, when a poor, forsaken boy in the streets of Lon-
don, he bethought himself of addressing a letter to
Edmund Burke. That great man had the penetration
to see that Crabbe was not an imposter not a fool.
He took the poor youth by the hand, he encouraged
him, he procured for him the career in which he lived
and died. He was, it is hardly too much to say, the in-
strument of his preservation and of his regeneration.
On the other hand, when with Wordsworth we think
of Chatterton, "the marvelous boy, the sleepless soul
that perished in his pride," how impossible it is to avoid
the reflection that if he had met with some congenial
sphere, some kindly hand to lead him forward, some
wise direction, (over and above the kindness which he
met from personal friends), that might have rescued
him from his own desperate thoughts, we should have
been spared the spectable of the premature death of
one whose fate will always rank amongst the tragical
incidents of the history not only of Eristol but of
England.
XII.
A self-educated man is, in some respects, the better,
in some respects the worse, for not having been trained
in his early years by regular routine. We have an illus-
tration of both the stronger and the weaker side of self-
education in the case of Mr. Buckle, the author of the
36
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
History of Civilization. At the time of his greatest
celebrity, it was often remarked that no man who had
been at regular schools or universities could, on the one
hand, have acquired such an enormous amount of mul-
tifarious knowledge, and such a grasp of so many
details; while, on the other hand, no one but a self-
educated man, feeding his mind here and there, without
contradiction, without submission, without the usual
traditions of common instruction, could have fallen into
so many paradoxes, so many negligences, so many igno-
rances.
It is enough to state this fact in order to put you on
your guard against the dangers of self-education, and
also to make you feel its hopes and opportunities.
Over the wide field of science and knowledge it is yours
to wander. The facts you acquire thus will probably
take a deeper hold on your minds from having been
sought out by yourselves; but not the less should you
remember that there are qualifying and controlling in-
fluences derived from the more regular courses of study
which are of lasting benefit, and the absence of which
you must take into account in judging of the more
desultory and the more independent researches which
you have to make.
A deaf person may acquire, and often has acquired,
a treasure of knowledge and a vigor cf will by the
exclusion of all that wear and tear, of all that friction of
outer things which fill the atmosphere of those who have
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
37
the possession of all their senses. But nevertheless, a
deaf person, in order not to be misled into extravagant
estimates of his own judgment, or of the value of his
own pursuits, should always be reminded that he has
not the same means of correcting and guarding his con-
clusions and opinions as he would have if he were open
to the insensible influence of "the fibres of conversa-
tion" as they have well been called, which float about
in the general atmosphere, that for him has no exist-
ence.
Self-education is open both to the advantages and
disadvantages of deafness; knowledge is at some en-
trances quite shut out, whilst such knowledge as gets in
occupies the mind more completely, but always needs
to be reminded that there is a surrounding vacuum.
XIII.
It was with a thrill of delight, quite apart from agree
ment or disagreement, that I read not long ago of one
of our chief public men in Parliament taking his stand
aloof from his party, and, in despite of his own inter-
ests, in defence of the dry and arid science of political
economy, which he thought was unduly depreciated
amongst large classes of our countrymen. Dry and
arid it may be, but I cannot doubt that it is, as it were,
the back bone of much of our social system, and it gives
38
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
a back bone to all into whose mind it has thoroughly
entered.
Then in geology, astronomy, chemistry, and the nat-
ural sciences generally, what a large field is open before
you for your pleasure and profit! When Wordsworth
said in his fine ode that there had passed away "a glory
and a freshness" from the earth, he little thought that
there was another freshness and glory coming back, in
the deeper insight which science would give into the
wonders and grandeur of nature.
I have heard people say who had travelled with Sir
Charles Lyell, that to see him hanging out of the win-
dow of a railway carriage, to watch the geological for-
mations as he passed through a railway-cutting was as
if he saw the sides hung with beautiful pictures.
Let me touch on the experiences presented to our
eyes and ears by travel. In this age it is one of the
peculiar advantages offered to all classes, or almost all
classes, which, in former times, was the privilege only
of a few, that the great book of foreign countries and
the phenomena of nature have been opened to our
view. We hardly appreciate how vast a revelation, how
new a creation has been opened to us in these respects
within the last fifty years. A century ago not only were
the scenes to be visited closed against us, but the eye
by which we could see them was closed also.
The poet
Gray was the first human being who discovered the
charms of the English lakes which are now able even to
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
39
enter into a battle of life and death against the mighty
power of a city like Manchester, because of the enthu-
siastic interest which they have enkindled in the breasts
of all who visit them.
The glories of the valley of Chamouny were first
made known to the European world by two English-
men, at the close of the last century. Before that time
the cherished resorts of such gifted persons as Voltaire
and Madame de Stael, were so selected as carefully to
exclude every view of Mont Blanc and his great com-
peers. But in our time, all these various forms of
beauty and grandeur are appreciated with a keenness,
and sought with an enjoyment which must add new
life and new vigor even to the most secluded amongst us.
XIV.
The mere fact that our Lord's teaching was suggested
by familiar and passing objects, is not without interest
and instruction. It shows that He was affected by the
outward impressions of the moment, not only in the
graver events of His life, as when the sudden view of
Jerusalem filled His eyes with tears, or the sight of
sufferers drew forth the heaving sigh and the bitter
groan, but habitually, and in His daily intercourse.
Even if we knew no more than this general fact, it
would be to us a touching proof that He was of “the
40
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
same flesh and blood," "tried in all points like as we
are."
But another and a higher thought strikes us when we
consider what were the especial objects which thus, if
one may so say, gave a color to the thoughts and ex-
pressions of Him who spake as never man spake.
Though characteristic not only of the country, but of
the particular spots of country where the parables and
discourses were uttered, they are yet so common and
obvious that, but for these sacred allusions, one would
pass them by without notice. The grander features of
the scenery, the mountains, the forests, the striking
points of Oriental vegetation, palm and cedar and tere-
binth, the images, in short, which fill the pages of the
Psalmists and prophets of the older dispensation, have
no place in the gospel discourses. He must have been
familiar with the magnificent prospect from the heights
above Nazareth. Hermon and Tabor must have been
constantly before him in His later wanderings. The
Pisgah-view must have been His from the Pearæn
hills. Yet none of these came within the circle of His
teaching. Perhaps the only exception, and that a
doubtful one, is the allusion in the Sermon on the
Mount to the city set on a mountain."
،،
But this is a mere passing glance at a single point in
the landscape. As a general rule, every image, every
emotion is drawn from the humbler and plainer figures.
of every-day life and observation; vineyards and corn
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
41
men.
fields, shepherds and ploughmen, travellers and fisher-
And if the beauty of nature attract His netice,
it is still of the same simple and general kind, the
burst of the radiance of an eastern sun, — the lively
instincts and movements of the careless birds over His
head,
the gay colors of the carpet of flowers under
His feet.
It were vain to ask the precise cause of these omis-
sions and selections. Perhaps there may be found
some answer in the analogies, partial as they are, of the
absorption of the greatest of ancient philosophers, of
the noblest of medieval saints: which made Socrates
delight in the city rather than in the country; which
made St. Bernard, on the shores of Geneva, uncon-
scious of the magnificence of the lake and mountains
round him. But rather, perhaps, we may say that it
was the same humble and matter-of-fact, yet at the same
time universal spirit, which characterized the whole
course of his life on earth, and has formed the main
outlines of His religion since.
XV.
The first view of Olivet impresses us chiefly by its
bare, matter-of fact appearance; the first approach to
the hills of Judea reminds the English traveller not of
the most but of the least striking portions of the
mountains of his own country. Yet all this renders
42
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the Holy Land the fitting cradle of a religion which ex-
pressed itself not through the voices of rustling forests,
or the clefts of mysterious precipices, but through the
souls and hearts of men which was destined to have
no home on earth, least of all in its own birthplace ;
which has attained its full dimensions only in propor-
tion as it has travelled further from its original source,
to the daily life and homes of nations as far removed
from Palestine in thought and feeling, as they are in
climate and latitude which alone, of all religions,
claims to be founded not on fancy and feeling, but on
Fact and Truth.
It is through the multitudinous mass of living, human
hearts, of human acts, and words of love and truth,
that the Christ of the first century becomes the Christ
of the nineteenth. Each successive age, each separate
nation, does his work on a larger and still larger scale.
The arts, the literature, the sciences, the charities, the
liberties, the laws, the worship of the commonwealths of
Christian Europe, are all parts of the living body of
Christ. Their influence on us is a part of His influ-
ence. Their benefits to us are part of the innumerable
benefits of His cross and passion. To live under the
best influences of Christendom, to live under the best
influences of Christian England, this for us, and this
only, is
- the apostle allows us to say so is Christ
himself.
K
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
43
XVI.
Whoever it be that we have an opportunity of help-
ing, there is our neighbor, however much we may have
been divided from him by other matters whether,
like the man that fell among thieves, he is a Jew, and
you are a Samaritan, or he a Samaritan and you a Jew,
he a Presbyterian and you an Episcopalian, he a Roman
Catholic and you a Protestant, he of one race and you
of another, he of one creed and you of another, he of
one party and you of another; he, whosoever he be, if
he is in difficulty and needs your aid, and you are able
to aid him he deserves and demands all the same
justice and compassion that you would gladly render to
him if he were of the same party, of the same church,
of the same country, of the same opinions as yourself.
What is the measure of the love we owe to others.
It is the measure of what we think is owing to ourselves.
"Love him as thyself." Observe, if I may use such a
word, the equity of this divine rule. It makes us the
judge of what we ought to do. It imposes upon us
no duty that we have not already acknowledged for
ourselves.
Every one of us knows how painful it is to be called
by malicious names, to have his character undermined
by false insinuations, to be over-reached in a bargain,
to be neglected by those who rise in life, to be thrust
on one side by those who have stronger wills and
44
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
stouter hearts. Every one knows, also, the pleasure of
receiving a kind look, a warm greeting, a hand held out
to help in distress, a difficulty solved, a higher hope re-
vealed for this world or the next. By that pain and by
that pleasure let us judge what we should do to
others.
This is the root of all Christian charity, of all Chris-
tian forgiveness, of all Christian justice, of all Chris-
tian toleration. Had this command sunk deep into the
heart of Christendom, how many a foolish quarrel
might have been averted, how many a needless war
might have been arrested, and how impossible would
have been most of the bloody persecutions which have
been the shame of the Christian churches.
And observe the object towards which this love is to
extend—“Thy neighbor." Here again there is, so to
speak, a common sense and equity; what has been
well called "the sweet reasonableness of Christ our
Saviour."
It is not an indiscriminate command of love to show
kindness to everybody and to all mankind. That, in
its literal sense, would be impossible. But it is to love.
"our neighbor." And what is meant by our neighbor
we cannot doubt; it is everyone with whom we are
brought into contact.
First of all, he is literally our neighbor who is next to
us in our own family and household; husband to wife,
wife to husband, parent to child, brother to sister, mas
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
45
ter to servant, servant to master. 'Then it is he who is
close to us, in our own neighborhood, in our own town,
in our own parish, in our own street. With these all
true charity begins. To love and to be kind to these is
the very beginning of all true religion.
But besides these, as our Lord teaches, it is everyone
who is thrown across our path by the changes and
chances of life; he or she, whosoever it be, whom we
have any means of helping the unfortunate stranger
whom we may meet in travelling, the deserted friend
whom no one else cares to look after.
XVII.
It is with the separate glimpses of the Divinity as
with the famous Torso in the Vatician, the fragment of
some noble statue, the memorial of some superhuman
struggle, which Michael Angelo, in the blindness of his
old age, used to feel round and round, gathering by
touch what he could not gain by sight, receiving from
the imperfect fragment an inspiration of the unknown
whole.
“That unfinished block," he used to say, "is my
master, and I am its obedient pupil."
This was a true likeness of the human race, or its
most gifted members, feeling, groping after God, if
naply they might find him.
As the eye of a picture seems to follow us, as the
46
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
face of the departed recurs to us in dreams or in pass-
ing clouds, or in the flash of sudden associations; so is
the lifting up from time to time of the Divine counte-
nance behind the veil. We do not pretend to fathom
the whole being of God; but the face, the eye, the
glance this perhaps we may hope to see and to
attain.
The poor Buddhist pilgrim who prayed to, be knew
not what, for support, and in the strength of that prayer
was sustained body and soul long days and nights, was
blessed, and that blessing was enough for him. The
Samoyede, who said in her morning prayer, "Sun,
arise, I arise with thee;" and in her evening prayer,
"Sun, go to rest, I rest with thee," expressed a sense
of harmony with the order of the world which raised
her above her own sluggish life. Still, indefinite as the
Divine ideal must always be, elevated as the thought of
almost any ideal must be, yet the whole question of the
good or evil of a religion must ultimately turn upon or
resolve itself into the character which the Divine
nature assumes, the aspect which the Divine counte-
nance wears. The name which invests the ideal with a
false, misleading character, may be worse than no ideal
at all. It was this which made Lord Bacon say:
"It were better to have no God at all than an
opinion which is unworthy of Him; for the one is but
unbelief, the other is contumely."
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
47
It was this which made Wesley say that if God were
what some represent Him to be, He would not be God,
but the devil.
There is in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg, a
collection of the various books used by Voltaire and
gathered by the Empress Catherine, round the statue of
the old philosopher, bearing on their margin copious
annotations in his own characteristic handwriting.
Amongst these is a well-known French work, composed
to disprove the existence of a Supreme Being. It is on
the first page of this work, and as a protest against the
whole of it, that Voltaire has inscribed his famous
saying:
"If God did not exist, we should have to invent
Him."
And in this scornful and indignant strain his remarks
are continued throughout the work. The main stress
of his arguments is always to urge that the God whom
the author of this "system of nature" was endeavoring
to subvert, was not the God who is alone worthy of the
adoration of the true philosopher and the true religious.
man.
The position which Voltaire in these his better mo-
ments maintained, and maintained so earnestly, is the
same as that supported by all who care for the honor of
Him whom they worship; namely, that in proportion
as the idea of God rises to the highest pitch of mental
and moral excellence, it deserves the adoration of man-
48
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
kind; and only in proportion as it does so rise, do all
the attacks of honest doubters and all the scandals of
false defenders fall off to the right hand and the
left.
There was a story once told me by an American
Presbyterian minister, in the Jerusalem Chamber at
Westminster, that the assembly of Westminster divines,
when they were there engaged in drawing up the Con-
fession of Faith, and when they came to the question of
making a definition of the Supreme Being, found the
difficulty so overwhelming that they proposed to have
a special prayer offered up for light. The youngest
minister present was to undertake the office.
It was,
according to the English tradition, Calamy; according
to the Scottish tradition, Gillespie. He rose up in the
assembly, and he began his prayer by an impassioned
and elaborate invocation of the Almighty, which he had
hardly uttered, when the whole assembly broke out
into the exclamation :
"This shall be our definition !"
The definition may still be read as the opening of
the third article of the Westminster Confession. What
by a natural impulse seemed to them the only method.
of extricating themselves from their difficulty, has been
the solution which the Christian world, we may almost
say the human race itself, has chosen in the midst of
this great inquiry.
If we still ask, "Tell me thy name? Give me some
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
49
name by which that face, that name of Love may be
made to speak, and smile, and guide us," this last
blessed name is made known to us in prayer-in the
best of all prayers, in the opening of the One Prayer
which has, beyond any other formulary or creed, been
translated into all the languages, and adopted by all
the civilized nations of the earth.
Not by metaphysical definitions, but in the natural
uplifting of the spirits of all mankind to God in the
Lord's Prayer, is the name given in which we all most
gladly acquiesce, and to which we all most gladly
cling "Our Father who art in Heaven."
"Our Father." It is a name contained twice or
thrice in the Old Testament. It is a name found here
and there in the Talmud. It is a name not altogether
unknown to the old Gentile world. But it was only
through its consecration in the mouth of Jesus Christ
our Lord, that it became the name which has super-
seded all other names, and has remained ever since-
the name of the God of Christendom, who is the God of
all the world.
"I do not know how the great loving Father will
bring out light at last, but He knows, and will
do it!"
That was David Livingston's consolation in the wilds
of Africa, and that may be ours also in all our toils and
trials. For the ideal of a father is the impersonation
50
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
of supreme love, which is the essence of supreme
goodness.
XVIII.
It was once said in mournful complaint of the high-
est ecclesiastic in Christendom, "For the sake of gain-
ing to-day, he has thrown away to-morrow forever."
Be our policy the reverse of this; be it ours to fasten
our thoughts, not on the passions and parties of the
brief to-day, but on the hopes of the long to-morrow.
The day, the year may perchance belong to the de-
structives, the cynics, and the partisans. But the mor-
row, the coming century, belongs to the catholic, com-
prehensive, discriminating, all-embracing Christianity,
which has the promise, not perhaps of this present
time, but of the times which are yet to be.
“Come, my friends Souls that have toiled, and
wrought, and thought with me.
"Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
XIX.
"What are these which are arrayed in white robes,
and with palms in their hands, and whence came
they?"
"These are they which came out of great tribulation,
and have washed their robes, and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb."
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
51
That is to say:
These are they who have suffered, not only in temp-
tation, but in the innumerable sorrows, disappoint-
ments, mortifications, and changes of this anxious pil-
grimage of life. These are they who have been refined
and puntied in that long struggle; who have learned
from their own sorrows and from their own trials to feel
for the sorrows and the trials of others; who have
gained through that experience a power beyond their
own - the power of faith, the power of sympathy, the
power of rising above the petty cares of earth, the
power of discernment between what is solid and endur-
ing, and what is false and fleeting.
Truly, that blood in which their white robes are
washed is the blood of the Lamb; not the blood offered
to appease an angry God, but the life blood (the blood
which is the life) of the gentle and spotless Lamb; the
drops of that same agony which watered the Garden of
Gethsemane, filling up, as the Apostle says, the afflic-
tions of Christ who was tempted like as we are and
learned wisdom like us by suffering.
XX.
No one can question the importance to the education
of young men, or, indeed, of any men, to have seen
with their eyes the example, to have received into their
souls the influence, of characters or intellects that
52
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
"stand the first in worth as in command." To have
known, to have been guided by any such, is indeed one
the most precious of human opportunities; to have, for
once in our lives, been penetrated by the awe, the thrill,
the delight of sitting at the feet of one whom we in-
stinctively felt to be a great man, in the historical sense
of the word, is amongst the rare experiences which we
feel not the less, but the more keenly, from the attrition
of the ordinary conflicts of humanity. We know in-
stinctively the characteristics of such pre-eminence.
Wherever we recognize, singly or combined, largeness.
of mind, or strength of character, or firmness of will,
or fire of genius, or devoted loyalty, there is a born
leader.
"There are many echoes in the world, but few
voices;" and let it be your constant effort to distin-
guish the echoes from the voices, and to respond ac-
cordingly. Insist on reading the great books, on mark-
ing the great events of the world. Then the little
books may be left to take care of themselves; and the
trivial incidents of passing politics and diplomacy may
perish with the using.
Bear in mind that in every branch of knowledge,
scientific or literary or artistic, the first question to be
asked is, Who is it that in that branch stands confes-
sedly at the head? What is its chief oracle? Who is
the ruling genius, head and shoulders above the rest?
It is the master-works of the respective departments
2:
VARRA PERSONEN M
1
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
53
of study which are, as it were, the Canonical, the Sym-
bolical books of science and literature, established be-
yond appeal by their own intrinsic merits, and by the
universal acceptance of mankind.
Above all, endeavor to grasp the distinction between
the great primary ideas and the small secondary ideas
which jostle each other in the turmoil of thought. Re-
member that those ideas which reach far and wide and
which can be expressed in terms plain, intelligible, per-
suasive to all educated men, claim at once a superiority
above the technicalities of controversial or professional
circles.
We do not say that this largeness of thought and of
language, is a necessary test of truth. It may be that
fine philosophic or poetic inspirations have come into
the world wrapt in the swaddling clothes of an enigma,
or in the obscure corners of a sect. No doubt there is
a racy flavor inherent in the words and in the idea of
each particular country; there are local institutions
which cannot be transplanted to other regions without
perishing. But, as a general rule, it is one of the best
safeguards against narrow, impracticable, fantastic doc-
trines, to test them by contrast and comparison with
the lofty thoughts which belong to the literature of all
times and all countries.
XXI.
On Shakspeare or on Plato, an ordinary man may
54
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
gaze with awe, yet often not be raised one inch nearer
the stupendous genius which he admires. But when we
see the moral heroes, the saints, the martyrs, the gen-
erous, the humane, the self-denying, the gentle, and the
just, the attraction is more than this. It is almost im-
possible even to look at them steadily without deriving
some strength, some encouragement, some rebuke, some
elevation from their very presence. To remember them
at all is to remember them for good. It was in good,
in being good and in doing good, that their chief energy,
their chief existence was spent on earth; and it is
therefore in good, in being good and in doing good, that
the chief continuance of their presence is carried on
still.
"Shall not we follow?" was the exclamation of
Augustine, as he read an account of the early martyrs.
It is almost the inevitable exclamation of every human
being whose soul has any spiritual life within it when
he thinks of the good or great, that by seeing or by re-
port he has ever encountered.
It was the mere sight of the apostolic face of John
Wesley that awakened in the philanthropic Howard
the burning desire to reform the prisons of Europe.
It is recorded of an English statesman of the last
century, Lord Shelburne, low deep an impression was
made upon him by his visit to the gifted and saintly
Frenchman, Malesherbes.
"I have seen," he said, "what I had previously con
41
{
į
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
55
sidered could not possibly exist; a man absolutely free
from fear and hope alike, yet full of life and warmth.
Nothing in the world can disturb his repose. He lacks
nothing himself, but he interests himself actively in
everything good. I have never been struck so pro-
foundly by anything, in the course of my travels; and I
feel sure that if ever I accomplish anything great in
what remains of my life, I shall do so encouraged by
my recollection of Monsieur de Malesherbes."
And even without seeing good men or knowing them
personally, the mere thinking or reading of them is
sufficient to fill the heart. When the missionary, Henry
Martyn, went to India, the study in which he found
most profit during his long voyage, was the lives of the
ancient saints.
"I love," he says, "to converse, as it were, with
those holy bishops and martyrs with whom, I hope,
through grace, to spend a happy eternity. The exam-
ple of the Christian saints in the early ages has been a
source of sweet reflection to me. No uninspired sen-
tence has affected me so much as that of the historians
of those times — that to believe, to suffer, and to love,
was the primitive taste."
We may follow such characters, perhaps, at a great
distance, as at a great distance Elisha followed Elijah
to the end. Our career or circumstances may be quite
different from others, as the career of the quiet, mild,
beneficent Elisha was different from the wandering
56
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
fierce, heroic Elijah; but still we can follow, still it is
possible that the spirit of Elijah may rest upon Elisha.
That practice which was adopted by a good man of the
last generation, may be imitated by all of us. When
ever he conferred a benefit on anyone, he charged the
recipient of his kindness to regard it as a loan which
he was to repay by doing a like kindness to some one
else, which is a true keeping and putting out to usury
the trust committed to us.
XXII.
What was said of the spiritual connection between
the first critical student of the Hebrew scripture, Nich-
olas Lira, and the great reformer Luther, has been ex-
emplified again and again. Si Lira non cantasset, Lu-
therus non saltasset.
It was the echo of Augustine that in like manner
awakened Calvin; it is the fire of Faraday that still
burns in Tyndall. Or, looking at the succession of our
poets, how often have they been the intellectual parents
of their successors.
Before Cowley was twelve years of age, the great
poem of Spenser, "The Faerie Queen," he tells us,
"filled his head with such chimes and verses as have
never ceased ringing there." The dead, old, nameless
author of the ballad of "Chevy Chase" stirred the
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
57
soul of Sir Philip Sydney, "as with the sound of a
trumpet."
There is a well-known story that when Walter Scott
was young, once - and once only-he met Robert
Burns. Burns was standing before a picture of a sol-
dier perishing in the winter, and under the picture were
written sympathetic lines which the gifted poet read
aloud with such emotion that the tears rolled down his
cheeks; and when he finished, he asked:
"Who can tell me the author of these lines?"
It was an obscure English author, and the only per-
son in the company who knew was a little lame boy,
who whispered it to his neighbor. When Burns saw at
once the modesty and the intelligence of the child, he
laid his hand on his head, and, in his quaint, provincial
phrase, said,
"You will be a man before your mother."
That little lame boy was the greatest genius of the
Scottish nation. Who can say how much of his inspi-
ration may have been kindled by that one electrifying
contact with the kindred fire of his glorious country-
man?
Or take another case. Cobbett, the homely but pow-
erful orator, was eleven years old, a poor gardener's
lad, when he bought for threepence Swift's "Tale of a
Tub." On the shady side of a haystack he sat down
to read it.
58
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
"I read it,” he says, "without any thought of supper
or bed. It produced what I have always considered at
sort of birth of my intellect."
That was a true affinity of mind with mind. Surely
we may each of us call to mind some book which we
have read, some lecture which we have heard, which has
left upon our minds the indelible impression which
opened a door which has never been closed, which gave
us a stimulus which we have never lost. Cherish all
such remembrances. They are the signs to us that the
crumbs of the bread of life have fallen upon us. They
are landmarks in our upward journey over the Hill of
Difficulty towards the House Beautiful.
XXIII.
Let us remember that greatness of action depends on
two other kinds of greatness; on our appreciation of
the greatness of the manner of doing what is good, and
our appreciation of the greatness of the occasion when
it can be dɔne. The "grand style," the "great man-
ner," that is within our grasp, however distant it may
seem.
It has been well said by an eminent French writer,
that the true calling of a Christian is not to do extraor-
dinary things, but to do ordinary things in an extraordi-
nary way. The most trivial tasks can be accomplished
in a noble, gentle, regal spirit, which overrides and puts
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
59
aside all petty, paltry feelings, and which elevates all
little things. Whatever is affected, whatever is osten-
tation, whatever is taken up from mere fashion, or party
cry, that is small, vulgar, contemptible. Whatever
springs from our own independent thought, whatever is
modest, genuine, and transparent, whatever is deliber-
ately pursued because it tends towards a grand result
that is noble, commanding, great.
When George Buchanan, in his latter days, was vis-
ited by Andrew Melville, he was found teaching his
serving-lad the alphabet. And when Melville wondered
that he was engaged in so humble a work-
(6
'Better this," said the old Preceptor of Princes
"better this than stealing sheep, or sitting idle, whic.
is as ill."
When they asked him to alter some detail in his his
tory, about the burial of David Rizzio that might offenc
the King, he asked,
“Tell me, man, if I have told the truth?
"Yes, sir, I think so."
"Then I will bide his feud (anger) and all his kin's
Pray, pray God for me, and He will direct me.'
""
These were very homely matters, but the spirit in
which they were touched was no less than imperial.
XXIV.
""
Great men are rare; great ideas are borne in upon
60
THOUGH
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
}
us we know not how or whence. But great deeds are
within the reach of us all, and it should be a never-
ceasing aim of genuine education to encourage the ad-
miration and appreciation, not merely of actions that
are good and wise, but of actions high-minded, large-
minded, which embrace a sphere not narrow but wide,
not mean but lofty; actions magnificent in quality, in
purpose, and in effect.
Every kindness done to others in our daily walk,
every attempt to make others happy, every prejudice
overcome, every truth more clearly perceived, every dif-
ficulty subdued, every sin left behind, every temptation
trampled under foot, every step forward in the cause of
good, is a step nearer to the life of Christ, through
which only death can be really a gain to us.
Think how much yet remains to be done in the
thirty, twenty-yes, even in the ten years, or perhaps
in the one year, perhaps even in the one day, that yet
may remain to us. Despise it not, neglect it not;
cherish, enlarge, improve this vast, this inestimable gift,
whilst it is granted to us with its endless opportunities,
with its boundless capacities, with its glorious hopes,
with its indispensable calls, with its immense results,
with its rare chances of repentance, of improvement,
even for the humblest and weakest among us.
XXV.
How surely a young man who knows and does what
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
61
is right will compel others, almost against their will, and
almost without his consciousness, to know and to do it
also. The persons disappear, but the good tradition.
remains; their good works do follow them, either their
own good works and words which outlive themselves, or
those which they have inspired in their successors and
survivors. The visions of a noble character, the glimpse
of a new kind of virtue does not perish.
A thing of goodness, like a thing of beauty, "is a joy
forever." To admire what is admirable, to adore what
is adorable, to follow what is noble, to remember any
such examples that have crossed our earthly pilgrimage,
that have brightened its darkness and cheered its dull-
ness this keeps alive before us the ideal of human
nature and the essence of the Divine nature.
The good thoughts, the good deeds, the good memo-
ries of those who have been the salt and the light of
the earth do not perish with their departure they live
on still; and those who have wrought them live in
them.
-
The weary traveller in the south of Spain, who, after
passing many an arid plain and many a bare hill, finds
himself at nightfall under the heights of Granada,
will hear plashing and rippling under the shade of
the spreading trees, and along the side of the dusty
road the grateful murmur of running waters, of stream◄
lets whose sweet music mingles with his dreams as he
sleeps, and meets his ear as the first pleasant voice
62
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
in the stillness of the early dawn. What is it? It is
the sound of the irrigating rivulets called into exist-
ence by the Moorish occupants of Granada five cent-
uries ago, which amidst all the changes of race and
religion have never ceased to flow. Their empire has
fallen, their creed has been suppressed by fire and
sword, their nation has been driven from the shores of
Spain, and their palaces crumble into ruins: but this
trace of their beneficent civilization still continues, and
in this continuity that which was good and wise and
generous in that gifted, but unhappy race, still lives
on to cheer and to refresh their enemies and their
conquerors.
Even so it is with the good deeds of those who have
gone before us. Whatever there has been of grateful
consideration, of kindly hospitality, of far-reaching gen-
erosity, of gracious charity, of high-minded justice, of
unselfish devotion, of saintly devotion, these still feed
the stream of moral fertilization, which will run on when
their place knows them no more, when even their names
have perished.
XXVI.
“To die is gain." Who is there that has not from time
to time felt this as he looks at the sufferings of this mor-
tal life; as he thinks of the wearing nights and days
of sickness, of the restlessness, the sinking, the pain,
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
63
the despair, the distress of the bystanders; as he looks
at the miseries of this sinful world, the disappointments
of brilliant hopes, the sore temptations to evil, the
multiplied chances of failure? Who, as he thus thinks
of himself, or of others, has not been moved to say,
from time to time:
M
،،
Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, that I might
flee far away and be at rest!"
It is the feeling beautifully expressed by the greatest
of our poets; and so felt even the great Apostle when,
amidst the desertion of friends, and the hard struggle
of truth against falsehood and good against evil, he
desired to be at rest, and be with his Master beyond
the grave, which, he says, "would be far better.”
In this sense death is and must be, a gain to all.
And it is by reflecting on this clear gain that the mind
bows itself to the terrible thought of the last dread sum-
mons from all that we see and love in this earthly
scene.
But the Apostle tells us that after all there is some-
thing yet greater than the gain and rest of death, and
that is, the struggle and victory of life. Death was
gain to him, but life was something more.
"To live is CHRIST."
Death in one sense is the gate of life eternal; but
life this mortal life—is the only true gate of a happy
and peaceful death. It is in life — in the wear and tear
64
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
of life — that those graces must be wrought and fash
ioned, which perfect the soul, immortal over death.
Reckon yourselves," says the Apostle, "to be dead
to sin." But there is something much more than this.
"Reckon yourselves to be alive to God through
Christ."
He preaches with all his heart and soul, not the
worthlessness, but the infinite preciousness of life.
The darkest and dreariest side of human life has also
a glorious and divine aspect. Sorrow, suffering, pain,
and death — all those evils of which the existence and
the very thought shake the faith, and try the patience,
and overcloud the serenity even of the best, and which
in the Jewish and in Pagan religions were, for the most
part, regarded as curses and penalties, as signs of wrath,
as works of the Evil Spirit—all these are intended by
the Christian religion to be so transfigured as to appear,
if not as blessings, yet, at least, as the channels of
blessings; if not as direct gifts of Divine Love, yet as
opportunities for working out the purposes of that
Divine Love to the human race.
The rude manger of Bethlehem, the reproaches of
Nazareth, the hardships of Capernaum, the tears of
Bethany, the Cross of Calvary, are so many expressions
of what Goethe called the Divine depth of sorrow, out
of which, as out of all sorrow and pain, is to be wrought
the improvement, the redemption, the regeneration, the
purification of mankind.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
65
(6
XXVII.
The principle of the universal benevolence of the
Supreme ruler of the universe is expressed in the words,
Father," "Our Father," the belief that the relation of
the Supreme Mind to man is that of a father. No
doubt the word in relation to the Deity was known be-
fore, both in Jewish and heathen times: but it was not
manifest it was not brought to the front of religion as
it was by Christianity. In the Old Testament it is
used, at most, six times; but in the New Testament it
is used as often as three hundred times. It is the mode
in which the Supreme Ruler is almost uniformly ad-
dressd throughout the Gospels. It expresses the belief
that, as in the case of a father and his children, so in
the Divine government of the world there is much which
we cannot understand.
In this obscurity we must humbly acquiesce. It ex-
presses also, that the main direction and purpose of
this government is for our good. In this hope is our
consolation.
We need not penetrate into the inscrutable secrets of
Providence; we need not perplex ourselves with precise
questions on the mode in which prayer is answered.
It is enough for us to know and feel that it is the most
natural, the most powerful, the most elevated expression
of our thoughts and wishes in all great emergencies.
It is enough to know that in the most severe of a!!
66
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
trials, the most sustaining and comforting thought is
the fixed belief that we are in the hands of an All-Wise,
All-Merciful Father.
The chief virtues of Greek morality were fortitude,
wisdom, self-control, and justice; of the ancient Roman
religion, patriotism, and imperial courage; of the He-
brew religion, resignation, reverence, and faith. All
these several virtues have their places in Christianity;
but there are other moral gifts which shine with the
most transcendent glory in the New Testament.
The main characteristics of the founder of our re-
ligion and of His disciples are kindness, universal kind-
ness and beneficence, to which is given the new name
of grace, love, or charity; purity in word and deed, to
which is given the new name of holiness, or consecration
to God; absolute sincerity, of which the very word.
Truth became a synonym of the Founder's life-hu-
mility and lowliness for which neither Greek nor Latin
had any adequate expression-these were the princi-
ples which, in the Epistles, were deemed to be essen
tially Christian, and which in the Gospels were called
divine.
XXVIII.
How many
are the sufferers who have fallen
amongst misfortunes along the wayside of life? "By
chance" we come that way; chance, accident, Provi-
dence, call it by what name we will, has thrown them
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
67
in our way; we see them from a distance, like the
priest; or we come upon them suddenly, as the Levite ;
our business, our pleasure is interrupted by the sight,
and is troubled by the delay. The priest and the
Levite may have had good reasons for hurrying on;
they may have been proceeding to services which they
could not postpone ; to duties which would not allow
them to endanger their lives. The parable has no
words of direct censure for them, but leaves us to ask
whether we should have done likewise; it leaves us to
determine for ourselves who are most to be admired;
they who did as we should all naturally do, they who
would not be put out of their way, they who thought it
beneath the notice of religious men to do a homely
deed of kindness, they who thought it imprudent to
mix up with a matter which was no concern of theirs ;
or he who had compassion on the wounded man, he
who administered comfort and support, he who broke
off his journey, he who for the sake of a stranger did
that which kinsmen declined to do. The priest and the
Levite are types and likenesses of men as they com-
monly are; thinking much of themselves and little of
others; with much prudence, much foresight, it may be,
but with little feeling, little sympathy, little power of
self-denial. Let them go on their way; we need not
judge them harshly. But let us remember that there is
a higher type of character, a better standard of the true
Christian than this. The good deed of the Good Sama-
68
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
こ​驚き
​ritan has still a fragrant odor in all the world. May it
be ours, if God throws like opportunities in our path,
to be enabled to share his blessing, and "go and do
likewise!'
It cannot be too often remarked that kindness is one
of the virtues which hardly ever fails to produce an
effect; kindness "in season and out of season;” kind-
ness which is in every one's power. How very much
the wheels of life would be smoothed, how very much
every one would add to the sum total of human happi-
ness, if every one were to take hold of any of the many
opportunities which every situation offers to be kind,
courteous, easy, and agreeable towards the chance trav-
ellers that he meets in his journeys towards the
chance sufferers that he comes across! It is never for-
gotten. The boy at school never forgets the kindness
of an elder school-fellow. The poor, solitary, and way-
worn man or woman never forgets the pressure of a
kind, feeling hand, the glance of a loving, sympathetic
eye. “A cup of cold water given unexpectedly at the
right moment will indeed not 'lose its reward.'
P
The "presence of mind” to catch these opportunities
of diffusing Christian kindness is one of the graces
which we should value as amongst the most valuable of
God's gifts, which we should endeavor to strengthen by
prayer, by habit, by remembering that God, in whose
presence we are, is ever requiring of us the special
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
69
frame of mind which makes us ever "present" with
Him, and ever present" to the call of our fellow-
66
creatures.
But there is yet a wider field of lessons opened by
the question, "Who is my neighbor?" The answer is
not the less instructive for its being given indirectly.
The lawyer- that is, as we should call him, the ex-
pounder and teacher of the Old Testament thought
doubtless, when he spoke of loving his neighbor as him-
self, that it was enough if he thereby bound himself to
love those with whom he agreed; those of his own
country, of his own church, of his own persuasion.
Nor would it have been a sufficient lesson for him if the
parable had been so turned that the act of mercy should
have been performed by a good Jew towards an afflicted
stranger, even though that stranger were a Samaritan.
This is not enough to open the narrow heart, or to
enlighten the blinded mind. Even the most uncharita-
ble amongst us are content to admire and approve acts
of comprehensiveness and toleration which are per-
formed by those with whom we ourselves agree. But
what we shrink from acknowledging, and what this par-
able forces us to acknowledge is this; that acts of good-
ness may be done by those from whom we differ — that
even those who, like the Samaritan, are outcasts and
aliens from the outward church of God, and worship
they "know not what," may yet be endowed with a
higher grace, and gifted with nobler gifts than those
70
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
who, like the priest and Levite, "stand day and night"
in the sanctuary. Who, as he reads the parable, will
not feel that he would rather cast his lot with the good
Samaritan than with the thoughtless priest or hard
Levite?
XXIX.
Even to the widest and freest cosmopolite there is an
unrivalled charm in remembering and revisiting the
scenes of his earliest childhood. The old church tower,
the dear and sacred graves, the place where we first
knew happiness, and where we first heard of death;
the little brook where, like Jacob, we "passed with this
staff" before we grew into the vast vicissitudes of after-
life—all these things must engage our best thoughts
and affections. They rank, in our minds, as a gifted
French poet has said, these monuments of our early
years, and these alone, on a level with the Pyramids or
the Parthenon.
But there is a duty, a sympathy deeper, wider, fuller
than our own immediate and early surroundings;
are people of whom we know not, on the other side of
the mountains on the other side of the mountains
of our ignorance, our prejudice.
Every nation, every church, every individual, has some
good qualities that the other has not. To love, honor,
and admire whatever is good and generous of itself,
wherever we find it, even in those whom in all else we
""
66
•
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
71
think most wrong- this is the high conception of
true religion; this shows what a magnificent religion
is Christianity, which is the religion of the Good
Samaritan.
We must be taught even by our enemies. We must
love what is lovable, even in those whom we despise,
In this way, whenever we go into the whole wide world
we shall find something to learn; and it is this which
makes the experience of any circles wider than our
own, so civilizing and so Christianizing to each of us.
The principle of the New Testament is that the char-
acters of those of whom we should least expect a great
future, are those in whom we shall sometimes most
surely find it. The irregular and despised publican
often comes before the correct Pharisee, the generous
prodigal before the complacent elder brother, the re-
pentant Magdalene before the supercilious host, the
outcast heathen and heretical Samaritan before the
orthodox Jew― the first, last, and the last, first.
On this widely ramifying experience which cuts across
the grain of so many commonplace prejudices, both of
the ancient and modern world, is built up the whole
idea of the Friend of sinners, the Shepherd of the lost
sheep, the Leader of the Christian chivalry, the cham-
pion of the weak, the defender of the oppressed, the
refuge of the helpless.
Nothing is so narrowing, contracting, hardening, as
always to be moving in the same groove, with no
72
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
thought beyond what we immediately see and hear
close around us. Any shock which breaks this even
course, anything which makes us think of other joys
and sorrows besides our own is of itself chastening,
sanctifying, edifying.
XXX.
Every dispensation of Providence is a kind of miracle
wrought for our benefit. We must make the very most
of it. It may be the position in life which is given to
us. Every position, great or small, may be made al
most as great or as little as we desire to make it, accord-
ing as we make the most of it or the least of it. To do
the necessary duties of any station, that is easy enough;
but to gather up all its outlying opportunities; to be
ready to lend a helping hand here, to give a kind word
there and a wise counsel there; "to fill," as we say,
(6
our place in life," instead of leaving it half empty; to
be entirely in our work for the time being, this is what
makes all the difference between a great man and a
commonplace man, a useful man or a useless man, a
statesman, or teacher, or ruler who will long be remem-
bered, or one who will be forgotten as soon as he is
dead.
We find it very difficult, perhaps, to know when we
may fairly call any event "Providential" or not. But
no one can have lived to the middle period of human
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
73
existence, and not seem to see in his own life how curi-
ously one part has fitted into the other, which at the
time seemed quite unintelligible; how opportunities
have been offered, on the acceptance or rejection of
which, the happiness or misery of many years afterward
has depended; how sins which we thought long buried
have started again to our remembrance; how good
actions have brought with them a train of blessings of
which at the moment we never dreamed.
The journey of life, like the actual journey of trav
ellers, is broken up again and again. One scene puts
another out of our recollection. But "the command-
ment of God is exceeding broad." Through all this
complicated web there is one golden thread, which runs.
on without breaking, and that is the thread of duty,
which is the thread of honor and usefulness and
happiness.
XXXI.
Who is it that, when years are gone by, we remem-
ber with the purest gratitude and pleasure? Not the
learned, or the clever, or the rich, or the powerful, that
we may have known in our passage through life; but
those who have had the force of character to prefer the
future to the present; the good of others to their own
pleasure. These it is who leave a mark in the world,
more really lasting thar pyramid or temple, because it
74
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
is a mark that outlasts this life, and will be found in the
life to come.
Give us a character on which we can thoroughly
depend, which we are sure will not fail us in time of
need, which we know to be based on principle and on
the fear of God, and it is wonderful how many brilliant
and popular and splendid qualities we can safely and
gladly dispense with.
XXXII.
We cannot improve ourselves, we cannot assist
others, we cannot do our duty in the world except by
exertion, except by unpopularity, except with annoy-
ance, except with care and difficulty. We must each of
us bear our Cross with Him.
lightened by thinking of Him.
day makes it easier to us.
We shall not be always as we are now. To most
of us, our cares, our difficulties, our restraints, our re-
sponsibilities, perhaps our pains and sorrows will in-
crease. There is but one thing which will turn this
bondage into liberty, and that is the final charge which
our Lord gives to Peter, "Follow thou me."
Follow after Him, though it may be at an immeas-
urable distance. Follow Him in His long endurance,
and His great humility. Follow Him with a bold and
cheerful spirit in the happy and glorious victory which
When we bear it, it is
When we bear it, each
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
75
He won over sin and over death; and in the end thou
shalt find in Him the true communion and fellowship
which He only can give, with all who - far and near,
on this side the grave or beyond it have cheered and
encouraged and urged our affections forward, onward
upward, from things on earth to things above, where
Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.
Knowledge, prophecies, gifts of all kinds pass away,
but the love of God and the love of man never fail.
They continue into the unseen world beyond the grave;
the remembrance of these things as we have known
them here, enables us to think of them there; the un-
selfish purpose, the generous sympathies, the deep af
fection, the transparent sincerity, the long self-control,
the simple humility of those to whom the command-
ment of God has been precious - these are the arches
of that bridge on which our thoughts and hopes cross
and re-cross the widest and most mysterious of all the
chasms which divide us; the gulf which divides the
dead and the living, the gulf which divides God and
man.
XXXIII.
Trusting in God and doing our duty; these are
words which bind us all together. If you or I can feel
that those who know us best can say of us that we are
trusting in God and doing our duty, it is enough to
teach us that this is a ground of communion which
76
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
neither the difference of external rites, not the differ
ence of seas or continents can ever efface.
XXXIV.
The sense of the vastness of the universe, and of the
imperfection of our own knowledge, may help us in
some degree to understand not, indeed, the origin of
evil and of suffering, but, at any rate, something of its
possible uses and purposes. We look around the world
and we see cruel perplexities; the useless spared, the
useful taken; the young and happy removed, the old
and miserable lingering on; happy households broken
up under our feet, disappointed hopes, and the failure
of those to whom we looked up with reverence and re-
spect. We go through these trials with wonder and
fear; and we ask whereunto this will grow. But has
nothing been gained? Yes, that has been gained which
nothing else, humanly speaking, could give. We may
have gained a deeper knowledge of the mind of God,
and a deeper insight into ourselves. Truths which once
seemed mere words, received without heed and uttered
without understanding, may have become part of our-
selves.
Humility for ourselves, charity for others, self-abase-
ment before the Judge of all mankind, these are the
gifts that even the best men, and even the worst men,
may gain by distrust, by doubt, and by difficulty.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
77
The perplexity, the danger, the grief often brings
with it, its own remedy.
On each bursting wave of disappointment and vexa-
tion there is a crown of heavenly light which reveals
the peril, and shows the way, and guides us through the
roaring storm.
Out of doubt comes faith; out of grief comes hope;
and "to the upright there ariseth up light in the
darkness."
With each new temptation comes a way to escape;
with each new difficulty comes some new explanation.
As life advances it does indeed seem to be as a vessel
going to pieces, as though we were on the broken frag-
ments of a ship, or in a solitary skiff on the waste of
waters; but as long as existence lasts we must not give
up the duty of cheerfulness and hope. He who has
guided us through the day, may guide us through the
night also. The pillar of darkness often turns into a pil-
lar of fire. Let us hold on though the land be miles
away; let us hold on till the morning break. That
speck on the distant horizon may be the vessel for
which we must shape our course. Forwards, not back-
wards, must we steer forward and forward, till the
speck becomes a friendly ship. Have patience and
perseverance; believe that there is still a future before
us; and we shall at last reach the haven where we
would be.
78
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
XXXV.
There is always the red range of Edom to be sur
mounted before we can reach the Promised Land ; there
is always the wine-press to be trodden before we drink.
the juice of the grapes; there is always the battle to be
fought before the victory is won. It is not enough to
speak of righteousness; we must be active in doing it.
It is not enough to wait till others help us; we must act
and fight, we must do and dare, though we stand alone
- though "of the people there be none with us." We
look, and there will be none to help; we may wonder
that there is none to uphold; but a just cause is its own
support; our own arm, in the strength of God, may
bring salvation to us; the fury, righteous passion, in-
dignation, enthusiasm of a single man, is enough to
uphold a sinking cause.
XXXVI.
"There is nothing." So we think of the small
effects which any effort after good can accomplish. How
poor, how slight, how insignificant, are the contributions.
of compassion, or even the organization of great socie-
ties, to lighten the vast load of human misery, or re-
lieve one inch of the withering drought of suffering hu-
manity. Yet here also out of that nothingness often
rises that little cloud not bigger than a man's hand, yet
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
79
the very hand that relieves us, that grasps us, that saves
us from perishing. Think not lightly of any effort that
can save any human being from misery and wa it. Let
us never despair; let us have patience. A word of
compassion goes a long way. The pressure of the si-
lent hand is never forgotten. Be not weary in well-
doing. Patience worketh experience and experience
hope.
Each of us is bound to make the little circle in which
he lives better and happier; each of us is bound to see
that out of that small circle the widest good may flow;
each of us may have fixed in his mind the thought that
out of a single household may flow influences which
shall stimulate the whole commonwealth and the whole
civilized world.
God grant that as our horizon of duty is widened,
our minds may widen with it; that as our burden is
increased, our shoulders may be strengthened to bear it.
God grant to us that spirit of wisdom and understand-
ing, uprightness, and godly fear, without which, even in
greatest things there is nothing; with which, even in
the smallest things there is everything.
XXXVII.
How many a young man has ere now been transfig-
ured by the near influence of a faithful friend sticking
closer than a brother, warding off temptations, making
80
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
him feel, till it became part of himself, how beautiful,
how godlike a thing is the bright and stainless career of
unselfish and uncorrupted goodness. How many an
enduring aim and purpose of life has been inspired by
such friend or such teacher, which, with "the expulsive
power of a new affection," drives before it all that is
base and trivial, leaving us masters of ourselves, and
inheritors of the true kingdom of God.
Choose, therefore, whosoever thou be, to whom these
words shall come with any force, choose between the
better and the worse.
It is the tragic interest of thy life that the evil may
predominate and become thyself; it is the sublime hope
of thy life that the good shall predominate and become
thyself.
XXXVIII.
A man who is possessed with what the French call
"the grand curiosity" of knowing all that can be
known, he who looks up to the truly great authorities of
all ages and countries to the high intelligences of un-
questioned fame and worth that God has raised up to
enlighten the world he has made an effort to enter
on the narrow path, and to face his way through the
strait gate that leads to eternal life. The very strug-
gle to him is good. The very awe of these great ques-
tions produces in his mind the reverence which is the
first element of religion. That was a true name which
M
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
81
the old Greeks employed to describe a good man, a
religious man. They called him " a man of business"
a man in earnest, a man who felt the gravity of what
he was doing and saying. Such a man, no doubt, may
get his conscience warped, or may become fanatical or
self-deceived; but so far as his seriousness goes he is
right; so far as his seriousness is sincere, whatever be
his errors he is on the right way, and God is not far
from him. Not what others think for us, but what we
are able to think for ourselves is the true life of our life.
XXXIX.
The human intellect has had placed before it by
Him who made it, one object and one only worthy of
its efforts, and that is Truth truth, not for the sake of
any ulterior object, however high or holy, but truth for
its own sake. We hope, we trust, we humbly believe
that truth will in the end be found to coincide with
goodness, with holiness, with grace, with humility, with
all the other noblest aspirations of the human spirit.
But if we think and reason on these high matters at
all, we must seek and desire truth even as though it
existed by and for itself alone.
XL.
We must look for the true face of our religion in the
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
#
face of those who have best represented it. We some-
times claim, and justly claim as the glory of our faith,
that it has attracted to itself the strength of intellects
such as Shakspeare and Newton, Pascal and Rosseau,
Erasmus and Spinosa, Goethe and Walter Scott. But
then do we sufficiently remember what is the aspect of
Christianity which commanded the reverential attention.
of men so different each from each? Was it the Chris-
tianity of Nicæa, or Geneva, or Westminster, or Augs
burg, or the Vatican? No. It was, by the very nature
of the case, something of a far more delicate texture,
of a far deeper root.
The Christianity for which Paley argued in his “Evi-
dences," and Lardner in his "Credibilia," and Butler in
his "Sermons and Analogy," and Pascal in his
"Thoughts," and Channing in his "Discourses," was
this the Calvinist, or the Lutheran, or the Wesleyan, or
the Tridentine, or the Racovian creed? No; for to
each one of those stout champions of the faith, one or
other of those forms would have been as revolting as
that which they advocated, was precious to them.
Not in the exclusiveness of the courts of heaven,
but in their width and openness, shall we rejoice here-
after; not by the exclusiveness of any church or school
on earth, not by the equality of all human characters,
but by their inequalities; not by contraction within our
own circle, but by our patient endurance of things
beyond our narrow vision, ought we to rejoice now.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
83
XLI.
We smile at the narrowness of the English philoso-
pher who regarded Christianity as the completest de-
velopment of human wickedness, because he fixed his
mind on one particular doctrine sometimes preached in
its name. But this should be a solemn warning to us,
to see how far such a doctrine is one for which we our
selves have contended as essential to the faith. True
Christianity is beyond the reach of such attacks or such
defences. Those who have watched the effects of sun-
rise on the Alpine ranges, will remember the dark and
chill aspect of the wide landscape in the moment pre-
ceding the dawn. At last, there arose at once in the
western and the eastern heavens a color, a brightness,
a lightness-varying, diffused, indefinite, but still
spreading and brightening over the whole scene. Then,
"as in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," the
highest summits of the range of snow burst from pale
death into roseate life, and every slope and crest be-
came as clear and bright as before they had been dark
and dull; and meanwhile the same light was creeping
round the mists of the plain and the exhalations of the
lakes, and they too were touched by gold, and every
shape and form yielded to the returning glow. Such is
the image of the rise of true religion, and therefore.
also of true theology, shadowy, diffused, expansive as
the dawn, yet like the dawn striking with irresistible
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
force now here, now there, first on the highest intelli-
gences, then on the world at large, till at length the
whole atmosphere is suffused with its radiance, and the
shades of night have melted we hardly know how or
where.
XLII.
The revival of the studies of the ancient languages
and the vast impulse given to the progress of human
thought by the Reformation was itself a new manifesta-
tion of Christ, a new declaration of his union with
minds and classes of men who had before been deemed
to be without God in the world. It is a constant re-
minder, that in using to the utmost the resources of
science, in watching for light from whatever quarter, in
sifting and searching all that comes before us to the
very bottom, we are fulfilling one of the chief calls of
our religion, we are accomplishing the very will of the
Redeemer. Whatever is good science is good theology;
whatever is high morality and pure civilization is high
and pure religion.
The variety, the complexity, the diversity, the breadth
of the character of Christ and of his religion, is indeed
an expression of the universal omnipresence of God.
It is for us to bear in mind that this many-sidedness of
Christianity is a constant encouragement to hold fast
those particles of it which we already possess, and to
reach forward to whatever elements of it are still be-
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
83
yond it. Say not that Christianity has been exhausted;
say not that the hopes of Christianity have failed, nor
yet that they have been entirely fulfilled. "In our
Father's house are many mansions." In one or other
of these, each wandering soul may at last find its place,
here or hereafter.
XLIII.
Doubtless, in our imperfect state, the will of God can-
not be done entirely on earth as it is in heaven. Yet
still the thought of that state to which we all look for-
ward, helps us more clearly to understand what should
be the aim and object of all earthly combinations and
forms; whether of language, of government, or worship.
It is the spirit, not the letter, by the essential substance,
and not the accidental covering; by the better under-
standing of the meaning that lies beneath the words ;
by the better appreciation of unity amidst outward dif-
ferences; by the comparison not only of earthly things
with earthly, but of spiritual things with spiritual, with-
out respect of persons or nations, that the unity of
spirit, which is the unity of the blessed angels in heaven,
can ever be produced amongst churches or nations.
Much of the course of this world may be carried on by
colossal armies, and by blood and fire and sword, by
gigantic commerce, by daring assertion of authority, by
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
›
ceremonial observances, by dogmatic exclusiveness.
But there is a higher course, which is carried on by the
still, small voice of conscience; by the union of intel-
ligent minds; by spirit, not by matter; by reason, not
by force; by mind and heart, and not by external polity.
Each one is, in this sense, a king to himself. The
hosts which really govern the world are the thoughts
and consciences of men.
XLIV.
More dear in the sight of God and his angels than
any other conquest is the conquest of self, which each
man, with the help of heaven, can secure for himself.
We know that what we see are but the outskirts of
creation; that the power and the wisdom which rule
this vast universe must be beyond the reach, not only
of our understanding, but of our furthest speculation.
Many a one who has been perplexed by the uncertain-
ties and contentions of history, has been strengthed by
the certainty and the unity of science.
Whatever else the discoveries of modern science
teach us, they teach us this the marvellous complex-
ity and the unbroken order of the material world; they
indicate to us how vast is the treasure-house of resour-
ces by which the immortality of each separate spirit,
the inter-communion of spirit with spirit, and of all
with God, may be sustained in a higher world.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
87
·
Everything which enables us to see how the universe
is one whole; everything which shows that man is
bound by subtle links with all the other parts of crea-
tion; everything which shows us how many of the mis-
eries of the world of man, the wretchedness of improv-
idence, intemperance, and sensuality, are only breaches.
of the fixed rules of nature; everything which confirms
us in the belief that the revelations of the Infinite and
the Divine is not confined to a single race or church,
but pervades more or less, all the religious instincts of
mankind; everything which impresses upon us the con-
tinuity, the unity of the Divine and human, of the
sacred and the secular, brings us into the frame of
mind which the Bible and experience alike impress
upon us as needful for the reception of the first princi-
ples of true religion.
XLV.
(C
It may be hoped that if there have been times,
when (to use well-known words), our nerves were irri-
tated by trifles," there shall also be times when “great
events" and great thoughts "shall make us calm." I
would not unduly exaggerate the prospects of success,
or underrate the fears of failure in the attempt to attain
a higher and more spiritual theology, a more patriotic
and generous policy.
88
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
The circumstances around us may often seem dismal,
small, ignoble; the dwarfing, levelling, disturbing effect
of partisanship and false popularity, may seem almost
irresistible. The "rocks ahead" which Cassandra
foresees are too visible amongst the breakers not to fill
the stoutest heart with alarm. Even thus, those who
contend for long years in vain may reflect that the
greatness of the end for which they strive is worth the
bitterness of the disappointment.
But surely in the peculiar crisis of our age the game
is still in our hands. We see clearly the enterprise
before us. And when in that enterprise we consider
how a few additional grains of charity would make all
the difference from how many mistakes we should be
saved, by the simplest elements of common sense and
self-control — how much our heat would gain, by how
slight an accession of light, how doubly the value of
our light would be enhanced, by how slight an infusion.
of heat, by how slight an addition of sweetness what
mole-hills of prejudice which a breath of truth might
overturn, have been erected into what mountains of
difficulty — what a fund of conciliation lies wrapped up
in all larger views of science, of literature, and of the
Bible - what noble paths of practice remain to be
explored, unknown to former generations then we
may well turn to those fine lines of the Roman poet,
and take as our watchword, not the despairing words
j
K
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
89
of the vanquished Cato, but the exulting words of the
victorious Cæsar.
"I tremble not with terror, but with hope,
As the great day reveals its coming scope;
Never in earlier days, our hearts to cheer,
Have such bright gifts of heaven been brought so near.
Nor ever has been kept the aspiring soul
By space so narrow from so grand a goal.”
XLVI.
To feel that there is one Being supremely just and
wise, through whom all the trials of this mortal life can
be turned to our good; whose judgment is not in the
least degree affected by the struggles of party, or the
respect of persons, or the honor, or praise, or fashion-
of the world; who see things not as they seem to be,
but as they really are; to reverence this Supreme Per-
fection because it is the perfection of all that is noble,
generous, beautiful, wise and just, in what we know
among ourselves; to be content with nothing short of
this in our ideal, our image of God; to feel that in
growing like this ideal is our best happiness; that in
entirely resigning ourselves to His justice and mercy is
perfect peace this, or something like this—this, and
nothing less than this—is to love the Lord our God.
XLVII.
A strong religious imagination, a strong religious
+
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affection, may often be seen side by side with a n.ind
left altogether weak and uncultivated. A strong logical
belief may be seen unsoftened by the genial influence
of a loving heart, and a heaven-aspiring soul.
A strong
will and a powerful fancy may be seen side by side
with a reckless disregard of prudence and common
sense. Every o
Every one of these forms is but the half or the
quarter of religion. But God cannot be divided, he
is one God, not many. He must be served by all our
nature, not by parts of it. The intellect must seek
truth with undivided, fearless zeal; else we do not
serve God with our whole mind and understanding.
The bodily powers must be guarded and saved for the
healthy discharge of all that Providence requires of us
in our passage through life; else we do not serve him
with our whole strength. The affections must be kept
fresh and pure; else we do not serve him with our
whole heart. The conscience must not have stained
itself with secret sins, unworthy transactions, and false
pretences, else we do not serve him with our whole
soul. There was an old barbarian chief who, when he
was baptized, kept his right arm out of the water, that
he might still work his deeds of blood. That is the
likeness of the imperfect religion of many Christians.
That is what they did who, of old, in their zeal for re-
ligion, broke their plighted faith, did despite to their
natural affections, disregarded the laws of kinship and
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
91
country, and honor and mercy. It is this shutting up
of religion into one corner of our being which is the
cause why many good men are not better, why many
religious men have been so unwise, why the world
secins often more charitable than the church, why many
a saint has been untruthful, why many a faithful be-
liever has been selfish or cruel, why many an earnest
seeker after truth has been irreverent and undevout,
why many a generous temper has been coupled with
self-indulgence and coarseness. The true religion of
Jesus Christ our Saviour is that which penetrates, and
which receives all the warmth of the heart, and all the
elevation of the soul, and all the energies of the under-
standing, and all the strength of the will.
XLVIII.
It was observed by Coleridge that when a man is told
that religion and morality are summed up in the two
great commandments, he is ready to say, like one who
first beholds the sea,
"Is this the mighty ocean is this all?”
Yes, it is all; but what an all! We look out on that
vast expanse, with its boundless horizon, with its ever-
lasting succession of ebb and tide, and we might per-
haps ask:
What is this barren sea to us? How vague, how in-
definite, how broad, how monotonous! Yet look closer.
92
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
"
It is the scene on which sunlight and moonlight, cloud
and shadow, storm and calm, are forever playing. It
has been the chosen field for the enterprise, for the
faith, for the charity of mankind. It is the highway
for the union of nations, and the enlargement of
churches. It is the bulwark of freedom, and the home
of mighty fleets, and the nurse of swarming cities.
And so these two commandments. They seem at
first sight vacant, vague, and indefinite; but let us trust
ourselves to them, let us launch out upon them, let us
explore their innermost recesses, let us sound their
depths, and we shall find that they call forth all the arts
and appliances of Christian life; that they will carry us
round the world and beyond it.
XLIX.
Look at the visions in the Apocalypse, (Rev. xix: 11-
16) where the older language is worked up again in a
new form. Look at that vision of the heavenly warriors
following their heavenly Leader on white horses, as He
rides before them with His vesture dipped in blood.
Who are they? Who are those celestial champions
of Christendom who come in the thickest fray to help
those that have no helper? There are the martyrs for
the early Christian faith, who literally came with their
garments dyed in blood; the advanced guard, the for-
lorn hope, who fought their way through the passes of
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
93
――――――
Edom for us and for themselves, witnesses to the
sacredness of conscience, and to the value of a noble
and honorable death. There, too, are the martyrs of
truth and science, who, in solitary study, misunderstood,
neglected, and unrequited, have trodden the wine-press
of knowledge alone; or who, like the earliest explorers
and discoverers labored that other men might enter into
their labors, and enjoy the Land of Promise which they
only saw in the far futurity, as from the top of Pisgah.
There, too, are the firm companions and friends of our
youth and age-faithful through good report and evil,
who appear at the right moment, like guardian angels
at our side, warding off temptation and misfortune, en-
couraging us when there was no one else to encourage,
warning us when there was no one else to warn, advis-
ing us in spite of ourselves, standing by us when the
world turned against us. There, also, is the young boy
or the young man, at school or college, doing what he
knows to be right, avoiding what he knows to be wrong,
remembering what he has learned at home, though far
away. There, too, are the pure-minded and high-spir-
ited amongst men, who stand perhaps alone in a frivo-
lous, selfish circle, yet still holding their own against
the ridicule of foolish enemies, or the flattery of false
friends determined to work, though their neighbors
are idle; to be frugal, though those around are extrav-
agant; to be truthful, pure, and temperate, though
those around are treacherous and self-indulgent.
94
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
A friend of mine accomplished, a few years since,
with singular courage, the rare and difficult task of as-
cending Mount Ararat. Two days after he had come
down, his companion explained to an Armenian Archim
andrite at the foot of the mountain what my friend had
done. The venerable man sweetly smiled, and said ·
"It is impossible."
(6
L.
But," said the interpreter," this traveller has been
up and has returned."
66
No,” said the Archimandrite, “no one has ever as-
cended, and no one ever will ascend Mount Ararat."
This belief in the impossibility of what has been
done is uncommon, but the belief in the impossibility of
what may be done is very common. It might have
been thought impossible that there should have been
discovered a North America as well as a South Amer-
ica. Yet it was discovered by a Venetian seaman who
sailed from the harbor of Bristol.
It was thought that no steamer could ever cross the
Atlantic. Dr. Lardner proved to demonstration that
such an event could never take place; and the late
Lord Derby said that, of the first steamer which crossed,
he would engage to swallow the boiler. Yet such a
steamer started from the docks of Bristol, and safely
reached New York.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
95
It might have been thought that there was something
impossible in the idea of a beneficent institution, living
from hand to mouth, supported by the indomitable
faith of one man, living on Providence. Yet this also
has been fulfilled by George Müller, on Ashley Down.
It might have been thought impossible that the rough
lads of Kingswood should ever be reformed, or that the
women of India should ever be moulded by European
influences. Yet this also was accomplished in our own
day, by the faith and energy of a wise and gentle
woman, dear to Bristol - Mary Carpenter.
All these discoverers have ascended Mount Ararat,
and though the most incredulous Archimandrite may
shake his head and sweetly smile, and say that it can-
not be, yet these things, great and small, have been
achieved, and achieved in safety.
This is one of the best fruits of the education of after
life. It encourages the hope that impossibilities may
become not only possibilities but actualities.
There are still many voyages to be made, still much
wealth to be expended, still new Ararats to be reached.
We are all of us Merchant Venturers—we all of us
must venture something, if we would leave something
worth living for, nay, if we would have something to
look forward to hereafter. Nil desperandum must be
written, as in the porch of the Redcliffe church, so over
the entrance of every stage of our existence.
96
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
LI.
In the transformation of opinion which is impercepti-
bly affecting all our conceptions of the future state, and
in the perplexities and doubts which this transformation
excites, the idea that comes with the most solid force
and abiding comfort to the foreground is the belief that
the whole of our human existence is an education
not merely, as Bishop Butler said, a probation for the
future, but an education which shall reach into the
future.
M
The possibilities that overcame the impossibilities
in our actual experience show us that there may be yet
greater possibilities which shall overcome the yet more
formidable impossibilities lying beyond our experiences.
beyond our sight, beyond the last great change of all.
Through all these changes, and towards that unseen
goal, in the words of Mr. Burke, “let us pass on —for
d's sake, let us pass on!"
LII.
Egypt was to Abraham — to the Jewish people-to
the whole course of the Old Testament, what the world,
with all its interests, and pursuits, and enjoyments is to
us. It was the parent of civilization, of art, of learn-
ing, of royal power, of vast armies. The very names
which we still use for the paper on which we write, for
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
C7
the sciences of medicine and chemistry, are derived
from the natural products and from the old religion of
Egypt.
We might think, perhaps, that the Bible would take
no account of such a country that it would have
seemed too much belonging to this earth, and the
things of this earth. Not so; from first to last, this
n.arvellous couutry, with all its manifold interests, is
regarded as the home and the refuge of the chosen
iace.
Hither came Abraham, as the extreme goal of his
long travels, from Chaldea southwards; here Joseph
ruled, as viceroy; here Jacob and his descendants set-
tled as in their second home, for several generations;
here Moses became "learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians." From the customs and laws, and arts of
the Egyptians, many of the customs, laws and arts of
the Isralites were borrowed. Here, in the last days of
the Bible history, the Holy Family found a refuge. On
these scenes, for a moment, even though in unconscious
infancy, alone of any Gentile country, the eyes of our
Redeemer rested. From the philosophy which flour-
ished at Alexandria came the first philosophy of the
Christian church. This, then, is one main lesson which
the Bible teaches us by the stress laid on Egypt. It
tells us that we may lawfully use the world and its en-
joyments that the world is acknowledged by true
religion, as well as by our own natural instincts, to be c
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
beautiful, a glorious, and, in this respect, a good and
useful world. In it our lot is cast. What was permit-
ted as an innocent refreshment to Abraham; what was
enjoined as a sacred duty on Moses and Apollos; what
was consecrated by the presence of God our Saviour,
we too may enjoy and admire and use. Power, and
learning, and civilization, and art may all minister now,
as they did then, to the advancement of the welfare of
man and the glory of God.
LIII.
The meeting of Abraham and Pharaoh — the contact
of Egypt and the Bible-remind us forcibly that there
is something better and higher even than the most glo-
rious, or the most luxurious, or the most powerful, or
the most interesting sights and scenes of the world,
even at its highest pitch, here or elsewhere.
Is
Whose name or history is now best remembered?
it that of Pharaoh, or of the old Egyptian nation? No.
It is the name of the Shepherd, as he must have
seemed, who came to seek his fortunes here, as a stran-
ger and sojourner. Much or little as rich or poor may
know or care about Egypt, we all know and care about
Abraham. It is his visit, and the visit of his descend-
ants, that gives to Egypt its most universal interest.
He comes into contact with Egypt, with the world;
he uses it, he enjoys it. It is but one of the halting
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
99
places in his life. He falls for a moment under its
darker influences; for a moment he yields to the fear of
man, and to the temptation of unworthy deceit. But
in the next moment he is himself again. He is what
we see him in the chapter which describes the offering
of Isaac; willing to sacrifice whatever is nearest and
dearest to the call of God and of duty.
Heathen traditions represent him as teaching the
Egyptians the astronomy that he brought with him from
Chaldea; or as reconciling their theological and politi-
cal disputes. But this is not that for which he is re-
membered in the Bible and by mankind at large. It is
as the Friend of God and as the Father of the Faithful.
It is not for those points which distinguish him from
the rest of mankind, but for those points which we may
all have in common with him.
LIV.
"Thou shalt not make to thyself any likeness of
anything that is in the heaven above, or in the earth
beneath or in the water under the earth." We cannot
doubt that this, to the Israelites, meant that they were
not to make to themselves graven images of the hawk
and the ibis that fly through the heavens, or the croco-
dile and the fish that swim in the Nile, or the serpent
that creeps in the caves of the earth, or the lion, the
jackal, and the wolf, that prowls on the rocky hills.
100
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
These were the forms under which, at that time of the
world, the human mind loved to represent the Divine
nature. Perhaps these were the best figures that could
be used in those early ages; and we may still learn
something from seeing how, out of those earthly shapes,
they drew lessons of that which is heavenly and divine
Even to us the animal creation, with all its manifold
instincts and powers, is still, if we rightly reflect, a
constant revelation of the Divine mind, of which it is
the noble workmanship.
But there is a more excellent way of thinking of God,
which these imperfect and strange representations shut
out from us; and that is, the way which was opened to
us, first through Moses, and then through Christ. God
is a Spirit; God is truth, God is justice, God is purity,
God is love. Whenever we fancy that he can pass over
or be pleased with anything that is untrue, or unjust, or
impure, or unlovely, we fall back into worse than the
old Egyptian darkness. In proportion as we value and
revere truth and justice and purity and loving-kindness,
in that proportion we are worthy of the new religion of
the new world, to which, by God's grace, we belong.
LV.
A remarkable feature of Lake Gennesaret must al-
ways have been the concentration of varied life and
activity in a basin so closely surrounded with desert
Anou
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
IOI
solitudes. It was those "desert places," thus close at
hand, on the table-lands, or in the ravines of the east-
ern and western ranges which seem to be classed
under the common name of "the mountain that gave
the opportunity of retirement for rest or prayer."
"Rising up early in the morning while it was yet dark,"
or "passing over to the other side in a boat," He
sought those solitudes, sometimes alone, sometimes
with his disciples. The lake in this double aspect
is thus a reflex of that union of energy and rest,
of active labor and of deep devotion, which is the
essence of Christianity, as it is of the life of him in
whom that union was first taught and shown.
LVI.
J
The story of Joseph is, perhaps, of all the stories in
the Old Testament, the one which carries us back to
our childhood, both from the interest we felt in it as
children, and from the true picture of family life which
it presents.
How like how very like - to the incidents of
every household is the story of the brothers; of dif-
ferent characters thrown together in the same house
Judah, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Joseph, Benjamin, the
father and mother, Jacob and his lost Rachel !
It brings before us the way in which the greatest
blessings for this life and the next depend on the keep
M
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬⭑
102
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
ing up of family love, pure and fresh, as when the pres-
ervation and fitting education of the Chosen People
depended on that touching generosity and brotherly
affection which no distance of time, no new customs,
no long sojourn in a strange land, could extinguish in
the heart of Joseph.
Joseph's heart yearned upon his brother." "Joseph
could not refrain himself before all them that stood by
him, and there stood no man with Joseph when he
made himself known unto his brethren,"
66
And he wept aloud, and he said, "I am Joseph
doth my father yet live?"
"And he fell upon his
brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept
upon his neck Moreover he kissed all his brethren,
and wept upon them; and after that, his brethren
talked with him."
Surely no long, familiar use, no antiquity of Egyptian
or Oriental manners, can ever blind us to the deep feel-
ing of that pathetic scene of that reunion of all the
scattered members of the family in one undivided
embrace.
LVII.
HOME, the scenes, the thoughts, the warnings, the
pleasures of home-the bonds of lasting and cordial.
affection which reach across seas and continents, and
keep us in spirit close to those who in bodily presence.
are far away — the images of old days and childlike
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
103
recollections that visit us in dreams, and soothe us in
sorrow, and calm us in joy - these are amongst God's
best blessings to his creatures, these are amongst the
best safeguards he has given us to protect us against
new difficulties, strange temptations, corrupting customs.
They are the blessings which in different ways we all
have in common. Everyone of us has a home some-
where, or in some degree, father, or mother, or brother,
or sister, or wife, or child. Every one has such an one,
far away, it may be, but ever present in thought to
us, to whom our well-being is inestimably precious;
whose happiness is or ought to be, inestimably precious
to us; to whom no joy is so great as the joy of know-
ing that we are doing what is right; to whom no grief
would be so great as the grief of knowing that we had
been doing what was wrong. Of this sacred claim
upon us, the Bible constantly reminds us.
It reminds us of what this claim is, even as regards
only this world; but it reminds us also that it is a bond
which reaches beyond this world. Those who have
passed out of the family circle into the world beyond
the grave are, in God's sight, and before our own
hearts, still one with us. Whosoever it be that we have
so lost (again I repeat each one of those dear and sa-
cred names as they may apply to each of us) — wife or
child, or brother, or sister, or mother, or father — they
still call upon us through them, by what we cherish and
know of them, to remember that their wishes and their
104
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
hopes for us are not buried in their graves, but will
continue as long as their own immortal souls. Their
highest desires now become sacred duties for us who
remain. The very mention and thought of their names
draw us upward and heavenward. Home is on earth,
the best likeness of heaven; and heaven is that last
and best home, in which, when the journey of life is
over, Joseph and his brethren, Jacob and his sons, Ra-
chel and her children, shall meet to part no more.
LVIII.
The disciples had returned to "their own homes " and
engaged in their usual occupations; Peter, and James
and John were again as they had been before in years
past, in their two boats on the lake, throwing in nets to
catch the fish which swam in its waters. Four of their
friends were with them two whose names are not
recorded; the other two, Thomas, known as the Twin
Brother, and Nathanael, from the village of Cana of
Galilee. They were once more at their common work.
The morning had just broken over the dark eastern
hills. The sun shone on the lake and on the tops of
the western mountains. On the shore of the sea -we
know not the exact spot, but somewhere along the
shelving beach-there stood a figure which arrested
their attention. They gazed but knew not who it was.
They heard a voice calling to them, "Children have ye
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
105
any food?" They obeyed the advice of the unknown
stranger, and then came the rush of fishes into the
net which at once recalled to the disciple who knew
his Master best, the like scene on the same waters
three years before:
"The disciple whom Jesus loved" turned to Peter,
and said: "It is the Lord."
Let me pause for a moment to call to mind how like
this is to what occurs in human life. These appear-
ances of Christ after his Resurrection seem to be told
to us as intimations of what still continues in our rela-
tions towards him.
"He is not here he is risen." He even then had
ceased to be to his disciples as he had been before, he
went and came suddenly-hardly known by them at
first, then known by some gesture, some word, some
old association. Is
Is it not so with us? We like the
apostles are engaged in our common occupations. We
hear a voice from the distance. At first it seems to us
only some event or incident of our ordinary life. Sud-
denly, we see, we hear in it the call of Christ the call
of God himself, calling us to higher thoughts. A fa-
miliar recollection of old days sweeps across us, to im-
press it more firmly upon us; and even in our engage-
ments, our amusements, we recognize the hand, the
voice of our merciful Saviour, and are able to say “It
is the Lord."
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
LIX.
"The Mind of Christ." The mind, the character of
Christ, that which he was and is, in that character
which is so wonderfully described to us in the Gospels
to have this in any degree, is what makes a man a
Christian; not to have it, is to make all other Christian
institutions and opinions almost worse than useless.
To enter into the recesses of this Divine character,
more holy than the most revered of earthly shrines; to
impress this mind upon ourselves; to carry away some
portion of it home for our daily use, more sacred than
the most sacred relics this ought to be the object of
all that we see as we traverse the scenes of his earthly
life.
To dwell on every part of that character is, within
these short limits, impossible. Let me take that part
which is brought prominently to view, in the story of
the woman of Samaria.
By the well which, ages ago, the Patriarch Jacob had
in excess of prudence, dug for his flocks, in the noble.
corn-fields which he had bought for his favorite son
Joseph, He who was passing from Judea through Sama-
ria into Galilee, "sat," in the midday, or the evening,
'wearied" by the well. His followers had gone to
uy provisions for his meal in the city up the valley;
And he sat there, weary and thirsty and alone, and saw
woman coming to draw water from the well, and
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
107
made that simple request so natural to all of us
"Give me to drink."
It is one of those touches of fellow-feeling with us
which brings Him so near to us, and us to him, even in
bodily presence. The woman who came was a Samari-
tan, a member of that ancient sect which still lingers
on the spot. To her, a stranger a heretic, as she
was in the eyes of a Jew-He promised the gift of the
water which springs up from no earthly well; the water
of life, which rises within the depths of the human soul,
and refreshes it with holy thoughts, and good resolu-
tions, and pure feelings, as we pass through this dreary
world, bearing each our heavy burden as best we may.
How like to all that he said and did- how unlike,
alas! to so much that we say and do.
The tender compassion to one who was disliked and
despised by His own countrymen · the boundless toler-
ation of the differences that parted them the forbear-
ance towards her hardness and narrowness,
and
incapacity of understanding what he said the willing-
ness to enter into a character and a life quite different
from his own the care and anxiety to do and say
something for her good. Which of us is there who
does not need some portion of that spirit, will not feel
rising within himself something of that stream of living
water, which shall refresh himself and those around
him, and leave a green spot behind, wherever he treads
in the hard, dry, barren journey of our mortal life.
Mar
Madd
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
The conversation proceeds. How exactly it is in
conformity with human nature and with Divine wisdom.
He reads the secret of her heart. He touches her own
especial fault. She starts aside —she will not have
this mentioned. No. This is just what we all refuse
to have touched. We fly, as she did, to some general
topic: "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet."
There was the vexed question of doctrine between the
Samaritans and the Jews. They worshipped, as they
worship still, on Mount Gerizim. To the Jews, Jerusa-
lem was, as it still is, the most holy place. It was out
of this question, so naturally suggested by the scenery
around him that there was brought out that great truth
which has changed the face of religion all over the
world. He would not give his decision in favor either
of Jews or Samaritans, or, if he did, it was but in pass-
ing. He would not entangle himself with peculiar
doctrines of either of the contending sects. But he
gave them what was best for both of them, and is still
the best for us. Gerizim and Zion before his prophetic
gaze melted into one.
As He looked out on the wide fields of waving corn
which lay before Him, His eye kindled, and His heart
swelled (so that His disciples feared to speak to Him),
and He saw the figure of the new harvest of the world—
of many sects and of many nations that was to be
gathered in with the fall of the old religion of times.
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
109
and places, and the new spiritual worship, which was to
fulfil and embrace the old.
LX.
God is a Spirit. Everywhere, at Jerusalen or Geri-
zim, in Palestine, in England, in church or in chapel, in
house or in tent, He accepts the service of His faithful
worshippers. And what is that worship? He expresses
it in two words, "Spirit" and "Truth." First, we must
offer our service, be it short or long, small or great,
with a feeling of what we are about with a sense of
the meaning, of the seriousness, of the awfulness, of
what we are saying. We must pray with energy, with
understanding, with spirit. If we have this feeling,
then our words, our posture, our acts will become rever-
ential. If not, we shall be still far away from God,
however near to Him we may be by His ordinances, by
His church, by outward appearance.
"Truth"- this is the new grace which Christ has con-
secrated. 'Love of truth, sincerity"— that our words
in prayer shall express what we really want to have
granted that our lives shall follow in some degree
upon our prayers; that when we call ourselves servants
of God and of Christ, we shall be thinking of doing
what is pleasing in His sight, instead of pleasing only
our own fancies, or inclinations, or appetites, or ease;
this is the true worship which He needs.
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
LXI.
What Christ was in His death, He was in His life.
What He was in His life, He was in His death. And
if we wish to know the spirit which pervades both, we
cannot do so better than by seeing what we may call
the text of His first sermon at Nazareth. He was in
the synagogue. The roll of the Hebrew Scriptures
was handed to Him. He unrolled it. His former
friends and acquaintances fixed their eyes upon Him to
see what he would say. And what were the words
which he chose? They were these:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath
sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver-
ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord."
What He said on this text is not described; we are
only told that they "marvelled at the gracious words
that proceeded out of His mouth." But what those
gracious words were we can well see from the words of
the passage itself.
،،
"The Spirit of the Lord was upon Him." First, to
preach the gospel to the poor," the glad tidings of
God's love to the poor, the humble classes, the neg-
lected classes, the dangerous classes, the friendless, the
oppressed, the unthought-for, the uncared-for.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
III
Again, the Spirit of God was upon Him "to heal the
broken-hearted;" to heal, as a good physician heals,
not with one medicine, but with all the various med-
icines and remedies which Infinite wisdom possesses,
all the fractures, and diseases, and infirmities of our
poor human hearts. There is not a weakness, there is
not a sorrow, there is not a grievance, for which the
love of God, as seen in the life and death of Christ,
does not offer some remedy. He has not overlooked
He remembers us.
us.
He is with us.
Yet again, the Spirit of God was upon Him "to
preach deliverance to the captive." Whatever be the
evil habit, or the inveterate prejudice, or the master
passion, or the long indulgence, which weighs upon us
like a bondage, He feels for us and will do his ut-
most to set us free to set at liberty those that are
cramped and bruised and confined by the chain of their
sins, their weakness, their misfortunes, their condition
in life, their difficulties, their responsibilities, their want.
of responsibilities, their employments, their want of
employments.
And lastly, the Spirit of God was upon Him "to give
sight to the blind." How few of us there are who know
our failings, who see into our hearts, who know what is
really good for us! That is the knowledge which the
thought of Christ's death is likely to give us. That is
the truth which, above all other truths, is likely to set
us free. "Lord, that I may receive my sight," is the
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
prayer which each of us may offer up for our spiritual
state, as the poor man whom He met at Jericho did for
his bodily sight.
LXII.
Whatever good is to be done in the world, even
though it is God himself who does it, cannot be done
without an effort― a preparation-a sacrifice. So it was
especially in the death of Christ-so it was in his whole
life. His whole life from the time that he grew up
(6 as a
tender plant," in the seclusion of his home at Nazareth,
to the hour when he died at Jerusalem, was one long
effort - one long struggle against misunderstanding, op-
position, scorn, hatred, hardship, pain. He had doubt-
less his happy and gentler hours we must not forget
them. He had his friends at Bethany, his apostles who
hung upon his lips, his mother who followed him in
thought and mind wherever he went. But here
amongst his own people, he met with angry opposition
and jealousy, he had to bear the hardships of toil and
labor, like any other Nazarene artisan. He had here
by a silent preparation of thirty years, to make himself
ready for the work which lay before him. He had to
endure the heat and the cold, the burning sun and the
stormy rain of his native hills and valleys. "The
foxes" of the plain of Esdrælon "have holes, the
birds" of the Galilean forests "have their nests," but
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
113
he had often "not where to lay his head." And in
Jerusalem, though there were momentary bursts of
enthusiasm in his behalf, yet he came so directly across
the interests, the fears, the pleasures, and the prejudices.
of those who there ruled and taught, that at last it cost
him his life. By no less a sacrifice could the world be
redeemed, by no less a struggle could his work be
finished.
Once the name of " Christian," of "Nazarine," was
an offence in the eyes of the world; now it is a glory.
But we cannot have the glory without the labor which
it involves. To hear his words, and to do them, to
hear of his death and to follow in the path of his suf-
ferings this and this only, as he himself has told us,
is to build our house, the house of our life, of our faith,
of our happiness, upon a rock; a rock which will grow
firmer and stronger the more we build upon it, and the
more we have to bear.
LXIII.
Saul was on his way from Jerusalem. He "came
near Damascus we know not how near, we know
not by which approach. It was noon; the Syrian sun
was bright in the heavens; he was charged with a mis-
sion, which admitted of no delay in his eyes that of
destroying the Christians in Damascus, with a savage
zeal like to that which in our own days has laid waste
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the same city. In one moment, his career was arrested
by the heavenly vision which ended in the great act
which we call his "conversion." It is an instance
such as we find still occurring but rarely, of a sudden
conversion. Yet "a conversion," that is, "a turning
round" from bad to good, from good to better, is neces-
sary for us all.
We are sometimes inclined to think that our charac-
ters once formed, can never be changed. This is not
true; at least it is only half true. Our natural disposi-
tions, our natural faculties, these do very rarely change;
but the direction that they take can be changed; and
the difference between their upward and their down-
ward direction is the difference effected by anything
which deserves the name of conversion, whether sudden,
as in the case of St. Paul, or gradual, as with most of
us. He in great measure, remained the same as he was
before he retained his zeal, his power, his energy;
but the turn which was given to those natural qualities,
by his conversion on the road to Damascus, gave a
turn to his whole life, and through him, a turn to the
life of the whole world. He approached Damascus, a
furious persecutor; he entered it a humble penitent;
he left it a great Apostle. So it is with us. Much
about us never will be changed, never need be changed,
never can be changed; but much about us can be
changed, ought to be changed, and, with God's good
help, will be changed. We are all on the road to some
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
115
end or object of our pursuits. To every one of us, as
to St. Paul, that end or object will at last appear in a
light totally different from what we now expect; and on
that changed light may depend our exceeding happiness,
or our exceeding misery, our great usefulness or our
utter uselessness in life.
LXIV.
Often and often we think that we are all right; that
no one can find fault with us; that those whom we
neglect, or despise, or set aside, are not worth consid-
ering for a moment. And yet all the while, as God
sees us, as others see us, we are injuring the very
cause we wish to promote; those of whom we think so
little may be the very likenesses and representatives to
us of God and Christ himself. In injuring them, in
despising them, we may be doing the most wide-spread
mischief, we may be defying God, we may be even
destroying our own souls. In helping them, in consid-
ering them, we are serving Christ himself.
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'
LXV.
"The righteous," says the Psalmist, "shall flourish
like a palm tree." That is one part of his life; to be
"
116
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
upright, graceful, gentle, like that most beautiful of
oriental trees. But there is another quality added ·
"He shall spread abroad like a cedar in Libanus."
That is, his character shall be sturdy, solid, broad; he
shall protect others, as well as himself; he shall sup-
port the branches of the weaker trees around him; he
shall cover a vast surface of the earth with his shadow;
he shall grow, and spread, and endure; he and his
works shall make the place where he was planted mem-
orable for future times.
It has been well said twice over by the most powerful
delineator of human character (with one exception)
ever produced by our country, that prayer to the Al-
mighty Searcher of Hearts is the best check to murmurs
against Providence, or to the inroad of worldly pas-
sions, because nothing else brings before us so strongly
their inconsistency and unreasonableness.
We shall find it twice as difficult to fall into sin, if
we have prayed against it that very morning, or if we
thank God for having kept it from us that very evening.
It is the best means of gaining strength and refresh-
ment, and courage and self-denial for the day. It is
the best means of gaining content, and tranquillity, and
rest for the night; for it brings us, as nothing else can
bring us, into the presence of Him who is the source of
all these things, and who gives them freely to those
who truly and sincerely ask for them. We may “ask
for them without caring to have them; but that is not
در
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
117
really "asking.” We may "seek," but without lifting
up our little finger to get what we seek; but that is not
really "seeking." We may "knock,” but so feebly and
irresolutely that no sound can be heard within or with-
out; that is not really to knock. But “ask
But "ask" distinctly,
and with understanding; "seek" earnestly and delib-
erately; “knock" eagerly and pertinaciously; and in
some way or other, depend upon it, we shall be
answered.
LXVI.
I do not wish to lay undue stress on any one of the
springs of our moral strength. Like the sacred river of
the Holy Land, so also the river of our spiritual life has
many sources, many springs, unrecognized by man, but
recognized by God.
All manner of good deeds, good examples, religious
forms and institutions—all these, in their different
ways, go to swell the current of our good thoughts.
But still to us as Christians, there are two sources, two
springs more especially sacred and important; and
these are the fountains of morning and evening prayer.
We acknowledge the duty, we have learned it from
our earliest years; the very practice carries us back to
the best days of our childhood. Once lose the habit,
and it may be hard to begin again; but once get a firm
hold of it, and you will feel that to have left it off, for
a single morning or a single evening, is like dropping
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
one of your daily employments, like striking off one of
your supplies of daily strength, like throwing away one
of your best opportunities of being what a true Cliris-
tian ought to be and wishes to be.
LXVII.
Always, in this life, bear about the remembrance of
the next. Every event, public or private, that befalls
us, may be turned, by our own care or our own neglect
to our salvation or our ruin. For every blessing, for
every sorrow, for every responsibility which we have
had, God will at last call us to account. The more we
can be raised above the petty vexations and pleasures
of this world into the Eternal Life to come, the more
shall we be prepared to enter into that Eternal Life
whenever God shall please to call us hence.
LXVIII.
The three Epistles of St. John contain many precepts
and many doctrines. But there is one doctrine and one
precept which they contain more than any other, and
which, according to tradition, he repeated over and over
again in the market place of Ephesus, when he was so
old that he could say nothing else, and that is:
"Little children, love one another.”
"This," he said to those who complained of hearing
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
119
nothing else, "this is the substance of the gospel. If
you do this, I have nothing further to teach you."
Love one another. What he meant was, that this is
the paramount and crowning duty of the Christian be-
liever. He did not say, as many Christians have said
since, "Agree with one another in doctrine." He did
not say, as many Christians have said,
"Hate one
another and kill one another." He did not say, “Flat-
ter one another, indulge one another." He did not
"Teach one another, inform one another."
What he did urge was that difficult but necessary grace,
"Love one another." That is, Love one another in
spite of your differences, in spite of your faults; do
what you can to serve each other, to lighten each
other's trials, and inconveniences, and burdens; above
all, if we may turn the precept into its most practical
form, Make the best of one another.
even say,
"Make the best of one another," he said to the
churches of his own time, and he would say to the
churches of our time, "Make the most of what there
is good." It is very easy to do the reverse, and to make
the most of what there is evil, absurd, erroneous. By
so doing, we shall have no difficulty in rendering bitter-
ness more bitter, and estrangements between nations
and nations, and Christians and Christians more wide,
and hatreds and strifes more abundant, and errors
more extreme.
120
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
But we shall not be fulfilling the command of Christ
nor of His beloved disciple. No doubt justice and
truth require that we should express our abhorrence of
folly, and error, and sin. But still, by making the most
of what there is good, that which is bad will be most
likely to disappear.
Nothing drives out darkness so much as light; noth-
ing overcomes evil so much as good. No weapon of
controversy, or argument, or opposition, is so effectual
as when our adversary sees that we see and admire
what there is in him that is good, and just, and right,
and true.
"Make the best of one another." So also he said
to the old, and middle-aged, and young who crowded
round him as he was sinking into his grave, under the
experience of a hundred eventful years; and so also he
still says to us as individuals, in all the relations of
life.
Here again we may, if we choose, make the worst of
one another. Everyone has his weak points; everyone
has his faults; we may make the worst of these; we
may fix our attention constantly upon these. It is a
very easy task; and by so doing we shall make the
burden of life unendurable, and turn friends into ene-
mies, and provoke strife, hatred, heartburnings, wher-
ever we go, and cut off from ourselves one of the chief
sources of happiness, and goodness, and usefulness.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
121
But we may also make the best of one another. We
may forgive, even as we hope to be forgiven. We may
put ourselves in the place of others, and ask what we
should wish to be done to us, and thought of us, were
we in their place. By fixing our attention on their
good qualities, we shall rise to their level as surely as,
by fixing our attention on their bad qualities, we shall
sink below their level. By loving whatever is lovable
in those around us, love will flow back from them to
us, and life will become a pleasure instead of a pain;
and earth will become like Heaven; and we, if God so
please, shall become not unworthy followers of Him
whose name is Love.
LXIX.
One lesson of the apostle Paul's life and doctrine, is
his deep humility.
66
By the grace of God I am what I am.”
"I am the least of the apostles, that am not worthy
to be called an apostle.”
It was not that he did not know how great were his
gifts; but still he had behind and within a deep-seated
feeling of his own shortcomings in times past and
present, of his own profound unworthiness before God,
of his constant dependence on the help of others, and,
above all, on the help of God.
This was a feeling which the Gentile world little ap-
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
preciated, but it is a feeling which lies at the bottom of
all true Christian excellence. To be humble; to be
willing to hear of our faults, and to have them cor-
rected; to know that we have that within us which
needs to be constantly forgiven; to feel that we are
always needing the help of One greater than ourselves
to lead us right; not merely to say that we are miser-
able sinners, like all the rest of the world, but to ac-
knowledge some special miserable sin of which we have
been guilty on one special year and day, and in which
we feel that we are guilty as others are not guilty ; to
be on the watch for every opportunity of improvement,
and growth in goodness and wisdom this is indeed
the first beginning of a holy and a happy life.
LXX.
The Spirit of Christ. This is what we have to ask
and to imitate; not the mere outward likeness, but the
spirit, the intention of His actions, is what He wishes
to give us, and what we must earnestly seek for.
Though He was poor, whereas we may be rich; though
He went about teaching, whereas we perhaps never
teach at all; though He lived and died in one small
country ages ago, whilst we have traversed many
countries and live in times wholly different, yet we still
may be like Him; we still may be in communion with
Him, because what we aim at is the mind, the soul, the
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
123
spirit which breathed through all His life, and which
can be shared in a measure by every one of us. This
is the best use of this sense of the word; but it is use-
ful as a guide of life generally. To this end must we
always distinguish between the spirit and the letter,
and see how the spirit is always more important than
the letter.
Many difficulties in the Bible which perplex us when
we look only at the mere letter, vanish away when we
look at the general spirit. Many dispensations of
Providence, which seem grievous to be borne, become
light when, from the mere letter and fact which kill, we
can feel through them the gracious spirit that gives life
and strength and healing to what in itself is dark and
mournful.
And in our own hearts, when we pray for the spirit
of Christ to enlighten us, what we pray for is that He
will enlighten and purify not only our outward acts, but
the innermost springs of our inmost mind, and con-
science, and spirit. Through our spirits only can God
now speak to us as a spirit. It is to our spiritual life
that we must pay heed, if we wish not to be cut off
from Him.
LXXI.
As is the fresh breeze to a ship becalmed at sea, fill-
ing her sails, and driving her onwards in spite of her
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
self, so is the Spirit of God and of Christ to the torpid,
languid human soul, which will not be roused except
by a power greater and higher than itself.
As is the fresh air to a close, infected room, so is the
keen, invigorating breeze from the throne of God,
which pours into the narrow chamber of the heart,
stuffed with the prejudices, and passions, and fancies of
our own little circle, of our own little thoughts, whose
doors have never been opened to new ideas, or bright
feelings, whose windows have been closed against all
wider and higher views.
Such was the " Spirit of the Lord," which “came "
on the heroes and saints of the old dispensation
Gideon, Samson, and David -- and filled them with
strength for the battle.
Such was the "rushing mighty wind" in the Chris-
tian church, which, from the day of Pentecost onwards,
swept through the dead, dry bones of the ancient
world, and roused them to life.
Such was the spirit of those old Christian knights,
who made it the business of their lives to defend with
a soldier's courage and fidelity the weak, the suffering,
and the oppressed everywhere.
Such, above all, was the soldier-like spirit of Him
who was the Captain of our salvation, who fought to
the last with unabated, unshrinking courage His battle,
our battle, the battle of the whole world, against sin,
and folly, and death.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
125
Oh, for one spark of this soldier-like spirit in the
weak and wavering moments of our daily course.
Oh, for one breath of this divine atmosphere of the
spirit to brace our nerves, and enliven our sluggish,
sinking hearts, and chase away the sultry oppression
that weighs us down in the great struggles of life!
Oh, for one blast of that rushing mighty wind, to
drive us with irresistible force cver wave after wave of
this troublesome world, till we come to the haven where
we would be !
LXXII.
Often wisdom and religion have been parted from
each other, and religious zeal and common sense have
regarded each other with suspicion. But, in fact, they
are most nearly allied. Common sense, discretion,
judgment, are high Christian graces. They are God's
gifts, to enable us to do the work which is set before
us. To be able to see the truth, and to discern the
false from the true, and to wish to know the truth
this is a gift which is needed by the highest philoso-
pher; but it is needed also by the humblest man or
youth that has to make his way in life, and to serve his
God and his country faithfully and truly. And of all
wisdom, of all judgment, the best source is the fear of
the Lord.
Wickedness is in itself folly-sheer, miserable folly.
Goodness is in itself wisdom, because it gives a straight
126
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
forward, independent, fearless judgment, when many
abler or more learned men, as the world thinks them,
are led astray by interest, or selfishness, or jealousy, or
suspicion.
Christ, who is "our righteousness, and sanctification,
and redemption," is also, as the apostle tells us, and as
we see from His own words, which He spake as never
man spake, " our wisdom." Let us seek His own spirit
from Him, and that which He had without measure He
will, in some measure, if we persevere, freely give to
the humblest of His followers.
LXXIII.
The statutes of the Lord "rejoice the heart;" they
are "sweeter than honey and the honeycomb." There
are many perplexities, there are many cares, there are
many little vexations in life; what is it which in the
midst of these gives us a serene cheerfulness and gaiety
of heart? It is simply remembering that we have a
fixed law of duty, a fixed law of our condition of life,
which we must fulfil; unchangeable laws which will not
endure to be broken, which are our support in time of
adversity, no less surely than they are our restraint in
times of prosperity.
There is the hollow peace, the treacherous friendship,
the shifting favor, which the world gives, and which the
world, as it knows full well, can take away. But there
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
127
is, on the other hand, the firm peace of our own con-
sciences, which we cannot lose but through our own
fault. There is the faithful and steadfast friendship,
which can only be broken off by our own folly. There
is the all-sufficient, all-protecting grace of Christ, who
will continue to help us so long as we help ourselves,
and will never leave us nor forsake us unless we delib-
erately leave and forsake Him.
Oh, may we all of us, as time rolls on, have "the
right judgment" to see and to choose the better part,
which neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor
things to come, can take from us. As difficulties un-
foreseen close round us as temptations multiply, as
wrong constructions are put upon our actions, as
friends fall away, or familiar places become vacant
as losses and bereavements come thick upon us may
we have the grace to know and to feel the immeasur-
able difference between the false and miserable spirit
of this hard and selfish world, and the loving, discrim-
inating, generous, holy spirit of Christ, our merciful
Saviour, and of His faithful servants.
M
LXXIV.
There is an ancient tradition that Abraham, as he
stood on the hills above Damascus, was converted to
the true faith in one God, from the worship of the heav-
enly bodies, by observing that the stars, the moon, and
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the sun, however bright and glorious, at last sank, and
were succeeded by others.
" and so
66
I like not," he said, "those that set
turned to the one unchangeable Lord and Maker of
all.
This, but in a higher and more precise form, is the
force of the Psalmist's argument when he says:
""
I see that all things come to an end, but thy com-
mandment is exceeding broad."
He prefers and we ought to prefer
the com-
mandment, the revelation of God, not only because it
lasts longer than anything else, but because it includes,
and comprehends, and absorbs into itself all there is
good in everything else.
Every station in life, however great or however pros-
perous, has its drawbacks, its checks, its limits. It de-
pends on circumstances over which we have no control,
and which may crumble beneath our feet; it depends
on popular favor which may cease; on friends who may
fall away, on enemies who are watching for our over-
throw; on the chances of advancement; on the life,
or the health, or the caprice of ourselves or of others.
But moral or Christian greatness is "exceeding
broad." The basis on which it is built up is as broad
and firm as the conscience and heart of man, as the
grace and goodness of God. It cuts across all other
divisions of life. A good deed, a Christian feeling,
can cheer us when nothing else can cheer us; can
J
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
129
support us when nothing else can support us; can
give a zest to happiness which not to have is not to
have happiness at all; which in adversity can console.
us when every other kind of comfort is useless.
LXXV.
Even the most far-reaching intellect and its effects
come to an end at last. Look at those greatest of all
monuments of the mind of man books. How rap-
idly they come to an end! How often it happens that
the very characteristic which insures to a book its fame
for this year or this century, is the very cause of its
passing away in the next.
One book alone has outlasted many generations, in
all nations equally, and that is the Bible; and this is
because of its exceeding breadth - because it embraces
every variety and element of thought, and every phase
of society; above all, because it embodies in every
part the moral commandment of God, which endures
forever in Heaven, and which applies not to one con-
dition of life only, but to all.
LXXVI.
How often do we see those who are good and wise
up to a certain point, but beyond that we come, as it
were, to a precipice - they break down, as we say; we
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
5
wonder that, being so very good as they are, they are
not better; that, being as wise as they are, they are
not wiser.
exceeding broad ”
This is the true
One character there is which is so ،،
as to grasp and overlap all others.
sign of the Divinity of the character of Christ. It is
the personification not of one part only, but of the
whole of the Law of God. It has not the littleness of a
mere teacher, nor the narrowness of a hermit or a saint,
nor the eccentricity of genius. "His shoulder," as the
prophet says, is broad enough" to bear the government "
and the sins of the whole world. His mind is wide
enough to sympathize with all our infirmities, as well as
with all our efforts after good in every direction.
No griefs of life are more trying than those which
arise from the half-goodness or the half-wisdom of those
whom we wish to love and respect. It is when we
think of these things that the perfect law and the per-
fect mind of Christ are so inexpressibly consoling.
Come unto Him, and in His greatness we shall find the
enlargement of our littleness, in His tenderness we
shall find the softening of our harshness, in His com-
passion we shall find the lightening of our burden.
LXXVII.
In every dispensation of Providence, sorrowful or
joyful-in every duty, in every trial in the great
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
131
waters, in the heaven of heavens in our manifold
blessings in our laughter, in our tears, in the fulness
of health, in the darkness of the grave—the hand of
God is with us, His love is with us.
The "Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" never comes
to an end. The "grace," the beauty, the lovliness of
His character is infinite. The "grace," the favor, the
good will, which He alone can give, is far beyond all
human popularity, above all human praise, and worth
all human judgment. The "grace," the forgiveness,
the mercy, which we all so much need, which we are all
so unwilling to give to others this in our loving
Saviour is "exceeding broad," granted to the first be-
ginning of repentance, giving welcome to the humblest
of our efforts after good. May this grace of Christ our
Lord be with us now and always.
LXXVIII.
One verse from the Bible may be enough to sustain
us in sore temptations; one fixed determination to do
what is right may be the rallying-point round which our
whole better nature may form and strengthen itself.
True, "We are not worthy so much as to gather up the
crumbs" of our heavenly Father's table; but "He is the
same Lord whose property is always to have mercy."
He blesses, He owns our humblest efforts. For the
sake of saving that single spark of good within the
132
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
soul; for the sake of kindling that smoking flax, and of
raising up that broken reed, He sent His Son to this
earth to sacrifice Himself for us, in His life and in His
death.
LXXIX.
To unite in our lives the two qualities expressed in
the motto of the Black Prince, "Hoch muth" and "Ich
dien," "high spirit" and "reverent service," is to be,
indeed, not only a true gentleman and a true soldier,
but a true Christian also. To show to all who differ
from us, not only in war but in peace, that delicate for-
bearance, that fear of hurting another's feelings, that
happy art of saying the right thing to the right person,
which he showed to the captive king, would indeed add
a grace and a charm to the whole course of this trouble-
some world, such as none can afford to lose, whether
high or low.
Happy are they, who, having this gift by birth or
station, use it for its highest purposes; still more happy
are they who, having it not by birth and station, have
acquired it, as it may be acquired, by Christian gentle-
ness and Christian charity.
And again, to act in all the various difficulties of our
every-day life, with that coolness, and calmness, and
faith in a higher power than his own, which he showed
when the appalling danger of his situation burst upon
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
133
him at Poitiers, would smooth a hundred difficulties
and ensure a hundred victories.
We often think that we have no power in ourselves,
no advantages of position, to help us against our many
temptations, to overcome the many obstacles we en-
counter. Let us take our stand by the Black Prince's
tomb, and go back in thought to the distant fields of
France. A slight rise in the wild upland plain, a steep
lane through vineyards and underwood, this was all that
he had, humanly speaking, upon his side; but he
turned it to the utmost use of which it could be made
and won the most glorious of battles.
So, in like manner, our advantages may be slight –
hardly perceptible to any but ourselves let us turn
them to account, and the results will be a hundred
fold; we have only to adopt the Black Prince's bold
and cheering words, when first he saw his enemies,
"God is my help, I must fight them as best I can;
adding that lofty, yet resigned and humble prayer,
which he uttered when the battle was announced to be
inevitable, and which has since become a proverb,
"God defend the right."
LXXX.
""
When the Gentile conqueror entered the Holy of
Holies, and looked round and saw that there was no
graven image, or likeness of anything on earth or in
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
heaven, he marvelled at the "vacant sanctuary,” as of
a worship without a God. Yet Pompey, in the temple
of Jerusalem, and the ancient pilgrim in Canterbury
cathedral, would be alike mistaken.
It is true that a void has been created, that the
Reformation often left as in the old sanctuary of the
Cathedral, so on a wider scale in the hearts of men a
vacancy and a coldness which it is useless to deny,
though easy to explain, and, to a certain point, defend.
But this vacancy—this natural result of every great
convulsion of the human mind — is one which it is our
own fault if we do not fill up, in the only way in which
it can be filled up; not by rebuilding what the reform-
ers justly destroyed, nor yet by disparaging the better
qualities of the old saints and pilgrims, but by a higher
worship of God, by a more faithful service of man,
than was thought possible.
M
In proportion to our thankfulness that ancient super-
stitions are destroyed, should be our anxiety that new
light, and increased zeal, and more active goodness,
should take their place. Our pilgrimage cannot be
Geoffrey Chaucer's, but it may be John Bunyan's. In
that true "Pilgrim's Way" to a better country, we have
all of us to toil over many a rugged hill, over many a
dreary plain, by many opposite and devious paths,
cheering each other by all means, grave and gay, till we
see the distant towers.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
135
LXXXI.
In the seventeenth century, the minister of the parish
of Anwoth, on the shores of Galloway, was the famous
Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the
Covenanters and their adherents. It was, as all readers
of his letters will remember, the spot which he loved
most on earth. The very swallows and sparrows which
found their nests in the church of Anwoth were, when
far away, the objects of his affectionate envy. Its hills
and valleys were the witnesses of his ardent devotion
when living; they still retain his memory with unshaken
fidelity. It is one of the traditions thus cherished on
the spot, that on a Saturday evening, at one of those
family gatherings whence, in the language of the great
Scottish poet,
66
'Old Scotia's grandeur springs,"
when Rutherford was catechising his children and ser-
vants, that a stranger knocked at the door of the manse,
and (like the young English traveller in the celebrated
romance which has given fresh life to these same hills
in our own age), begged shelter for the night.
The minister kindly received him, and asked him to
take his place amongst the family, and assist at their
religious exercises. It so happened that the question.
in the catechism which came to the stranger's turn was
that which asks:
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
"How many commandments are there?"
He answered "eleven."
"Eleven!" exclaimed Rutherford, "I am surprised
that a person of your age and appearance should not
know better. What do you mean?"
He answered "A new commandment I give unto
you, that ye love one another: As I have loved you,
that ye also love one another. By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another." Rutherford was much impressed by the
answer, and they retired to rest.
The next morning he rose early to meditate on the
services of the day. The old manse of Anwoth stood
its place is still pointed out in the corner of a
field, under the hillside, and thence a long winding
wooded path, still called Rutherford's Walk, leads to
the church. Through this glen he passed, and, as he
threaded his way through the thicket, he heard amongst
the trees, the voice of the stranger at his morning devo-
tions. The elevations of the sentiments and of the
rexpressions convinced him that it was no common man.
He accosted him, and the traveller confessed to him
hat he was no other than the great divine and scholar,
Archbishop Usher, the Primate of the Church of Ire-
land, one of the best and most learned men of his age,
who well fulfilled that new commandment in the love
which he won and which he bore to others; one of the
few links of Christian charity between the fierce con-
P
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
137
tending factions of that time, devoted to King Charles
I., in his lifetime, and honored in his grave by the Pro-
tector Cromwell. He it was who, attracted by Ruther-
ford's fame, had thus come in disguise to see him in the
privacy of his own home.
The stern Covenanter welcomed the stranger Prelate;
side by side they pursued their way along Rutherford's
Walk to the little church, of which the ruins still re-
main; and in that small Presbyterian sanctuary, from
Rutherford's rustic pulpit, the Archbishop preached to
the people of Anwoth on the words which had so star-
tled his host the evening before:
"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love
one another: As I have loved you, that ye also should
love one another."
LXXXII.
If we can easily imagine the surprise of the pious
Scotchman when he first heard of an eleventh com-
mandment, much more may we figure to ourselves the
surprise of the apostles when they, for the first time.
heard this new commandment from the lips of their
Divine Master.
What? Are not the Ten Commandments enough?
Must we always be pressing forward to something new?
What is this that He saith. 'A new commandment?"
We cannot tell what he saith.
(C
138
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
True it is that on those old Ten Commandments
much more on the Two great Commandments, hang all
the law and the prophets. They contain all the land-
marks of our duty- the landmarks of our religion.
But there is yet a craving in the human heart for some-
thing even beyond duty, even beyond reverence. There
is a need which can only be satisfied by a new, by an
Eleventh Commandment, which shall be at once old
and new
which shall open a new field of thought and
exertion for each generation of men; which shall give
a fresh undying impulse to its older sisters - the young-
est child (so to speak) of the patriarchal family, the
youngest and holiest and best gifts of Him who has
kept the good wine till the last. Many a false Eleventh
Commandment has been put forth by the world to sup-
ply this want in its way; many a false Eleventh Com-
mandment has been put forth by the churches in their
way. But the true new commandment which Our
Saviour gave was, in its very form and fashion, pecu-
liarly characteristic of his way — peculiarly character-
istic of the Christian religion.
The novelty of the commandment lay in two points.
First, it was new, because of the paramount predomi-
nant place which it gave to the force of the human affec-
tions, the enthusiasm for the good of others, which was
- instead of ceremonial, or mere obedience, or correct-
bess of belief —henceforth to become the appointed
channel of religious fervor. And secondly, it was new,
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
139
because it was founded upon the appearance of a new
character, a new manifestation of the character of man,
a new manifestation of the character of God. Even if
the four Gospels had been lost, we should see from the
urgency with which the apostles press this new grace of
love or charity upon us, that some diviner vision of
excellence had crossed their minds. The very word
which they used to express it was new, and the conse-
quences therefore were new also. "Love one another,"
was the doctrine of Jesus Christ, "as I have loved you."
LXXXIII.
The solid blocks or tables on which the Ten Com-
mandments were written were of the granite rock of
Sinai, as if to teach us that all the great laws of duty
to God and duty to man were like that oldest primeval
foundation of the world more solid, more enduring
than all the other strata ; cutting across all the secondary
and artificial distinctions of mankind; heaving itself up,
now here, now there; throwing up the fantastic crag,
there the towering peak, here the long range which
unites or divides the races of mankind. That is the
universal, everlasting character of duty. But as that
granite rock itself has been fused and wrought together
by a central fire, without which it could not have ex-
isted at all, so also the Christian law of Duty. in order
to perform fully its work in the world, must have been
140
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
warmed at the heart and fed at the source by a central
fire of its own - and that central fire is Love - the
gracious, kindly, generous, admiring, tender movements
of the human affections; and that central fire itself is
kept alive by the consciousness that there has been in
the world a Love beyond all human love, a devouring
fire of Divine enthusiasm on behalf of our race, which
is the Love of Christ, which is of the utmost essence
of the Holy Spirit of God. It is not contrary to the
Ten Commandments. It is not outside of them, it is
within them; it is at their core; it is wrapped up in
them, as the particles of the central heart of the globe
were encased within the granite tables in the Ark of
the Temple.
LXXXIV.
The love wherewith Christ loved us, the new love
wherewith we are to love one another, is universal, be-
cause in its spirit we overcome evil simply by doing
good. We drive out error simply by telling the truth.
We strive to look on both sides of the shield of truth.
We strive to speak the truth in love, that is, without
exaggeration or misrepresentation; concealing nothing,
compromising nothing, but with the effort to understand
each other, to discover the truth, which lies at the bot-
tom of error; with the determination cordially to love
whatever is lovable even in those in whom we cordially
detest whatever is detestable. And, in proportion as
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
141
we endeavor to do this, there may be a hope that men
will see that there are, after all, some true disciples of
Christ left in the world, "because they have love one
to another."
This love does not imply the necessity of absorbing
one church into another, or of destroying one church
in order to make room for another. It consists — and
herein the tendencies of our age give us an immense
assistance in carrying out the new commandment — it
consists in a better understanding, a better appreciation
of the peculiar spirit of every church-in recognising
the inward semblance which exists under outward diver-
gences. For this discharge of our Christian duty, the
increased knowledge of our past history, the increased
means of personal communication, are homely, but not
less sacred channels through which this grace may flow
in and out on all the various sections of Christendom.
LXXXV.
It was a just remark of a veteran statesman and his-
torian of France, in speaking of the electric effect pro-
duced on the fiercest of the leaders of the old Revolu-
tion by being suddenly, and for the first time, brought
into close contact with the unfortunate queen How
many estrangements, misunderstandings, mortal enmi-
ties, would be cleared up and dispelled, if the adversa-
ries could, for a few moments, meet eye to eye and
6
142
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
face to face." Not less true is this of ecclesiastical
than of political hostilities. The more we see of each
other, the less possible is it to believe each other to be
out of the pale of Christian salvation, or Christian
sympathy.
LXXXVI.
Not without reason did the venerable patriarch of
German Catholic theology, when addressing the univer-
sity of Munich, declare that of all the sciences that
which would gain most from the impetus of modern
events was theology, which must henceforth "transform
her mission from a mission of polemics into a mission
of irenics; which, if it be worthy of the name, must
become a science, not as heretofore, for making war,
but for making peace, and thus bring about that recon-
ciliation of churches for which the whole civilized world
is longing." It is but the natural result of the increas-
ing age of the world, that it should learn that temper-
ance in theological argument, that better sense of
proportion in theological statements, which we some-
times see in the increased moderation of the experience
of individuals, in the mildness of the mellowed old age
of Athanasius and Augustine, of Luther, of Baxter, and
of Wesley. It is but the natural result wherever lofty
intellectual powers, or powerful spiritual discernment,
have turned on theological subjects. The religious
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
143
thoughts of Bacon, Butler, and Berkeley, of Shakspeare,
Milton, and Walter Scott; or, again, of Pascal and
Thomas a Kempis; or, again, coming down to a lower
level, of Bishop Wilson's maxims, or Whichcote's
Aphorisms; or yet again, the sermons of Frederick
Robertson in the Church of England, and the “pastoral
counsels" of John Robertson, in the Church of Scot-
land, alike lead us to that peaceful path of true wisdom
"which the lion's whelp hath not trodden, nor the vul-
ture's eye seen"- which the fierce fanatic hath not
known, nor the jealous polemic guarded.
LXXXVII.
The true union between Christian churches is promo-
ted by the deepening sense-deepening in all that
have eyes to see or ears to hear the signs of the time—
the deepening sense of the mighty works that have to
be achieved, and that may be achieved, for the moral
and social regeneration of mankind. It is when we see
some union formed for high philanthropic objects, or
inspired by a common feeling of sympathy for what is
in itself just, noble, and true, that we recognise a sam-
ple of what ought to be the animating principle of the
true fraternal unity of churches. "Nothing," says a
philosophic observer of our own time, "produces such
steadfast friendships as working together for some pub-
lic good." Nothing so fuses together all differences a
144
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
some event which evokes the better side of human
nature in large masses of men. The age of the Cru
sades is past and gone, but there are causes of Chris-
tian charity far holier than that for which the Crusaders
fought, which might call forth more than the Crusaders'
chivalry. The famous Confession of Faith which issued
from Westminster in the seventeenth century, as the
expression of the whole Church and nation of Great
Britian noble and inspiring though it was, in some
respects beyond all the Confessions of Protestant
Europe is yet not to be compared with the uniting
and sanctifying force of the Christian English literature
which in the nineteenth century has become the real
bond and school of the nation, beyond the power of
educational or ecclesiastical agitation to exclude or to
pervert.
LXXXVIII.
It was the singular fortune of King William III., to
have had for his two most intimate friends and advisers,
two of the most earnest ecclesiastics of Great Britian,
both of them Scots. In the south, next to the Primate
Tillotson, was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury; in
the north, the real Presbyterian Primate of the Church
of Scotland, William Carstairs. Carstairs has left noth-
ing in writing; but his life is filled full of Christian
strength and wisdom. His earliest public appearance
was undergoing the agonizing trial of the thumbscrew
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
145
!
before the Priory Council in Edinburgh. All present,
even his judges, were struck by the extraordinary forti-
tude and generosity of a man "who stood more in awe
of love for his friends than of the fear of torture, and
hazarded rather to die for them than that they should
die for him."
Recommended to the Prince of Orange, by this
heroic courage, as well as by the singular sagacity
which he showed on the same occasion in revealing to
his judges only what was of no use to them, and no
harm to anyone else, he accompanied William on his
eventful voyage to England, and was the first to call
down the blessings of heaven on the expedition by the
religious service which he celebrated immediately on
his landing at Torbay, after which the troops all along
the beach, at his instance, joined in the 118 Psalm.
From that time he was William's companion to every
field of battle —his most trusty adviser in all that re-
lated to the affairs of Scotland. "Cardinal Carstairs "
was the name by which he was usually known, alluding
to the saying of Cardinal Ximenes that he could play
at football with the heads of the Castilian grandees.
The king had one all-sufficing explanation of his
influence :
“I have known Mr. Carstairs long; I have known
him well; and I know him to be an honest man.”
One famous instance of his power is recorded, unique
in the history of princes and churches. An oath ("the
146
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
oath of assurance," as it was called), extremely obnox-
ious to the General Assembly, had been intended by
the English Government to be imposed upon its mem-
bers. The commissioner sent up an earnest remon-
strance against it by a special messenger. There was
just time for him to return to Scotland with the king's
final determination on the night before the Assembly
was appointed to meet. Carstairs was absent when the
messenger arrived; and in that interval William, under
the advice of his ministers, refused to listen to the
remonstrance, and sent off his instructions by the mes-
senger. When Carstairs arrived at Kensington he
heard what had happened. He found the messenger
setting off for Scotland, and demanded him in the
king's name to deliver up the despatches. It was now
late at night; not a moment was to be lost.
He ran
to the royal apartment, and was told by the lord in
waiting that the king was in bed. He insisted on en-
tering and found William fast asleep, drew the curtains,
threw himself on his knees by the bedside, and awakened
him. The king, startled, asked what had brought him,
and for what he knelt. “I am come to ask my life.”
"What can you have done," said William, “to de-
serve death?"
Carstairs told what had occurred. The king was
furious; Carstairs begged only for a few words to ex-
piain. The king listened, was convinced, threw the
despatch 'nto the fire, wrote a new one at the dictation
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
147
of Carstairs; the messenger set off, and, in conse-
quence of this delay, arrived only just in time, on the
very morning of the fatal day. The crisis was averted,
and the constitutional establishment of the church of
Scotland at this day is, humanly speaking, the result of
that memorable night.
LXXXIX.
When Carstairs was imprisoned in the castle at Edin-
burgh, a boy of twelve years, son of Erskine of Cambo,
governor of the castle, in the course of his rambles
through the court, came to the grate of Carstairs'
apartment. As he always loved to amuse himself with
children, he went to the grate and began a conversa-
tion. The boy was delighted, and every day came to
the prison grate-told him stories, brought him pro-
visions, took his letters to the post, was unhappy if
Carstairs had no errand to send, and no favor to ask.
When Carstairs was released, they parted with tears on
both sides. One of the first favors that Carstairs
asked of King William was, that he would bestow the
office of Lord Lyon on his young friend, to whom he
had owed so much; and he obtained it, with the addi-
tional compliment that it should be hereditary in the
family. So in fact it continued, till it was unfortunately
forfeited by the engagement of Erskine's eldest son in
the rebellion of 1745.
148
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
Another story illustrates the freshness and simplicity
of his pastoral character, amongst the absorbing public
affairs which occupied him.
His sister, the wife of a Fifeshire clergyman, had be-
come a widow. Carstairs had just arrived in Edin-
burgh from London, to transact business with King
William's ministers. She came over to Edinburgh, and
went to his lodgings. They were crowded with the no-
bility and officers of State; and she was told she could
not see him.
"Just whisper," said she to the servant, "that I de-
sire to know when it would be convenient for him to
see me."
He returned for answer, "Immediately," left the com-
pany, came to her, and most affectionately embraced
her.
On her attempting to apologize, "Make yourself
easy," he said; "these gentlemen are come hither, not
on my account, but their own. They will wait with
patience till I return. You know I never pray long."
And so, after a short prayer suited to her circum-
stances, he fixed the time for seeing her more at leisure,
and returned in tears to the company.
XC.
Toward the ejected Episcopalian clergy Carstairs acted
with the utmost tenderness and consideration. He had
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
149
""
a visit from one of them by the name of Cadell. Car-
stairs observed with pain that his clothes were thread-
bare. He eyed him narrowly, and begged him to call
again, on the pretext of business, in two days. Mean-
while, he had ordered a suit of clothes from his tailor,
to suit not his own, but Cadell's make. When Cadell
arrived, he found Carstairs in a seemingly furious pas-
sion at his tailor for mistaking his measure, so that
neither coat, waistcoat, nor pantaloons would set upon
him. Turning to Cadell, he said:
They are lost if they don't fit some of my friends;
and, by the by, I am not sure but they may answer
you.”
Cadell tried them. They were sent to his lodgings.
On putting them on, he found in one of the pockets a
ten pound note, which he immediately brought back.
By no means," said Carstairs. "It cannot belong
to me, for when you got the coat, you acquired a right
to everything in it.”
((
When the great churchman passed away in full age,
he was interred with all honor in the venerable grave-
yard of his own church of Grey Friars. As the second
founder of the Presbyterian church was laid in his
grave, two mourners were observed to turn aside and
burst into tears. They were two Episcopalian non
jurors, whose families for years he had supported.
The grave is unmarked by any monument. The
name of Carstairs belonged to no party, English or
150
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
Scottish. It is not famous by the zealots on either side
the Border, but there is none of which the whole eccle-
siastical profession ought to be more proud.
XCI.
An English merchant at St. Andrews once said:
"I heard a sweet, majestic-looking man, and he
showed me the majesty of God. Afterwards, I heard a
little, fair man, and he showed me the loveliness of
Christ."
'The latter was Samuel Rutherford the true saint
of the Scottish Covenant. Anworth, on the shores of
Galloway, was the scene of his pastoral ministrations.
Men said of his life there:
M
"He is always praying, always preaching, always en-
treating, always visiting the sick, always catechising
always writing and studying." "There," he says, “I
wrestled with the angel and prevailed. Woods, trees,
meadows, and hills, are my witnesses that I drew on a
fair match between Christ and Anwoth."
We need not follow his life in detail. He was taken
from Anwoth, and imprisoned at Aberdeen for his op
position to the policy of Charles I. He finally left
Anwoth, after the triumph of the Covenant, to become
professor at St. Andrews, where he remained til his
end.
He was already on his death bed when he was sum
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
151
moned by the parliament of Charles II. to appear be-
fore it on the charge of high treason.
"I am summoned," he replied, "before a higher
judge and judicatory: that first summons I behove to
answer; and, ere a few days arrive, I shall be where
few kings and great folks come."
On the last day of his life, in the afternoon, he said:
"This night will close the dawn, and fasten my
anchor within the veil, and I shall go away in a sleep
by five o'clock in the evening. There is nothing now
between me and the resurrection but 'This day shalt
thou be with me in Paradise.' Glory, glory, dwelleth in
Emmanuel's land."
When Parliament voted that he should not die in the
college, Lord Burley rose and said:
"Ye cannot vote him out of Heaven."
He lies in the churchyard of the ruined cathedral of
St. Andrews; and, like a medieval saint, has attracted
around him "the godly, who desired that they might be
laid even where his body was laid."
XCII.
There are few men whose character gives the impres-
sion of a more complete elevation, both above the cares
and prejudice of the world of a more entire detach-
ment from earth than Robert Leighton, the one saint
common both to the Presbyterian and the Episcopal
152
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
church. Sometimes this appeared in his playful sayings
on the misfortunes of life. On some great pecuniary
loss he made a jesting remark:
"What," said his relation, "is that all you make of
the matter?'
"Truly," answered Leighton, "if the Duke of New-
castle, after losing nineteen times as much of yearly
income, can dance and sing, while the solid hopes of
Christians will not avail to support us, we had better he
as the world."
((
""
Once, as a party embarked on the Thames in a boat,
between the Savoy and Lambeth, the boat was in immi-
nent danger of sinking, and most of them crying,
Leighton never lost his serenity; and, to some who ex-
pressed their astonishment, replied:
(6
Why, what harm would it have been if we had all
been safely landed on the other side!"
To the Lord's prayer he was specially partial, and
said:
،،
Oh, the spirit of this prayer would make rare Chris-
tians. One devout thought is worth all my books.”
Often would he bewail the proneness of Christians to
stop short of perfection; and it was his grief to observe
that "some good men are content to be low and stunted
vines."
One single expression, perhaps, best shows the secret
at once of his unworldliness, his humor, and his high
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
153
philosophy. He was reprimanded in a synod for not
"preaching up the times."
“Who,” he asked, “does preach up the times?"
It was answered that all the brethren did it.
"Then,” he rejoined, "if all of you preach up the
times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach
up Christ Jesus and eternity."
To close his life, was, he said, "like a traveller pull-
ing off his miry boots." His well-known wish was to
die in an inn-"the whole world being a large and
noisy inn, and he a wayfarer tarrying in it as short a
time as possible." So, in fact, he breathed his last in
the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane.
In England, his burial place at Horsted Keynes is
still venerated, and his "Commentary on St. Peter"
alone, of ancient Scottish works of theology, is read on
the south of the Tweed: and the "aphorisms" drawn
from it have been made the basis of one of the most
philosophical of English theological treatises — " Cole-
ridge's aids to Reflection."
XCIII.
Not only the comfortable words, "Come unto me
and I will give you rest," but the words, "Enter ye in
at the strait gate" not only the words "Him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out," but the words,
154
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
"Be ye perfect, even as my Father is perfect,” are parts
of the same Gospel of Peace.
The keen frost which braces our nerves and clears
our atmosphere is as necessary, and seasonable, and
invigorating as the gentle airs of spring, as the genial
warmth of summer, as the golden fall of autumn.
All
are alike to be found in His discourses, all are alike to
be cherished.
It is a Gospel of Peace to find a friend who, even
whilst he rebukes us, slows that he enters into our
thoughts, reads our wants, feels for our weaknesses.
Such is the effect of reading the words of Him who
knew what was in man, who was tempted like as we
are, who lays his finger on each infirmity of our suffer-
ing souls. It is glad tidings of great joy to be told.
that goodness, patience, justice, purity, are not idle
dreams that they are within our reach, that not in
any one country or place, but everywhere, God may be
served and man may be loved.
XCIV.
The surest means of overcoming evil is to overcome
it with good. The surest means of overcoming error is
by setting forth truth. Not active pursuit of evil, but
absence of zeal for good, is the cause of more than half
the crimes and miseries which infest the world, of more
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
155
than half the controversies and slanders which infest
the church Occupy, busy, engross yourselves with
things honest and true, lovely, of good report, and you
will then have no pleasure in seeking out things un-
lovely and of evil report, no leisure to pick them out in
the doings, and characters, and opinions of your neigh-
bors. To expel and destroy evil by thinking and doing
of good - this is the divine scheme of education,
for it is the divine scheme of the redemption of the
world.
XCV.
Nothing that can suggest a high or holy thought,
nothing that can keep out a low or base temptation, can
be regarded as unworthy a Christian's notice in his pas-
sage through this wide world, over which we must pass
to the land of rest beyond. Everything which opens.
our minds to a better knowledge of what is noble and
beautiful here on earth every active, invigorating
pursuit and taste of our own every dear recollection
of times gone by every grateful thought of friends,
new and old - every truth, divine or human, firmly
fixed in the heart or in the mind are amongst the
treasures which God has given to help us on our on-
ward journey, till we shall see the face of Him in
whom all these things are forever united in one.
156
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
XCVI.
It was
a wise maxim of ancient military tactics:
Always make a silver bridge for a flying enemy.
It is no less a maxim of Christian wisdom and Chris-
tian charity: Make silver bridges for those who seek to
retrieve their errors, their mistakes, their wrongs.
Do not raise obstacles in the way of the returning
penitent, whether penitent towards God or towards
man. It was an ancient maxim, too, cf worldly pru
dence: Look on your best friends with the thought that
they may one day become your worst enemies.
It is for us to reverse this maxim, and rather say:
Look on your worst enemics with the thought that they
may one day become your best friends.
XCVII.
Think how often you have been mistaken; how often
you may be mistaken yet again. Think how, in the
warmth of your own better feelings, your hard and cold
heart has melted, and you may fairly hope and believe
that the same genial warmth will spread towards whom
it is directed; and many a proud spirit that would have
long met scorn with scorn, and hate with hate, will be
bowed down to the dust by one kind word; many a
hard heart will be melted down by the morsel of bread
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
157
and the cup of cold water, that would have resisted a
whole furnace of angry invectives.
This is the true Christian vengeance, the true Chris-
tian victory over those who wrong or offend us. Char-
ity, no less than honesty, is the best policy, and also
the noblest revenge.
XCVIII.
It is a great thing as we often hear it said, to have
“right men in right places," but it is also a great thing,
and one which more nearly concerns our own individual
practice to have the right man doing the right thing;
and the right thing said and done in the right place, and
at the right time, and in the right way. A right thing
done in a wrong way is often more mischievous than a
thing done wrong altogether. A saying, in itself most
true, loses its savor, if said at a wrong time. An
amusement, in itself quite innocent, a practice, in itself
most holy, a rebuke, in itself most just, will become.
almost wicked, if said or done by a wrong person, or in
a wrong place. It is no defence to say that such and
such a thing was good in itself, or good a thousand
years or even ten years ago, or good a thousand miles
off. The question is, whether it is good for us, and for
our neighbors; good for us now in the nineteenth cen-
tury, in our own homes, in our own circles; good to be
!
158
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
JAKKENSATEN GENER
- DAN IN
done and said by us and for us as we are, and as those
about us are.
There is a time and place for everything. How
many good plans have come to nought, not from wicked-
ness, not from opposition to what is good, but because
men have tried to mend at the wrong time, or refused to
mend at the right time- because men have exalted one
truth, or one virtue, or one custom, however good in
itself, out of all proportion to other truths and duties,
and so have driven men by a recoil and reaction into
an equal disproportion on the other side over-rever-
ence leading to irreverence, over-strictness to over-laxity,
excessive rashness to excessive caution, excessive se
riousness to excessive childishness.
XCIX.
Each of us has his own special calling, greater o
smaller, more or less varied. Let us not waste ou
time, or mar our usefulness, by intruding into provinces
which are not ours, or overburdening ourselves with
labors disproportioned to our strength and powers.
The very same gifts which are most useful to our sta-
tion of life will be a snare and a sin to men in another
station, or men in the same station under different cir-
cumstances. Any one faculty pushed to extremes, in-
dulged to excess, ceases to be a gift or a blessing and
becomes a curse. Music — how divine and healing an
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
159
art in itself, yet how distracting, how unsettling, how
dangerous when it takes possession of the whole man
and leads him hither and thither without the counter-
poise of either principle or pursuit.
Study-how soothing, how edifying in its right sphere
yet how fatal if it usurps the place of the practical
duties of everyday life and of important stations. Me-
chanical pursuits-how pleasant as a recreation to
many, how necessary as a support to the whole commu-
nity, how direct a duty to some; how deeply sanctified
by the life of "the Carpenter, the Son of Man;” yet
how fatal when they encroach on higher responsibilities.
How fatal to that unfortunate king who, in the crisis of
the French monarchy, devoted himself to his favorite
craft rather than to the task of saving the state. How
useful to that great prince who made it the means of
civilizing and reforming his vast barbarian empire. How
valuable, in short, are all these occupations, if they
help us forward in our main work of life; but how dan-
gerous, if they so take possession of us, as to lead us
away from our proper calling, either without giving us
another, or giving us a wrong one, in its place.
C.
In the defence of Lucknow, we are told that the
courage, the subordination, the zeal of each individual
of the little garrison was sustained by the awful con-
160
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
sciousness that on him rested the safety of the whole-
a single outpost lost would be the loss of all.
Even so
it is with us. The assailants are many, the defenders
are few; if the fortress of goodness and truth is to be
saved, it must be by everyone doing at his own post the
work which belongs to him alone. The weak cannot
do the work of the strong, the soldier cannot do the
work of the nurse, nor the private of the general, nor
the general of the private. What discipline effects in
the army is effected in our moral duties by a sense of
the apostolical doctrine of proportion. Everyone has
his own work assigned him by the Captain of our salva-
tion. Not to do that, or to do another's work which is
not ours, is to betray the whole-a breach of discipline,
a disproportionate zeal, or a disproportionate prudence,
may in our spiritual no less than in our earthly warfare
be as fatal, though not as guilty, as cowardice, or
treachery, or neglect. Great enterprises may be marred,
if not ruined; noble characters may be wasted, if not
lost, merely by the vain endeavors to do ourselves what
would be far better done by others.
—
Allow for others- claim for yourselves a division
of labor, a division of responsibility. A good master,
a good servant, a good soldier, a good teacher, is made
in no other way so well as by knowing what is his
place, and keeping to that; not doing anything above
his place, or below his place, or out of his place, but by
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
161
،،
waiting" on and in his place, whatever it be, proph-
esying, fighting, exhorting, ruling, learning.
CI.
There is an old Christian virtue of which the name
breathes the savor of former days, but which lingers, we
trust, amongst us still. Chivalry
the desire to pro-
tect the weak, and repress the strong— the leaning to
the weaker side because it is the weaker the holding
out against the strong, because it is the stronger; this,
as we all know, is an unworldly virtue. It has often
run into excess. It is often mischievous and trouble-
some. It has become the subjeet of the most famous
satire that the genius of man has ever composed. But
still, even in its excesses, it is refreshing. It is edify-
ing, even when we oppose it. We are the better for
secing and admiring it, even if we are incapable of at-
taining to it ourselves, or if we have to restrain its
extravagances. God grant that we may always have
the grace to acknowledge its own inherent excellence.
It is unworldly, it is not what the world expects, but it
is for that very reason what the world most needs.
How invigorating it is to see men, as we sometimes
see, not in any wild knight errantry, but in simple.
Christian independence of spirit, dependent on God,
though independent of man, stand up against the fury
of professional clamor, and against the stupidity of
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
162
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
popular prejudice. How ennobling it is to see men,
whether in the press or out of the press, resist the
tyranny of public opinion which will not hear the other
side, and do justice where justice needs to be done,
and refuse the popular praise which is not due, and give
the unpopular praise which is due.
They have their reward, though not as others have
it — they are the lights in the distance that keep alive
the spirit and the hope of those who have not strength.
and courage to imitate them openly — they will be re-
membered when they pass from this earthly scene, if
for other good words and works, yet for this above all
that "they delivered the poor that cried, and him that
had none to help him."
CII.
To mix much in the affairs of this world, its cares, its
interests, its amusements, to enjoy them deeply, to
grasp them keenly, to fret and chafe as they pass from
us this may not be very wrong, but it certainly is
worldly. It is the natural result of having attached
ourselves, conformed ourselves to the fashion, the
scheme, the stir and rush of the engine of this tremen-
dous world. Where shall we find the calmness, the
serenity, the elevation of soul, which can disentangle
itself from the confusion, console others, console itself,
stand aloof, make its voice heard above the roar, be
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
163
tranquil in the midst of battle, and shipwreck, and per-
plexity, and ruin? be pure in the midst of corruption,
and steadfast in the midst of the whirlpool? This is an
unworldly good which even worldly men covet when
they sce it. This is indeed to be transfigured by "a
renewing of the inward man, which day by day is re-
newed, though the outward man perish."
It may come to a few through philosophy — let us
rot deny this but it is the very point in which philos-
ophy most resembles religion; and for the mass of us,
it will only be through religion, through the resignation
of our own will to God's will, that we shall attain that
((
peace which passeth understanding."
To have a great cause on hand, to know that it is far
greater than anything which we can do for it, this is
always the best check to all the vanities and vexations
of the world. To feel that is the cause of God, is a
source of consolation and calmness higher still. The
great king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, was warned.
not to risk his life in battle. He answered, as an an-
swer which was to silence all objections, “God the
Almighty liveth.”
CIII.
"Up and be doing," is the word that comes from
God to each of us. Leave some good work behind
you that shall not be wholly lost when you have passed
164
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
away. Do something worth living for, worth dying for;
do something to show that you have a mind, and a heart,
and a soul within you. Ask yourselves, is there no
good deed which you can do to remind yourself, to re-
mind others, that you are a Christian. Is there no
want, no suffering, no sorrow, that you can relieve? Is
there no act of tardy justice, no deed of cheerful kind-
ness, no long-forgotten duty that you can perform? Is
there no reconciliation of some ancient quarrel, no pay-
ment of some long outstanding debt, no courtesy, or
love, or honor, to be rendered to those to whom it has
long been due ; no charitable, humble, kind, useful deed,
by which you can promote the glory of God, or good
will among men, or peace upon earth? If there be
any such, I beseech you, in God's name, in Christ's
name, go and do it.
CIV.
There are, according to the old Greek proverb, many
who have borne the thyrsus, and yet not been inspired
prophets. There are many, also, who have been in-
spired prophets without wearing the prophetic mantle,
or bearing the mystic wand; and these, whether states-
men, philosophers, poets, have been amongst the friends,
conscious or unconscious, of the religion of the future;
they are citizens, whether registered or unregistered,
in the Jerusalem which is above, and which is free.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
165
CV.
Theology has gained, and may gain immensely, by
the process which has produced so vast a change in all
other branches of knowledge-the process of diving
below the surface and discovering the original founda-
tions. How much has been offered by archæology by
the excavations of Pompeii, of Nineveh, of Rome, of
Troy, of Mycena. How much for history, by the ex-
ploration of the archives of Simancas, of the Register
House of Edinburgh! How much for science, by the
crucible of chemistry, by the spade and hatchet of the
geologist, by the plummet of the challenger. To this
general law theology furnishes no exception.
CVI.
Every deep religious system has in it more than ap-
peared at the time to its votaries, far more than has
appeared in later time to its adversaries. Even in the
ancient religions of Greece and Rome, it is surprising
to observe how vast a power of expansion and edifica-
tion was latent, in forms of which the influence might
long ago seem to have died out. The glory of the
Homeric poems, the solemnity of Sophocles and Æs-
chylus, the beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, have, as it
were, risen from their graves after the lapse of centu-
ries, and occupy a larger space in the modern mind
166
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
than they have done at any time since their first crea-
tion. Even in the case of Mohammedanism, the Koran
has, within the last century, been awakened from a
slumber of ages, and has been discovered to contain
maxims which Christendom might cultivate with advan-
tage, but which, in all the long centuries of ignorance,
were hopelessly forgotten both by friends and foes.
A great religion is not dead because it is not immedi-
ately comprehended, or because it is subsequently per-
verted, if only its primitive elements contain, along
with the seeds of decay and transformation, the seeds.
of living truth. Especially is this the case in Chris-
tianity, which is not only (like Mohammedanism) the
religion of a sacred book, but the religion of a sacred
literature and a sacred life.
CVII.
Our Lord's life is an example, but it is not, nor ever
could be, an example to be literally and exactly copied.
It has been so understood, on the one hand, even by
such holy men as Francis of Assise, who thought that
the true "imitation of Christ " was to produce a fac-
simile of all its outward circumstances in his own per-
son. It has been so understood, on the other hand, by
some in our own day, who have attacked it on the ex-
press ground that it could not, without impropriety, be
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
167
literally re-enacted by any ordinary person in England
in the nineteenth century.
But it is not an example in detail; and those who try
to make it so, whether in defence or in attack, are but
neglecting the warning which Bacon so beautifully gives
in the story of the rich young man in the gospels :
"Beware how in making the portraiture thou break-
est the pattern."
(C
In this sense, the Christian church ought to know
Christ henceforth no more according to the flesh.'
All such considerations ought to be swallowed up in
the overwhelming sense of the moral and spiritual.
state in which we stand towards Him. His life is our
example, not in its outward acts, but in the spirit, the
atmosphere which it breathes in the ideal which it
sets before us in the principles, the motives, the ob-
ject with which it supplies us.
CVIII.
Who can say how much of the purity and simplicity,
and therefore universal strength of the first teaching of
the gospel, we owe (humanly speaking) to the humble.
station and uneducated character of the first apostles,
which thus received, at once, and without perversion or
intrusion of alien thoughts, the original impression of
the Word made flesh?
Who can say how great would have been the loss to
16S
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the world had the gospel originated, not in the weak-
ness of Palestine and Galilee, but in the learning of
Alexandria or the strength of Rome?
And again, in St. Paul himself, it might have seemed
at the time to all, as it did to him, that the cause of the
gospel would have been better served had he been re-
lieved from his infirmity and gone forth to preach and
teach with unbroken vigor of body and mind, his bodily
presence strong, his speech mighty and powerful.
But history has answered the question otherwise, and
has ratified the Divine answer in which the apostle
Paul acquiesced. What the apostle lost for himself,
and what Christianity lost for the moment, has been
more than compensated by the acknowledgment that
he was beyond doubt proved to be, not the inventor of
Christianity, but its devoted and humble propagator.
In his own weakness lies the strength of the cause.
When he was weakest as a teacher of the present, he
was strongest as an apostle of the future. And what
his trial was to him and to the world on a larger scale,
that the trial of each individual Christian may have
been ever since, the means in ways inconceivable to
him now, of making himself and others strong in the
service of God and of man.
CIX.
The Christian idea of a future state is not fully ex-
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
169
pressed by a mere abstract belief in the immortality of
the soul, but requires a redemption and restoration of
the whole man.
According to the ancient creed of Paganism ex-
pressed in the well-known lines at the commencement
of the Iliad, the souls of departed heroes did indeed
survive death; but these souls were not themselves;
"themselves were the bodies left to be devoured by
dogs and vultures.
""
The teaching of our Saviour and the apostles, on the
other hand, is always that, amidst whatever change, it is
the very man himself that is preserved; and, if for the
preservation of this identity any outward organization
is required, then, although "flesh and blood cannot in-
herit the kingdom of heaven," God from the infinite
treasure house of the new heavens and new earth, will
furnish that organization, as He has already furnished
it to the several stages of creation in the present order
of the world.
"If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not
much rather clothe you, O ye of little faith."
"Ye do err, not knowing
the power of
God."
CX.
The majesty of the Bible will touch hearts which even
its holiness cannot move, and will awe minds which ne
170
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
argument can convince. The early chapters of Genesis
contain many things at which the man of science may
stumble; but none will question their unapproachable
sublimity,
The book of Isaiah may furnish endless matter for
the critics; but the more fastidious he is, the more
freely will he acknowledge its magnificence of thought
and diction. The authorship of the four Gospels may
be defended, attacked, and analyzed interminably; but
the whole world bows down before the grandeur of the
eight beatitudes, and the parable of the prodigal son,
and the farewell discourses, and the story of Gethsem-
ane and Calvary.
CXI.
Sometimes we think that we are about to be over-
whelmed by a general return of forgotten supersti-
tions, sometimes by a general chaos of incredulity;
sometimes our course seems darkened by an eclipse of
faith, sometimes by an eclipse of reason. Yet, on the
whole, the history of mankind justifies us in hoping
that as in the moral, so also in the intellectual condition
of the race, in regard to the higher spiritual truths, our
light is not altogether swallowed up in darkness, that
the good cannot be and is not altogether lost, that the
evil, the error, the superstition, that has once disap-
peared, even if it returns from time to time, will not
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
171
again permanently rule over us as heretofore. Chris-
tianity itself goes through these struggles. In its divine
aspect it wrestles with man. In its human aspect it
wrestles with God. It has within it, like the Patriarch,
two natures - the crafty, earth-born Jacob, the lofty,
heaven-aspiring Israel.
CXII.
It is because there is hardly any one form of Chris-
tian truth which has been held "always, everywhere,
and by everybody," that we seem to see how it may at
last assimilate to itself all the good and all the truth
which the world contains, and which, though not in it,
are yet of it. So far as it has survived the conflicts of
eighteen centuries, it has been not by adhering rigidly
to the past, but by casting off its worser and grosser
elements, and taking up in each age something of that
higher element which each age had to give.
It has survived the corruptions and superstitions
which it inherited from the Roman Empire, and has
carried off in the struggle the elements of Roman
civilization.
It has survived the miserable controversies of the
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, and has carried off
from its earlier age the first germs of liturgical worship,
and the memory of the martyrs.
It has survived the barbarous fancies and cruelties of
172
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the Middle Ages, and carried off with it the marvels of
mediæval art.
It has survived the fierce conflicts of the Reforma-
tion, and has carried off with it the light of freedom, of
conscience, and of knowledge.
It has survived the shock of the French Revolution,
and has carried off with it the toleration and the justice
of the eighteenth century.
It has survived the alarms which were excited at the
successive appearance of astronomy, geology, physiol
ogy, historical criticism, and has carried off with it a
deeper insight into nature and into the Bible.
In each of these anxious wrestling matches it has,
like the patriarch, seen the face of God, and its life has
been not only preserved, but transfigured.
CXIII.
It was one of the last anxious aspirations of Dean
Milman, that some means might be found to avert the
wide and widening breach which he seemed to see be-
tween the thought and the religion of England. There
has been an increasing suspicion which threatens more
and more to embitter the fiercer factions of the ecclesi-
astical and the scientific world-each rejoicing to push
the statements of its rival to the extremest conse-
quences, and to place on them the worst possible
construction.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
173
There have arisen new questions, which ancient the-
ology has, for the most part, not even considered.
There is an impetuosity on both sides, which to the
sober sense of the preceding century was unknown, and
which insists upon the precipitation of conflicts, once
cautiously avoided or quietly surmounted.
There are also indications that we are passing through
one of those periods of partial eclipse which from time
to time retard the healthy progress of mankind. In
the place of the abundant harvest of statesmanlike and
poetic genius with which the nineteenth century opened,
there have sprung up too often the lean and puny stalks
blighted with the east wind. Of this wasting, wither-
ing influence, modern theology has had its full share.
Superstitions which seemed to have died away have
returned with redoubled force; fantastic ideas of divine
and human things which the calm judgment of the last
century, the heaven-inspired insight of the dawn of this,
would have scattered like the dreams of fever, seem to
reign supreme in large sections of the religious world.
And this calamity has overtaken us in the presence
of the vast, perhaps disproportionate, advance of scien-
tific knowledge, which feels most keenly and presses
most heavily the weaknesses of a credulous or ceremo-
nial form of belief.
But behind these outward manifestations of danger,
there is a higher Christianity which neither assailants
nor defenders have fully exhausted. We cannot believe
174
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
that the inexorable hour has struck. There is good
ground for hoping that the difficulties of religion, na-
tional religion, Christian religion, are but the results of
passing maladies, either in its professed friends or sup-
posed foes.
We may fairly say with the first Napoleon, "We have
perhaps gone a little too fast, but we have reason on
our side, and when one has reason on one's side, one
should have the courage to run some risks."
The evening star, according to the fine image of the
poet, which is the accompaniment of the setting day,
may be one and the same with the morning star, the
harbinger of sunrise.
CXIV.
In a famous speech of one of our greatest orators
during the European war of twenty-five years ago, there
occur words which have never been forgotten by those
who heard them, and which struck a sacred awe on the
national assembly to which he spoke :
"The angel of death is passing over the land. I
seem even now to hear the beating of his wings."
Not only in war, but in
some household that tread
those wings may be heard.
also the angel of life, for if
reunite.
every day of every year, in
may be felt, the rustling of
But the angel of death is
death divides, he may also
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
175
The angel whose visits are of judgment and destruc-
tion, invites and provokes us to works of charity and
kindness. The angel who sits within the shadow of the
sepulchre, is also the angel of the resurrection of our
immortal souls.
"
CXV.
To put forth old truths that they may with each suc-
cessive age wear a new aspect; so to receive new truths
that they may not clash rudely with the old; this is the
function which God entrusts to each new generation of
mankind. So, again and again,
God hath fulfilled himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
CXVI.
The human mind, it has been well said, may and
ought to repose as calmly before a confessed and un-
conquerable difficulty as before a confessed and discov
ered truth.
In the power and justice and judgment of the
Almighty, no less than in His mercy and love, let us
place our absolute confidence. "God," as the old prov-
erb says, “never smites with both hands at once
with one hand He strikes to afflict, but the other is up-
lifted behind the veil, to bless, to heal, and to purify.
))
176
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
We may rest assured that the Supreme Mind has a pur-
pose, even though we do not see it.
CXVII.
The cross of Christ is the pledge to us that the deep-
est suffering may be the condition of the highest bless-
ing; the sign, not of God's displeasure, but of His
widest and most compassionate love.
CXVIII.
We know that what we see are but the outskirts of
creation; that the power and the wisdom which rule
this vast universe must be beyond the reach, not only
of our understanding, but of our furthest speculation.
Many a one who has been perplexed by the uncertain-
ties and contentions of history, has been strengthened
by the certainty and the unity of science.
"The moral perversions of mankind would have
made an infidel of me," said one of the best prelates of
this century, "but for the counteracting impression of
■ Divine providence in the works of nature."
CXIX.
We all have need of the grace of humility. We have
need of the conviction that many of us, perhaps most
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
177
of us, are but as dust and ashes in the presence of the
great oracles in the various branches of knowledge that
Divine wisdom has raised up amongst us. We have
need of willingness, of eagerness to be corrected by
those who fear to tread where we rush boldly in, and of
a desire to improve ourselves by every light that dawns
upon us from the past or present, from the east or from
the west, from heaven or from earth.
CXX.
We sometimes hear it said, that in this or that school,
or in this or that system, morality may be taught, but
not religion; or that unless religion is taught, it is use-
less to teach morality. There are, no doubt, elements
in religion that are not necessarily contained in moral-
ity. But in the highest point of view the distinction.
fades away as we touch it. In Paganism this might
have been so. But in Christianity, morality is itself the
innermost part of religion, is its very Holy of Holies.
The Homeric gods, as a general rule, were not better,
but worse, than the Homeric heroes. The description
of the Eternal in the Old Testament, again, was often
too far removed from human thought to be represented
to us in the form of human goodness. But the Chris-
tian idea of God was nothing else than the perfection
of virtue and wisdom. There are not many definitions
of the Supreme Being in the New Testament, but they
178
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
are mostly of this kind, "God is love; God is light;"
and when to this we add that the Founder of our reli-
gion is set before us, not only as an example of human-
ity, but as the representation and personification of
Divinity, this truth concerning the moral nature of the
Divine essence, attains a vividness and power which has
never been reached in any other faith.
In all the various theories concerning the nature of
Christ, if not equally, at any rate in a predominant and
impressive form, the chief aspect in which He is set be-
fore us is as a mirror in which we see the perfection of
the Deity. The more human the representation of His
virtues, the more we feel the divine character of the
mission entrusted to Him. The more attractive and
persuasive to all our moral convictions, so much the
more we feel that He has disclosed to us the secret of
the invisible and eternal mind.
CXXI.
The acts and courtesies of life have their own value ;
but that value is as nothing compared with a high, hon-
orable, upright course of life. The splendor or the
simplicity of worship, the excellence of music, or the
beauty of architecture, have their own attraction for the
truly spiritual mind. But compared with duty-com-
pared with forbearance, humility, and truth they have
in the judgment of the Supreme mind very slight at
traction indeed.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
179
CXXII.
The universal benevolence of God as our Father;
the universal capacity for religion in mankind as His
children; the identification of religion with morality;
the identification of moral goodness with the Divine
nature; the supreme importance of charity, purity,
truth, and humility; the necessity and the possibility of
continued progress, both in the individual and in the
race; the reversal of the superficial judgments of the
world; the identification of things secular and things
sacred; the divinity of sorrow and suffering; the spirit-
ual character of true religion, both in worship and in
doctrine these are the ten chief inward principles
which lie behind all the facts, institutions, and history
of Christianity, which would not, so far as we know,
have struck root in the world at all but for the coming
of Christianity, and which, wherever they are found
bearing fruit, constitute a Christian, whatever be the
outward profession; which, wherever they are not
found, cause a failure, a falling short of the privileges.
and the consolations of Christianity.
CXXIII.
Christianity is what it is by the fact that there was
once lived upon earth a sacred and divine life sacred
and divine because it was supremely, superhumanly,
180
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
and transcendently good; because it was above. the
limitations of time, country, and party; because it re-
vealed to mankind the fullest insight into the heart of
the Eternal and Supreme; and Christianity shall be
what it may yet become, in proportion as that life, or
anything like it, is lived over again in the personal ex-
ample and influence of any human soul that aspires
towards the perfect ideal which is represented not in
the name, but in the power; not in the letter, but in the
spirit, of Jesus Christ.
CXXIV.
There is a passage in the Book of Genesis, on which
I have often been accustomed to dwell, as a likeness of
the course which we may hope that ecclesiastical his-
tory may take.
When Isaac digged a well in the valley of Gerar, the
neighboring herdsmen strove with him, and he called
the name of that well Esek, that is to say, "strife or
controversy; " and they went on to another well, and
there also were accusations and counter accusations,
and he called the name of that well Sitnah, that is to
say, "calumny," or "recrimination." And they went
on and found another well in a large, free, open space,
where each had room to feed their flocks at will, with-
out interfering with the others, and he called the nume
of that well Rehoboth, that is to say, as it is in our ver
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
181
(6
sion, room,' or "width," or "breadth," or as it is
called in the sacred Vulgate of the ancient church,
Latitudo, or in plain English, "latitude."
Latitude, or latitudinarian, is not deemed a reproach
by that venerable translation; it was deemed the high
est title of honor by the noblest English divines at the
close of the seventeenth century. It may, perchance,
be our best guide, even in the New World, to the still
waters of comfort and peace.
""
CXXV.
"Thy will be done," that great prayer which lies at
the root of all religions, is a thought which the old.
Western nations hardly understood. It breathes the
spirit of the race of Abraham, of the race of Ishmael."
"God is great," so a Musselman Algerine once said
to his Christian captive. The captive, who came from
the British Isles, has recorded that it was the first word
of consolation that had reached his heart, and caused
his sinking spirit to revive.
On the other hand, look at the practical activity and
beneficence which formed the sum and substance of
the Redeemer's life; how he went about everywhere
doing good, how He made the service of man to be it-
self the service of God. This is a vast advance from
the immovable East. It is the Divine recognition of
those energetic faculties which have especially marked
182
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
the character of the Greek, the Roman, the German,
and the Anglo-Saxon races of mankind.
Christ has taught us how to be reverential, and seri-
ous, and composed. He has taught us no less how to
be active, and stirring, and manly, and courageous.
The activity of the West has been incorporated into
Christianity, because it is comprehended in the original
character and genius of our Founder, no less than are
the awe and reverence which belong to the East.
CXXVI.
It is well to know how to be in sympathy with the
will of God; to feel truly the littleness of all that is
little, and to feel no less truly the greatness of all that
is great; to have a just measure of what is partial,
secondary, indifferent, and of what is eternal, perma-
nent, and essential; to look beyond the narrow present
to the far-reaching past and future. This, which we
may believe is the instinct of the blessed intelligences
which stand around the throne of God, ought to be the
aspiration, difficult and arduous, yet not impossible, of
those who are struggling here on earth.
"The Lord sitteth above the cherubim, be the earth
never so unquiet."
We should strive to look upon things on earth as we
imagine that He looks upon them who sees their begin-
ning, middle, and end.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
183
There are, indeed, those who serve, although they
only "stand and wait;" those who in the temple of
heaven, as in the temple on earth, do God's will by
silent praise and contemplation. But this is not the
usual description of the ministering spirits. They rest
not, day nor night; their rest is in work, and their work
itself is rest. They rejoice, so we are told, in the re-
covery of every fragment of good. And this ministra-
tion for our welfare extends even to those operations of
Providence which seem at times most adverse.
As in nature, the fierce rain, the wild wind, the raging
fire, are often indispensable instruments for the purifica-
tion of rivers, the invigoration of health, the reforma-
tion of cities, so also it is in individual experience.
In our own lives how often it is that we come across
what have been finely called "veiled angels."
"We know how radiant and how kind,
Their faces are those veils behind;
We trust those veils one happy day,
In heaven and earth shall pass away.”
CXXVII.
As we look at the divisions of Christendom at large
or of any one of its separate churches, the question
often arises, Who is this that cometh from Edom with
garments dyed in Christian blood the seamless rai-
ment rent in twain by the violence of Christian contro
184
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
versy? Can this be the Prince of Peace? Can this be
the God of love? Can this be the Merciful and the
Just?
Yet here, also, is another side to the picture. Here,
also, must the truth of God enter into its rest by hard-
won victory, by generous rivalry, by the eager conflict
of soul with soul and mind with mind. Union of the
same elements is nothing; it is only the union of di-
verse elements which makes unity worth having. If all
were the eye, where were the hearing? If all were the
ear, where were the seeing?
We may have absolute agreement and sameness
every face like every other face, every mind like every
other mind; but we should then have none of the vari-
ety of nature, none of the culture of civilization, none
of the richness and the fulness of Christianity. But in
proportion as any church is civilized, and national, and
comprehensive, there must be divisions, and those very
divisions are the sign of comprehension and of vitality.
As in the state, so in the church, it is by argument,
by debate, by the intercourse of different souls, that
truth is sifted, and light struck out, and faith tried, and
charity perfected.
There are streams of religious thought which, like
the Nile, can diffuse beneficence by their sole strength,
without tributary or accessory aid; but the stream of
the highest Christian truth, in this respect, resembles
the mighty river, the glory of the Western world, which
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
185
flows beneath the heights of Quebec, and which derives
its force and majesty from that peculiar conformation
of the continent which has made it the depository and
the outlet of all that vast volume of waters which, in
hidden springs, and immense lakes, and world-renowned
cataracts, discharge themselves into its broad channel,
and make it the highway of the nations.
Such is true Christianity, accepting and including all
the elements of life which, from the inland seas of far
antiquity, or the rushing torrents of impetuous action,
or the dissolving foam of ethereal speculation, find their
way into its capacious bosom.
CXXVIII.
When we hear on every side, of the inquiries concern-
ing that mysterious frame which has been so fearfully
and wonderfully made, let us not be alarmed as though
some new thing had happened to us. However far we
may trace back the material parts of man, from what-
ever earlier forms of existence it may be thought possi-
ble to derive the bodily frame which we possess in com-
mon with other parts of creation, no one can go farther
back or deeper down than St. Paul, or than the Book of
Genesis have already led us.
"The first man is of the earth, earthy," says St. Paul ;
"the Lord God," says the Book of Genesis, “made man
186
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
out of the dust of the earth," out of the inanimate
brute earth.
There is much, no doubt, that has of late years
brought out the likeness of our physical nature to that
of the lower animals, with a force, and vivacity, and
multiplicity of illustration that was not known before.
But the fact itself has always been familiar even to the
ordinary observer.
There is much, also, that has long ago compelled us
to abandon the prosaic chronological character of the
earlier chapters of the Bible. But this need not pre-
clude us from recognizing the truth of their general
spirit, of their spiritual forecast. The Biblical and the
scientific accounts thus far, at least, go together that
neither in the one nor the other can the description of
man's origin affect or destroy our knowledge, our cer-
tainty of what he is row.
There is nothing more surprising in being told that
the race of mankind has sprung, as the Bible tells us,
from the dust of the earth, than in being told that a
Newton or a Shakespeare has sprung from the small,
sleeping infant, without speech, without reason, almost
without consciousness.
It would be new, it would be against religion, it
would be against the Bible, it would, I may add, be
against all fact and all experience, if we were told that,
because of this humble origin, if so it be, therefore we
could never rise above it; that because we were once
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
187
children, therefore we must be forever children and can
never become men; that because we were once savage,
we could never be civilized; that because our first man
was cf the earth, earthy, therefore all our higher and
nobler desires, and hopes, and affections, are also of the
earth, earthy.
This would indeed make us, as St. Paul says, of all
creatures the most miserable. But any such degrading,
retrograde belief, is repudiated by none more than by
the chief of our philosophic inquirers. They, as well
as the most devout theologian, maintain that the des-
tiny, the vocation of man is not to be stationary, but
progressive; that nothing in the whole world is so ex-
cellent and enduring as that which has been done by
the heroic, or generous, or truthful amongst the sons
of men; that "to all eternity the sum of truth and
right will have been increased by their means; that to
all eternity falsehood and injustice will be the weaker,
because such deeds have been done."
When, therefore, we are asked, "What is thy name?"
we may, without misgiving, reply fearlessly that we are
not ashamed of our lineage or our destiny. The name
of "
Adam," and homo, and humanus, all alike mean
"the child of the ground."
But there are far other and higher names
or if
not names, at least descriptions-in store for him;
and to arrive at these we must ask not only what is
188
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
our bodily structure, but what is our inmost self? Man
looks upwards, not downwards forwards, not back-
wards; and it is the direction in which he looks, far
more than the actual look itself, which indicates what
he is.
It is not the descent but the ascent of man which re-
veals his true nature. As the Christian poet, George
Herbert, sang, with an insight beyond his age:
"All things unto our flesh are kind,
In their descent and being to our mind,
In their ascent and cause."
CXXIX.
M
The self of a man is that which the Bible, in the
largest sense, calls his soul—the seat of all those intel-
lectual and moral faculties which lie behind the outward
frame, which even when we look at the face of a living
friend, we do not see which when we look at the face
of a dead friend, we know is no longer there. This is
the widest sense of the word "soul" or
،، self." But
both the Bible and common experience make a distinc-
tion here, also, between the lower and the higher.
The apostle says, in that great chapter where he dis-
cusses the hope of immortality-"the first man was
made a living, natural soul." The natural man the
natural genius, the natural intellect, the natural play of
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
189
mind, the natural vigor — this is no doubt a vast ele-
ment in the human being.
But still we all feel that these are not the qualities
which most endear, most attract, most elevate. There
is something yet beyond; and that is what the apostle
calls the spirit - the quickening, life-giving spirit.
There is an earthy man, and a natural man; but there
is, above all, a "spiritual" man.
g
As we have borne in our outward frame the image of
the earthy, which we share in common with the animal
creation; as we have a living soul, a natural soul, which
we share in common with all, even the most degraded
of men, so in our innermost being we bear the image
of the heavenly, which we share in common with God
himself.
If the soul is, in the Teutonic languages, the "sea,"
the vast illimitable ocean of the human being, on which
"the wind," "the breath" plays, it is the breath, the
wind itself, which is the life of that troubled sea. That
is "the spirit," that is the man himself; that is the es-
sence of our nature, which is made in the image of
God.

And if we ask, what is this spiritual part? we must
reply, it is the affections; it is the generosity which
embraces the needs of others besides ourselves; it is
the conscience, which is the ruling faculty within us; it
is the faith which removes mountains; it is the hope
190
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
which looks beyond the grave; it is, above all, the love,
the charity, which never fails which is at once the
homeliest and the loftiest of the virtues of humanity,
and of the attributes of Divinity.
He who cultivates this part of his existence who
makes the other two parts, of the body and the soul or
mind, subordinate to this one supreme part — he is a
spiritual man. He in whom this spiritual part lives and
burns, has a pledge of immortality. And what is im-
pressed upon us by the history of our race is that this
spiritual part of man's nature has, on the whole, most
constantly advanced.
The first man, which was of the earth, earthy — the
outward, physical man-has, on the whole, remained.
the same. The intellectual part has advanced im-
mensely; the civilized man is far above the savage
the Greek and the Roman far above the Asiatic.
But the spiritual man the soul of the affections
whilst on the one hand, it is found in some measure
even in the lowes. forms of the human race, where the
intellect is least developed, yet, on the other hand, has
advanced, even where the intellect has remained
stationary.
If the Greek was an advance on the barbarian, the
Christian in his highest state is a far greater advance
on the heathen. It is in this indefinite growth of the
spiritual man, as compared with the stationary charac-
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
191
ter of the earthly, natural man, that we gain at once a
new insight into the spiritual forces of which we are
now composed, and a new hope for our future.
CXXX.
Religious feeling, religious doctrine, religious ordi-
nances are of no value unless they produce in our lives
justice, integrity, honesty, purity, gentleness, modesty.
These are the means by which the name of God is hon-
ored amongst men. You who have still your way to
make in the world, remain steadfast to this thought.
You may have many difficulties, many perplexities, but
remember that as long as you believe that God is just,
so long as you know that the best mode of serving
Him is to be like Jesus Christ in the goodness and
truthfulness of His character, so long you have enough
for your religious guidance.
CXXXI.
Bigness is not of necessity greatness, nor is splendor
of itself civilization, nor is even indomitable will and
perseverance absolutely identical with progress. Some-
times, as we think of the chequered history, whether of
the long annals of the mother country, or the no less
chequered history of this country, short in duration, but
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
long in eventful characters and eventful incidents, there
comes to our minds the recollection of those lines of
the cynical poet of England:
"New times, new climes, new lands, new men, but still,
The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill."
Yet with this we must combine, if possible, the
brighter prospect of the Christian poet, which, though
referring only to the duties and tasks of daily life, may
be applied also to the fortunes of empires and churches,
even of those which were least in his mind:
"New perils past, new sins forgiven,
New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice."
When we think, whether in England or in America,
of the boundless generosity of individuals; when we
remember the kindliness and purity of domestic hearths;
when we think of the efforts of the higher and more
civilized portion of each nation, our hearts refuse to be
disquieted,
"Human courage must rise to the level of human ad-
versity" that was a noble saying of an American
general whom both sides in the late civil conflict de-
lighted to honor. Human virtue, we may add, must
rise to the level of human corruption and human
temptation.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
193
CXXXII.
▬▬▬▬▬▬
Rest assured that our happiness, our dignity, our wel-
fare here and hereafter, depend not on what our ances
tors were thousands of years ago, not on the construc-
tion of our outward frames, not even on the channels
through which our moral natures have come to us, nor
even on those high mental gifts of intellect, mind, and
genius - which are, after all, gifts, ornaments of our-
selves, not our very selves.
No, not on any of these things, wonderful as they are,
and greatly as they contribute to our happiness, does
the real destiny of men or of nations rest; but on our
moral nature itself on what we are, on what we do,
on what we admire, on what we detest, on what we love,
on what we hate.
CXXXIII.
Here stand I," said Luther; "I can do nothing
against conscience.”
“To endeavor to domineer over the conscience,"
was the confession wrung from Charles V., however
little he may have followed it out in practice, "is to in-
vade the citadel of heaven."
It is this doctrine of the supremacy of conscience,
whether as involved in the Bible, or familiar to us as it
is drawn out by Butler, which corrects the pretensions
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
i
of all artificial authority. All human authority, civil or
ecclesiastical, must in the last resort, be alike subordi-
nate to the one Divine authority which speaks to us
through the voice of conscience.
When the apostles declared, and when we after them
declare that we must obey God rather than man, it was
not the repudiation of the laws of ruler or magistrate;
it was then the assertion of the supremacy of conscience
against the authority of a Sanhedrin of priests and
scribes, as it still may be against the authority of a
Pontiff, a Synod, or a council.
It is this doctrine, also, which is the foundation of all
true spiritual independence- that is, of the independ-
ence by which a brave man acts for himself and by
himself, regardless of adverse critics, or fashion, or
carping foes, or what is still more difficult to with-
stand lukewarm friends.
66
They have said. What say they?
What say they? Let them
say." That is the noble motto of the chief college in
the university of Aberdeen. It should be the motto,
also, of every resolute soul, which cares more for mind.
than matter, more for quality than for quantity, more
for God than for man.
CXXXIV.
However much the outward frame may be mortal,
however much the intellect may change its forms with
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
195
each succeeding age the moral and spiritual nature
of man outlasts all convulsions in this life, and will, we
humbly trust, outlast death itself. There is something
greater than the resurrection of the body, and that is
the immortality of the soul; and there is yet something
greater still, and that is the ever living, quickening,
vivifying power of the Spirit.
66
'Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee." So,
as it has been finely described of late, we are often
tempted to say with Abraham, as we look at the bril
liant figures
whether of men or of nations that
brighten this scene with their dazzling qualities, their
fascinating social charms, their magnificent appearance.
But it is not Ishmael, it is Isaac, the homely, spirit-
ual Isaac, that lives and endures through all changes,
and has within him the pledge of perpetual progress
and perpetual youth.
It is the character, the sum total of our moral being
which we have to regard in the supreme judgment.
This self, this character, is that soul which we cannot
exchange for any other good in the world. It is this of
which the Bible says, "What shall it profit a man to
gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" his own
spiritual, innermost, moral self.
It is this great doctrine of the Bible which was ex-
pressed in other words in the famous warning of
Necker to Mirabeau — equally applicable to unscrupu-
lous brilliancy everywhere, whether in church or state,
¦
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
1
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in young or old-"You have too much sense, too
much ability, not to find out, sooner or later, that, after
all, morality is in the nature of things."
CXXXV.
There have been in almost all ancient forms of re-
ligion, in most modern forms, also, strong tendencies,
each in itself springing from the best and purest feel-
ings of humanity, yet each, if carried into the extremes
suggested by passion or by logic, incompatible with the
other, and with its own highest purpose. One is the
craving to please, or to propitiate, or to communicate
with the powers above us by surrendering some object
near and dear to ourselves. This is the source of all
sacrifice. The other is the profound moral instinct
that the Creator of the world cannot be pleased, or
propitiated, or approached by any other means than a
pure life and good deeds.
We leap, as by a natural instinct, from the sacrifice
in the land of Moriah to the sacrifice of Calvary.
There are many differences there is a danger of ex-
aggerating the resemblance, or of confounding, in either
case, what is subordinate with what is essential.
But the general feeling of Christendom has in this
respect not gone far astray. Each event, if we look at
it well, and understand it rightly, will serve to explain
the other.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
197
Human sacrifice, it has been well said, which in out-
ward form most nearly resembled the death on the
Cross, is in spirit the furthest removed from it.
Human sacrifice which was in outward form nearest to
the offering of Isaac, was in fact and in spirit most
entirely condemned and repudiated by it. The union
of parental love with the total denial of self, is held up
in both cases as the highest model of human, and there-
fore as the shadow of Divine love. "Sacrifice" is
rejected, but "to do Thy will, O God," is accepted.
CXXXVI.
There are moments in the life both of men and of
nations, both of the world and of the church, when vast
blessings are gained, vast dangers averted, through our
own exertions - by the sword of the conqueror, by the
genius of the statesman, by the holiness of the saint.
Such, in Jewish history, was the conquest of Palestine
by Joshua, the deliverances wrought by Gideon, by
Samson, and by David.
Such, in Christian history, were the revolutions ef-
fected by Clovis, by Charlemagne, by Alfred, by Ber-
nard, and by Luther. But there are moments of still
higher interest, of still more solemn feeling, when deliv-
erance is brought about not by any human energy,
but
by causes beyond our own control.
198
THOUGHTS TILAT BREATHE.
Such, in Christian history, are the raising of the siege
of Leyden and the overthrow of the Armada, and such,
above all, was the passage of the Red Sea.
Whatever were the means employed by the Almighty
whatever the path which He made for Himself in
the great waters, it was to Him, and not to themselves,
that the Israelites were compelled to look as the source
of their escape.
"Stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah," was
their only duty. "Jehovah hath triumphed gloriously,"
was their only song of victory.
It was a victory into which no feeling of pride or self-
exaltation could enter. It was a fit opening of a history
and of a character which was to be specially distin-
guished from that of other races by its constant and
direct dependence on the Supreme Judge and Ruler of
the world.
Greece and Rome could look back with triumph to
the glorious days when they had repulsed their in-
vaders, had risen on their tyrants, or driven out their
kings. But the birthday of Israel the birthday of
the religion, of the liberty, of the nation, of Israel
was the passage of the Red Sea; the likeness in this,
as in so many other respects, of the yet greater events
in the beginnings of the Christian church, of which it
has been long considered the anticipation and the
emblem.
P
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
199
CXXXVII.
The wilderness, as it intervenes between Egypt and
the Land of Promise, with all its dangers and consola-
tions, is, as Coleridge would have said, not allegorical,
but tautegorical, of the events which in almost uncon-
scious metaphor we designate by those figures. It is
startling, as we traverse it even at this day, to feel that
the hard, stony track under our feet, the springs to
which we look forward at the end of our day's march,
the sense of contrast with what has been and with
what is to be, are the very materials out of which the
imagination of all ages has constructed its idea of the
journey of life.
CXXXVIII.
Sinai is not Palestine the law is not the gospel;
but the Ten Commandments, in letter and in spirit,
remain to us as the relic of that time. They represent
to us, both in fact and in idea, the granite foundation,
the immovable mountain on which the world is built
up; without which all theories of religion are but as
shifting and fleeting clouds; they give us the two
homely, fundamental laws, which all subsequent revela-
tion has but confirmed and sanctified the law of our
duty towards God, and the law of our duty towards our
neighbor.
W
200
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CXXXIX.
To labor and not to see the end of our labors; to
sow and not to reap; to be removed from this earthly
scene before our work has been appreciated, and when
it will be carried on not by ourselves, but by others.
is a law so common in the highest characters of history,
that none can be said to be altogether exempt from its
operation.
It is true in intellectual matters as well as in spirit-
ual; and one of the finest applications of any passage
in the Mosaic history, is that made by Cowley, and ex-
tended by Lord Macaulay to the great English philos-
opher, who,
“Did on the very border stand
Of the blessed Promised Land;
And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and showed us it;
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer, too."
CXL.
Our age is an immense advance upon the age of
chivalry and the crusaders; but it is well, from time to
time, to be reminded that there are virtues in chivalry
and in barbarism, as well as in reason and civilization;
and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has taught
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
201
us that even the most imperfect of the champions of
ancient times may be ranked in the cloud of the wit-
nesses of faith "God having provided some better
thing for us, that they without us might not be made
perfect."
CXLI.
Wild excesses in youth are often followed by energy,
by zeal, by devotion. We read it in the examples of
Augustine, of Loyola, of John Newton. Sudden con-
versions of character such as these are amongst the
most striking points of ecclesiastical history. But no
less certain is it that they are rarely, very rarely, fol-
lowed by moderation, by calmness, by impartial wisdom.
Count the eager partizans of our own or of other
times. How often shall we find that their early disci-
pline was one of headstrong and violent passion. How
often shall we find that the conversion of a lawless and
reckless youth issues in the one-sided and superstitious
zeal which hurries the ark of God into battle, after the
example of Hophni and Phinehas - which would op-
pose to the death the erection of the monarchy and the
rise of the prophets, as Hophni and Phinehas, in all
probability, would have opposed it, had they been con-
verted and spared.
Whatever else is gained by sudden and violent con-
versions, this is lost. Whatever else, on the other
hand, is lost by the absence of evil, by the calm and
•
202
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
3
even life which needs no repentance, this is gained.
The especial work of guiding, moderating, softening
the jarring counsels of men, is for the most part the
especial privilege of those who have grown up into
matured strength from early beginnings of purity and
goodness — of those who can humbly and thankfully
look back through middle age, and youth, and child-
hood, with no sudden rent or breach in their pure and
peaceful recollections.
In proportion as the different stages of life have
sprung naturally and spontaneously out of each other,
without any abrupt revulsion, each serves as a founda-
tion on which the other may stand; each makes the
foundation of the whole more sure and stable.
10
In proportion as our own foundation is thus stable,
and as our own minds and hearts have grown up gradu-
ally and firmly, without any violent disturbance or
wrench to one side or to the other; in that proportion
is it the more possible to view with calmness and mod-
eration the difficulties and differences of others
avail ourselves of the new methods and new characters
that the advance of time throws in our way return
rom present troubles to the pure and untroubled well
of our early years to preserve and to communicate
;he childlike faith, changed, doubtless, in form, but the
same in spirit, in which we first knelt in humble prayer
or ourselves and others, and drank in the first impres-
sions of God and of Heaven.
g
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
203
CXLII.
We all know what a powerful motive in the human
mind is the spirit of a profession, the spirit of the
order, the spirit, (as the French say), of the body to
which we belong. Oh, if the spirit of our profession,
of our order, of our body, were the spirit, or anything
like the spirit of the ancient prophets! if with us,
truth, charity, justice, fairness to opponents, were a
passion, a doctrine, a point of honor, to be upheld
through good report and evil, with the same energy as
that with which we uphold our position, our opinions,
our interpretations, our partnerships!
A distinguished prelate has well said:
"It makes all the difference in the world whether we
put the duty of truth in the first place, or in the second
place."
Yes, that is exactly the difference between the spirit
of the world and the spirit of the Bible.
The spirit of the world asks, first, "Is it safe?" sec-
ondly, "Is it true?"
The pirits of the prophets ask, first, "Is it true?"
secondly, "Is it safe?"
The spirit of the world asks, first, "Is it prudent?
secondly, "Is it right?"
The spirits of the prophets ask, first, "Is it right?"
secondly, Is it prudent?
It is not that they and we hold different doctrines on
"}
204
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
these matters, but that we hold them in different pro-
portions. What they put first, we put second; what we
put second, they put first. The religious energy which
we reserve for objects of temporary and secondary im-
portance, they reserved for objects of internal and
primary importance.
When Ambrose closed the doors of the church
of Milan against the blood-stained hands of the devout
Theodosius, he acted in the spirit of a prophet.
When Ken, in spite of his doctrine of the Divine
right of kings, rebuked Charles II. on his death-bed
for his long unrepented vices, those who stood by were.
justly reminded of the ancient prophets.
When Savonarola, at Florence, threw the whole
energy of his religious zeal into burning indignation
against the sins of the city, high and low, his sermons
read more like Hebrew prophecies than modern
homilies.
CXLIII
The true spirit of independence is not eccentricity,
not singularity, not useless opposition to the existing
framework of the world, or the church in which we
find ourselves. Not this which is of no use to any
one - but this which is needed by everyone of us, a
fixed resolution to hold our own against chance and
accident, against popular clamor and popular favor,
against the opinions, the conversation of the circle in
.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
205
which we live; a silent look of disapproval, a single
word of cheering approval - an even course, which
turns not to the right hand or to the left, unless with
our own full conviction a calm, cheerful, hopeful en-
deavor to do the work that has been given us to do,
whether we succeed or whether we fail.
CXLIV.
Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom
we know we can thoroughly depend-who will stand
firm when others fail the friend faithful and true, the
adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and
chivalrous; in such an one there is a fragment of the
Rock of Ages — a sign that there has been a prophet
amongst us.
-
"
CXLV.
We may be depressed by this or that failure of good
projects, of lofty aspirations. But the prophets and
the Bible bid us look onward. The world, they tell us,
as a whole, tends forwards and not backwards. The
losses and backslidings of this generation. if so be, will
be repaired in the advance of the next.
CC
'To one far-off divine event," slowly, it may be, and
uncertainly, but still steadily onward, "the whole crea
tion moves.'
206
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
Work on in faith, in hope, in confidence; the future
of the church, the future of each particular society in
which our lot is cast, is a solid basis of cheerful perse-
verance. The very ignorance of the true spirit of the
Bible of which we complain, is the best pledge of its
boundless resources for the future. The doctrines, the
precepts, the institutions, which as yet lie undeveloped
far exceed in richness, in power, those that have been
used out, or been fully applied.
CXLVI.
The turn, the change, the fixing our faces in the right
instead of the wrong direction-this is the difficulty,
this is the turning-point, this is the crisis of life. But
that once done, the future is clear before us. The
whole prophetic teaching of the Old and New Testa-
ment, has staked itself on the issue; it hazards the bold
prediction that all will be well when once we have
turned; it bids us go courageously forward in the
strength of the Spirit of God, in the power of the life of
Christ.
CXLVII.
Look forward, we sometimes say, a few days or a few
months, and how differently will all things seem.
Yes;
but look forward a few more years, and how yet more
differently will all things seem! From the height of
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
207
that future, to which on the wings of ancient prophetic
belief we can transport ourselves, look back on the
present. Think of our troubles, as they will seem when
we know their end. Think of those good thoughts and
deeds which alone will survive in that unknown world.
Think of our controversies, as they will appear when
we shall be forced to sit down at the feast with those
whom we have known only as opponents here, but whom
we must recognize as companions there.
To that future of futures which shall fulfil the yearn-
ings of all that the prophets have desired on earth, it
is for us, wherever we are, to look onward, upward, and
forward, in the constant expectation of something better
than we see or know. Uncertain as to "the day and
hour," and as to the manner of fulfilment, this last of
all the predictions still, like those of old, builds itself
upon the past and present:
"It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we
know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ;
for we shall see Him as He is."
CXLVIII.
The Gospels contain the sun in his rising; the Old
Testament is but the twilight of the dawn. The Gospels
contain the sun in his setting; all that follows is but in
comparison as the reflected light in moon or stars, to
guide us on our way through the darkness of the r
208
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CXLIX.
The poor in spirit— the humble, teachable, simple
minds, that know the bounds of their own ignorance,
that know the depths of their own sinfulness, that can
bear to have their faults corrected, that can look afar
off and not claim any spiritual perfections that do not
belong to them, that are content with saying, in silence
and solitude, "God be merciful to me a sinner"
these, little thought of by men, despised often both by
the religious and irreligious, have their place in "the
kingdom of God," which, as by rightful possession, is
"theirs."
CL.
When heaven and earth are passing from our mortal
gaze, or from the gaze of those whom we have known
and honored when the hand of death is gradually
drawing the curtain round us what words, what
thoughts, are those which survive in that dark hour?
The greeting of Christian cheerfulness, the calm thought-
fulness of Christian wisdom, the blessing of the Chris-
tian peacemaker, these will sound in our memory long
after the eyes are closed and the lips are sealed.
Heaven and earth shall pass away; but the words of
Christ, and the Christ-like words of Christ's disciples,
shall never pass away in this world or the next.
M
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
209
CLI.
The kingdom of God, the blessedness of the kingdom
is not, "lo here! or lo there!" it is "within us." We
carry it about with us; it is to be found, with God's
grace, everywhere. If there be any gifts whatever,
which we may hope God will bestow, in answer to our
prayers, to our sincere and humble seeking, they are
these.
Wealth may bring cares, knowledge may puff up,
friends may fall away, power may become a heavy bur-
den, but meekness, truth, and love do indeed "rejoice
the heart," and "give light to the eyes" of the simplest
and of the greatest. No pilgrimage to distant lands,
no reading of hundreds of books, is needed. This hap-
piness is independent of everything, except God, and
Christ, and our own souls.
CLII.
There is a legendary tale which describes how the
wood of the True Cross was of old rejected, because it
would not fit into the building of the ancient temple.
It was too long for one corner, it was too short for
another, it was too narrow for a third, it was too broad
for another; and so it was laid aside till it came forth
at last to be the means and symbol of the world's
redemption.
210
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
So are we, as we endeavor to fix in our straitened
earthly tabernacles the pattern of the heavenly. On
the way to our Father's house, no less than in our
Father's house, are many mansions many halting
places. None of us can embrace at a glance the whole
of Christian truth. Inconsistencies, incongruities, will
be found in every system, in every view. It is this
our own imperfection which is to us a sure pledge
that the truth of Christ will not be lost in any human.
school. It was before them, it will live after them.
M
CLIII.
They who hunger and thirst after righteousness
whose consciences will not let them rest, who seek after
a better standard of right and wrong, truth and false-
hood, purity and impurity, justice and injustice, than
they find in the world around them; to whom justice is
a positive joy, and injustice a deep and rankling grief;
who long with the longing of the Psalmist, in a dry and
thirsty land, to be better themselves, and to make others
better also; who prize God's law more than gold, yea,
than much fine gold; whose heart and whose flesh cry
out after the holiness of the living God; these “shall
be satisfied." Alas! it may be, not here; but in that
new and better world "wherein dwelleth righteousness,
where they shall wake up after His likeness, and be sat-
isfied with it."
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
211
CLIV.
Render to art, to nature, to science, the conclusions
which they have fairly won; render to them the honors
with which God has invested them, by planting on their
front that image and superscription of Himself which
none can see and doubt. Render this, too, again, not
grudgingly or of necessity, but as remembering that
here, also, "God loveth the cheerful giver."
CLV.
Whenever you can lay your finger or plant your foot
on an acknowledged fact in nature, or in language, or
in history, cling to it, cherish it, honor it as a fragment
of the truth on which we all repose. It may be small
and homely in itself as the silver penny of Cæsar's
tribute; it may seem contrary, as that did, to all pre-
conceived opinions; but nevertheless, if it be a fact,
stand by it, not in the name only of science or philos-
ophy, but in the name of God, and in the name of
Christ stand by it without fear or wavering, well
assured that therein you are doing not dishonor but
honor to the Master "who, we know, is true, and who
teaches the way of God in truth, and who regards not
the person of man."
212
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CLVI.
Not to the world at large only, but to each one
amongst us, “the night is far spent, the day is at hand.”
Young and old, our time is passing away; we are every
one of us drawing nearer to that day when we shall
meet the Judge of all mankind. God knows that we
have all need of mercy
of His infinite mercy. Every
one who knows his own heart, knows how welcome is
any thought that softens the severity of that judgment,
that brings home to us the sense of that mercy - how
gladly we trust that the love which was manifested in
Christ Jesus is indeed boundless, and overflows even
where it is least expected.
"God be merciful to me a
sinner" must be the prayer even of the best and purest
of men.
But not the less must we bear in mind that even our
sense of God's mercy will be shaken unless it is accom-
panied by the sense of His eternal justice, of our eter-
nal duty. We may not limit the mercy of God -- but
neither may we invent any other way of salvation than
that which he has appointed for us.
There is none
other name under heaven given among
we must be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ
holy, the just, and the good - Jesus, the Saviour, who
came to save us from our sins Christ, the Redeemer,
who came to redeem us from all iniquity.
There is no other means by which we can enter
men, whereby
- the
St
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
213
heaven, save that "holiness, without which, no man can
see God." There is no other rule whereby we shall be
judged, but "according to the works done in the body,
whether they be good or whether they be evil.”
CLVII.
Those of us who have travelled in mountain countries
know how one range of hills rises behind another, one
ever seeming the highest, till yet a higher appears be-
hind it; each has its own beauty, each its own peculiar-
ity. But there is one range, one line of lofty summits,
which always conveys a new sense of beauty, of awe, of
sublimity, which nothing else can give the range of
eternal snow. High above all the rest we see the white
peaks standing out in the blue sky, catching the first
rays of the rising sun, and the last rays of the sun as it
departs.
So it is with that range of high Christian character
which our Lord has set before us in the Sermon on the
Mount. High above all earthly, lower happiness, the
blessedness of the eight beatitudes towers into the
heaven itself. They are white with the snows of eter-
nity; they give a grace, a meaning, a dignity to all the
rest of the earth over which they brood. And when
the shades of evening gather round us, when the dark-
ness of sorrow and sickness closes in, when other com
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THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
mon worldly characters become cold, and dead, and
lifeless, then those higher points of true Christian good-
ness stand out brighter and brighter; the gleam of day-
light can be seen reflected on their summits when it has
vanished everywhere besides; they are still there, living
Jospels to instruct and cheer us; on the tops of the
mountains how beautiful are their feet who even by
silent goodness bring peace and good will to man.
CLVIII
The gate to heaven is sufficiently narrow by reason of
our manifold sins, and of God's perfect holiness; the
entrance through the needle's eye is close enough by
reason of our own cares, and distractions, and self in-
dulgence; let us not choke it up yet more by obstacles.
of which Christ says nothing.
Mu
CLIX.
You never get to the end of Christ's words. There
is something in them always behind. They pass into
proverbs they pass into laws they pass into doc-
-
trines they pass into consolations; but they never
pass away, and, after all the use that is made of them,
they are still not exhausted.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
215
CLX.
Consider how small a book even the whole Bible is,
and remember, further, how small a part of that book
is occupied by the words of Christ. Compare them
with the teaching of other celebrated teachers in our
own or former times.
One collection, alone, of the sayings of the Ara-
bian prophet, Mahomet, fills no less than thirteen.
hundred folio pages. All the sayings of Christ are
contained in the short compass of the four Gospels;
the few that are not there do not occupy two pages at
most; the whole Sermon on the Mount the greatest
discourse ever preached, the whole code of Christian
morality, the whole sum of saving doctrine - would
not, if read aloud, take more than a quarter of
an hour.
M
Consider how greatly this has assisted the preserva-
tion, the remembrance, the force of Christ's words. We
have not to go far and wide to seek them; they are
within our grasp, within our compass, within our sight;
very nigh to us, in our heart, and in our mouth
easy
to read, easy to recollect, easy to repeat. The waters
of life are not lost in endless rivers and lakes. They
are confined within the definite circle of one small,
living well, of which all can "come and drink freely,
without money and without price."
――
216
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CLXI.
The meek, the disinterested, the unselfish, those who
think little of themselves and much of others - who
think of the public good, and not of their own who
rejoice in good done not by themselves, but by others,
by those whom they dislike, as well as by those whom
they love — these shall gain far more than they lose;
they shall "inherit the earth" and "its fulness."
CLXII.
――――
It is a remarkable evidence of the unearthly origin of
our Master's teaching and mission, that when we come
to seek for comparisons and human likenesses by which
we can bring it home to our minds, we can find no lower
level than the very highest point to which human reason
has ever reached.
CLXIII.
Think over everything in your minds of which you
are quite sure, and act up to this. Do not trouble your-
selves about things of which you are not quite con-
vinced. Do not make yourselves out better than you
are; but be as good as the best part that is in you, and
then you will gradually grow better and wiser, "without
partiality and without hypocrisy."
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
217
CLXIV.
We are all of us, old and young, beset more or less
by the sophistries, the systems, the schools, the parties, -
which time and circumstances, which past ages or our
own age have cast up around us and beside us,
before us and behind us. We are involved in their
meshes, we walk in the grooves which they have made
for us.
To many of us it is a duty to go on as we have begun,
walking round and round our own small circles, seeing
only but a short way in advance, thinking much of what
lies close before us, little of what lies beyond us. Yet
still there is an encouragement and consolation in the
thought that none of these things of themselves consti-
tute the whole, or the essence, of Christianity; the Lord
is still the pattern of His church.
CLXV.
None can better afford to be content with the self-
control imposed by the wisdom and moderation of the
gospel, than those who have still the whole field of life
before them. Nondum, "not yet," was most fitly the
youthful motto of the same great prince whose device
in later life was "forward; "Plus ultra.
218
:
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CLXVI.
Remember that in this world, where the evil is ever
mingled with the good, the good, whatever it be, has its
claim on our imitation and admiration, whatever be the
evil whereby it is surrounded. Condemn not the wheat
because it grows amongst the tares. Hold up to all
honor, even as our Master did, the noble deeds even of
a Samaritan outcast.
CLXVII
To feel that there is a work before us to be done in
this world before we die—to feel that God is with us,
and that earth and the things of earth have no power to
turn us from our purpose to have fears, and hopes,
and pleasures, and pains, of which the worldly man
knows nothing to feel that God in Christ has forgiven
us all that is past, and henceforth bids us joyfully serve
Him in newness of life — to have within our hearts that
divine faculty of love or charity which will alone outlast
the great change of death — to show forth in our charac-
ters some trace, however slight, of "the mind which was
in Christ Jesus"- this is to become a new, heavenly,
unearthly creature, which "will avail," which "will be
strong" (such is the true meaning of the word) which
will survive when all else shall wax old and perish, which
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
219
will have its abiding place in that
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."
CLXVIII.
CLXIX.
new heaven and
What cannot be affected by mere statements of truth,
however true, or by mere systems of morals, however
good, will be effected when they are represented in
flesh and blood, in the life of a devoted servant of God,
in the story of the life and death of Christ our Lord.
To fasten upon this, to trust one's self to this, to be
awakened by this, is Christian faith and on feelings
such as these, or like to these, all Christian doctrine,
whether theological or moral, must be based.
-
"The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.”
'Then henceforth I will live, by the grace of God,
as a man should live who has been washed in the blood
of Jesus Christ."
So, on reading the apostle's words, exclaimed a young
soldier, arrested by the sight of them in the midst of a
reckless course; and in that strong faith, worked by a
love no less strong, he was cleansed from his former
sins, and acted out in his life, that sudden and almost
unconscious, but yet most true, most scriptural interpre
tation of St. John's words.
#
220
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CLXX.
?
The Good Shepherd saw that the lost sheep were
worth saving. God saw that there was something in
man not wholly lost and depraved, and therefore He
came to make the best of it, to restore it, to save it.
Look at the case of any circle of men, such as is often
described in fiction or seen in real life; men, it may be,
sunk in vice and sin, seemingly without any chance of
restoration. Suddenly, perhaps from accident or from
ignorance, there appears on the stage a new character,
upright, pure, innocent; he moves amongst them with-
out understanding them, and they not understanding
him On many he produces no effect; they regard him
only as a victim, or as a hypocrite, or as a fool.
But there will be some whose hearts are not entirely
hardened, who are wavering between good and evil, or
who are evil only because they have never known good.
In them such a character awakens a new sense. All
that there was of good, sleeping within them is roused
at the sight. Good rushes to meet its kindred good. It
is like twin brothers, long parted, suddenly recognizing
each other. The half good becomes wholly good; and
that union of good, the links in the chain of evil are
broken asunder, and the man, the society, the institu-
tion is saved. So God saved the world; so by one
man's righteousness are many made righteous.
}
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
221
CLXXI.
Leisure misused, an idle hour waiting to be employed,
idle hands with no occupation, idle and empty minds
with nothing to think of; these are the main tempta-
tions to evil. Fill up that empty void, employ those
vacant hours, occupy those listless hands, and evil will
depart, because it has no place to enter in, because it is
conquered by good.
The best antidote against evil of all kinds, against the
evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless.
perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep
hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not
stand against pure words, and prayers, and deeds.
Little doubts will not avail against great certainties.
Fix your affections on things above, and then you will
less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations,
the troubles, of things on earth.
CLXXII.
It is not enough to rely on the good within ourselves,
we must look to the good without ourselves. What that
highest good is we all know. But do we sufficiently re-
member how in the thought of that highest good, in the
communion with God in Christ, lies not only our peace
and safety, but our victory over evil? In earthly war-
222
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
2
fare, we know well that however courageous may be the
host, they must have a leader in whom to trust.
And so it is in our spiritual warfare; we must have
the example and the encouragement of the just and
good who have gone before us. But, above all, we
must look to Him who, above all other names, is called
"Jesus' that is, our "Joshua," our conqueror, our
victorious leader, the captain of our salvation, the Lion
of the tribe of Judah.
""
CLXXIII.
Augustine's youth had been one of reckless self-indul-
gence. He had plunged into the worst sins of the
heathen world in which he lived; he had adopted wild
opinions to justify those sins; and thus, though his
parents were Christians, he himself remained a heathen
in his manner of life, though not without some struggles
of his better self and of God's grace against those evil
habits. Often he struggled and often he fell; but he
had two advantages which again and again have saved
souls from ruin advantages which no one who enjoys
them (and how many of us do enjoy them!) can prize
too highly — he had a good mother, and he had good
friends. He had a good mother, who wept for him,
and prayed for him, and warned him, and gave him that
advice which only a mother can give, forgotten for the
moment, but remembered afterwards. And he had
_____
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
223
good friends, who watched every opportunity to encour-
age better thoughts, and to bring him to his better self,
In this state of struggle and failure he came to the city
of Milan, where the Christian community was ruled by
a man of fame almost equal to that which he himself
afterwards won, the celebrated Ambrose. And now the
crisis of his life was come, and it shall be described in
his own words. He was sitting with his faithful friend
Alypius; his whole soul was shaken with the violence
of his inward conflict the conflict of breaking away
from his evil habits, from his evil associates, to a life
which seemed to him poor, and profitless, and burden-
some. Silently the two friends sat together, and at last,
says Augustine:
"When deep reflection had brought together and
heaped up all my misery in the sight of my heart, there
arose a mighty storm of grief, bringing a mighty shower
of tears."
He left his friend, that he might weep in solitude; he
threw himself down under a fig tree in the garden, (the
spot is still pointed out in Milan), and he cried in the
bitterness of his spirit:
"How long? how long? to-morrow? to-morrow?
Why not now? Why is there not this hour an end to
my uncleanness?
""
"So was I speaking and weeping in the contrition of
my heart," he says, “when, lo! I heard from a neigh-
boring house a voice as of a child, chanting and oft re-
224
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
peating, 'Take up and read, take up and read.' In-
stantly my countenance altered; I began to think
whether children were wont in play to sing such words,
nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So,
checking my tears, I rose, taking it to be a command
from God to open the book and read the first chapter I
should find."
Eagerly he returned to the place where his friend was
sitting, for there lay the volume of St. Paul's epistles,
which he had just begun to study.
"I seized it," he says, "I opened it, and in silence.
read that passage on which my eyes first fell. 'Not in
rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wan-
tonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh,
to fulfil the lusts thereof.' No further could I read, nor
needed I; for instantly, at the end of this sentence, by
a serene light infused into my soul, all the darkness of
doubt vanished away."
We need not follow the story further the life of
St. Augustine is familiar to us all; but his conversion is
a striking instance of the effect of a single passage of
Scripture suddenly yet seriously taken to heart. It is
an example, like the conversion of St. Paul, of the fact
that from time to time God calls His servants, not by
gradual but by sudden changes. It is also an instance
-how, even in such sudden conversions (which are the
exceptions and not the rule of Providence), previous
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
225
good influences have their weight. The prayers of his
mother, the silent influence of his friend, the high char-
acter of Ambrose, the preparation for Christian truth
in the writings of heathen philosophers, were all laid
up, as it were, waiting for the spark, and, when it came,
the fire flashed at once through every corner of his
soul.
CLXXIV.
There are glimpses of Heaven granted to us by every
act, or thought, or word, which raises us above our-
selves - which makes us think less of ourselves and
more of others- which has taught us of something
higher and truer than we have in our own hearts
which has aroused within us the feelings of gratefulness,
and admiration, and love—which has taught us, or
may teach us, in any sense, to remember and to imitate
whatever things are just and true, pure and honest,
lovely and of good report.
CLXXV.
We sometimes imagine that by "preaching the gos-
pel" is meant preaching the same truth over and over
again in the same words, to congregations however dif-
ferent from each other, under occasions however differ-
ent each from each. This was not the preaching of the
226
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
gospel by Him who first preached it; even in the short
compass of the Gospels, every chord of the heart is
struck, every infirmity of the conscience and mind is
roused and soothed. Heaven and earth may pass away,
but as long as a single human soul survives in the
depths of eternity, in that human soul Christ's words
will live, will find a hearing, will awaken a response.
And this variety is expressed and is secured by a
process in itself instructive. Not by one form of teach-
ing only, but by many. By things new and old; by
discourses such as the Sermon on the Mount; by stern
truth with the Pharisees and Sadducees; by pleasant
fiction and parable, such as those He spoke on the sea-
shore of Genesareth.
Remember this, all that learn and all that teach.
Not by one channel only, but by many, is God's truth
conveyed; one may have more attraction for one class,
one for another; but by some means or other, Christ
would have us taught to know His Father's mind, to do
His Father's will; but every one of those ways and
means is after His example.
CLXXVI.
now
Wide as are the differences which part men asunder
Greck and Latin, Lutheran and Calvinist, heretic
or schismatic, nay, even heathen or infidel — these dif-
ferences are not greater than those which appeared to
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
227
each other to part the Jew and the Samaritan in the
time of Christ.
Yet, if such an one shows that he has within him the
fruit of Christian mercy and love, Christ himself has
told us that he is for the time our neighbor, our model,
our teacher. He shows by his deeds that, though he
be divided from us, he is one with Christ; he shows by
his deeds that, though his creed may be wrong, his
heart is right; he shows by his deeds that, though he
may have much to learn from us, we have much to learn
from him. The more we differ from him, the more
erroneous we think his belief, so much the more is his.
zeal a warning against our apathy; so much the more
is his generosity a warning against our closeness; so
much the more is his justice, or benevolence, or energy,
or whatever his virtue and grace may be, a warning
against our indifference or sluggishness or selfishness.
Whatever be his other shortcomings, yet in these points.
he may well instruct us.
CLXXVII.
Who is there, however thoughtless, that has not been
struck for a moment, by the singular analogy of human
life to the descent of those mighty streams which we
may track from their source to their end? The clear
and innocent murmur of the infant brook; the furious
roar and rush of the youthful torrent; the deep serenity
228
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
and heavenly hue imparted as it falls in with some bet
ter influence than its own; the whole color of its course
again polluted and overclouded by its junction with a
less worthy but more headstrong companion; its final
character, widening and deepening with the lapse of
years, making for itself a way through distant countries,
the fertilizer and civilizer of cities and nations, till it is
lost in the common grave of all the streams of the
earth.
But of all these comparisons and parables, none is
more fruitful, none more really susceptible of wielding
manifold instruction than that old but not yet exhausted
figure which compares human life to a journey.
The uncertainty from day to day of what each day
will bring forth, and yet the general security that deter-
mination and resolution will at last reach the end at
which they aim; the meeting of various travellers in a
common point, not without surprise, through various
routes, some by the beaten track, some alone, some with
guidance well or ill chosen how like to the course of
human life, whether of individuals, or of nations, or of
churches; how truly each is the counterpart of the
other; how many lessons it suggests, if viewed for a
moment seriously, of humility, of hope, of wisdom.
CLXXVIII.
Sooner or later we must be separated, by death or by
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
229
absence, from those to whom we most earnestly cling
for support and love in this mortal life. We have had
them with us so long; let us think of it, not with repin-
ing, or useless regret, but as so much clear and unal-
loyed mercy, which, having once been ours, can never
be taken away from us. Yet neither while they are with
us, nor when they are removed from us, is this the chief
relation in which we stand towards them. A time will
come, if it has not already come with many of us, when
they must leave the world and "go to the Father of
spirits. Whenever this time comes we feel, or ought to
feel, the blessing of knowing that the earthly ties which
bound us so closely to them, are not the whole of their
existence, or of ours. They have gone to that state
where they are like the angels of heaven, where years
and months cease to be counted, where the only bond
of communion between us and them, so far as we know
anything, is that they are in the presence of Him who
their God and our God, their Father and our Father.
in whose light they and we shall, we trust, see all things
clearly, and know as we are known.
CLXXIX.
در
He who has had his mind trained to a keen sense of
whatever things are true, and just, and honest, and
pure, and lovely, and of good report, will be best able
230
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
to perceive the full combination of these graces in the
person of Jesus Christ our Lord. He who has most
keenly felt the evil of their separation in others, will feel
the most intense relief and delight in finding them once
for all united there, and in that union he will see a
pledge and evidence of the truth of Christ's religion,
such as the world could never have given, such as the
world can never take away.
CLXXX.
Goodness, kindness, purity, holiness, truth, each
carries its own conviction with it, melts the heart which
cannot be broken; leaves its traces behind it, even
when not heeded at the moment; evil not only falls
before it, but is convinced, transfigured, transformed,
upraised by its power.
It was not through the anger, but the love of God,
that the world was redeemed; it is "not the wrath of
man," but the love of man, that most fully “works out
in the world the righteousness of God." Meet harsh-
ness by kindness, meet uncleanness by purity, meet
craft and suspicion by straightforward honesty, meet
intolerance and prejudice by toleration and forbearance.
The contest may seem unequal at first, but in the end
we shall conquer. Great is truth, great is goodness,
and at the last, truth and goodness will prevail.
|:
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
231
CLXXXI.
The attitude into which we are put by humility, by
disinterestedness, by purity, by calmness, gives the op-
portunity, the disengagement, the silence, in which we
may watch what is the will of God concerning us. If
we think no more of ourselves than we ought to think,
if we seek not our own but others' welfare, if we are
prepared to take all things as God's dealing with us,
then we may have a chance of catching, from time to
time, what God has to tell us.
In the Mussulman devotions, one constant gesture is
to put the hands to the ears, as if to listen for the mes-
sages from the other world. This is the attitude, the
posture which our minds assume, if we have a standing
place above and beyond the stir, and confusion, and dis-
sipation of this mortal world.
CLXXXII.
Look at the great natural divisions of mankind, the
rich and poor, the clever and the dull, the learned
and the ignorant. How are these to be brought to-
gether? What qualities have they in common? Will
the gifts which the world most admire help us to this
end? No; we must turn elsewhere for these bonds of
union.
Not Homer, not Shakespeare, but the Bible is the
232
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
common book of all men. Not worldly powers, but un-
worldly graces, are the common gifts of all mankind.
CLXXXIII.
Our road to heaven needs no tortuous, winding path
it runs straight as an arrow across mountains and
valleys; it cuts through difficulties, it makes use of nat-
ural facilities, it brings us into company with unex-
pected faces, characters, situations; but it is turned
aside by none of them to the right or to the left, and at
the end it will bring us to the city where we would be.
Year by year changes gather round us. We shall not
be this year as we were last year. If we remain the
same, yet things around us change, and our relative po-
sitions, thoughts, duties, feelings, change with them.
But one thing changes not, and that is, the duty and
privilege of keeping the commandments of God.
CLXXXIV.
Heroes and saints are indeed the salt of the world,
and the light of the world-a life is spread by them
into the putrifying mass, a glory streams from them into
the dark void. Their summits reflect a light which re-
mains there when it has vanished everywhere else; their
example, whilst it makes us feel far below them, yet in
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
233
a manner annihilates space and time, and brings us near
to them.
And let us all remember also, that in proportion to
the grace and dignity given by a true, religious, un-
worldly spirit, even to the noblest worldly virtues, is the
mischief wrought by the absence of worldly virtues in
those who think and call themselves unworldly.
Let us remember that there is no greater stumbling-
block in the way of the reception of true religion by
men of the world, than the uncandid, untruthful, unjust,
ungenerous deeds, and words, and tempers, sometimes
seen among men who profess to be, and who, in a cer-
tain sense, "" are not of the world."
CLXXXV.
Do not divert the faith of Christ our Saviour, that
world-controlling, world-conquering faith from its proper
functions, we cannot afford to lose its aid, we want the
whole volume of its waters, the undivided strength of
its stream, to moisten the dry soil of our hardened
hearts, to feed and cleanse our dark habitations, to turn
the vast wheels of our complex social system, to deepen
our shallow thoughts, to widen our narrow sympathies,
to sweeten our bitter controversies, to freshen our stag-
nant indolence. Faith working by love "can do this,
and nothing else can ;" we can neither with safety spare
234
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
its motive power, nor yet without danger open another
path for its energies.
CLXXXVI.
No feelings, no doctrines, no practices are good and
true to us, however good and true in themselves, which
we ourselves do not, in some degree at least, feel to be
true and good. Truth which is forced upon us from
without, or adopted by us without conviction, is really
no truth at all. No doctrines are so important, so likely
to take hold of a man, as those which, imperfectly per
haps, but in some measure, he has approached before.
If ever we can be made to act, to know, to think up to
our professions, our own words, our own creed, we shall
have made a far nearer step to truth than by embracing,
with ever so much ardor, the truth which comes to us
from others.
CLXXXVII.
The highest revelations of the nature of God and ot
man were given with a direct, practical bearing on the
conduct and hearts of mankind. The humblest pre-
cepts of humility, of courtesy, of love of justice, were
revelations of the mind of God and of the salvation of
man. It is important to remember this: we are all of
us apt to put asunder what God has thus joined to-
gether. Some are tempted to think that Christian be-
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
235
lief is inore important than Christian practice. Others
are tempted to think that Christian practice may easily
apound without foundation in Christian belief. Against
both errors the Scriptural use of the word "doctrine "
is a useful and constant protest. The "word of Christ"
was "meekness, righteousness, and truth."
CLXXXVIII.
It is not amongst the uneducated, nor yet amongst the
well-educated, but amongst the half-educated, and the
ill-educated, and the over-educated, that the springs of
bitterness rise which poison the Christian life. In the
spirit of the poor and humble, in the spirit of the
ancient church, in the highest works of human genius,
a ready response is made to the words of the Bible, and
the Spirit of Christ - amidst even the most untoward
generation.
CLXXXIX.
There have been many corruptions and superstitions
growing up in the church in different times and
countries. But there is one main corruption and super-
stition, against which it is our duty at all times and in
all countries to protest. Every religious community,
nay, every religious individual, is tempted to set the
outward above the inward, the ceremonial above the
spiritual, the feelings or the understanding above the
236
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
conscience; to think more of sacrifice than of mercy;
more of the blood of bulls and goats, more of mint,
anise, and cummin, more of saying "Lord, Lord," than
of justice, humility, and truth. Against this tendency,
wheresoever shown, there is, if one may use the expres-
sion, an eternal protest an eternal Protestantism
shrined in every part of Scripture.
CXC.
en-
How greatly the value of a gift depends on the man-
ner of giving. "He who gives soon," according to the
old proverb, "gives twice." So he who gives with sim-
plicity, that is, with singleness of purpose, without an
underhand design, without expecting praise or notice,
he gives twice, thrice, a hundred fold more than he who
gives grudgingly, than he who gives late, than he who
gives ostentatiously. One gift well given is as good as
a thousand; a thousand gifts ill given are hardly better
than none.
CXCI.
Christian truth, Scriptural truth, Catholic truth, is not
of one kind only, but of many. It has its lights and
shades, its foregrounds and its distances; it has its
lessons of infinitely various significance and importance,
some significant always, some significant at one time,
some at another; some important in themselves, some
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
237
of no importance except in connection with others.
Woe be to us if, instead of "rightly dividing the word
of truth," we confound all its parts together.
It is only by following "the proportion of faith,” that
we can rightly understand and act on any part of it.
We may believe correctly on every single point, yet if
we view these points out of their proper connection and
proportions, our view of the whole faith may be as com-
pletely wrong as if on every single point we had been
involved in fatal error.
CXCII.
There may be difficulties in the applications, the com-
parisons of Scripture; but the Scriptures, as they are in
themselves, taken as their own interpreter- their ob-
ject, their spirit, their words rightly examined are
sufficient. Give us the Law, the Psalms, and the
Prophets, in all their manifold and most instructive
diversity; give us the Epistles, as they come breathing
and burning from the hands of the apostles; give us,
above all, the crown and completion of evangelical
teaching in the four Gospels, and we want nothing
more.
CXCIII.
We hear without astonishment, without awe, without
any sense of freshness or novelty, or immediate stirring
238
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
interest, mere expositions of theological truth on the
one side, or mere moral essays on the other side; but
the moment that the two come together, the moment
that morality is taught with the fervor and solemnity
which only religion can give, or that religion is invested
with that reality and conviction of truth that can only be
given by its application to the moral duties of common
life, then more or less of a shock is always produced ;
the eye opens, and the ear listens, and the mind wakens,
and the conscience starts up, and the whole man is
struck with awe, and "the secrets of his heart are made
manifest," and he reports that God of a truth is
there.
CXCIV.
Christ's healing power appears in inward, yet more
than in outward suffering. It is not a mere emotion of
benevolence or pity that gives to His teaching this
peculiarly touching and consoling character. There is
a law, if one may so speak, a principle of mercy, no less
than of justice, in all that He said and did. He pitied
because He loved. He loved, because He saw through
all the wretchedness, and darkness, and bondage of evil,
that there was in every human soul a possibility of re-
pentance, of restoration; a germ of good, which, how-
ever stifled and overlaid, yet was capable of recovery
of health, of freedom of perfection.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
239
CXCV.
Our citizenship is not here. We, like Him whose
name we bear, must leave the world and go to the
Father; it is our duty and our privilege to live as in
that thought, and they who keep that thought steadily
before them, will have, like the apostles, the best sup-
port in all the trials, the changes, the excitements of
this mortal life. They who so use the world as not
abusing it, will have that blessing of freedom from care
and anxiety which, as has been truly said, is the portion
of those only who can see time in eternity, and eternity
in time; who can feel, on the one hand, that time and
the things of time are not rendered worthless by the
vast prospect which encompasses them, but who can
feel, on the other hand, how the consciousness of that
prospect alone gives them their true value.
CXCVI.
Would that our harsh judgments could be restrained,
our impatience checked, our selfishness broken down,
our passions controlled, our waste of time and life in
worthless or unworthy objects corrected, by the thought
that there is One in whose hands we are, who cares for
us with a parent's love, who will judge us hereafter
without the slightest tinge of human infirmity, the All
Merciful and the All-Just.
240
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CXCVII.
In the Cross of Christ — the highest good which God
has revealed to man"in this conquer." Conquer,
because the Cross of Christ shows us what is God's love
to His creatures. Conquer, because it shows us what
is the highest call of man. Conquer, because it shows
us the strength and the firmness, the gentleness and
mercy, the suffering and the victory in which, and
through which, we too are to be victorious.
CXCVIII.
Every wide-spread error contains a concealed truth.
This is the point on which we must fasten if we wish to
overthrow the error. In every human being there is a
spark of good. That is the spark which, in bringing
the light of goodness near it, we shall cause to explode,
and shatter the whole fortress of evil which has been
raised over it.
Take any system of evil and look at it in this way:
try to find out its true side; argue from that, appeal to
that, grant that; and how much more convincing will be
your arguments to those in error, how much more in-
structive and elevating to yourself, than if you opposed
the whole system as a mass of unmixed falsehood!
Or take any institution, any circle of men, any char-
acter that you wish to reform; how much better is your
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
241
chance, if you try to find some one good or generous
principle to which you can appeal, which you can, as it
were, make your friend, than if you treated the whole
man, the whole place, as incorrigibly corrupt.
CXCIX.
The soldier who is more brave because of a higher
than any earthly courage within him, the man of law
who is more scrupulously just because he has before him
a higher than any earthly tribunal, the men of com-
merce and business
"Who carry music in their heart,
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat,
these are exact instances of what the apostle means by
being "transformed by the renewing of our minds."
These are the most truly unworldly, because, though
living in the midst of the furnace, its "fire has had no
power upon them."
CC.
True opinions, free inquiry, ancient ceremonies, de-
vout feelings yes, even knowledge, rank, station, an-
tiquity, "have much advantage," "much profit," "much
(7
242
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
every way" for the strengthening of our bulwarks and
our outposts. Yet behind, and within, and above them
all, is the citadel of the fortress-"keeping the com-
mandments of God." So long as this is ours, we are
safe; if we lose this, we lose all. In comparison with
this, and without this, circumcision and uncircumcision,
orthodoxy and heresy, antiquity and novelty, are-
"nothing."
CCI.
Let the truth speak for itself. Do not lay on the
church, but above all, do not lay on the Bible, do not
lay on the Gospel, the charge and the burden of scru-
ples and difficulties which are but as the inventions of
yesterday. Render to God to Christ to the Scrip-
tures render to the doctrines of true Christian theol-
ogy - the sense and the wisdom which are really theirs.
Render to them their own pure gold, as it was when it
was not become dim, their own most fine gold, not yet
changed by wear and tear, and rust, and counterfeit ;
render these faithfully and gratefully where they are
due, and we may then be sure that Cæsar and Cæsar's
things will never suffer.
CCII.
-
-
How many controversies need for their remedy not
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
243
theological learning, not ancient precedents, not sound-
ing watchwords, but a few grains of common prudence,
a single spark of good sense and discretion.
CCIII.
There is, indeed, a struggle, a never-ending struggle
to be maintained against the world, in that darker sense
in which St. John spoke of it, as lying in sin and false-
hood: there is a heavy sacrifice to be demanded from
all those who have the courage to speak and to act and
to think, not as the many or the mighty think and
speak, not as pleasure and interest require. Such a
contest, more or less severe, is, or ought to be, in store
for all of us.
But let us not increase the difficulties of this contest
by means of our own devising — let us thankfully re-
member that in our enjoyment of this world's power,
and truth, and beauty, no less than in the burning fiery
furnace of resistance to its evil, there is another walk-
ing with us, and His form is like unto the Son of
God.
CCIV.
Let us always ask about this or that opinion, not, “Is
it dangerous?' "Is it safe?" "Is it useful?' "Is it
agreeable?" but, "Is it true?" Let us remember, with
""
244
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
the apostle, that if we wished ever so much,
،، we can do
nothing against the truth." Truth is great, and truth
will prevail. This is our warning, our reward, our con-
solation.
CCV.
Set forth the light, and the darkness will flee before
it. Take care of the truth, and the errors will take care
of themselves You may destroy a hundred heresies,
and yet not establish a single truth. But you may, by
establishing a single truth, put to flight with one blow a
hundred heresies.
CCVI.
It is inspiration, it is the gift of God's Spirit, that
through the whole of the Scriptures there is, though ex-
pressed "in divers manners," the same unmistakable
mode of speaking "with authority and not as the
scribes."
We feel as we read, that there is in the Scriptures a
solemnity, a simplicity, a dignity, which ordinary writ-
ings have not. They command our attention, they
speak to us directly, they take the command of our
souls in the storms and dangers of the world; even as
in actual storms and shipwrecks, the crew of the sinking
ship-in sudden emergencies, the agitated household –
1
I
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
245
in revolts and revolutions, the raging multitude - is
hushed into submission by the commanding voice, irre-
sistible weight, and calm composure of some powerful
mind, some heroic character, raised up by the greatness
of the crisis.
It is this in the teaching of Scripture, of our Lord
especially, that solves all those difficulties which we are
apt to conjure as to the conflicts that may arise be-
tween human and divine authority, between the claims
of reason and the claims of revelation.
CCVII.
Old religious factions," says Burke, "are volcanoes.
burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriæ
of old eruptions, grow the peaceful olive, the cheering
vine, and the sustaining corn."
Those who have seen the sides of Vesuvius can well
appreciate the force of this image. There, indeed, may
be seen tracts of desolation, bare, black, and lurid, be-
yond any other which earth can show. These are where
the sulphur still lingers, and repels every effort of vege-
tation. But there are also tracts, close adjoining to
them, and even in the midst of them, where the green
vineyard, the grey olive, the golden orange, and the
springing herb mark that, out of the attrition and de-
composition of the ancient streams of lava, the vital
246
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
forces of nature can assert themselves with double vigor,
and create a new life under the very ribs of death.
So it is with extinct theological controversies. So
far, indeed, as they retain the bitterness, the fire and
brimstone of personal rancor and malignity, they are,
and will be to the end of time, the most barren and
profitless of all the works of man. But if this can be
eliminated or corrected, it is undeniable not only that
truths of various kinds take root and spring up in the
soil thus formed, but that there is a fruitful and useful
result produced by the contemplation of the transitory
character of the volcanic eruptions which once seemed
to shake the earth.
CCVIII.
The Bible might have been uniform, perfect, without
varieties of text or statement, without faults of grammar
or diction, without difference of style or progress of doc-
trine. The Bible is nothing of the kind. It is full of
inequalities, variations, pauses, silences, lights, and
shades, which indicate the hand of God in Creation, and
which indicate it no less in the multiform diversity of
His own express Revelation.
In this lies its inexhaustible strength, its boundless
versatility, its unbroken hold on the hearts and con-
sciences of men — the true signs of a Book wherein re-
sides the voice of Him whose voice is as the voice of
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
247
((
many waters, the language in which we all of us hear
every man
as it were
"in the tongue wherein
we were born, the wonderful works of God." And, if
in this Book, the divine and human be necessarily in-
termingled, is it (we do not say rational, but is it)
pious, is it reverential, to deny the human in order to
exalt the divine?
""
J
The same microscope of criticism that reveals to us
the depths of the inner meaning of the divine message
in all its manifold fulness, reveals to us also the imper-
fections, the contradictions of the human messenger.
We cannot have the one without the other.
It is because we so prize the kernel that we are con-
tent to break the shell; and yet, even in the shell to
recognize and to value the roughnesses and the flaws
which prove it to be a genuine and not an artificial
product. To that recognition, we are persuaded that
every student of the sacred text and history must sooner
or later be brought.
CCIX.
Sacred pictures, sacred sculpture, sacred poetry,
sacred music, sacred ritual, must all be judged by the
same varying standard. The presence or the absence
of any one of these is reverent or irreverent, according
to the intention of those who use it, and the disposition
of those for whom it is intended.
248
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CCX.
There is the rashness of the moth that flies into the
fire; but there is the rashness, no less, as Archbishop
Whately has well said, of the horse that is burnt to
death because it refuses to leave its accustomed stall.
There is an advantage in caution and silence; but there
is an advantage, also, in courage and in speaking out.
Doubt," says Professor Jowett, “comes in at the
window when enquiry is denied at the door."
66
It is a parable worthy of John Bunyan. We almost
see the venerable Sage, worn out with anxious, reveren-
tial search, rudely repelled by the sturdy guardians of
orthodoxy from the wide portals at which he humbly
knocks for admittance, whilst, aloft and behind, the
grinning, chattering imp has climbed in through the
lattice, and occupied the innermost chamber of the
house.
Doubtless, the revelation contained in the Sacred
Records would be more surprising if the waters of the
Red Sea, the mountain of Olivet, the city of Jerusalem,
the influences of Egypt, Chaldea, and Rome, were found
to have had no real existence, but to have been, one and
all, called into existence by miraculous interposition, to
meet the special occasions described in the Biblical
narrative.
But no one will be rash enough to maintain that reli
gion would gain by such a process. Rather by the nat
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
249
ural links which all these objects furnish between the
present and the past, the Sacred History becomes not
only more credible, but more edifying, more attractive,
more humane (in whichever sense we take that word),
and therefore more divine.
CCXI.
The endeavor to accept opinions from which we
differ, as the counsels of a mistaken friend rather than
as the attacks of a malicious enemy — the endeavor to
view controverted questions on their own merits, and
not according to the names or positions of the persons
concerned - the endeavor to grasp the truths which lie
beneath the words — is a severe moral and intellectual
struggle, but it is one which must be mastered in all
controversies, if anything like a unity of Christendom
is ever to be thought of.
"Had the human mind the same power of holding
fast points of agreement, as of discovering differences,
there would be an end of the controversy."
So an eminent theologian speaks of one particular
subject. But it might equally be said of .most of those
abstract questions which have divided Christendom.
CCXII.
It is a characteristic story told of M. de Tocquerville,
250
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
that, when standing on the steps of the throne on the
august occasion of the opening of Parliament, he
watched in silence the gathering of the peers in their
scarlet robes, the entrance of the ministers in their
official uniforms, the appearance of the sovereign in
royal magnificence, and then, when he beheld the Com-
mons rushing to the bar in their plain, unadorned, rough,
everyday dress, he exclaimed, "Voila le Maitre." He
seemed to see that the day was come, in the nation, as
in a household, when it is the servants only who appear
in livery, whilst the real master stands above for-
malities.
The sentiment implied in this saying has doubtless a
touch of exaggeration, derived from a too austere view
of human affairs. But it represents the real cause of
the alienation, felt by many minds, from external show,
even when not associated with doctrines or ideas repug-
nant to them. And in this respect the general antiqua-
rian taste of the time, whilst fostering an appreciation
of architecture and a love of historical associations, is
often found to be a positive check on ceremonialism, or
credulity in religion.
No one is a more decided enemy to legend and super-
stition, because no one knows more about them, than a
profound archaeologist. No one is more apt to think
simplicity the beauty of holiness than a man who enters
most thoroughly into the glory of art.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
251
CCXIII.
"It is not," as Phillip Henry well said, "the actual
differences of Christian men that do the mischief, but
the mismanagement of those differences."
And by a better management of those differences, by
a better understanding between all the different
branches of Christendom, without any external amalga-
mation or formal reconciliation it is to be hoped that,
a unity will spring up—it may be to be realized only in
some far distant age, but to begin in our own — more
like to that unity of which the Church has yet
witnessed.
CCXIV.
The Bible is unlike all other books in its variety, un-
like in its unity, unlike in its high morality, unlike in its
pure theology, unlike in its general accuracy, and in its
tone of truthfulness, unlike in its clear representation of
the mind of God, in its constant and fearless appeals to
the highest conscience and reason of man.
But it is a collection of books written in the language
of men, through the thoughts of men, with the same va-
rieties of text, with the same difficulties and discrep-
ancies of statement and style, with the same depend-
ence on and illustrations from geography, history, chro-
nology, philosophy, which we find in other books, and,
252
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
therefore, in exact proportion to our belief in its divine
inspiration and authority, in exact proportion as we
wish to understand its real meaning, and not to substi-
tute for it our own or other men's fancies - in that
proportion we must "interpret the Bible as we would
interpret any other book."
The conflicts respecting Inspiration are the mere
scintillations or filings thrown off by the fiction between
fact and theory. What we have to do in such an
enquiry is not to frame or to attack any theory about
the Bible, but to ascertain what are the actual charac-
teristics of the Bible itself. Find out what the sacred
writers really said what they really intended - and
then, whatever it be, whether it be prose or poetry,
poetry or history, exact accuracy, or manifold inaccu-
racies, contradictions, imperfections -scientific histori-
cal, linguistic that is what must be included within
the range of Biblical Inspiration.
Every fact which we thus ascertain from the astron
omer, geologist, ethnologist, scholar, or divine, is the
best approach to the true solution of the only question
at issue, namely, what is the intrinsic nature of the Bible
itself.
C
It cannot be gainsayed that the paramount glory and
power of the Bible has become far more evident to us
by this nearer, closer investigation. I speak not here
of that Divine Faith and supernatural spiritual excel
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
253
}
lence, which is wholly independent of all such lesser
details, but of the increased profit, delight, veneration,
derived from a knowledge even of these.
Can anyone, for example, doubt that the enjoyment
which a merely ordinary student possesses of the Song
of Deborah, or the Book of Job, far exceeds that of the
Fathers and the Schoolmen, in whom those magnificent
poems inspired hardly a spark of poetic recognition,
who saw in them chiefly the repetition of allegories,
which might equally well have been drawn from any
other book whatever?
Can anyone doubt that the characters of David and
St. Paul are better appreciated, more dearly loved, by a
man like Ewald, who approaches them with a profound
insight into their language, their thoughts, their customs,
their history, than by a Scholastic divine from whom the
atmosphere in which the king and the apostle moved
was almost entirely shut out?
CCXV.
It is said that whilst in one of his inferior bishoprics,
Philaret was invited to dine with the governor of the
place. The governor and his aides-de-camp talked
irreverently of the Bible. Philaret was silent.
the governor, irritated, turned to him and said:
"Have you nothing to say to this?'
Philaret replied:
At last
""
254
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
"I have studied the Bible well, and it tells me not to
'throw pearls before swine.'"
The governor enraged, struck him on the face, and
asked,
"What does the Bible say to that?'
Philaret replied:
(6
""
The Bible says, 'If a man smite thee on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also.""
He then rose, moved towards the sacred picture
which in all Russian apartments, and therefore in the
governor's dining-room, hung in the corner of the wall,
and crossing himself said :
"For these and all other Thy mercies good Lord,
make me truly thankful," and immediately left the house.
A report of the incident reached St. Petersburg, and
a fortnight after a letter came from the Emperor, asking
him for an explanation. He replied:
"Tell the people in St. Petersburg not to trouble
themselves about it. Whatever happened, I have for-
gotten it and forgiven it.”
The Emperor insisted on knowing it, and the gov
ernor was degraded. Philaret, however, begged him
off, that he might not be the cause of the ruin of an in-
nocent family; shortly afterwards the Archbishop be-
came Metropolitan of Moscow, and though third in
rank of the three Metropolitans in Russia, yet, from the
respect entertained for his character, he was choser to
crown both Nicholas and Alexander II.
T
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
255
CCXVI.
The celebrated Benedictine monk, Padre Tosti, was
speaking not long ago of the effects of modern criticism
-partly with praise, partly with blame-"At least,"
he said, "it has had this advantage, that it has caused
you to shut up all your Symbolical Books."
I do not say that it has done this; but it has placed
them for the first time in entire subordination to the
higher theology of the Scriptures, to which they never
before actually paid the obedience which in words they
had always professed. And it is this which produces a
kind of unity of religious thought unknown before since
the revival of independent enquiry. When French
Catholics and French Protestants, German Catholics
and German Protestants, English Churchmen and Eng-
lish Nonconformists, are for the first time employed in
studying the same book on the same general principles.
it is impossible but that greater unity will emerge,
greater unity of interest, if not of sentiment.
CCXVII.
Only a few can be like Christ in bursting the bonds
of superstition, in revealing new truths to the soul of
man, in withering up by just contempt and scorn the
falsehood and self conceit of hollow piety or pretended
knowledge; but everyone can be like Him in those
256
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
things which the doubting disciples saw and heard.
Each of us has some one to whom we can do what He
did; some one whose failing eyesight or lost hearing
we can soothe; some one whose sick room we can
cheer; some one whose bereavement we can lighten;
some one whose temptations we can ward off, whose
conscience we can rouse. Let no one say that he can-
not be a Christian, that he cannot own the authority of
Christ. By every kind act, or deed, you can, if you will
- and you will, if you reflect for a moment on God's
purpose in sending you into the world.
CCXVIII
The first establisher, or organizer, of any regular
ecclesiastical system in Ireland was Malachi, or Maal-
Maadhog O'Margair, of Armagh, the friend of St. Ber-
nard, of whom that saint says that "he was no more
affected by the barbarism of his nation than fishes by
the saltness of the sea." He first broke the succession
of the lay prelates of Armagh and grasped the Episco-
pal insignia which were in possession of one of the
chiefs of the O'Neill's. He first, or nearly the first,
broke through the practice of his countrymen, by
exchanging wooden wattled buildings for stone churches,
and was met with the indignant cry, since repeated in
many tones, "We are Scots, and not Frenchmen;" or,
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
257
as his countrymen in later times would say, "We are
Irishmen, and not Englishmen." Through him the Cis-
tercian monks were first brought from Clairvaux into
Ireland; and the exquisite ruin in the retired vale of
Mellifort, recalls, not only in its architecture but in its
situation, the like remains of the Gallican Cistercians;
the more from its contrast with the bleak, bewildered
groups of diminutive chapel and tower, and rudely-
carved crosses, in the adjacent sanctuary of Monaster-
boice; tne one as certainly native and Irish, as the other
is certainly continental and French.
The old archbishop of Armagh, who appeared at
Dublin amongst the English courtiers followed every-
where by his white cow, on whose milk he lived; the
lay-ecclesiastical potentates, who came out with their
long yellow hair streaming over their shoulders and
down their backs, were as unlike to the princely Nor-
man prelates of Canterbury and Winchester as they
would be to modern cardinal or modern primate. And
on the other hand, the repugnance of the aboriginal
people to the new settlers was the same, in kind, if not
in degree, as it has been ever since. "You have had
no martyrs in Ireland," was the taunt of a Norman
ecclesiastic to a native Irish priest. "We have had
none yet," was the ready response; "but you have
brought a race amongst us who will soon give us the
opportunity."
258
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
CCXIX.
Who that has ever seen Kilmore can forget the grave
of Bedell ? Close by that great church (Kilmore),
great only by contrast with the small tenements which
in the fourteenth century served for Irish worship-
humble indeed compared with the cathedrals of Eng-
land was the Episcopal palace in which Bedell gathered
as in a little fortress, the scattered Protestants of the
neighborhood, during the insurrection of 1641. There,
in happier days, he, and he alone, had labored at the
one weapon which might have produced some effect on
the native Irish — the translation of the Bible into their
own language. In a corner of the churchyard, as far as
possible removed from the church, in accordance with
his known repugnance - curiously beyond his age-to
intramural interments, his remains were brought a few
months later, when, worn out by the hardships in his
imprisonment in the castle on the neighboring lake, he
died on its shores, in the house of a friend. Then it was
that two signal testimonies were given not only to the
power of Christian goodness, to the universality of Chris-
tian charity, but also to the force of the English, and to
the gratitude of the Irish nature. The troops of the rebel
army escorted his body to the grave, and as they fired a
volley over his coffin, shouted, Re quiescat in pace Ulti-
mus Anglorum. The Roman priest who stood by, ex-
claimed, Sit anima mea cum Bedello. The sacred grave
13
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
259
I
in that thronged cemetery is now overshadowed by a
branch of a vast sycamore which he himself planted in
the adjacent garden, and which seems to connect his
saintly end with his generous and genial life. "Bury
me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried,
and lay my bones beside his bones," was the request of
one of his successors in the See; and another built in
his honor the new cathedral, which, amidst whatever
changes, will always remain a monument of the affec-
tion with which his memory was cherished as the ideal
of a Christian bishop.
CCXX.
In no Roman Catholic country of Europe have the
priesthood obtained such an ascendancy over the people,
as in Ireland. Nowhere are their blessings more eag-
erly sought, their curses more dreaded. This situation
has also been their bane, because it has brought about
that dependence on their flocks both materially and
morally, to counteract the evils of which has been the
object of almost every eminent statesman of whatever
party; because it has engendered in them a necessity of
descending to the manners, almost the vices, of the
lower classes a dread of placing themselves in oppo-
sition to any popular movement, however unreasonable,
that foreign or domestic agitation may set on foot. One
260
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
portrait, for good or evil, may stand for all the Pope
of Ireland at the beginning of this century— Dr. Doyle,
Roman Catholic bishop of Kildare - the original "Lion
of the tribe of Judah." We almost seem to see his long
unfleshy arms, his pointedly lean shoulders, his high
broad forehead, his long dark eyelashes, his half-closed
eye and sly Irish smile. We recognize his commanding
character even in the smallest trials:-
"When you
act as a bishop be always in the right, and stand
to it."
"But what if I am in the wrong?"
always in the right."
"Give me something to do," he exclaims when he is
ill; "I don't ask for a Father of the Church; but give
me something, for the love of God, if it be only the Pa-
gan Tacitus." When asked to remain at his fire-side,
and spare himself by sending a letter to the synod,
"Pshaw I might as well send this poker." Nothing
is more triumphant than his leadership of the Roman
Catholic Relief movement. Nothing is more praise-
worthy than his struggles in defence of national educa-
tion, and against the Whitefoot insurgents. Nothing is
more tragical than his mixture of despondency and
terror at the prospect of coming into collision with the
popular agitators, which at last wore him out. His
tomb in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Carlow is the
lasting monament of his fame and of his sorrows.
Cl
"No matter, be
+
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
261
#
CCXXI.
Nowhere can the Protestant Englishman feel a glow
of prouder enthusiasm than as he catches from the
ancient ramparts by Walker's monument the distant
view of the Foyle, up which the Mountjoy came on one
memorable July evening, bearing succour to the heroic
inhabitants of Derry. But the churchmen must always
bear in mind that this glory was shared in equal pro-
portion by the Presbyterians, who, during those long
months of famine and distress, partook of the toils and
the dangers of the Episcopalians.
The Regium Donum granted by William III., to the
Presbyterians, is but a scanty acknowledgment of the
services which in that great struggle they rendered to
the English Crown and the Protestant cause.
It is one
of the most striking proofs of the vigor of this branch
of the Church in Ireland, that from it sprang the foun-
ders of the Presbyterians and of the Methodists of the
United States. From the same wild country of Donegal
that gave birth to the first missionary of Scotland,
sprang Francis Mackenie and Patrick Mackie, the two
earliest Presbyterian ministers of Philadelphia. And
from the Irish "Palatines," as they were called the
refugees from the Palatinate who settled near Limerick,
and on whom Wesley produced the deepest impression
-issued forth Philip Embery and Barbara Heck, the
262
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
founders of the first Methodist chapel in New York.
The singular grace of the Irish nation opened a path for
the refined enthusiasm of Wesley, such as he had vainly
sought in Scotland. “He found,” he said, "as much
courtesy in their cabins as he could have found at St.
James or in the Lcuvre.”
CCXXII.
The two bishops of Cork, the one Irish Protestant,
the other Irish Catholic, not long ago met each other in
the road between Cork and Kinsdale, coming to restore
their letters which had gone astray respectively to each.
Their carriages stopped, and their prisoners were ex-
changed. "Pray go on opening my letters," said another
Roman Catholic prelate to one of the most eminent of
living Protestant bishops; "it is of no importance."
The two last archbishops of Dublin co-operated on the
most friendly terms in the Board of National Education.
Within the memory of aged persons of our time, at the
centenary of the deliverance of Londonderry, the two
bishops of Derry were seen walking side by side to
assist in the Protestant cathedral at the service of joint
thanksgiving. About the same period a farmer called
to pay his rent to the bishop of Limerick. He found
him with another elderly gentleman seated by the fire,
each with a pair of bag-pipes. "Wait," said the bishop
"until you have heard us play a duet;" and, "Now go
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
263
home and tell your friends that you heard a duet played
together by the Protestant and Catholic bishops of
Limerick."
CCXXIII.
In the graveyard of the Protestant cathedral of Tuam
there stands the stem of the ancient sculptured cross of
the original church. In the precinct of the Roman
Catholic cathedral there stands its pedestal. The two
fragments cannot be exclusively appropriated by either
church. Neither can be expected to relinquish what
each prizes, and what each has been the means of pre-
serving. Neither would be so ungenerous as to wish to
destroy what the other possesses, merely because the
one has lost it. What all good Protestants, what all
good Catholics, of Tuam naturally wish for this ancient
cross, is what every wise statesman, every true Christian
would wish for the religion of which that cross is the
symbol, namely, a neutral ground, a mutual truce, by
which the two parts shall at least be joined, as the em-
blem of peace, not as the landmark of division.
CCXXIV.
Go to France or Germany, and no man will be at a
loss to tell you where the most learned, the most enlight-
ened men of the country are to be found. They are
264
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
members of the Institute; they are lecturers in the Col-
lege of Henry IV.; they are professors in the Univer-
sities. Here and there they may have risen to be
ministers of state. But such a rise has been through
their literary eminence; and that eminence is illustrated,
not superseded, by their new position. Every one
knows where is the oracle at whose mouth he is to en-
quire. In England it is far otherwise. Now and then.
it may be that a great light in theology or history will
burst forth at Oxford or Cambridge and draw all eyes
to itself. But these are exceptions. Look over the
roll of our literary heroes in ancient times or in present.
Engaged in the distracting labors of the school-room,
serving the tables of a bank, in the back room of a
public office, in the seclusion of a rustic parish, are too
often planted the men who in France or Germany would
have been enthroned on professional chairs addressing
themselves to the rising historians, philologers, or theo-
logians of the age. The evil has been pointed out in
the report of the Oxford Commission, and may, we
hope, be remedied to some extent by the legislature;
for an evil undoubtedly it is, that Archimedes should be
without the standing-place from whence he might move
the world. But there is a brighter side to this state of
things which is not to be overlooked. It is a good that
light should be diffused as well as concentrated; that
speculation and practice should be combined and not
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
265
always isolated; that genius should be at times forced
into uncongenial channels and compelled to animate
forms of life which else would be condemned to hope-
'ess mediocrity.
CCXXV.
To show that the good of man was the will and wish
of God, to show that doing good to one another is the
chief duty of man this is at once the object of Christ's
coming into the world, and the proof that He had begun
a new epoch in the history of mankind. This hope,
this desire, this purpose was, and is still, that the blind
whether with the eyes of body or mind, should receive
their sight; that the deaf, whether deaf by nature or
deaf by prejudice, should open their ears; that the
lame, whether halting by sickness or halting by idleness,
should be active and walk; that the lepers, whether
they suffer from filth of body or filth of soul, should be
made clean and pure; that those whose hearts are dead
to better things should be roused to new life; and those
who are laid in their graves should have the seed of im-
mortality planted within them. Wheresoever and by
whomsoever this is effected, there the work of Christ
and of Christianity is done. Wheresoever and by
whomsoever this is hindered, there the work of Christ
and Christianity is thwarted and prevented.
266
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CCXXVI.
We cannot be scholars of Christ without putting into
practice what we learn from Him. In a foreign language
what a difference there is between learning it in books
and by rule, and learning it by the necessities of life,
being forced to speak it in order to get what we want.
What a pleasure there is in finding that the word which
we read in a dictionary will help us out of some pressing
difficulty. And even as a very few words, so learnt, and
so applied, go a very great way, so is it in religion. You
may have heard of the poor woman who is said to have
found her way from the distant wilds of Asia to her hus-
band in England by constantly repeating the only two
English words that she knew, "Gilbert" and "London.”
This is a likeness of what many and many a Christian,
many a one, perhaps, whom some would hardly call a
Christian might do, if he only put into constant practice
again and again the very simplest and shortest notions
he has of Christ and of Christ's goodness.
CCXXVII.
The educated world of Christendom has formed a
unity for itself, above and beside and without the exter-
nal unity or divisions of the churches in which those
who wish can approach each other, without even touch-
ing on the barriers which politically and ecclesiastically
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
267
part them asunder. A French or German Catholic, like
Tocqueville, or Remusat, or Döllinger has far more in
common with men like Hallam or Macaulay or Tenny-
son or Milman, than he has with the partisans of the
Court of Rome. The higher we ascend in the intellect-
ual scale the more we find the atmosphere to be one of
attraction and not of repulsion. The theology of Lord
Bacon, and of Bishop Butler, and of Pascal can be used
by Christians of every church almost equally. The
name of Shakespeare, the greatest in human literature,
does it belong to a Protestant or a Catholic? History
refuses to answer. Criticism falters. The true verdict
of mankind says "to neither."
CCXXVIII.
Helps, indeed, assistances innumerable, not only
through the clergy, the Sacraments, and the Bible, but
through example, through art, through nature, through
science, through history, through pcetry, through church,
through home, through school, through advice, through
love, through friendship, the human scul has always
needed, and will always need, in her arduous, ever re-
tarded, upward flight towards a better world. Cut the
belief in a fixed, external, necessary "medium between
the soul and God," on earth, is exactly that which if
we have rightly read the Psalms of David, the epistles
of Paul, and the Gospel of Christ - if we have learnt
268
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
anything from the sufferings of the church before the
Reformation and since-true religion is always striv-
ing to dispense with, and the more it can be dispensed
with, the nearer and higher is the communion of the hu-
man spirit with its Maker and Redeemer.
CCXXIX.
"He went about doing good." Doubtless Christ did
many other things also. He was the source of free-
dom, and of light, and of justice, and of holiness.
But this - His benevolence was the chief outward
characteristic of His life whereby He commended to us
everything else that he did; by this, more than by any
other single aspect of His life, He shows to us His like-
ness to His Heavenly Father, who delights in the good
of all His creatures; by this chiefly He invites us to be
like Him.
CCXXX.
We must not be afraid of the famous name of (6 Prot-
estant." We must vindicate for the great old name of
"Catholic" its free, original meaning, and make it once
more the watchword, not of narrow, exclusive, external
observances, but of the universal breadth which it
bears in the ancient creeds, and which was infused into
it by the teaching of Isaiah and of St. Paul.
!
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
269
CCXXXI.
Christ might have come like John the Baptist, aus-
tere, living in the desert. So, have come many Eastern
sages, many Christian saints. He did no such thing.
He threw Himself into the busy life of men.
He was
a centre of happiness wherever he moved. If there
was any suffering of body and mind within His reach,
He hastened to heal it. His superhuman powers were
hardly ever exercised on mere acts of wonder, There
might have been many more startling, more extraordi-
nary, or, as we should say, more miraculous prodigies,
than those which are recorded in the Gospels. The
remarkable point in these is that they contain nothing
which is not directly connected with the good of man.
CCXXXII.
No doubt there are many who still cling to the notion
that we must have all or nothing; that the Bible, like
the Koran, is one single book, in which the slightest
variety or shade is inadmissible, and that every word
and fact contained in it is of equal importance.
on the whole, the doctrine that revelation has been
made not uniformly and all at once, but "in sundry
times and divers manners" has now, we may trust,
been so firmly rooted, that the "moral difficulties" cre-
But,
270
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
ated by requiring in the Old Testament a perfection
which was never claimed for it by Christianity will soon
cease almost to exist. Once grant that "the Jews were
not premature Christians, any more than they were pre-
mature astronomers or geologists," and our exaggerated
disappointments will fall to the ground with our exag-
gerated expectations.
CCXXXIII.
Consider what a resting place this gives to our specu
lations, reflect how many of the theological questions.
which vex the present time, respecting this life and the
next, must begin and end in this that God is
above all else, a moral Being; that He is Love; that
He is a righteous Judge, who will deal with us accord-
ing to truth; that Obedience is greater in His sight
than outward ceremonies; that the Good, the Faithful,
and the True is above every other offering that can be
made in heaven or on earth.
CCXXXIV.
In the deep, unaffected, unartificial creed of the poor,
many a one will find the truest response to that which
he has learned from the profoundest Biblical critic,
and the most soaring aspirations of philosophy.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
271
CCXXXV.
The language of a morbid and despairing theology is
Whenever a doubt comes into your mind, fling it
away like a loaded shell." The language of a healthy
and hopeful theology is that of Lord Bacon “If a man
begins with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if
he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in
certainties." Science, history, and the principles of our
moral nature are formidable antagonists to Theology if
she sets herself against them; but they are her very
best friends if she takes them as her counsellors, her
advisers, her allies.
CCXXXVI.
Whatever victory has been gained over evil and self-
ishness, and misery, that, whether called by His name
or not, is the triumph of Christianity, the proof that
Christianity is divine. Whatever victories yet remain
to be won in the same great cause are the proofs that
the work of Christianity is not yet over; that Christ
still calls upon the energies of every individual and of
every class to accomplish in times to come greater
things than He has ever yet done, whether while ac-
tually with us on earth or through His Spirit working
on the spirits of men.
272
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CCXXXVII.
"The Gospel is preached to the poor." This is one
of the phrases which we often hear repeated, without
thinking of its deep meaning. It means that the glad
tidings, the doctrine that Christ came to preach, unlike
many systems that have been taught before and since,
was so genuine and natural, that it went to the heart of
the humblest, and simplest of men. Not that it was
unsuited to the most refined far from it for what is
most simple is equally suited to the best educated and
the least educated. It is the half-educated, the one-
sided, those who think they know everything when
really they know but very little it is these who find it
hard to enter into the words of true wisdom. But the
Gospel of Christ has won its way into the palaces of
the great and the schools of the learned, precisely be-
cause in the first instance it was suited to the wants of
those who had no theories and no prejudices, who had
perhaps but one or two ideas in their minds, but for
that very reason had their minds open to receive what
fell dead on the perverted fancy of the Pharisee or the
worldly coldness of the Sadducees.
"I thank thee, O Father, because thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them
unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in
thy sight."
Even so, for so alone in God's providence was it pos-
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
273
sible that the truly wise of after ages should be the
better for the teaching which none but children and
childlike souls could receive then.
CCXXXVIII.
To a great extent the German language, especially
the language of German theologians will always be to
us a dead language — a tongue in which the learned
will converse with each other, but not a medium of pop-
ular communication. This is in some respects, a great
convenience. They are always subjects in which it is
impossible for the mind of a whole nation, or of two
whole nations to be simultaneously on the same level;
and in such matters a separate language is the best
means of intercourse between those who are really able
to form a judgment on the questions at issue. For this
reason we confess that we can never look with much
hope or favor on mere translations of German works
on theology or philosophy. It is next to impossible
that they should convey to the uneducated Englishman
the impression which they received from the German
author. Often, indeed, the mere fact of translation
renders them utterly unintelligible. The real interpre
ters of German thought are those who receiving it
themselves, and understanding by experience its strength
and its weakness, are able to reproduce it in an En
274
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
glish garb, or rather to develop and animate English
literature by the contact.
CCXXXIX.
What a feast there is in a single good book! We
sometimes hardly appreciate sufficiently the influence
which literature exercises over large phases of the
world. By literature I mean those great works of his-
tory, poetry, fiction or philosophy that rise above pro-
fessional or common place uses, and take possession of
the mind of a whole nation or a whole age. Spend, if
possible, one hour each day in reading some good and
great book. The number of such books is not so great
as to overwhelm you. Every one who reflects on the
former years of his education, can lay his fingers on
half a dozen, perhaps even fewer, which have made a
lasting impression upon his mind. Treasure up these.
It is not only the benefits which you yourself derive
from them it is the impression which they leave upon
you of the lasting power of that which is spiritual and
immaterial.
CCXL.
There have been those whose good genius or good
fortune have enabled them to triumph over the difficul-
ties of early life and raised them to high places in
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
275
church and state, but who have then lost thought of
others still struggling as they struggled, who have not
cared to entangle themselves again in dangers from
which they have happily escaped, to whom the new gen-
eration is a growth as of another planet, uncared for,
unthought of, unknown. Let no one be hard on such
apparent apathy. It need not be the result of selfish-
ness or of indifference. It may only be the effect of
the almost inevitable pressure of events, of circumstan-
ces, of the preoccupation of fresh scenes, the consoli-
dation of formed habits, the separation by time and
space from earlier scenes or from new associates. But
there are some few noble natures that are proof against
this temptation; and of those few were Dean Milman.
However prudent in action, however fastidious in taste,
perhaps even exacting in his demands, he yet was al-
ways ready to lend a helping hand to rising merit, to
foster any new light, to lift up the broken reed. He
was by disposition averse from controversy. He ab-
stained on principle from joining in party movements,
or even literary combinations, for which he could not
make himself fully responsible.
(C
I have made it a rule in life," he said, on one such
remarkable occasion, "always to preserve my own soli-
darity." But not the less, or rather by this very means,
did he resolutely maintain his independence of judg-
ment; never fascinated by the love of popularity, or
deterred by the fear of unpopularity, from sympathy
#76
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
with an unpopular cause or an unpopular name. Against
injustice and intolerance everywhere was raised the
protest, sometimes of his indignant voice, sometimes of
his no less indignant and significant silence. That well-
known sentence in his history was characteristic of his
whole career:
"Who would not meet the judgment of
his Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of Nesto-
rius, rather than with the barbarities of Cyril?"
CCXLI.
Who has not felt it hard to recognize the author of
the "Paradise Lost" and of the "Penseroso" in the
polemical treatises on Divorce and the execution of
Charles I.? Who does not know the immeasurable
contrast between Wordsworth, the poet of nature and
of the human heart, and Wordsworth, the narrow Tory
and High Churchman of his later days? Let us hope
that in each case it is the poet who is the real man-
the theologian and politician only the temporary mask
and phase.
CCXLII.
Who is there that has ever seen the old church of
Herstmonceux with its yew tree, and churchyard, and
view over sea and land, and will not feel that it has
received a memorial forever in the touching allusions to
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
277
the death of Phillis Hoad, to the grave of Sina Deim-
ling, to the ancient church on the hill top? Who that
ever heard or read the striking introduction of the
stories of Hooker's death and of the warning of St.
Philip Neri, in the sermons on the "Chariots of God,"
and on the "Close of the Year," will not feel the power
and life given to the pastor of the humblest flock by
his command of the varied treasures of things new and
old, instead of the common places which fill up so many
vacant pages of the sermons of an ordinary preacher.
To pass from common clerical society, however able
and instructive, to Herstmonceux Rectory, was passing
into a house where every window was fearlessly opened
to receive air and light and sound from the outer world,
even, though for the moment unwelcome, dazzling,
startling.
،،
Children," says Julius Hare in one of his apo-
thegms, "always turn to the light; O that grown up
men would do likewise !"
CCXLIII.
Look at the teachings of Christ — look at its unpro-
fessional, unartificial, unsophisticated character; its
freedom from constraint, from technicalities, from hard
words, from exclusiveness. This made it a gospel to
the poor at first; and this makes it a gospel both to the
poor and the rich now. He knew what was in man and
278
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
therefore he could throw Himself unreservedly on the
common sense and common feeling of the multitude.
He struck into this new vein and He found there the
very materials which He needed for the establishment
of His kingdom. He himself had labored with His own
hands at the mechanical work of shaping wood and hew-
ing timber. He found in the hearts of the peasants and
fishermen of Galilee a response which He vainly sought
elsewhere. With the weaknesses of those rough, wild,
dangerous classes, He sympathized with a sympathy
such as the world had never before seen, and has rarely
seen since. He was never afraid, never ashamed, of
being with them, of being on their side, of being
considered, even unjustly, as one of them.
He was
theirs, and they were His. The fervor of that first love
may have waxed cold, but it continued long. Those
early twelve, those first apostles, were attracted round
Him with a passionate faith deeper than any which had
yet drawn soldiers round their leader or scholars round
their teacher, because they felt that He, great beyond
their comprehension, noble with a nobleness not of this
earth, had come down to their level, had made himself
one of themselves, had made their cause, their welfare,
their infirmities, we may almost say, His own. There
was one qualification, and one only, for an apostle of
those times, that He should have companied with the
Lord Jesus during the whole time that He went in and
out amongst them." That was enough; that was the
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
279
education which raised them to the rank of princes and
rulers of men. They received Him into their hearts
and they rose to the whole grandeur of the calling to
which He had invited them.
CCXLIV.
We cannot be scholars of Christ without trying to un-
derstand what is the place and the work in the world for
which each of us is fitted. Everything which befalls us
is part of our heaven and education. Every event and
condition of life is a lesson which is to be turned to ac-
count to make us more worthy of Him who by suffering
was made perfect — who Himself entered not into joy,
till first He had suffered pain.
CCXLV.
The sympathy, the cordial fellow-feeling, the commu-
nity as it were of flesh and blood, between Christ, our
Saviour, and the laboring, toiling, poverty-stricken, strug-
gling, perhaps disaffected, uneasy portion of mankind,
is the proof, the living, eternal proof, to them, if to no
one else, of the vitality, the immortality of His religion.
"Art thou He that should come, or do we look for
another?"
No; we, or at any rate, they of whom I speak, cannot
look for another: for they will never find another who
280
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
felt more with then and for them, who more desired to
draw to Himself, and to all that is highest and holiest,
those for whom sage and saint, statesman and philoso-
pher, had before that time had hardly a word of comfort,
hardly an act of kind consideration. The fact that the
Gospel was first preached to the poor, gives to the poor
a long, hereditary, inalienable interest in the teaching of
the Gospel, in the progress of Christianity.
CCXLVI.
Blessed are they who, in the calm moments of retire-
ment, of worship, of prayer, of silent waiting, have found
that to "the weary and heavy laden " Christ can indeed
give rest; that compared with the heavy bondage of the
world, or the exactions of human systems, "His yoke,
indeed is easy, and His burden is light." This blessed-
ness, this happiness has been felt by thousands; this is
to them the best of all proofs that Jesus Christ the poor
Nazerene, the Holy and the True, is He that should
come, and that we need not look for another.
M
CCXLVII.
To every reflecting mind the freshness and simplicity
of the Gospel the building up of materials so raw,
and wide as were the minds of the apostles, is one of
the evidences of its more than earthly origin. But if
!
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
281
there be any class to whom it comes on this account
with peculiar, endearing authority, it is the working men
of this toilsome world the class of mechanics, of ar-
tisans, the class of those who stand afar off, and hardly
venture to lift up their eyes to heaven, to whom the
sight of church or chapel, from strange, untoward causes
has become unfamiliar and unknown.
To these, if to any, our Lord speaks with a voice
which ought at once to command attention. The world
of the clergy and of religious teachers - these, we might
perhaps expect, would have turned away from Him, for
their ancestors it was who, in the persons of the chief
priests and scribes, opposed and reviled Him and com-
passed His death. The great, wealthy, religious world,
these we might also expect, would have turned a deaf
ear; for it was against them that His sternest rebukes
were aimed. The statesmen, the poets, the men of
fame and name, might perhaps be excused for finding a
difficulty in entering into the spirit of One so unearthly,
so free from those bonds of time and place with which
so much of worldly power and glory is united. But the
working, laboring men, those of whom we sometimes
hear it said that they hardly enter the walls of places
of Christian worship — these are the very disciples, now
as formerly, who ought to hail and welcome Jesus
Christ, as their own especial Lord and Master, their
Champion, their Friend, the Chief whom, in public and
in private, they would delight to honor and to reverence.
282
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CCXLVIII.
"Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended
in me."
That is the last and best proof of His authority
over us · the blessedness, the happiness of those, who
being brought to Him by whatever means, are "not
offended," that is, do not stumble, and halt, and make
difficulties, in their onward way to a closer communion
with Him, a clearer knowledge of what He is and what
He wishes them to be.
"Blessed" so we seem to hear Him say, "shall be
that doubting, half-believing John, in his solitude and
despondency, if he still holds on steadfastly, believing
amidst his unbelief, hoping against hope, faithful
among the faithless - -set free by the truth which he so
sincerely sought."
Blessed too, are they, poor or rich, who see the in-
ward spirit of the gospel in spite of its outward failures,
who are not deterred by the thousand faults of its pro-
fessors and teachers from grasping with heart and mind
its essential substance.
Blessed are they again, who, struggling against the
temptations of their hard life, not knowing how they
shall rise above this devouring pressure of competition.
and business, the absorbing cares of household and
maintenance, and saving, and want of saving, yet are
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
283
able to feel a sustaining hope in the thought that God
loves them, that Christ is cheering them.
CCXLIX.
Christ calls us to be His "disciples," that is, His
scholars.
"Scholars," that is, those who are day by day advanc-
ing more and more, higher and higher, in His school.
We cannot get on at school if we are always finding
fault at every turn; we cannot get on at school unless
we are really anxious to know exactly the meaning and
purpose of what we are taught. And so we cannot be
disciples we cannot be scholars of Christ and of
Christianity unless we think it really worth consider-
ing, worth examining, worth discussing, worthy of every
wise man's attention; worthy, may I not also say, of
every wise man's prayer, that he may make it more and
more the object of his life to be what Christ enjoins.
CCL.
If ever we have watched a life of pain and sorrow
made happy and cheerful by the calm belief that all
things work together for our good; if ever we have
been cheered by the sight of a countenance transfigured
in the radiant smile that tells of the peace within, which
finds life perfectly sweet and death perfectly desirable,
284
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
B
if ever we have known a father or mother, or brother
or friend, on whose face were written the command-
ments of God, who, through good and evil, could not
and would not desert us, whose presence, by its grace
and purity, seemed to cast out devils wherever it came;
if we have been happy enough to meet with characters
whom to know was to love, whom to admire was almost
to grow better; then we shall have no other need to
persuade us that blessed, thrice blessed is he whosoever
shall not be offended in Christ; we shall know that it
is He who has come to strengthen, and deliver, and en-
lighten us we need not look for another.
CCLI.
The true Christian belief in the blessedness of the
good rests not on the sense of any single word, or of
any single text, but on the conviction pressed upon us
alike by conscience and by the whole tenor of Scripture,
that God's essential attributes are unchangeable that
of all His attributes none is more essential or more un-
changeable than His love for those who love Him, and
His desire to recover those who have gone astray
from Him. It is the love of God and the fear of God,
the love of goodness and the hatred of sin, not the
hope of heaven or the fear of hell, that in the Bible
are made the foundations of human action
to eternal life.
the way
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
285
CCLII.
To a man striving earnestly to mend his life, nothing
is so true a Gospel of Peace as the announcement of
God's ever ready help. To the humble or simple man,
doing his duty in that state of life to which God has
called him, walking according to the law which God has
written in his heart, the best gospel is, that God with “a
righteous judgment" will faithfully "render to every
man according to his deeds."
CCLIII.
The teachings of Christ are not abstract doctrines,
nor ceremonial regulations, nor expressions of fleeting
devotion; they all have one grand object, namely, to
make us and all mankind more just, more merciful,
more pure, more holy. They breathe the spirit of the
Father of spirits; for they are founded on the laws of
everlasting truth and right.
As the Ten Commandments on the mountain, where
amidst blackness and tempest, the trumpet spoke ex-
ceeding loud, so were the Eight Beatitudes on the Gali-
lean mountain, where "He opened His mouth" and
spoke those strong, yet gentle words, which are at once
the rule and the hope of the Christian life the "law
and the gospel in one the law which was given by
Moses," fulfilled in "the grace and truth which came
by Jesus Christ."
286
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
CCLIV.
“The words of St. Paul are not dead words; they are
living creatures, and have hands and feet." Luther
meant thereby to describe, and did faithfully describe,
the extraordinary force and completeness of the words
of that great apostle, each of which seems to have a
distinctness and substance of its own. But there is
something in our Lord's words higher still; we almost
forget that they are words; they seem but as a trans-
parent light in which the truth is contained. No sect
has turned them into watchwords; they are almost like
a soul without a body. "The words that He speaks to
us are spirit, and are life."
CCLV.
The feet of Christ bring the glad tidings of good
things.
In different degrees it may be, and to one more than
to another but to all there is a joy, a cheerfulness, a
gladness, even in His shortest sayings. That the king-
dom of heaven was come at last, that His own coming
was the pledge of its victory - this pervades all that
He said, as well as all that He did.
courses in this light, and they will
a most consoling aspect.
Look at His dis-
assume a new, but
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
287
CCLVI.
There is such a thing as a worldly spirit, and there is
such thing as an unworldly spirit and according as
we partake of one or the other, the savor of the sacri-
fice of our lives is ordinary, common-place, poor and
base; or elevating, invigorating, useful, noble and
holy.
CCLVII.
-
CCLVIII.
How often is it the case that he is not the truly edu-
cated man who is so outwardly, nor is that true nobility
which is outward in the flesh; but he is the true gentle-
man who is one inwardly, though he be a poor man and
a peasant; and that is true education and true nobility
which shows itself, not in the appearance and the man-
ners, but in the heart and in the spirit, "whose praise
is not of men but of God."
So to expand our Love, that we lose not our hold
upon Faith-so to keep hold on Faith, that we do not
shut out Love - may be difficult. But God forbid that
we should have gone so far astray that the union of the
two should be to us impossible which was the very soul
and spirit of the apostolic age-which is the very pe
288
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
culiarity which most distinguishes the Faith of Christ
from every other faith in the world.
CCLIX.
It has been said of an eccentric philosopher of our
time that his mind became paralyzed when anything
presented itself to him in the light of a duty. It
might almost be said, in contrast of St. John, that a
truth seems to have had no force for him unless it came
to him in the light of a duty. The abstract statement
without its practical application is in St. John's mouth,
only half a doctrine. The whole doctrine, the com-
plete doctrine, must be made up of both together.
CCLX.
We know, we have felt in life what effect is produced
by coming in contact with some new character, some
new form or idea of goodness, such as was before un-
known to us; what hopes, what elevation of soul, what
enlargement of mind, what self-reproach, what self-
knowledge, what zeal, what admiration, does it kindle
within us! Such a new character, such a new form or
idea of goodness in the highest sense, the world met, as
she wandered on her way, in the person of Jesus
Christ. He came across the path of the erring race of
man, just at the time when the existing shapes and
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
289
forms of virtue and religion seemed to be wearing them-
selves out. He came as a new element, a new leaven,
into the old corrupted mass. He was literally a new, a
second Adam, a new man, a second beginning in the
history of our race. From Him, and in Him, the world
as it were took a new lease of life. It was this newness,
this freshness, this difference from all that had gone
before — which, even more than mere power, or wisdom,
or goodness, availed in Him to win the world to Him-
self. Men were arrested by the combination of graces
which they had before never seen united; men were
attracted by a voice which spake as never man had
spoken before; men were touched by a tenderness more
awful than severity; men were awed by a wisdom which
was majestic from its very simplicity and its loveliness.
Thus it was that the birthday of Christ became the
second birthday of the world. Henceforth we no long-
er reckon our years from the beginning of the Grecian
festivals, or the old corrupt empires of the earth, or the
old creation of the world - but from this day.
"Old things are passed away: behold all things are
become new."
CCLXI.
"Render unto God the things that be God's," and
you will truly “render unto Cæsar the things that be
Cæsar's."
290
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
The moderation, the calmness, the healing, reconcil-
ing effect of the words of Christ, even in this single
instance, is a pledge to us that we may well believe and
trust in them elsewhere. It is a pledge to us that we
need not abandon the common principles of sense, and
justice, and love of truth, by devoting ourselves to the
service of God- nay, rather it is a pledge that only by
lending to those homely, yet noble gifts, the impulse,
the sanction, the zeal of religion, will they ever take
their
proper place in the world, or in the church.
ic
Hypocrites," in the gross and common sense of the
word men wilfully and deliberately pretending to be
religious when they are in heart villains — these are
indeed very rare, almost impossible. But "hypocrites"
in the true, original scriptural sense, are alas! too
common everywhere.
"One who acts a part," such is the true meaning of
the word. One who deceives others, or, what is much
more frequent, deceives himself into thinking that he is
better than he is. One who knows not himself, who
knows not his own special sin, who knows not his special
ignorance. One who is good, not because he loves
goodness, but because it is required of him by his pro-
fession, by his station, by public opinion. One who
affects language, feelings, manners, which are not nat›
K
CCLXII.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
291
;
ural to him. One who sees the mote of a blunder, an
error of judgment in his brother's eye, and sees not the
beam of selfishness, of slander, of bigotry, of worldli
ness in his own eye. One who thinks that it is very
good to require religion, or correct belief from others,
but pays no heed to it himself.
Hypocrites" in this
sense are to be found in every congregation; we are all
of us in this sense open to our Lord's rebuke.
CCLXIII.
((
It was said by an old philosopher, "If thou couldst
see the very form and face of Goodness, it would excite
within thee a love of itself almost inconceivable.
May it not be said with truth, that if we could set
before ourselves, before the world, the very form and
face of Him who is indeed Goodness incarnate, it would
excite a love, a zeal, a union, and energy, which we
could now hardly imagine.
There would still be disbelief, there would still be dis-
union, there would still be persecution disbelief more
dark, disunion more bitter, persecution more savage
perhaps, than has been since the time when that divine
Image was first shown to the bigotry of the Jewish and
the proflicacy of the heathen world.
'He came unto His own, and His own received Him
not."
Yes, this might be; this will be till the end of all
<p cla
292
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
things. But the faith in Christ's love, the faith in
Christ's holiness, the faith in Christ's authority, the
faith in Christ's mercy, has a power to unite good men,
to attract all men, to disarm bad men, to encourage
weak men, to convince doubting men, beyond any other
faith that has ever yet appeared.
What moral exhortations fail to effect from their
hollowness, what abstract speculations fail to effect
from their difficulty, that we may humbly hope to gain
from the union of all in the belief in the living person
of Christ.
CCLXIV.
"In necessary things unity, in doubtful things liberty,
in all things charity." Such was the rule laid down by
a great father of the ancient church. It is indeed a
general maxim, which each will apply differently for
himself. Some will make so many things necessary
that there will be no room left for liberty; others so
many things doubtful that there will be no room left for
unity. Yet there is one part of His saying which none
can misinterpret or carry too far:
"In all things charity." In all things, see the best.
of thy neighbor, and try to imitate it. In all things,
see what is good, just, true, and beautiful in others,
however firm in thine own opinion, and in thine own
faith.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
293
<<
CCLXV.
Consider what an endless task it would be to refute
every folly and heresy in detail; what heart burning,
what bitterness, every such attack leaves behind! how
unprofitable to those who attack, how unprofitable to
those who witness the attack! Doubtless there are
times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But
let us remember that it is an evil. It is overcoming evil
by evil; it is an evil as undoubtedly as war or pestilence,
or any of those scourges which the wisdom of man and
the mercy of God strive to restrain within the very
smallest limits in which they can be confined. How
then can we overcome error, yet not overcome it by an
evil almost equal to itself? The old rule still applies:
Conquer evil by good. Conquer falsehood by truth."
Set forth the light, and the darkness will flee before it.
Take care of the truth, and the errors will take care of
themselves.
CCLXVI.
In all things let us put the question, Is this the
right thing for me to do, here, and now, and in this
way ? Is this according to the fitness of life? Is it
good when weighed not in the haste of the moment,
but in the scales of well-balanced judgment? Is it the
best
way of doing it when measured not by the narrow,
partial measure of our stunted, dwarfish minds, but by
294
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE,
the lofty, well-proportioned measure of the full, manly
stature of the fulness of Christ our Lord?"
CCLXVII.
We know what it is to be absorbed in the things of
the day, the interest of the moment - business, pleas-
ure, party, study. To be raised above these things to
a higher world, to feel there is nothing so hateful as sin,
nothing so lovely as goodness, to have a keen sense of
our own shortcomings, to know the excceding sinfulness
of sin, and the exceeding brightness of justice, purity,
holiness to feel the law of God to be sweeter than
honey and the honeycomb- to be glad when we think
or hear of the grace, the truth, the love of Christ -to
look forward with pleasure to being with Him and with
just men made perfect-this is, in full measure, to
become " a new creature."
CCLXVIII.
"The night is far spent, the day is at hand."
So wrote the apostle, in the expectation it would
seem, of a closer approach of the latter days than was
borne out by the actual event. Yet that very expecta.
tion seems to have been made the means, under God,
of carrying him forward into the future; of placing
him, as it were, in the midst of our own days, of our
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
295
own trials, of our own questions. Read his words in
this point of view, and you will see in them the divine
authority with which he speaks proved by a most
undoubted, because a most unexpected sign. They
are, it is true, full of his own personal experiences,
but they are full of ours, also. They are prophecies
in the entire sense of the word-prophecies of what
we want to be told, of what no one else can tell us;
prophecies fulfilled by reading to us the secrets of
our own hearts, by unravelling to us the riddle of
our own times. The night of the heathen persecution.
is over; the night of the dark ages is faded away;
the night of the storms of religious and civil discord
is far spent; the day of civilization, of enlightenment,
of knowledge- so we fondly, perhaps too fondly
hope is near at hand. Yet in that day the best
armor in which we can clothe ourselves is still the
armor which the apostle commends his words are
still applicable; he is a child not of the past night, but
of the present and of the coming day: his advice.
his teaching, his exhortations, will stand the test of
all the light, of all the enlightenment of the most
enlightened, the most inquiring eyes.
CCLXIX.
—
"Receive one another, as Christ received us."
"Receive," that is, take to yourselves, take to your
296
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
bosoms, place in your whole view, those whose scru-
ples, or whose want of scruples, whose over-weakness
or whose over-strength, we naturally would put from
us and thrust into the distance.
"Receive them." If they are unknown to us, if
they are far off, let us rejoice in seeing them, let us
find out how much better they themselves are than
our own expectations, than our conceptions of them-
nay, than their own professions, their own represen-
tations of themselves.
"Receive them." Look at their proceedings, their
arguments, their opinions, their scruples, not from
our point of view, but from theirs. This is the only
way of doing, I will not say charity, but justice to
those who are unlike ourselves. Even after all the
allowance, we may still find much to condemn ; but
till we have thus "received them," till we have labored
to apprehend what they mean, we are no judges at all
in the matter. Do to them as we would that they
should do to us. Place ourselves in their situation
and ask what we should do, starting from their belief
from their knowledge, from their ignorance, from their
mistakes.
"Believe yourselves ignorant" (this was a good rule
once laid down with regard to difficult authors), "be-
lieve yourselves ignorant of their understanding, unless
first
that you
understand their
you are
ignorance."
sure
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
297
CCLXX.
If a man professes religion ever so little, yet pro-
fesses it sincerely, there is at least one part of his
nature to which you can appeal when you come to
set him right. He may be prejudiced, narrow-minded,
perverse; but, if he has a spark of Christian principle
within him, in this respect he is bour 1 to be, and unless
he is a mere self-deceiver, he will be above the world;
he will suffer you to lay the finger on his weak point;
he will allow himself to be healed, he will let you say,
"Thou art the man," and he will say himself, “I have
sinned." He will acknowledge that the general sin-
fulness of which he professes himself guilty in the
sight of God, can be detected in special instances by
the eye of man. Such a one, whatever may be his
other shortcomings is, so far, an unworldly character
such a one, though unworldly, is to the world an
unspeakable gift. Could we spare any that there are,
is there not room for many, many more?
CCLXXI.
The ear may be unable to gather sounds of comfort
from others; the lips may refuse to express the
thoughts that are waiting within; the eye may fail to
fix itself on the words which once gave instruction
and support; but the treasure which was laid up in
298
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
childhood, in youth, in manhood, remains there in
an undiminished lustre ; as the outward man perishes
the inward man is thus renewed, sustained, when cut
off from all beside; and as all else fades away, we
feel, in the solitude of the sick chamber, and in the
darkness of the grave, that the soul which was so
nurtured has but passed into the more immediate
presence of that which on earth he most cherished
into the presence, in the most absolutè sense, of
whatsoever things are true and honest, just and pure,
lovely and of good report.
CCLXXII.
How easy it is to show mercy in such a way that it
shall be no mercy, and how truly has the apostle laid
his hand on the exact quality which causes kindness to
be really kind, and mercy really merciful. Not tender-
ness, not generosity-no; but something we can all
command-"cheerfulness;" a bright smile, a beaming
countenance, a playful word, these are the accompani-
ments that find an entrance into the closed heart, and
raise the downcast eye, and bless him that gives and
him that takes.
CCLXXIII.
Look at the great family of Christendom, and ask
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
299
which of all the races, kindreds and peoples could be
spared from the place which they occupy. The lively
energy of one, the noble chivalry of another, the free
inquiry of a third, the common-sense or austere rea-
sonings of a fourth, the boundless activity of the
East, the artistic devotion of the South, the stubborn
and simple belief of the North, the immovable fidelity
and tenacity of the East, which of these can we
safely dispense with? If Christendom ،، were all
seeing," where were the hearing? If the sinews and
bones were all, where would be the smelling nostrils
and the beating heart? No; let us believe that even
in this widest sense we are one body and one spirit,
that each member of the great community "supplieth
that which the other lacks," that if one
one member
suffer, all the other members suffer with it.
For the New World as for the Old World there is a
glorious work to do, a work which requires all the rev-
erence, all the seriousness, all the repose, of the East;
all the activity, all the freedom, all the progress, of the
West; all the long past of Europe, all the long future
of America a work which neither can do for the
other, but a work which both can do together.
"Hast Thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me,
even me also, O my Father!"
This is the prayer which East and West, England and
300
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE:
•
America, may well send up from shore to shore. Give
to each the grace to learn from each. Give to each the
strength to fulfil that pure and lofty mission which
belongs to each. Give to each the spirit of wisdom.
and understanding, of "holy hope and high humility,"
to which the whole body of mankind, fitly joined to-
gether and compacted by that which every joint sup-
plieth, according to the effectual working of every part,
shall make increase of the body unto the edifying of
itself in love. We have taken the wings of the morn-
ing, we have dwelt in the uttermost parts of the west-
ern sea. O, may Thy hand even there lead us onward!
O, may Thy right hand even there hold us up!
Accuracy.
Aspiration.
Bible, The
Bigotry.
Charity.
Chivalry
Christ.
Christianity.
•
Conversion.
Courage.
Death.
Discipline.
Duty.
•
•
VIII. XXXVIII.
CLIII. CLVII.
LXXV. LXXVIII. - CX. CXLVIII. CLX. CXCII.
CCVI. CCVIII. CCX. - CCXIV.
LXIV. CLVIII.
LXXXII. LXXXIV.
CCLXIV. CCLXIX.
CI. - CXL.
–
LV.-LIX. - LXI. - LXX. LXXVI. CLIX.
XIV. XV.
•
-
INDEX.
IV.
-
XVI. LXVIII. LXXXI.
XCVI. XCVIII. - CXC.
-
-
-
-
-
CLXII. CLXXIX. - CCXXIX. - CCXXXI.
-
CCXLVIII.
CCLV. CCLX. – CCLXIII.
XVIII. XXVII. - XI. - XLI. - XLII. CXII. - CXX.
CXXI. CXXIII. - CXXV. - CXXVII. CLXXXVII.
CCXXV. CCXXXVI. - CCXXXVII.-CCXLIII.
CCXLVII. - CCLIII.
CLXVII. CLXIX.-CLXXIII.-CCLXVII.
XXXII. XLIX. LXXIX. LXXXVIII. - CXLII.- CXLIII.
–
CLXVI. CCXX. CCXXI. CCXXX. CCXXXIII.
- – –
. XXVI. - CXIV. – CL. - CIXXVIII. - CCLXXI.
XIX. XXXIV. - XXXV. XCIII. CXVII. - CXXXVII.
–
XXXIII. - LXXIII. - LXXXIII-XCVIII. - CHI.-CXXI.
CXXXVIII. CLXIV. - CCI IX. - CCLXVI.
VI.XII-XIII. CCXLIV. CCXLIV. - CCXLIX-CCLVII.
CLXXII. - CXCIII. - CCL.
XXXVI.-CLXVIII. CLXXXV. - CCLI. CCLVIII.
XVII. XLVI.XI.VII. CCXXXIII
III. IX. XX. - XXI. - XXIII. - XXIV. - XXXI- - XCI.
- -
XCII. CXXXII.-CXLIV.
CLXXX. CLXXXIV.
CXCVII. CXCIX. CCXVIII - CXCIX.
LVI. — LVIL
Education.
Example. CLXX. XXV. - XXXVII.-CVII.
Faith.
God.
Greatness, True.
-
-
-
-
– -
-
-
P
M
-
G
-
-
<
· -
-
-
-
-
302
Index.
Humility.
Immortality.
Justice.
Literature.
Moderation.
Obedience.
Prayer.
Progress.
Providence.
Religion.
Responsibility.
Ritualism.
Sacrifice.
Sincerity.
Spirit, The.
Sympathy.
Truth.
Unity.
War.
Worship.
World, The
CIV. CXI. -
-
LXIX. CVIII. CXIX.-CXLIX. CLXI. CLXXXI.
CLXXXVIII. CCXXXIV.
CIX. CXXVIII. CXXIX, CXXXIV. - CXLVII.
-
V.-CLIV. - CLVI.-CLXVI.-CXCVI.-CCLII.
CCXXXVIII.-CCXXXIX.-CCXLI.
XCIX. - CXLI.-CLXV. — CCXV. - CCLXI. – CCII.
CC.
- -
<<
LXV. LXVI.
XLIII. XLIV.-XLV. L. LI.- LXIII. - XCV.
Mag
-
CXIII. CXV. CXXIV. CXXXI.
-
- CXXXIX.
CXLV. CLXXIV. CLXXXIII.- CCLXVIII.
XXX. - LXXVII. CXVI. CXVIII. CXXVI.
CXXXVI.
CLI. CCXXVI.
-
CCXXVIII. CCXLVI.
LXVII.-C.
CCIX. CCXII.
LXII. CXXXV.
CLXIII. CLXXXIX. - CCLXII. - CCLXX
LXXI.
XI. - XXII.-XXVIII. - XXIX. - LXXXV.- LXXXIX.
XC. - CXCIV. CCXL.- CCXVII. CCLXXII.
–
CCLX. CCXLV.
XXXIX. - LXXII. XCIV. CLII. CLV. - CLXXV.
-
CLXXXVI. - CXCI. CXCVIII. - CCI.CCIV.
CCV.CCLXV.
LXXXVII. CLXXVI. CLXXXVII. -
CCXIII. CCXVI. CCXXII.
- –
- CCXI.
CCXXIII.
CXXVII.
VII
CCXXVII. CCLXXIII.
–
LX.
LXXX
LII. LIII. - CXCV. - CIII. - CCLVI
-
——
-
Sunda
-
G
XLVIII. LVIII. LXXIV. CXXX.
-
<
God
<<
-
-
-
•
·
-
-
-
—
-
((
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NEW YEAR'S TANGLES.
HEROINES.
SOME YOUNG
Each volume 16mo.
Cloth. Price, $.75.
JESSIE WELLS.
DOCLA'S JOURNAL.
HELEN LESTER.
BERNIE'S WHITE CHICKEN.
MARY BURTON ABROAD.
Price, $.60.
SIDE BY SIDE.
The Little Pansy Series, 10 vols. Boards, $3.00. Cloth, $4.00
Mother's Boys and Girls' Library, 12 vols. Quarto Boards, $3.00
Pansy Primary Library, 30 voi. Cloth. Price, $7.50.
Half Hour Library. Octavo, 3 vols.
Price, $3.20.
RECENT AND CHOICE BOOKS FOR S. S. LIBRARIES.
By Carrie A. Cooke.
By E. A. Rand.
Pushing Ahead,
Roy's Dory,
Little Brown Top,
After the Freshet,
•
By Margaret Sidney.
The Pettibone Name, .
So as by Fire,
Half Year at Bronckton,
By Pansy.
An Endless Chain,
Ester Ried Yet Speaking,
New Year's Tangles,
Side by Side,
•
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$125 To-days and Yesterdays,
1 25 From June to June,
I 25
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For Mack's Sake, by S. J. Burke,
Little Mother and her Christmas, by Phoebe McKeen,
By Marie Oliver.
Seba's Discipline,
Old and New Friends,
Ruby Hamilton, .
Soldier and Servant, by Ella M. Baker,
Keenie's To-morrow, Jennie M. Drinkwater Conklin,
Hill Rest, by Susan M. Moulton,
Echoes from Hospital and White House. Experiences of Mrs. Re-
becca R. Pomroy during the War, by Anna L Boyden,
Not of Man but of God, by Jacob M. Manning,
Cambridge Sermons, by Alexander McKenzie,.
Self-Giving. A Story of Christian Missions, by W. F. Bainbridge,
Right to the Point From the Writings of Theodore L.. Cuyler,
Living Truths. From Charles Kingsley,
•
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My Girls, by Lida M. Churchill,
Grandmother Normandy, by the author of " Andy Luttrell,"
The Snow Family, by M. B. Lyman,
The Baptism of Fire, by Char.es Edward Smith,
Around the Ranch, by Belle Kel ogg Towne,
Through Struggle to Vic.ore, by A. B. Meservy,
Three of Us, by Heckla,
Breakfast for Two, by Joanna Matthews,.
Onward to the Heights of Life,
Tort and Mended, by W M. F. Round,
That Boy of Newkirks, by L. Bates,.
Th Class of '70, by H. V. Morrison,
Uncle Mark's Amaranths, by Annie G. Hale,
Six Months at Mrs. Prior's, by Emily Adams,
A Fortunate Failure, by C. B. LeRow,
Carrie Elsworth, by M. D. Johnso.,
The Pansy Primary Library, 30 vols.,
$1 25
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By Mrs. S. R. G. Clark.
125 Our Street,
Yensie Walton,
$150
Yensie Walton's Womanhood,
By Mrs. J. J. Colter,
1 00 One Quiet Life,
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60 Robbie Meredith,
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The Only Way Out, by J. F. Willing,
John Bremm, by A. A. Hopkins,
Sinner and Saint,
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The Tempter Behind, by John Saunders, .
Good Work, by Mary D. Chellis,
Mystery of the Lodge, by Mary D. Chellis,
Finished or Not,
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*Messrs. D. Lothrop & Co., Boston, also publish the celebrated
PANSY AND PRIZE BOOKS. Full Catalogue sent on application.
The
Books.
Yensie
Walton
These books, from the pen of Mrs. S. R. Graliam Clark, are possessed
of such conspicuous merits, as to secure for them the unqualified com-
mendation of eminent religious journals such as the Central Christian
Advocate, The Journal and Messenger, The New Orleans Christian
Advocate, The Lutheran Observer, Christian at Work. The Dover
Morning Star, The Gospel Banner, Philadelphia Methodist, Herald
and Presbyter.
YENSIE WALTON.
YENSIE WALTON'S WOMAMHOOD.
THE TRIPLE E.
ACHOR.
12m0, cloth, illustrated, uniform binding, $1.50 each.
YENSIE WALTON.
OUR STREET.
6
Yensie Walton," by Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark. Boston: D. Loth-
rop & Co. Full of striking incident and scenes of great pathos, with
occasional gleams of humor and fun by way of relief to the more tragic
parts of the narrative. The characters are strongly drawn, and, in gen-
eral, are thoroughly human, not gifted with impossible perfections, but
having those infirmities of the Aesh which make us all akin. It will take
rank among the best and most popular Sunday-school books. — Episcopal
Register.
A pure sweet story of girl life, quiet, and yet of sufficient interest to hold
the attention of the most careless reader.-Zion's Advocate.
YENSIE WALTON'S WOMANHOOD.
The many readers who have made the acquaintance of " Yensie Wal-
ton" in one of the best Sunday-school books ever pub ished, will be de
lighted to renew that acquaintance, and to keep their former companion
still further company through life. There is a strong religious tone to the
whole story, and its teachings of morality and religion are pure and
healthful and full of sweetness and beauty. The story is a worthy suc-
cessor to Mrs. Clark's previous work -Boston Post.
The heroine is an excellent character for imitation, and the entire atmos-
phere of the book is healthful and purifying.-Pittsburg Christian Advo-
cate.
OUR STREET,
By the same author, is a capital story of every day life which deals with
genuine character in a most interesting manner.
THE TRIPLE E,
Just published, is a book whose provoking title will be at once acknowl-
edged by the reader as an appropriate one. It fully sustains the author's
eputation.
ACHOR, a new book in press.
D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston.
、....
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
FIELD, WOOD, AND MEADOW RAMBLES, or How we
Went Bird's-nesting. By Amanda B. Harris. Illustrated by
George F. Barnes. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $2.00.
Equal in elegance and excellence to any publication of the
season is Field, Wood, and Meadow Rambles, by Amanda B.
Harris. In it the author describes the adventures and ex-
periences of two young ladies who spent one summer in
searching the fields and woods for the purpose of studying
the peculiarities and habits of the birds of the region. The
story is delightfully told, and will undoubtedly rouse scores
of young ladies to attempt the same thing next season. The
work is illustrated by twelve exquisite drawings by George
F. Barnes, with frontispiece, title page and vignette. The
paper on which the text and illustrations are printed is of
the best; the margins are liberal and the binding elegant
and strong. Within and without its attractions entitle it to
a foremost place among the best gift books of the year.
-
LEADING MEN OF JAPAN. With a Historical Summary
of the Empire. By Charles Lanman. Boston: D. Lothrop
& Co. Price $2.00. No man is better qualified to write
upon Japanese subjects than Mr. Lanman, who for several
years was a resident of the Empire, and a student of its
political, social, and religious elements and characteristics.
During the past dozen years Japan has taken immense
strides in what we are pleased to call civilization. The cus-
toms and beliefs of many centuries have been overthrown;
the form of government has been changed, and methods
which have until now been peculiar to western nations have
been introduced. It is not to be supposed that all this has
been accomplished without effort. The men who have
played the rôle of reformers have had many obstacles to cʊn-
tend with, and even now there is no lack of opposition to the
introduction of foreign civilization. Mr. Lauman gives an
interesting account of the changes made, and of the pros-
pects for the future, in these sketches of the leading men of
the country. It is a book which every one who wishes to
keep abreast with the times ought to read, and which a great
many will read. It is the only work of the kind which has
ever been published.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE TEMPLE REBUILT.
By Frederick R. Abbe. Boston:
D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25. A new edition of this
poem, re-written, enlarged and rearranged, has been brought
out in obedience to a demand on the part of the public, and
will be found by those who now read it for the first time a
work of high purpose and rare ability. Mr. Abbe is a poet
in the truest sense of the word, and his subject is one which
gives the largest opportunity for thought and expression.
The poem involves the story of primal innocence, the fall of
the soul, its restoration through Divine grace, and final
salvation. By the "temple " the author typifies the soul of
man; it is cast into ruins by sin; the new foundation is the
plan of salvation as laid down by Christ; the builders are
the Christian virtues and graces; the implements are prayer
and good works: and through these the edifice again arises
in its pristine purity and beauty. The author paints in
vivid language the various scenes which rise before him
during the progress of the poem; the bright radiance of the
heavenly courts; the thronging seraphim and white-robed
angels; the star-gemmed skies; the beautiful things of
earth; the horrors of the pit, and the terrible scenes of the
last day. The closing portion of the poem is entitled
Hallelujah," and is a call to all created things on earth
and in heaven to praise the Lord for his redemption. We
quote briefly from this section to give the reader an idea of
the characteristics of the author's style and an example of
his skill in the choice and use of language:
66
Praise Him, ye mountains! on whose beetling crags
Nestle the eagles, peering for their prey;
Where from the clouds of thunder tempests bind
Their brows with terror, and the sullen snows
With cold caressing lap the traveler;
Or where the molten entrails vomit fire
In furious miniature of final doom.
In higher grandeur yet will you arise,
Under a fairer sky, a calmner clime,
Bright pillars of the sun; your radiant brows,
Disarmed of every weapon of dismay,
The purple pavement of angelic feet,
With sovereign peace on every peak enthroned.
The volume is handsomely printed on good paper, and
bound in cloth.
EXCELLENT BOOKS.
SIX MONTHS AT MRS. PRIOR'S. By Emily Adams. Illus-
trated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. 1.25.
"In this fresh little story, which is addressed especially to
young girls, the author tries to impress the lesson that the
disagreable and annoying duties of life may be made pleasant
by accepting them as inevitable, and asking help from
above. Mrs. Prior is the widow of a clergyman, and has
been left with five little ones to support. She discharges her
servant, and divides the lighter duties of the household
between herself and the two eldest of her children, Minnie
and Helen. Unaccustomed to any thing but study and play,
the girls find it very hard to have their old time appointments
for enjoyment circumscribed, and complain bitterly at first.
The book gives a history of their experience, and shows how
the work that was so irksome at first became in the end a
source of pleasure and means of healthful discipline.
"Six Months at Mrs. Prior's" is a sweet story of womanly
tact combined with christian trust. A widow, with scanty
means, makes a home happy for a group of children, restless,
wayward and aspiring, like many American children of our
day. The mother's love holds them, her thrift cares for
them, her firmness restrains, and her christian words and
life win them to noble aims and living. The influence of the
christian household is widely felt, and the quiet transform-
ing leaven works in many homes. We can't have too many
books of this kind in the family or Sunday-school."
MISS PRICILLA HUNTER, by Pansy, opens a new view
for that charming writer, but one eminently popular at the
present time. It deals with the payment of a church debt,
and shows how an humble woman, with a Christian charac-
ter which gave power to her words, raised the money to pay
off a debt which had long been a hindrance to church growth
and to Christian benevolence. Why she did it, and how she
did it, is told in Pansy's best fashion: her encounters with
crabbed folks, and stingy folks, and folks determined not to
give to the church debt, are highly amusing, as well as her
devices to get something from everybody.
1

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