3DE 372 
 
 wi. 
 
 I . 
 
CHRISTIAN 
 
 BELIEVING AND LIVING 
 
 ,/? T ,ir < 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 BY 
 
 F. D. HUNTINGTON, D. D., 
 
 PREACHER TO THE UNIA ERSITY, A^D PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF 
 CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 
 
 117 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 1860. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
 
 CllOSBY, NICHOLS, & CO., 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 University Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING 1 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE ANSWER OF FAITH 16 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 THE FAITH-FACULTY 36 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 THREE DISPENSATIONS IN HISTORY AND IN THE SOUL . . .63 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN 83 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL 98 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE . . . .114 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND TIMES OF SPECIAL 
 
 RELIGIOUS INTEREST ........ 129 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 PEACE BY POWER .......... 167 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE 187 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS 202 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 SAINTHOOD IN CAESAR S HOUSEHOLD 217 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 DIVINE REWARDS 232 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME 254 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION . . .274 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING 291 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE ADVENT 3 8 
 
CONTENTS. V 
 
 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING . . \ . .321 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY 338 
 
 SERMON XX. 
 
 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN IN THE DIVINE TRINITY 355 
 
 SERMON XXI. 
 
 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE OF SANCTIFICATION . . . 419 
 
 SERMON XXII. 
 
 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 436 
 
 SERMON XXIII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION . . . 451 
 
 SERMON XXIV. 
 
 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING 486 
 
 SERMON XXV. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER . , 502 
 
 NOTE TO SERMON XX. . . . .524 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 YE SEE YOUR CALLING. 1 Cor. i. 26. 
 
 THE word " calling " applied to a human life in the 
 Christian sense, and by a Christian authority like Paul, 
 is a condensed confession of faith. It means the great 
 primary truth of religion, viz. that our erring life is gov 
 erned by a will above it, and is capable of receiving in 
 fluences of attraction from the Spirit of God. Take up 
 that single truth, trace it out to its legitimate results, 
 admit all its practical obligations, let in upon your own 
 mind both the solemn sense of duty and the clear illu 
 mination for sorrow that it brings with it, accept its 
 necessary incidents of penitence, renewal, redemption, 
 and you find that, including its connections and con 
 sequences, it is a majestic compendium of religious 
 doctrine. 
 
 There is another and at present a more secular ap 
 plication of the same term. A man s common employ 
 ment the means of his livelihood is spoken of as 
 his " calling," or his vocation. But this usage discovers 
 the same origin ; for it must have sprung up in days of 
 a livelier faith, when it was verily believed that each 
 man s business in the world was a sacred appointment, 
 i 
 
2 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 and that he himself, while about his ordinary work, was 
 on a divine errand. A living faith not only justifies 
 that view, but requires it. For it supposes that in the 
 soul which has confessed its calling, where Christ is 
 " formed within," there is a power of holy consecration 
 supreme over all the choices and pursuits of the mind. 
 We are thus carried up to a conception of Christian 
 discipleship that has been too far lost out of the modern 
 habits of living, and even out of the belief and worship 
 of the Church. We have glimpses of a holy manhood 
 and womanhood beyond the mark of our secularized, 
 diluted, or perhaps formalized and ossified Christianity. 
 We catch a breath of the fragrant piety which once 
 hallowed the earth and sweetened the air. We feel 
 that miraculous touch which has always brought heal 
 ing and vigor to the languid pulse and feeble muscles. 
 We behold, with sight too dim, but in a splendor that 
 cannot be wholly veiled, " the prize of the high calling 
 of God in Christ Jesus." 
 
 The expression stirs some feeling of mystery. More 
 is suggested than the understanding clearly grasps. It 
 is so, in a degree, with every elevated, prophetic utter 
 ance of spiritual truth. For that always borders upon 
 the unknown, shades off into the infinite, and leaves 
 us to discern spiritually what we cannot reduce to the 
 terms of knowledge. Religion itself, as the invisible 
 bond that holds us consciously, confidingly, to the Eter 
 nal One, is mysterious. Yet a life without this sense of 
 a Hand guiding it, a Spirit moving it, a God in Christ 
 calling to it, is really far more perplexing and unac 
 countable than with that key to its changes. For then, 
 severed from a Father, it is not only a mystery, but 
 a contradiction; not only a riddle to the reason, but, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 3 
 
 sooner or later, with all its failures and miseries, a pain 
 ful puzzle to the heart, or even an agonizing mockery to 
 our sense of right, an enigma that neither genius, nor 
 stoicism, nor sensuality, nor suicide can solve. Persons 
 of sensitive natures have to shut their eyes and refuse 
 to think of it. Hardier observers speculatively turn it 
 over, like some anomalous specimen in science, in the 
 fingers of their philosophy, with no clew to its secret. 
 
 But there is something here, too, that is plain enough 
 to common sense, and, to earnest moods at least, very 
 welcome. How many weeks will any of us be able to 
 live without coming to some spot where it will be felt 
 as a rational comfort to believe that all our way, step 
 by step, trial by trial, surprise, success, failure, loss, 
 removal, was ordered for us by Him who sees the end 
 from the beginning? If there is a " calling," there is 
 One who calls, and who when calling has a right to be 
 heard. It follows that there is one object in existence 
 so pre-eminent, that to accomplish that is to fulfil the 
 great purpose of our being, and to fail of that is to miss 
 the chief end. These are very intelligible ideas, easily 
 seized by every mind, and indeed seeming to be natu 
 rally suited to serious and reverential habits of thought, 
 looking but a little way below the surface. It is only 
 triflers, too frivolous to think, who conceive of their life 
 as without a plan, and have never heard the call of the 
 Master, " Go, work to-day in my vineyard." 
 
 So true is this, that it has been observed of the 
 most efficient and commanding men in the history of 
 the world, that they were apt to represent themselves 
 as led on by some Power beyond themselves, insti 
 gated, possessed, or inspired by a strange force above 
 their control, a Demon, a Genius, a Destiny, or a 
 
4 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 Deity. And certainly the successful establishing of this 
 impression respecting any leader, legislator, or reformer, 
 has always proved a powerful element of popular fasci 
 nation. To be held the princely child of an unseen 
 guardianship, an elect avenger of the gods, or an in 
 spired instrument of Fate, has always clothed a hero in 
 extraordinary superiority. And whether you take it as 
 the honest conviction of the claimant to such a mission, 
 or as the superstition of his followers, this seems to be 
 an indirect natural testimony that the strongest achieve 
 ments of man bear in their very bosom an involuntary 
 witness that there is more than man behind them. 
 
 But the Apostle refers to something higher and holier 
 than any dreamy sentiment like this. Standing on the 
 verities of the Gospel, speaking, observe, to those that 
 have heard it and nominally assented to it, he summons 
 them to a more solemn and searching sense of what 
 it requires of them : " Ye see your calling, brethren." 
 The truth is clear ; you see it. It is not of men, but 
 of God, who calls. Christ has lived, and he asks living 
 followers. He has died, a sacrifice, and he asks the 
 spirit of self-sacrifice, the death of evil, in you. He has 
 risen, living evermore ; and whatsoever gift of his love 
 ye shall ask, believing, ye shall receive. These are your 
 guaranties, your commission, your grounds of action. 
 This is your calling. It is not, then, our life in gen 
 eral, every kind of life, the life of mere accidental im 
 pulse or of moral insensibility, the life of self-interest, 
 the life of fashion-following or fame-seeking, it is not 
 an irreligious life at all, in any of its unsightly and 
 empty forms, that is " your calling." It is the life of 
 a disciple of Christ, penetrated in every part by his 
 spirit, warmed by his zeal, baptized into his pure blood, 
 
THE CHI VLLING. 
 
 sanctified l.y his indwelling ;e, purged of 
 
 works and :i s Tvih- ohrdi ii , his quickening 
 " hid " with him, and so " 11 nifest " and <( 
 
 fied" with him. 
 
 It is remarkable how pertemngly the New 
 ni -nt (Tm_ r s to thi< par ption of the 
 
 tian relation, srttiiiL r it ini-wii: i all possible C< 
 linns of phrasr, and ].iittin-j in contact witli 
 (! incut of tli Cliri-iian v < if there T 
 
 vitality in it that nni^t ii"t means be n 
 
 Disciples are >aid to 1 the <>f Jesus," " 
 
 out of darknrx im,, mar\ ( ; ..-ht," "called 
 
 liluTty," M-allrd to p. d to eternal 
 
 u called " first, to be aft<T ustificd and 
 
 lifd," 1 "eallol to inh-rit a l l;ang," "called i 
 body" and u one hope," u c > God s grac 
 
 " holiness," to k * his kingdom nd glory," wil 
 holy calling," u a h av -nly ca The Apostl 
 
 died" from one pla .\ \v<>ik. u ring, joy, to 
 er, in the journeying and progns of their apost 
 To u walk worthy of tin- TO is made the 
 
 ness of a careful conscience nake our "< 
 
 and elr tinii sure," is the gr; ry of our w 
 
 The promise that subdues all uiii y as to the re 
 in the words, "Faithful is h alleth you." 
 
 Let us notice, in order, the pvrninent teachi 
 this laiiLiu;! 
 
 I. In the first place, it is r in it, as i 
 
 the whole drift of the primitive terming of the Aj 
 that the business of a Christian 1 -imething 
 and distinctive, a " calling" by ; elf. That is 
 nature and spirit, it is somcthii > l>e disting 
 from all other occupations, all schmes of thougl 
 
6 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 terns of philosophy, enterprises of the will, or plans of 
 education. It is such that no one of these things can 
 be mistaken for it, nor substituted in place of it. A 
 Christian character springs from its own root, grows by 
 its own laws, and bears its own peculiar fruit. It finds 
 a distinct provision in every human soul for developing 
 it, a religious capacity, an organ of faith, a spiritual 
 want, reaching dimly after God, and never meant to be 
 satisfied but in the gift of his Holy Spirit. It is there 
 fore to be gone about as an attainment, grand but sim 
 ple, practicable for all men, the noblest of all objects. 
 It has its own conditions, of effort, preparation, faithful 
 use of appointed means. Seek, and ye shall find ; ask, 
 and ye shall receive. The inward eye must be turned 
 toward the Revelation of God. There must be defi 
 nite action, a fixing of attention, a concentration of the 
 mind, a full purpose of the will. This must have a 
 beginning, which the New Testament everywhere speaks 
 of as being born into a new life. There must be a stir 
 ring and moving of the soul awakened from death to 
 ward its Deliverer, with complete faith in him, which 
 Christ constantly calls coming to him. Then there must 
 be a growing into greater strength and goodness, with 
 out end. Here, therefore, is a new principle of conduct. 
 It is a divine calling. Paul speaks as if no pursuit were 
 to be thought of in comparison with it. It is the errand 
 on which we are all sent into the world, to gain the 
 character, to live the life, that will be nearest to God 
 here, and will be immortal by its secret fellowship with 
 Him who is its Resurrection, Life of life. 
 
 II. Secondly, this idea of a " calling" individualizes 
 not only the Christian obligation, but the Christian per 
 son. Paul had no conception of a social Christianity 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 7 
 
 apart from the personal righteousness of the men that 
 make up society. That is one of the plausible fictions 
 of people who find speculative abstractions more to their 
 taste than the self-denying drudgeries of daily duty, and 
 a Christianity on paper a cheap substitute for Chris 
 tianity in the heart. Ye see the calling, Paul says, 
 and it is your calling. This is personal language. It 
 is addressed to individual men and women. It is the 
 uniform and thorough dealing of the Christian doctrine. 
 That truth knows nothing of public virtue except as it 
 is found in the breasts and the conduct of private per 
 sons, who take their virtue with them, and keep it with 
 them, when they enter into public relations. It reaches 
 society and institutions only through the souls that are 
 open to its persuasion and loyal to its control. It is 
 quite vain for us to congratulate each other on a state 
 of general integrity and order, if we tolerate depravity 
 in ourselves, or excuse it in the usages of the class to 
 which we happen to belong. If we have a community 
 here of a thousand people, in which we want to see the 
 Christian graces flourishing, our only way is to go to 
 work and turn one and another of the thousand into a 
 Christian person, each beginning with himself. Every 
 body feels the advantage of a general good name ; the 
 least deserving take a pride in it when it is secured ; 
 one of those indirect and involuntary tributes to the 
 power and truth of religion which are more unanswer 
 able than volumes of formal arguments. But are we 
 willing to pay the price, the contribution of our own 
 personal uprightness and vigilance ? Or are we mean 
 enough to wish to take a share of the credit, while prac 
 tising the very sins that this fair repute is wanted to 
 conceal ? The worst enemies our faith has to suffer 
 
8 THE CHBISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 from are those that always take complacency in its ben 
 efits as a civil economy, but always make it bend to 
 their own inclination in the indulgences of passion and 
 the obliquities of self-interest. Its open deniers those 
 who call themselves infidels have a small and incred 
 ulous audience. There is not one of the creeds the 
 most rigid but has more hearty and contented adhe 
 rents than the no-creed of blank negation. And com 
 monly, the more explicit impiety or irreverence becomes, 
 the less its chance of popularity. The mortal wound is 
 given by those who .take up Christianity as a social pol 
 icy, a name to conjure with, a commercial convenience, 
 trying to make that pass for the holy reality of Christ. 
 The only people that can take any benefit from this in 
 sincerity are those that are too undiscriminating to mark 
 the difference between words and things. And even for 
 these, the difference is constantly forcing itself to light ; 
 the mask is constantly liable to drop, through the un 
 guarded inconsistencies and the providential uncover- 
 ings of hollow proprieties. How weary and indignant 
 God must be at hearing these Pharisaic praises of a 
 Christian religion, a Christian legislation, a Christian 
 literature, a Christian country, from speakers and writ 
 ers who allow Christianity to conquer no one of their 
 propensities to pleasure or to pride ! Have you never 
 known a community tacitly, not avowedly, there is 
 too much instinctive shame left for that, but actually, 
 and by a common understanding, established on the 
 rule to recognize the practical control of Christianity 
 up to a certain point, and beyond that point, a mu 
 tual, silent conspiracy to let questionable matters alone ? 
 How would that bear the preaching of Paul, or of Paul s 
 Master ? The truth is, the fashions and assemblages of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 9 
 
 society, instead of being an exposure and a judgment 
 to irreligious hearts, are often made their protection. 
 We speak of bad men hiding in solitude. Far more 
 of them hide in company. Personal obligation, with its 
 strict and solemn answers of each penitent and awak 
 ened soul to the call of its Lord, is sunk, or frittered 
 away, in the cowardly compliances of a vulgar prosper 
 ity. The original Gospel breaks in upon this giddiness. 
 It says, Unto you I call, soul by soul. The vocation 
 is an individual matter. Ye see it, each for himself. 
 Hast thou faith, have it to thyself. There is no im 
 personal character, no pardon by proxy, no collective 
 salvation. The work is for each. " Repent," is* for 
 each. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," is for each. 
 " Take up the cross and come after me," is for each. 
 " Ye see your calling." 
 
 Thus we have found that this Apostolic view of prac 
 tical Christianity as a " calling " individualizes, first, the 
 Christian principle, as having a place distinct from all 
 other principles, and, secondly, individualizes the Chris 
 tian life, as having all its awful obligations, its joys 
 and sanctions, centred upon each personal conscience 
 and heart. 
 
 III. Be reminded, further, that, notwithstanding all 
 this, Christ s truth is a matter, not of partial, but of 
 universal application. The Christian spirit, the Chris 
 tian revelation, the Christian privilege and promises, 
 are not meant for a class of men culled out arbitrarily 
 here and there ; not for a few persons of special con 
 stitutional proclivities that way, nor for a few others 
 whose circumstances and situation in the world happen 
 to predispose them for a spiritual plane of being, mak 
 ing it easy for them to reach it. The Bible makes no 
 
10 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 such limitations, no reservations, no exceptions. " "Who 
 soever will," " All men everywhere," "In every 
 nation," " From the least even unto the greatest " ; 
 these are the broad terms of the Gospel charter, the 
 strict terms of the Gospel requisition. Nor is the Chris 
 tian calling a whit the less universal and impartial for 
 the reason that, as we were just now showing, it is 
 special, requiring a personal consecration. On the con 
 trary, its speciality is the very ground of its universality. 
 God himself, as the Infinite Spirit, is far more readily 
 recognized as having to do with the whole human race, 
 for the distinctness of his personality. The more per 
 sonal, the nearer to all. The forces of nature lose 
 nothing of their diffusive or penetrative action by the 
 distinctness of the laws that govern them. The more 
 definite, the more important, and the more searching 
 you make the Christian command to be, the more will 
 the principles of its righteousness send their pressure 
 into every department of life, and the spirit of its char 
 ity diffuse its fragrance into every nook and corner of 
 the household of humanity. Nothing in the adminis 
 tration of Christianity is better proved by trial than 
 this. 
 
 If there were any variations excusing men from this 
 calling, they might be suspected to exist either (1.) in 
 the unlike constitutions of men s minds, or (2.) in their 
 unlike external conditions, or (3.) in the unlike ages 
 when they appear ; in other words, either in their 
 nature, their place, or their time. Yet how far these 
 things are from really constituting, in the Christian 
 view, an apology for disregarding the duty of a dis 
 ciple ! 
 
 Take the inequalities of intellectual equipment. 
 
THE CHEISTIAN CALLING. 11 
 
 There is not much likelihood of men s seeking a re 
 lease from taking up the Christian work and cross on 
 a plea of mental infirmity. One of the last confessions 
 extorted from vanity is that of inferiority there. More 
 probably the pretence of exemption will arise in the 
 opposite quarter, and be a pretence of gifts or a culture 
 superior to the need of faith, independent of the humil 
 iating doctrines of the Crucified. Yet in this very pas 
 sage we have a sublime strain of prophetic utterance 
 from Paul, coming with such irresistible power of in 
 spiration, and with such self-attesting credentials of 
 the Spirit of Truth in its majestic affirmations, as to 
 supersede argument, and leave the poor conceits of 
 irreligious knowledge and genius to contempt. ""Where 
 is the wise ? Where is the disputer of this world ? 
 Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world ? 
 The world by wisdom knew not God. The foolishness 
 of God is wiser than men. For the preaching of the 
 cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto them 
 which are called, Christ, the power of God and the wis 
 dom of God." 
 
 Or take the excuse of unfavorable outward fortunes. 
 "What are those fortunes ? Poverty and hardship ? 
 Unto the poor the Gospel was first preached, and in 
 every age the facts show that it is with them that its 
 simple and consoling truths have found their most 
 cordial and fruitful reception. Wealth and station, 
 then ? But unto whom much is given, of them shall 
 much be required. The ten talents must answer for 
 ten talents more returned unto the Lord who reckon- 
 eth. Or is it the busy and contented state of pecuniary 
 mediocrity or a competency ? Yet that is the very 
 state which, of all others, a wise man is represented as 
 
12 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 praying for, and which common sense would pronounce 
 most favorable to a useful and healthy piety. Indeed, 
 nothing is plainer than that the whole honest spirit 
 of our religion disallows the evasive notion that any 
 position can liberate the spiritual child of God from 
 loving his Maker, serving his Saviour, and living in 
 godly charity with his fellow-men. 
 
 And, thirdly, the changing aspects of the times are 
 just as powerless to acquit any single conscience of its 
 accountability for a Christian walk and conversation. 
 Principles do not change with periods. The Christ of 
 whom it is written that he is the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever, is not subject to fluctuation, either 
 in the measure of his aifection or in his demands for 
 allegiance. If the tendencies of an age are material 
 istic, so much the more need of men and women whom 
 the world cannot purchase, nor the flesh seduce, nor 
 the Devil deceive. If the times are hard and un 
 believing, it is out of such epochs, by men whose faith 
 is a light shining in a dark place, lamps in the cave, 
 that the noblest revolutions have sprung, the abomi 
 nable idols of the den have been discovered, and new 
 days of hope have dawned. If the times are prosper 
 ous, then it is a call for money and commerce and 
 learning to spread the Christian kingdom, setting up 
 the cross wherever the heathen imagine a vain thing. 
 Or if they are corrupt and vile, then it is for brave wit 
 nesses to live this loftier life, to stand unstained by all 
 pollutions, and, though vice should combine with the 
 voluptuousness of Corinth an American energy, mix 
 the appetites of the ancient Paganism with the inso 
 lence of the new, and revive the sorceries of the familiar 
 spirits of old among the destructive theories begotten 
 
THE CHEISTIAN CALLING. 13 
 
 in the prurient imaginations of yesterday, yet to keep 
 themselves unspotted from the world. 
 
 The true lesson when some fresh outbreak of in 
 iquity in the very seats of law puts back the hopes of 
 civilization, or some almost incredible story of crime 
 alarms the security and sickens the senses of the land, 
 is not a general distrust of man or of woman ; it is not 
 a weighing off, by human judgment, of guilt against 
 guilt, as if we held the balances of Omniscience ; it is 
 not to lend a frightened ear to those sweeping suspi 
 cions which are the tempter s capital, and the poison 
 of all peace ; it is not even a diminished confidence 
 in the principle and the honor which in Christ s new 
 born souls still live, thank God ! and live because 
 He lives, as dear and sacred and mighty warders of 
 the purity of home as ever ; but it is this rather, 
 that there is no safeguard on earth for any one sin 
 gle virtue but the calling wherewith the Christian is 
 called ; no sufficing restraint on the wild and riotous 
 depravity of man, but a reverent faith in God ; no in 
 corruptible keeper of a household or a heart, but a 
 principle of right such as that Redeemer planted, who 
 was holy, and harmless, and undefiled, and separate 
 from sinners. 
 
 My friends, a near and natural illustration of this 
 uniformity of the Christian calling and responsibility 
 occurs in the very composition of an assembly of Chris 
 tian worshippers. 
 
 Ye see your calling, families. On every domestic 
 sanctuary, its sympathies, its cares, its wear and waste 
 of sensibility, its wealth and joy of love, tenderness, 
 pity, and tears, Christ lays the law of a consecrated 
 and holy economy. Set thy house in order ; for these 
 
14 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 
 
 earthly tabernacles are to be dissolved. And while 
 they last, they take in no calm, no abiding light, save 
 through invisible windows that open upward into the 
 unshadowed and undivided Heaven. 
 
 Ye see your calling, parents. To exercise your trust, 
 I will not say religiously, but even honorably, you will 
 have to feel that the Christian character of every child 
 committed to your charge, and living in sight of your 
 life, is immeasurably the most urgent interest of your 
 parental office. The religious welfare of these souls, 
 you will confess, does not rest on the same basis as 
 their social, literary, worldly advancement, but, high 
 as that is, on a higher and stronger. Whatever hinders 
 or endangers that, in speech or example or neglect, 
 inflicts a wrong too terrible to trace. The lines of its 
 bad influence run out, beyond where any eye or thought 
 can follow them. There is a cause of Christian earnest 
 ness to be carried forward ; a work of Christian training 
 to be done ; a privilege of Christian comfort and sym 
 pathy and mutual help to be diffused, by self-denial, 
 watchfulness, counsel, and prayer, a calling where 
 with all who are intrusted with the solemn embassy of 
 paternity or maternity are alike called. 
 
 And ye see your calling, men of action. "I have 
 written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, 
 and the word of God abideth in you." Is there not 
 something more, in this vocation, than some of you have 
 fairly apprehended ? Something on which conscience, 
 waking to a livelier activity, will take, if you will let it, 
 a stronger and firmer hold ? You have a field not sur 
 passed, you will say, for Christian opportunity in the 
 world; powers that never will be freer, nor less com 
 promised with the usages of evil; standards of public 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 15 
 
 opinion that are in your own hands, to be nobly mould 
 ed by you, if the good will stand together, or for you to 
 be ignobly moulded by, if you are servile ; temptations 
 to be overcome, prizes to be won. You have a Church 
 of Christ inviting you and offering you its gracious aids 
 and benedictions. However sin may have spoilt -the 
 past, do not despair. If you sit weeping with Mary by 
 the sepulchre of some buried joy, a voice may yet break 
 in on your grief, " The Master is come and calleth for 
 thee." If you lie blind and weak by the wayside with 
 Bartimeus, the animating news may yet lift you to your 
 feet, " Rise ! he calleth thee." 
 
 To-day, then, fellow-worshippers, we are to put it to 
 ourselves, whether this cause of our Redeemer does not 
 signify either more or less than our treatment makes it : 
 whether, if its claim is genuine, and its doctrine valid, 
 it does not require of us a more explicit, profound, all- 
 controlling acknowledgment ; whether consistency does 
 not enjoin it upon us to enthrone this faith over all the 
 practice of our life, making every abode of kindred 
 bodies a home of Christian hearts ; making all the social 
 pleasures and the literary competitions of youth to be 
 just, generous, blameless; all honors to be gained and 
 knowledge laid up, heartily, for a usefulness whose rec 
 ord is beyond this world ; and all our public aifairs so 
 ordered as to lay the foundations of intellectual emi 
 nence and civil glory on this only sure and stable Rock, 
 the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 If we both see and follow this calling of our Lord, 
 when he calls again, and calls " his own by name," it 
 will be to glory and honor and immortality. 
 
SEEMON II. 
 
 THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 AND ERE THE LAMP OF GOD WENT OUT IN THE TEMPLE OF 
 THE LORD, WHERE THE ARK OF GOD WAS, AND WHEN SAMUEL 
 WAS LAID DOWN TO SLEEP, THE LORD CALLED SAMUEL, AND HE 
 ANSWERED, " HERE AM I ; SPEAK, FOR THY SERVANT HEARETH." 
 
 1 Sam. iii. 3, 4, 10. 
 
 IF pride should object that the text is only the lan 
 guage of a child, it will be enough to answer, that 
 he was a child of faith, which is wiser than the wisest 
 brain, and to recall and put with it the unquestionable 
 words of Christ : " Except ye become as little children, 
 ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Setting aside the unbelief that rejects it, and the un 
 concern that neglects it, there are undoubtedly two views 
 taken of the nature of the thing we call Christianity. 
 One represents the world as a field of man s work, and 
 so calls on men to put forth their self-impelled activity 
 in it ; the other represents it as a scene of the work of 
 God in Christ, and calls on men to witness his presence, 
 to welcome his spirit, and to make themselves willing 
 and obedient instruments in his hand. A perfect rec 
 onciliation of these would be Christianity realized ; but 
 in their divorcement is the denial of the incarnation, 
 the very matter of heresy, the loss of the supernatural 
 
THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 17 
 
 Gospel gift, and the bereavement of the immortal 
 hope. Self-will would be the spring of life in the one 
 case, faith in the other. One would ask of its own 
 mind, " What shall I do ? " The other of the Divine, 
 " What wilt thou have me do ? " The one stimulates it 
 self by the friction of human effort on its own level ; the 
 other opens itself in prayer to be stimulated by an inspira 
 tion from above. One says, every morning, at every be 
 ginning of a task, or every turn in the way, " Lord, here 
 am I ; send me ; lead me " ; the other, " Fellow-men, 
 here I am ; make room for my wit and my enterprise." 
 One is Samuel in the temple ; the other is Saul fronting 
 the Philistines. Both say, " I will arise," but one adds, 
 " and will go to my Father, and will arise for that pur 
 pose." Both resolve, " I will work out my salvation," 
 but one first confesses, " It is God that worketh in me 
 both to will and to do." So it was from the very begin 
 ning. In the twilight of history stand two figures, 
 brothers, patriarchs. Both tended their flocks, and 
 wrought in " sad sincerity " all the day ; but before one 
 of them, when the night fell, and he slept in the pasture, 
 with a stone for his pillow, the angels of God ascended 
 and descended, and earth no less than heaven became a 
 Bethel, house of God. One would give us Saul of Tar 
 sus, rushing on in his headstrong and unhallowed zeal to 
 Damascus to persecute the best benefactor he ever knew ; 
 the other is Paul the Apostle, penetrated by the voice *of 
 Jesus, humbled by the light above him, " not disobedient 
 to the heavenly vision," saying, " I can do all things, 
 through Christ strengthening me." 
 
 We need not undervalue either the toiling hand or 
 the trusting heart. Work is too noble and too much 
 needed to be even indirectly disparaged. The world 
 
18 THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 
 
 everywhere waits for more of it, fruitful, righteous, 
 cheerful work. The earth is to be subdued ; and it can 
 be subdued in no other way. Loads of oppression are 
 to be lifted off. Ignorance is to be instructed. Strong 
 poor men are to be guided to their task, and paid their 
 wages. Weak poor men are to be helped, till they grow 
 strong. Superstition is to be flooded with pure light. 
 Error is to be discrowned. Partition-walls of prejudice 
 and pride are to be broken through. Nature is to be 
 made the servant of man, and her forces tools in the 
 grasp of thought. No ; the question is not whether 
 men shall work, but how they shall work to a purpose, 
 i. e. work rightly. Here the voice of Christ speaks, 
 and speaks unmistakably. It says, To work rightly, 
 to work effectually, you must work from God, con 
 sciously, faithfully, piously, from God. His Christ 
 must be your leader ; his Spirit your law ; his will your 
 motive. Not as out of yourself alone, but out of him, 
 must your power come. And faith is the feeling that 
 confesses it; prayer is the hand that draws it down. 
 He who knew all that is in man testifies this again and 
 again. It was to convince us of it, that he came into 
 the world. If we are Christians, we shall hold that no 
 work is done well that is not done religiously. Philoso 
 phy is not here our authority ; we have an altar, of which 
 they have no right to eat who serve that tabernacle. 
 Yet the highest philosophy would say the same thing. 
 To be efficient, labor must be hearty ; and when we say 
 the heart goes into it, we mean simply that faith goes 
 into it. In moral enterprises, a thing must be believed 
 in before it can be done. We are born into a spiritual 
 estate, and we cannot live worthily ol it, nor be educated 
 into a fit adjustment to it, till we behold the facts, the 
 
THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 19 
 
 verities, the obligations, the destiny, that pertain to us 
 by virtue of our spiritual inheritance. No life is truly 
 lived that is not lived in the spirit of him who arose in 
 the temple and answered the heavenly summons with 
 his reverent, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 
 For he seems like only a prophecy of that other child 
 born later for a yet diviner ministry, who also spoke in 
 the temple and said, " Wist ye not that I must be about 
 my Father s business ? " 
 
 The first word of the Bible Luther ever read, out of 
 the Bible itself, at Erfurth, his biography tells us, was 
 the story of Hannah and " her child lent to the Lord 
 for ever " ; and the beautiful narrative, so full of fresh, 
 prophetic meaning to his ritual-laden spirit, drew him on 
 to the study of the whole Holy Word, till, through the 
 text, " The just shall live by faith," as through the gates 
 of the morning, the full, clear light of the new day broke 
 in upon his soul. The story of Eli, so striking that it 
 has passed into the arts as well as religion, places us at 
 a most significant crisis in the ecclesiastical fortunes of 
 the chosen nation. It is the grand moment of transi 
 tion from the priest to the prophet. Wafted incense, 
 the fat of beasts, gorgeous sacerdotal vestments, the 
 sacrificial pomp of the priesthood, hitherto these have 
 been the only medium of intercourse between earth, 
 and heaven. But now a new order of worship, more 
 spiritual, more simple, more real, is to be installed. 
 The day of the prophet has come, bold rebuker of 
 kings and chieftains, sharp discerner between light 
 and darkness, between truth and lies, the unsparing 
 censor of the corruptions of government, of the abuses 
 of law, of the idolatries and worldliness of the people. 
 Superannuated Eli, representative of the priestly formal- 
 
20 THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 ism, slumbers in the temple-court. Young Samuel, 
 first of the prophets, type at once and herald of the 
 new ministry of righteousness, wakes by night, hears the 
 whisper of God s spirit, and answers with the prompti 
 tude of a vigilant faith. " The priestly system," it 
 has been well said, " boasts of being immutable and un 
 improvable ; all its veneration is for the past, not sym 
 pathetic nor prospective ; it turns its back upon the liv 
 ing, and bows the head and bends the knee to departed 
 ages. It involves a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a 
 servile worship, a physical sanctity, and a retrospective 
 reverence." But now comes the prophet " commissioned 
 from the Divine nature to sanctify the human. His 
 business is to bring the finite will and the infinite into 
 immediate and thrilling contact. An earnest speech, a 
 brave and holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of con 
 science, because freshness and loftiness of faith, these 
 natural sanctities are his implements of power. The 
 prophetic character involves the ideas of a spiritual 
 Deity, a noble humanity, a loving worship, individual 
 holiness, and a prospective veneration." 
 
 At this precise point of history the priest gives way, 
 the prophet appears. Old Eli sleeps by his altar ; Sam 
 uel, with eager faculties, hears that voice which no 
 sacerdotal ear could hear, and answers, " Speak, Lord ; 
 thy servant heareth." 
 
 It is a transition symbolical of what may go on in the 
 individual heart, yours or mine. When we pass from 
 a mere outward compliance with religious forms to a 
 hearty adoption of their life ; when we turn from sleepy 
 ceremonies that satisfy, to the searching devotions that 
 humiliate and so arouse us ; when we cease building 
 on a proud moral complacency, and come straight to our 
 
THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 21 
 
 Father, in our Redeemer, and beseech him to speak, and 
 long to hear, instead of veiling his presence behind nat 
 ural laws or second causes ; then we have made the 
 whole passage from Jewish externalisni, which dies, to 
 Christian spirituality, which is immortal. We have 
 gone from works that have no living root, barren and 
 fruitless, to the faith that ever works by love, and so 
 yields fruit for ever, an hundred-fold. The theory of 
 the priest is, that Heaven is to be propitiated by a round 
 of meritorious acts or forms. The truth of Christian 
 prophecy is, that we reach salvation, and find heaven, 
 just so far as we practically believe in our Saviour, and 
 walk and speak, and buy and sell, and marry and die, 
 in his spirit. 
 
 Now, different periods, places, communities, have their 
 peculiar perils. The business of Christianity is to meet 
 with its positive and inexhaustible power just the im 
 pending, pressing danger. Its reconciling spirit is one, 
 universal, unchangeable ; but its forms of application 
 are not stereotyped, nor its protests everywhere the same. 
 "With the recluses of Port Royal, and the monks of St. 
 Edniondsbury, work needed more to be preached than 
 faith ; and the resolute preacher who roused the dream 
 ers to action was the true prophet of the Lord. But 
 contemplation is not much our habit. Quietism is not 
 the modern excess. Dreaming is not our American 
 weakness. Everything tends of itself to external dem 
 onstration. All the wheels of prosperous enterprise 
 are running. Action is spontaneous. Indolence may 
 debilitate individuals ; but the strong, swift march of the 
 multitude tramples them down, or crowds them aside. 
 So work needs less, just here, to be preached than faith. 
 Let us think not of the wants of other centuries, but of 
 
22 THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 
 
 our own wants. We want to charge all this human en 
 ginery, this useful doing, with the spring or motive power 
 of true good in God, and so convert it to Christ. This is 
 Christianity. This is what churches are built for, Sab 
 baths are appointed, worship is kept up. You might 
 have many true things, noble virtues, manliness, 
 honesty, temperance, kindness, courage, discoursed 
 upon, without these. Those are for religion, to keep 
 alive the conviction and love of Christ in men, to make 
 them feel just what Samuel felt in his temple, that a 
 personal God speaks, to be obeyed, and a Christ has 
 come, to be formed within. 
 
 Get on in the world ; get wealth ; get position ; enjoy 
 yourself ; and in doing this follow your own best ideas 
 as you find them in a general culture of your powers 
 and in the laws of the world, by consulting your moral 
 sense, and the judgments of society ; do about right, as 
 the standards of respectability require : is this, or not, 
 a prevailing doctrine of man s highest relations ? Is this 
 what has come about in the name of " religion," and 
 what passes for the piety of the churches ? The result 
 will inevitably be, first, a lifeless form of devotion, a pre 
 tending to pray where there is no prayer ; next, a per 
 ception of this hollowness by sharp-sighted minds ; next, 
 a terrible recoil of scepticism, and a standing aloof from 
 sacred institutions, on the part of men who, however 
 far from faith, are yet too clean to touch a lie ; to be 
 followed, I suppose, if the laws of human nature hold 
 good, by some honest, penitent return to a living in 
 tercourse with the living Eternal Spirit that has waited 
 patiently all the while. This for the general action of 
 Christendom, the history of the Church at large. But, 
 meantime, where is the individual ? Where are we ? 
 
THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 23 
 
 Are we taking up and wearing the name of religion, 
 while our souls are not calling earnestly upon God, and 
 not beseeching, through evil report and through good 
 report, through convivial temptations and fashionable 
 excitements, and profitable dishonesties, and household 
 irritations, to do his will bravely, and abide in his peace 
 contentedly ? Can we say in the midst of every com 
 pany, every plan for the future, every hope of promo 
 tion, every bargain, every study, every covert "of dark 
 ness, " Lord, I wait thy command ; speak, thy servant 
 heareth, and will obey " ? If not, then that thing we 
 call religion is something else. That happens, only in a 
 different direction, which happened on a large scale under 
 the Papal hierarchy in the Middle Ages, when religion 
 came to mean a set of monastic vows, when a " re 
 ligious" person was not a righteous man, or a godly 
 woman, or a devout child anywhere, but a member of a 
 separate community shut out from the world, and 
 when a " religious " house was not the dwelling of a 
 Christian family, adoring and serving God, but of some 
 Dominican or Franciscan order. The idea of a real re 
 lation to God will have gone out, and a notion of mortal 
 power and luxury have come in in its place. Honesty 
 requires that the name shall be changed with the thing. 
 An intelligent traveller in South Africa states that 
 among the more degraded tribes he found one, where 
 no word was known in the language for a " Supreme 
 Being." There was a word remembered but dimly by 
 only here and there an old man, one or two in a 
 thousand, but entirely lost to the mass of the people, 
 signifying, " Him that is above." By gradual steps the 
 very name of the Supreme had faded out, after the 
 vanishing faith in him, from the savage soul. What 
 
24 THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 
 
 will it be to the real advantage of our civilization when 
 God himself has been put out of all our thoughts, and 
 men live on daily in utter disregard of his presence and 
 his law, if only by virtue of our superior mastery over 
 the arts of expression we preserve the articulate sound 
 that names him, the sound by which believing an 
 cestors once heartily called upon him, and each holy 
 tongue said, " Speak, Lord ; for thy servant heareth," 
 but nothing beside. " Not every one that saith unto me, 
 Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 If we look into the average life of Christendom to-day, 
 we find there much bad keeping between the religious lan 
 guage and the habit of religious thought, or rather the 
 habit of those anxious thoughts which occupy the place 
 that belongs to religion. In other words, Are even the bet 
 ter thought and purpose of men really religious, or ethical 
 only ? Does life fix itself habitually in God, take its de 
 parture from him, appeal to him, ever return to him, and 
 seek eternal rest and harmony in him ? or does it strike 
 out in a bold and eager search after something of its 
 own, feeling along by its own hand over an unbounded 
 sea, without any lamp in the sky, or any unvarying 
 finger to determine a fixed point, " dim sounding on its 
 perilous way," not having God in all its thoughts ? If 
 the latter, then, while the old language remains to fill up 
 solemn occasions, to sustain the appearances of worship, 
 to build meeting-houses, and write Sunday-school books, 
 and repeat public prayers, to appease the traditional de 
 mand for pious observance, the heart of the whole mat 
 ter is still wanting ; then there is an actual contradiction 
 between the phraseology of the subject and the sense of 
 it, between the convictions in which such men live, 
 and the speech and ceremony they are afraid to drop. 
 
THE ANSWER OP FAITH. 25 
 
 Now, tliis is nothing else than cant, the base resort of 
 timidity; superstition, if it springs from a nameless 
 fear of evil, hypocrisy, if it springs from a love of 
 superstitious people s approval, or a desire to keep on 
 terms of commerce with old respectability ; but in either 
 case a ghastly piece of pretension, a falsehood. Then 
 the world is right in charging upon ecclesiastical func 
 tionaries, and even upon Sabbath assemblies, unreality, 
 or worse. Nothing in the world can bring sincerity 
 back but a reopening of the interior gates and avenues 
 between each human soul and Christ, nothing but a 
 free and faithful turning of the dependent heart to the 
 personal Lord of its life ; nothing but the filial and rev 
 erential feeling of the Prophet-child, looking ever up 
 with obedient faith, " Lord, here am I ; speak, for thy 
 servant heareth ! " 
 
 It seems to me the testimony of an unprejudiced lay 
 man of our times one of the most penetrating readers 
 of the laws of impression, and one of the most original 
 thinkers has value, when he says, incidentally, " I be 
 lieve the reason that preaching is so ineffectual is, that 
 it oftener calls on men to work for God, than to behold 
 God working for them. If," he adds, " for every rebuke 
 that we utter of men s vices, we put forth a claim upon 
 their hearts ; if for every assertion of God s demands 
 from them we could substitute a display of his kindness 
 to them, I think there would be fewer deaf children 
 sitting in the market-place. 7 
 
 Leave criticism aside. Our business is with ourselves. 
 We are a company of persons, suppose, seeking in com 
 mon how to live righteously, to be helped by each other s 
 experience, and encouraged by each other s discoveries. 
 Trying other things, have we tried fairly the power of 
 
26 THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 intercourse by faith with the Spirit ? Trying our own 
 strength, have we tried God s? Troubled with our own 
 cares, business perplexities, household sorrows and fears, 
 or with the frightful tendencies of the times, have we 
 taken all these, in salutary and believing confidence, to 
 our Father, as little children take their troubles to father 
 or to mother ? 
 
 That our religion, in its explicit and holiest sense, is 
 the veritable guide of our life, the support under it, the 
 inspiration quickening it, the comfort healing it, the 
 promise irradiating it; that a man has learnt how to 
 live only when his daily cry is precisely that old cry, 
 " Thy servant heareth ; here am I at thy bidding, for 
 thy service, send me" ; this is shown in the fact that 
 such a doctrine stands in exact agreement with the only 
 true theory of the origin of life itself. We talk of our 
 dependence 011 Providence. Who is Providence ? That 
 language means nothing, unless it means that of every 
 thing which exists God is, every instant, the ever-new, 
 ever-conscious, ever-active Creator. Strictly speaking, 
 there is but one life. Our personality, individual di 
 versities, moral freedom, are all carefully secured, yet 
 secured overy moment by the Spirit himself afresh. 
 " Man lives only from God. 7 Every moment this crea 
 tive life flows in. Creation is perpetual. We are told 
 of whole forests springing from a single root. The uni 
 verse itself is such a manifold growth, in affiliated parts. 
 Every form in nature is a branch. The Northman s 
 fable of the universal tree, whose divine sap is the 
 energy by which all things are and consist, was not so far 
 from the true cosmogony, or doctrine of creation, as 
 many a baptized creed which locates its Deity at a dis 
 tance from his creatures in space, and far back before 
 
THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 27 
 
 the flood iii time. These throbbing hearts that warm 
 the world are only pulses from one central and everlast 
 ing heart of love. Those unfading stars that light the 
 sky, and shine serenely on one another, are only so many 
 tongues of a kindred flame, burning up from one con 
 scious and eternal fire. Our breath, which the ancients 
 called spiritus, is the breathing spirit of the Infinite 
 One. u Thou takest away their breath," said the believ 
 ing Psalmist, " they die, and return to their dust." The 
 whole Bible is written to teach us what we are so slow 
 to learn, that we live in God, and shall be held and 
 judged for ever in the righteous laws of his own justice 
 and truth. " In the beginning God created," is the 
 sublime key-note of the Old Testament. " I can do all 
 things through Christ which strengtheneth me," is the 
 blessed consolation of the New. "What absurdity and 
 crime, what enormity of ingratitude, as well as defiance 
 of retribution, must it be, to cast off the parental hand, 
 to hide from the only source of good, to rebel at the 
 only beauty that never fades, and the only love that 
 never cools ! It was, in the beginning, as it ever will 
 be, guilt, and craft, and fear, that hid from God s face, 
 when ho was heard coming in the garden. It was, as it 
 ever will be, innocence, and candor, and simple trust, 
 that answered promptly as a welcome in the place of 
 prayer, " Lord, here am I ; speak, for thy servant 
 heareth ! " 
 
 But life is not only given and regiven ; it has to be 
 consecrated, redeemed from sin, and spiritually sancti 
 fied. So this doctrine throws equal light on the minis 
 try of Christ in the world. In fact, your whole view of 
 that ministry will take its shape from the way this sub 
 ject lies in your belief. Christ did not come to show us 
 
28 THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 how a human existence can be moiilded, and the world s 
 evils be vanquished, by a resolute self-will. It is amazing 
 with what a barren notion of " Christ, the example," some 
 Christian readers have been satisfied ; as if the Son of 
 God had stood apart from the vital seats of motive-power, 
 the springs of love and faith in men, and only exhibited 
 to the eye of admiration an external model of excel 
 lence, which his followers were to set themselves, with 
 cool faculties, to copy. The highest spiritiial works 
 are not accomplished in that way. Exemplary virtue is 
 never the loftiest virtue. Imitation of any model, how 
 ever high, is not the noblest action of the soul. Influ 
 ence, as the very etymology of the word might teach, is 
 another thing from that. All our best helps are spiritual 
 gifts or forces from soul to soul. Christ came to be a 
 divine personal influence in the world ; i. e. that in and 
 through his Person the Divine life might veritably and 
 literally flow into the breasts of mankind. He came not 
 to tell us the manner of living, but to communicate, to 
 pour in, upon all willing and receiving hearts, the power 
 of living, the energy that acts itself spontaneously 
 into holy thoughts and deeds. To that end the Divine and 
 the human elements are perfectly blended in him. He 
 is the Divine Humanity in Jesus of Nazareth ; the Word 
 from the beginning ; the " Man of Sorrows," and " before 
 Abraham was," Son of Mary, and Son of God. This 
 constitutes a mediator. In order that God might gain 
 that love and that trust, in order that man might lay 
 hold of him in a personal " way, and truth, and life," 
 in a Saviour made in all points like himself, and even 
 tempted as he is, the Father was manifested in the Son. 
 The world s poor, aching heart longed to see and to feel 
 that heavenly compassion, that Divine goodness, and it 
 
THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 29 
 
 came. Bethlehem and Calvary were the answer to that 
 want. And so, Christendom over, wherever Christ has 
 been most personally reverenced, and loved, and clung to, 
 and sung, and celebrated, and followed, there his religion 
 has had its most positive planting, and exercised its most 
 effectual control. So, it is said, his true disciples are 
 " partakers " of his life ; whoso " receiveth " him not 
 heareth him merely, or looketh on him, but " receiveth " 
 him " hath life eternal." "We are to eat his flesh, and 
 drink his blood, the strong, true figure says. He is to be 
 formed within us. He gives himself. This comports 
 with the purest and simplest philosophy of the spiritual 
 nature. Surely, if Christ merely set himself up as a 
 pattern of human virtue to be imitated, he did not un 
 derstand himself, nor his work. Then he could not 
 have said, " As I live by the Father, so ye shall live by 
 me " ; "I in them, and thou, Father, in me, that all 
 may be made perfect in one." 
 
 Objections can be imagined. It may be said, that 
 when we make it man s first duty to wait on God, as a 
 worshipper and servant of his Spirit, we encourage a 
 tame, abject feeling, by making everything hang in sub 
 jection on one being. But what kind of a being ? Sup 
 pose he is Perfect Goodness, and can no more destroy his 
 child s guarded liberty than he can be untrue to himself. 
 Suppose he is Boundless Light, and holds his children 
 subject only that he may pour the more steadily upon 
 them his spotless brightness, in which they may walk 
 the more safely. Suppose he is Infinite Affection, so that 
 the more entirely we arc his, the more we are exalted, 
 enlarged, and raised in the dignity of man s estate. So 
 we learn the difference between the servility that bows 
 to any finite masterdom, and the joyous inspiration of 
 
30 THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 waiting obediently on Him "whose service is perfect 
 freedom." 
 
 In fact, I think some natural analogies must have ex 
 plained to us, that the most inspiring of all things is to 
 feel the direct action of a greater and more generous 
 spirit than our own. Hence it is that we enter into the 
 great instances of self-denial, and grow disinterested by 
 them; that martyrs sufferings awaken aspiration and 
 stir zeal ; that glorious charities kindle enthusiasm and 
 brotherly love in the dullest soul. It is not that the 
 cold understanding sees something there for the cold 
 will to adopt, as a fine virtue for a yet colder selfishness 
 or pride to practise. It is that the imcalculating over 
 flow of noble sympathies in a person whose contact we 
 feel, bears on many responsive natures with it, and that 
 personal goodness exerts an attraction and an authority 
 of which we can only mark the tendency and feel the 
 blessing, without explaining the method, or estimating 
 the extent. And when we ascend from mortal measures 
 of this power to the unsearchable, we take with us an 
 humble illustration how the one spiritual force which 
 most liberates and exalts -manhood is faith reverently 
 waiting to hear the order, and run on the errands of 
 our Lord, how obedience to him becomes the perfect 
 emancipation of the soul. 
 
 Or it might be said, that to depend on another, though 
 he be infinitely high and holy, puts the grand work of 
 man s salvation out of his own hands, and encourages 
 personal negligence and sloth. And so we might con 
 clude, but for the plain and familiar spiritual principle, 
 that no motive on earth is so efficient to prompt action, 
 to rouse energy, to stimulate invention, to sustain en 
 durance and sacrifice, as personal love. Unless this 
 
THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 81 
 
 principle holds, more than half of the world s literature 
 is a lie, and its charm is in its doing violence to the dic 
 tates of our nature, instead of echoing them. Take the 
 nearest illustration. For the first dozen years of his 
 life, and often more, each of us, as a rule, is subject 
 to his parents. It is a subjection of trust and affection 
 on the one side, of love and tenderness on the other, 
 and so the best possible image of the parentage in heav 
 en. Does it indispose the heart for service ? Does it 
 prevent the child s activity ? Or does it, in healthy and 
 normal cases, beget the sacred passion for grateful obe 
 dience, and the life-long eagerness to render work for 
 work, and love for love ? 
 
 The facts of experience come in, and turn the imagi 
 nary objection into a positive proof. For where have 
 the most practical of human charities, and the grand 
 ameliorations of philanthropy, had their birth and 
 growth ? Has it not been in the strong-holds of relig 
 ion, in the climate of Christian faith, in the breasts 
 of believers ? History makes her undeniable answer. 
 The love of God has created and warmed the love of 
 man. Faith has fed charity. Prayer has inspired benef 
 icence. In the martyrdoms of the Church, in the hos 
 pitals of pestilence and war, on both continents, where 
 rude soldiers and dying lepers have invoked blessings on 
 the sisters of mercy, and kissed the passing shadows of 
 those angels of human compassion, as fast as one section 
 falls before the contagion, or faints with famine, another 
 presses up to fill the empty places; the thinned com 
 panies close their ranks with celestial, cheerful courage, 
 and the august ministry of Nazareth goes on. Not sel 
 dom the most contemplative of the mystics have been 
 the most abundant in alms-deeds. Many of the Quiet- 
 
32 THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 ists. accused of an inactive and selfish piety, were really 
 the practical philanthropists of their time. One of the 
 chief masters of the sect of German devotees called 
 " The Friends of God," of the fourteenth century, set 
 down by their enemies as visionaries and dreamers, is 
 found writing these words, worthy of any humanity- 
 preacher of the nineteenth : u For my part, I would 
 rather there were less of excitement and transport, less 
 of mere sweet emotion, so that a man were diligent 
 and right manful in working, for in such exercise do we 
 best know ourselves. These raptures are not the highest 
 order of devotion. And this I say, that if it happened 
 to me, that I had to forsake that lofty, inward work, to 
 go and prepare comfort for some sick person, I should go 
 cheerfully, believing not only that God would be with 
 me, but that he would vouchsafe me, it may be, even 
 greater grace and blessing in that external work, under 
 taken out of true love in the service of my neighbor, 
 than I should receive in my season of loftiest contem 
 plation/ All fair history confirms what right reason 
 would expect, that there is no fountain of good labors 
 so rich and unfailing as a heart that ever waits and calls 
 on God. 
 
 So the doctrine proves itself complete ; not narrow 
 and one-sided, but broad and all-embracing. Out of 
 this holy waiting upon God comes the resolute action 
 for men ; out of this childlike looking upward into the 
 spiritual world, the manliest pressing forward into enter 
 prises for the world around you ; out of the believing 
 prayer, each duty of the day. It was when Hannah s 
 son laid down to sleep, ere the lamp of God went out in 
 the temple. the ark of sacred promise resting at his 
 side, that the voice called. Faith hallows the evening 
 
THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 33 
 
 and the morning, and makes them a day of the Lord. 
 The consecrated disciple rises to each new encounter 
 with his lot, in a reverent vigilance for every beckoning 
 of God s hand. He falls asleep, each night, with a 
 sacred curiosity to hear that further revelation of the 
 great secret and mystery of being which the daybreak is 
 sure to tell from the Spirit. He finds a path through 
 the intricacies of earthly duty, by a simple reference to 
 the benignity of the Lord, like the Psalmist, who fled 
 from the onset of his enemies, and the strife of tongues, 
 to the " pavilion of the Most High." He quiets the im 
 portunities of his own unbelieving mind by confessing, 
 t; Thou wilt show me the path of life " ; like Sir Thomas 
 Browne, who says he conquered his " sturdy doubts and 
 boisterous objections in no martial posture, but on his 
 knees." 
 
 The revelations of God are not ended, if only there 
 are earnest eyes to see them, though the lamp has gone 
 out in the Hebrew temple. His voice has not ceased 
 speaking, if childlike trust listens, though the ark of the 
 elder covenant has floated away into darkness. His 
 glory is not quenched on the open face of creation, 
 though it shines no longer in the Shekinah over the 
 wings of the cherubim. Each obedient and thoughtful 
 heart may take up the supplication, as the poetry of 
 faith has paraphrased it, sermon passing into song, 
 and exhortation into prayer : 
 
 " Still, as of old, thy precious word 
 Is by the nations dimly heard ; 
 The hearts its holiness hath stirred 
 
 Are weak and few. 
 "Wise men the secret dare not tell ; 
 Still in thy temple slumbers well 
 Good Eli : O, like Samuel, 
 
 Lord, here am I ! 
 
34 THE ANSWEH OF FAJTH. 
 
 "Few years, no wisdom, no 
 Only my fife eaa I lay down ; 
 Only my heart, Lord, to thy throat 
 
 I bring ; and pray 
 A child of thine I may go forth, 
 And spread glad tidings lhrn%h die earth 
 And teach ad hearts to know thy worth ! 
 
 Lord, here ami! 
 
 " Young lips may teach me woe, Christ saii: 
 Weak feet cad emlmui home hare led ; 
 
 Small hand* hare cheered the nek one s tt 
 
 With freshest flowers ; 
 O, teach me, Father! heed their sighs, 
 While many a soul in darkness lie* 
 Ami waits thy message ; make me wise ! 
 
 Lori, here am I! 
 
 Ami make me strong ; that, staff and sr. 
 And guide and guardian of the way, 
 To thee-ward I may bear, each day, 
 
 Some fainting soul. 
 
 Speak, for I bear : make pure in heart 
 Thy face to see ; thy truth impart, 
 In hut and hall, in dmrch aad man ! 
 
 Lord, hero am I! 
 
 **I ask no heaven till earth be thine, 
 Kor glory-crown, while work of mine 
 TTi iiiiinilfc here ; when earth shall shu 
 
 Her sins wiped out, her capow free, 
 Her Toice a musk unto thee, 
 For crown, new wuk give thon to n . 
 Lord, here am I!" 
 
 When the heavy weights of disbursement hang upon 
 our will, when the riddle of the \nrlcTs success and 
 failure vexes the understanding, ~nen all our - 
 ings look like baffled blows upon tfc air, when the 
 name of virtue, put near any deed i ours, seems like 
 a mockery and a satire on all we su and do, when 
 
THE ANSWER OF FAITH. 
 
 changed faces ci 
 
 or uiiiiiiswcrcd aft-ctioii< tu. into RM 
 
 - with ({ .in- hcni;: 
 
 our h -arts niiik- out, in tip; lonir nL ht I 
 
 "Would God i: ." then whan 
 
 tiling to do, there in i\\<- dark, than to wait, in tin 
 of the << hild, ere th<- lamp of 
 
 quite out. to li-t-n, and tl. 
 ks, in what-\T tun\ : 
 fully, " Lord, I am here, thy 
 nt hcarcth I * 
 
 , CJod himself, he that created thec, will ai 
 ; . .ill.-d tin-.- l.y thy name, an< 
 art mine ; I hav(- n-di-.-iii-d the*- : wli -n tl 
 throu jh l\\<: v>, ,,d tl 
 
 tli- shall not overflow tllCC. V, 
 
 walk<--t through . thou s-liali not !>< l.nrne 
 
 th T ^h:lll tl ijM.ii thec. 1 am th 
 
 thy 5 \ and my dan; 
 
 saith the Lord Almii- 
 
 Th -p- is orijcr in th- spiritual world, as it lies 
 andal ov.- us. L . : -A i t 
 
 thiii 
 
 futui 
 
 Rai 
 
SEKMON III. 
 
 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD ARE SPIRITUALLY 
 
 DISCERNED. 1 Cor. ii. 14. 
 
 THIS is addressed to persons supposed to have some 
 concern about gaining a Christian character, and to be 
 seeking the way. It presumes us to be risen above the 
 stolidity of a mere sensual satisfaction into a posture 
 of spiritual inquiry. It especially meets two mistakes, 
 not uncommon, nor without plausibility ; that of sup 
 posing that the whole measure of Christian obligation 
 is filled out by a development of moral sensibility and 
 moral performance ; and that of supposing that all 
 Christian truth can be received and tested by the in 
 tellect. 
 
 If that is the best definition of education which 
 makes it consist in giving a man the right use of his 
 powers, the education will be best which assigns to 
 each of his powers its own use, and does not require 
 of one to do the work of another. Respecting those 
 faculties of man that are more purely intellectual, this 
 is generally allowed. But it is just as true of what 
 is called his religious or spiritual nature ; and in the 
 practical acknowledgment of that truth will come a 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 37 
 
 great wave of spiritual light, a great gain of religious 
 power, if indeed such a discovery shall not be found 
 indispensable finally to any commanding action of the 
 Christian faith in the world. 
 
 Why should I, or why should you, not having done 
 so before, set about the business of being a Christian, 
 in secret principle, in open confession, in consistent 
 conduct? This, in short, is the question. Christian 
 ity stands on earth, the Gospel is published, Christ 
 himself was born at Bethlehem, and died at Calvary, 
 and inspires his disciples, to give the answer. But 
 that it may be received as an answer, that in us which 
 the voices speak to must hear ; that door through 
 which only the heavenly guests can enter, must be 
 open. 
 
 Every good that is possible to man finds something 
 in him to lay hold of it ; material nourishment, a body ; 
 the air, lungs ; light, eyes ; enterprises, a will ; property, 
 the passion of ownership ; beauty, taste ; science, an 
 understanding ; friends, affection. On the other hand, 
 every faculty in him has its external object, and an 
 appropriate exercise in reaching towards it. This is 
 the adaptation of the creature to his place ; the mu 
 tual fitness between man and his home, every part 
 of man and some part of his surroundings. Without 
 this complete adjustment, nature would be a riddle, 
 the mind a mockery, history a failure, and our Maker 
 certainly not God. 
 
 So far as the outward condition is concerned, this 
 is easily found out. Even in the more external move 
 ments of the intellect, having to do with our immediate 
 wants, and necessary to provide for our comfort, it is 
 acknowledged. If we fail to own it when we come to 
 
 4 
 
88 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 our deeper life, passing from man as a mind to man 
 as a soul, or from man as he thinks and under 
 stands, to man as he feels, aspires, and believes, it 
 will not be because the analogy fails, but only because 
 we enter a region we have kept less familiar, and whose 
 objects lie farther from the senses ; the senses mean 
 time crowding in and engrossing attention. 
 
 Every competent authority, however, affirms that man 
 is provided with a spiritual power, for discerning, re 
 ceiving, and doing spiritual things. The Word, ex 
 perience, the system of nature in other departments, 
 and the human constitution itself, agree in that. There 
 are spiritual realities. How do we know it, or what 
 is it to us when we do know it, if there is not an 
 implanted faculty in us, capable of becoming conversant 
 with those realities ? There is, to vary the expression, 
 a spiritual world, including beings and facts and 
 laws of its own. How strange if there were not some 
 part of ourselves made to touch it, opening out on 
 that side, and, if treated purely, if dealt with ac 
 cording to its own conditions, forming a bond of kin 
 dred and sympathy between our whole nature and that 
 world unseen! Or, if you prefer, there is a body of 
 religious truth, imposing corresponding duties on us, 
 which we can apprehend, and commune with, and draw 
 from, only by a distinct energy, whose germ God planted, 
 meant for that end, and for no other. 
 
 How God himself exists, an Infinite Person ; how his 
 spirit acts on human spirits ; the divinity of the man 
 Christ Jesus ; the possibility and power of redemption ; 
 how sin can be forgiven ; the certainty of a future 
 life ; the great laws of religious improvement and de 
 cay, including the facts of salvation and retribution, or 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 39 
 
 Heaven and Hell ; the being of persons not living in 
 visible bodies ; these are among the things obviously 
 belonging to that world, that body of truth, that scene 
 of spiritual realities, and are really known to us only 
 through a spiritual discernment, or faculty of faith, 
 as outward nature is known by the senses, and its 
 scientific relations by the understanding. 
 
 After this enumeration, nothing need be said of the 
 relative rank of this spiritual part of man among the 
 human powers. The interests it embraces, the infini 
 tude it touches, the fact that by it we are related 
 to God, and to Eternity, so that our boundless weal or 
 woe depends upon it, all this lifts it at once into un 
 questionable supremacy. If it exists at all, it is the 
 royal thing in us, and rules by divine right. 
 
 Now, if we begin to say that we will know religion 
 only through some of the faculties given us for know 
 ing something else, that we will not set about being 
 Christians except by means of the understanding, or 
 the memory, or sensible proof; if, when we are called 
 on to believe, we reply, we will not believe because we 
 cannot demonstrate, whereas if we could demonstrate 
 there would be no occasion at all to believe ; if we say, 
 we will not trust in God, nor pray, nor credit the 
 Christian Incarnation, nor accept the New Testament, 
 because these are things not rationally made out, be 
 cause we have stationed logic as gate-keeper to let noth 
 ing pass that cannot be framed into a syllogism ; then 
 do we not call off a part of our powers to do a work 
 not their own, and for which they are not fit ? Do we 
 not miss a good, possibly an infinite one, by that mis 
 management ? Do we not abuse ourselves, just as if 
 we should insist on judging poetry by rules of reason- 
 
40 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 ing, or learning algebra by our affections, or trying 
 to remember a language we never studied ? You say, 
 you cannot reason out the whole Gospel teaching. 
 Very well ; the Gospel never said you could, nor asked 
 you to try. The Gospel approaches that part of your 
 nature which the Creator made to receive it. The 
 things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned. 
 
 On the other hand, if we leave out of practice and out 
 of culture one of the faculties, or groups of faculties, 
 planted in us for growth ; if we fail to direct it to its 
 proper objects, and to nourish it on its natural food, then, 
 like other unused powers, it will wither and die. So 
 much will be not only taken from the efficiency and the 
 symmetry of our being, but we forfeit all the wisdom 
 meant to come by that avenue. Other forces, which this 
 ought to have counterbalanced and checked, will grow 
 rank and pernicious. Nor shall we ever quite know 
 how much we have lost, what glories and joys may 
 have been shut out, what bright and heavy-laden 
 processions from the gates of heaven may have passed 
 by, such as might have filled our houses with honor, 
 while we were busy making terms with those sharp ex 
 tortioners and publicans of the brain. 
 
 One chief difficulty probably consists in the fact that 
 this spiritual faculty, while distinct, is yet so intimately 
 and so variously connected with others. It is so con 
 nected, because man is a complex being ; just as each 
 of our powers is modified by its companions. As the 
 imagination affects the judgment, as the affections mod 
 ify the will, as the memory restrains the fancy and 
 helps the understanding, or as the logical faculty cools 
 the passions, so the spiritual faculty may, more or 
 less, mix with all these, and, in turn, be strengthened 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 41 
 
 or weakened by their suggestions. It was intended to 
 be so. Yet, out of that necessity doubtless comes a 
 danger that faith will not get her due ; and for the cause 
 just now assigned, that her objects are more remote, 
 while the appetites are not only exorbitant but somehow 
 disordered, and fallen from their estate of purity. 
 
 All our powers exercise reciprocal influences. To a 
 degree, they are not only related, but interdependent, 
 for they are parts of one living, organic creature. In 
 their perfect balance would be the perfection of charac 
 ter. Depravity, of all sorts, unsettles that balance. It 
 pulls the sovereign from its throne, sets up a usurper in 
 selfishness, raises an insurrection of passions, and leaves 
 the whole commonwealth in discord. Worst of all, and 
 first of all, it clogs the channels whereby illumination 
 and energy flow in from above, and so at once multiplies 
 our enemies, and robs us of our weapons of defence. 
 
 Another obstacle to the right appreciation of this 
 faculty grows out of the indefiniteness of the place as 
 signed it in any metaphysical classification. It is easy 
 to see what recognized powers are adjacent to it ; the 
 affections, because the character of God and the first 
 Christian duty is love ; conscience, because the discrim 
 ination between right and wrong draws the line where 
 religion comes in contact with and re-enforces morality, 
 or practical righteousness ; reverence, because without 
 that there would be no worship ; the desire of excel 
 lence, and a sense of the Infinite, if these are to be reck 
 oned distinct natural powers, because both of them 
 would bring important elements to what is the common 
 understanding of religion. Possibly, if philosophy had 
 completed its analysis, all that we mean by the distinct 
 spiritual faculty would be found embraced under some 
 
42 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 of its names. It is enough that we know the faculty by 
 its effects ; that we can have a growing consciousness of 
 it, if we will ; and that the whole resultant action of all 
 its elements is faith, the New Testament faith, not 
 mere belief, not mere trust, still less mere opinion, or 
 vague feeling, but faith. We may call it, then, without 
 error, the faith-faculty. 
 
 Very largely, it is subject to the same conditions, as to 
 its cultivation, with the other faculties. 
 
 For instance, it is increased by a separate and special 
 discipline of its own, as the rest are ; with its own ap 
 paratus, tuition, and practice. As the understanding has 
 its school, the affections their home, the artistic faculty 
 its manipulations and galleries, the natural sciences their 
 lectures and cabinets, so the spiritual power has its own 
 modes of impression and multiplication, in the Bible 
 and its filial literature, in meditation, rising into devo 
 tion, in the Church and its ordinances. 
 
 Or, secondly, the faith-faculty may be assisted indi 
 rectly by the healthy exercise of all the other powers. 
 No exclusive possession is claimed for it. It rather pen 
 etrates than excludes ; rather leavens than destroys ; 
 rather sanctifies than slays. All that is, in the good 
 sense, natural, it tries to purify and preserve ; only when 
 it meets those natural sins which are really the perver 
 sions and degradations of nature as God made it, does 
 it lay the axe to the root of the tree, and overturn, and 
 make the old die that the new may be born. Otherwise 
 it welcomes all the other powers to its service, in their 
 co-ordinate, harmonious operation. Christianity has a 
 body of facts, to which it refers for testimony, facts of 
 history, facts of human nature, and therefore it wants 
 the understanding to grasp and hold them. So long as 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 43 
 
 the understanding keeps to its own province, and does 
 not presume beyond its limits, there is agreement. So 
 have these Christian facts a system of laws, relations, and 
 doctrines under and among them ; and, therefore, the 
 faith-faculty asks for science to arrange them. So long 
 as science does not trespass over her own domain, to pass 
 upon what is not hers, there is only concord still. So 
 has religion, for its impressions and effects, symbols and 
 forms of beauty, and calls in the aids of poetry and art, 
 architecture and music. So long as taste does not un 
 dertake to dictate to piety, and substitute her esthetics 
 for religious principle, all is harmonious. Once more, 
 the sequences of moral and religious truth involve pro 
 cesses of reasoning; hence theology is thankful for 
 sound logic, and only when it grows meddlesome and 
 arrogant, does the higher authority have to rebuke it 
 as foolishness, a babbler, " science falsely so called." 
 And, in general, since sophistry and error are apt to 
 encumber the simplicity of the Gospel with artificial 
 matter, the close-thinking intellect is serviceable in 
 clearing the human additions away, and undoing a false 
 reasoning with a true. 
 
 But, apart from all mixtures and modifications, the 
 spiritual sight has a sphere of its own. Things are 
 shown to it not shown to the strongest brain. A knowl 
 edge breaks upon the earnest heart, waiting at the Mas 
 ter s feet, which makes the wisdom of the world but 
 folly. Rendering unto the understanding the things of 
 the understanding, we must render unto faith the things 
 that are faith s. We are not to say that till we can com 
 pass the heavenly world with our intellectual measuring 
 line, and clear up every difficulty, we will not believe ; 
 any more than we arc to say, that till we can have logic 
 
44 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 set to music, we will not learn logic ; or that, till the 
 propositions of geometry are put to us in brilliant rhetoric 
 we will not study geometry. A burst of feeling, or an 
 impassioned appeal, may find a graceful place, and have 
 a persuasive effect, now and then, in a legal argument ; 
 but, whatever else we may think of it, we cannot say it 
 is a part of the argument. And a purely intellectual 
 process may render invaluable aid to religious truth, but 
 it will not make it a whit more true, nor necessarily bear 
 it in 011 those seats of feeling and faith, where it must 
 get a lodgment, if it is to renew the fountains of life. 
 
 It is to the faith-faculty that revelation is offered. 
 Indeed, revelation would be impossible without it ; and 
 it is only for want of opening it, and looking through it, 
 that some men doubt whether a revelation has been 
 made. As the word signifies, revelation is an uncover 
 ing, or showing, of what was before unseen, utterly 
 profitless, of course, except there is a vision to behold 
 what is shown. Patmos, the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 the banks of the Jordan, Gethsemane, would be all spots 
 of common earth and without illumination but for that. 
 When the voice from above, in reply to the Saviour s 
 prayer, " Father, glorify thy name," answered, " I have 
 both glorified it, and will glorify it again," some of them 
 that stood by, rationalists, said that it thundered ; others, 
 spiritually-minded, said that an angel spoke to him. To 
 a really spiritual mind it will seem no strange thing that, 
 when an epoch like the advent of Christ arrives, and the 
 whole course of the world is to be changed, the habits 
 of the material scene should yield to the stress of the 
 spirit, and the time of the Messiah be signalized by that 
 spiritual world breaking through a little, and giving 
 tokens of its reality, what we call miracle. To ap- 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 45 
 
 predate the revelation will require a vision in sympathy 
 with the Christ revealed. Yet, doubtless, the showing 
 of the things stimulates and quickens the vision. Per 
 haps it is significant of this, that the word " vision " is 
 used for both, the faculty seeing, and the thing seen, 
 both being related and mutually dependent. 
 
 Revelation, not being a book of psychology, docs not 
 describe the exact place that spiritual discernment has 
 in a metaphysical system, nor even, as we have seen, give 
 to it a metaphysical name. It simply refers to it by its 
 action, its function, which is faith. Of that all the Bible 
 is full, letting us see the faculty by its fruit, the prac 
 tical not the speculative way. After the name of the 
 Author of our religion, faith is the chief term of the 
 Bible ; and it is the correlate to that name. The Word 
 is forever calling on men to believe. Have faith. To 
 many people, whose spiritual life has never been awak 
 ened and exercised, this word sounds vague, abstract, 
 technical : sounds as of the pulpit, and not of the living 
 world. Yet, in the light of this truth, as we have seen 
 it, how simple and how natural ! Have faith ! That is, 
 exercise this faith-faculty. Use it; and by using it, 
 strengthen it. Open the soul. Let the light in. Let 
 the prayer be, " Lord, I believe ; help thou mine un 
 belief." 
 
 It is very remarkable, if we read the Evangelists with 
 this view, how constantly Christ addresses himself to this 
 inward vision. He evidently expects to accomplish 
 nothing without it. His parables, his warnings, his ten 
 der entreaties, were all adapted to open and quicken it. 
 Till that was done, his message could not get entrance. 
 So he stands waiting, with unspeakable compassion and 
 love, before every heedless, unbelieving, unrepenting 
 
46 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 heart : " Behold I stand at the door, and knock." He 
 waits for the inward eye to open. He does everything, 
 says everything, that is possible to help it to open. 
 Without that, nothing avails. Even miracles would be 
 useless. The healer of sightless men came to cure a 
 worse blindness than any that shuts out the light of the 
 sun. His errand on earth was not to restore a few sick, 
 or palsied, or buried bodies. He did that only to reach 
 in, to startle, to raise up, the deaf, dumb, paralytic, 
 slumbering soul within. It was the Lazarus of a lost 
 humanity he was seeking, when he cried, " Come forth, 
 " Loose him, and let him go." Accordingly, before he 
 put forth these special wonders, how often he looked 
 in on the hearts about him, to see if there was that in 
 dispensable readiness that would justify the miracle, 
 or make it really beneficent. Sometimes it was simply 
 a common question, as if to fix the mind : to Bartimeus, 
 " What wilt tliou that I should do unto tliee ? " Some 
 times it was a searching requirement, uncovering in 
 stantly all the hidden reservation, and exposing the weak 
 illusion : to the young man : " Sell all thou hast, and 
 give to the poor." Sometimes, as to Matthew : " Believest 
 thou this ? " When the leper cried, at once, " Lord, if 
 thou wilt, thou canst make me clean," he did not delay, 
 but put forth his hand and healed him. When the cen 
 turion had such humility as to decline the visit of the 
 Lord of life to his unworthy roof, he exclaimed, " I have 
 not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." And when 
 the Syrophenician woman came pleading for her lunatic 
 daughter, he let her cry long aftei him, till he had proved 
 her : " It is not meet to take the children s bread, and to 
 cast it to dogs." Yet, when she had the lowliness and the 
 trust to say, " Yea, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 47 
 
 of the crumbs which fall from their master s table," and 
 showed herself content even with the cast-off blessings 
 of a more favored people, he spake again that great ben 
 ediction, " Great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as 
 thou wilt." And so, forever and forever, we shall be 
 spiritually enriched just as much as we are willing and 
 ready to be. They that love much are forgiven much ; 
 and "the things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned." 
 
 We can apply the same principle to seeking for 
 what are called the " Evidences for Christianity." As 
 often conducted, that study is chiefly a dry exercise of 
 the understanding. It is all very well. The under 
 standing s own difficulties are met ; intellectual objec 
 tions are removed ; the sceptic s allegations are logically 
 answered, perhaps, and the Gospel history is reconciled 
 with reason. A very noble enterprise, on the out 
 works. Only it does not make a believer, in Christ s 
 sense. It does not bring the interior life into sympa 
 thy with the Saviour. It does not give spiritual dis 
 cernment. It does not bring us to live joyfully and 
 affectionately with our Lord. 
 
 Faith comes another way, by its own faculty. It 
 has been said, by a bold statement, that we are to be 
 lieve Jesus Christ was the Son of God because he said 
 he was. It sounds credulous, at first. And it is not 
 the whole of the truth. But there is a profound mean 
 ing in it, and it was a profound thinker that said it. 
 We are to believe Christ is the Son of God because 
 he says he is ; that is, because such a person as he, 
 with his character and nature, with all that we at once 
 see and feel him to be, if we give ourselves up to a 
 simple impression of his Divine Goodness, because 
 he, with his own spirit, his love, and look, and tone, 
 
48 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 says he is. There is an evidence of Christianity ; not 
 an argument, but an apprehension ; not a balancing of 
 affirmatives and negatives, but a direct sight. Stand 
 ing before him on the mount, sitting at his feet, look 
 ing up at him on the cross, we believe. Without 
 reasoning upon it, without deduction, or premise, or 
 analysis, we consent. We use those steps at our leis 
 ure, to confirm, or to settle subsidiary matters. But 
 by faith, we say it is so ; it is borne in upon us as ft 
 conviction, like the goodness of the friend we love ; and 
 no dialectics will make it more true. It is as true 
 as it can be ; and you are just as likely, more likely, 
 to act upon such a conviction, in any common case, 
 than on the result of an argumentative process. 
 
 Or, take up any of the Saviour s great sayings, where 
 principles are announced so broad as to encompass the 
 whole zone of duty, truths so vast as to link heaven 
 and earth together; what are they still but verbal 
 sounds, save as there is a spiritual discernment ? "I 
 am the Resurrection and the Life," that unparalleled 
 sentence, of more moment to each of us than all the 
 wealth and all the knowledge and all the news circu 
 lating through all the civilization and societies of the 
 world ; over how many listless ears and indifferent minds 
 it will pass to-day, as fruitless as the mourning mother s 
 repetition of the familiar name to the daughter that was 
 dead! "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart": what is it to us, if our earnest hearts 
 within us are not asking what we shall do, and whom 
 we shall love. " I pray, Father, that they may be 
 one, as we are": is there any logic in the books, 
 or any science in the schools, that will make that 
 prayer clearer to your soul, or that will abate, one 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 49 
 
 particle, its eternal beauty and grandeur when the 
 love of your own soul has really prayed it once ? Take 
 the Beatitudes, one by one. And as their immortal 
 promises fall 011 the outward sense, mercy for the 
 merciful, comfort for them that mourn, the kingdom 
 of heaven for the poor in spirit, filial places for the 
 peacemakers, celestial fellowship with the Prophets for 
 those persecuted for righteousness sake, and for the 
 pure in heart the beatific vision of God, what does 
 all this boundless Beatus, " Blessed," signify, except 
 there be some spiritual discernment to catch an image 
 of the joy ? To the sensual, to the profane, to the soul 
 that is shut upward and open only toward the earth, 
 cold in devotion and eager only with its appetites, or 
 cased in that intellectual selfishness that shrinks as it 
 freezes, what great desire, or aspiration, can that 
 " Blessed " bring ? 
 
 It is not to be forgotten that in the practical direc 
 tion of the Christian life, in the various applications 
 of Christian truth to duties, there is need of the best 
 intellectual force. Religion is constantly calling men 
 tal activity to her service. For instance, in the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, you find a large discussion 
 of questions of judgment, questions, rather, of con 
 science, primarily, but such that only judgment, reflec 
 tion, intellectual powers, can rightly settle them. They 
 are properly matters of Christian casuistry. Christi 
 anity was a new religion. It had to be put into many 
 old practices, social relations, civil and ecclesiastical in 
 stitutions. These involved more or less important ques 
 tions. They were not the great things of Revelation. 
 Revelation is occupied with grand original truths, com 
 prehensive facts, immense disclosures of a world of un- 
 
50 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 seen life. So it can plant them in the convictions of 
 men, it is less concerned about the rest. It knows 
 the rest will come, in due time, by the working of 
 the accepted Spirit. 
 
 Yet naturally the minds of the first Christians would 
 be greatly exercised on the practical side of their new 
 religion, getting it at work in their life, into contact with 
 their habits and employments, adjusted to their former 
 notions and outward ordinances. Faith, in itself, is an 
 unchangeable principle ; but when it acts by human 
 agents, in human affairs, its operations will be variable. 
 Paul would help these first Christians in that matter. 
 He was able. He had their confidence. He had a 
 strong dialectic power, and a ripe culture, as well as 
 spiritual illumination. So he taught them, about cir 
 cumcision, about tongues, about going to law, about 
 marriage, and feasts, and church discipline, all with 
 reference to a fair working out of the Christian ideas. 
 But then he knew, all the while, these were not the great 
 things of faith. Those, which were really the subjects 
 of his inspiration, were stated in few words. It was in 
 them, after all, that his specialty, as an apostle, lay ; and 
 he often and gladly returned to them. Whenever he 
 comes to them it is with veneration, with holy feet. 
 Then he says, " Spiritual things are spiritually dis 
 cerned." 
 
 It is a great hour for a man, when he wakes up to 
 this conviction that there is a world of truth which he 
 is to receive, grow familiar with, and live in, otherwise 
 than through his mind, or his bodily senses. It is a new 
 being. It is his regeneration. The term is not too 
 strong. Christ uses it, deliberately, repeatedly. For 
 that change is not merely the addition of a new sense, 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 51 
 
 on a level with Iris other senses. It is a wakening to 
 a world not only new, but one which, if seen to exist 
 at all, is seen to be of supreme beauty, dignity, bril 
 liancy. It pours another atmosphere over all the things 
 we know by other senses. " If any man be in Christ, 
 in Christy what does that mean, if not something far 
 more than a mere external or even intellectual presence, 
 in him as in an element, an air of life, a vital and in 
 spiring ether, a flood of light? whosoever is thus in 
 Christ " is a new creature. Old things are passed away ; 
 behold, all things are become new." Sin is hateful. 
 Transgressions are repented of and renounced. There 
 is a new principle of living, which is the love of God. 
 Wonderful things are written of it, by them that know. 
 It makes men willing to suffer, willing to die. For 
 " every one that loveth is born of God," and cannot really 
 die. " His seed remaineth in him." " He that loveth 
 not, knoweth not God, for God is love ; and he that 
 loveth dwelleth in God, and God in him." " And here 
 by we know that he dwelleth in us, by the spirit which 
 he hath given us." 
 
 All this is but the waking up, quickening into active 
 and conscious life, of a germ or faculty formed in us by 
 our Maker ; the calling up of a vitality which sin had 
 deadened. Doubtless there is a difference in degrees of 
 the natural endowment, in different persons. But in 
 every man it exists, and in every man there is enough 
 to make a Christian of. In this also, it follows the 
 analogy of the other faculties, in sane and common 
 cases. The power is of God ; the use is by man. 
 
 Nor is it to be overlooked that for the training of this 
 spiritual power there is an appointed tuition. We are 
 sent to that school. The " selfsame spirit " that is the 
 
52 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 quiekener and teacher, in order to deal naturally with 
 us, and give regularity to the spiritual life, will have a 
 language, rich and varied, to express to the inward sense 
 the invisible things, by things that are seen and heard. 
 Images, forms, books, rituals, ministries, become symbols 
 and vehicles of the hidden reality. These are never to 
 be thrust out of their place by a false spiritualism ; never 
 to be thrust into the place of the Divine substances they 
 body forth by a materialistic superstition. Then they 
 become idols, or a cant, like all unreal speech and cere 
 mony ; but in themselves they are the beautiful and fit 
 ting language to us of what we are by-and-by to see face 
 to face, and know as we are known, the veil taken away. 
 Indeed, the spiritual world is so much greater than 
 this, that it is probable all outward things are only signs 
 of its realities, expressions of its facts. Yery likely there 
 is no form in nature, that has not its spiritual counter 
 part. However this may be, we know that we have a 
 special language to teach us spiritual discernment. "We 
 have forms of worship, ordinances of consecration and 
 communion, a Bible. Through these we are to read, 
 with the spirit of sincerity for our lamp, the spiritual 
 sense. To stop with the form or letter itself is like 
 only noticing the grammar and the rhetoric of compo 
 sition, regardless of what it conveys. We spell out our 
 heavenly lesson under a higher and holier influence. 
 God makes all life his interpreter. 
 
 " The Spirit breathes upon the Word, 
 And brings the truth to light." 
 
 In Judaism, in Christendom, that word does not profit 
 which is not mixed with faith in them that hear it. 
 We may wonder that this spiritual light, or faith- 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 53 
 
 faculty, was not given to us perfect and mature. The 
 knowledge of truth and of heaven is a good: why 
 should not a God of goodness, who holds this very 
 thing supreme, confer it on us, without this slow, 
 stumbling process of acquirement ? "Why not rend 
 away the veil at once, and compel us to believe ? 
 
 But compulsory belief would not be faith. Besides, 
 no other desirable attainment is given us on these 
 terms, no knowledge of the stars, or the earth, or 
 coins, or shells, or plants. And by going down a little 
 way, we find a part, at least, of the reason. In the 
 whole Divine Economy of Man, we see the enlarge 
 ment of his powers reckoned a greater good than the 
 bare increase of his possessions. The wisdom to use, 
 to assimilate, and to set things into their relations, 
 is more than the owning of them. It is no unusual 
 thing to see a man surrounded by wealth that he has 
 got together by one kind of faculty without the other 
 faculty which can turn it to account in solid help, in 
 true beauty, in culture, in the enriching and adorning 
 of his own manhood. This is sometimes called success 
 in business ; but you would not call it so. So it is not 
 uncommon to see a man who has piled up stores of in 
 formation in his memory, but is as helpless as before, 
 for want of the faculty that transmutes knowledge 
 into personal force. This may be called learning, but 
 not by learned men. In each case, how much better 
 would a power of another sort be, more mind and 
 less money, in the one, more wisdom if less knowl 
 edge, in the other. One sits there in his furniture 
 and estates, a subaltern, mortified for his awkwardness, 
 or else despised because he is not mortified : the 
 other carries about a load of the names of all sub- 
 
 5* 
 
54 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 stances in earth and air at his tongue s end, yet none 
 the less at the mercy of all the hard weather of life. 
 
 So, even in religion, the first good will not be a formal 
 or literal acquaintance with the objects. They must, 
 as it were, enter into us, and become a part of us. 
 We must know them by sympathy. Like must be 
 get like, in the appreciative and responsive action of 
 our own nature. Graciously God refuses to let us 
 have spiritual things, save by the steady growth and 
 ripening of a spiritual mind. In fact, otherwise we 
 should not really have them. They might lie about 
 us, like the items of a miser s property, but we should 
 never own them. Possibly they might rather own us, 
 enslave us in superstition, or some bondage to the 
 letter. We should hold them only nominally, not 
 really. It would be mortgage, and not freehold. Any 
 mere passing of glories before the organs of sight would 
 be a spectacle and nothing more, the flitting images 
 of the magic lamp, not " the powers of the world to 
 come." 
 
 Hence, by a law that cannot be broken, spiritual 
 knowledge is not poured irresistibly into the mind. 
 We have to reach out for it, and work towards it, and 
 strive after it, and little by little get the feeling of it, 
 along with the sight of it. It is for our own sake. It 
 is that the truth may really be ours, of us, our life 
 and not our furniture. It is because otherwise it 
 would be of no more service to us than bank-notes in 
 the fingers of an infant, or a steam-engine in the 
 hands of a savage. This is what Christ doubt 
 less refers to, where, speaking of an extreme case, he 
 tells the disciples not to cast their pearls before swine. 
 The gross nature does not see that they are pearls. 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 55 
 
 That seen, there would be hope ; and the patient Christ 
 would wait, and labor, and invite to the last ; for 110 
 Teacher was ever so encouraging. Yet there must be 
 eyes willing to see. " He that hath ears to hear, let 
 him hear." 
 
 The instruction and the encouragement are direct. 
 Our Christian attainments are in our own hands, and 
 yet are not less, for that, the gift and grace of God s 
 spirit. Heaven is over us, and open to us. The Gos 
 pel is plain to the eye that reads in faith. All the 
 world illustrates this Christian lesson. If the prac 
 tised astronomic observer can see a star in the sky, 
 where others see only the field of blue ; if the worker 
 in mosaic can detect distinctions of color where others 
 see none ; if the Esquimaux can distinguish a white 
 fox in the snow ; if the sailor sees the ship where the 
 landsman sees no spot ; if thus, to a measurable keen 
 ness of vision, " the eye sees what it brings the power 
 to see," then, much more, as we lift up the eyes of the 
 spirit, in prayer and trust and charity, shall we behold 
 the invisible, look on the things not seen and eternal, 
 and, by purity of heart, " see God." " I am come," said 
 Jesus, " that they which see not might see." Then, 
 as in the higher walks of science the illuminated 
 mind sometimes transcends the ordinary necessities of 
 language, conquers defect, and leaps to its discoveries 
 as by intuition, or translates the ideas of nature by a 
 deeper familiarity with her signs, so it will be here. 
 Outward things cannot destroy nor change that in 
 terior sight. It has been said that when the great 
 English anatomist, Hunter, died, leaving the results 
 of his life-long observations and his classification in 
 unpublished manuscripts, his fraudulent brother-in-law, 
 
56 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 aiming to appropriate the system as his own, burnt the 
 work and fancied his guilty secret safe. But the scholar 
 had recorded his thoughts in another volume. When 
 competent naturalists opened his museum of specimens, 
 preserved in the Royal College of Surgeons, there, on 
 the cases, they could read off, in the exact arrange 
 ment of his specimens, as clearly as in words, his 
 whole theory of the animal kingdom. And if even 
 the intellect rises to these noble freedoms and inde 
 pendencies, in its insight, how much more the spirit, 
 which, because it dwelleth in Love, is born of God, and 
 dwelleth in God, already, and forever. 
 
 And now, if this line of thought is just, you will not 
 shrink from any lawful inferences from it ; but will 
 thankfully accept them, even if their practical applica 
 tion should be searching to the conscience. 
 
 1. See, then, first, that the waking of this spiritual 
 power, in any individual heart, at the call of God s 
 spirit, into a conscious and voluntary action, is the 
 beginning of the Christian life. By man s creation, 
 the germ of it was provided, and that was all nature 
 did. Even what nature originally supplied, man has 
 perverted. The germ was bent and hurt in its tender 
 ness. Not only the individual but the Race has per 
 verted it. Hereditary appetites have biased it. Bad 
 passions have depraved it. God comes again, in Christ, 
 to heal and quicken. For that act the New Testament 
 has plain names : " being born again," " renewal," " re 
 generation," " conversion," " believing with the heart." 
 It stands in rational analogy with all our living ways. 
 To see, to feel, to begin to act, in the Spirit, this is 
 the essential of Christian discipleship, of the immortal 
 life, on earth, in heaven. 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 57 
 
 2. One kind of exercise does not bring another kind 
 of strength ; one kind of effort another kind of attain 
 ment; but each its own. Muscular training does not 
 furnish the mind, but the body. An eager acquisition 
 of money does not refine the taste, nor liberalize the 
 disposition ; it only sharpens the eye to the main chance. 
 Political ambition does not foster magnanimity, but cun 
 ning and calculation. So in every department of action 
 and pursuit. And, by the same law, moral endeavors 
 will produce moral vigor, but not spiritual, for there 
 is a difference. Uprightness in trade is a noble trait ; 
 it is worth more than it ever costs ; and there is no 
 Christian character without it. But honesty in busi 
 ness is, after all, a distinct thing from faith in God; 
 there is not a village in Christendom where the two 
 are not found in separate men. Honesty grows by 
 honest dealing; faith grows by religious worship and 
 experience. Veracity is established by telling the 
 truth ; but a spirit of prayer is awakened by going 
 away in secret, and penitently, humbly conversing with 
 God. The blessed submission that trusts heaven in 
 every trouble and bereavement, by the bed of pain, 
 in loss of fortune, in the desertion of friends, at the 
 new-made grave, this is a spiritual grace, one of the 
 " things of the Spirit," and it is no more to be gained 
 by mere outward correctness of behaviour, or a com 
 pliance with all the decent rules of social morality, 
 than fortitude is to be gained by frugality, or tender 
 affections by a stout understanding. An inward sense 
 of communion with Christ is a spiritual thing, and, 
 a very practicable thing : it is the true Christian s pecu 
 liar privilege. But it cannot be found in the mere 
 routine of an honorable, thrifty traffic, nor in the ex- 
 
58 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 citements of society. It is found by coming to Christ, 
 believing on him, thinking of him, loving him, being 
 grateful to him, opening to him, as he stands at the door 
 and knocks. The inward nature is made of organs like 
 the outward. Each has eyes to see with, and hands 
 to lay hold by. Christ came into the world to touch, 
 restore, vitalize the benumbed and dying organs of the 
 soul, that they which see not might see ; and every 
 power, now paralyzed by sin, might leap back to life. If 
 we would have this matchless and miraculous physician 
 heal us, and make us spiritual beings, fit for a spiritual 
 or heavenly society, we must be more than industrious, 
 more than economical, more than amiable and temper 
 ate and respectable : though we must certainly be all 
 these : " these ought ye to have done, and not to leave 
 the other undone." We must, in all the powers of 
 godliness, in devotion, in the love of God, in faith 
 and hope and charity, go from strength to strength, 
 steadfast, always advancing, always abounding, in the 
 work of the Lord. 
 
 3. The doctrine will remove, if .we suffer it, many of 
 those hinderances to our setting in earnest about the 
 Christian life, which spring from a mistaken impression 
 that the teachings of religion must first be encased in 
 the formulas of reasoning, or seen through by the under 
 standing, instead of humbly welcomed by faith. That 
 mistake will only confuse, darken, and cripple the soul. 
 Each power God hath given us, to its own place, for 
 its own office ! Thus only can we gain God s blessing, 
 or do his will. If we put the heart where the brain 
 belongs, we shall be children, and not men, in under 
 standing. If we put the reason where faith belongs, 
 we shall fail of our highest glory, miss the heavenly 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 59 
 
 peace, be ungrateful to God and to Christ, and stay 
 ignorant of the first wisdom. Of the pure light of 
 Heaven, gained by prayer and by doing the will, we 
 can never have too much ; but by trying to put our 
 own tapers instead of it, we destroy the very temple 
 we were exploring. The excess of candles in the illu 
 mination of the Church of San Spirito, at Florence, 
 consumed the building. So our pride of human opinion 
 quenches that Holy Spirit itself, of which all sanctuaries 
 are but the shrine. " Spiritual things are spiritually 
 discerned." " With the heart man believeth unto right 
 eousness." In a life so solemn and so tempted as this, 
 we need another guide than reason. The cross of this 
 intellectual self-renunciation will ever be to the Jews 
 a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness ; but 
 to them which believe, the power of God, and the wis 
 dom of God unto salvation. 
 
 There is a servile deference paid even by Christians 
 to incompetent judges of Christianity. They abjectly 
 look to men of the world, to scholars, to statesmen, for 
 testimonials to the everlasting and self-evidencing veri 
 ties of heaven ! And if they can gather up, from the 
 writings or speeches of these men, some patronizing 
 notices of religion, some incidental compliment to the 
 civilizing influence of Christianity, or to the literary 
 beauties of the Bible, or to the aesthetic proprieties of 
 worship, or to the moral sublimity of the character or 
 Gospel of Christ, they forthwith proclaim these tributes 
 as lending some great confirmation to the truth of God ! 
 So we persist in asking, not "Is it true ? true to our 
 souls ? " or, " Has the Lord said it ? " but, " What say 
 the learned men, the influential men, the eloquent men ? 
 Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed 
 
60 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 on him ? " Shame upon these time-serving concessions, 
 as unmanly as they are fallacious. Go back to the 
 hovels, rather, and take the witnessing of the illiterate 
 souls whose hearts, waiting there in poverty, or pain, or 
 under the shadow of some great affliction, the Lord 
 himself hath opened ! " I thank thee, Father, Lord 
 of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
 babes ! " 
 
 4. As the faculty of faith grows and strengthens by 
 its own holy exercise, so it is lost by whatever sensual 
 izes or materializes our life. While the spiritual energy 
 in us becomes feeble, the world around us will grow hurt 
 ful and react against us. Travellers say that in the 
 countries liable to earthquakes, before the earthquake 
 comes, some subtle influence in the air weakens the 
 nervous energy of the human system, and, by abating 
 the power of resistance, predisposes the mind for terror. 
 It is the same cause that produces the evil without us 
 and within us. The same moral disorder infects our 
 powers and makes nature herself our enemy, instead of 
 our friend. Each separate deed we do bears its part. 
 Every gross indulgence, or hour of selfish vanity, dims 
 the sight. Darker and darker every day the chambers 
 of the soul become. Weaker and weaker the energies 
 for all noble, heavenly action. Grosser and more grov 
 elling the desires. Narrower and narrower the limits 
 of the inmost life. Character is lost. The soul dies, 
 in trespasses and transgressions, the second death. 
 This is the fearful retribution : not always executed 
 speedily, but inevitably : not arbitrarily nor angrily, 
 but because the things of the Spirit of God are and 
 must be spiritually discerned. 
 
THE FAITH-FACULTY. 61 
 
 5. Hence we are responsible not only for what we 
 do but for what we see. More than we often think, 
 these eyes of the soul are in our power. Say what we 
 will of the obscurities of Revelation, and the mysteries 
 of Providence, truly spiritual and believing men and 
 women go on reading both, deeper and deeper, clearer 
 and clearer, all their lives, till at last, no longer through 
 a glass darkly, the veil taken away, they see as they 
 are seen, know as they are known, stand face to face 
 with the Saviour they have so long and so trustingly 
 followed, and have " open vision for the written word." 
 If we do not behold the constellation of splendid truths 
 that radiate their evangelic light from the Gospel, it 
 is because blindness is in the dim pupils of our eyes, 
 unused or abused. Just as fast as we will let it, the 
 day will dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts. 
 By living out all the goodness we know, in the daily 
 beauty of holiness, we shall behold life s grand propor 
 tions. By walking with Christ you shall wear his like 
 ness. Nay, for he is a living Christ, you shall 
 have him formed within you, not only the hope, but 
 the present possession, of glory. And because you 
 know him spiritually, in the purity and love of his life 
 and cross, men will also take knowledge of you, that 
 you have been with him, and are with him now, and 
 shall be his people forever. 
 
 6. Thus, while spiritual discernment is a power by 
 itself, and works according to its own conditions, and 
 is lost or deadened by its own wrongs, its results, when 
 it is rightly and generously unfolded, belong to the whole 
 breadth of character, the whole range and beauty and 
 honor of human life. 
 
 When the faith-faculty is alive and at its principled 
 
62 THE FAITH-FACULTY. 
 
 work, it will reach out in its supremacy into all those 
 other parts of man, and all the real interests of society, 
 to hallow, guide, and bless them. It will not stay con 
 fined to the closet, nor the sanctuary, nor the Sabbath, 
 nor the conference, nor the chamber of the heart, 
 where it began, and where it still gets nourishment, 
 but it will mingle itself in business and company, in 
 bargains and visitings, in the merchant s traffic, and 
 the student s books, and the mechanic s handicraft, 
 and the farmer s husbandry, and the Christian woman s 
 housekeeping, making all these to be no jmore drudg 
 ery, but cheerful, dignified, and sacred services of re 
 ligious love and joy. 
 
 A man s religion is not then a part of him, but is a 
 quality of the whole of him. Having its own life-spring 
 and stream, it fertilizes the whole field of his being. 
 It makes his business safer, his scholarship wiser, 
 his manhood manlier, his joy healthier, his strength 
 stronger. It is the crown of his enterprise and the 
 charm of his affections, the humility of his learning 
 and the glory of his life. Faith works by love. And 
 because it has the sight of things not seen and eter 
 nal, it is the splendor, the transfiguration, and the 
 sanctity of things that are seen and temporal. 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 THREE DISPENSATIONS IN HISTORY AND IN THE SOUL. 
 
 ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS ACCOUNTED TO HIM 
 FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS. THE LAW WAS GIVEN BY MOSES ; BUT 
 GRACE AND TRUTH CAME BY JESUS CHRIST. Gal. ill. 6; John 
 
 i. 17. 
 
 THE spiritual growth of mankind has proceeded 
 through three great stages. Each of these has been 
 marked by the evolution of one predominating element, 
 or salient principle of religious action. On examina 
 tion, we shall be able to discover an impressive corre 
 spondence between these successive epochs in the his 
 tory of humanity at large, and the process of life in a 
 well-disciplined, Christianized individual. This analogy 
 is so thickly set with points of interest, as well as so 
 fruitful of practical suggestions touching right religious 
 ideas, and right living, that I shall let it fix the form, 
 and be the subject of the discourse. That subject is: 
 The threefold discipline of our spiritual experience, as 
 compared ivith the threefold order in the expanding 
 nurture of the human family. 
 
 The three Biblical Dispensations are types of three 
 great principles of conduct, or rather three schools of 
 religious culture, under which we must pass as persons, 
 just as the race has passed in history, before we can be 
 
64 THREE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 built up into the symmetrical stature of a Christian 
 maturity. 
 
 I. First, was the dispensation of natural religious 
 feeling. The race was in childhood. It acted from im 
 pulse. It obeyed no written code of moral regulations, 
 but, so far as its life was right, it either followed some 
 free religious instincts, or else depended on direct inti 
 mations from the Deity, directing or forbidding each 
 specific deed. The man chosen as the representative of 
 this period was Abraham. The record of it is the book 
 of Genesis. That writing is the first grand chapter in 
 the biography of man ; and its very literary structure 
 so dramatic in contents, and so lyrical in expression, so 
 careless in the rules of art, so abounding in personal de 
 tails and graphic groupings of incident, so like a child s 
 story in its sublime simplicity answers to the spon 
 taneous period it pictures. " The patriarchal age " we 
 call it. The term itself intimates rude, unorganized 
 politics ; the head of each family being the legislator for 
 his tribe. But, in the absence of systematic statutes, 
 every man, by a liberty so large as to burst often into 
 license, was likely to do very much what was right in 
 his own eyes. If he had strong passions, he would be a 
 sensualist, like Shechem, or a petty tyrant, like Laban. 
 If he were constitutionally gentle, he would be an in 
 offensive shepherd, like Lot. Such were the first two 
 brothers. Cain s jealousy made him a murderer ; Abel 
 was peaceable, kept sheep, and the only voice he lifted 
 up against outrage was when his blood cried from the 
 ground. Some of these nomadic people, having devout 
 temperaments, " called upon the name of the Lord," we 
 are told, like Enoch and Noah. Others were bloated 
 giants, mighty men in animal propensities, gross and 
 
THREE DISPENSATIONS. 65 
 
 licentious, given to promiscuous marriages ; so that 
 presently God saw that the wickedness was so great, 
 and the imaginations of men s hearts were so evil, that 
 he must wash the unclean earth with a deluge. But 
 there was no permanent restraining power ; no fixed 
 standard of judicial command ; and so, when the flood 
 dried, the tide of sin set in again, streaked only with 
 some veins of nobleness. On the plains of Shinar pride 
 fancied it could build a tower that should overtop the 
 All-seeing Providence ; and it had to be humbled by a 
 confusion of tongues, scattering the builders. Even 
 Noah, a just man for his times, so pure in that com 
 parison, that he was carried over on the waves from a 
 drowned generation, to install a new one, had scarcely seen 
 the many-colored splendors of the promise in the rain 
 bow, before he was drunken of overmuch wine. Abra 
 ham himself, so full of trust that his trust finally saved him, 
 strong enough in the power of it to lay his son on an altar, 
 at an earlier age stained his tongue with a cowardly 
 falsehood, calling his wife his sister for safety s sake, 
 first pattern of the politicians of mere expediency, and 
 was rebuked for it by Pharaoh, who had seen less of the 
 heavenly visions than he. Sodom, with its indescribable 
 pollutions, was not far from Beth-el, house of God. 
 Jacob received a revelation from opened heavens ; yet 
 he overreached his brother to appropriate the family 
 blessing, and defrauded his father-in-law. Throughout 
 the whole of this patriarchal era, reaching from Adam 
 to Joseph, and covering, by the common computation, 
 twenty-three hundred years, there were beautiful virtues 
 flowering into the light by the spontaneous energy of 
 nature, but poisoned in many spots by the slime of sen 
 suality. The human stock threw out its forms of life 
 
 6* 
 
66 THREE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 with a certain negligence, as the prodigal force of nature 
 does her forests as a boy swings his limbs in the open 
 air. There were heroic acts ; but they were dispersed 
 over intervals, with dismal contrasts of meanness and 
 cowardice between. There were ardent prayers ; but 
 foul passions often met and put to flight the descending 
 hosts of the angels of God. Character needed a stanch 
 vertebral column to secure its uprightness. No perma 
 nent sanction lent impregnability to good impulses. 
 Even the saint, whose spirit rose nearest to heaven, 
 walked on the verge of some abyss of shame. For 
 though Abraham believed, Moses had not yet legislated, 
 nor Christ died. 
 
 Corresponding, now, to this impulsive religious age of 
 the race is the natural state of the individual. It is 
 the condition we are born into, and multitudes never 
 pass beyond it, because they are never renewed, or made 
 Christian. Morally they are children all their lives. 
 Bad dispositions mix with good ; one moment holy aspi 
 rations, the next a flagrant immorality. What is want 
 ing is a second birth of spiritual conviction. Conduct 
 is not brought to the bar of a governmental examination, 
 and judged by an unbending principle. Temptation is 
 too much for this feeble, capricious piety. Nature, true 
 enough, is always interesting ; and spontaneous products 
 may be beautiful. But man, with his free agency, beset 
 before and behind by evil, is not like a lily growing 
 under God s sun and dew, with no sin to deform its 
 grace or stain its coloring ; he is not like the innocent 
 architecture of a cloud, shaped by the fantastic caprices 
 of the summer wind ; nor yet like the aimless statuary 
 of the sea-shore, sculptured by the pliant chisel of the 
 wave. He has to contend, struggle, resist. He is tried, 
 
THREE DISPENSATIONS. 67 
 
 enticed, besieged. Satan creeps anew with every new 
 born child into the Eden of the heart, and flaming 
 swords are presently planted on its gates, proclaiming 
 no return that way to innocence. The natural religion, 
 of which modern mystics are so fond, and modern peri 
 patetics prattle, is not enough for him. It might pos 
 sibly answer in the woods, unless this feeble pantheism 
 should substitute artistic ecstasy for worship, and moon 
 light for the sun, that flashes down the glories of reve 
 lations ; or in some solitary cell, though even there monk 
 and hermit have often found the snare of impure imagi 
 nations spread too cunningly for it. But let the boy go 
 to the shop, and the girl to school ; let the young man 
 travel to the city, and the young woman lend her ears 
 to the flatteries of that silver-tongued sorceress, Society ; 
 and all this natural piety is like a silken thread held 
 over a blazing furnace. We may put ourselves at ease, 
 fancy we shall fare well enough under so kind a Father ; 
 come out comfortably at last ; there is such tender pity 
 in the skies. But the dispelling of that delusion will be 
 the sharp word out of the throne of judgment, " De 
 part from me, I never knew you." No Babel of refuge 
 will be built to the top. No friendly intervention will 
 avert the perdition of the Sodom in the heart. No 
 Tamar of custom will cajole with her coquetry the an 
 cient and everlasting justice. No thrifty leagiies of a 
 low commercial instinct, postponing conscience to the 
 arithmetic of traffic, no corrupt political majorities, 
 subscribing patriotic manifestoes as stock for party or 
 private dividends, though they be as eleven against one, 
 and though they piously profess to be sons of Israel by 
 church subscriptions, shall buy national prosperity by 
 their brother Joseph s blood. 
 
68 THREE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 There is often a vague assumption that certain prin 
 ciples of natural right, evolved and compacted by ethical 
 science, might save our social state. But, remember 
 that society, without Christ, in its philosophy, its litera 
 ture, its art, its morals, obeyed a law of deterioration and 
 decay. Without him, it would have been sinking still. 
 Instead of the Christian justice that hangs its balances 
 over our seats of lawful trade to-day, we should have 
 not even Punic faith, but something more treacherous 
 than that not even the hesitating Roman honesty, but 
 a zone of restraint more dissolute than the Corinthian, 
 and principles looser than the Spartan s. Instead of a 
 respected merchant, or steady mechanic, going out to his 
 business to-morrow, amid a public order that Christ has 
 organized, might have been seen a barbarian with the 
 concentrated falsity of a hundred Arabs, waking into a 
 world convulsed with perpetual anarchy, or skulking 
 away to transact his base affairs in a worse than Circas 
 sian mart. We may baptize the interesting displays of 
 our intermittent virtue with a Christian name ; but they 
 may yet contain no quality of Christ s peculiar sanctity. 
 They may leave human life quite untouched by that 
 unrivalled glory, however bright their transient beam. 
 They are not redolent of the New Testament. Their 
 uprightness does not bear the sanction of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. Their slender rectitude is not tliQ principle 
 that treats men justly because they are God s children, 
 which was the law of Christ s great honesty. Their 
 kindness is not the sweet charity of the beatitudes. 
 Their moderation is not guarded by those majestic war 
 ders, reverence for God, and a Saviour s love. Nor is 
 their worship, if they adore at all, fervent with the pray 
 ers of Olivet and Gethsemane. 
 
THREE DISPENSATIONS. 69 
 
 And as the first dispensation ended in a slavery in 
 Egypt, or broods darkly over Pagan nations waiting to be 
 brought nigh by the blood of Christ to this hour, so the 
 lawless motions of every self-guided will must end in a 
 servitude to some Pharaoh in the members that cries 
 aloud for emancipation a settled alienation from the 
 household of the good. 
 
 II. Next after this impulsive Or spontaneous period, 
 which is the period of Childhood, comes the legal or 
 judicial, a second stage in the history of the religious 
 consciousness. Moses, the lawgiver, is its representa 
 tive. From this crisis, the chief significance of the 
 world s religious experience is concentrated, for some 
 sixteen hundred years, in Juda3a, and human progress 
 runs on through the channel of Hebrew nationality. 
 Other families have wandered off into hopeless idola 
 tries. The religion of instinct has found its appro 
 priate termination in a degraded Egyptian priesthood, 
 mixing civil despotism with the incantations of an im 
 pure mythology. 
 
 And now, God calls up Moses out of this miserable 
 oppression into the summit of Sinai, and appoints him 
 the head of the second august human epoch. A period 
 of laws, after instinct, begins. Instinct must be curbed, 
 for it has done mischief enough. Impulse must be sub 
 jected to principle, for it has proved itself insufficient 
 alone. There must be positive command, controlling 
 wayward inclinations. " Thou shalt," and " Thou shalt 
 not," are the watchwords. It is an age of obedience. 
 Ceremonies and ordinances are set up to bring the wild 
 will under discipline. And the better to secure exact 
 obedience, a visible system of formal observances is an 
 nounced, so many sacrifices every day, and so many 
 
erj sacrifice. To withstand the surrounding seduc- 
 of nations still steeped in the vices of their natural 
 nsities, a scheme of cuaciie restraints comes in. 
 people must hare multiplied festivals, jubilees, 
 natknal gatherings, regularly kept, and by Divine ap 
 pointment. To drair them, there is a gorgeous temple 
 with an imposing altar, a tabernacle, a covenant, a shek- 
 inah lighted from heaven, a priesthood clad in splendid 
 garments, and an the superb apparatus of a magnificent 
 ritoaL Even the dafly habits, materials of common 
 dress, qualities of food and kinds of flesh, are all to be 
 regulated in detail by specific statutes. Law reaches 
 down to determine the most minute particulars, the 
 cleansing of houses, the shape of the beard, the sowing 
 of the field, all having reference to neighboring idol 
 atrous usages, of which these twelve tribes must, by all 
 jmrnnn, be kept clear. And for the breach of every law, 
 from greatest to least, there must be penalty. That part 
 of human nature that terror and dread appeal to is ad- 
 dressed. On the transgraaior woe is denounced. There 
 is a Mount Ebal, full of menacing curses, as well as a 
 Gerizim pledged to blessings. Smoke, earthquakes, 
 thunders and lightnings, marshalling their awful pageant 
 about .Sinai when the law was given, only prefigured 
 punishments that should always torment the disobedient. 
 And, accordingly, down through all the Hebrew for- 
 . while prophets were set to admonish and call 
 back the rebellions, the great staple of Israelitish history 
 wa, the Divine chastisement that followed violations of 
 law, and the prosperity that rewarded its observance. 
 Sieges and campaigns, conquests and captivities, judges 
 and kin^-i, Joshua, Gideon, and Ezra, David, Saul, 
 

7:2 THBEE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 vision of time for business is only a form of law, coerc 
 ing industry and efficiency. Many a man has to spur his 
 sluggishness by definite tasks ; and many more would 
 bring nothing to pass, but for fixed methods and seasons. 
 "Without a morning and evening sacrifice, forgetful 
 world! in ess would render poor service to God ; and 
 memories, like Martha, so careful and troubled about 
 many things, would fail of Mary s one thing needful. 
 The laying apart of exact sums for charity has been all 
 that stood between some men and the doom of avarice ; 
 benevolence had to be put out to school, and philan 
 thropy be drilled into promptitude like a cadet. Let us 
 not despise law, for every day practical proofs are scat 
 tered before us, that it is a schoolmaster to lead us to 
 Christ. 
 
 Even fear, though fastidious nerves are apt to discredit 
 it as a lower sentiment, has its office in disciplining 
 thoughtless and stubborn wills, breaking down pride and 
 prompting insensibility, till it is ready to hand us over 
 to motives of a nobler order. There is a meaning in a 
 tradition of an ancient German prince, who, in early 
 life, was bidden by an oracle to search out an inscription 
 on a ruined wall which should prefigure his mortal fate. 
 He found the Latin words, signifying after six. Sup 
 posing they revealed the number of days he was to live, 
 he gave himself for the six days following to his hitherto 
 neglected soul, preparing himself to die. But finding 
 death did not come, he was still held to his sober resolu 
 tions by supposing six weeks were the interpretation ; 
 and then he prolonged his holy life to six months, and 
 six years. On the first day of the seventh year, by rea 
 son of the excellent manhood into which he had thus 
 formed his character, he had gained the confidence of 
 
THREE DISPENSATIONS. 16 
 
 the people, and he found the fulfilment of the ambiguous 
 prophecy by being chosen Emperor of Germany. Here 
 is a figure of common experience. We may conceive it 
 to have been a more " spiritual " process, that the prince 
 should have been drawn to piety, by loving goodness for its 
 own sake. But it was the timid dread of dying that drew 
 him, and the royal benefactions of a truly Christian mon 
 arch justified the agent. Christian biography is crowded 
 with instances of first awakenings by fear. It is remark 
 able that Luther, whose great soul, illumined afterwards 
 by the text, u The just shall live by faith," became the 
 modern apostle of the doctrine of Grace as opposed to 
 justification by legality, was first aroused from utter in 
 difference by two terrors, the violent death of his friend 
 Alexis, and the thunderbolt that struck close by him on 
 his way from Mansfeldt to the University. Have you 
 never known a fever, or an accident, or the incipient 
 symptoms of a consumption to be the determining cause 
 that bent the whole current of a life from earthward to 
 heavenward ? Have you never known that a mere 
 dread of punishment or pain, of hell or disgrace, has 
 stopped the erring feet of lust, silenced profanity, driven 
 back the Sabbath-breaker ? God is not ashamed to take 
 into the sublime economy of his purposes these stim 
 ulants to virtue ; and let not us, in our puerile conceit, 
 venture to pronounce them unworthy. Outgrow them 
 if you will, and can ; but take care that you are not 
 found, after all, below, instead of above the plane of 
 their influence. 
 
 For be assured, though we have read the Xew Testa 
 ment, named the name of Jesus, and quite looked down 
 on the Jew, some of us have not yet climbed up so far 
 as to Moses and his Jewish law. In the Bible s older 
 
 7 
 
74 THREE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 Testament there are needed examples for us yet. Not 
 all of us have learned that majestic, unchangeable fact, 
 that God is Sovereign ; nor those related facts that, if 
 we will perpetrate the wrong, we must suffer the penalty ; 
 that we cannot dodge the consequences of what we do ; 
 that indolence must sap our strength ; that selfishness 
 must end in wretchedness ; that falsehood is a mint 
 coining counterfeits that must return upon our hands ; 
 that hypocrisy to-day is disgrace to-morrow. This is 
 law, everlasting, unrepealable law; and our poor at 
 tempts to resist or nullify it, avail not so much as a puff 
 of mortal breath against the gulf stream in the Atlantic. 
 Blessed will it be for our peace, when we accept it, and 
 bow to it, turning it into a law of liberty. 
 
 Remember that the grandest examples of sainthood, 
 or spiritual life, that the ages have seen, have been souls 
 that recognized this truth, the firm, Puritanical ele 
 ment in all valiant piety ; and without it mere amiable 
 religious feeling will be quite sure to degenerate into 
 sentimentality. "We need to stand compassed about 
 with the terrible splendors of the Mount, and with some 
 thing of the sombre apparatus of Hebrew command 
 ments, to keep us from falling off into some impious, 
 Gentile idolatries of the senses. Holy places, and holy 
 days, and solemn assemblies, still dispense sanctity. Our 
 appetites have to be hedged about with almost as many 
 scruples of regimen for Christian moderation s sake, as 
 the Jew s for his monotheism. " We wish," says some 
 one, " that it was not so difficult to be good. We wish 
 that we could be self-indulgent, and yet be good for all 
 that ; that we could idle off our time, and yet be wise 
 for all that." The worldling wishes he could combine 
 his worldliness now with a heaven hereafter ; the volup- 
 
THREE DISPENSATIONS. 75 
 
 tuary, that lie could have " the clear eye and steady 
 hand of the temperate " ; the vain, ambitious, capricious 
 woman, that she could exhibit the serenity that comes 
 of prayer. But Sinai stands unmoved, at the outset of 
 every life-journey through the wilderness ; and at the 
 further end, beyond the river, Ebal with its curses, and 
 Gerizim with its blessings. " Whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that shall he also reap." 
 
 III. But there is a Third Dispensation, profounder 
 and richer than that of statutes ; and, at the head of it, 
 One greater than Moses. The period of literal com 
 mandments was insufficient ; humanity outgrew it. It 
 became a dead profession, a school of foolish questions, 
 a shelter of hideous hypocrisies. Lo! the enlarging 
 soul of the race asks a freer, more sincere, more vital 
 nurture, and it comes. If the simple religious instincts 
 of Abraham had been accepted for righteousness ; if the 
 law had been given by Mos es ; grace and truth enter in 
 by Jesus Christ ; grace for the heart, truth for the un 
 derstanding ; favor for man s stumbling feet, and light 
 for his eyes. Christ does not abrogate law, but by his 
 own life and sacrifice first satisfies its conditions. He 
 says expressly, " Think not that I came to destroy Moses, 
 but to fulfil." The cross does not unbind the cords of 
 accountability, but tightens and strengthens them rather. 
 The Gospel aifords no solvent to disintegrate the com 
 mandments ; it only lets " the violated law speak out its 
 thunders" in the tones of pity. Divine laws never 
 looked so sacred as when they took sanctity from the 
 redemption of the crucified. 
 
 Witness now a new light, " lighting every man that 
 cometh into the world." It is the deliverance of the 
 heart. It is the purifying of the life. It is the sancti- 
 
76 THREE DISPENSATIONS, 
 
 fication of the spirit. The law, by which no man living 
 can be justified, because no man ever yet kept it in 
 violate ; which makes no allowance for imperfect obe 
 dience, and yet never was perfectly obeyed, which, 
 therefore, is a rule of universal condemnation when 
 standing alone, this stern, unrelenting law gives place 
 to a Gospel, gladder tidings, a voice that comes not 
 to condemn but to save ; a ministry of mercy, asking 
 only a penitent spirit that it may offer forgiveness, and 
 only an inward faith changing the motives that it may 
 confer eternal life. 
 
 Law and prophets, then, are not annulled ; what they 
 lacked is siipplied. They are absorbed by Evangelists. 
 The Gospel takes up all their contents, recasts them, and 
 quickens them with the vitality of a fresh inspiration. 
 Moses remains, but only as a servant to Christ. The dec 
 alogue still stands ; but the cross stands on a higher ped 
 estal, invested with a purer glory. Humble Calvary is 
 the seat of a loftier power than towering Horeb. We 
 must still be under discipline ; but the lawgiver is lost 
 in the Redeemer. What was a task is transfigured into 
 a choice. The drudgery of obedience is beautified into 
 the privilege of reconciliation. Love has cast out fear. 
 Man no longer cowers before his Sovereign with terror, 
 but pours out his praises to a Father. The soul is re 
 leased from the bondage of a thrall into the liberty of 
 a child. Out of the plodding routine of mechanical 
 sacrifice it ascends into spiritual joy, where the hand 
 writing of ordinances is done away ; the Great High 
 Priest has ascended once for all into the heavens, and 
 suffering is willingly borne because it makes the disciple 
 like the Lord. 
 
 Thus the word spoken by the third epoch of religious 
 
THREE DISPENSATIONS. 77 
 
 culture is not, " Act thy nature out and. follow thy law 
 less impulses," nor yet, "Do this circle of outward 
 works, and then come and claim salvation for thy 
 merits," but, believe, first, and then out of thy faith 
 do the righteous works which thou then canst not but 
 do. Repent of thy short comings, and be forgiven. 
 Lean on Christ, thy Saviour. Love God, thy Father. 
 Help men, thy brethren. And come, inherit thine im 
 mortal kingdom ! 
 
 Now, at last, if it only keeps on in the path divinely 
 marked for it, the soul emerges into that wide fellowship 
 of Christ, that open hospitality of spiritual freedom, 
 where the impulse of nature is only guided, not stifled, 
 by law; where law is ripened and fulfilled into faith. 
 The highest victory of goodness is union with God. 
 That union conies only by a mediator. For recon 
 ciliation between finite and infinite, there must be a 
 Reconciler combining both. The way to peace lies by 
 Calvary. Humanity realizes its complete proportions 
 only by inward membership with him who fills all the 
 veins of his living body with his blood, and the chambers of 
 his church with the glory of his presence to-day. " Be 
 lieve in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." 
 
 For, observe, by all means, this striking condition per 
 taining to the doctrine ; that neither of these three 
 stages, whether of the general or the personal progress, 
 denies, or cuts off, its predecessor. Nature prepares the 
 way for law, making the heart restless, by an unsatis 
 fying experiment, without it. Abraham saw more glori 
 ous ages coming than his own, and the promise given to 
 him and his seed, Emmanuel accomplished. The law 
 disciplined wayward, uncultured man, making him 
 ready for the church that was to descend "like a 
 
 7* 
 
:.-. -?. 
 
 - - ". _ 
 
 .- 
 
 to that mWime 
 wfacrc I diafl ifeiw-c to do only 
 i mi ii liTii, liil 
 
- 
 
80 THREE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 places ; not by a religion kindling at some favored hour 
 of sentimental meditation, only to sink and flicker in 
 the drudgery of common work. It is to little purpose 
 ili;ii wo read and circulate and preach the Bible, ex 
 cept nil our reading and all our living gain thereby a 
 more biblical tone. And it is quite futile that "bur 
 breasts glow with some fugitive feeling in the house of 
 God, unless that feeling dedicates our common dwell- 
 
 lo be all houses of God. 
 
 So have you seen the religious legalist. In business, 
 in the streets, in sanctuaries, at homo, you have seen 
 him. In business, measuring off his righteousness by 
 some sealed measure of public usage, as mechanically 
 as bis merchandise, and making a label or a dye-stuff 
 his cunning proxy to tell tho lio that some judicial 
 penalty had frightened from his tongue ; disowning no 
 patent obligation, but cheating tho customer, or oppress 
 ing tho weak, in secret. In tho street, wearing an out 
 side of genial manners, with a frosty temper under it, 
 <u M cloak of propriety with a heart of sin ; in the sanc 
 tuary, purchasing, with formal professions, one day, the 
 pn\ ilcgo of an untroubled self-seeking the other six, or 
 possibly opening the pew door and the prayer-book hero 
 to-day, with the same hand that will wrong a neighbor 
 to-morrow ; and, at home, practising that reluctant vir- 
 tuo that would hardly give conjugal affection but for the 
 marriage-bond, and that, by being exported to another 
 continent, would find a Parisian atmosphere a solvent 
 of all its scruples. Not descending, at present, to the 
 depth of depravity, he certainly never rises to a pure 
 piety. Whatever respectable or admirable traits you see 
 in him, you miss that distinctive mark which every eye 
 takes knowledge of is a spiritual consecration. 
 
Si 
 
 Kngroft,, now* on that * wild olix^ Stock the $ 
 jniecs of Christian lov\\ drawn from their original 
 in Bethlehem, u of the sx>ed of I>avid, and the wot 
 of Jesse w ; soften thai hard integrity by Christian 
 charity ; in pta<ft> * duty dwi^ ftvnu shwr 
 duty dww flrwn a viliii^ ^1^^ and 
 IV> Ihi** wut thou lwnU 
 Chrbl : 
 
 * Calvwry : lhi is thai divino wr\lw iu>l K>uud 
 ri^tid rulw of elirtwofa^ttil ^K\\\^U>IU hut, 
 ft\v |4ay and vajriou^ infKMrsliadin^ <Mf a 
 ito which \^i> an> h> conform our 
 Ihc T^it* jwiVA M lortf^ shall hav\> 
 our impatient wUU our hearts xrill l\o rvati\r to 
 s^v % ** Our Father, vrho art m heaven ! ^ ISeek, ftr^t^ 
 after that indwollitig gootiiue^ that has its fountain in 
 tlie centre of the s$nl> and good works will he th 
 constant streanu Be children of light. Live hy the, 
 spirit not the letter : hy failh> not hy fear* For yoxi 
 aw calKnt to l^e disciples of Jesus, Henceforth the 
 Christian is to he known, and to he saved, not, hy the 
 hand so much as hy the heart ; not by a righteous 
 ness that is legal, hut spiritual* Let not yonr piety 
 he the occasional piety of Kahhinical Sahhaths* with 
 ghastly intenuls of worKllincss Ivfwxvn, lib^ isolaknl 
 springs in a desort of sajiid : Imt a piety, xrhos^ pe 
 rennial influence, like the river that keep* the meadows 
 always green, shall ^netrate and fertilise the whole 
 soil and open field of y\mr Iving, and thus mite 
 glad the city of yonr CK*L No rich, nor tamtilVtl, nor 
 accepted life can he lived by ws except Christ bfc its 
 inspiration. Hope will not* rach np to immortality, 
 
82 THREE DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 except it climb by the cross. Let not your lives be 
 dead shapes of outward decency, the carved and 
 gilded wood of an ark and a tabernacle deserted by 
 the Spirit, but vital branches, filled with leaping and 
 vigorous currents of holy feeling, on the living vine ! 
 " For if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is 
 none of his." 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN.* 
 
 GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME A SINNER ! Luke Xviii. 13. 
 
 BY contrast with the arrogant and egotistical boast 
 of the Pharisee, and on the score of its natural modesty, 
 this prayer of the Publican wins the respect of all 
 classes of people. But to enter into the anxious and 
 burdened feeling out of which such a cry of sorrow 
 must have sprung, and to make that feeling our own, 
 is not so much a matter of course. This requires some 
 thing of those more earnest exercises of the interior 
 life, and that deeper discipline, which involve the very 
 presence and power of the renewing Spirit. 
 
 This man, standing here before God, afar off from 
 his fellow-men, the very image of depression, not so 
 much as his eyes lifted, pronounces himself a sinner. 
 And this expression of conscious unworthiness is not 
 made as a piece of information to heaven or earth. It 
 is simply the irrepressible confession of sincerity, pressed 
 out of the soul by a longing for forgiveness ; short, 
 because so terribly sincere. The straitened spirit in its 
 anguish has no room for prolix particulars. The very 
 sound of the words, the downcast look, the withdrawn 
 
 * Preached at the beginning of Lent, 1859. 
 
84 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 
 
 > 
 
 position, the agonized gesture, as well as the character 
 Christ puts upon these things, betray the reality of his 
 repentance. The thing they expose to us is human 
 sin, its self-conviction, its wretchedness, its way of 
 relief. It is with this disease of the moral nature as it 
 is with some sorts of physical disorder ; the sight of it 
 is repulsive and forbidding, till the malady is acknowl 
 edged in our own body. Then for the first time, when 
 the pain throbs along our nerves, we are willing to 
 contemplate it without impatience. It is a spectacle of 
 ugliness and humiliation, from which men are eager to 
 turn away their eyes, till they feel its hurt and peril 
 pressing into the organs of their own frames. The 
 prosperous and self-satisfied and unawakened say, Why 
 talk to us of sin ? 
 
 One reason why, is that it is a fact pervading the 
 world. Another is, that it is the greatest of evils, and 
 the malignant source of all evils that exist, being the 
 sting of death itself. Another, that it is, or will be, 
 incomparably the greatest of miseries, a misery that 
 only a knowledge and a feeling of sin like the publican s 
 can prevent. Still another reason is, that Christ and 
 his religion continually refer to it, having it for their 
 express object to take man out from its control and 
 give him the mastery over it. So that it has come 
 about, as the divine order for us, taken as we are, that 
 a quickened individual conviction of sin is the first step 
 in passing into a new and Christian life. 
 
 An individual conviction. After all, what probably 
 goes far to make all human discoursing about sin both 
 unwelcome and ineffectual, is that so* much of it is a 
 rebuke of man by man rather than the humble confession 
 of a common wrong. We must acknowledge, also, that 
 
THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 85 
 
 in our public and formal treatment of it, we are apt to 
 fall into cool, customary, unfelt language. That is, 
 there is too much of the Pharisaic method in our judg 
 ment and speech about the world s depravity ; too much 
 vagueness, and verbal repetition, and tacit complacency ; 
 not enough of the sadness and sincere solemnity of the 
 publican. Let us at least try to feel what we say, and 
 put ourselves in with those that we rebuke, not to 
 make out a bad case against mankind, but to help each 
 other into God s way of delivering us from the bad case 
 we are actually in. Observe, in all his intercourse with 
 men, Christ displayed the utmost tenderness to those 
 who had found out that they were sinners, all that 
 ran and knelt to him in penitence. His woes and 
 threatenings and judgments were for those that were 
 sinners without confessing it. 
 
 The sinning man is here presented to us as having 
 given personal offence to his Maker. He implores for 
 giveness of the Father he has offended. All our evil, 
 in act, or word, or wish, or thought, is a direct wrong 
 against the God of all goodness and purity, himself. 
 When we offend, it is not merely ourselves, not merely 
 other men, not merely public opinion and social conven 
 tions, that we offend. Ah, this notion that there is no 
 other iniquity for man than a transgression of the natu 
 ral laws of his own constitution, and that no hurt is 
 inflicted biit on his own or some human sensibility, is 
 not at all the doctrine of Christ or of the Bible. There 
 is grief with God himself. A wound is given to the 
 infinite and loving heart. A jar is sent not only through 
 the air of this world, and across the chords of humanity, 
 but up to the ear of heaven and into the Spirit of pa 
 rental tenderness on high. Man is responsible to some- 
 
86 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 
 
 thing beyond his own organization. Remorse is not 
 merely the after-thought of a mistaken self-interest, 
 the reconsideration of a hasty policy. Doubtless the 
 wrong is double, and the suffering is on both sides. 
 " He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul." 
 But mark the first clause, " Sinneth against me." 
 As the blessing of truth is alike to heaven and earth, 
 giving health and light, so are the curse and the pain 
 of sin felt all along the immortal and sympathetic 
 ranks of being. As godliness is profitable both to 
 the life that now is and the life that is to come, so is 
 wickedness a blight and a sorrow. And of both of 
 these lives, and of all the worlds, God is a judge 
 who must be just, and a ruler who must uphold the 
 right, as well as a feeling Father who sorrows and 
 pities. Those who have the dimmest sense of God have 
 the dullest perception of what is opposite to God. Pan 
 theism knows nothing of sin. As prayer is something 
 more than a placid meditation on the beauty of the 
 world or a gallery of art, Christian faith something 
 more than confidence in our own powers to accom 
 plish what we undertake, and religion something more 
 than the tranquil balance of cultivated faculties, so is 
 sin a personal affront, whose bitter consequences only 
 the forgiveness of God himself can remove, and toward 
 which, with the publican, we must implore him to be 
 merciful. It does not read, " Nature be merciful," 
 nor " Laws of my constitution be merciful," nor " So 
 ciety be merciful," nor, " I will be merciful to myself," 
 but, " GOD be merciful ; " nor yet, " God be merciful 
 to sin in general," but " to me a sinner." 
 
 Men of the ripest attainments, deepest experience, 
 and clearest insight in the Christian life, have been 
 
THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 87 
 
 those who have gone through this sharp conflict; not 
 men of easy views of the Divine requirements ; not men 
 too fastidious to accept the stringent action of God s 
 law ; not men disposed to palliate their own faults, or 
 to narrow down or reason away the irreconcilable oppo 
 sition between a principle of self-seeking and the prin 
 ciple of holy obedience. Indeed, in proportion as the 
 religious character grows positive and fervent, the soul 
 grows sensitive ; and while charity for others is larger 
 and kindlier, for the very reason that the heart has 
 so heavy a record to return of its own weaknesses 
 and errors, at the same time a strict personal doctrine 
 of sin seems more reasonable and right; for sin itself 
 is only more and more dreadful. Conscience, stricken 
 with shame, confesses to the reproof; while the soul, 
 rising in aspiration, and gathering itself into closer 
 communion with the purity of the heart of Christ, re 
 pudiates with intenser disgust every unhallowed in 
 clination. 
 
 We may contrive many plausible coverings and apol 
 ogies ; for the sophistry of sin is as old as its pride. 
 We may maintain that we are no worse than our neigh 
 bors. One man extenuates his guilt ; another denies it 
 altogether, and counts the charge of it an insult, not 
 remembering who brings the charge with most searching 
 severity and with the most fearful authority. We may 
 admit the offence, but plead the violence of the temp 
 tation, the treacherous opportunity, the customs of 
 society, the necessities of business. The first man that 
 sinned cried, " The woman tempted me, and I did eat," 
 and the tens of thousands of his descendants who sinned 
 yesterday protested that they did not sin willingly ; they 
 only did not see how they should "get along in the 
 
88 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN* 
 
 world " without doing as they did. But whoso world ? 
 and " get along " towards what ? Or, we sometimes 
 think it quite hard that an amiable disposition, popular 
 manners, punctual payments, and an occasional alms 
 giving, are not suffered to stand for our excusing, if our 
 Father in Heaven is forgotten or profaned. Yet all 
 the while we know these to be poor, pitiful pretences, 
 which never wholly satisfy the minds that make them. 
 Deeper down, in some spot of your nature which the 
 gracious Spirit has not yet permitted to be hardened and 
 perverted utterly, is there not another verdict, rendered 
 at another plea ? a voice that is ready sometimes to cry, 
 " God be merciful to me a sinner " ? 
 
 So profoundly rooted is this religious instinct, the 
 feeling that any thorough and effectual religious life 
 must be born through the pains of penitence, that 
 you will probably have heard some persons deploring 
 their feeble sense of sin. They say they are not pierced, 
 or borne down, as they know they ought to be, with a 
 keen and overwhelming conviction of their alienation 
 and transgression. This is one of the common and 
 most sincere confessions in the beginnings of religious 
 concern. Men under moral conviction at once lament 
 that they are insensible to their bad state, and yet show 
 a lively sense of it in this very regret. They grieve 
 because their grief is so small, and their condition con 
 tradicts itself. It seems like a tangled knot in the mind. 
 Is not the true explanation of it simply that there is a 
 conflict, or an inequality, between the moral judgment 
 and the spiritual emotions ? Conscience pronounces it 
 our duty to realize and acknowledge our ingratitude and 
 disobedience ; it says ought. But habit has made the 
 heart dead. The feelings do not come up properly to 
 
THE PEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 89 
 
 their part of the work. An apathy is on the soul ; le- 
 galism holds her in its bondage ; and till the subduing 
 sight of the cross unseals the fountains of holy emotion, 
 there is only self-accusation, but no peace. Repentance 
 has stung the conscience, but has not reached, renewed, 
 and comforted the heart. 
 
 The three scriptural words that are most frequently 
 employed to express the special effect of Christianity 
 all convey the meaning that the soul is somehow, in 
 every case, if left to itself, out of its right line of life, on 
 a wrong course, looking the wrong way. These are 
 Redemption, Salvation, Reconciliation. Redemption ; 
 but why redeemed, except the soul has involved itself 
 so helplessly in a false state, that this divine force must 
 be interposed for its rescue ? Salvation ; but saved 
 from what, if not from a peril and a misery incurred by 
 a wicked will, and escaped only by the new principle of 
 faith that comes of Christ ? Reconciliation ; but why 
 reconciled, except there has been alienation ; and where 
 the Father of goodness on the one side and his child on 
 the other are estranged, where is it possible the occasion 
 of alienation should be but in some perversity of the 
 child ? In the same way, the words conversion, renew 
 al, regeneration, repentance, words made familiar as 
 the household speech of the church, unless we utterly 
 discharge them of all honest meaning, impress it upon 
 us that every one of us is out of his innocent subjection 
 to God s will, sinning. 
 
 The whole machinery of heathen worship has been 
 a device for ending man s controversy with his Ma 
 ker. Under Christianity, the same idea only takes a 
 more refined shape and a higher sanction. The heart 
 comes to Christ because it carries its burden of sin to 
 
 8* 
 
90 THE FEELING AND CRY OF STN*. 
 
 every other system, philosophy, and teacher, only to 
 bring- it back heavier and more galling than before. 
 
 The world over, in its serious hours the heart longs, 
 sighs, groans, and travails with sorrows that cannot be 
 uttered, to be delivered from the bondage of sin and 
 death. The Scripture has no other doctrine of the 
 matter, on any of its pages ; and scarcely one page 
 where this is not. Read the burning confessions of the 
 fifty-first Psalm, and of many another before and after it, 
 where the fire of remorse, which is only the lurid re 
 flection of sin, almost visibly scorches the Psalmist s 
 heart ; read the terrible descriptions of that state of man 
 without his Redeemer written by Paul to the Romans ; 
 or the tragic picture of Paul s own fearful struggles 
 with the law of his members ; or the awful prophecies 
 of a society forgetting its Lord, given in Jude. Re 
 call the narratives of depravity in Scripture history, and 
 the denunciations upon it by prophets, and the thrilling 
 exhortations against it by apostles. Remember that 
 the Bible begins with the first inroad of sin, and finishes 
 with warnings of its punishments. Above all, remember 
 that the first word of the new dispensation was 4; Re 
 pent," and its consummation was the cross built on 
 Calvary to assure forgiveness to " repentance toward 
 God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ ; " and you 
 will hardly need to multiply these convincing tokens 
 that all the ministrations of our religion to the human 
 soul presuppose that we all have sinned, are sinners 
 still. If any of you are disposed to complain that there 
 is too much preaching against sin, apply your criticism 
 to the Bible. The Christ whom we preach came to be 
 a Saviour from sin, did he not ? How much better to 
 think and feel thoroughly what sin is now, than when 
 
THE FEELING AXD CEY OF SIX. 91 
 
 the i: space for repentance " is exchanged for the deter 
 minations of the judgment ! 
 
 Suppose, then, any one of us to be conscious that 
 he ought to hare a more living sense of his evils, 
 assured that by that way only can he hope to come 
 to a strong and pure religious character, how is that 
 penitential frame to be produced ? 
 
 It must be by setting up a contrast : a contrast either 
 between our own character and the character of God, 
 or between our character as it is, and as it should be 
 under the perfect Christian rule of duty and the in 
 spiration of Christian faith. 
 
 To the character of God as expressed to us primarily 
 in revelation, and less directly in nature and history, 
 we ascribe the perfection of holiness. But this sentence 
 is only a repetition of words ; and what we want is to 
 get beyond this stale formality. TTe are to quicken 
 in ourselves the true, right feeling of the publican, by 
 reviving and strengthening, in every possible way. the 
 impression of our Father s goodness. Could we only 
 once break through this deadening influence of regu 
 larity, where the very love of God is hidden in its 
 own constancy ; could we see and feel that we are 
 indeed utterly, and always, and afresh every instant, 
 at our Maker s disposal and dependent on his will, 
 every fibre of the body kept in place by his care, and 
 every breath inspired by him, and the whole spirit sub 
 ject and amenable to him ; could we then begin to con 
 sider his patience and recount his gifts, his patience 
 with us from the cradle, and with the race from Eden, 
 his gifts, as many as the organs, inlets, faculties, 
 tissues, powers, of all our complex being multiplied 
 by all the seconds of our life ; could we then rise from 
 
92 
 
 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 
 
 this to some worthy conception of his own Infinite Life, 
 boundless, fathomless, endless, yet all intensest life, 
 the majesty, the might, the dominion, the purity, the 
 pity, the wisdom, the love ; God forbearing with all 
 this impious and disgusting folly, God enduring all this 
 abhorrent selfishness, God upholding all these unprofit 
 able and unthankful creatures, if so be that possibly 
 something may yet be recovered of their self-destruc 
 tion, and the well-beloved Son dying for that ; and 
 could we at last put in contrast with Him our lives, 
 so mean, so weak, so bad, then should we not be 
 ready to exclaim, with something more than a mere 
 recitation of the memory, " Lord ! what is man that 
 thou art mindful of him ? God be merciful to me a 
 sinner ! " 
 
 Turn to the Scriptures. Another line of contrast is 
 presented in the express standard of character set be 
 fore us there. You take any of those great summa 
 ries of obligation, which are gathered up here and 
 there in the Scriptures like waymarks to the genera 
 tions, easiest for the mind to hold, and oftenest re 
 peated : let it be the ten Hebrew commands, interpreting 
 them not only in the letter but the spirit, from that 
 first and awful one, its rigor not superannuated by 
 three thousand years, its vitality not outlawed because 
 we have moved from the neighborhood of the Canaan- 
 ites and our heathenism has changed its name and its 
 garments, which declares, " Thou shalt have no other 
 gods before me," prohibiting all our idols, self, friends, 
 family, fame, property, down to that last of the ten, 
 which cuts so closely into our daily and hidden habits 
 when it says, " Thou shalt not covet anything that is 
 thy neighbor s." Or let it be the preacher s short but 
 
THE FEELING AND CRY OP SIN. 93 
 
 difficult compendium, " the conclusion of the whole 
 matter," "Fear God, and keep his commandments, 
 for this is the whole duty of man." Or let it be the 
 prophet s persuasive generalization, putting it as so rea 
 sonable, but still keeping it so far beyond us, " What 
 doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, 
 love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God " ? Or observe 
 the wonderful blending of simplicity and power in the Be 
 atitudes, pausing to think on what hearts, and what only, 
 each " blessing " can descend. Or let it be the Saviour s 
 double precept, more unattainable than all, "Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neigh 
 bor as thyself." Or listen to that grand and stirring 
 roll-call of the disciple s duties in Paul s twelfth chapter 
 to the Romans. Or, finally, ponder that plain, brief 
 definition of the practical James : " Pure religion, before 
 God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and 
 the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself un 
 spotted from the world ! " weighing well the meas 
 ure of that Christian cleanliness demanded in the latter 
 clause, "to keep himself unspotted from the world." 
 Let any of these or all of them be the statutes of the law 
 and the will of your God. Remember all are without 
 abatement, without exception, without qualifying clause, 
 or proviso, or partiality, or respect of persons, the unre- 
 pealable command of the righteous Ruler of all ages and 
 all worlds, not to be evaded, because he is Omniscient, 
 and not to be broken, because the good of all would then 
 be betrayed. And then, having these for the rule 
 and requirement, let us lay them down, syllable after 
 syllable, side by side, with our outer and inner life 
 for a week, or a day, and behold the contradiction. 
 
94 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 
 
 Place them beside the spiritual indifference and the 
 moral obliquities ; the earth-bound attachments and the 
 broken resolutions ; the obstinate self-will and the 
 swerving aspirations ; the irritable temper and the 
 inflated vanity ; the cunning calculations of self-ad 
 vancement and the impulsive fires of passion. Watch 
 the conversation of a single company, its direct or 
 insinuated slander, its envious or conceited judgments, 
 its delight in censure and in the discovery of weakness, 
 ill-disguised by moral protestations, its enormous pre 
 ponderance of blame, its excesses of supply to admi 
 ration or to appetite. Consider what a thing actual 
 full-toned justice would be in the transactions and 
 speech of society ; what a Christ-like mercy would do ; 
 and how the splendor of an absolutely spotless soul 
 would shine among us. Think what it must be to love 
 God with all the heart, and to walk humbly with him. 
 Reflect how full the world is of those precautions, safe 
 guards, defences, which argue, from experience, a con 
 stant expectation that men will do wrong, overreach and 
 deceive, if they can. Let all this work of individual com 
 parison be done honestly, fearlessly, faithfully, and with 
 a prayer that even He who seeth in secret may be satis 
 fied. And surely the argument will come to an end. 
 It will break into the publican s prayer, " God be merci 
 ful to me a sinner ! " 
 
 But let us not fail to take one step more. The actual 
 impression of human sin which the Scriptures give, which 
 the Saviour himself in this passage and elsewhere gives, 
 is not made by specifying particular detailed acts of 
 wrong, but by referring to the one great pervading sin 
 of an unbelieving, unrepenting, unconsecrated heart. 
 This is the fatal thing, the depravity that is unto 
 
THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 95 
 
 death. You notice, and it seems to me a very striking 
 fact, that while the Pharisee enumerates his merits, 
 what he thinks his positive and negative virtues, his 
 abstinences and proprieties and almsgivings, the Publi 
 can does not pretend to enumerate his offences. Now, 
 goodness that can be measured and counted off is not 
 enough. Goodness is a principle, and that is measure 
 less. Christ would show this publican as knowing that 
 down underneath all particular sins there lies the one 
 worse sin of a wrong soul, from which all the little ones 
 spring and take their energy of mischief, the parent-sin 
 of Satanic self-love that brings the whole vile progeny 
 forth. It is not so much sins as sin that we have to 
 confess and deplore. Some acts of evil will ever remain 
 to be renounced. But the state of sin, nothing but 
 a Christian renewal or a regeneration from the Spirit of 
 God in the cross of Christ will change that. A mere 
 indifference to the right, a mere imfilial forgetfulness of 
 God, the mere coldness of disregard to Christ s com 
 passion, makes up that godless condition. The Fath 
 er asks a filial spirit in his child ; the Saviour asks a 
 disciple s affection. We cannot veil that deep gulf 
 which stretches always between him that serveth God 
 and him that serveth him not with any brilliant mist 
 of kindly instincts or graceful accomplishments. This 
 is life eternal, to know thec and thy Christ ! " Thou 
 shalt love thy God." 
 
 My friends, we all shrink from the Pharisaic reputa-^ 
 tion. Yet this must be true ; that if any of us are 
 not penitent with the publican, the prodigal, the woman 
 at the Redeemer s feet; if any of us are going on with 
 habitual self-satisfaction, with no burning uneasiness, 
 no bitter accusations, no sad shame within ; if the days 
 
96 THE FEELING AND CRY OF SIN. 
 
 pass over us and bring no feeling with them that we 
 are far from where we ought to be and might be, and 
 far from what our Saviour has come to make us to be ; 
 if we have not frequent hours of sorrowful self-scrutiny ; 
 no solitary struggles with ourselves, and none of that 
 secret pleading on our . knees for forgiveness which is 
 the only way any holy soul ever found to the kingdom 
 of God, we may be sure that, though we should lack 
 the effrontery to stand up and repeat the very inso 
 lence of the Pharisee, yet we are with him in spirit, 
 and shall go down to our houses to-day no more justified 
 than he. 
 
 Finally, recall the truth, written in those common 
 expectations of mankind which Paul well describes as 
 a "certain fearful looking for of judgment" almost as 
 clearly as in the volume of the Book, that an irre 
 sistible power, mightier than any of our passions, and 
 penetrating below our delusions, will dispel every 
 mistake, bring all that is dark to light, and make every 
 soul stand face to face with its sins. What wisdom 
 in us to anticipate these disclosures and their retribu 
 tion ! How reasonable that, seizing on all helps to 
 wards reckoning the departures of our transgression, 
 we should see what is the sin that most easily besets 
 us! 
 
 No generalities here can adequately unveil our pri 
 vate hearts. Pursue this salutary search, therefore, in 
 the secrecy of your several retirements. Dismiss all 
 concealments ; we may well dismiss them before the 
 God who sees beneath them. Reject those too nattering 
 constructions which pride and self-excuse are always 
 so ready to suggest, to quiet the disturbances of con 
 science. Give penitence free way, for it cleanses while 
 
 
THE FEELING AND CEY OF SIN. 97 
 
 it burns. Rebuke the whisper that says, " Soul, take 
 thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." Plunge down 
 into the darkest corners, not only among sins of the 
 tongue and the street, of society and business, of the house 
 and the hand, of the market and the Church, but among 
 sins of forbidden desires, of subtle indulgence, of the 
 temper and the imagination, sins that ally them 
 selves, if they can, with noble impulses and warm affec 
 tions, with the intellect and with honor. This will be 
 a worthy sacrifice, an acceptable lenten service, such 
 a fast as God hath chosen. And it will be a new wonder, 
 if, at the end of that solemn scrutiny, we do not all im 
 plore, with no need of exhortation from each other, 
 " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " 
 
 In the Castle of Despair, Christian found the key of 
 promise in his bosom. And this is the promise : " If 
 we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive 
 us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous 
 ness." " Who hath delivered us from the power of 
 darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of 
 his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through 
 his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 THE ECONOMY OF EENEWAL. 
 
 ARISE YE, AND DEPART ; FOR THIS IS NOT YOUR REST. Micah ii. 10. 
 
 THERE is no incongruity between the use of this solemn 
 command as the Prophet wrote it, and the use to be 
 made of it here. The arising and the departure, as 
 the passage stands, referred to a visible residence ; there 
 was to be a literal change of place. But even there 
 the act was required as part of a religious discipline, 
 and for a divine purpose. The national condition that 
 made such a migration necessary was one incident in 
 a peculiar providential history. The outward removal 
 was the result of an inward state, a state of moral 
 deterioration and danger. Domestic comfort must be 
 abandoned for the sake of the spiritual safety, purity, 
 and progress, of a corrupt, imperilled people. The call 
 is made in the name and by the Spirit of the Lord God. 
 In all these respects, the original bearing of the lan 
 guage agrees with the present application of it. There 
 is no violence in transferring it from a Hebrew to a 
 Christian age. The need that a self-absorbed heart 
 should bestir itself and arise, should go forth and 
 follow God s call, should be moulded into a new form 
 and born into a new life, through separation, travail, 
 
THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL. 99 
 
 sacrifice, is as independent of the differences of time 
 and country as any attribute of humanity. 
 
 Indeed, this permanence of the essential realities of 
 life through all social changes, wherever a human soul 
 lives, sins, and suffers, furnishes the starting-point in 
 this subject. The Maker of both man and the Gospel, 
 fitting the one for the other, has laid a preparation in 
 the constitution and the experience of every one of our 
 hearts for all the great promises, ministries, and beliefs, 
 of the Word. And so, if we make a reverential ex 
 amination of the actual proceeding of human life, in 
 its deeper currents, we shall find there a universal need, 
 if not always a believing cry, for the power and the 
 peace that come of the Christian change. Unless it is 
 the emptiest of sentimental exclamations, the peniten 
 tial prayer, " God be merciful to me a sinner," will be 
 followed by an arising and departing, with new-born 
 affections, energies that are not of the flesh but the 
 Spirit, from the old and far country, for the Father s 
 house. 
 
 First of all, the true growth of every really progres 
 sive character is made through a succession of decided 
 departures out of positions, habits, estates of thought 
 and feeling, which have once become familiar, into 
 untried territories. Some of these points of transition 
 belong to the common order of our lives. There is 
 the passage from the comparatively irresponsible and 
 dependent period of early childhood into the greater 
 self-determination of youth, a spot where the holy 
 hand of our religion is as much wanted, to help the 
 tempted heart through the sudden rush of responsi 
 bility, and through the strange sense of freedom, and 
 through the restless irritation of ill-adjusted duty and 
 
100 THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. 
 
 privilege, a spot where the tranquil influence of a 
 spirit of faith in God is as manifest a blessing, as 
 at any later stage in the whole way. "Within the safe 
 enclosures of a guarded external innocence the moral 
 purposes will not stay any longer. They would not 
 be fulfilling the Creator s design, if they did. That is 
 not their rest ; they must arise and depart. And gen 
 erally, at the moment, the young mind is eager enough 
 to go ; the leave-taking from the former securities is 
 light-hearted and with few regrets. It is only they 
 that look on, from places further along, who discover, 
 underneath the merriment, the elements of pain and 
 tragedy already at work. Youth must see its visions, 
 and dream its dreams, and taste its awful liberty. 
 The hour for that comes. Well and happy for it, blessed 
 for it, if they are only visions of purity and honor, 
 dreams of holier and nobler attainments, a liberty never 
 to be sunk into the license of corruption, and by that 
 way into the bondage of iniquity ! Yet already there 
 is judgment. The Past begins to bear its fruit. If 
 father and mother have been heedless, passionate, 
 worldly, or have taught one thing with their lips at 
 the child s bedside now and then, and another with 
 their life every day, no remonstrance afterward can re 
 trieve that fault. Parental fear and love can then only 
 send out their ineffectual entreaties after the receding 
 and scarcely listening adventurer. Misdirected and 
 robbed, where it ought to have been fortified and en 
 riched, the young soul must nevertheless arise and de 
 part. Or, if, on the other hand, the training has been 
 Christian so far, still the old shelter, however gracious, 
 would presently prove a prison-house. God must be 
 served by an individual will. He bids each go, find his 
 
THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. 101 
 
 vineyard, bear his burden. Moral childhood is not 
 our rest. 
 
 Again, later, there is a transition from youth into 
 maturity. The dream is broken. That graceful, airy 
 tent, which the uncommitted thought reared for itself 
 at will, is dissolved. A more real habitation, of severer 
 shape, supplants it. Or, rather, it is now a field of out 
 door service. To remain at the less arduous post would 
 be at least, for more timid or indolent natures the 
 pleasanter way ; to have occupations laid out, instead 
 of laying them out, under the great Taskmaster s eye, 
 ourselves; to have our comforts provided and our 
 costs paid, with little strain of forecast and self-denial ; 
 to be receivers and observers rather than laborers and 
 stewards ; all this might suit the sluggish and self- 
 indulgent. But it is not our Maker s plan. Chilly 
 as the future looks, the least enterprising must go to 
 meet it. Hedged up and steep as the path lies, we 
 must push into it, and clear it, and conquer it, step 
 by step. And this, not because of any blind force of 
 fate, or any drudging necessity of a mere worldly sub 
 sistence, but because it is the sacred calling where 
 with our God calls us. The Eternal Spirit is very 
 near. It is a miserable stupidity and ingratitude if 
 we fail to see that all this change is of Him, and for 
 Him, and must be religiously turned to his glory. That 
 result the honors and applauses of men will avail noth 
 ing to secure. The young shepherd, David, going forth 
 from his pastoral retirement, is found presently clad in 
 the mantle of a king. But what then ? Will the king 
 be David the debauchee, with murder in his lustful 
 heart; or David aspiring to build a temple to Je 
 hovah? If the first, then the purple and the crown 
 
102 THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. 
 
 are no consolation in that hour of retributive agony 
 which wrings from him the sobs and groans and bitter 
 repentances of the Fifty-first Psalm. 
 
 In some vague, indefinite way, this decree of de 
 parture makes itself felt in all thoughtful souls. How 
 many a young man, to whom the guilty resort is just 
 as hospitable as to the rest, turns away with a sad face 
 from the shows and the gayeties, because the shadow 
 of a more earnest and holy reality has fallen upon him ! 
 You say he seems melancholy, and needs to have his 
 spirits cheered; and you think the plummet of your 
 Epicurean philosophy has sounded him. But he knows 
 the Prodigal s country and the charmer s voice as well 
 as you do. The old enchanters call, but he does not 
 hear them. The light laugh rings, but if there is shame 
 in it he does not follow it. That is not his rest. The 
 spell of a deeper fascination holds him; the drawing 
 of a mightier attraction leads him. The vulgar specta 
 cle may shine in the streets, with music and dancing ; 
 but close by, in the temple, the sages are sitting, wis 
 dom speaks, the veil before the ineffable and ever 
 lasting glory is lifted. He will stand and look and 
 listen there. He will ask questions of Revelation and 
 Eternity. Almost he can say, with that divine Child 
 of twelve years old at Jerusalem, " Wist ye not that 
 I must be about my Father s business ? " 
 
 Beyond these earlier and successive departures, from 
 one period of our age to another, made necessary by 
 the inevitable movement of time, there are a great 
 variety of other changes, having the same general pur 
 pose, and illustrating the same plan of God. With a 
 dealing which our reluctance and disobedience some 
 times make sharp and dreadful, now in warning and 
 
THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL. 103 
 
 now in promise, but always tender, always affectionate, 
 because always the dealing of our Father, they all 
 invite us one way. They repeat, What doth the Lord 
 thy God require of thee, amidst all this fluctuation 
 and uncertainty, but to follow the holy commandment ? 
 They bid us arise and depart, because we have here no 
 continuing city, that we may seek one to come. 
 
 Sometimes this dissolution of our former order of life 
 is made unavoidable by conditions beyond our control. 
 Sometimes it is only urged upon us by our sense of 
 duty, and we make it rather than be openly false to God, 
 or faithless to man, or traitors to our better selves. 
 Sometimes it is attended by an outward alteration of 
 fortune or dwelling-place, which only gives emphasis 
 to the spiritual lesson. Sometimes it is wholly a shift 
 ing of the internal proportions and scenery of our being, 
 and we have to find out where the Spirit would have 
 us go only by the light he has set in conscience and 
 in his Word. In one way or another, we have to learn 
 respecting stage after stage, where we had thought to 
 find a permanent repose, and to be able to lay aside 
 our vigilance, dismiss our anxiety, relax our effort, 
 and lie down to be happy, that instead of that we 
 must bestir ourselves once more, leave the dear de 
 lights behind us, arise and depart, for our rest is not 
 yet. 
 
 So, for example, a particular line of employment is 
 found to have furnished all of opportunity, or stimulus, 
 or trial, that the great Former of our characters in 
 tended, and it is broken off. A particular place of 
 residence has exhausted all its helps and ministries 
 upon us, and we must take up the little parcels that we 
 call our goods, and go to be schooled in some new neigh- 
 
104 THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. 
 
 borhood. A particular set of acquaintances, or kind 
 of business, is found to be secretly undermining our 
 principles, leading us to measure truth by favor, flat 
 tering our pride, or confirming our prejudices, or soften 
 ing our courage in duty, or circumscribing our sym 
 pathies and judgments by the petty notions of a class 
 and its fashions ; and then we have to be taken off, 
 and cast upon simpler, perhaps rougher, but more whole 
 some and righteous relationships. Old estates are sold 
 and divided. Old resorts are cut off. Old houses are 
 taken down. Our parents die, and the whole domestic 
 framework, of which their venerable persons were the 
 centre, crumbles to pieces over their graves. Perhaps 
 in the close circle of our own household affections 
 these affections are tempting us ; our human love grows 
 selfish and ungodly ; kindred are made idols ; our own 
 flesh and blood stand between us and heaven, casting 
 shadows and not light ; wrong is transformed into an 
 angel, and is only a more beguiling wrong. And there 
 fore, in that mystery of bereavement which is often 
 "past our finding out" only because we will not be 
 still and look where the Almighty points, these circles 
 are sundered : the little graves or the longer ones are 
 opened and filled, and the windows are darkened, and 
 the mourners go about the streets. The family flower 
 fadeth. The strong faint, and the beautiful wither. 
 Suddenly, " our tents are spoiled," and " our curtains 
 in a moment." One by one we arise and depart, for 
 this is not our rest. 
 
 In other cases, with less visible signals, but not less 
 effectually, we are moved out of our moral and mental 
 habitations. So long as we are in them, nothing seems 
 more fixed than our opinions, tastes, and estimates. 
 
THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL. 105 
 
 But they may become too fixed. Opinion hardens into 
 bigotry. Tastes grow fastidious and luxurious. Esti 
 mates of men and things stiffen into prejudices. And 
 hence, by one process or another, we are mercifully 
 led to give many of them up, or modify them. Events 
 are ordered to that end. By convictions within that 
 we cannot resist if we remain honest with God, or by 
 forces without that we cannot resist if we remain honest 
 with men, we are pushed over the boundaries of party, 
 or sect, or a scheme of thought to which all our fibres 
 were fastened. It is hard loosening them. It makes 
 the sensibilities bleed, and the affections ache. But 
 our progress, our piety, nay, our integrity, may depend 
 upon it, and then it is an inexorable master that says, 
 " Arise, and depart." Rest is an inferior considera 
 tion. There are vices of the intellect, and vices of 
 social conformity, and vices of moral indolence, as well 
 as vices of appetite ; and they all require a rigorous 
 correction. In this migratory state, we are meant to 
 be kept moving. Every moral climate here is more 
 or less tainted, and grows pestilential if we linger in 
 it too long. It is just as the text says : " This is not 
 your rest ; because it is polluted, it shall destroy you 
 with a sore destruction." Pilgrims and foreigners, it 
 is only in a heavenlier air that we are to be accli 
 mated, and abide. The moment we come to consider 
 our scheme of living satisfactory, our schedule of per 
 formances perfect, some unexpected revolution breaks 
 in like a whirlwind to disturb this complacency, and 
 set us into larger, perhaps plainer rooms, where we 
 can drink in more light, and gain a deeper wisdom, 
 if we will. If we have been living by the average 
 morality, we must be led out where we can catch sight 
 
106 THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. 
 
 of a loftier and more absolute standard. If we have been 
 content with artificial rules, we must learn to walk by 
 faith. If we have counted it enough to do as others 
 do, or to escape the reproach of law and of public 
 opinion, we must look with more searching and hum 
 ble eyes to the original law and will of God. Or, if 
 we have taken our own instincts or reasonings for our 
 religion, then the cross must shine out in the sky 
 where we worship, and we must kneel and be peni 
 tent and confess at the foot of it, and henceforth " con 
 quer" both self and the world "by that." 
 
 Secondly, these turns of the inner life will often be 
 painful, demanding something more than a natural 
 or stoic courage. This is implied in the language. We 
 imagine ourselves in a state of rest. It may be sinful. 
 It may be false and foolish. But use has made it easy. 
 Familiarity has deadened conscience, or stifled its pro 
 test. The senses spread their couch, and deck it, and 
 make it fragrant, and think to lie luxuriously upon 
 it. Avarice builds greater barns to bestow its fruits 
 and its goods, and says, " Soul, take thine ease." Con 
 ceit desires no improvement. Religious indifference 
 wishes only to be let alone. But no ! Pain comes. The 
 insensible heart must be startled. The earthly and the 
 divine fight together within us, and we suffer under the 
 conflict. Fearful controversies as of our will against 
 the God of Right, as of ourselves against ourselves 
 must vex the patience, and agitate the soul. As the 
 mind goes up to vow an independent allegiance to the 
 Spirit of the Lord, many seductive solicitations are plied 
 to quiet it back into its ignoble rest again. The former 
 habits, taking up the terms of honor, say, " Do not leave 
 us ; never break the old friendship." Degrading asso- 
 
THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. 107 
 
 elates say, " Do not set yourselves up to be better than 
 your equals ; the average virtue is virtuous enough ; 
 anything but pretension and hypocrisy ! " and at that 
 shallow sophistry false modesty is terrified. Never 
 theless, the secret soul knows the voice of the Tempter 
 knows the voice of its Lord : " Arise, depart ! " 
 
 Comfort says, " Stay where you are ; build here on 
 the plain. "Why try the unknown? Why tempt the 
 dangers of the steeps ? Here is much goods for many 
 years ; eat, drink, and be merry." But the patient 
 mountain stands there, a rough stairway from the plain 
 to the sky, and, with all its cliffs and thorns, it offers a 
 more irresistible invitation. Arise ! Duty lies there, 
 and only pleasure here. 
 
 Sometimes, as many of you need not be told by me 
 or by anybody, this separation from familiar evil is a 
 struggle as between life and death, shaking the whole 
 soul, and tearing its shrinking quick in torture. It 
 is like the sword that pierceth to the dividing asunder 
 of the joints and marrow. And yet, such is the power 
 of the conviction of the spirit of truth when humility 
 has once begun its holy and honest work within us, 
 how many even go out to meet that saving sorrow! 
 Indeed, when the heart has slept too long in the lap 
 of indulgence, there often creeps upon it, I believe, 
 an undefined feeling that before long this rest must 
 be ended: the foreshadow of some darker angel cast 
 across the path. And if the ear of our sympathy were 
 quicker and finer than it is, we should doubtless often 
 overhear, in the tones that breathe around us, the sad 
 ness and the prayer of an unsatisfied . spirit striving 
 against the evil in it ! Blessed is the mind that springs 
 with alacrity and thanksgiving to its better ministry ! 
 
108 THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL. 
 
 For, thirdly, all true souls, really touched with the 
 Spirit, and consecrated to the fellowship of Christian 
 obedience, will be ready for this sacrifice. Not all 
 equally ready. The bonds of past practice and attach 
 ment hang unequal weights about our necks. But 
 what awakened soul will not willingly be drifted away 
 from the accustomed repose, if it is thereby brought 
 nearer to the righteousness and charity of Christ? 
 This, in fact, is the test of the sincerity of faith : the 
 willingness to give up all that has been precious but 
 not holy, and launch out upon the future, trusting 
 only to the Unseen Hand, like the Patriarch, of 
 whom that beautiful thing is written, that when he 
 was called to go out into a place which he should 
 after receive, he obeyed, and went out, not knowing 
 whither he went, dwelling in the land of " promise," 
 and looking for a city which hath foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God. Great difficulties will 
 threaten every such obedient foot, the wilderness 
 before, the bondage to evil behind ; but God is mightier 
 than they, a pillar of fire for the night, and of bright 
 cloud by day : " Greater he that is for us than they 
 that are against us." Outside our private battle, soci 
 ety exposes gigantic wrongs to be redressed : but the 
 right which is to redress them is sure, and the pro 
 phetic ear of hope hears the sound of its footsteps from 
 afar. There are changed faces, disappointed compan 
 ions,- an angry class or denomination forsaken, sneers, 
 imputations, false charges, and criticisms, such feeble 
 weapons of the modern world s inquisitions as betray the 
 cowardice of persecution, without its positive creed or 
 its power. But these are not a terror to him who 
 hears the voice say, " Awake, arise, and Christ shall 
 give thee light ! " 
 
THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL. 109 
 
 So, through familiar analogies, we are led to see how 
 the sacred provision is made, in our fallen but still as 
 piring nature, for that one only radical and complete 
 transformation which changes the governing motive of 
 life, the "regeneration" of the Gospel. We catch 
 sight of a solemn and beautiful economy of spiritual 
 renewal. 
 
 It has been said that no period of our life becomes 
 quite intelligible and clear to us till we quit it for 
 the next : not childhood, till we have left it ; not youth, 
 till it has departed ; not life itself as a whole, till it 
 verges to its close. There is certainly truth here; 
 and there is a much larger and more sacred truth 
 connected with it. Retrospect is not all our outlook. 
 Our best wisdom is not gained from what is behind 
 us, but from what is above. The deficiencies of knowl 
 edge find at once a cause and a compensation in the 
 immeasurable certainties of faith. " I know," said the 
 Apostle, " in whom I have believed." Our great want 
 is to look up, with just that assurance. For that we 
 have to be moved and dislodged. For that we have 
 to change our state, our mind, our heart. As there 
 are arms to take the reluctant child up and carry him 
 to his good, so God lifts us along. We are born that 
 we may be born again. We live that we may have 
 life everlasting. 
 
 Once more, when the heart is really made new, and 
 is filled with all the holy life of its Lord, it matters 
 nothing what the outward place or scenery may be. 
 Then there is no restless thirst for novelty, no con 
 tempt or complaint of commonplace task-work. Then, 
 even in the new country, the old and familiar has to 
 be taken back. There is much in common between 
 10 
 
110 THE ECONOMY OF RENEWAL. 
 
 the forms of the old life and the forms of the new. The 
 same people have to be met, and served, and endured. 
 The same body has to be fed, clothed, exercised, kept 
 under. The same crosses of temper, self-disgust, baffled 
 aspiration, have to be borne. No emigration transports 
 us out of the reach of mortal annoyance and infirmity. 
 If the old duties look small, the old labors irksome, 
 and the old places incapable of religious grandeur, it 
 is probably a sign that the new heart is not really in 
 us, but only some specious and vain imagination in 
 stead. It is rest we are seeking, then and that is 
 not for us here. We are breaking from Providence. 
 After his high communion in the temple, Jesus, the Lord 
 of souls, went back to Nazareth, content with the com 
 panionships of his childhood for eighteen years more, 
 cheerful with a village reputation, and subject to Joseph 
 and Mary. 
 
 To this, then, we are brought, that there is one 
 migration of the soul more complete and adventurous 
 than all besides : that which takes it over from every 
 kind of self-direction into a pure self-renunciation to 
 the Spirit of God; one " going forth" more decisive 
 and sublime than all journeys or discoveries from 
 the miserable effort to satisfy ourselves into the liberty 
 of the sons of God ; one central and all-transforming 
 change that which refashions us, by a new principle 
 of life, from the likeness of sinful men into the like 
 ness of God s Son. All other transitions touch us at 
 certain points or parts of our nature : this transfuses 
 another spirit through the whole ; old things pass away, 
 because the old evil is gone ; and all things are new. 
 
 Here enters the regenerate soul upon a new coun 
 try, which, after all, turns out to be its native land. 
 
THE ECONOMY OP RENEWAL. Ill 
 
 Coming to himself, arising and going to his Father 
 from his famine, the Prodigal finds himself at home 
 a home now such as it never was before. Except ye 
 be converted and become as little children, ye cannot 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. But childlikeness 
 is not childishness. If we try to keep the irresponsible- 
 ness of childhood, its innocence is gone. That would 
 be only staying in our shelter of careless impulse and 
 unconsecrated custom, till the shelter is a "sore de 
 struction." The man that refuses to renounce him 
 self for Christ on the plea that he stays as he was made, 
 mistakes the apathy of an underling for the freedom 
 of God s child. He does not stay as he was made ; for 
 he was made to be a disciple, growing in goodness, 
 and renewed day by day. If he is not that, day by 
 day his depravity is debasing him. " Seekest thou the 
 highest and greatest," says Schiller, " the plants can 
 teach it to thee. What they are involuntarily, that 
 be thou voluntarily ; " which is well enough for poetry. 
 But what if the plant should find itself, some morning, 
 with a twisted stalk, bruised stem, blighted leaves, 
 and a disordered sap running in all its veins? Man 
 can never take his Gospel from the flowers. If he 
 gives up to the nature in him, he is a great deal worse 
 than their deadliest poison. If by the grace given in 
 Christ, and welcomed by holy faith, he is born again 
 and brings his earthly nature under, by so much is 
 he nobler than all their beauty. Immortal, and made 
 alive with the very life of God, he can say, in the 
 grandeur of his humility, "It is no more I that live, 
 but Christ liveth in me." 
 
 And now, having thus traced the steps of this great 
 truth, of a necessary change in character from the 
 
112 THE ECONOMY OP EENEWAL. 
 
 sluggish, selfish, sinning state, till Christ is formed 
 there, and having done it rather in the language and 
 by the method of common discourse, it only remains 
 to remind you if it has not occurred to more than 
 one of you already that for all this doctrine, and 
 more than we have been able to convey, there is a 
 statement far more strong and complete, more clear 
 and convincing, of simpler speech and sublimer author 
 ity, in the Gospel of the New Testament. There you 
 find again and again, repeated in as many forms as 
 the heart and customs of men could need it, from the 
 lips of the Redeemer and his first disciples, that truth 
 of which all this train of remark has been but a 
 feeble echo, or exposition : " Except a man be born 
 again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." There 
 you find that to " arise " there must be repentance 
 toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ since 
 " it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to do." 
 There you find that Lord to whom, with Peter, when 
 you have arisen you must go, because he alone has the 
 words and the gift of eternal life. There you see re 
 vealed what is to be departed from, the " evil heart 
 of unbelief," " the old man and his deeds," " corrupt 
 according to the deceitful lusts." And there you behold 
 the " rest " that is not here, but remaining " for the 
 people of God," the peace that is given not as the 
 world gives. 
 
 And then all that is earthly can be freely sacrificed 
 for this life divine. When we go out from one resting- 
 place after another, it may feel at first as if it were an 
 exile from all joy. But as the old roof drops away, 
 the Almighty arms will close us round and lo ! an 
 other house, not built with hands, begins already to 
 
THE ECONOMY OP EENEWAL. 113 
 
 reveal its spiritual symmetry, its fairer form and eter 
 nal strength, around us. Though father or mother 
 forsake us, the Lord will take us up. If you are dis 
 heartened at your trivial fruits and slow advances, 
 you will remember that even the great Saints and 
 Prophets who have done most have been conscious of 
 leaving the vast work of good unfinished, dying, one 
 after another, "without the sight" of their desired 
 achievement, still declaring that " they seek a coun 
 try." Then our own death itself is no more terrible. 
 We cease gazing backward to the Eden behind, but 
 look steadily to the heaven above. We lose sight of 
 the earthly gardens of ease and pleasure from which 
 our infirmity expelled us, in expecting the immortality 
 to which we are called. Forgetting the things that are 
 behind, we reach forth to those that are before, willing 
 to arise and depart, that we may be found risen in 
 deed into newness of life. 
 
 10* 
 
SEEMON VII. 
 
 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 CONVERSION. Acts XV. 3. 
 
 word is now separated from its connections, 
 because it better serves the use I intend to make of 
 it standing alone than with any additions. Exclud 
 ing every other matter, I wish, with the help of your 
 Mft"** 1 , to inquire what is the Christian doctrine 
 of the soul s " conversion/ The Christian doctrine : 
 let us give emphasis to the word Christian. For, if 
 we were to enter on this inquiry through the forms 
 of human opinion upon it, following the method of 
 speculations, criticising all the theories and 
 that men s philosophies and fancies have in- 
 and fought about, we should be quite sure 
 to hare a very long, a very dull, and a very unprofitable 
 ! . But if, on the other hand, we could only 
 
 catch fiie truth as it comes fresh, direct, and radiant, 
 out of fiie heart of the Xew Testament, we should be 
 sure of something dor, simple, attractive, and of un 
 speakable fraciiMi ralue. 
 
 You wfll hardly need to be persuaded that Christ 
 liMiialf by las own lips and through his Apostles, tells 
 precisely what i to be believed about conve: 
 
 
: 
 
116 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 which makes character, this conversion is the real one, 
 
 the primary, absolute, essential renewing. So that, 
 state the Saviour s benign errand on earth in whatever 
 language you will, you find that turning, changing-, 
 making over, was his central purpose ; and that is 
 literally conversion. You may trace this idea through 
 all his parables and discourses. It was to clear a way 
 into men s minds for the entrance of this renewing 
 power that he astonished them with miracles and 
 warned them with prophecies. When he cured so many 
 kinds of maladies, he pointed inward to the sick heart, 
 and said his chief design was to heal the disorder there, 
 
 conversion. When he raised the dead, he showed by 
 that physical sign that the soul must be raised up to 
 a new life, out of the death of trespasses and sins, con 
 version. When he cast out demons, he signified that 
 in all our breasts are the possessing devils of self- 
 love, avarice, lust, vanity, jealousy, anger, which 
 must be cast out before we can be his disciples ; con 
 version, again. Some of his last words on the cross 
 were a recognition of a malefactor s conversion, and 
 a blessing upon it. After his resurrection, on his walk 
 to Emmaus, he sought to convert the slow-hearted 
 and foolish men he talked with. At his ascension to 
 the right hand of the Father, where he was before, he 
 charged his disciples to go forth and convert the people, 
 founding a church to be composed of converted souls. 
 Still, we are taught, he liveth to make intercessions, 
 and to be an advocate for the world s conversion. The 
 Apostles di(fr as they were bid ; and if you read their 
 history and letters with simplicity, you will see that 
 the burden of their preaching also, like their Master s, 
 was, " Repent and be converted." Christianity has not 
 
NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 117 
 
 renounced its character, to this day. It still finds men 
 needing to be changed, from bad to good, from self-will 
 to devout submission, from unbelief to faith, from world- 
 liness to holiness, from petulance and intemperance 
 to a principled and sweet self-control, from gain to 
 God; and so it still has to preach a new character, 
 a changed heart, a different life. And precisely that 
 is conversion. 
 
 Much has been done to confuse and perplex the sub 
 ject by certain technical terms, which have come to 
 be invested with artificial associations. I take four 
 of these words, and suggest that each of them, after 
 stripping off the human accretions, signifies something 
 plain, evangelical, and vital to the matter; and that, 
 in fact, by combining their significations, we get a 
 complete view of this great spiritual necessity. These 
 four words are Repentance, Reformation, Regenera 
 tion, Conversion. 
 
 The first, Repentance, taken as a translation of the 
 compound Greek word used in the New Testament to 
 express the same thing, points to an internal alteration, 
 or a thinking differently from some former way of think 
 ing. The modern word seems also to introduce a refer 
 ence to pain. It means a changed mind, an altered rul 
 ing purpose, a new way of looking at things. Used as it 
 is here, it means, of course, a new way of looking at 
 the deepest and greatest thing, the central thing, the 
 object of life, or our relation to God. This change 
 of mind affects the whole judgment, intention, spirit, 
 of our being. It implies a turning about in the direc 
 tion, the drift, of a man s innermost life. If he re 
 garded the world, before repentance, as a place merely 
 to get the greatest amount of bodily pleasure in, after 
 
118 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 repentance he will regard it as the place to get the 
 greatest amount of goodness in ; he repents of his 
 sensuality. If he looked upon it before as only a shop 
 for making money, afterwards he will look upon it as 
 a mission-field for cultivating righteousness ; he re 
 pents of his sordidness. If he treated his position be 
 fore as only a dressing-room for ostentation, he will 
 afterwards treat it as a vineyard for honest and useful 
 labor; he will repent of his vanity and idleness. If 
 he esteemed men and women before only as beings 
 made to promote his comfort, and advance his in 
 terests, he will afterwards esteem them as beings that 
 he is to comfort, and whose interests he is to serve ; 
 he will repent of his cupidity and selfishness. And 
 so through the whole circle of virtues and vices. His 
 inmost purpose is changed. Literally, he thinks the 
 other way. 
 
 But, then, consider that most of us do not live ac 
 cording to mere momentary impulses, but according 
 to a pretty well established and uniform rule, or habit. 
 We may not be conscious of having adopted such a rule 
 at any particular time, but practically it is so. Even 
 the most impulsive people have a settled method; and 
 that is the simple but very dangerous method of acting 
 as they happen to feel inclined at the moment. If you 
 examine yourself carefully, or study human nature 
 wisely, you will also find, probably, that with every in 
 dividual -this settled rule is one of two, viz. self- 
 gratification, or religious principle. I know there are 
 some persons kind-hearted, sympathizing, helpful, by 
 their natures, who are far from loyal to religious prin 
 ciple. But these amiable instincts, being natural, and 
 not the result of discipline, or conscience, or faith, are 
 
NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 119 
 
 really easier to their possessors, and give them more 
 pleasure, than the opposite order of feelings would. 
 So that these persons do not form a third class, as 
 at first sight they seemed to ; they belong, after all, 
 to those whose main object is self-gratification. 
 
 We have, then, two great governing motives, two 
 states, by which mankind are broadly divided : that in 
 which men really try faithfully to live by a righteous 
 principle, rooted in God through Christ, on the one 
 hand ; and that in which they live carelessly, at the 
 dictate of some form of worldly policy or self-gratifica 
 tion, on the other. Hence it follows that to be changed 
 from the last of these to the first which is a change 
 of the state, or of the ruling affection is the real re 
 pentance. That is indeed a thing of the mind, the in 
 most nature of the man ; what constitutes character 
 what makes one a Christian, from having been not a 
 Christian. This is the Evangelical, the radical, com 
 prehensive repentance. 
 
 Furthermore, as this change of the mind, or of the 
 inner man, affects one s views of the past, as well as 
 of the present and future, it must of course be ac 
 companied with a palpable sorrow that the past life 
 has been what it has, and has not been what it so 
 plainly ought to be. In a true repentance, this sorrow 
 will be intense and bitter. A sincere and spiritual 
 man cannot but loathe himself for having done those 
 shameful, vicious, ungrateful things. Paul s vivid lan 
 guage of self-condemnation becomes actual and natu 
 ral to us. We are disgusted with our spiritual mean 
 ness. Looking up to Christ and his redeeming love, 
 we are smitten with the disgrace that we should so long 
 have been wounding and insulting him. Looking to 
 
120 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OP THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 the Holy Spirit, so infinitely tender and forbearing, 
 we feel that the first utterance of prayer must be a 
 confession of unworthiness, a cry for pardon and 
 deliverance from a deserved ruin. And if this grief 
 is not a mere dictate of selfish fear, or mercenary 
 calculation, but a spiritual penitence because the pure 
 God has been offended, and the crucified Christ wronged, 
 then it is that godly sorrow, needing not to be repented 
 of, or changed from, which purifies and brings peace 
 and pardon to the heart. This is repentance. 
 
 The second of the four words is Reformation. To take 
 the special force of this, you have only to separate it 
 into its elements re-formation. This takes us out 
 from the interior process, signified by repentance, into 
 the external part of the change. It is no less a change 
 than the other ; for whereas that gave a new spirit, this 
 gives a new form. That was thinking, feeling, purpos 
 ing, aiming another way : this is being formed another 
 way. That breathed into the life a new principle : this 
 clothes it in a different shape. That was a concern of the 
 heart the affections : this is a concern of conduct, or 
 action. Taking the comparison of a tree, repentance 
 would change the vital element, the nature of the circu 
 lating sap ; reformation would show a different kind, 
 of fruit, as no longer thistle-down or thorns, but figs 
 or grapes. 
 
 Reformation is just as essential as repentance. That 
 is, it is just as essential that you should, up to your 
 power, do the deeds of a good man or woman, as that 
 you should take the resolution to be a good man or 
 woman. If you are heartily sorry for misspent years, 
 you will make it your business to spend your future 
 years wisely. If you are called to renounce an un- 
 
NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 121 
 
 devout heart, the same Lord calls you to work with 
 holy hands. In whatever the past has been irreligious 
 and mean, the future must be sanctified and noble. 
 Despising your selfishness, you must go on to gener 
 osity. Renouncing a paltry ambition, you must serve 
 humanity and truth for their own immortal sake. The 
 invisible energy that makes the acorn vital is nothing, 
 unless you give it soil and air for growth and expan 
 sion into the fair proportions of the oak. 
 
 Thus, in fact, reformation becomes the test of re 
 pentance, proving its sincerity and its worth. We infer 
 that a miser is penitent, when we see him giving lib 
 erally to the poor, or to spreading the Gospel. A sen 
 sualist may profess to have repented; but we are not 
 sure, till we see him forsaking dissipation, and living 
 temperately and chastely. A vain, frivolous girl de 
 serves small confidence as repenting, till her whole 
 appearance reveals a constant life hidden with Christ 
 in God, and the dignity of a sober devotion to the 
 welfare of others. It is not to be believed that a sul 
 len or angry temper has been actually repented of, 
 till the countenance loses its unhallowed fire, and the 
 voice its asperity, and the words come gently, like his 
 who when he was reviled reviled not again. 
 
 Now, obviously, reformation must be a much slower 
 process than repentance. A thought may dart instantly 
 through the mind ; a feeling may flash across the heart 
 like the lightning across a cloud ; sorrow, the sincerest, 
 may wring the soul during a single breath. And in a 
 certain sense, the man may be thus changed, because the 
 heart is changed, and the face is turned. But that build 
 ing up of character which we call reformation, and which 
 gives to repentance its value, is the patient work of a life. 
 11 
 
122 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 After the beginning is a progress, patient, pains 
 taking, unceasing. All is not over with the rising of 
 the day-star, or the flush of dawn. The transport of 
 a new sensation is not the great object of a Christian 
 conversion. With some that will be more vivid than 
 with others partly on account of temperament, partly 
 on account of the sharpness of the contrast between the 
 old life and the new. With some it will be more sudden 
 than with others. There is nothing in nature to pre 
 vent its coming sometimes, as it did to Paul, and many 
 a strong and consistent believer since, like the instan 
 taneous throwing open of a close, dark room to the 
 sun. But there is everything to prevent its being 
 transient, i. e. if it is true, its vanishing like the 
 lightning, or fading in early clouds. It must endure ; 
 and not only endure, but grow. It must shine 
 brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. Perhaps 
 the first freshness will not be always felt in it. Nay, 
 as the day grows fierce and long, and the toil heavy, 
 the birds may stop singing, and there may be dust 
 and heat. Resolute souls, counting the cost, will not 
 faint, nor look back with longing to the morning. The 
 day s work is better than the morning s hope ; the 
 sheaves of harvest are better than the seed-time. If 
 the spiritual life has really sprung from its eternal 
 source, and knows its resting-place in God, we shall not 
 complain of the burden, nor forget the fountain, nor 
 withhold our hand till the evening. 
 
 The third term is Regeneration. This brings into 
 the doctrine a third element, as indispensable as either 
 of the other two. Repentance, as we have seen, is an 
 act of the individual himself, though an act that is 
 internal, affecting the dispositions, or spirit. Reforma- 
 
NAMES AND ELEMENTS OP THE GREAT CHANGE. 123 
 
 tion expresses an act without, or rather a series of 
 acts, yet one that is equally the work of human agency. 
 But regeneration is a term which shows us that in all 
 this change, including both repentance and reformation, 
 we are not acting of ourselves alone, but are moved, 
 are acted, by the Holy Spirit. Regeneration, or being 
 born again, is then something done for us. The second 
 birth, like the first, is in some sense independent of 
 personal agency. Our part in it is faith yielding to 
 it. Be ye born again, the Saviour says. Our part 
 is the trust which lets the Spirit s influence into our 
 hearts. Our part is to receive God s gift, seconding 
 it by a holy purpose. In all genuine renewing there 
 is a power acting upon us from above, God s power, 
 whose energy is felt through Christ s redemption and 
 the Comforter s presence. The task is too great for 
 our damaged competency and our enfeebled faculties. 
 The vivifying and gracious Spirit must breathe over 
 and quicken our dulled and sluggish souls, as the 
 genial gale of spring wakens the clover and wheat 
 on the warm April furrow. Our spiritual renewing 
 is from above. " No man can come unto me," said 
 Jesus, " except the Father who hath sent me draw 
 him." "We are roused into this more glorious life, 
 this resurrection from moral death, only by coming 
 into contact, by faith, with him who comes to give life 
 unto the race, himself the light and life of the whole 
 believing and living world. " Of mine own self," un 
 assisted in this regeneration, " I can do nothing ; but 
 I can do all things through Christ strengthening me." 
 
 So we come to the last of the four terms in question, 
 which is Conversion. This signifies the entire result, 
 the turning of the whole nature together from one 
 
124 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 state to its opposite. When repentance has changed 
 the grand ruling affection within, when reformation 
 has wrought a corresponding renewal of the outward 
 life, and when both have been done, not in the imagina 
 tion of any conceited mortal ability, but, as they can 
 only be done, by self-renouncing and holy submission 
 to the silent energy of the indwelling and inworking 
 Spirit of the living God moulding us as he will, then 
 indeed is the soul created anew in Christ Jesus. Spirit 
 ually it is no more the same, but another. The in 
 spiring and regulating force is different ; for, instead 
 of being the narrow and dark dominion of self-will, it 
 is the free, large, upward-soaring love of the Father, 
 kept warm and glowing in the love of man. The sub 
 stantial body of life is different. Instead of the ferment 
 of the passions, the ever-disappointing scramble of am 
 bition, the strain of unrewarding competition, the strife 
 of worldliness, there is the calm work of righteous 
 ness; everything is colored by the celestial tints of a 
 heavenly hope ; the secret influence of a divine com 
 munion spreads into the commonest drudgery ; daily 
 toil is elevated; the hands are sanctified; more and 
 more, not by spasmodic, strange, or fantastic jerks, but 
 by a steady growth, as orderly as " the blade, the ear, 
 and the full corn in the ear," the Christian disciple 
 is fashioned into the likeness of his Lord. The influ 
 ence from above is different; for instead of being a 
 mere preserving Providence, which is nominally recog 
 nized and practically disobeyed, it is the accepted and 
 welcomed inspiration of the Holy One, helping our 
 infirmities, encouraging our timidity, pardoning us in 
 our penitence, urging us forward in our reformation, 
 Renewer, Quickener, Comforter, Sanctifier. Repent- 
 
NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 125 
 
 ance, Reformation, Regeneration, are here united, con 
 summated, and consolidated. This is the conversion 
 that Christ proclaimed, that the cross provided, that 
 the resurrection symbolized, that the Apostles preached, 
 that has filled the ranks of the church, that we are 
 told heaven is entered by, when it is said that "Ex 
 cept a man be born again he cannot see the king 
 dom of God." 
 
 Thus do we see that each of these four terms, which 
 we are apt to employ indiscriminately, and half-indiffer- 
 ently, as if they all expressed some unreal or vague 
 thing, stands for a distinct, intelligible, and most in 
 teresting fact in a Christian s experience. Each denotes 
 a step in the way to eternal life. Through each every 
 soul must pass which is to have strength, beauty, free 
 dom, which is to attain either the noble and fair 
 proportions of Christian excellence here, or the be 
 liever s immortality. 
 
 Not one of the three first can be left out, if you 
 would attain the blessedness of the last. Theological 
 sects have often tried to put one for the whole, and 
 so have blundered into the worst practical errors, 
 narrowing the broad Gospel, and crippling the soul s 
 progress. 
 
 We cannot, for instance, take repentance alone, and 
 call that conversion. To change the mind, or feeling, 
 or purpose, is the first thing; but it avails little if 
 we do not press forward to reformation of the life. 
 That would be the seed sown where there is no depth 
 of earth. The beginning is right, and the promises 
 are fair, but all ends some day in a miserable apostasy. 
 Characters of that stamp are loud in pretension and pro 
 fession, but soon fall into dismal, foul endings. This 
 11* 
 
126 WAWBR ASD ELEXZ: 
 
 without 
 
 of feeling without the patient 
 Society has been often de- 
 
 "*- ^.T. , 
 
 I_7r I .. -} 
 
 2^ :...." i7_ .i._i 15 7; i7.Ti_ii "^;T. ; 77 
 regeneration by the Spirit ; for what m it that a 
 
 ^^_ __~ ~_ "7T~-_" I __ r r . 7 _jl r T__ .r 7- !7 I__7T 
 
 ibe Almi^ity niiJHn of all life and yupui 
 ^ both to wifl and to dp? 
 
 40 right motives. It is all mrttmlr work. It is 
 
 . _ - -- - VIA, . _. _ . 
 
 .:_.i. c :: :_- .^.:i: :-:. . :.. - 
 
 " : . ... . -... " . - - . ". . - " -:.::._:. 
 
 \ ^ LI IT. "-"Ill I__l~ ^1 1 7 7 - ~ I. TilI" I I" I "" LIL..TJ. TI I H .1 
 1 . -IT . * T . Ul "- - " r " rZ-T ! I T _ -I 7 "_ _ -I Ll_ 5. -.^1. TI I -1 1 . 
 
 ~" - - ^ - - - - ." ^ ~ ~ " " ^ ~ ~_ ~ ~ ^__ ^ ^ - ~ * t 
 
 But if it if not rooted in holy principle, in a coniiction 
 that aft f" is liitTfiil and " ML in a tibortHigh tnni 
 mg of the heart to Christ, it wffl not stand sharp 
 
 trials, nor wffl h yield die heaTHily fruits. And with- 
 
 _ 7 ~ I M T _I- I r I_ I i !I_ T _ I ^ T! I . - T . " I T _ I 71 T T7~".r 
 
 " - -_! T T-.I 
 
 So, again, regeneration * MIM< * be without repentance 
 and refioanation. for God newer * ! ! our mn ; 
 
 ^^ ^ - - . ^ ,^ _^ ,. ^ .^ . . ^_ ^ _.__..,. -j^- 
 
 - 
 
 forbearing as our Father is, he does not ave us 
 our wilL Xo soul is feared into the kingdom 
 of beaten. JMr - can we CTCT be born again, except 
 as we voluntarily open our breasts to receive the di 
 vine gift from on high, and freely yield our bodies and 
 lives, servants of righteousness, The Saviour calls: 
 
NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 127 
 
 we must answer. The Spirit pleads: we must arise 
 and come. Heaven throws wide its gates : we must 
 enter in. 
 
 Laying aside all dogmatical prepossessions, then, do 
 we not get a plain and effective doctrine from the 
 study of these scriptural terms ? Conversion is three 
 fold. Xo one of the three elements can be omitted 
 without weakening and damaging the whole. Repent, 
 reform, receive and quench not the Spirit by which 
 the new birth is given, and ye shall enter into life. 
 
 Gathering up the practical points of the doctrine, 
 we find them also to be three. 
 
 First, of this new life in the heart Christ himself 
 is the immediate source. The knowledge of it, the 
 power of it, the promise of its exceeding joy, all come 
 by him. His words, his life, his cross, move us to 
 repentance, stimulate us to reformation, baptize us 
 in the waters of regeneration. The more intimately 
 we enter into fellowship with his life, the more we 
 bear his spiritual image, the more we are impelled 
 by his heavenly affections, the more truly regenerate 
 will our souls be. The New Testament always asso 
 ciates a true conversion with faith in his person. Look 
 to his sufferings, and repent of the sins for which he 
 bled. Look to his example, and be reformed into the 
 character of which he is the pattern. Look to his per 
 petual and secret influence over the believer s heart, 
 the Comforter he promised to give after his ascension, 
 and be new-created by his Spirit. It is his own word, 
 " I have come that they might have life." 
 
 Again, we see what is for us personally to do. It is, 
 by the energy of an inward resolution, to renounce our 
 state of indifference, *o disown sin, to cast off the works 
 
128 NAMES AND ELEMENTS OF THE GREAT CHANGE. 
 
 of darkness, not to be satisfied with social respecta 
 bility, to have a changed mind, a new purpose, a Chris 
 tian aim ; i. e. to repent. It is, by constant fidelity, 
 by imitation of the perfect example, by effort, by all 
 means of help and grace, to live righteously ; i. e. to 
 reform. It is, by childlike trust, by tractable affections, 
 and above all by the prayer which kneels in daily adora 
 tion through the interceding Son, to welcome the re 
 newing Spirit ; i. e. to be regenerated from above. 
 
 And finally, we witness the beauty and the glory of 
 the result. A consecrated life, what spectacle of 
 dignity or loveliness can all our visions of the good 
 or the fair bring into comparison with that ? It is 
 the consummation of man s estate. It is the crown 
 of humanity. It is the flower of all the world. Peace 
 after storms ; bursts of morning sunlight after murky 
 tempests ; spring verdure and blossoms after the cold 
 trance of winter ; resurrection after death ; all these 
 but faintly image the peace, the sunlight, the vitality, 
 the power of a Christian s heart, recreated in Christ 
 Jesus. For, " if any man be in Christ, he is a new 
 creature. Behold, old things are passed away, and 
 all things are become new." 
 
SEEMON VIII. 
 
 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND TIMES OF 
 SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 
 
 SEEK YE THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND, CALL YE UPON 
 HIM WHILE HE IS NEAR. LET THE WICKED FORSAKE HIS WAY, 
 AND THE UNRIGHTEOUS MAN HIS THOUGHTS : AND LET HIM RE 
 TURN UNTO THE LORD, AND HE WILL HAVE MERCY UPON HIM ; 
 AND TO OUR GOD, FOR HE WILL ABUNDANTLY PARDON. Isaiah 
 Iv. 6, 7. 
 
 To a singular degree, the history of religion is also 
 a history of the power of names. Once, names, if they 
 are really names, had things corresponding to them ; 
 and the existence of the thing accounts for the name. 
 So long as this correspondence continues, the actual 
 name standing clearly for the fact, and the same fact 
 being always pointed to by the name, so long all 
 goes well ; language fulfils its designed office as a 
 sign of realities, and as a medium, or currency, for 
 thought; men are mutually helped and enlightened 
 by it ; science finds it a safe instrument ; instruction 
 and debate become possible ; knowledge is increased. 
 So that, sometimes, hardly any better benefit can be 
 conferred on a thing than to get a good, true name for 
 it. Many a great cause has been signally advanced, 
 has virtually conquered, when some genius in states 
 manship, in reform, in letters, has penetrated to its 
 core, and named it. 
 
130 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 Iii other cases this natural relation is broken ; either 
 the thing is found without the name, or the name 
 without the thing, or names are transposed and applied 
 to the wrong objects. Then arise discussions that yield 
 less light, and are farther from the heart of the matter ; 
 then come confusion and verbiage, and an unprofitable 
 attention to the letter that killeth, rather than the spirit 
 that giveth life. Then come the vexed interpretations 
 of instruments, questions of a constitution with a party 
 for each, an age of controversy, dogmatism, appeals to 
 documents and lexicons, commentary upon commentary, 
 and then, sometimes, an age of mere cant, formality, 
 and ventriloquism. We feel then what Dr. South calls, 
 in the title of a celebrated sermon, " the fatal imposture 
 and force of words." This process had begun so early 
 in the Christian church as the time of Paul, who evi 
 dently had a lively sense of the evil, repeatedly warning 
 Timothy against disputings and dotings about ques 
 tions and strifes of words, which minister no edifying 
 and are to no profit, but subvert the hearers ; and 
 so, it need not be added, it has continued to this day. 
 
 Religion is not wholly peculiar in this respect ; other 
 great human interests have had to suffer in the same 
 way, for the error is not in a particular subject, but 
 in human nature, it is the resort of a superficial or 
 less earnest mood, taking refuge from moral or in 
 tellectual dissatisfaction in phrases, or feeding empti 
 ness of feeling on husks. Only you notice that where 
 the interests involved are most palpable to sense, there 
 the mere name has least control. Material commerce 
 suffers comparatively little in that way ; yet there are 
 instances of it even there. Men have been kept from 
 great enterprises, great gains, by the power of names 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL EELIGIOUS INTEREST. 181 
 
 alone; refusing to colonize fruitful lands, refusing to 
 admit new discoveries of vast material productiveness, 
 refusing to embark in prosperous ventures, for no other 
 reason. So agriculture, manufactures, and trade have 
 been kept back. Yet, generally, the plainer the profit 
 the less hinder ance from a name. When we come 
 to the region of feeling, and of ideas, or of a welfare 
 that is spiritual, the name will be relatively more 
 effective, just because the thing is less palpable. And 
 when you tell men to stop doing wrong, and begin to 
 do right, to put off their hardness and selfishness, and 
 live like children of God, to get them a new heart 
 and a new spirit, some of them will tell you, perhaps, 
 No, they shall not do that, because that would be a 
 " Revival of Religion." We are to look beneath this 
 term, " a Revival," to the reality it has been chosen 
 to express. 
 
 I. " Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call 
 ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake 
 his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and 
 let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy 
 upon him ; and to our God, for he will abundantly 
 pardon." 
 
 Commonly those sentences, read as the text of a 
 sermon, might convey 110 other than their direct mean 
 ing, their simple contents ; and certainly language 
 was never written in a more direct or simple sense. 
 Used so now,* they very likely associate with them 
 the thought of a particular religious movement, acting 
 through the community ; and in their association with 
 that movement, according to the view taken of it by 
 
 * April, 1858. 
 
132 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 two classes of persons, meet a furtherance or a hinder- 
 ance to their natural impression. Here are preached 
 two duties, repentance and reformation. Men are 
 bidden, by one of the Lord s Prophets, by one of the 
 great thinkers and reformers of history, as from the 
 Lord himself, and for the sake of their own good, to 
 come back from the way of iniquity to the way of 
 religious integrity ; to pass from a state of self-seeking 
 to a seeking after God ; to repent of sin, and be for 
 given for it. Of course the ability is implied, goes 
 with the duty, measures the obligation. If anybody 
 is unable, the call is not for him ; and if the disability 
 is general, the whole message is void, and can only 
 return to heaven ; which, in the same passage with 
 the text, God promises his " word " shall not do, but 
 rather refresh the earth, like rain. But beyond this, 
 to some persons the words will have more power now, 
 to others less acceptance now, for the reason just given. 
 We cannot well afford much time to a mere criticism 
 on either side of a temporary attitude of a great truth ; 
 but it lies in the way, and it is a proper subject for un 
 prejudiced examination. Instead, therefore, of taking 
 up with a mere name, " Revival," which name may 
 possibly have become unrelated to the essential thing, 
 or been artificially colored by the accessories, let us, 
 at the outset, try to look in on the substantial facts, 
 which for Truth s sake we ought to see, and seeing 
 to revere. 
 
 The first of them is that to have the feeling of God 
 awakened, made alive, in any human heart, is a good. 
 That is a very tame expression. It is the one good 
 of life. It is so vast, and deep, and wide, and beautiful, 
 and comforting, and satisfying a good, that no other 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 133 
 
 good deserves to be mentioned in comparison. Like 
 Him who comes to embody and open its glory on the 
 world, it is " the desire of all nations." Whatever 
 difficulties there may be in reaching it, whatever igno 
 rance in seeking, whatever obstacles from passion, 
 pride, or sense, or a fickle will, it is all that. And 
 if it is all that for one person, it cannot be less for 
 many. The more hearts it comes to, possesses, and 
 fills, the greater the good. The sooner it comes, still 
 the greater the good. Let the way be what it will, 
 we shall consider that presently, the result is in 
 finitely desirable : to have the habitual feeling of God, 
 our Father, and of living as his affectionate, obedient 
 child. " Seek ye the Lord." 
 
 Come to the second fact: this feeling is to be had 
 because God is with us. He is not far off. He " may 
 be found." His presence is perpetual, universal. Am 
 I to stand here to urge the Omnipresence of God? 
 "We may be far off; he is not. He abides and follows 
 after. He remains and accompanies. He besets us 
 behind and before, goes with us, and waits for us where 
 we are going, lays his invisible hand upon us, and 
 whither shall we flee from that presence? He dwells 
 in all our houses, always has, always will ; and when 
 we are carried out of them not long hence, to be buried, 
 he will continue there. He is in this house, but not 
 less in any other houses, this moment. If we are get 
 ting ready an answer to his voice, " Go work to-day in 
 my vineyard," he knows what the answer is, and how 
 much it is worth. If we are silently apologizing, he 
 weighs the excuse in as just a balance as if we did 
 it aloud. If we are bracing up our pride, because it is 
 uncomfortable to feel self-accused and we want to go 
 12 
 
134 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 on in the old, careless, indulgent way, this also he 
 sees. If when we go away we turn aside the edge of 
 his truth, so mercifully sharp, that searching " sword 
 of the spirit, 7 because it hurts our bosom sin, or threat 
 ens to cut into some pleasant, wicked habit, if we 
 turn it aside by raising foreign questions, or finding 
 fault with other people s way of acting, or fitting the 
 Divine word to some neighbor s conscience, that is 
 seen by him who sees the thoughts when most anx 
 iously concealed. What a boundless blessing, when 
 we are so easily swayed by custom, so pliant to fashion, 
 when we have so many tricks for deceiving each other 
 and ourselves, and so often succeed, or are succeeded 
 with, in that destructive business, that there is One 
 undeceivable, One always knowing us, One always true, 
 to warn us from the most disguised and subtle sin ! 
 When we turn to Him, he is found. When we call 
 on Him, he is near. This is the second fact, the second 
 ^element in the reality of the case. And to feel this 
 also, we shall agree, is an incomparable good. 
 
 The third fact is, that in very many of us the feeling 
 has not been so, but fearfully otherwise. There is a 
 Past, and it has its record. No man can read it for 
 another ; but there is one reader of it, a conscience, in 
 our own breasts, that is far more to be dreaded than 
 any person outside on earth. What is to be done about 
 that Past ? If there were no memory, and no law con 
 necting past and present and future, we could dispose of 
 it. As it is, we are aware of it, inevitably. We see it 
 has been wrong, bad, foolish, perhaps so self-absorbed 
 and prayerless as to be properly called " without God 
 in the world." The thought of Him, to some of us, 
 has not been welcome, or, if we have made it tolerable, 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 135 
 
 it has been only by trying to make Him such an one as 
 ourselves, not like himself: lenient, not holy; indul 
 gent, not consistent, goodness yielding even in the 
 high spirit of the Almighty. For a Past like this what 
 will be the best ? Will it not be forgiveness ? Both 
 an escape out of sin, and out of the burdened feeling 
 of it? A free, relieved, joyful mind? Another part 
 of the reality of a new life: the New Testament full 
 of it : Christianity making it its peculiar truth : thou 
 sands and thousands in grateful confession, in song 
 and praise, in volumes and in secret whispers, Christen 
 dom through, in all ages, telling of that reality. " To 
 the Lord, for he will have mercy upon him, and to 
 our God, for he will abundantly pardon." 
 
 The state of mind that leads to this is repentance, 
 a fourth great good. But the essence of repentance is 
 sorrow, sorrow for our sin. Sorrow is painful, and 
 we shrink from pain ; we avoid it. To those that have 
 not felt the evil that repentance cures, how dark and 
 bitter a thing it is to be away from God, homeless, 
 fatherless, an orphan, and made so by selfish ingrati 
 tude, to those it will not seem a good. It is a good 
 only to those who feel the evil it delivers them from, 
 the nobler peace it brings them to. We know there 
 is one thing worse than pain : the painless disease that 
 kills ; the slow, insidious, fatal malady that eats away 
 the springs and energies of life, without giving the 
 warnings of bodily distress. To stop that, to heal that, 
 we gladly go in search of pain. We tell the surgeon 
 to hurt us that we may live. Physical vitality is often 
 undermined unconsciously. To avert that process by 
 a pang, by a period of needful and saving agony, we 
 account a blessing. After the first stages of suffoca- 
 
136 
 
 tion, the drowning, on their own testimony, pass into 
 a state of insensibility to suffering, or even, as many 
 maintain, of positive and exquisite pleasure. Adam 
 Clarke, who went through it, says, in his autobiog 
 raphy, it was like being borne gently through the 
 most luxurious tropical verdure, the keenest enjoy 
 ment. And when this swift, easy passage to destruc 
 tion is interrupted, and friendship applies restoratives, 
 there are spasms, tortures ; the sufferer begs to be let 
 alone, to die. It is not otherwise with the spiritual 
 sensibilities. It is their coming back from death to 
 life that makes distress. But no wise man, only the 
 demented man, regrets that distress. Paul, with his 
 singular exactness of expression, says that the sorrow 
 that is unto life, the price of living forever, needeth 
 not to be repented of, not to be sorrowed for. The 
 pain that rescues life is a good. 
 
 Another element to be taken into view is the sym 
 pathetic nature of man, another good. So far as we 
 have now gone, the religious work might proceed in the 
 separate individual, for he could, in a degree, though 
 a fainter one, feel his relation to his Ood, feel the di 
 rect action of God s spirit, and the power of the love 
 that forgives, alone. But nature has not constituted 
 us for constant solitude: all our practical sentiments 
 gain something by being shared. In some natures 
 they gain immensely, and can do little without it. In 
 others they are quickened, revived. Christianity, whose 
 entire principle is love, has always been prompt to avail 
 itself of this natural helper. Every meeting for devo 
 tion is an example of it. Every house built for a con 
 gregation of worshippers is a monument to it. 
 
 The living church itself, the repository of Christian 
 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 137 
 
 truth and life, is a collective Body, a social institution. 
 Man s social nature is at the basis of it. Some men 
 seek such sympathetic encouragements on one day of 
 the week ; others find a still farther assistance by paus 
 ing in their business and turning aside for instruc 
 tion or refreshment from the midst of temptation. It 
 is not a matter of uniform demand, nor of canonical 
 regulation. If we are free beings, and natural, some 
 times we shall ask more, sometimes be satisfied with 
 less. It is not because God is ever more merciful, 
 or righteousness ever less sacred. It results from the 
 liberal and spontaneous character of this sympathetic 
 part of our nature. We are not tied up to ceremonial 
 rule ; please Heaven, we will not be entangled again 
 with any such yoke of bondage. From causes we can 
 not wholly explain, the motions of men s hearts are 
 unequal. Every idea that has been alive, and really 
 stirred the world, has kindled and animated its ser 
 vants by the interaction of numbers and the familiar 
 stimulus of society. Everybody knows this force needs 
 to be guarded and limited ; everybody, who really 
 knows anything about men, knows it is one of the 
 beneficent appointments of the Maker of men. 
 
 Added to this, grafted directly upon it, is the power 
 of social prayer. And certainly no one who has had 
 any knowledge in himself of what this achieves, what 
 answers it brings, doubts that it is a good. There is 
 much in all prayer that passes our understanding. It 
 is the meeting-point of the seen and unseen. It is 
 the border-land between earth and Heaven. It is the 
 contact and communion of finite beings with the Infi 
 nite. What wonder any analysis of ours should fail 
 to unwind all its mysteries and explain all its divine 
 12* 
 
138 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 economy ? It is enough that wherever religious Wis 
 dom has opened its lips to teach anything, it has 
 taught this ; enough that the great body of believing 
 men since Christ, if we may not say since the begin 
 ning, have proved it; that all Revelation, calmly, as 
 by prophetic, unanxious, assured authority, promises 
 especial blessings to it; enough that Christ, by his 
 example and by his lessons, enjoins it : " If two of 
 you on earth shall agree as touching anything that 
 they shall ask, it shall be done for them." " For where 
 two or three are gathered together in my name, there 
 am I in the midst of them." 
 
 Christ made his religion public ; he instituted and 
 practised social prayer. In our sensitive anxiety to 
 make religion private, let us take care not to make it 
 so very private that it shall be both invisible and 
 impalpable, depriving it of all those immense acces 
 sions of power, provided for in human nature, which 
 come of our social constitution. With many among 
 us, it has long been the favorite and the noble teach 
 ing, that religion which is surely the name of our 
 intercourse with Heaven should not stay in sanctua 
 ries and Sabbaths, but go out into the highways and 
 markets. At last she has gone there, and lifted up 
 her voice by the way, " in the places of the paths," in 
 the midst of toil and of merchandise. If now she is 
 bidden, by these same persons, to go back into sanctu 
 ary and Sabbath, as the proper sphere of her dignity, 
 or to " move on " elsewhere, what shall she conclude 
 but that she is not very cordially wanted anywhere ? 
 
 I have thus mentioned four or five of the chief, con 
 trolling ideas, or facts rather, which must be active 
 wherever there is a real, living interest in Christian 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 139 
 
 Truth ; wherever there is a general, practical obedience 
 to the animating words of the text. There is no one 
 of them, I am very sure, which any of us, in a moment 
 of deliberate thought, would not pronounce a solid, 
 unquestionable good, even though his will should hold 
 back, or his life stumble, or his heart be cold. When 
 we strip away all superficial matters, the traditional 
 language, the adventitious impressions, the bad names 
 given by opposition, the real blemishes left by folly or 
 presumption, these are what remain, as the elements 
 of a true religious movement in a community: the 
 feeling of God; a conviction of his direct presence 
 and action on the soul ; a new sense of the want of 
 relief from transgression, of being lifted out of that 
 lost, orphaned state, and forgiven, and taken home, 
 with the supply of that relief in Christ the crucified, 
 " the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the 
 world ; " the activity of the social sympathies, and their 
 enlistment in the highest of all our possible acts, com 
 munion with God, seeking both greater nearness to 
 Him, and spiritual blessings for ourselves and each 
 other from Him. 
 
 Methods are all secondary. Whatever way leads to 
 that result is a royal way, honorable, justified, blessed. 
 I rejoice, yea, and as Paul said, will rejoice, in every 
 road that has that end. To make religious verities 
 realities, to get the whole subject out of this dim or 
 fantastic nebulous haze where it hangs before so many, 
 to bring it near from its distance, and clear from its 
 obscurity, and bright from its vagueness, and strong 
 from its weakness, this appears to me the one thing 
 needed. For when religion is once real, it will be all- 
 commanding and all-attracting. Let me pay homage 
 
140 
 
 to and make room for all sincere measures that lead 
 to that ! 
 
 II. As to measures in operation at any particular 
 time, we shall be certain to hear criticisms and objec 
 tions. The whole subject of religion is one on which 
 those that have convictions are sensitive, and those 
 that have none are free-spoken. The individualism 
 of Protestants, the jealousy of Sectarists, the frigidity 
 of Rationalists, all have their protests. Passions too 
 may be provoked to a louder remonstrance than all. 
 Let us not forget, whichever side we take, that the 
 same underlying, all-essential and eternal realities re 
 main, and remain unchanged. Still, for us, the voice 
 of Infinite Goodness will say, " Seek ye the Lord ; seek 
 him now ; repent ; forsake the wicked way ; believe ; 
 work; be faithful unto death." The threefold ques 
 tion will return, and keep returning: Is it possible 
 to love our Father too soon ? to love him too well ? 
 to love him too long ? And that other threefold ques 
 tion : Is not the Gospel true ? Have you received it, 
 in its practical power, into your faith ? Is there any 
 reason why you should not take it, believe it, give 
 thanks for it, to-day? 
 
 1. Protests are made against religious excitements. 
 Excitements are of different kinds and degrees. Ex 
 citements that come from without are to be suspected. 
 Excitements that are due to the senses are full of peril. 
 Excitements which necessarily, by a law of nature, 
 must be followed by a reaction into apathy, are hurt 
 ful. These statements are past question, and need 
 not be oracularly put forth every day as discoveries. 
 Indifference so stolid that man, made to love God and 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 141 
 
 goodness with all his heart, cannot abide in it, but has 
 to be excited out of it, is also suspicious. A coolness 
 so complacent that it must be broken up by a wrench 
 of repentance, is also full of peril. Your worldly un 
 belief is hurtful. We have to set off exposures and 
 dangers against each other, in this world, and find the 
 safe way, or the way of salvation, by coming as quickly 
 as we can to our Guide. We shall probably estimate 
 the harm of religious fervor very much according to 
 our relative estimate of the importance of religion it 
 self. Men are least apprehensive of too much feeling 
 where they love most ; and some who have little fear 
 of excess in pleasure-seeking, in a gay season, in social 
 brilliancy, in business, counting all days or nights and 
 all companies and all energies suitable for them, ap 
 pear to be nervously afraid if a few unusual hours 
 in a week are given up to devotion ; to converse with 
 our Maker ; to counsels for the object for which Christ 
 gave his life ; to the free unlocking of those grand, 
 commanding affections and aspirations in us, through 
 which all principles of justice and mercy for men grow, 
 and which more than anything else determine duty ; 
 to that life which is to go on when all of this world 
 has vanished from us, and go on to eternity. Mean 
 time, we see a general religious movement working 
 about us, differing, I should think all of us must con 
 fess, from many that have gone before, in its freedom 
 from fanaticism, in the general quietness of its opera 
 tion and calmness of its temper. 
 
 2. It is inquired, fairly enough, whether the phrase 
 ology of special religious movements imputes caprice 
 to the Supreme Being, coming and going to the 
 Ever-present, varying moods to the Unchangeable, de- 
 
142 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 grees of nearness to Him who is closer than the air, 
 nay, always in us, the life of our life, every power 
 and breath and consciousness dependent on his being 
 there. A fair enough question of phraseology, and 
 to be thoughtfully regarded. But even when the lan 
 guage is mistaken, we shall not surely so grossly or 
 wantonly misconstrue one another, as to suppose that 
 the error reaches in from language to thought, and 
 that, in their actual conceptions of Him, any class of 
 Christians contemplate God as local, or itinerant, or 
 fickle. If anything in sectarian misrepresentation were 
 incredible, we should say it is incredible that any per 
 son, most of all any preacher, with any sense of profes 
 sional responsibility, or even of the common responsi 
 bility of veracity, and with competent information for 
 public speech, should allege of any considerable por 
 tion of his fellow-Christians, in this age, and in this 
 land, that they disbelieve in the Omnipresence of God. 
 The truth is, every call to repentance that now fills 
 the air presupposes the liveliest and the firmest faith in 
 that omnipresence. It says, " Seek, ask, pray," every 
 where, continually, to all alike. It never says, You 
 may not seek, you must not ask, it is useless to pray. 
 Of course, the belief that the Almighty Spirit is every 
 where and always present, is universal. There is no 
 exception. To affirm the contrary of any order of 
 Christian people is a wicked absurdity, known as de 
 nominational bigotry in the church, but in the world 
 as slander. 
 
 Beyond this, and notwithstanding this, it is true, 
 there is a frequent fault of expression, chiefly for the 
 reason that language, which is the medium of finite 
 natures, is inadequate to contain and convey the facts 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 143 
 
 of an Infinite Being, or even, very accurately, our 
 highest views of him. So there is weakness ; there is 
 ambiguity ; and not -seldom there is, in all of us alike 
 probably, carelessness. We have to shape our images 
 according to human models, a good deal ; and so we 
 humanize the Deity, we represent him under the fig 
 ures of human life. All religious expression has done 
 so from the first. The Bible habitually does so ; ordi 
 nary speech does, especially as it grows earnestly 
 poetic, or earnestly practical. The fervent feeling takes 
 the first graphic term that comes, which is apt to be 
 very human ; reverence would gain by more care. 
 But it is plain enough, to all but blinded and angry 
 partisans, that when men speak of the Holy Spirit as 
 here in distinction from there, as present and absent, 
 as near or far, they mean something actual ; they mean 
 just what the Wise and Holy Scripture means, when, in 
 it, the pious Patriarch says, " Behold, the Lord was in 
 this place, and I knew it not ; " what Moses and the 
 Prophets mean when they say the Lord " passed by," 
 or " came from Teman ; " what the text means when 
 it says, " Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found, 
 while he is near ; " because, let critical nicety and cap 
 tious philology prescribe what rules they will, the fact 
 is that there are times when God is more easily found, 
 his gift of life more readily gained, and when if not 
 gained it is missed altogether, so that there is a " now," 
 and an " accepted time ; " what the Apostle James 
 means when he says, " Draw nigh to God, and he 
 will draw nigh to you ; " nay, what the Son of God 
 himself, who alone " knoweth the Father," and " saith 
 true," means, when he declares, " The kingdom of 
 God is come nigh unto you." Do you imagine these 
 
144 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 teachers, because they used these words, believed the 
 God they loved and worshipped to be only occasion 
 ally present anywhere ? An unworthy and an igno 
 rant cavil. 
 
 3. There are indiscretions, we hear. No doubt of 
 it. The question is, whether the indiscretions are so 
 many, and so glaring, as to overbalance the palpable 
 and lasting good that comes of engaging many people 
 heartily in the new conviction that they have a spirit 
 ual, immortal capacity, and owe their lives to their 
 Creator. When we have governments without indis 
 cretion, families without indiscretion, colleges without 
 indiscretion, manners, trade, navigation, over any sort 
 of sea, without it, we shall have an administration of 
 Christianity without indiscretion. But, remember, the 
 greatest indiscretion we can possibly fall into about re 
 ligion is to let it alone. 
 
 4. It is said, the eager demonstrations that attend 
 strong religious movements disgust the " cultivated and 
 refined." Men have even been found saying this who 
 are not usually over-forward to appear as the advocates 
 or patrons of these particular classes, who have gen 
 erally found in them, in fact, only a spirit of selfish 
 aristocracy and a conservative anti-Christ, but now, all 
 at once, by " sudden conversion," are jealous for their 
 scruples. Doubtless, there is such a thing as a high 
 Christian expediency. Thought is to be taken for the 
 weak conscience, for the fastidious taste, and even, I 
 think, sometimes for the narrow prejudice. Christian 
 ity is broad enough, generous enough, strong enough, 
 for that. Paul expounds that law in the fourteenth 
 chapter to the Romans, and acts upon it wherever 
 lie becomes " all things to all men that he might 
 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 145 
 
 gain the more." Religion wants the intrusion of no 
 impertinent appointments, and no bad manners. That 
 complete Apostolic gentleman, just referred to, knew 
 very well the need of the precept, when he directed 
 the Corinthians that " all things should be done de 
 cently and in order ; " yet he was certainly the central 
 and animating figure in many a scene quite as " ex 
 cited " and " exciting " as any witnessed this year 
 among us. Christian wisdom will deprecate any viola 
 tions of true dignity or decorum, will carefully forestall 
 them, the ranting appeal, the rude phrase, the dis 
 tasteful arithmetic definiteness, the publicity and prema 
 turity in computing converts, the vulgar interruptions. 
 Our God is a "lover of concord" in forms and sounds 
 and seasons and colors and ceremonials, as in the tem 
 per and disposition of men, and " he hath made every 
 thing beautiful in his time." But nothing is so " beauti 
 ful " in his sight as the heart that trusts and loves him. 
 He has made the laws of fitness and of grace to be 
 steadfast and sacred; but he tells us that all the out 
 ward graces of propriety and art are but dim symbols 
 of the clustering group of spiritual graces that his own 
 immediate Spirit makes to bud and unfold and yield 
 their ripened fruitage, in the believing soul of man : 
 that to hasten now, in the accepted time, to present 
 our bodies a " living sacrifice," is a most " reasonable 
 service;" and that all the "fitness he require th" is 
 to " feel our need of him." 
 
 We have to remember that the " cultivated and re 
 fined " are to be considered, just because culture and 
 refinement are a positive good, and because every 
 human being is to be considered. Christianity says, 
 " Honor all men." But something, in turn, must be 
 
 13 
 
146 PERMANENT REALITIES OP RELIGION, AND 
 
 asked of these well-bred persons, and something must 
 be expected of intelligence. Among other things, it 
 is expected intelligence will consider the variety of 
 adaptations, the limits of occasion, the pressures of 
 emotion, the fallibility of human understandings, the 
 adventitious disfigurements that attach to the noblest 
 works, and consider how gloriously, blessedly true it 
 is, that while there are " diversities of operation " there 
 is " the same spirit," and while there are " differences 
 of administration," there is " the same Lord." 
 
 If, when the actual blemishes are put away, or only 
 a few are left, and these so insignificant as not to be 
 appreciable beside the grand earnestness overshadow 
 ing them, as in these days generally happens, if 
 then, still, the cultivated and refined are repelled from 
 a large blessing or duty by a trivial indiscretion, that 
 will be something for the cultivated and refined to 
 look to. A positive, aggressive Faith, like the Gospel 
 of Christ, has too much to do to stop and smooth 
 away every little human roughness from its rugged 
 reformations. Prophets that are full of the preaching 
 of repentance and a new kingdom will sometimes wear 
 camel s hair instead of broadcloth, and a leathern girdle 
 instead of fine linen, and we must get used to it as we 
 can. There is such a thing as an overweening pride 
 in the knowledge of this world, which shuts the spirit 
 ual sense. There is a disproportionate zeal for the ad 
 vantages and splendors of a material civilization, whicl 
 hides the loftier glory of the skies. " Not many wise 
 not many mighty." " They have their reward." Ii 
 that day of simple, spiritual revelation, when the secret; 
 of all hearts shall be revealed, all earthly distinction; 
 levelled, and all ranks and badges forgotten, the ques 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 147 
 
 tion shall not be, Who was highest, who lowest ? who 
 richest or who most beautiful ? who cultivated alone, 
 or refined alone ? But, Who loved God and man, 
 who honored the right, who was loyal to truth, who 
 lived and walked in the spirit, who had faith in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and out of that faith, as towards 
 Christ himself, did minister to those hungry, athirst, 
 naked, strangers, sick, in prison ? So, many that are 
 here first shall be last, and the last first. It was when 
 the Saviour had placed the favored children of light 
 and opportunity below the infamous idolaters, Chorazin 
 and Bethsaida below Tyre and Sidon, proud Caper 
 naum below perished Sodom, that he calmly lifted 
 up hjs eyes to heaven and adored the wondrous, equal 
 izing mystery : "I thank thee, Father, Lord of 
 Heaven and Earth, that thou hast hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them 
 unto babes." 
 
 By some inwrought principle of a free being, any 
 unusually vivid, searching truth that meets him alters 
 his position. Truth turns aside for no man ; he is 
 instantly obliged to take some attitude towards it ; it 
 not only measures, but it places him. So it comes 
 about, that the waking up into extraordinary activity 
 of a social religious sentiment separates, inevitably, 
 those whose natures are in opposite relations to it. 
 Put any great moral idea into any community, and it 
 will instantly divide asunder the receivers and reject 
 ers. The very touch of a forcible, reformatory, inno 
 vating, reviving influence or doctrine, is a universal 
 power of discrimination ; it polarizes all minds ; it 
 sends each " to his own place." The ultimation of 
 that dividing process by the one radical and decisive 
 
148 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 question will be the Last Judgment ; and this dividing 
 process no amiability, no diplomacy, no caution nor 
 compromise nor legitimate charity, can wholly pre 
 vent. We are to avoid that result where we honestly 
 can ; but neither honesty, nor candor, nor prudence, 
 can escape it always : Christ found it so, and declared 
 it. " It must needs be that offences come." " I am 
 come to send fire on the earth, and what will I if it be 
 already kindled ? " It was a fire of love, but the terrible 
 transmutation of mortal selfishness turned it to hate. " I 
 came not to send peace, but a sword ; " " separating 
 child from parent, brother from brother, making a 
 man s foes to be those of his own hoiisehold." Yet 
 none the less was his spirit peaceful, his aim reconcilia 
 tion, the church he was to found a Brotherhood. Sin 
 is the base magician that so turns the truth of God 
 into a lie, and the compassion of Christ into a strife. 
 But truth cannot keep itself back, Christ cease to be 
 preached, zeal refrain from running and urging men 
 to be saved, according to the Great Commission. Right 
 and wrong cannot really be reconciled, nor take each 
 other s seats. Light and darkness cannot mix, nor both 
 retire. Blessing and cursing cannot mean the same 
 thing, if they do come from the same mouth. Gerizim 
 and Ebal cannot wheel on to each other s bases, nor 
 sink their peaks into the plain. 
 
 So the outbreak of uncommon religious earnestness 
 will probably stir up, in some quarters, the worst ele 
 ments of human nature. The scoffers, if there are 
 any, will redouble their ribaldry. The jesters, who, 
 in their sad struggle between God s purpose for them 
 and their own folly, make life a ghastly burlesque, 
 will discover material for caricature or scurrility. If 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 149 
 
 there is a clerical banterer anywhere, who seasons his 
 generous exhortations to rectitude, for flagging appe 
 tites, with slurs and sneers, he will find the tempta 
 tions to special smartness too much for him, and inter 
 mix, in unusual proportions, raillery with religion, low 
 comedy with lessons in virtue, irreverence with maxims 
 of moral progress. All this will not seriously interrupt 
 the Almighty, nor hinder Truth, nor affright the deeper 
 intuitions of man. More probably it will serve to ex 
 pose the exigences of a Christless theology, show how 
 a denying habit vulgarizes at last both intellectual self- 
 respect and a chaste heart, and, by making the excess 
 of offence disgusting, correct its own damage. 
 
 5. It is said a social religious interest is made de 
 pendent on " machinery," is " manufactured." Dis 
 tinguish again between two kinds of machinery. In 
 its own place, machinery is held very far from being 
 an evil. Kept to its use, nobody objects. If brought 
 in to do what can be done, at last, only by the free, 
 unforced choice of the spiritual nature, it is mischievous 
 utterly. If it is thrust out of its sphere, to obstruct 
 or to dishonor the higher motions of the conscience 
 and tire affections, it is still a mischief. If by machinery 
 you only signify outward means to achieve an inward 
 result, or visible measures to arrest and engage volun 
 tary attention to a great truth, you will not willingly 
 discredit it. All moral and spiritual improvements are 
 carried forward by such means. Every institution is 
 such a means ; the meeting-house ; the vestry ; the 
 stated assembly; the order of exercises in worship; 
 personal appeals to man s religious sensibility ; the 
 serious letter you write to a friend in temptation; 
 ordinances ; pictures on church walls ; the bells that 
 
 13* 
 
150 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 shake the air. You do not stigmatize these as " ma 
 chinery," and for the reason that they are fit, and 
 are familiar. What other instruments are fit will be 
 a matter of individual construction ; there is no law, 
 no code ; only let it be a generous construction. It 
 does seem strange that a wide-spread spirit of relig 
 ious inquiry and resolve, appearing simultaneously in 
 all parts of a vast country, not suggested by a priest 
 hood, but often encountering clerical opposition, pro 
 ceeding almost wholly by unpremeditated operation, 
 having simple and unlettered prayers for its chief utter 
 ance and aliment, thus as purely spontaneous, or 
 rather bearing as many traces of a divine origin, as 
 any authenticated reformation, that this should be 
 held up to reprobation as the article of a crafty " manu 
 facture." You might as well say that the forests of 
 Mt. Washington, or the freshets of the rivers, or the 
 American Revolution, were got up by manufacture. 
 When you hear men speaking, and see them laboring, 
 unpaid, often unthanked, with sincerity in every look 
 and tone, to persuade their fellows to accept some 
 blessing, simply because it is a blessing, whether your 
 tastes accord or not, you are not apt to suppose they 
 are acted by machinery, nor engaged in a manufac 
 ture. What shall be thought of the knowledge of 
 affairs, the insight into human nature, the scientific 
 reading of phenomena, that come to that impotent con 
 clusion? It will be happy for us, brethren, I think, 
 if we are not all painfully reminded of those words 
 of sorrow and dread, which speak of a " despite to 
 the Spirit of grace," and a "quenching" of it, and 
 of the woe pronounced on words uttered against the 
 Holy Ghost out of a state wilfully wedded to self and 
 to past opinion. 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 151 
 
 6. It is the character of vivid experiences, we are 
 told, to be temporary, which is partly true and partly 
 not. The vividness may be temporary, and the feel 
 ing, or still better the principle which the feeling helps 
 to warm and foster, may be permanent. That depends 
 on the individual s fidelity, or fixedness of purpose. 
 If he lets it go, he has shame and self-contempt for 
 his portion ; if he consistently holds fast the principle, 
 as we would fain believe, and must believe by the facts 
 in a large preponderance of cases, then he thanks 
 God for the unspeakable peace to the end of his earthly 
 days and forever. 
 
 Distinguish also between the proper transientness of 
 one process, and the proper permanency of another. 
 To come out of insensibility and it will not be de 
 nied some persons are in that state is transient; to 
 remain interested, and go on, and live accordingly, is 
 permanent. To object to the former that it is tran 
 sient, would be just as unreasonable as to object to 
 the latter that it is permanent. It is in the nature of 
 the thing, and cannot be otherwise. As has been well 
 observed, the object of waking up is to be awake ; and 
 we do not object to the means of waking, that the per 
 son is not expected to be waking up all the time. The 
 questions are : " Is he asleep, and is it better to be 
 awake ? " Perhaps he will not be the less likely to 
 keep awake, because he awakes suddenly. We do not 
 criticise the morning bell which rouses us to our work, 
 that it does not ring all day. One thing is wanted to 
 open our faculties, and another to keep them at their 
 task. The first will avail little without the other; 
 but you never discredit the first because it does not 
 do the work of the other. Conversion is the opening 
 
152 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 of the spiritual faculty, or sight, to Christ, the Light 
 of the world. 
 
 Plentiful analogies occur for this variation of move 
 ment in the other chief interests of man, and in nature 
 herself, whose order is indisputable. In the business 
 of legislation, there is a certain period a few weeks 
 of the year when legislators devote a special atten 
 tion to the State and the Statutes. They hold meet 
 ings from day to day, and are engaged, sometimes 
 excited, in adjusting the claims of the people. After 
 they adjourn and separate, the government, thus re 
 vived and reinforced, goes on ; the statutes quietly 
 do their work ; the results are permanent, and nobody 
 wonders that the assemblies are not in session all the 
 year. In education, special seasons are set apart for 
 waking up the intellectual faculty, and getting it in 
 working order; lessons, libraries, lectures, apparatus, 
 machinery, fulfil this office ; and the rest of life is 
 spent in putting what has been gained of mental life 
 or power to practical use. Our men of science hold 
 a "protracted meeting" of several days every year. 
 If any new enterprise, like a new facility for travel 
 across the country, is to be achieved, you hear of 
 special meetings, measures, till the community are 
 " waked up," as we say, to the importance of the 
 undertaking. Nobody is afraid of a reaction. The 
 demonstrations of feeling cease, or are changed. There 
 is still interest, and still feeling. Only the propor 
 tions or methods of expression are altered. Prepara 
 tion gives place to the work, and leads to it. "Waking 
 up is followed by organization, regularity of labor. It 
 is according to human nature. It is according to the 
 best philosophy of human life. We are not always 
 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 153 
 
 alike ; yet this does not necessarily imply any abate 
 ment of real energy. We are creatures of many moods, 
 faculties, and members ; a liberal interpretation of man 
 and society and truth bids us believe that God in his 
 great plan has room for all. In the stated and gracious 
 succession into which the Church has distributed the 
 Christian year, respect is paid to the same principle 
 in the alternation of Fasts and Feasts, each with its 
 appropriate emotions. The natural year itself is re 
 viving. All around us, in ten thousand signs of new 
 and exuberant animation, over all the fields and hill 
 sides and meadows, it is budding and blossoming into 
 verdure and beauty. Among the branches of trees, 
 in the choirs and orchestras of woods and orchards, 
 on the banks of loosened streams, you will hear the 
 voices of this " time of refreshing from the presence 
 of the Lord." The feet of spring are beautiful upon 
 the mountains, and these glad or growing creatures 
 of God break forth into the singing of their uncon 
 scious revival hymns. Nor will any censures hold 
 against these marvellous and divine renewings, be 
 cause after they are complete, and leaf and fruit stand 
 in their finished glory, spring passes into summer, and 
 the grand maturity comes on in a more silent strength. 
 
 Nay, our Lord and Redeemer himself had one ad 
 vent ; the wilderness of the world bloomed but once 
 for his coming; the isles of the south awake once, at 
 his call ; he rises once from the dead. Yet he liveth 
 evermore, and the soul that is risen indeed with him, 
 and is awake to his righteousness, walks with him, 
 and hath an eternal life abiding within. 
 
 Ever since the church was founded, it has had its 
 times of peculiar demonstrative activity. During the 
 
154 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 intervals it may not always have had less power than 
 in those days of its waking and reawaking; but it 
 certainly had greater power for them. Church history 
 opens, in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, 
 with an account of a notable revival, a Pentecostal out 
 pouring of the Spirit. In the patristic period Chris 
 tianity was revived in many countries, sometimes on 
 new fields, planting its heavenly seed on fresh earthly 
 soil, but sometimes on itself, putting new life into the 
 old forms, new blood into the old body. So in the 
 Catholic ages Christianity was often revived through 
 the missionaries and the mystics. It was revived 
 through Luther and Huss. It was revived through 
 Wycliffe, through the Anglican Fathers, through the 
 pious Puritans, through the Wesleys and their fiery- 
 hearted friends. The Holy Spirit has roused, directed, 
 blessed believers, and thus borne forward the Kingdom 
 of Heaven among men. If there is any class, any sect, 
 any community, any single soul that may take the 
 posture of consistent, clear, thorough objection, it seems 
 to me it is only that one which is sure it does not need 
 more faith and righteousness than it has; and that 
 one can object only for itself; and finally that one, in 
 its poor complacency, will need reviving most of all. 
 
 The appeal to personal experience is instructive. 
 Looking back at the beginnings of their efforts, most 
 Christians see that the first strong impression was un 
 expected, had a certain mystery in it; many will re 
 member that it had a marked character. The man 
 "came to himself," all at once perhaps. Why not? 
 Some new event, at the Spirit s touch, let in, in a 
 moment, a light not seen before, as when the shutters 
 of a dark room are thrown open to the sun. That 
 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL KELIGIOUS INTEREST. 155 
 
 "faith iii the Lord Jesus Christ," out of which all 
 just works and noble dispositions will proceed, is awak 
 ened. To pretend that they have thus proceeded al 
 ready, or that the building of character is done, or 
 that the soul is safe without further exertions, would 
 be absurd, and worse. 
 
 7. The virtue of liberality is implicated, as has more 
 than once been already implied, and the more so as 
 the spirit of the religious interest abroad is itself singu 
 larly liberal, comparatively free from dogmatic debates 
 or denunciations, from sectarian exclusiveness, from 
 narrow definitions or inclosures. There may be those 
 who do not see how to join in these public acts, and 
 honestly believe that, for them, this is not the best way 
 to promote the religion of Christ. If they therefore 
 despise, or misjudge, or misrepresent their differing 
 brethren, ascribing to them other doctrines than they 
 teach, or errors they do not commit, they only transfer 
 the disrepute of bigotry from those they abuse to them 
 selves, whom they abuse worst of all. 
 
 No man, it seems to me, who looks largely over the 
 facts and the phenomena of the Christian World, can 
 dare to insist that all mankind shall take one outward 
 path to Heaven. If he does, it will be a dangerous 
 symptom that he is not quite in it himself. The in 
 ward path must be essentially the same for all. There 
 is but one DOOR. " By me," Christ said, " enter in ; " 
 " I am the door." But the ways that lead to the door, 
 with slighter or greater divergence from each other, 
 reach out, at last, over all the intellectual territory of 
 the great continent of humanity. Who shall say his 
 alone leads to the Door? Who shall not rejoice to 
 believe that through them all pilgrims are pressing 
 
156 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 on, sincerely, patiently, humbly, with hope, with faith, 
 that they may enter ? " Now, when the pilgrims were 
 come up to the Gate, there was written over it, in letters 
 of gold, 6 Blessed are they that do his commandments, 
 that they may have right to the tree of Life, and may 
 enter in through the gates into the city. " And now 
 abideth faith, hope, charity. But the greatest of these 
 is charity. Read the twelfth and thirteenth chapters 
 of Paul s First Epistle to the Corinthians, and you will 
 see that he was before any modern theologian in setting 
 the grace of Christian Love above any " gifts " of heal 
 ing, of tongues, of interpretation, of miracle, of proph 
 ecy, actual as they were. 
 
 As with the ways, so with the agents. They are 
 various as the materials of the universe, the forms 
 of being, the motions of the mind. God has honored 
 both the obscurest and the weakest instruments, and 
 highly exalted them, and made them " confound the 
 mighty." If many have been led to trust and serve 
 him by great Christian eloquence, others by broken 
 petitions, or stammering remonstrances, or a single 
 word, as when John Bunyan, dissolute and hardened, 
 overheard a poor unlettered woman praying in secret, 
 and was turned by it to pray himself, or as when 
 young Malcom, at Brown University, was kindly told 
 by one of his teachers to " make one honest effort 
 for his soul s sake," went to his room, and locked 
 it, and thought of that expression, " one honest 
 effort," till he came out the new man whose name 
 is now revered and beloved by hundreds, thankful for 
 his fidelity. If some by vast events, held up before the 
 eyes of nations, in the tempest, the fire, and the earth 
 quake, others by the still small voice, as when an 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 157 
 
 eminent modern apostle, lately gone up from the 
 world,* was first really touched, as he afterwards said, 
 by hearing the president of the college where he studied, 
 in one of the daily prayers, repeat that tender prophecy 
 of Isaiah, " A bruised reed shall he not break and 
 the smoking flax shall he not quench." Some by 
 terrible things, seen or heard, like John Newton by 
 a storm at sea, like Chief Justice Hale by seeing a 
 companion fall dead in the intoxication of a convivial 
 entertainment, or like the Christian Emperor who was 
 awakened to Christian sensibility by thinking of the 
 miseries he had caused in his battles ; but others by 
 some sweet memory or meditation, like Sarah Martin, 
 the devout philanthropist, who first had the Christian 
 love kindled in her heart by the remorse that fol 
 lowed the telling of a childish falsehood ; or like 
 a young American scholar, who never believed in the 
 God of Revelation, till one day, when he was hearing 
 a recitation on the Copernican system of astronomy, 
 suddenly he saw him the Builder of the solar order, 
 balancing the stars in his wisdom, and saw him for 
 ever after. Sometimes the Spirit makes even the least 
 congenial scenes his ministers, as when a young man 
 I knew of, just entering a place of revelry, an hour 
 after midnight, heard the clock strike one. It brought 
 instantly to his mind words he had once read. 
 
 " The bell strikes one, we take no note of time 
 But from its loss. If heard aright, 
 It is the knell of my departed hours. 
 "Where are they ? " 
 
 And that course of sober thinking, beginning with 
 
 * Dr. Taylor. 
 14 
 
158 
 
 the bell s note, ran on till it condensed into the Chris 
 tian purpose that controlled the rest of his life. These 
 are facts. We all feel them, as we hear them, to be 
 reasonable, natural, beneficent. Who shall doubt that 
 in all the sights and sounds we meet God sets signals 
 for us to seek him ? As soon should we be at liberty 
 to doubt His presence in the world, to blot out the 
 majesty of His religion from our life, to unbind its 
 laws of responsibility from our consciences, to reject 
 its immortal consolation from our sorrows. 
 
 From these suggestions, I am obliged to believe that 
 laying all particular mistakes and local extrava 
 gances out of view the occurrence of special seasons 
 of religious interest rests on principles as indisputable, 
 as close to science, as natural, as any known to us ; 
 the supremacy of the religious element in man ; the 
 immediateness of the Divine Spirit ; the unity of an 
 ascendant, governing motive in the soul; the possi 
 bility, at least, of a direct transition from one to an 
 other, or a change of mind (perdvoia) leading to a 
 newness of life (jTra\Ljyevea-ia) the social susceptibility 
 to impression ; the spiritual suggestiveness of common 
 objects to a spiritual mind. 
 
 The theology of a real revival is a very simple matter. 
 It is in three words. It is Christ s " Come unto me." 
 ". Come to Christ," that you find is the prevalent watch 
 word, call, creed. That is the theology. If you choose 
 to distribute it, you find it contains these principal 
 truths : the gracious activity of the Spirit of God ; 
 the indifference, unbelief, sin, of men ; the merciful 
 and all-sufficient approach of God to men in the Per 
 son of Christ, the Redeemer, with overture, invitations, 
 inspirations, sacrifice, everything to draw men to a 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL EELIGIOUS INTEREST. 159 
 
 new and holy life and save them, in Him whose 
 name is " the only name given under Heaven, among 
 men, whereby they can be saved." The entire move 
 ment emphasizes the efficiency of means, and so dis 
 credits any notion that could put the Divine Grace 
 into contradiction with human freedom. Its one ques 
 tion is precisely Christ s question : " What shall it profit 
 a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
 soul ? " Undoubtedly, denominational interpretations 
 modify this comprehensive theology ; but they are every 
 where subordinate. Does it betray a very cordial sym 
 pathy with the Saviour s own purpose, when differences 
 are so far forgotten, and hearts are taken up into the 
 glowing, harmonizing air of devotion, to interpose a 
 polemical discussion ? Will a practical and ardent zeal 
 for the Saviour s own " love of souls " take just then the 
 direction of a controversial commentary on opinions ? 
 
 But the harm is not great. If here and there some 
 thin, discordant note is heard, it is soon lost in the 
 resounding praises that arise from the dwellings and 
 churches of a nation. The mighty sweep of holy feel 
 ing, impelled by the hand of Heaven, bears down the 
 expostulations of a fastidious brain. The wind blow- 
 eth where it listeth. Men, and women, and young 
 children, having in them the peace and joy of God, 
 are not to be much disturbed. Already, their acclama 
 tions ascend, from the north and the south, from the 
 east and the west, from the city and the village, from 
 the lonely chamber and the great congregation. In 
 the stately sanctuary you catch their majestic melo 
 dies in the ancient " Gloria in Excelsis," sung with 
 grander trust. In unnumbered companies that gather 
 in plainer courts, places of every worldly use turned 
 
160 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 to temples by sudden, solemn, and glad dedications, 
 you hear " Worthy the Lamb that was slain ! " In 
 closets and secret chambers, where God alone listens, 
 he hears the broken confession, " This only I know, 
 that whereas I was blind, now I see." " Nothing shall 
 be able to separate me from this love of God, which 
 passeth knowledge." 
 
 III. If now we return to the positive teaching of 
 the text, we shall see that it contains for us, for all 
 men, three things, with results. 
 
 First, The presence of the Spirit. On that fact de 
 pends all the good, all the joy, all the glory of man 
 kind. On the feeling and confession of it depends all 
 high and strong excellence. Man s greatest and most 
 blessed hour is when he wakes into the living con 
 sciousness of this, becomes aware of his spiritual rela 
 tions and his immortal destiny, ceases to live in himself 
 and for himself, stretches his thought and affection to 
 the Infinite and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity, and 
 then, through him, to all souls of men having the same 
 Father, however weak, dark, erring, sinning. That 
 is the one great good, for every human soul. It is 
 possible for all ; God is always " near," never afar. 
 The " now " is for us ; the " while " is for us. These 
 are human conditions. The will is free. For us there 
 are " times " and " seasons," and, as every day of life 
 in all its interests shows, if we fail then we may fail 
 utterly. But in his own unchanging compassion, the 
 Holy Spirit always " may be found." To the prophet 
 God had not been manifest, outwardly, in the Christ. 
 Now, in him God has come. " Come unto me." 
 " "Whosoever will, let him come." 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 161 
 
 Secondly, there is, for men, a possible absence from 
 God ; not of God from men, but of men from God. So 
 our speech feebly and falteringly shapes the truth. God 
 may be near to us and we not near to him. An unfelt 
 presence is no life nor comfort. It is a silent form 
 near us in the dark. Sin is that distance. Moral dis 
 agreement is a thicker and higher barrier than moun 
 tains, or the stellar spaces. To be indifferent, where 
 trust and love should be, is absence ; and that, remem 
 ber, is no single deed, it is a state; God is not 
 "found" in it, not "sought." 
 
 The third thing is an act of man s, accepting the 
 ceaseless act and offer of the Spirit, co-working with 
 it, to bring these two together ; God s presence, man s 
 practical consciousness of it ; seeking and finding. It 
 is the opening of the spiritual sense. It is the renun 
 ciation of that proud self-will that has kept it shut. 
 It is the changing of the soul s state. It is regenera 
 tion. It is a new creature. It is a different heart. 
 There is another motive, and so another life. It is of 
 God himself, in man. Acceptance in the one of grace 
 in the other. Faith answers to the promise. How 
 swiftly the homeward way is passed over! Penitent 
 affection is eager, and the Father is waiting. There 
 are conditions, favorable and unfavorable. There is 
 an accepted time, a day of salvation ; a " financial 
 crisis," if you please ; which is sometimes suggested 
 as the whole explanation of ten times ten thousand 
 better hearts ! Only remember, behind the " financial 
 crisis " there is the Eternal Spirit, working, inviting. 
 Yes, a "financial crisis," in other words, enough of 
 the " husks that the swine did eat ; " an hour of thought, 
 a broken constitution, an opened grave ; but how much 
 
162 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 better if it is the joy of youth, the still persuasion of 
 prosperity, and the bounding pulse of grateful health, 
 or the manly voice of Christian invitation, " the good 
 ness that leadeth to repentance " ! You may suggest 
 that people meet to pray because they have leisure, 
 "nothing else to do." But it is a new thing in the 
 world, if idleness alone, with all the modern appliances 
 for filling up vacant hours in great cities, should crowd 
 strong, shrewd men into plain rooms, to entreat spirit 
 ual blessings on themselves and one another, with every 
 token of urgent sincerity in look and tone. There is 
 no shorter way of explaining that, I think, judging 
 it by its fruits, than to say, our God is in it. Manifold, 
 mysterious, merciful are these calls and ways of God. 
 He has made the universe wide enough, and the human 
 soul various enough, for them all. 
 
 The result will be twofold ; the two parts of charac 
 ter. Character may have yet scarcely begun to be 
 formed. That is a labor remaining. But there has 
 been planted the forming principle. " The wicked 
 will forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his 
 thoughts." 
 
 There will be a harmony of the affections with the 
 Divine Spirit. There will be the hidden life, ever 
 nourished by prayer, ever making prayer more real. 
 Its deep peace is indestructible, passing knowledge, not 
 given by the world s wealth, not taken away by the 
 world s robberies or reproaches. This is piety. It is 
 the habitual and ever-growing consciousness of dwell 
 ing with the Father in Heaven. It is the power of 
 being forgiven. " Unto the Lord, for he will have 
 mercy upon him." It is the wonderful admission to a 
 yet more intimate and personal endearment : " And to 
 ovr God, for he will abundantly pardon." 
 
TIMES OP SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 163 
 
 There will be a life consecrated to righteousness ; 
 morality ; only a morality warmed, expanded, deep 
 ened, by the spirit of Christ, the love of God. Not a 
 drudging bondage to the legalist s commandments ; 
 not a frigid compliance with the literalist s rule. Every 
 beneficent and generous duty will take its place of 
 honor, but more as privilege than as duty. Religion 
 will be the natural inspiration of conduct, not because 
 it is some volatile and graceful sentiment, nor the mere 
 instinct of happy lovers and fond mothers, but the 
 grounded principle of Eight, law eternal underneath 
 it, a Personal Maker above it ; the fruit of a profound 
 experience ; the offspring of law and love reconciled 
 in the Gospel ; the steadfast righteousness in Christ, 
 to which the Law, as a schoolmaster, had led. No task 
 will be too heavy, no sacrifice too bitter, no human 
 being too base or ugly or far away, for the zeal of this 
 convert and disciple, made an heir of Heaven and 
 the brother of the race. Every slave s oppression, every 
 wronged sufferer, every unjust practice in business, 
 every impurity in society, every onesidedness in edu 
 cation, every falsehood in institutions, will be his solemn 
 and intense concern, for he follows Him who gave his 
 life for the least. " Right feeling, right thinking, right 
 acting, right being," will all be his, more and more, 
 because " the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus 
 hath made him free from the law of sin and death." 
 
 Of all the instances of awakening religious life lately 
 reported, none carry such power of impression as those 
 where the new feeling of obligation to God has been 
 attended, from the very beginning, with a new feel 
 ing of duty to man ; where the reform of practice has 
 kept pace with the growth of faith ; or more even 
 
164 PERMANENT REALITIES OF RELIGION, AND 
 
 than this, where the convert has felt that he could not 
 go a step in religious regeneration without first putting 
 himself right, wherever he was wrong, with his neigh 
 bors. Hear a parable, yet a true story, one of a 
 class that might be told here all night. Not fifteen 
 furlongs from where we are, and not long ago, a certain 
 man, who had repeatedly and openly avowed himself 
 a disbeliever in Christianity, in worship, and in the 
 very being of a God, of active powers, large intelli 
 gence, and an average conscience, began to see the 
 truth he had so long kept covered up. He began to 
 believe himself mistaken, and to think that God, and 
 the law of God, and Revelation, and the Future Life, 
 might be realities, after all. It was borne in strongly, 
 irresistibly ; he hardly knew how, except as he did 
 know and see that it was through the sympathies and 
 intercessions of some about him that he loved and 
 trusted. He was troubled to agony. Such inward 
 revolutions as that do not come about without strain 
 ing the sensitive parts of the soul, breaking up the 
 frozen fountains of penitence and self-reproach, and 
 shaking the whole nature with pain. Dealing quite 
 honestly with himself, he went into solitude and prayed. 
 He prayed only this, that if there was a God, he might 
 know and believe in Him. He prayed rather into the 
 wide heavens than to a Heavenly Father. But, after 
 this first and single act towards his Maker, he said : 
 " I know little yet of religion ; there is evidently some 
 thing here I never dreamed of yet ; but if I am going 
 to pray to God, I must settle my difficulties with my 
 fellow-man. There is my former partner in business, 
 whom I quarrelled with a year ago, and whom I have 
 been hating ever since ; the first thing for me to do 
 
TIMES OF SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INTEREST. 165 
 
 now is to go and confess my wrong, and be at peace 
 with him. No more prayers, till that is done ; no 
 falsities left behind ; no sins reserved ; a clean begin 
 ning or no religion." He went to his partner, and 
 was forgiven, and forgave. He went to his God, and 
 was sure he was forgiven there ; and then he went on, 
 into a sound, consistent, spiritual life. Old things 
 passed away, and all things became new. This is 
 Christianity. It is Christ s spirit of sincerity, courage, 
 truth, faith. We do not often see a more literal com 
 pliance with the Saviour s own direction : " If thou 
 bringest thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest 
 that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there 
 thy gift before the altar, and go thy way : first be 
 reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer 
 thy gift" Let us remember the latter clause, no less 
 than the first. It was coming to the altar, to the 
 prayer, that first made this man feel compelled to go 
 to his offended brother. It was going there that made 
 him ready to go back to worship : here, as everywhere, 
 faith and works proceeding together, each helping the 
 other: repentance toward God quickening the con 
 science; conscience, obeyed, opening the temple-door 
 of devotion. 
 
 God grant to his church ever new, deeper, more 
 genuine revivals of pure and undefiled religion ! May 
 he pour out his spirit upon all flesh, in other Pente- 
 costs, on every barren place, every cold church, every 
 unprofitable heart! As the rain cometh down from 
 heaven, and returneth not thither, but water eth the 
 earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, so may the 
 living word be, that goeth forth out of his mouth ! 
 Again, and again, the voice of one crying in these 
 
166 
 
 PERMANENT REALITIES OP RELIGION, ETC. 
 
 wildernesses of passion, and care, and sin, " Repent ! " 
 Again, and again, may the Son of Man come in power 
 and great glory! Till, in all of us, and all around us, 
 and all over the earth, " instead of the thorn shall come 
 up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar the myrtle- 
 tree, to be to the Lord for an everlasting sign that 
 shall not be cut off." 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 THE MOUNTAINS SHALL BRING PEACE. Ps. Ixxli. 3. 
 
 WHAT is to be noticed in this metaphor is, that it pro 
 poses an unusual view of the conditions of peace. In 
 itself a mere image in the mind of a poet, reflected 
 there in a study of natural scenery, it is hardly less the 
 declaration of a principle of moral and spiritual life, 
 carried out into the material world for an illustration. 
 
 " The mountains shall bring peace." Commonly, we 
 expect impressions of tranquillity in the lowlier places 
 of a landscape, where the objects are so minute as to stir 
 no effort in the mind, and the place is so level as to lift- 
 it in no upward movement. Enclosed valleys, with limits 
 easily reached by the eye and restraining rather than 
 tempting any bold imagination, smooth and flower-sprin 
 kled plains, or green meadows and still waters, these 
 are thought to represent the moods of repose, and per- 
 liaps to produce them. Instead of this, but with a sense 
 }f real effects quite as true, the writer of this Hebrew 
 Dde finds the peaceful in the grand, rest in greatness, 
 [f we have ever felt that the sight of high hills, with 
 strong outlines and broad reaches, recruited us, that 
 here was intellectual refreshment in a wide horizon, 
 
168 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 we shall have all that is necessary to make the figure a 
 fit introduction to our doctrine and its argument. 
 
 This doctrine is, that the quiet of the human soul is 
 to be honestly found, not in descending to its lower or 
 less forcible states, but in the freedom of its highest quali 
 ties, and through its stronger exercises : or, that Chris 
 tian peace is an attainment of the spiritual energies, and 
 not a mere acquiescence in inferiority. 
 
 The positive results of this conviction, in awakening 
 action and giving a healthy inspiration to the will, as well 
 as our liability to leave it for less invigorating notions, 
 will lead me first to put forward some general illustra 
 tions of it, and then to connect it with the personal con 
 cerns of character. 
 
 When the Saviour speaks of the ultimate result of his 
 religion, in the single heart or in the world, he calls it 
 Peace : " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto 
 you." But as soon as you look into the spirit and relations 
 of his words, you see that in this peace there is some 
 thing quite peculiar. It is no wonder he emphasizes the 
 pronoun, and says, " My peace." It is a peace obtained 
 by the drops of blood and the cross ; Gethsemane and- 
 Calvary ; by a life in which there was no place to lay the 
 head. It is not a mere constitutional, negative, nor any 
 superficial peace ; it is not what we call pleasure, nor a 
 happy temperament, nor gratified sensibilities, nor sa 
 tiated appetites. It is something deeper and stronger. 
 It is an attainment ; it is a victory ; it is tribulation 
 overcome. It is the mightiest powers of our nature bal 
 anced, reconciled, and harmonized at last, through w6 
 know not what struggles and sufferings, till, by the per 
 fect sway of one supreme principle of faith, there are the 
 equipoise and serenity that pass all understanding. 
 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 169 
 
 So long as mankind put up their first prayers for hap 
 piness, they need to learn that power of character is before 
 happiness, and indispensable to any joy that is Christian. 
 We are to be suspicious of effeminate contentments. 
 Christianity has to suffer cruelly, not only from its open 
 deniers, and its merely nominal adherents, but from the 
 needless imbecilities of its sincere disciples, if moral 
 weakness can ever be called very sincere. Plenty of 
 infirmities will remain, at our best ; but we are not to 
 make room for them, and domesticate them, by the 
 vicious theory that it is enough to subside into a nerve 
 less placidity, imagining that God is indulgent instead 
 of kind, finding food for our complacency in the fond 
 ness of Heaven, and substituting a harmless routine of 
 easy virtues for the originality and valor of a great 
 hearted faith. One of our most insidious temptations 
 is to mistake a comfortable deadening of aspiration for 
 Christian assurance ; and of the two possible sorts of 
 satisfaction, viz. raising the soul to its objects, and 
 quenching its nobler desires, accepting the last. Some 
 people think if they are calm, at ease, and especially 
 if their serenity has a pensive or sentimental color, 
 no matter about their strength. But no man who is not 
 as strong as he can be, and making himself stronger in a 
 piety that is muscular and adventurous, is really right 
 eous. Our religion to-day wants red blood and thick 
 sinews. It wants the spirit of the hills in it. Bodily 
 health and genius are commonly reckoned as gifts, and 
 blessings only in that meaning ; but in another sense 
 they are both duties, as the parables of the steward and 
 the talents prove. And it is so with all the greater 
 attributes of the soul. 
 
 We are apt to keep up in the mind tacitly, at least 
 
 15 
 
170 PEACE BY POWEK. 
 
 a faithless alternative between goodness and greatness : 
 the fallacy being that these two do not bear to each other 
 any relation of comparison, since each is an element of 
 the other. Their righteousness is the greatest thing in 
 the really great ; and by just so much as goodness lacks 
 greatness, or strong qualities, it comes short of being 
 divinely good. As surely as God meant each spirit of his 
 children to be a completely-developed instance, with all 
 the capacities fulfilled, there can be no feeble saints ; 
 their feebleness is just so much abridgment of their 
 saintliness. Nor is there any comfort in this for gifted 
 sinners. They naturally make the mental and social 
 traits their first standard of judgment, and have their 
 little sneer accordingly ; but the infirmity of the irre 
 ligious is always really deeper than that of the good, 
 since it is infirmity at that inmost point of man, where 
 he was made to be strongest, where he was to touch 
 God and eternity, and where disease debilitates the 
 whole constitution with the deadliest certainty. 
 
 Taking a little further assistance from the image of 
 the text, the three obvious attributes of mountains are 
 elevation, magnitude, permanency. They are measured 
 by their height ; their most obvious impression on the 
 eye is that of size, or majesty ; and among the muta 
 bilities of the globe they are the most enduring, being 
 described as ancient, lasting, and even everlasting. 
 Out of these three several characters, in their natural 
 combination, and only rounded a little into the curves of 
 time and weather, comes, as the Psalmist felt, and as most 
 of us have felt in looking at them, an influence of peace. 
 It will be no harm if we transfer this simple analysis in 
 its terms to our subject. In just such attributes of 
 strength human character, also, is to find its moral bal- 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 171 
 
 ance, its real peace, viz. in its aspiration, its large 
 ness, its constancy. Man is high with his devotional 
 affections, his prayers ; wide with his practical prin 
 ciples, and steadfast with his convictions. Or, he is 
 high with his spirit, wide with his will, and steadfast 
 with his reason. With these three properly adjusted, 
 you will have a general effect of serenity ; because such 
 a man will live in a certain equipoise within himself, 
 centred and completed according to the grand designs 
 of his Creator, as a creature belonging both to the world 
 and heaven. He reaches up into the infinite mystery 
 that broods like a sea of conscious life above him. He 
 reaches out, in all liberal fellowships, to mankind, with 
 a love that cannot narrow into hatred nor be fretted into 
 war ; and he rests firmly on eternal foundations. And 
 thus, on all sides, God-ward, and man-ward, and self- 
 ward, so far as man can, he resides in the securities of 
 a well-defended peace ; he is castled in the kingdom of 
 his own tranquillity, safe from the changes of the time, 
 and from the fear of change to come. He is " set 
 fast like the mountains, being girded with power." 
 
 And the same causes that make him strong in this 
 empire of rest within himself ordain him to exert un 
 consciously the same influence on others, rendering him 
 a natural peacemaker in society ; for, as has been said, 
 " mountains are to the body of the earth what muscu 
 lar action is to the body of man." 
 
 Spiritual serenity, then, is spiritual strength. It 
 comes in by no softness of sentiment, but by thorough 
 work. It comes by a faith that emboldens and energizes 
 the whole soul, a penitence that searches and strains it, 
 and often a secret fight of afflictions. Christianity is a 
 robust religion. It was planted in the world by a race of 
 
172 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 heroes. Its great starts forward, into new continents and 
 epochs, have been made through martyrdoms. The blood 
 of sacrifice has watered its roots. Men of easy systems 
 wonder and cavil at all this sacrifice and crucifixion, and 
 call it a " blood-theology ; " but they sneer at the highest 
 glory of earth and heaven, which is voluntary sacrifice 
 for love, much as you hear languid fops criticise the 
 fanaticism of the Puritans, that conquered for them, out 
 of the jaws of the wilderness, the inheritance where 
 they lounge and sprinkle rose-water. As the mountains 
 bring peace, the sublimity of the Christian ideas tran 
 quillizes. That Faith insists that we shall be brave men, 
 in order to be peaceable men ; that the people of God 
 shall work, even as the Father worked, to obtain the 
 rest that rcmaineth for them; that they shall strive, 
 through a strait gate and a narrow way, to enter in 
 where are pleasures forevermore. Those three moun 
 tain-attributes must appertain to their piety : height of 
 spirit, reaching in worship toward the throne of God ; 
 amplitude of affection, in whose abounding charity all 
 the landscapes of the earth shall lodge ; and constancy in 
 all the integrities and purities of a consecrated life. 
 Then will be the peace that passeth all understanding, 
 the peace of the Son of God. 
 
 In their natural organization, both men and moun 
 tains have roots. Of both, the deepest or primary for 
 mations often appear at the summit. These huge tel 
 luric pyramids are not mere masses laid in dead weight 
 upon the surface of the earth ; but are the protrusion 
 of its own energies, organized parts of itself, discoveries 
 or features of its internal forces, and so the springing 
 expression of its passion and power. 
 
 Take any one of these three traits just mentioned 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 173 
 
 away, and, besides what other ruin you make, you most 
 disastrously disturb the peace. Take away the aspir 
 ing faith, rob yourself of religion, and then all those 
 implanted instincts of other worlds, which were meant 
 for faith to guide and satisfy, become the haunting 
 terrors of superstition. Shorn of its high commerce 
 with the Unseen, the degraded mind shrinks with fear 
 from what its providential intuitions warn it must yet 
 be, and trembles to die because it has not found what 
 makes it sacred and lofty to live. There is no peace 
 there, but the misery of weakness. Take away the 
 large confidence of a round-about and generous hu 
 manity : you mar all peace again by that littleness, for 
 other men will be either hated, or suspected, or envied, 
 or feared. Take away the constancy : you have vacilla 
 tion, uncertainty, yieldings, capitulations, and whatever 
 brings confusion and pain, with total loss of peace. On 
 whichever side you enfeeble man, you unbalance and 
 torture him. 
 
 Proceed to some examples, in other regions of life, 
 how peace depends on power, how the gentler traits 
 are upheld by the braver, and all noble joy comes of 
 energy. 
 
 In literary expression, the effect of pathos is finest 
 in thinkers habitually severe. What saves sentiment 
 from sentimentality is the feeling of a firm intellectual 
 fibre through the emotion. The lighter mental move 
 ments are most sure of respect where they adorn some 
 massive argument ; and imagination never sets its em 
 bellishments of style with such decisive impression as 
 when it plays from a brain of great logical consistency. 
 
 If it should be supposed that this is a mere effect 
 of contrast, as much to the honor of the lighter term 
 
 15* 
 
174 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 in the comparison as the weightier, and so profitless 
 to my doctrine, observe that if either style is carried 
 quite through a given mind, or even through a single 
 performance, unrelieved by the other, the result in 
 one case will be well-nigh contemptible, but in the 
 other never quite so bad. You never hold a string 
 of fancies, however brilliant, in such esteem as a hard 
 process of reasoning. We can better spare the beauty 
 than the force, the ornament than the bones, and all 
 the ornament than any one of the bones. Indeed, 
 that which is beauty when it clothes strength, or crowns 
 resistance, or graces grandeur, if it comes to constitute 
 the total substance of an object, is beauty no longer, 
 but in its characterlessness sinks to prettiness. With 
 out the presence of some strong trait, a fair face is a 
 sort of incarnate satire. 
 
 It appears to be owing to this principle of propor 
 tions that works lying in the sphere of the lighter 
 literature, and the arts, require to be sustained with 
 uncommon intellectual pith and dignity, to deliver 
 them even into respectability. No writing of good 
 sense, however prosaic, is so insufferable as common 
 place poetry, where weakness publishes itself in the 
 finery of measure and rhyme. No dryness of real 
 reason is so cheap as a florid mediocrity. Unwonted 
 decoration or sweetness, in humanity or nature, sur 
 feits and sickens. There is no garden of summer flow 
 ers on earth that can satisfy the sight of an intelligent 
 race like Atlas or the Jura ; and, in his more earnest 
 moods, no man can long for a tropical Eden, or a vale 
 of Tempe, as for the soaring sweeps of mountain-side, 
 whose wedges widen down into the central widths of 
 the world. 
 
 
PEACE BY POWER, 175 
 
 We are able to cite, to the same purpose, the familiar 
 fact that persons who have been in the strain and peril 
 of some moral or civil revolution, wounded with real 
 weapons, and compacted by times of terror, if they 
 have benignant qualities, impress us in that way far 
 more than is possible for men of softer discipline. Their 
 past soldiership clears our confidence of all suspicions 
 of a mere effeminate amiability, or cowardly concilia 
 tion. It is not only that they have been tried, and 
 therefore can be trusted, but the very battles where 
 they were brave give a loftier import to their sympa 
 thies, and to their kindness a certain authority. Ten 
 derness is doubly tender where we know a rugged and 
 aggressive temper has been subdued to it by that rule 
 over the spirit which is. mightier than the taking of 
 cities. The gentleness of heroes, the love of warriors, 
 smiles among sunburnt scars, the piteous tears of the 
 Northmen s gods, these are the irresistible pleaders. 
 So the arms of the fierce Scotch family of Douglas 
 bore the inscription, " Tender and True." 
 
 Even of mountains themselves, those eloquent peace- 
 prophets of nature, the calmness is deeper when we 
 know that their preparation has been through violence, 
 their walls upheaved by monster forces, their braces 
 fixed by earthquakes, their breasts swelled with inner 
 fire, their tops torn by hurricanes, or grated by the 
 grinding drifts of deluge, or bitten and sawed by the 
 teeth of glacier and avalanche, rock and ice. 
 
 Let me put it to your private experience. It is 
 familiar how bereavements, which are the storms of 
 the soul, prepare the way for religious tranquillity. 
 I suppose that in every parish church in the land the 
 majority of trusting disciples were made so under the 
 
176 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 rough handling of some kind of pain. They had to 
 march, weeping, blinded, through the dry valley of 
 Baca, to find it at last " a well " of living water, and, 
 going from strength to strength, to appear in Zion 
 before God. Resignation is rest ; and, to know it, the 
 heart has to be torn by terrible separations, writhing 
 at the new-made grave, heavy among the ruins of 
 fortune, broken over disappointed plans, or unreturned 
 aifections. It is humiliating, but real. Tempests must 
 sweep our sky, before the air is still and the summer 
 sunshine calls up the noiseless energies of life. Ask 
 the ministers, the Church records, the secret thanks 
 givings that rise around the communion-table. They 
 will tell you, as One greater than they told you long 
 before, that crosses bring calmness, that afflictions yield 
 afterwards the peaceable fruits of righteousness, that the 
 rough, sharp mountains, hard to climb, bring peace ; and 
 that the Sabbath temple, the Lord s great House of 
 Rest, into which the toilsome nations flow to praise, 
 is built upon their top. 
 
 In the solemn portrait-galleries of history, the serenest 
 faces are the saddest, where peace has not been in 
 herited, but conquered. We have this union of power 
 and tenderness eminently in such as Luther ; the bravest 
 heart of all his age ; fronting the pride and wrath of 
 Europe and ready to smite it in the face ; fearless of 
 men and devils, because so fearful of God, with his 
 " rugged sterling strength and sense" in all he did, 
 lightning on his lips and thunderbolts in his hands, 
 and his " smiting idiomatic phrases cleaving to the heart 
 of the matter," yet, as was further well said of him, 
 " a most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as 
 indeed the valiant heart ever is," weeping at the 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 177 
 
 death-bed of his little Margaret, making music with 
 his flute, and with such " breathings of affection, soft 
 as a child s or mother s," in his wild soul, that it was 
 thought " to a slight observer he might have seemed 
 a timid, weak man, affectionate, shrinking tender 
 ness the chief distinction of him." 
 
 Doubtless these fierce strengths need to be both bal 
 anced and mastered, to produce tranquillity. Loosen the 
 natural attractions, and the soul becomes like a universe 
 of uncentralized, plunging planets. Yet the very vehe 
 mence of the fury, and the magnificence of the misery 
 wrought by unchecked passions, furnish a measure of 
 their power for good, and inform us what imperial 
 powers dwell kindly together in a true human soul, 
 just as the splinters that fly from a wheel shattered by 
 centrifugal excess betray the momentum of the engine 
 more vividly than all its beneficent regularity. This is 
 the baleful energy and sublimity of crime. Yet, even 
 in characters of such enormous evil, there is acknowl 
 edged to be a sort of fascination, like the beauty of 
 basilisks, the romance of villany. We are never 
 wholly rid of the idea that strength of any sort is a 
 good. That is precisely the secret of success in the 
 scriptural and Miltonic character of Satan, who exerts 
 his attraction, not so much by his baseness as in spite of 
 that, through the marvellous and kingly splendor of 
 that arch-angelic intellect, that was ruined but not 
 obscured, and had all its royal might apostatized and 
 turned over to rebellion. It is only when the power is 
 kept in symmetry with love, and thus in the sanctity of 
 divine order, that the spirit goes forth in its real 
 majesty, and has its description in that radiant image of 
 Scripture, " clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and 
 terrible as an army with banners." 
 
178 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 May I not press this point a little further, and expect 
 your agreement when I say that we begin to have fresh 
 hope of a character, that it will be something and do 
 something, when, after debility or effeminacy, it is 
 roused even to an irregular activity, and manifests the 
 vigor of a manly will, though it should be in ways not 
 the most profitable ; just as sometimes, after a monoto 
 nous mist in the air, or the dull dripping of a drizzly 
 day, we begin to have a heightened respect, as it were, 
 for the weather, if a roll of thunder peals through the 
 fog, giving us a reassurance, if not a positive comfort, in 
 that reverberating affirmation, that we are still girt 
 about, not only with the softness and forbearances, but 
 with the awful energies of creation ; that the eternal ele 
 ments are at work, and that the whole scene of things is 
 not to be liquefied into a loquacious patter of drops, or 
 dissolve away into lassitude in sultry vapors. Nor are 
 these effects mere fugitive or fanciful associations. The 
 positive use of the majesty is at least as great and as sus 
 taining as that of the gentleness, to a reverential mind. 
 For not all the genial fruits that the showers encour 
 age on the farms are a nobler offering to the God who is 
 a spirit, than when the awe-struck mind answers, with 
 the old Psalmist, to the voice out of the cloudy taber 
 nacle, " Yerily, God thundereth marvellously, and 
 divideth the flames of fire, and shaketh the wilder 
 ness ! " or, with the Patriarch Job, " Canst thou thun 
 der with a voice like him ? Lo, these are parts of his 
 ways; but the thunder of his power who can under 
 stand?" 
 
 Again, in the great pacifications of empires, the same 
 rule prevails. Alienated kingdoms are not restored to 
 one another, any more than they are safely upheld 
 
PEACE BY POWER. -179 
 
 within, themselves, by those amiable and unfortified in 
 stincts which merely recoil from blood ; nor by multi 
 tudes of weaker well-wishers to the general welfare among 
 the citizens. It takes the strongest heads to bring 
 peace. Diplomacy has to summon her stoutest, clearest- 
 sighted, and farthest-sighted ministers. Through the 
 laborious disentanglement of political subtleties, and the 
 firmest confronting of thought against thought, the ro 
 bust encounter of strong reasons, the friendly courtesies 
 of neighboring states are preserved; the finest logical 
 abilities of statesmen wrestle together for the restoration 
 of concord. A treaty that settles the line across a dis 
 puted territory tasks the best brains of two nations ; and 
 sometimes, for want of such wits, a spark of war is 
 fanned into a flame, and continents are shaken, or 
 oceans reddened. All the soft-hearted dispositions of a 
 whole people cannot provide national tranquillity like 
 two or three powerful natures in the right place, 
 the mountains of the moral scenery. These are the 
 " broadstones of honor," and the public amity reposes 
 on them. We can well understand how travellers 
 should say that, among all the exquisite openings along 
 the Rhine, there is no more perfect aspect of peace than 
 looks from the solid masonry of the Ehreribreitstein 
 castle, the impregnable Gibraltar of the North, with its 
 silent battlements four hundred feet from the rock in 
 the sky, with its vast magazine equal to sustaining eight 
 thousand men on a ten years siege, and its well sunk to 
 the river-bed, never to fail till the Alpine fountains 
 are dry. The most intrepid are most pacific. Magna 
 nimity makes no quarrels. Indeed, the very seed-field 
 of anarchy is a populace all of whom are too restless to 
 keep order, and none of them wise and strong enough 
 to rule. 
 
 
180 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 Iii this very Psalm that contains my text you have a 
 real instance. The Poem itself, in its first application, 
 is a loyal lyric to an oriental prince, a patriotic cele 
 bration of some sovereign both victorious and fatherly ; 
 terrible on the field, but very gracious in his home gov 
 ernment. So the poet alternately celebrates the two 
 sets of regal attributes. Now the king is a fighter, 
 breaking in pieces the oppressor with vengeance ; but in 
 the next verse he is saving the children of the needy 
 whom his sword has emancipated. Now he is exalted, 
 as having dominion from sea to sea, a monarch moving 
 in arms, the wilderness bowing to him, his enemies lick 
 ing the dust, tributary chiefs and satraps waiting at his 
 palace-door. Yet, in the same strain, and because the 
 spear and throne are the badge and seat of so much, 
 power, he is shown looking compassionately after the 
 troubles of the poor, counting precious the blood of the 
 victims of wrong, and binding up their bruises like a 
 sister of charity. In one line his glory shines with the 
 splendor and constancy of the siin ; and in the antistro- 
 phe it is said all nations shall call him blessed, or happy. 
 Here everybody fears him ; but presently his mercy 
 comes down upon the people " like rain upon the mown 
 grass," making " abundance of peace so long as the 
 moon endure th." Obviously, in the poet s mind, so far 
 from suggesting any contradiction, these attributes were 
 thought to have a natural relation, the power being the 
 source of the peace. 
 
 Or if, as some interpreters have done, we take the 
 Psalm as a prophetic anthem to the Messiah, then we 
 shall only pass on to a better and even the highest per 
 sonal illustration of the same thing ; where the great 
 ness and the mercy blend in complete divine unity, 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 181 
 
 a perfect peace ; where the " Lion of the tribe of Judah" 
 is also the " Lamb of God ; " where the wielder of a 
 power that compasses heaven and earth is meek and 
 lowly, the world s eternal conqueror its crucified 
 victim, where the strength that might have marshalled 
 legions of angels is only employed to send out his infi 
 nite affection on a wider sweep, and with a mightier 
 salvation. 
 
 Hence we come to discover in what order of persons 
 we are to look for the noblest charity and the real con 
 solation. We want our consolers to be, not only the 
 subjects of pain, but its conquerors through their suf 
 fering. The more masculine your pity, the more it 
 moves and melts. We never value greatly the tears 
 of easy weepers, and even of those of mothers and 
 lovers the power and the preciousness are proportioned 
 to the frugality. Yery weak people cannot know what 
 charity is ; and on a hot provocation all their professed 
 liberality sours back into bigotry, and their kindness 
 curdles into hate. 
 
 Writes Henry More : " Those that endeavor after so 
 still, so silent and demure a condition of mind that they 
 would have the sense of nothing there but peace and 
 rest, what do they effect but a clear day shining upon 
 a barren heath ? Neither sheep nor shepherd is to be 
 seen there, but only a waste solitude, and one imiform 
 parchedness and vacuity." 
 
 And when we speak of comfort, we are directed up 
 to the Comforter. Paul speaks of the fruits of that. 
 Paraclete, or Holy Spirit, as " love, joy, peace, long-suf 
 fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temper 
 ance ; " mostly, you say, the softer graces. But he is 
 there writing to contentious and boisterous Galatians. 
 
 1C 
 
182 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 What is the whole doctrine of that Spirit, in the New 
 Testament and in Paul ? They represent Him as not 
 only Comforter, but also, and first, Rebuker, Renewer, 
 and San.ctifier. He shall reprove the world. He shall 
 tear up false confidences. He shall plant the stripes 
 and wake the agonies of repentance, that he may be a 
 true healer. He shall rend the guilty shelters of pride 
 and self-complacency to pieces. He shall search secrets, 
 divide joints and marrow, so close and sharp is his 
 work, toss the heart with self-accusing, and then re 
 build the whole character and church on clear, stout, 
 rocky foundations. And this shall be his comforting. 
 This will be the preparation of a peace that cannot be 
 moved, deep, genuine, strong, healthy, lasting, a 
 repentance that needeth never to be repented of. 
 
 Yes, all our peace is in God, who is not only the 
 strongest, but Almighty. As the mountains are round 
 about Jerusalem, the capital and throne of the nation, 
 so the Lord is round about his people. 
 
 It is at the close of that superb hymn to Omnipotence, 
 in the twenty-ninth Psalm, that we hear the subdued 
 twofold benediction, " The Lord will give strength 
 unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with 
 peace." 
 
 His presence is safety precisely because it is power, 
 the love invincible, the compassion omnipotent. He 
 in whose pavilion we can hide, in the shadow of whose 
 wings we can utterly trust, must be the Father, and the 
 Father of an Infinite Majesty ; who himself settcth fast 
 the mountains, being girded with power; who ridetli 
 upon the high places of the earth and breaketh the 
 cedars ; before whom the mountains themselves are 
 moved and the everlasting hills skip like lambs, Leb 
 anon and Sirion like a young unicorn, and the seven 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 183 
 
 thunders uttering their voices. He is our Father. He 
 is our Infinite Clemency. He is the good and gentle 
 Shepherd. And when work has made ready for rest, 
 and discipline has ripened faith, and the energies of life 
 have found their sabbath, and power has broken down 
 the middle-wall of partition and made us one. He it is 
 who then, in his Son, becomes " our peace," reconciling 
 us thus to himself, and leading us then,. at last, where 
 we could not come before, in the green meadows, by the 
 still waters. 
 
 Let me turn this train of thought now, as briefly as 
 possible, to direct personal applications. 
 
 1. We learn from it never to be afraid of rugged and 
 even painful experiences. Even if happiness were our 
 highest end, which with noble natures it never can be, 
 the rough handling of repentance and sorrow will be 
 our shortest way. It is not among the children of in 
 dulgence or idleness that you find the most contented 
 households, or the serenest souls, but with them that 
 take up crosses cheerfully, and fear none of those 
 things that they shall suffer, and never cry " Peace, 
 peace," when there is no peace, nor seek it where it is 
 not to be found. It is only truth, in its two-edged 
 strength, that makes the arm strong; and only loftiness 
 and largeness and firmness that give peace. 
 
 " Great souls snatch vigor from the stormy air, 
 While weaker natures suffer and despair ; 
 Grief not the languor but the action brings, 
 And spreads the horizon but to nerve the wings." 
 
 2. We have also a rule for " strengthening the breth 
 ren." Influences of power, of course, whether in inspir 
 ation or sustenance, cannot go out except from vigor 
 ous hearts. And if we think to make up for the lack of 
 these by abounding in gentle sympathies, we have seen 
 
184 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 that vacillating and feeble people cannot be very effect- 
 iial even as sons of consolation. We would all rather 
 be spoken to of submission by heroes and prophets, 
 the men of iron arms, clad in camel s hair, their mus 
 cles fed on wild honey, or by the women of St. Bar 
 bara s endurance. As we would comfort one another, 
 we must try, with the apostle s earnestness, to " endure 
 hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ." 
 
 3. "We see, further, of how sterling worth is a form of 
 religious belief which holds fast the stringent as well as 
 the soothing doctrines of Christ s evangelical teaching. 
 Any theological system runs fast to feebleness, and se 
 cretly loosens its grasp, which deals in the unmingled 
 imagery of caresses and indulgences. Just as a creed 
 of rigid legality, a dispensation of threats and judg 
 ments, is bloodless, so a creed of indiscriminate compas 
 sion is nerveless. The order of the universe is poised 
 between justice and mercy ; and it is not kindness, but 
 the bitterest cruelty, which would imsettle that order, 
 by giving us a Deity too doting to punish, and too fond 
 to judge. If we have a Father who is simply fond, we 
 have one that cannot forgive, and whom it is not possible 
 for a very intelligent being to love, but only to flatter 
 and despise ; and when we worship a deified fondness, it 
 is likely that our self-direction will be only a fondling of 
 our favorite sins. The Gospel is able to encourage us, 
 just because its promises beam forth from such a tre 
 mendous background of equity and prohibition. Its 
 reconciliations must be no mock deliverances, or rhetor 
 ical reliefs, or quasi salvation, but realities. Our God 
 must be the God who hates iniquity, and destroys pride, 
 and brings down the oppressor, and breaks in pieces 
 those that lift themselves against him, a God who 
 
PEACE BY POWER. 185 
 
 makes the natural penalties of guilt the exact measure 
 of his grace in pardoning, and who rules in righteous 
 ness precisely to this very end, that he may be a Father 
 of forgiveness. 
 
 4. We learn the way of making our own eternal life 
 secure. The New Testament speaks continually to us 
 of salvation. How little they interpret that term by 
 Christ himself who find nothing in it but a timid appeal 
 to calculating, sordid self-love ! By salvation he means 
 such safety as lies in a sturdy and athletic power of 
 character, will, heart, conscience, and intellect, got 
 by daring to attempt great virtues, and by incessant 
 intrepidity. Hence he stirs the great deeps of human 
 nature, moves its most magnificent affections, requires 
 the travail of a new birth, prophesies warfare, will have 
 his disciples consent to crucifixion sooner than deny 
 him, and let the dead bury their dead rather than 
 look back. He offers a new yoke to the weary who 
 pray for rest, and says that yoke shall rest them. He 
 holds up no lower standard than to be perfect as the 
 Father in heaven is perfect, and impartial as the God of 
 sun and rain. He says, Give up houses and lands for 
 duty, false friendships for principle, fame for truth, the 
 whole, world for God. So he strikes boldly in among 
 the grander verities of the soul. He would build broad 
 ly and loftily. He sets up, as the chief apostle, the 
 manliest person of his age, the embodiment of all 
 that is indomitable, generous, shrewd, witty, patient, 
 independent, modest. He wins confidence by the very 
 immensity of his demands. Men speak of Christianity 
 is honoring the passive virtues, like poverty of spirit. 
 But it does this for the very reason that, by a pro- 
 bunder understanding of human nature, and a sharper 
 
186 PEACE BY POWER. 
 
 insight into facts, it knows that in the consistency of 
 those virtues with the active ones is the hardest stress 
 on men s individuality ; and so it is original in pro 
 posing the tests of Christian manhood just where they 
 are most decisive, in faith, in the taking of crosses, in 
 a free consent to be inspired, and thus be saved by the 
 Divine Spirit acting down into humanity from heaven, 
 in the Redeemer s life and love. 
 
 5. My final remark grows out of all that has gone 
 before ; and it is that we disturb the true spiritual 
 order, and invert God s plan for us, whenever we go in 
 search of peace first, and not holiness ; when we pray 
 most heartily for the quiet of repose, instead of the 
 honors of toil, and the noble pains of sacrifice. " First 
 pure, then peaceable : " that is the clearly-pronounced 
 order and everlasting law of a disciple s way. 
 
SEKMON X. 
 
 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 AND THEY FEARED AS THEY ENTERED INTO THE CLOUD. 
 
 Luke ix. 34. 
 
 THIS scene of the Transfiguration lies on the border 
 land between the material world and the spiritual, and 
 belongs partly to both. The simplest truth taught by 
 it is that both these worlds are real. At present, we 
 know the one through our senses, and the other, if 
 we take knowledge of it at all, through inward per 
 ceptions of the soul. If any of us live chiefly in the 
 senses, if our interests, habits, and tastes lie chiefly 
 on that side, or if the exercises of our minds cling 
 principally to the material aspect of things, then the 
 discernment of the other great reality grows dim. 
 When anything is told us of it, even in the Scrip 
 tures, it sounds like a fable. Openly or secretly, we 
 question its authority. The spiritual discernment, or 
 faculty of faith, has not been used, perhaps not even 
 opened; and then, though we should stand around 
 the Son of Man, who came to show how these two 
 worlds are one and open into one another, though the 
 Prophets should come, clothed in light, and a voice 
 speak out of the excellent glory, we should only say 
 it was a meteor, or it thundered. It would take more 
 
188 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 than a Bible, more than a miracle to convince us. No 
 matter how merciful or wonderful the work, " Neither 
 would they be persuaded though one rose from the 
 dead." And so it turned out where the wonder 
 working Saviour stood. He healed men s miseries ; 
 they that were dead sat up and spake. Some believed ; 
 some doubted. 
 
 Three men, the three who seem to have been the 
 best prepared to enter into the higher meaning of the 
 Christian life, and were therefore admitted whenever 
 the Saviour s divine power was more mysteriously man 
 ifest, John, Peter, and James, were called up to 
 witness this immortal interview, where the two great 
 Prophets of the elder and preparatory covenant were 
 to meet, in transfigured forms, with the Messiah of 
 the Fulfilment, and there, in the serenity and splendor 
 of the Mount, to converse together of " the decease 
 which he should accomplish at Jerusalem ; " a theme 
 vast and solemn enough even for that august audi 
 ence. Moses the Lawgiver, Elijah the Reformer, Jesus 
 the Redeemer! In the whole representation of what 
 took place, you see things that in themselves are quite 
 beyond natural observation, exhibited by natural objects 
 and appearances, as a mountain, human bodies, light, 
 sound. 
 
 This fact has sufficient religious importance to justify 
 us in dwelling a moment upon it. Setting aside notions 
 purely Pagan, and keeping in the line of the nominal 
 belief in one God, there are three distinctly marked 
 stages in the progress of opinion about the natural 
 world, with a fourth to come. 
 
 The first of these is where the natural world is re 
 garded as divine only as to what appears to be extraor- 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 189 
 
 
 
 dinary or exceptional in it. Thunders, tempests, earth 
 quakes, eclipses, famines, pestilences, are thought to 
 betray a divine presence. Or, in human affairs, sudden 
 accidents, unexpected deliverances, strange coincidences. 
 God is a God of occasional interference, not of con 
 stant regulation and animation. Not all our daily 
 affairs and the regular processes of creation are sub 
 ject to his watchfulness, and charged with his in 
 dwelling spirit ; but nature is liable to arbitrary visita 
 tions from without. The religious sentiment feeds on 
 the marvellous. There is a piety of surprises and 
 i alarms, intermittent, spasmodic. God is not in the 
 order of nature, its laws, its silent, beneficent growths 
 and noiseless motions, but in its loud jars and grotesque 
 anomalies. You will hear much there of special 
 providences : it is not Providence at all, but intrusion, 
 improvisation, perturbation. Of course this will be a 
 God of violence and of terror. And the name of this 
 first view will be Superstition. The supernatural is, 
 then, strange, frightful. 
 
 The second is exactly opposite to this. It is where 
 the attention is turned wholly to the law-side of nature, 
 and does not see that there is a personal will acting 
 Teely anywhere within nature or about it. It is so 
 3ent on getting rid of exceptions that it forgets the 
 Maker. It mistakes uniformity for self-acting me 
 chanics. Virtually it denies the spiritual world, with 
 ill its nobler, varied and glorified forms of life. There 
 ire men so absorbed in the regular processes of the 
 iniverse as to be insensible both to its Original and 
 ;o its holy object. Prudence is substituted for piety. 
 Che nearest approach to penitence is regret for a mis 
 calculation. Self-reliance is put for devout trust; a 
 
190 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 
 
 little knowledge, which vanishes away, for faith and 
 hope and charity, which abide. The future is all 
 dark, without promise or resurrection. The name of 
 this is scepticism. The supernatural is denied. 
 
 The third, which is unquestionably a great advance 
 on the other two, is where God is believed to be over 
 both the natural and the spiritual world, but only in 
 the spiritual. These two worlds are driven wide apart. 
 Thus the only religious purpose answered by nature 
 is to furnish a convenient supply of figures and illus 
 trations for religious discourse. In those who have 
 a lively admiration for external beauty there will grow 
 up a sort of fanciful, poetical, sentimental piety ; in 
 those who distrust and despise the material world, as 
 ceticism. Christianity and creation are sundered, 
 though God joined them together. It is a kind of 
 half-belief. The supernatural is essentially unreal ; and 
 the evidence of miracle, where it is introduced into 
 theology, has a materialistic cast, as if the high and 
 self-attesting truths of Christianity and the soul were 
 actually dependent on proofs addressed to the senses. 
 
 But there is a fourth condition, or will be yet, 
 where the natural and the spiritual are seen and felt to 
 be parts of one plan, under one Creator. The laws 
 of the one are recognized to be exactly harmonious, 
 nay, identical, with the laws of the other. There is not 
 only a resemblance, but a correspondence ; the things of 
 nature being found to be the things of the spirit of man, 
 good and evil ; and all the things of nature having their 
 counterpart in the spiritual world, whether life or death, 
 health or disease, clouds or sunshine, serpents or doves. 
 Christ s instructions are full of these things ; and they 
 are not accidental comparisons, but are meant to bring 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 191 
 
 God s works together into the closest unity. So says 
 the Apostle Paul in a passage which commentators have 
 only partially and superficially comprehended : " The in 
 visible things of Him, from the creation of the world, 
 are clearly seen, being understood by the things that 
 are made." He is the God of the insect as much as of 
 the archangel. In the original design of the Creative 
 mind, each was meant for the other, everything in 
 nature, great or small, star or starfish, to meet and 
 answer to something in man. This at present may be 
 Christian mysticism. But it will be Christian faith. 
 All the strong tendencies of true science, as well as of 
 Revelation, are bearing in this direction. They tell us 
 that when God formed the lowest living creature, al 
 ready man, with brain and heart and immortality, was 
 in his thought. In every department of knowledge and 
 thought, unity is the reigning idea. All interdepend ; all 
 belong to each other ; all serve each other. And this is 
 the Christian doctrine. Revelation is to find each of its 
 great practical truths confirmed in the universe. The 
 sovereignty of God ; his personal and free presence to 
 every part and particle; the disorder of sin, or disobe 
 dience to law ; the remedy for that, or reconciliation ; 
 the necessity of a second or spiritual birth to restore and 
 complete the natural man, have dim types in nature. 
 And, above all, what now concerns us most, there 
 is hinted the reality of a revelation of what is unseen 
 and eternal, through appropriate and pre-adapted forms 
 that are seen and temporal, in connection with the min 
 istry of the Son of God and Son of Man, as a media 
 tor belonging both to earth and heaven, or rather as 
 having both these belonging to him. In this view, the 
 Christian miracles become not only credible, but what 
 
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194 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 under the laws of light and air and water and attrac 
 tion, are the properties of the cloud in nature. 
 
 Now, in that succession of special disclosures of the 
 Divine Presence and care for man, of which the Bible is 
 the completest record and Christ the perfect incarna 
 tion, it is striking to see how each principal act of Rev 
 elation is covered with a cloud, a palpable veil of 
 mystery. In the book of Job, supposed to be the oldest 
 piece of writing, there is a statement, an anticipation 
 of what has just now, after thousands of years, come to 
 be the settled conclusion of studies in science, that 
 in the very process of creative power the whole planet 
 lay enfolded in a garment of cloud, " thick darkness 
 a swaddling-band for it." The earliest covenant of 
 God s mercy for his children, it is written, had its token 
 in a rainbow of the cloud. At the emancipation of the 
 chosen people, the beginning of the history in which 
 Christianity was to be born, a cloud led the tribes, which 
 was " light by night " to them, but was " darkness " 
 to the pursuing Egyptians. Throughout all their long 
 march to the Land of Promise, this cloud was not only 
 a guide, but a special sign of Jehovah, and they saw his 
 glory in it. At Sinai, through all the giving of the 
 Law and the founding of the Hebrew commonwealth, 
 which was the inauguration of the first dispensation, it 
 is said a cloud covered the Mount. In the ark of the 
 tabernacle, in the holy of holies, in the Shekinah, which 
 was the lineal antecedent of the temple and the 
 church, the symbol of the Lord s perpetual watchfulness 
 was a cloud over the mercy-seat; and at great crises 
 in the religious history we are told of a cloud filling 
 the sanctuary. Isaiah prefigures the flocking in of the 
 Gentile nations into the true fold, and the worship of a 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 195 
 
 universal assembly, under the same image. All the 
 devout Jewish poetry preserves these allusions, and 
 finds in the clouds a fit dwelling, or chariot, or pavil 
 ion for the Most High. In the New Testament, the 
 highest and clearest manifestations of the Son of God 
 robe themselves in this mystery, as at the transfigu 
 ration, the ascension, and the predicted judgment. 
 " As they beheld, a cloud received him up out of their 
 sight." " They shall see the Son of Man coming in a 
 cloud, with power and great glory ; every eye shall see 
 him, men s hearts failing them for fear, and the 
 powers of heaven shaken." The Apocalypse repeats 
 these representations. From the beginning to the end 
 you see the persistent and remarkable reappearance of 
 this symbol. Considering how these different books of 
 the Bible were produced, and what a variety of authors, 
 periods, countries, stages of literary culture, they pro 
 ceed from, this is more than a coincidence, it is de 
 sign. It discloses a general truth. As men are brought 
 near to the very sight and feeling of their Lord, an ob 
 scurity overshadows them ; there is a shrinking ; rever 
 ence hides the face ; the angels even, admitted to the 
 brightest day, veil their eyes with their wings ; no sight 
 is clear enough, no faith is bold enough, not to need the 
 screen. " They feared as they entered into the cloud." 
 
 Instead of looking farther away from us, let us see if 
 the great truth lying under all these forms does not 
 come very near, to strengthen or to comfort us, in our 
 own familiar experience. The loftiest visions of heaven 
 have much to do with Our lowliest and commonest 
 duties. There is one lesson for the privileged disciples 
 and for us. 
 
 1. Most of our deepest acquaintance with religious 
 
196 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 truth comes by a discipline of some severity. To pass 
 out of a life of indifference and self-indulgence into one 
 of purity and prayer requires a painful effort. If you 
 can look back to any time when your life took a new 
 starting-point, or rose to a higher aim, you will remem 
 ber there was some hard conflict connected with it. 
 Suffering is not only the consequence of sin, but the 
 instrument of recovery. It is a means of penitence, 
 and so a minister to the only real peace. The source of 
 the trial may be without or within : in disasters of for 
 tune, defeats of pride, failures of ambition, companion 
 ships which cross and torture our temper, disordered 
 and aching bodies, secret adversaries fighting with con 
 science, or bereavement by death, putting such a look 
 on the world that it never can be again what it was 
 before, quenching joys never to be rekindled. It is 
 under some shadow, through some cloud, that most of 
 us have to approach our Master, and enter into the 
 brightness of his communion. The Christian s path, as 
 he enters on it, is very apt to run by ruins or graves, 
 ruins of desire, or graves of those not less dear because 
 their beauty was mortal, and their strength was frail. 
 Think as we may of this humiliating necessity, it will 
 not be easy to trace the secret workings of Christian 
 power, or to examine the records of the visible church 
 of believers, and deny it. Nay, Christ himself an 
 nounced it plainly beforehand : "Whoever would be my 
 disciple must take up a cross to come after me." The 
 question in the mind of any one of you may be, whether 
 it is true or not. But the real question is only whether 
 your life has yet been wide and deep enough to find it 
 out, or whether you have it yet to learn. 
 
 2. The second point on this practical side of the doc- 
 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 197 
 
 trine is that it is when we are entering into this cloud, 
 having only the dark side of it before us, and its 
 damp and chilly folds closing around us, that we are 
 afraid. 
 
 The purpose of the cloud is to shut out all that we 
 are not meant to see. It is also a kind of background 
 for the heavenly vision. There must be a bitterness in 
 the draught that heals us. This is only one way of ex 
 pressing the exact and eternal contradiction of right 
 and wrong. The true life is born by a painful travail. 
 The all-giving Father does not begrudge us joy; but 
 when we were created with the capacity of immortal 
 growth and infinite bliss, we took with it the capacity of 
 a fall, and we fell. The very knowledge of our highest 
 good is overcast. So that when the merciful Lord brings 
 us on the way towards himself and his glory, we do not 
 know what is before us. The trials that result in our 
 regeneration are dark as we go into them. They are 
 trials for faith. Is it all black vapor ? Are there horrid, 
 fiendish shapes ? Are there possibly bright forms of 
 heavenly helpers ? Will deadly blows be struck at our 
 hearts in the dark ? Or, will voices of promise and bless 
 ing speak ? It is so with the coming of a physical dis 
 order. The struggle is at the appearance of the first 
 fatal symptoms. The sufferer fears them. Afterwards, 
 as the malady wears on, very often angels come and 
 minister about the happy bed. It is so with the early 
 agonies of penitence ; with the first crash of our break 
 ing, long-cherished plans ; with the announcement that 
 those we love must die. The alleviations, the illumina 
 tions, are not yet. Fear is a sign of weakness and de 
 pendence, perhaps of conscious wrong and remorse. 
 And in the best of the disciples there will be enough of 
 17* 
 
198 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 tins sense of shortcoming and estrangement to make the 
 entrance into the cloud dreadful. Either the fear of 
 guilt, or the fear of reverence, will bow the most self- 
 confident down. The time that brings the clear warn 
 ing of some advancing sorrow is a day of clouds and 
 darkness. We shudder and start back, and ask bitterly 
 if this cup cannot be removed, and cry that we cannot, 
 cannot bear it ; and then we go into a secret conflict 
 with ourselves, or our fate, and it is indeed a valley of 
 the shadow of death. Like the solitary Patriarch, in an 
 agony that no human soul can share, we wrestle there 
 till the day breaketh, or else till it is hopeless despair 
 and the second death. When mothers look into the 
 faces of their children and listen to their breathing, and 
 then first realize that another and stronger arm than 
 theirs is drawing the little darling frame irresistibly 
 away ; when some definite sensation in the body tells 
 that all remedy is fruitless, and it is only a matter of a 
 little longer or shorter postponement, and the keepers of 
 that house tremble, and its windows are darkened ; when 
 the roused conscience is first stirred by the conviction 
 that all thus far has been horribly ungrateful and hol 
 low and ungodly, then it is entering into the cloud, 
 and it is fear. The heart sinks. The mind wavers. 
 The reason is blinded. The universe is a riddle. Prov 
 idence seems gone. The sun is hid. Faith has not laid 
 her hand yet on the clew. We see no way out, and no 
 morning beyond. It is darkness, and nothing but dark 
 ness, before and around and above. Are there some 
 that do not know this? We cannot even pray that 
 they may never know it, because so are we made 
 that only by knowing it can we know what comes after. 
 3. For, thirdly, there comes, as the Evangelist writes, 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 199 
 
 "a voice oufc of the cloud," which is sufficient, if we 
 will hearken to it, to guide us through the dark, into 
 the light, where the sun is never dim. Nay, it will in 
 fuse light through all the cloud itself; and that, instead 
 of a cavern of blackness breathing deadly night-winds, 
 becomes a pillar of fire, a token that our Leader is near, 
 a luminous temple of peace and rest. If we are not 
 buried in the cloud, and lost there, by a faithless and 
 obstinate impenitence, then we shall be permitted, 
 after patience and through faith, to behold this trans 
 figuration. For the voice says, " This is my beloved 
 Son, hear him." Hear him, and he will scatter the 
 cloud from about you with the breath of his mouth. 
 Hear him to believe, and you will be willing to let the 
 cloud remain all God s time, for even the night will 
 be light about you. Hear him to obey him, and you are 
 sure that the upward path he has appointed shall be 
 brighter and brighter, till the light of the moon shall be 
 as the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold. Hear 
 him to love him, and, in cloud or sun, health or 
 sick chamber, in a glad house or sitting by the grave 
 stone, living or dying, you will never be afraid again, 
 because perfect love casteth out fear. 
 
 So it is, as many of you will bear witness, that in 
 the Christian life it is only the clouds before that are 
 terrible ; when they are passed through, or when faith 
 looks up in the midst of them, and hears the voice, they 
 put on garments of light, their receding forms are 
 beautiful ; or, if they follow, it is only as luminous wit 
 nesses what God s discipline has done for us, moving 
 and ethereal monuments of a pain that was merciful. 
 
 Many thousands have found this to be wonderfully 
 true ; the heavenly hand leading them forcibly just 
 
200 THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 
 
 where they dreaded to go, and so bringing them, by a 
 way they knew not, to the mount of his glory and 
 his peace. There may be other clouds yet before us. 
 But they also, forbidding as they will look at first, if we 
 bend to hear the Divine voice speaking in them, will 
 roll away behind us like the rest, and dissolve in sun 
 shine. So that the voice says, Be of good courage ; only 
 believe ; only believe ; fear none of those things that 
 thou shalt suffer, pain, or affliction, or separation ; I 
 will be with thee ; my rod and staff shall comfort thee ; 
 open thy heart to me, and then my truth shall irradiate 
 all thy soul as the unhindered sunbeams fill the spaces 
 of the air, and there shall be no dark corner left. In 
 the world ye shall have tribulation ; but I have over 
 come the world. Only live in love and purity and 
 trust. Then all heaven is above you. More than that, 
 the very heavens are come down. You have nothing left 
 to fear. Christ walks with you. " The Lord shall be 
 thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." 
 
 The end of this line of thought must be with the end 
 of earth and the earthly life. One of two sorts of death 
 bed every one of us here is daily preparing. At one of 
 them, the cloud will be heavy and thick and cold; 
 nay, it will not be cloud only, but night, the sun 
 gone down ; and there will be no voice from the Christ 
 of the Resurrection speaking in it, bringing life and 
 immortality to light. Whether conscience is then 
 awake and afraid, and the restlessness and alarm show 
 that judgment is begun, or whether long recklessness 
 and self-conceit have created an insensibility whose 
 calmness is more frightful than any fear, it will be 
 dark : dark to the dying, and dark to the surviving. 
 They will try, in the desperation of a partial fondness, 
 
THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 201 
 
 to glean, up from your waste of life the memory of 
 some better fragments of amiability, or outside virtue, 
 to relieve the dreary retrospect, hardly to brighten 
 the prospect. So die the foolish and the faithless ; and 
 it is death indeed. 
 
 The other is the departure of the Christian believer 
 and workman : not to be described, because there is in 
 it something of that spiritual and mysterious grandeur 
 which never went into any speech of man. Yet it is a 
 mortal transfiguration begun. "Whatever the aspect 
 physical disorder and emaciation may wear, the cloud 
 has another side turned to the unfading sun. There is 
 no distressing attempt to palliate, or to excuse, or to flat 
 ter. The mourners may weep ; but it is as those weep 
 who hold a cross in their hands, and are sure that the 
 terms of forgiveness have been fulfilled. The dying 
 one may groan ; but it is as the most human lips of the 
 Divine One groaned, praying, " Not as I will, but as 
 thou wilt." We need not ask that our friends should 
 die in transport. Yet if their trust is in the crucified 
 and transfigured One, it is a bright cloud that receives 
 them up out of our sight. The voice speaks out of it. 
 And on the other side of it is the wide spiritual taber 
 nacle, that has no need of the sun, or the moon, or the 
 stars, where worship, before the throne of God and 
 the Lamb, John and Peter and James and Moses and 
 Elias, and " a multitude that no man can number " ! 
 
SEKMON XI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 I HAVE TRODDEN THE WINE-PRESS ALONE. Is. Ixiii. 3. 
 
 LIKE much of the most impressive language, both in 
 the Bible and in general writing, this sentence affects 
 us rather by what it dimly suggests than by what it 
 directly expresses. Nor is this a mere secondary or 
 accidental property of language. It is one of the prime 
 uses affixed to it by the Author of all language. In a 
 similar way, you have noticed how the commonest 
 objects take on attributes and exercise influences not 
 at all accounted for by their material substance. The 
 house where you were born speaks to you ; and it says 
 what cannot be explained by the wood and mortar and 
 iron that compose the structure, nor by the shape into 
 which architecture has fashioned them. Its language 
 is eloquent with the immaterial voice, the unwritten 
 poetry, and the fleeting images that cluster about those 
 two lyric names, Home and Childhood. The Bible that 
 your mother gave you borrows its beauty from no skill 
 of the book-maker s art, and it has sent in a nameless 
 significance upon your heart before you open its leaves. 
 So it is that all language possesses itself of a spiritual 
 character, and works effects like a living soul. And 
 
1 
 
 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 203 
 
 this is pre-eminently true of words addressed to the 
 religious nature, such as hymns, parables, prophecies. 
 
 The text is one of the most remarkable examples. 
 " I have trodden the wine-press alone." Taken liter 
 ally, this is a sentence quite barren to us, or even 
 worse. Difference of climate and customs has taken 
 all literal interest out of it. Yet under the law of sug 
 gestion referred to, it becomes forcible and significant. 
 We may have never seen a wine-press, nor even be 
 anxious to inquire who the person is that is speaking. 
 And yet every one of us probably takes an impression, 
 and the same impression, from those words. What is 
 the figure they summon up before us all ? Probably 
 that of a man left to solitary toil, deserted but not 
 faithless, having a heavy burden to bear, and bearing it 
 uncheered by social sympathy, a hard and bitter 
 work to do, yet nobly doing it alone. From this image 
 our minds pass unconsciously over to the solitude of 
 our spiritual strifes and inward sufferings. We in 
 stantly and universally recognize in him who " trod the 
 wine-press alone " a representative of all our internal 
 work. 
 
 My position is this : that, for a religious purpose, and 
 as a part of God s spiritual discipline with us, our deep 
 est experiences must be passed through in solitude. 
 We must suffer alone, we must get wisdom alone, we 
 must be renewed in the inmost spirit of our minds 
 alone, we must resist temptation alone, we must medi 
 tate alone and pray alone, and we must pass through 
 the valley of the shadow of death alone. Some degree 
 of solitude is a necessary condition of all these great 
 acts. We cannot expect companionship in them ; we 
 must not lean too much upon human sympathy in 
 
204 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 them. It is a fact of our constitution. Some strength 
 ening results will be found, I hope, in veins of thought 
 opening out of this truth. 
 
 It was a distorted perception of that truth that gave 
 what value they had to the old systems of monasticism, 
 or religious retirement. These ancient practices our 
 modern times have, for the most part, reversed. If a 
 man is much alone now, it must be rather by a direct 
 effort to that end than by popular habits. Some such 
 effort will be salutary to his virtue. This sweeping 
 tendency to social agglomeration, wholesome as it is 
 within bounds, will be all the more wholesome for 
 being occasionally resisted. If its direct action is to 
 harmonize the many, and combine scattered forces, the 
 effect of an independent superiority to it will be to 
 emancipate the individual judgment, and make solid the 
 personal character. Social habits may soften asperities ; 
 but it needs solitude to settle our principles. Social 
 habits may make us good-natured ; but to get certainty 
 for our ideas, or assurance for our faith, we must be 
 alone. The stronger traits, the more rugged and 
 manly virtues, powers of endurance, energies for moral 
 enterprise, are never developed except in such balanced 
 spirits as have been thrown back much upon solitude 
 and themselves. The friction of society may smooth 
 down individual peculiarities, but there are such things 
 as a smoothness that is insipid, and a compliance that 
 is so accommodating as to be cowardly. If constant 
 intercourse with others neutralizes our prejudices, it 
 may also undermine our simplicity, coax our kindly 
 sentiments into vicious compromises, and tempt our 
 integrity out of its self-possession into disgraceful bar 
 gains. If we learn amiability in the mixed company, 
 
CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 205 
 
 so do we learn what stanch and steadfast convictions 
 are by standing alone. If we form delightful connec 
 tions in the one, so do we gain the nobler faculty of 
 thinking for ourselves, acting for ourselves, and believ 
 ing for ourselves, in the other. 
 
 At a period when the activities of associate enterprise 
 threaten Christian individuality with so many perils, 
 in a place where the personal sense of right is beleaguer 
 ed and solicited by so many plausibilities, among cus 
 toms where majorities take the place of single-headed 
 tyrants, and the bribe of promotion bewilders the clear 
 sightedness of faith, let us look to our integrity. It is 
 useless to talk of character, at all, if we are to go on 
 measuring ourselves by one another, and asking our 
 neighbors how far it will do to go in breasting the cur 
 rent, or anxiously querying with ourselves how many 
 friends, or favors, or votes, or offices, how large a 
 piece of " the world," we shall have to lose by taking 
 sides with Christ, instead of striking out boldly, and 
 committing ourselves unreservedly, in faith, to his 
 cause. If we are set, in earnest, on escaping from 
 delusions and sins, we cannot afford to wait for the 
 multitude. If we would walk with clean steps, we 
 must gird ourselves for a solitary march ; if we would 
 find God, and be his children, and have the great 
 reward of his presence, we must " enter into the closet, 
 and shut the door, and pray to the Father who is in 
 secret." 
 
 I do not forget the obvious arguments for association, 
 nor the often quoted benefits of a union of minds. Let 
 them stand for their undoubted worth. It is clear that 
 Christian faith wins some of its noblest victories only 
 in social revivals. But let it be also remembered that 
 
 18 
 
206 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 a concentration of the individual will upon its own 
 chosen purpose, such as a man never gets except by 
 isolating himself, is a matter of as much moment to 
 the success of every good interest in the world as the 
 contact of numbers. Who would not prize more highly 
 the solemn determination of a single independent mind, 
 taken and weighed and perfected in solitude, unswayed 
 by public dictation, and incorrupt from the hot breath 
 of crowds, than the longest subscription-list to a set 
 of written or concocted measures, or the enthusiastic 
 " resolutions " of the loudest caucus ? Let it be fur 
 ther remembered, that if combinations of masses are 
 promotive of good causes, they are also mighty facili 
 ties for bad ones. If they create, they can destroy ; if 
 societies are agencies potent to bless the world with 
 reformations, mobs may also confound it with new mis 
 chiefs. And the grandest regulator of their shifting 
 play is in those firm convictions that strike their roots 
 in the soil of lonely meditation. 
 
 Providence will doubtless amply vindicate itself for 
 making men gregarious ; and our multiplying methods 
 of intercommunication leave no stimulus to that side 
 of our nature unsupplied. There are two extremes ; 
 and at times we are moved to say, 0, if we were as 
 ready to deliberate as to combine, to study and reflect, 
 as to organize societies, to live righteously and pray 
 to God in secret, as to hide our individuality in frater 
 nities and escape the responsibility of our free will in 
 public meetings, we might hope for a speedier advent 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 This truth may enter more readily if we remember 
 that the higher intellectual qualities those that are 
 more intimately related to the moral, and thus have the 
 
CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 207 
 
 largest agency in forming character depend on soli 
 tude for their most successful cultivation. Judgment, 
 imagination, clearness and consistency of thought, 
 breadth of vision, whatever constitutes the originality 
 and natural force of the mind, these are all nurtured 
 in lonely studies. The stream may sparkle and widen 
 in the hot glare of public engagements, but the peren 
 nial springs whence all its waters are supplied must be 
 up among the cool and shaded heights of solitude. The 
 biography of nearly all those master-intellects that have 
 left a deep mark on human affairs brings testimony 
 that at some period of their lives they were cast much 
 apart from men, and made to rely on their own re 
 sources, and on the powers unseen and eternal. One of 
 the most remarkable of them all, the life of a leader 
 in English literature, contains this testimony, in his own 
 words: "If, after the model of the Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius, I should return thanks to Providence for all 
 the blessings of my early situation, one of the very first 
 I should recall, as chiefly worthy to be commemorated, 
 would be that I lived in solitude." A very appreciative 
 critic of art, a man who studies the beautiful through 
 the eyes of his heart as well as through his scientific 
 understanding, has said that he always chooses to walk 
 through galleries of great works imaccompanied ; for 
 the reason that conversation belittles every subject, 
 enfeebles the judgment, and fritters admiration away. 
 In the lives of all the strong thinkers that have ren 
 dered great services to science, by discovery, by original 
 combinations, by concentrated force, there has been a 
 preparation of solitary study, a youth given to the habit 
 of retirement. Can you find a single exception ? So, 
 emphatically, of those best persons, who by the com- 
 
208 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 bined weight of intellectual and moral attributes have 
 been the signal reformers or builders of institutions. 
 Affecting society far and wide, they did not gather their 
 best power in social resorts, but alone with Heaven : 
 Paul, three years in Arabia ; Luther, in his cell ; Alfred, 
 in the Island of Nobles. Mahomet, Columbus, Wash 
 ington, their youth was apart from men ; their career 
 was baptized and initiated in the air of retirement. 
 And of the great Lord of all the divine ministry to the 
 world must begin with forty days in the wilderness. 
 
 If being alone is tributary to intellectual greatness it 
 is still more so to the proper symmetry and health of 
 the moral principles. - Every soul that has had any 
 moral experience whatever must know that the best 
 elements in his composition are those derived from 
 passages in his life where no second could keep his 
 soul company, where he must be alone ; disappoint 
 ments that he must suffer alone ; difficulties that he 
 must face alone ; reflections where he must look to his 
 own soul and his God alone. Two conditions have af 
 fixed themselves to the history of moral reformers and 
 heroes : they have first been overshadowed by the great 
 ideas for the redemption of humanity which have filled 
 their souls, in solitary thinking; and when they have 
 gone out on their beneficent errands, they have had to 
 work alone, confront apathy and opposition unsupport 
 ed by the sympathies of any multitude. Is it not inevi 
 table to infer that this very separation from outward 
 props has lent them inward victory ? Superiority to 
 slavish customs, single-hearted allegiance to the invisi 
 ble Right, the mind that makes and the sensitive 
 conscience that respects moral discriminations, these 
 are fruits of treading the wine-press alone. 
 
CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 209 
 
 Still more strictly does this rule hold of the deeper 
 emotions. And as these are the most spiritual motions 
 within us, they prove how close the kindred is between 
 solitude and spirituality of character. The loftiest 
 of all our possible emotions is religious reverence, 
 expressing itself in worship, or prayer. This com 
 munion with Heaven is inseparably associated with 
 secrecy. It has been ever since worship took its Chris 
 tian ordination from him who said, " Enter into thy 
 closet ; " ever since the Lord God spoke with Adam 
 alone in the garden, in the cool of the day. 
 
 Nature has herself given a broad hint of this truth, 
 in making it absolutely impossible for us to express to 
 any mortal the deepest feeling. She indicates our duty 
 by making even some inferior kinds of veneration too 
 deep for utterance, "too deep" sometimes even 
 "for" the utterance of "tears." Just when she dis 
 closes to our perceptions any of her grandest pictures, 
 she shuts our lips. "Whenever she stirs our sense of 
 the sublime, she sternly tells us, " My children, be 
 dumb ! " When we are most profoundly moved in 
 any way, she thus prisons our hearts in a practical 
 solitude, at least, and we feel the utter helplessness of 
 our tongues. If we are so presumptuous as to speak, 
 we feel instantly rebuked for the foolishness of our bab 
 bling. The less imposing, the smaller and lighter as 
 pects of nature, permit us to be sociable ; but when her 
 more majestic voice sounds, our impertinent ones must 
 be still. A lively company may talk and jest as they 
 float among the winding threads of a picturesque har 
 bor, shut in by the limitations of that narrow scen 
 ery ; but, if they have souls within them, they will grow 
 thoughtful and be silent as they sail out upon the infi- 
 
 18=* 
 
210 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 nito sea, amidst the boundless simplicity of the waves 
 and the sky. Or they may chatter and laugh together 
 in the variegated and blooming valley ; but when they 
 go up among the everlasting hills of God, and stand on 
 those solemn pillars of his arch, an invisible Hand will 
 seem to draw them apart from one another, and fill 
 them with a wonder that cannot be uttered. They 
 may prattle the gossip of the drawing-room in gardens 
 of sunshine, but the roll of celestial thunder will hush 
 their empty levity with awe. It is because the grand 
 eurs of creation take us nearest to the Creator. 
 
 So, whenever the uplifted soul approaches God in 
 its sincerest devotion, it must go alone; if other souls 
 bend around, in unity of spirit, yet the communion of 
 each with the Father is solitary, and each must be 
 accepted not for another, but by itself. It must bear 
 its own single burden to the mercy-seat. " Hast thou 
 faith, have it to thyself before God." The prayer must 
 rise from a heart leaning on no earthly arm, even as 
 it goes up to a Spirit of whom it is written that " He is 
 God alone," and that He " alone doeth great wonders." 
 
 Impatience of solitude is a bad religious sign. Who 
 ever dreads to be alone has reason to dread the here 
 after. If he is afraid of being left to himself, how shall 
 he dare to meet the searching of his Judge ? It be 
 comes quite indispensable to the wholesomeness of a 
 man s spirit, that he should escape from crowds. As 
 much moral peril as physical lurks in the air and poi 
 sons the breath of dense communities. Too much 
 company scatters the sublimity of the human will ; it 
 intoxicates the sober reason ; it natters pride ; it 
 debauches the conscience ; it puts our independence 
 under a base apprenticeship to the popular caprice ; 
 
CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 211 
 
 it sets our steadiest purposes whiffling in every wind. 
 And so it happens that the mind whose habit is 
 to dwell habitually in mixed assemblages of men is 
 overtaken, by and by, with a humiliating sense of hav 
 ing squandered itself. That is the foretaste of its after 
 retribution. And remember this^ that if your sensi 
 bility fails to be thus mortified for its immodesties, it is 
 for the alarming reason that the defection from truth 
 has been so wide that the simplicity of the soul has 
 been lost amidst the necromancy of the senses ; dissipa 
 tion has luxuriated into satisfaction ; remorse has been 
 gossipped out of being, and perpetual publicity, after 
 drenching the character in exposure, has left it too soft 
 in fibre for resistance, too shameless for self-reproach. 
 Yes : something must have gone terribly wrong with 
 us, if we are afraid to be shut up with none but God. 
 They are not valiant souls that are frightened to find 
 themselves in the unfamiliar and strong hands of his 
 Truth, shaking their false proprieties, oversetting their 
 timid hiding-places, and tearing open dangerous conceal 
 ments. It is a stern safety ; and to shuffle ourselves 
 out of it into the superficial intimacies where we are 
 more at home is not the way to maturity of spiritual 
 life. It is the way of evasion. There is no escape from 
 the law that makes the work of regeneration into higher 
 spiritual states personal, reserved, separate. There is 
 no social salvation excusing the individual. Society is a 
 great interest, but it can never shift responsibility from 
 you and me. Men must go into the kingdom of heaven, 
 if they go at all, just as they go into any grand experi 
 ence, be born again just as they are born into the 
 life that now is, one by one, and each for himself. 
 The fight with the adversary is a single combat, after 
 
212 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 all. What earnest men want is not flatteries and pag 
 eants, but the simple and steady verities that they can 
 stand on for eternity. 
 
 Nay, this is demanded from us in mere fidelity to 
 Truth herself; for when we begin to esteem her for the 
 multitudes she fascinates, when we begin to count up 
 her adherents and ask whether she draws large audi 
 ences, we have already broken from the true loyalty. 
 Next to the sordidness of wedding Truth for her dowry, 
 which Stillingfleet satirizes, is that of choosing her 
 because all the world admires her. We need to remem 
 ber we of this public age, we of these supple times 
 that very often the living energy of an idea is not 
 proved till it is voted down. For when it rises again, a 
 resurrection-power is born with it. So the finest quali 
 ties of persons are not developed, sometimes, till they 
 are crowded out of favor, and banished into a minority. 
 Good men have very often to be ridiculed and thwarted, 
 all their lives through, and their vindicator never 
 comes till their coffin comes. Where conscience counts 
 her ten that are willing to save a city, popular compli 
 ance has counted her ten thousand willing to ruin it, 
 and be ruined with it. But, then, principle does not 
 count men ; she weighs them. If numbers tested truth, 
 there never was a time, since history began, when false 
 hood would not have been on the throne, and right in 
 exile or at the block. We have got to do Christ s work, 
 in the world and for the world, without anticipating the 
 world s verdict, or we shall never do it at all. 
 
 A Christian loneliness, the solitude that has Christ 
 in it, renews man s strength. It fortifies his reso 
 lution. It establishes his peace. It clears away the 
 dust of the earth s day-delusions and the damps of its 
 
CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 213 
 
 night-sorrows. It enables us to look abroad with an tin- 
 troubled eye on the future. It makes the mind popu 
 lous with beautiful imagery from regions of the invisible. 
 It sends the thoughts 011 cheerful pilgrimages to all the 
 holy shrines of the Bible and the universe. It lets in 
 happy memories through the open door of our aifections 
 to console our misery, and blessed promises to animate 
 our faith. The Father is with us. 
 
 " 1 have trodden the wine-press alone." Human suf 
 fering, in all its forms, is solitary. Tenderest sympa 
 thies may flock abundantly and graciously to visit it 
 and minister to it. But there is something in it that 
 their kindest offices cannot reach ; something appointed 
 by Providence to be left alone ; and it is well. Bear 
 holy witness, all you who have been purified by heavenly 
 discipline, and found your light afflictions turning to an 
 exceeding weight of glory, and the sadness of your 
 countenance prophesying crowns of life, bear witness 
 that it is well ! Grief is of many kinds, but all grief 
 that is really terrible sends the soul into speechless, 
 secret solitude. Human love may reach out ready 
 hands, eager to help and to soothe ; but it cannot reach 
 down to that lowest centre of anguish where the pang 
 throbs in intensest pain. So true is it that the heart 
 knoweth its own bitterness, that not only the stranger, 
 but the friend, cannot intermeddle with its distress. 
 Here is a healthful group of confiding friends ; so long 
 as they are glad and well, every shade of happy feeling 
 may be mutually communicated and shared. But let 
 sickness stretch one of them in wasting fever, and, as 
 the dark mystery of disease closes round the clouded 
 senses, there rises up a silent wall of impenetrable 
 loneliness between the sufferer and the watchers. There 
 
214 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 are experiences busy in that failing frame that cannot 
 be told, thoughts that cannot possibly pass over from 
 one to the other. I have seen a sick child that was so 
 frank by nature that concealment was all impossible to 
 her, and yet, when the solemn spell of dissolution was 
 coming slowly down upon the features, no entreaties of 
 affection, not the longings of trusted parents and loving 
 sisters, could draw out from that august silence one 
 whisper of the struggle where life and death were 
 wrestling for the mastery. 
 
 " She saw a hand we could not see, 
 She heard a voice we could not hear, 
 It beckoned her away." 
 
 Even the little child must tread the wine-press alone. 
 By some it has been believed that the young spirit has 
 a consciousness of this, and feels " that if he should be 
 summoned to travel into God s presence, no gentle 
 nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor 
 mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to 
 share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and 
 maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those 
 mighty galleries alone." It is always so ; no cries of 
 friendship can break the sacred stillness of the dying, 
 or bring back more than some short syllable of excla 
 mation. Let faith believe that this significant reserve 
 in the depths of a great experience is meant to chasten 
 our patience, to bid us wait with calmer hope our 
 resurrection. 
 
 Bereavements I need hardly tell you what the truly 
 bereaved know so well, and what none but they can 
 understand at all must be borne, after all attempts 
 at participation, essentially alone. And the falling 
 away of those nearest to us, whether by the coldness of 
 
CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 215 
 
 changed love away from ourselves, or through disgrace 
 away from honor, must most emphatically be suffered 
 alone. The world s mightiest tasks of reformation and 
 regeneration have to be wrought out when lookers-on 
 refuse their friendship, and the workers in them stand 
 misunderstood, misinterpreted, reviled, persecuted, 
 alone. All the deliverers of mankind from wrong and 
 sin must be men of sorrows and solitude, following 
 the Saviour who had not where to lay his head. Even 
 of that divine Redeemer, who laid down his life for 
 our sanctification, how often do we read that he went 
 away alone to be strengthened ; that when night came 
 he was alone ; that he went apart to pray ! What lone 
 liness in his spirit at the supper let the table, as often 
 as it is spread before us, refresh our remembrance 
 when he said, " All ye shall be offended because of me 
 this night ; " and on the cross, when he prayed in agony 
 that the Father " might not forsake him " ! 
 
 " I have trodden the wine-press alone." Alone we 
 must go, brethren, and be prepared to go by prayer and 
 faith, through all the deeper and more solemn exi 
 gencies of our life ; alone through besetting temptation, 
 and the loss of what is most precious ; alone through the 
 defection of friends and through personal discourage 
 ment ; alone to the judgments of the Most High ; alone 
 from thence to reap as each hath sown. 
 
 Take, then, to close and seal the truth we have pon 
 dered, these two convictions : 
 
 Solitude is a means of spiritual education. Seek it ; 
 ordain it ; cherish it ; value it not for its own sake, but 
 for faith s sake and Christ s sake ; sanctify your life by 
 the prayers it will then inspire. Do not take these 
 thoughts as mere secondary suggestions about the out- 
 
216 CHRISTIAN LONELINESS. 
 
 side of religion. They have to do with its very core and 
 spirit, its spiritualities, its devotions, its regenerating 
 power on the soul. In order to let the great truths and 
 influences of religion do their work upon us, we must 
 put ourselves in the range and sweep of their action; 
 we must so to speak give them a chance at our 
 inner life. The street is no such place ; the crowd is 
 no such place. Enter into thy closet. 
 
 Couple with this truth another: that as you draw 
 yourself apart from the noise of men, you draw near to 
 God. Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the 
 door, pray. Pray to thy Father which is " in secret." 
 When human companionships forsake thee, the Lord 
 will take thee up. Herein, precisely, lies the unfathomed 
 meaning of that Eternal word of Christ, "All ye," 
 mortal friends, " shall be scattered every man to his 
 own, and shall leave me alone ; " alone from men, and 
 " yet not alone " from Heaven, because " the Father is 
 with me." Absent and distant from the world ; nearer 
 and nearer to God ! So it shall be in all the wine-press 
 and trial of your faith. Even in the valley of the 
 shadow of death, though alone in the former sense, in 
 the latter compassed about with brightness, and fearing 
 no evil, his rod and his staff shall comfort you. 
 
SERMON XII. 
 
 SAINTHOOD IN CAESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 THE SAINTS THAT ARE OF C/ESAIl S HOUSEHOLD. Phil. iv. 22. 
 
 THIS incidental allusion informs us that already, in 
 Paul s day, there were Christian disciples in the Pagan 
 palace of the world. Jesus was confessed, it seems, not 
 only "before men," but before emperors, men that, 
 in irresponsible power and savage cruelty, had almost 
 lost the nature of men. 
 
 Faith has won its . grandest conquests on straitened 
 and sorrowful fields. If the strength and joy of believ 
 ing are proportioned to the weight of the crosses borne 
 for it, and such a rule as that does appear to have 
 place in the spiritual economy, then it is in some 
 such post of perplexity as a Caesar s household, some 
 age of persecution or close corner of peril, that we 
 must look for the bravest witnesses to truth. So keenly 
 has this been felt by some adventurous souls, that they 
 have positively longed for fiercer onsets of trial than 
 our common and easy fortunes bring, giving their relig 
 ious constancy a chance to prove itself invincible. Sir 
 Thomas Browne, with his unbounded veneration, had 
 an appetite so hungry for this stimulus to trust, that he 
 says, in one of the passages of his Treatise 011 the Relig 
 ion of a Physician, " I bless myself and am thankful 
 
 19 
 
218 SAINTHOOD IN OESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 that I lived not in the days of miracles, and that I 
 never saw Christ nor his disciples ; for then my faith 
 would have been thrust upon me, and I could not have 
 enjoyed that greater blessing promised to all that see 
 not and yet believe." He envies the old Hebrews their 
 title to the only bold and noble faith, since they lived 
 before the Saviour s coming, and gathered their confit 
 dence out of mystical types and obscure prophecies. 
 Modern society does not abound in instances of such 
 enthusiasm for believing. More persons seem to be ask 
 ing what is the minimum of faith that can be made to 
 serve for safety, how much knowledge will release 
 them from here, and divine indulgence there, than 
 how affluent a measure they may be privileged to keep 
 in reserve. We eulogize virtues that flourish only in a 
 favoring soil and climate. We palliate and excuse the 
 deficiency, when honesty is missing in the household of 
 Csesar, in seats of power or wealth or folly, in office 
 or at court, in Washington or in Paris. We forget that 
 the current piety of the Church, of society, and of the 
 market sinks and dwindles inevitably, unless it is 
 replenished by the energy of those valiant examples 
 which will dare to bear testimony and be true in the 
 very palaces of power and fashion and mammon. 
 
 Of the line of Roman Caesars, that race standing 
 apart, of whom it has been well said, by a scholar com 
 petent to speak, that there met in them " all the heights 
 and depths which belong to man, all the contrasts of 
 glory and meanness, the extremities of what is highest 
 and lowest in human possibility," the personage 
 whom Paul speaks of here as having saints in his house 
 hold was the sixth from the founder. Nero was a 
 prince that as far surpassed others in infamy as 
 
SAINTHOOD IN (LESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 219 
 
 Augustus did in royalty ; a man who, if every soul 
 beside himself in his household had been a saint, con 
 centrated inhumanity and pollution enough in his per 
 son to have darkened all their virtue by the blackness 
 of his unnatural crimes ; a man that expended more 
 ingenuity in contriving new modes of dishonoring 
 humanity than most Christians have in serving it, and 
 who earned the reputation of introducing into history, 
 as facts, crimes so enormous, and combinations of wick 
 edness so revolting, that but for him they would have 
 been held too fabulous for the wildest fancy ; a man 
 that hunted up and down his vast domains to find some 
 fresh species of murder, with exquisite and aggravated 
 accompaniments enough to season it to his monstrous 
 appetite, with the same eagerness that gluttons search 
 out a fresh delicacy for a sated palate ; a man that 
 tried three different ways of butchering his own mother, 
 and at last despatched her by a vulgar execution, in a 
 petulant rage at being baffled so often ; and who added 
 the tyrant s caprice to the incendiary s, by undertaking 
 at once to throw off the suspicion of his own agency in 
 the diabolic conflagration of his capital, and to comfort 
 his bloodthirsty temper, by imputing the fire to the 
 innocent Christians ; who tortured his Christian sub 
 jects by unheard-of torments, dressing them in the 
 skins of wild animals to provoke dogs to tear them to 
 pieces, or wrapping their bodies in clothing smeared 
 with pitch, and then setting them on fire to light up the 
 Roman night with their burning ; a man, in short, that 
 wrought so awful an impression of his attributes of 
 superhuman atrocity on the minds of the believers of 
 that age, that a common rumor went abroad among 
 them, after his horrible death, that he would return 
 
220 SAINTHOOD IN CAESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 again alive to vex the world anew, and to be the Anti 
 christ of prophecy. 
 
 In the household of such a man and such a Csesar it 
 was that the Apostle, himself now a voluntary prisoner 
 at Rome, awaiting his trial and probably his martyr 
 dom, found "saints," saints that he mentions with 
 special honor, when he sends their message in his let 
 ter to the friends at Philippi. There, and then, if 
 nowhere else or since, we can all feel that it was some 
 thing heroic to be a saint. By contrast with so dark a 
 depravity, and in the teeth of so relentless a spite, 
 " professing Christ " had a meaning ; to be called a 
 Christian cost sacrifices that deserved the name. Saint- 
 ship shone, then, with a palpable glory ; and no man 
 could fail of seeing whence the light came. The follow 
 ers of the Crucified, and the lovers of the world, were 
 separate companies of souls ; the sword and the lions 
 pronounced the distinction between them with emphasis. 
 No wonder Paul thanks God that even then the faith of 
 the Roman Christians was spoken of in all the world. 
 
 Across the chasm of almost eighteen hundred years, 
 beyond an ocean that is narrowed now by the Christian 
 civilization which those saints installed, we are speaking 
 of it, thanking God, too, I hope, for his own won 
 drous providence in his Church, thanking Paul s pen 
 that has left us this bright trace of a precious mar- 
 tyrology, thanking these saints of Caesar s household 
 themselves, for the mighty arms of faith which they 
 reach over to us, to encourage our confidence, to 
 shame our unbelief, to reinspire our too sluggish zeal. 
 
 Possibly it may be found that there is just as real and 
 deep a distinction now as then, between him who serv- 
 eth God and loveth the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, 
 
SAINTHOOD IN (LESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 221 
 
 and him who serveth and loveth not. Possibly it may 
 appear that the glory of an actual saintship, the verita 
 bly faithful spirit, is just as pure and lustrous now as 
 then. Possibly we may see that yet there are saints in 
 Caesars households, and that there is as good cause to 
 venerate and to multiply them, as when the gladiators 
 waited in the ring, and beasts licked up their blood 
 from the sand. 
 
 For, the substance of all sainthood that has vitality 
 enough to survive in households of Caesar is this, that 
 its virtue is so built on interior foundations, and its 
 religious faith so rooted in the spiritual source and 
 Divine Master of its life, that no outward opposition 
 avails to break it down, or even to interrupt its worship. 
 You see, at once, how this carries the spirit of it out of 
 the first age, and beyond Nero s palace ; how possible it 
 is, and how much wanted also, wherever an adverse 
 influence frowns on Christian purity, or hinders Chris 
 tian fidelity, and therefore how the subject is reduced 
 at once to a practical study. For that bad influence 
 may proceed from things not held in much suspicion ; 
 from a false social standard ; from a set of surround 
 ing associations hostile to holiness ; from a dominant 
 worldliness in a nation, or a city, or a college, or a lit 
 eral household ; from an inhuman course of legislation ; 
 from maxims of pretended honor really barbarous ; 
 from customs of evasion and apology, or of self-indul 
 gence and sensual excess, of profaneness and cruelty, 
 that creep in among loosened principles, as well as from 
 courts arid tyrants thrones. 
 
 There are three or four special traits essential to this 
 sainthood in Caesar s household, whoever the Caesar 
 may be, and wherever his house may stand. The first 
 
 19* 
 
222 SAINTHOOD IN (LESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 of these, we shall agree, is courage. Christianity has 
 not only room, but favor, for every noble sentiment in 
 human nature ; and so she offers even to the veteran 
 soldier, and to the enthusiastic youth, a field for all his 
 bravery grander than any of his battles, in the resist 
 ance of moral invasion. Accordingly, we find that, 
 very soon, Christianity seized on some of those rough 
 warriors that never quailed themselves, but had terrified 
 and conquered the world. Mention is incidentally 
 made of one convert who was " a centurion of the band 
 called the Italian band," and some of these believers 
 about the person of Nero must probably have been 
 guards of his palace. On one of the early Christian 
 monuments at Eome there is an epitaph of a young 
 military officer, saying that he deemed himself " to have 
 lived long enough when he shed his blood for Christ." 
 But Christ s religion courts no consideration from 
 armies. Its courage is of another kind, the courage 
 that bears wrong, but will not commit it, that saves 
 life, rather than destroys it. It is a courage that springs 
 from an unspotted conscience, and wins the triumphs of 
 generous good-will ; the courage that goes into and 
 out of all companies, counting-houses, caucuses, and 
 churches, with an uprightness not to be bent, whether 
 you bring threats, or sneers, or golden baits to tempt it; 
 a courage that lifts up an unblenched face in the most 
 formidable array of difficulties, satisfied to stand on the 
 platform of the New Testament, and on God s side, to 
 listen to the encouragement of the beatitudes and to 
 hold to the breastplate of righteousness. And, as I sup 
 pose it really takes about as much unadulterated forti 
 tude, if all things are brought into the account, for a 
 young girl, to-day, to maintain a truthful and devout 
 
SAINTHOOD IN CESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 223 
 
 conversation, that is, to be a Christian, as it did for 
 St. Agnes ; or for a student to carry an undenled soul 
 through an apprenticeship or a university, as it did for 
 Yigilius to go by night from his post in the palace to 
 hear an epistle read from one Paul of Tarsus, when it 
 was whispered about Rome that the Apostle had sent a 
 letter to his brethren there ; so wherever such a Chris 
 tian courage in duty is, there will be saints of Caesar s 
 household. 
 
 And if there are, a second of their qualities, always 
 attending the highest kind of courage, but very difficult 
 to be united with its counterfeits, you will find to be 
 modesty. It does not appear that these devout persons 
 in Rome set themselves up to revolutionize religion, or 
 to be patterns of perfection. They did not call them 
 selves saints ; Paul called them so. They did not boast 
 of their religion ; there was too much solemn sincerity 
 in it. They did not lurk about the temples of idolatry, 
 to mock its soothsayers, and to disseminate self-righteous 
 slanders about its priesthood. They knew the joy of 
 their own believing, and the blessedness of their com 
 munion with Jesus ; and cared more for fellowship with 
 the Redeemer than for admiration from the citizens. 
 That was their Christian modesty. Disjoined from 
 their fortitude, it might have degenerated into timidity. 
 And that is often our danger. There are some persons 
 we all know such of diffident dispositions, that err 
 in not mixing enough boldness of resistance with their 
 good nature or amiability. They remain inefficient dis 
 ciples, because they shrink from the public notice of 
 taking up the cross. This is to turn one of the most 
 beautiful of Christian graces, " the ornament of a meek 
 and quiet spirit," into a deformity and an offence; 
 
224 SAINTHOOD IN CESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 X 
 
 it robs the Master of the testimony that is his due, and 
 it glides easily into a selfish and sluggish indifference. 
 It sometimes happens that there are individuals among 
 us placed in a very literal resemblance to those that 
 were saints in the household of Cassar. In a state of 
 society like ours, nominally Christian, but often more 
 careful to render unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caasar s than unto God the things that are God s, there 
 will occasionally be instances of single believers in 
 large groups or communities of practical unbelievers. 
 While the main current of speech, feeling, and habit 
 runs one way, and that to self-pleasing, some one living 
 a higher life, having a spiritual aim, pledged secretly 
 to the law of Christ, and devoutly desiring above all 
 things to take up the cross and come after him, is sorely 
 perplexed with the trial of a petty and cowardly perse 
 cution from those that ought rather, if not perverse in 
 their depravity, to revere the better heart as a heavenly 
 presence amongst them. And then this very trait of 
 modesty, a virtue in its place, threatens to become a 
 traitor, to intimidate the trembling purpose and draw 
 back the soul from God to folly. This is the position of 
 all threatened minorities. They will get strength for 
 the fiery trial by going back to see how the inmates of 
 a palace full of gluttony, licentiousness, and all royal 
 vices, held their allegiance fast. 
 
 But to imitate that successful blending of modesty 
 and courage, they will want a third quality, namely, 
 independence. The question of duty once settled, all 
 gates but that which leads to acting it out must be shut. 
 And beyond that point, all arguments from custom, 
 from the general expectation, from popular applause, 
 from public or private gratification, are impertinent ; as 
 
225 
 
 much so as for the little band to hesitate whether they 
 should lose caste by going out one day fifty miles from 
 the capital, as far as Appii Forum, to meet the despised 
 prisoner who was conducted in from an Eastern prov 
 ince as an accused insurrectionist, after he had made 
 Felix tremble, and half persuaded Agrippa. Remem 
 ber, they were living in the centre of the great world s 
 energy and splendor, as well as of its corruption, and 
 in the very focus of its intelligence, as well as iinder its 
 hottest hatred. Independence was a virtue quite indis 
 pensable to them ; but not a whit more so than to us. 
 For, every day, Providence, through our own instincts, 
 pushes us into some crisis of moral peril, where, if we 
 do not act simply of ourselves, and take our direction 
 at first hand from the Spirit, our integrity itself is gone. 
 And superadded to independence and modesty and 
 courage is constancy There must have been a great 
 many days when it would have been easy, and very con 
 venient, for these valiant saints in Csesar s household to 
 slip round into the old comfortable heathenism again. 
 Inducements were not wanting. For the ignorant there 
 was personal safety. For the cultivated, Seneca was 
 alive, competent to commend the Pagan philosophy in 
 its purest aspects and its Stoic severity, and professing 
 himself ambitious, Jerome said, to be to Heathendom 
 what Paul was to the Church. But they held fast. 
 They might be hunted out in their obscure retreats, 
 and might see their teachers slaughtered, as good Ste 
 phen once was, the moment the benediction had passed 
 his lips ; but they gathered again, the next evening, and 
 other hands, willing to be mangled by the same martyr 
 dom, broke to them the bread of life. The Emperor 
 might send them out to build his baths ; they raised no 
 
226 SAINTHOOD IN CJESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 civil rebellion, but, while they bent to their slavery, 
 knelt and prayed to the Father. Arrows might pierce 
 their bodies ; but, as you see in the picture of Sebastian, 
 they believed that angels would draw all the pain of 
 the weapons out, and the Lord Jesus receive their 
 spirits. Extermination itself would not alarm them ; 
 Diocletian afterwards fancied he had killed the last, and 
 set up a column to show that the whole Christian sect 
 was extinct. But faith is prophetic ; and although they 
 could not foresee what actually happened, that their 
 sculptured images should one day crowd the Pantheon, 
 and the temple reared to a heathen goddess be dedi 
 cated to the mother of their Christ, they did foresee that 
 they should all stand, with white robes, and palms in 
 their hands, and songs on their lips, before God, in 
 another temple, to go no more out. 
 
 God is asking constancy of us. You do not need 
 that I should remind you what ever-besetting and fear 
 ful tempters are waylaying your steadfastness. If you 
 swerve from Christian consistency ; if you go from 
 prayers here to profanity and passion in the paltry 
 annoyances of the week ; if you purpose, and will not 
 perform; if you talk of heaven, and live only for self; 
 if you profess Christianity at church, only to dishonor it 
 by your daily infidelity, then it wants no judgment 
 out of yourself to tell you, that you belong not to the 
 saints of Caesar s household, but among its sinners. 
 
 Our Nero is self-love. The senses are the Cassars 
 of all ages. Fashion is a Rome that commissions its 
 legions and spreads its silent empire wider than the 
 Pra3torian eagles. The reigning temper of the world 
 is the imperishable persecutor and tyrant of the faithful 
 soul. And so, in all our New England, in every home 
 
SAINTHOOD IN CAESAR 1 S HOUSEHOLD. 227 
 
 and street, seminary ana dwelling, there are chances 
 for the reappearing of saints in Ca3sar s household. 
 Wherever a fearless man deems any bribe to do wrong, 
 whether it come in cunning insinuations or open bids, 
 and whether it offer him promotion, better wages, a 
 larger house, more luxuries or leisure, or easier tasks, 
 deems it all an insult to his clean heart, and so 
 spurns it instantly away, as a disgrace that would soil 
 his spirit more than the dirt of any drudgery would his 
 hand ; wherever an incorruptible merchant refuses to 
 conform to popular deceptions, at the risk of losing 
 trade, or exercises as unsleeping a vigilance over every 
 stroke of his pen, and every branch of every transaction, 
 when no eye but God s looks down on his desk, as if 
 the whole board of the public exchange were watching 
 him, or scorns to take up subterfuges which commercial 
 customs may wink at and excuse, and does it because 
 God s eye is the guide of his life ; wherever a righteous 
 mechanic refuses to let down his performance to the 
 variable standard of thoroughness or shabbiness extant 
 in his class ; wherever an honest statesman stands above 
 his party, the moment his party cast their principles 
 into a lottery, and will not put on the robe of office 
 so long as it hides in its folds the hypocrite s curse ; 
 wherever a consistent theologian keeps a conscience as 
 well as a pulpit, and will not compromise his exhorta 
 tions and prayers by the bigotry of a sect or the rever 
 ence of a salary ; wherever a self-commanding woman 
 is greater than the extravagant edicts of the fashion- 
 makers, and dares to be a rebel against wasteful and 
 ambitious competitions or a society speaking polite lies ; 
 wherever young and joyous persons fear God too wisely, 
 and venerate duty too sacredly, to scoff at religion, or 
 
228 SAINTHOOD IN CESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 laugh at temperance, or tolerate impure companions, 
 under any tempting; wherever a disciple of Christ is 
 not ashamed to own and praise that holy Lord, by 
 whom only he has forgiveness, though unbelieving asso 
 ciates taunt and ridicule his constancy ; there you 
 behold " saints of the household of Cresar," of Roman 
 firmness but of Christian holiness, the true succession 
 of immortal confessors to the truth, the moral Apostoli 
 cal lineage of Christ s unterrified witnesses, and heirs of 
 his kingdom. 
 
 Most of our knowledge of these old Roman Christians 
 comes by the way of the Catacombs, that subterra 
 nean passage, reaching out many miles, from Rome to 
 Ostia, stamped, on all its walls, with the sculptured and 
 pictured symbols of early Christian ideas and the fune 
 real inscriptions of the men that lived in and died for 
 them, preserving in the silent burial of fourteen hun 
 dred years these traces of martyrs and confessors, but 
 uncovered at last by the enterprise of discovery, and 
 made to rehearse the lost history of the first struggles 
 of our religion in the capital of the world. There you 
 may read what it was to be a saint in the household, 
 or even in the city, of the Caesars. You may see how 
 prayers that could not be stifled went up from caverns, 
 with no doubts that they should find their way to the 
 ear of God through the rocky roof, sooner than the 
 shrieks and incense from the shining heathen temples 
 above. There you will see how Providence, honoring 
 humble instruments, as his method is, used the vulgar 
 sand-diggers that excavated the Campagna, after they 
 were converted to the new doctrine, to act as guides to 
 their brethren of the young Church, providing a hiding- 
 place for it in the scene of their former labors. You 
 
SAINTHOOD IN C2ESAR ? S HOUSEHOLD. ,229 
 
 behold the long tiers, or alcoves, of the graves of those 
 who, having died in faith, inherit the promises. No 
 symbols of hateful passion, no tokens of revenge for the 
 wrongs they smarted under, no wails of heathenish 
 despair, no signs of bloody altars ; but, instead, the 
 tokens of peace, hope, and joy ; pictures of love ; 
 legends of reconciliation ; a monogram of the Saviour ; 
 a lamb ; a branch of palm ; a cross ; some epitaph 
 commemorating a " friend of all men," " an enemy 
 of none," " one meek and lowly," those that " sleep 
 in Jesus," or others "borne away by angels." Every 
 where you see traces and proofs of that heavenly tem 
 per, that pure and prayerful spirit, that disinterested 
 and self-denying piety, that influence from on high, 
 which you know was never the product of the Roman 
 nature, never caught from Roman philosophers, never 
 fostered by the Roman armies, never ordained by Ro 
 man law, never inspired by Roman mythology, the 
 gift of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the heritage 
 of his Church, the new creation, the regeneration of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, the Catacombs, which formed 
 both the church and the cemetery of the early Roman 
 Christians, were thrown open to the light. Notice now 
 the change that passes on the outward position of these 
 sacred memorials. The monumental stones, the cover 
 ings of graves, the decaying bones even, are removed 
 from their dark chambers, and lifted into the day. They 
 are placed in royal collections of costly treasures ; they 
 are sent all over Europe as precious gifts to princes ; 
 they stand in honored niches in great museums of art ; 
 and even on the splendid walls of the Vatican travellers 
 find these plain tablets, with their rude inscriptions 
 20 
 
230 SAINTHOOD IN CAESAR S HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 scratched by unlettered gravers in the dark, with 
 their badly spelt epitaphs, simple as the Sermon on 
 the Mount, they find these ranged in showy publicity 
 along vast galleries, beside the pompous eulogies and 
 exquisite sculptures of more artificial days, relics of 
 a troubled, lowly past, venerated, nay, worshipped now, 
 by a prosperous and perverted present. The Church 
 that hid underground in sackcloth and ashes, scourged 
 by the Caesars, has risen out of dens and caves into 
 the world s homage, conquered its enemies, and sits on 
 Cesar s throne. 
 
 Is there not a twofold change, one within exactly 
 the reverse of that without, an increase of danger 
 keeping pace with the increase of power ? The change 
 from outward poverty and inward strength to material 
 prosperity with spiritual starvation, is no such progress 
 as Christians can pray for. When one reads these sim 
 ple and joyous words that were written in the Cata 
 combs by the saints of Cassar s time, he feels himself 
 borne back into the fresh morning air of faith, into 
 the original purity of Gospel life, among brave, up 
 right, and steadfast souls, incapable of being shaken by 
 imperial, commercial, political, or social intimidation, 
 very near to the Divine Master who was tempted in all 
 points as we are, yet without sin. Ascend from the 
 humble Koman Church of the second century into the 
 arrogant pretensions and inconsistencies of our own, 
 from the Christianity of the damp pit, where self-denial 
 would rather face crucifixion than take all the bribes 
 of comfort, up into the Christianity of the popular and 
 outside appearance which satisfies so many to-day. 
 
 We have nothing to fear from caverns or palaces, 
 from emperors or popes. Yet there is something to 
 
SAINTHOOD IN CJESAR s HOUSEHOLD. 231 
 
 learn from the noble faith of -believers that could lay 
 down their life for Christ, and something to fear from 
 the hollow sins of hypocrites who waste life for worldly 
 welfare. Human nature is the same, though the great 
 seats of power are shifted from the Tiber westward, and 
 the currents of thought and habit flow in altered chan 
 nels. "We have our probation daily, amidst the con 
 flicts, interests, exposures, enterprises, of a New Eng 
 land community, not the wickedest on the planet, 
 but wicked enough to need all our vigilance, purity, 
 example, and prayers ; and enough like Cassar s house 
 hold to make us aspire to be saints, righteous souls, 
 within it. But whatever we do, or fail to do, outside 
 ourselves, be it our first care to save our own hearts 
 from destruction. Within us lies an empire to be lost 
 or redeemed. What personal relation each soul has 
 with God, that is a question not to stand unsettled 
 any longer. For over every passing moment impends 
 the whole arch of eternity. The God who calls us to 
 regeneration, calls us to judgment. Cassar may wear 
 the crown, and saints bear the cross, on earth ; but into 
 the household of heaven can enter nothing that is 
 denied, or maketh a lie, and " crowns of life " are only 
 for the " faithful unto death." 
 
SEEMON XIII. 
 
 DIVINE REWABDS. 
 
 THEN CAME TO HIM THE MOTHER OF ZEBEDEE S CHILDREN 
 WITH HER SONS, WORSHIPPING HIM, AND DESIRING HIM, 
 GRANT THAT THESE MY TWO SONS MAY SIT, THE ONE ON 
 THY RIGHT HAND, AND THE OTHPIR ON THE LEFT, IN THY 
 KINGDOM. BUT JESUS ANSWERED AND SAID, YE KNOW NOT 
 WHAT YE ASK. ARE YE ABLE TO DRINK OF THE CUP THAT 
 I SHALL DRINK OF, AND TO BE BAPTIZED WITH THE BAP 
 TISM THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITH? THEY SAY UNTO HIM, 
 WE ARE ABLE. AND HE SAITH UNTO THEM, YE SHALL DRINK, 
 INDEED, OF MY CUP, AND BE BAPTIZED WITH THE BAPTISM 
 THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITH; BUT TO SIT ON MY RIGHT 
 HAND AND ON MY LEFT IS NOT MINE TO GIVE. Matthew 
 xx. 20 - 23. 
 
 WITH a dim perception of his objects, and a feeble 
 feeling of his divinity, but with sincerity, these two dis 
 ciples had attached themselves to Christ s company and 
 his fortunes. Something in that wonderful person and 
 ministry they hardly yet know what it is has 
 drawn them honestly to him, and the attachment grows 
 with a growing intimacy every day. But presently 
 there creeps in a thought for their private position, 
 which is the first form of selfishness ; and then a thought 
 for their national ambition and revenge, damaging 
 the whole-heartedness and beauty of their devotion. 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 233 
 
 They are loyal to the great and good Master they have 
 found ; but they are not yet Christlike enough to forget 
 that his imperial ascendency will probably bring with it 
 their own promotion. They really mean to be true to 
 his interests ; but they are not so far spiritualized as 
 not to be thinking that they can at the same time serve 
 his interests and advance their own. They are fol 
 lowing, but following half unconsciously for a personal 
 reward. 
 
 Christ s answer is not for these seekers of office only, 
 nor for place-hunters in our day only, but for all men 
 who would think of being Christians for a compensation, 
 in whatever form we give that compensation shape, 
 in a secular civilization, in public prosperity, in agree 
 able society, in our neighbor s confidence, votes, trade, 
 esteem, or in personal happiness. He says, You may 
 drink of my cup, which will often be bitter ; you may 
 be baptized with my baptism, which may be one of fire 
 and blood: but you are not to think of honors and 
 rewards : those are all of so different a sort and are to 
 come in ways so different from those you dream of now, 
 that if I were to tell you what they are you would 
 only marvel and doubt. Wait ! think nothing about 
 sitting on my right and my left, in my new kingdom, 
 which is even far newer and stranger than you imagine. 
 Follow on in my path. Do all the daily work of a 
 disciple. Take up my cross and learn what its great 
 redemption means. "Warm and enlarge your hearts 
 with my Holy Spirit. Be concerned about your service 
 and sacrifice, not about the recompense. 
 
 This introduces the doctrine of Divine Rewards. For 
 what reason is Christ to be sought ? Out of what mo 
 tive is his will to be done ? Is it because he has the 
 
 20--* 
 
234 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 power to make us miserable, and the power to make us 
 happy ? and so is it for the hope of getting payment or 
 for the fear of getting punished, which are only oppo 
 site sides of one and the same principle, or is it from 
 another reason altogether: viz. out of the affection, the 
 reverence, the trust, and the gratitude, due to his di 
 vinity and awakened in us by his goodness ? As the 
 answer to these questions affects the very motive out of 
 which men begin and pursue a religious life, or refuse 
 to do SO} the subject is of course abundantly practical. 
 Is not one of the main reasons why Christian faith exer 
 cises such an imperfect power among men, that they 
 misapprehend the sort of advantage they may expect to 
 get from it ? 
 
 There appear to be three principal desires which 
 direct attention to religious truth. The first of these, 
 and the lowest in the order of moral purity, is a want 
 of personal comfort. Those actuated by this motive 
 have heard that religion makes life happier, eases its 
 burdens, lightens its labors, heals its pain, and, gen 
 erally, gratifies the sensibilities. That is, on the whole, 
 it will be a pleasanter thing to live with some religious 
 emotion and protection than without. The idea that 
 this pleasure will be of a higher character than sensual 
 or worldly pleasure is not entirely forgotten ; but it is 
 secondary. Comfort first, nobleness afterwards. And 
 so this class, deciding that they will get more happiness 
 from religion than by any other process, go in search of 
 a religion. 
 
 The second want is that of moral guidance, or a rule 
 to act by, and is of a much higher grade than the first. 
 Persons under this motive, having got clear of a su 
 preme concern for comfort, look out on life as a school 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 235 
 
 for training in right exercises, and for the practice 
 of the virtues. They are conscious of being under 
 the weight of a tremendous law, or command, which 
 they must obey. Their interpretation of Christianity 
 is summed up in the maxim to keep the command 
 ment. But the world is a perplexed scene, they find. 
 One way of doing right seems to conflict with another 
 way. The paths cross and recross each other. It is a 
 tangled labyrinth. A thousand questions of casuistry 
 come up. The problems are hard to solve. Too much 
 is thrown on a short-sighted intellect and an infirm 
 heart. Besides, duty as duty, by compulsion, is not 
 inspiring, but drudgery. God s law, even if known, 
 can never be perfectly kept, but is broken somewhere 
 by fallen man continually. From sheer inability to do 
 the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, 
 such persons go to religion to help out their deficien 
 cies ; but they go to it rather reluctantly, as to a rule, 
 not as an inspiration, nor for love of it. 
 
 The third want is of a different character. It has 
 no regard to selfish satisfaction whatever, whether by 
 agreeable emotions, or the complacencies of good per 
 formance, or exemption from the fear of penalty for bad 
 performance. It is, so to speak, a want of giving and 
 loving, of giving to the Lord what the soul feels 
 belongs to him, affection and gratitude : a want of 
 loving, and of rendering all the hearty service that love 
 inspires. It is a spiritual aspiration. It would pour out 
 freely and forever the spontaneous tribute of a glad and 
 self-forgetful spirit. It does not stop to inquire so much 
 about the pleasure to be got out of piety, nor about the 
 commands that apply to conduct. It springs straight 
 up by an impulse whose proper name is faith, and puts 
 
236 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 the whole heart into the keeping of the Holy One, to 
 let him have it, and mould it and fashion it as he will. 
 Meditating on the divine excellence and mercy and 
 sacrifice, it feels that he is the irresistible object of a 
 devotion imcalculating and unlimited, which it would 
 be impossible to keep back. It ceases to calculate and 
 hardly even prays to be made happy. It is the desire 
 of a harmonious and affectionate union with God in the 
 reconciling and forgiving Spirit of the Saviour. 
 
 Here are three motives sending men to religion. 
 After their simple statement, no man needs to be in 
 formed which is the loftiest and best. Not that each 
 of them is necessarily free from any intermixture 
 with the others. They may be blended in different de 
 grees. But one of them is likely, in every case, to 
 predominate strongly over the other two ; and so each 
 of them is represented among us by a distinct class of 
 persons, with specimens that all of us have seen, the 
 religionists of self-gratification, the religionists of moral 
 obedience, and the religionists of spiritual aspiration 
 and affection, or of faith. 
 
 Next, be reminded that these three different wants 
 spring up from different places, or faculties, in our 
 nature. 
 
 The first comes from a mixture of natural instinct 
 and shrewdness, which we commonly call by the sus 
 picious name of self-interest. "When that feeling turns 
 to religion, it acts in different constitutions in various 
 ways, from the hypocrite who puts on the profession of 
 Christianity and goes through its ceremonies merely as 
 a means of advancement or social currency in a Chris 
 tian community, up to the sincere and aching sufferer, 
 who applies to the New Testament, precisely as he 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 237 
 
 would to a medical adviser, to bo rid of pain. Between 
 these arc many degrees of character : the dishonest 
 formalist, deserving nothing but disgust, the bereaved 
 mourner, or the victim of misfortune, or treachery, or 
 disease, who carries an agonized and dissatisfied heart 
 to the Bible for a cure, and is to be met in a spirit of 
 tender compassion. But none the less is it a serious 
 question for every one of us, how far self-interest, in 
 any of its shapes, is at the bottom of our religious pre 
 tensions ; because just so far as it is, these pretensions 
 are hollow, we are on the wrong road, and are 
 estranged from the large and beautiful soul of our 
 Lord, whose greatest work is sacrifice, and whose name 
 is Love. 
 
 The second want comes from the region of the con 
 science. Conscience exacts obedience. It refers to 
 a law. It speaks of the irreconcilable opposition be 
 tween what is right and what is wrong. It is the seat 
 of morality, and governs all our moral action. It is 
 the noble faculty that rules by divine right over the 
 appetites, and even the understanding. All honor to 
 obedience simply as obedience ; to duty as duty ; to 
 men and women who try to find out God s command 
 and keep it ! They are not far from the kingdom of 
 heaven, and keeping on shall surely come there. 
 Among the nobilities and glories of religious charac 
 ter, this is next to the very highest, and second only to 
 the life of love. No man can be a complete or Chris 
 tian man who slights conscience. It is what regulates 
 most of our human intercourse and social relationships. 
 It girds up business and amusements, commerce and 
 personal habits, with mighty restraints, checking all 
 manner of excess, forbidding fraud, and instigating 
 
288 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 many righteous deeds. Its demands are just, and it 
 has a right to be satisfied. Nor can those be mistaken 
 who go to the Saviour to satisfy it. For it can be thor 
 oughly enlightened, and kept quick-sighted, nowhere 
 but in him. Yet this need not make us confound the 
 religion of conscience, which is somewhat legal ancl 
 rigid alone, with the religion of spiritual aspiration 
 and affection, of Christ s faith. 
 
 The want of this third kind originates, not in the un 
 derstanding, nor the passions, nor the conscience, but 
 in the soul and the soul s peculiar activity, especially, 
 as was said, in its love, its trust, and its gratitude. 
 These do not so much send us out in search of a relig 
 ion ; for love, trust, gratitude, directed to the soul s 
 Saviour, constitute the Christian religion. They are 
 the thing itself, in its divinest purity and dignity. Fil 
 ial love, trust, gratitude, rising to the Father, are 
 greater than anything a servant in the bondage of the 
 law can know, and more glorious than the fairest form 
 of self-interest. They are the peculiar brightness and 
 power of the Christian style of religion. They exalt 
 the faith of Jesus over every other principle. They 
 bind the heart in generous and immortal fellowship 
 with him who is the Light and Life. 
 
 It becomes evident enough how out of these three 
 fountains flow three sorts of religious life, as distinct 
 from one another as their sources are. One we may 
 call the religion of calculation, the second the religion 
 of duty, the third the religion of holy love. This last is 
 pre-eminently the religion of Christ. Tt is what we find 
 in the New Testament. It is our gospel. Here the 
 willing and affectionate heart, touched by grace, and 
 springing freely up to the Father, adores no longer a 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 239 
 
 judge, but a friend ; not a lawgiver merely, but a 
 redeemer. It takes up all the law, but looks at it in 
 the light of love. It keeps the commandments, but 
 from another motive, not as commandments, but as 
 the will of Him whom it delights to honor, and in whose 
 bosom it longs forever to dwell. 
 
 We have now prepared ground from which we can 
 look more clearly at the rewards God promises to those 
 that diligently seek him. They depend, in each case, 
 on the motive and spirit in which we serve him. 
 
 First of all, then, religion will never yield its true 
 rewards to those that seek it for the sake of its rewards. 
 It deals very frankly with us, having no concern to 
 make proselytes under false pretences. It is willing we 
 should understand that those who court it for anything 
 else than its Giver s sake will meet perpetual disap 
 pointment. "Whatever else they may get, it will not 
 be Christian peace. Men may carry their selfishness 
 into their religion, or rather into certain religious for 
 malities and observances, as into everything else. But 
 they will bring away only what they take in. If you 
 espouse the Christian cause only to better your social 
 position, or your business prospects, you will find you 
 have grasped a phantom. You only provide an accumu 
 lated fund of shame, against the hour when the secrets 
 of all hearts shall be laid open. Under the pretence of 
 seeking God, you have only put on a mask, and gone on 
 seeking and serving yourself. God has never engaged 
 to be a " rewarder " of such ; for it is not Him that they 
 seek. 
 
 But suppose you rise a step above this covetousness 
 for outward gain, and enter on what is called a relig 
 ious life for a better kind of comfort, as, for example, 
 
240 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 to obtain relief for sorrow, or the satisfaction of self- 
 approval. No man can say that in such cases God may 
 not lead the soul on, through this half-selfish state, into 
 serving him for some more disinterested affection. His 
 compassion is boundless ; the very contact of the mind 
 with him in any way is hallowing ; and he is willing to 
 save to the uttermost the weary and stricken hearts that 
 lift their eyes from earth to heaven. But just so long 
 and just to the same extent as their motive is personal 
 comfort, they will fail of any glorious reward. I have 
 known persons to be so haunted and scourged by some 
 great grief or suffering, that they were ready to try any 
 new prescription, to get rid of the aching. They begin 
 at the wrong point, with a wrong idea, and cannot suc 
 ceed. What they need first of all is a renunciation of 
 the worldly and selfish heart they are still carrying in 
 their bosoms, and because it is offensive to the pure 
 God ; what they need is repentance and a renewed life 
 inwardly ; what they need is the change that will put 
 them at once into thorough reconciliation by faith with 
 the spirit of Christ, fixing their chief interest to a new 
 centre. Gaining this, regardless of comfort, and willing 
 to suffer on, even, if that should be the Divine purpose, 
 so entire is their subjection of unworthy self to the 
 blessed Hand, saying, with the great-hearted patri 
 arch, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," 
 comfort will come fast enough of itself; and precisely 
 because they did not ask noj think of rewards, know 
 ing, in fact, that, sinners as they were, they deserved 
 none, and if they had done their very best had done 
 only what was their duty to do, the most splendid of 
 all rewards will suddenly appear. 
 
 There is a deeper meaning than we sometimes seize 
 
 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 241 
 
 in that saying, that God will reward every man " accord 
 ing to his works," not merely in proportion to his 
 works, and in some way or other, but in one way, and 
 that way according to his works, in the line of his 
 works, in the kind of them, love for love, purity 
 for purity, faith for faith, heaven, which is perfect 
 holiness, for holiness. Precisely in that temper Paul 
 said, " What is my reward, then, for preaching the gos 
 pel ? Yerily, that when I preach the gospel, I may 
 make the gospel of Christ without charge." So Christ 
 puts the disinterested spirit at the very centre and core 
 of the whole message : Drink of my cup, be baptized 
 with my baptism, no matter where you sit, on thrones 
 or footstools ! Do good and lend, hoping for nothing 
 again, and your reward shall be great ; for ye shall be 
 the children of the Highest. 
 
 In this honorable quality, man s Christian service is 
 not disconnected from his best acts in other lines of life. 
 The higher sentiments answer with Antipater of Mac- 
 edon, who, being presented with a work on happi 
 ness, replied that he had no time to study happiness. 
 Those memorable and inspired deeds that waken the 
 world s delight, and live on its tongue, are never done 
 for a price. All heroic achievements, the sublime sacri 
 fices of man for man, of ease for right, of life for love, of 
 self for country, stand clear of calculation for reward. 
 The moment history has to say of a man," He did it for 
 pay, and took his wages, he played the hero by bar 
 gain," that moment she strikes him from her catalogue 
 of heroes, and kindles her enthusiasm at other foun 
 tains. The friendship that gives blood and breath for 
 a friend, the martyrdom that is borne cheerfully for 
 faith, the patriotism that faces death or crucifixions of 
 21 
 
242 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 feeling worse than death, these and all of the same 
 high race of magnanimities spring from uncalculating 
 affections. So our instincts demand, and so the facts 
 testify. In these august enterprises of the soul, all 
 thought of recompense and even of obligation, is gone. 
 Moral revolutions are not brought to market. Op 
 pressed peoples are not set free for a consideration. 
 Terrible wrongs are not righted with an eye to the 
 main chance. A state is never made illustrious by its 
 office-seekers. A church will never " arise and shine, 
 the glory of the Lord being risen upon it," through the 
 agency of those who are ambitious to enjoy its digni 
 ties and administer its affairs, whether Hildebrands 
 and Gregorys, or village popes and parish demagogues. 
 And in the quiet joys of every-day life, and the graces 
 of household devotion, the delicious charm and the 
 beauty never lie in the computed service, but in the 
 willing offering for love s dear sake alone. 
 
 If these are the nobilities of man elsewhere, we need 
 not hesitate to recognize them as legitimate in our 
 Christianity. Indeed, it is Christianity that interprets 
 and sanctions them. When we go down into its deeps, 
 through the words of Jesus, or through the lives and 
 confessions of its strongest believers, or through a 
 profound experience, we come to the same discovery. 
 Man is meant to live his best life, not because he 
 must, not because he shall smart and ache if he does 
 not, nor yet because he shall be made happy, he, 
 in his little selfish paradise of personal comfort, if 
 he does. Christ s gospel holds another language, offers 
 a more inspiring doctrine, reads man s deeper soul 
 by a heavenlier lamp. Its central idea is self-sacri 
 fice. Its everlasting symbol is a cross. Its universal 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 243 
 
 sentiment is love. All its apparatus of punishments 
 and rewards, threats and promises, which are cer 
 tainly very real and very frequent, is to educate us 
 up to that mark, at last. If we are far below it, the 
 law as law must come in to train us up to it. Com 
 mand, obligation, duty, must rule and discipline us in 
 that elementary stage. The law is our schoolmaster to 
 lead us on to Christ, just as in earthly schools the 
 scholar is taught, by coercion, to live and learn from 
 higher motives. In the framework of a compulsory dis 
 cipline, he grows up to seek knowledge for its own sake 
 and to study from love of it, which is the highest result 
 of any education. Duties, Christ teaches, must be 
 done as duties, work as work, till in the regenerate 
 spirit of his own self-forgetful devotion we do them 
 spontaneously, or do them even as he died for us, for 
 love. 
 
 Here, too, we shall find the peculiar and distinctive 
 ministry which the Christian Revelation brings. Pre 
 cisely what the world wanted was a being near, visible, 
 palpable, good enough, gracious and divine enough, 
 to inspire an affection or a faith of such mighty energy 
 as to breathe in this new motive, and start the moral 
 life of men from a new point. And this came in Christ, 
 our living, suffering Lord. The unseen Jehovah had 
 done much for his people ; but in the distant deific 
 Providence man had not seen yet that last and crowning 
 proof of mercy, a willingness to suffer for the beloved s 
 sake. In Christ, in all his humiliation, and most of all 
 at Gethsemane and Calvary, that is embodied. And 
 whosoever has in him the grateful and believing sense 
 of it, is a new creature. He lives again. He lives for 
 ever. It is the regeneration. It is the Life Eternal. 
 
244 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 No more to sit on the right hand or the left of kingly 
 power and splendor ; no more for outward reward, no 
 more for fear, no more as a servant obeying the rigor 
 ous and literal commandment ; but as the loving child, 
 with filial discipleship, he lives for God. All the 
 weighty and striking words of the New Testament and 
 its new and divine philosophy are fulfilled in him. He 
 walks with Christ, rooted and built up in him. He has 
 put on the Lord Jesus. Christ is verily formed within 
 him, a new creation, a spiritual, personal life, which 
 is the life of self-forgetful, of more than obedient, of 
 trusting love. 
 
 Nor can it be said, to derogate from the virtuous 
 character of this unsordid fidelity, that it is merely im 
 pulsive, and partakes of the fitfulness and uncertainty 
 of impulse. To be spontaneous, and to be impulsive, 
 are not the same thing. The acts of the maturest, 
 most rational, most thoroughly disciplined saint may 
 be just as spontaneous and just as natural as the sim 
 plest instincts of the child. It only requires that the 
 inward life shall be so full, so harmonized, and so holy, 
 that its acts shall proceed, as it were, unconsciously 
 from it, by a choice so constant and ready that the 
 mind does not seem even to choose. In fact, this is 
 probably the highest result of religious discipline. 
 Friction ceases. Effort is lost in free allegiance. Only 
 it is now not instinct only, as in infancy, but the in 
 stinct of the convicted soul and principled conscience, 
 of the man " born again of the Spirit " into the king 
 dom of Christ. It differs from the spontaneity of child 
 hood, just as the purity of the man from the purity of 
 the child. It has been tried by temptation, and had 
 its fight with the world. There has been the struggle 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 245 
 
 of passion and the warfare with evil. Between this 
 and that lie all the conflict and trial and agony and 
 experience of the converted heart and the developed 
 life. They differ as Peter the consistent apostle, fervent 
 and self-renouncing, from Peter the natural man, hot 
 and self-asserting. Command has been obeyed. Law 
 has done its work. But now constraint is swallowed up 
 in the Christlike eagerness of doing good because it is 
 good, and all things for the Father s glory. 
 
 The same principle must be applied to the desire of 
 going to heaven as a motive to religious endeavor. Just 
 so far forth as I desire to go to heaven for the sake of 
 any personal pleasures to be enjoyed there, because it is 
 a place where there is more ease, or an endless round of 
 festivities and happy excitements, so far I degrade the 
 true conception of heaven and prepare a certain disap 
 pointment for myself. But if we hope for the next life 
 as a scene of larger spiritual freedom, nobler opportuni 
 ties, and an escape from all sin and meanness, we are 
 right to long for our immortality. The kingdom of 
 Heaven is a state of spiritual purity, not meat and 
 drink. This is the sense in which Christ always holds 
 out to us the promise of a hereafter. " Set your affec 
 tions on things above," he says, i. e. noble, exalted, 
 disinterested, divine things, eternal truth, a Christ- 
 like life, God s love, angelic holiness, not easy, com 
 fortable, pleasant, good-tasting things. When he says, 
 " Your reward shall be great in heaven," he is speak 
 ing of disinterested conduct, and he means that its 
 whole consciousness and feeling shall be lofty and 
 serene as heaven, and he assures the spiritually 
 minded who have faith in him that they shall have eter 
 nal life. But he nowhere offers us heaven as a price for 
 21* 
 
246 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 good behavior, as foolish parents, or rather wicked 
 parents, hire their children to obey with sweetmeats and 
 toys. It is in no such sense as this that he engages to 
 be a rewarder of them that seek him. The very pas 
 sage just quoted discredits such a thought ; for it says, 
 " If ye love them that love you, what reward have ye?" 
 There must be spontaneous service. The heart must 
 go into it, uncalculating and ungrudging. You must 
 love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, 
 and bless them that curse you, and lend hoping for 
 nothing again. Then you will be children of the High 
 est ; and, precisely because you expected no reward at 
 all, verily your reward shall be great. 
 
 There is a striking legend of saintly old Bishop Ivo, 
 who walked with God, and saw through the self-seeking 
 religionists of his time, and longed for larger faith. 
 He describes himself as meeting, one day, a figure in 
 the form of woman, of a sad, earnest aspect, like some 
 prophetess of God, who carried a vessel of fire in one 
 hand, and of water in the other. He asked her what 
 these things were for. She answered, The fire is to 
 burn up Paradise, and the water is to quench Hell, 
 that men may henceforth serve their Maker, not from 
 the selfish hope of the one, nor for the selfish fear of 
 the other, but for love of himself alone. God does 
 not consume Paradise, nor quench Hell. He keeps 
 the fountains of sweet and living waters leaping and 
 flowing in the one ; he keeps the awful fires of the 
 other burning. But surely all this promise and penalty 
 do not mean that we are to stop in their discipline, 
 and calculate the price of our obedience. no ! Not 
 while the glorious voice of the Apostle rings out over 
 the centuries, " The love of Christ constraineth me : I 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 247 
 
 count all things loss for the excellency of the knowl 
 edge of him." Not while the Saviour says to the as 
 piring heart of the world, " Be ye perfect, even as your 
 Father in heaven is perfect," " hoping for nothing 
 again." 
 
 So we come up at last to those acts of the true 
 religion our Christian religion which are done in 
 the faith of the heart ; and here we reach the highest 
 view of the Divine rewards, simply because God has 
 made these to be their own reward. The reward is in 
 doing them ; in the inevitable feeling that goes along 
 with them, far enough from being set about as the end, 
 but interwoven with them by the gracious bounty that 
 ever surprises faithful souls. With all these true acts 
 and emotions of the really spiritually-minded man, it 
 is precisely as it is with any of those acts of common 
 life that the heart goes most into. You cannot speak 
 of any rewards for the love that is the bond of a true 
 marriage, without insulting those to whom you speak. 
 You cannot connect the notion of compensation, pay, 
 with the affection that twines a child s arms about the 
 mother s neck, or that keeps her waiting, in vigils that 
 outwatch the patient stars, over the child s pain or sin, 
 without profaning that affection. You cannot asso 
 ciate the prospect of a reward with the heroic humanity 
 which keeps the friendly vessels hanging close, many 
 days and nights, in the frightful companionship of a 
 common peril, to take off the passengers of the imper 
 illed and sinking ship ; nor with any generous and brave 
 rescue or sacrifice. Now, to any spiritual estimate, the 
 services of daily piety are as full of the charm and fas 
 cination and glory of self-forgetting devotion as any of 
 these. Christ is nearer than wife or husband. The 
 
248 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 Father in heaven is more real, and infinitely holier and 
 tenderer, than the human mother. All fellow-souls in 
 moral misery or sin need help more urgently than the 
 shipwrecked company. And so, if our piety is real, 
 like Christ s piety, it must be just as self-oblivious, as 
 hearty, as spontaneous and free, as that. And then it 
 will have a more unspeakable, glorious, infinite reward. 
 These, then, are the Divine Rewards. They are 
 rewards in kind. They are large just according to the 
 spirituality of our lives, the zeal of our worship, the 
 strength of our faith. They are interior, not visible. 
 They are incidental, not sought. They are of nobleness, 
 rather than of happiness. Sometimes " the Rewarder 
 of them that diligently seek him " will reward the true 
 Christian soul by giving him a strengthening and en 
 couraging consciousness of harmony with the divine 
 will ; sometimes by taking him out from under the power 
 of temptation, or a straitened self-accusation, and setting 
 his feet in a large place ; sometimes by redoubling 
 his spiritual energy and quickening his Christian ac 
 tivity, breathing a prompter zeal into all the secret 
 forces of his being, through the unseen agencies of the 
 Holy Spirit ; sometimes by giving him a blessed sense 
 of renunciation, of having given up all to Him to whom 
 all of right belongs, together with an exalted sense of 
 liberty from all limitations of appetite and ambition ; 
 sometimes by affording us greater satisfaction in our 
 appointed struggles and our every-day drudgery, and 
 sometimes, too, by granting us provided we do not 
 ask it too eagerly, as if it were better for us than 
 toil an inward peace, or rest from care and from 
 strife and from fear, passing all understanding, such 
 as the world never gave. 
 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 249 
 
 I have read of a devoted sister of charity who, 
 year after year, attended a division of the army of 
 France in every campaign, to care for the wounded 
 and watch with the sick. Her energy, courage, gentle 
 ness, and presence of mind saved many lives, and gained 
 her the reverence and admiration of officers and men. 
 On the field of slaughter and agony, her impartial, 
 Christlike compassion made no distinction between her 
 own people and the enemy ; and three foreign empires 
 Russia, Austria, and Prussia conferred upon her 
 crosses of honor. From her own nation it was contrary 
 to the rules of her order that she should receive any 
 badge or decoration, as a reward for her services. But 
 the gratitude of the generous soldiers found out a way 
 to remunerate her as beautiful as it was appropriate. 
 Knowing well whence her lofty pleasures sprang, they 
 petitioned and obtained for her, from the minister of 
 war, the privilege of pardoning, every year, two crimi 
 nals condemned to death. This is what I mean by 
 rewards in kind. It gives us, I think, some feeble con 
 ception of what may be the noble joy and the spiritual 
 recompense of heaven. 
 
 " For when the power of imparting good 
 Is equal to the will, the human soul 
 Requires no other heaven." 
 
 "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." 
 
 But, greater mystery yet, which faith must still 
 accept or die, for God leads us to himself through 
 ways that we know not, he rewards us sometimes, in 
 his deepest love, only by setting us to the performance 
 of larger and harder tasks ; only by beckoning us on 
 to steeper heights, with sharper rocks, where we must 
 climb ; only by handing down to us grander opportuni- 
 
250 DIVINE REWARDS. 
 
 ties of endurance ; only by calling us 011 and up, with 
 his own animating voice, to some more splendid 
 because more grievous sacrifices. These also, to the 
 truly brave and truly consecrated heart, are rewards. 
 On the heads of some of his children God sets special 
 sufferings as crowns of honor, as signs what great 
 things he has yet in reserve for them, because he will 
 make these crosses ladders of light whereby they shall 
 ascend nearer to himself. And to all that are truly his, 
 when he would give his greatest reward, he gives him 
 self, the Holy Spirit, in his Son. Or, if we will have it 
 set in music, we shall find it in a brave and lofty hymn 
 of Francis Xavier : 
 
 " My God, I love thcc, not because 
 
 I hope for heaven thereby ; 
 Nor because they who love thec not 
 Must burn eternally. 
 
 " Thou, O my Jesus, thou didst me 
 
 Upon the cross embrace ; 
 For me didst bear the nails and spear, 
 
 And manifold disgrace ; 
 And griefs and torments numberless, 
 
 And sweat of agony, 
 E en death itself, and all for one 
 
 Who was thine enemy ! 
 
 " Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, 
 
 Shall I not love thee well, 
 Not for the sake of winning heaven 
 
 Or of escaping hell, 
 Not with the hope of gaining aught, 
 
 Not seeking a reward, 
 But as thyself hast love d me, 
 
 O ever-loving Lord ! " 
 
 It is well to seek salvation ; that old phraseology is 
 not mistaken. Only we must remember salvation is 
 not a thrifty, self-promoting concern, by which we just 
 
DIVINE REWARDS. 251 
 
 graze and enter the gates of Eden, and get somehow 
 landed in a place of comfort, where there is no hard work. 
 Christian salvation is a spiritual state, here or hereafter, 
 where nobler and heartier service can be done for God 
 and man. That is a weighty saying of St. Augustine : 
 " God counts among the reprobate not only those who 
 have received their comfort on earth, but those who 
 grieve because they have not." It is right to exhort 
 men to make sure their calling and election in heaven. 
 Only, we must remember, heaven is not a spot to lie 
 down in, and there, on our couches, tuning our harps, 
 to think how much misery we have personally escaped. 
 The Christian heaven is an exalted society of self-sacri 
 ficing spirits, bound together in mutual fellowship by 
 their common consecration to Him who is above them, 
 where each accepted soul will go from strength to 
 strength, run and not be weary, toil and not faint, 
 aspire and not be baffled, do good and not be misinter 
 preted, and will be assimilated in ever closer and closer 
 affinity to Him who is its Light and Life, in whom 
 whosoever liveth and believeth shall never die. 
 
 Let us fearlessly carry our standard beyond the old 
 line of our inferior moods. And if any of us find we are 
 asking for a religion that shall make us comfortable, or 
 put us at ease, be sure we are asking, out of a false 
 spirit, what no reverential prayer should dare to peti 
 tion, what cannot be, and are no longer in a pos 
 ture to receive the Master s gifts, nor the favor of our 
 God. For of our Christian religion the badge is a cross, 
 even as self-forgetfulness is the spirit, love is the 
 motive, disinterestedness is the principle, faith is the 
 inmost spring, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ " the 
 first lesson and the last. 
 
SEEMON XIY. 
 
 3 4 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH WILL I GIVE A WHITE STONE, AND 
 IN THE STONE A NEW NAME WRITTEN, WHICH NO MAN KNOW- 
 ETH SAVING HE THAT RECEIVETH IT. Rev. ii. 1 7. 
 
 THE Book which is the grand interpreter of man s 
 inward nature and relations makes repeated refer 
 ences to the sacred power of names. In the Biblical 
 view, to give anything a name is to perform an act of 
 religion. What is it? It is to apply to some indi 
 vidual object, having God for its maker, that sign by 
 which it shall be known, separated from other things, 
 and called : and surely that ought to be done rever 
 ently, as in the presence of Him from whom all things 
 came, and to whom all things are known. In the origi 
 nal design, it cannot be doubted that God meant there 
 should be some special correspondence between the 
 qualities of each thing and the name it bears. This 
 gives to names their highest significance, makes them 
 descriptions or pictures, and in a manner judgments, 
 of the object they are applied to. And when we think 
 of the moral consequences that may be involved, it is 
 not strange that in the Divine history of the creation 
 such prominence is given to that critical and privileged 
 
THE SECEET OF THE NEW NAME. 255 
 
 hour when " the Lord brought every beast of the field 
 and every fowl of the air to Adam, to see what he 
 would call them : and whatsoever Adam called every 
 living creature, that was the name thereof." To every 
 discoverer, explorer, inventor, and original mind in 
 science, the same privilege and trust and duty have 
 been committed, in a degree, ever since. 
 
 When we rise to the plane of human life, this same 
 sanctity of names becomes more evident yet. Because 
 then they come to stand not only for individual exist 
 ences, but for conscious beings. They discriminate not 
 things, but persons, with will, conscience, purpose, ac- 
 countableness, and every other attribute of personality. 
 They mark off soul from soul, among the infinite ranks 
 and gradations of the immortal family, on earth and 
 in heaven, that no man can number. It must be for 
 this high reason that the first and characteristic ordi 
 nance of the Christian Church Baptism is asso 
 ciated with the giving to the person of his proper name, 
 his Christian name, we say. It means the recognition 
 before the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, all of 
 these august and separate names to be spoken there, 
 the recognition of the child s personal being, yet as 
 belonging to the social body or Family in the Church. 
 The old Church-catechisms tacitly assume the same 
 truth. If you ask those who profoundly comprehend 
 the spirit beneath their letter, they will tell you that 
 first question "What is your name?" is put to 
 the candidate, on his way to the Lord s table, and 
 put even when the name is well known to the ques 
 tioner, to point to the fact of separate, responsible life ; 
 because the Head of the Church asks a personal relation 
 to each member by name, and would appeal to the in- 
 
 22 
 
256 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 most soul of the young disciple, making him think who 
 he is, whose he is, and how he shall answer for himself 
 when he is called again at the Judgment; "singling that 
 special child out from all the millions," making him 
 stand alone, and " confess that he is a person," with a 
 life s work to do that none can do for him, a person 
 whom Christ died to redeem. This is what they will 
 tell you, to explain that question. Christ himself once 
 very tenderly and strikingly affirms his intimate per 
 sonal remembrance and regard for every such member, 
 even the least and the weakest, where he says that he, 
 the Good Shepherd, calls every one of his own by their 
 names. What the organs or modes of communication 
 shall be in the spiritual world, is beyond us. But, if we 
 we were in the habit of connecting, in our common 
 thoughts, the life we are living now with the life that 
 we live after death, as much as the spiritual laws allow 
 us, and as much as simple Christianity teaches us and 
 all holy comfort entreats us to do, then we should ac 
 count it nothing unnatural that our Christian names 
 should attend our identities everywhere ; and that, at 
 our final awaking hereafter, love and sympathy should 
 call us by the same names that were so dear and so 
 definite on earth, the same, perhaps, and yet " new" 
 names, because so modified, in the language of the skies, 
 that each shall betray the quality or character of the 
 life that has been lived in the body, the name a 
 judgment. 
 
 If we ascend still higher, from the human to the Di 
 vine, the power of names is more signally manifested 
 yet. Him whom no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor 
 hand touched, we yet know by his wonderful and Al 
 mighty name, our God. It is striking that the Scrip- 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 257 
 
 tures everywhere speak of the " name " of the Lord as 
 of the Lord himself. His name is his glory, his pres 
 ence, his power, his wisdom, his person, and it is the 
 only outward sign, or bond, of personal communi 
 cation between him and us who are allowed to make 
 no image of him. How impressive, too, that when his 
 great manifestation is to be made in humanity, it is de 
 clared that the eternal ivord is made flesh. That is the 
 uttered Divinity, the God pronounced, communicated 
 to man, through the incarnation. And when we breathe 
 the universal prayer of childhood and age, taught us by 
 the Saviour, we entreat first of all, " Hallowed be thy 
 name ! " In the dawn of Hebrew history, by the voices 
 of prophecy, God gave his people a memorial name, by 
 which he should be known forever, Jehovah, a seal 
 upon his covenant with them, a name of promise, point 
 ing to a deliverance to come, a Saviour, a Messiah ; and 
 that mighty name stood, on the lips and in the mind 
 of the chosen tribes, through centuries of trial and ex 
 pectation, an impregnable defence, an inexhaustible 
 hope, an unfailing herald of redemption to come. After 
 the Redeemer appeared, the universal command to 
 Christendom was that its prayers should be lifted to the 
 Father " in the name " of Christ. 
 
 So we arrive at the point of the text : "To him that 
 overcometh," saith that Faithful and True Witness, the 
 First and the Last, " will I give to eat of the hidden 
 manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the 
 stone a new name written, which no man knoweth 
 saving he that receive th it." I suppose most readers 
 feel that, besides what the understanding clearly grasps 
 in this sentence, there goes along a certain mystery of 
 suggestion, an influence not defined, making up a part 
 
258 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 of the beauty, and indeed a part of the power, of the 
 promise. It leads us to expect more than we can 
 exactly shape, and so stimulates wonder as well as faith. 
 This is often true of the higher utterances, the raised 
 expression of poetic or prophetic states, where more 
 comes to the soul than precise phrases can carry. 
 Much of the associative impression of sacred language 
 is of this sort ; another more open part of our nature 
 than the reason is addressed and moved, especially 
 where the imagination is made an active vehicle of the 
 spiritual message, as in the Apocalypse, where the text 
 occurs. The hearts of children are often lifted we 
 know, to reverence and holy moods, by passages they 
 cannot analyze nor interpret; and before the infinite 
 truths told us here from heaven the strongest intellects 
 are little more than children. 
 
 The likeliest explanation of the writer s figure is 
 found by a reference to an ancient custom connected 
 with the public games. The victor, " he that overcorn- 
 eth," among other honors was presented with a white 
 stone tessera with his name inscribed on it. Such 
 a stone was often of two parts, each bearing a portion of 
 the name, and was thus used as a talisman or secret 
 token between friends or families. None but the two 
 parts made for each other completed the device. Each, 
 whenever presented, in whatever part of the world, 
 would instantly match into its place, and constitute the 
 bearer s passport to kindness and favor with the kin 
 dred of its fellow s owner. One of the Roman poets 
 (Plautus) alludes to such a tally where the name of a 
 Deity was engraved, as well as those of the parties 
 pledged. The original cause or incidents of the alliance 
 were the secrets hidden by the emblem, hidden to all 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 259 
 
 but the holders. And the rights of hospitality, secured 
 by this badge, seem to be the occasion of that other 
 allusion in the same verse to the "hidden manna," thus 
 filling out the metaphor. 
 
 This much we find hinted to us, at least, by way of 
 verbal interpretation ; and it is enough. The spiritual 
 truth which the veil of figure covers can hardly be mis 
 taken. He that overcometh every victorious soul 
 prevailing by faith and by righteousness in the long and 
 patient battle of life shall have secret satisfactions 
 springing up in his heart, known only between himself 
 and his Lord. They will not consist in outward ap 
 plauses, in visible successes, in any worldly compensa 
 tions whatever. The chief of them all will be the 
 silent assurances of His personal affection, who is the 
 purest, highest, holiest. The testimony of his friend 
 ship will be the best reward. The token of his favor 
 will be the inestimable good. So much light does 
 advancing excellence always cast on old forms of truth, 
 a deeper life ever illuminating even familiar oracles, 
 that the very name of the Christ shall have a new mean 
 ing. It shall be a new name. It shall have a personal 
 charm and preciousness to each several believer. None 
 shall know it as he knoweth it that receiveth it. No man 
 ever knows the meaning of our deeper experiences, or of 
 the words that express them, as we know them ourselves. 
 Just as the Almighty said to the great Jewish leader and 
 lawgiver, when he declared to him his memorial-name, 
 " By that name thy fathers did not know me," though 
 they had used that name for hundreds of years, 
 meaning that in their less luminous state and backward 
 education they did not comprehend or realize what the 
 name contained, so, to each growing nature of man 
 22* 
 
260 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 the significance of every sacred word gains depth and 
 clearness at every step of his way. What was dark to 
 unbelief is bright to faith. What was perplexing to 
 the beginner in Christian living is simple and radiant 
 if he perseveres. The very name of the Source and 
 Spring of the world s only perfect spiritual illumination, 
 Christ, has no attraction and no interest to those whose 
 daily habit is alien from him. But let any walk in his 
 way, adopt his spirit, be joined to his society, and then 
 another feeling shall invest that name, give it beauty, 
 and open its gracious meaning, and make it a name 
 above every name, a new name, to which every knee 
 must bow, known only to him that receiveth it. 
 
 Let us divide, and state in their order, the principal 
 points of Christian truth which seem to start, for our 
 practical instruction and encouragement, out of this 
 mystical promise of the Apocalypse. 
 
 I. The first of these is the strict and private individ 
 uality of all real religious experience. When the pro- 
 founder feelings of some persons begin to be stirred, 
 as their penitence for a misspent life, or their convic 
 tion of the hollowness of all mere external virtue, they 
 become uneasy at the strength and solemnity of their 
 emotions. They run out to dilute their conscience in 
 mixtures with society. They are afraid of themselves, 
 and of those sober self-questionings that are their best 
 friends. Instead of letting the wholesome process of 
 conviction go on with thoroughness, in solitude, till 
 they fathom their hearts, and find out their evil, and 
 rouse from their danger, they are frightened to find 
 themselves in the strong and unfamiliar hands of relig 
 ious repentance, and retreat into positions more genial, 
 but less honest and less brave. 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 261 
 
 We cannot come right with God and his truth till we 
 are able to confront the facts in our own breasts, and 
 accept their rebuke. Sooner or later, some monitory 
 Providence comes and searches us, and shows that the 
 path to God s right hand is in great part a lonely one. 
 For such souls as have undertaken the higher life with 
 Christ in earnest, it is enough that the Infinite and 
 Unchangeable One shall be on their side, and compre 
 hend their struggle, and call each one of them by His 
 own name, at the end of the conflict, and give " to him 
 that overcorneth" that token of secret recognition which 
 he " knoweth that receiveth it." 
 
 II. A second characteristic of that true inward life 
 which the text implies is that its rewards are not such as 
 can be described beforehand. No man knoweth them 
 saving he that receiveth them. They remain to come out, 
 and be felt unexpectedly in their place. The very result 
 the religion of Christ undertakes to achieve in men s 
 hearts is disinterested devotion. The instant the idea 
 of a literal compensation is brought forward, therefore, 
 the essential doctrine is denied. Virtue under pay is 
 no longer virtue. Stipulated wages and heart s love 
 are distinct motives. The principle of implicit submis 
 sion to the Infinite Goodness, or of an eager reception of 
 heavenly favor through a grateful faith, is a totally sep 
 arate thing from the notion of earning a self-satisfied 
 heaven by a quantum of deserts, and of establishing a 
 claim on a Divine creditor by a square account with 
 his demands. It is not strange to find thoughtful and 
 wise persons, as they go farther into life and deeper 
 into acquaintance with themselves and other men, grad 
 ually giving up as preposterous the idea of anybody s 
 really being saved by his merits, or a Christless salva- 
 
262 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 tion ; i. e. of being such a keeper of the perfect 
 law of God as to be lifted into a fellowship with its 
 author, and justified in claiming eternal happiness as 
 a fair equivalent. Arrogance itself recoils from an inso 
 lence so audacious. If we are never to feel ourselves 
 friends and co-workers and children with God till we have 
 bought that place by legal conformity, we must give 
 up the whole hope. It is another relation altogether. 
 Obedience itself, or the constant prayer and effort for 
 it, springs from a different root. It is a penitent, 
 dependent, spontaneous movement of the unselfish soul, 
 towards the Almighty love, for its own sake. Faith is 
 not hired. Why, even in all the loftier and purer 
 human relationships, affection scorns the calculations of 
 self-interest. There is not a tie of holy friendship on 
 earth but feels itself insulted by the suggestion of a 
 price. That preacher aggrieves the finest natures he 
 speaks to, and practically wrongs the whole spirit of the 
 Gospel he professes to administer, who appeals to peo 
 ple to believe in God, and follow the Crucified, only for 
 the sake- of winning a paradise of comfort, or of escaping 
 a pit full of pain. Doubtless, the scriptural language 
 considers all the mixed conditions of human want, and 
 condescends to stimulate our low and impoverished 
 aspirations by promises of rest and joy. But read on, 
 read all ; ponder and compare ; see where its celestial 
 philosophy culminates, and you find that it does not 
 leave the disciple till it points him to Love as the fulfil 
 ling of the law ; till it carries him up above offers of 
 hire to a self-forgetful passion for excellence ; till it fas 
 tens the supremo appeal on the voluntary sufferings of 
 One who gave himself freely for us ; till it makes the 
 cross the symbol of its spirit. Heaven has no element 
 
THE SECEET OF THE NEW NAME. 263 
 
 of idle or exclusive privilege in it. The disciple shall 
 not have places pledged on the right hand or left, 
 but drink of the Master s cup, be " near and like his 
 Lord." This personal nearness and assimilation will be 
 enough. Then we shall be able to take up, and repeat, 
 and pray ourselves, this prayer of Bradwardine, a 
 brave believer of ages ago, kneeling there in the twi 
 light of a darker time, but closer, I think, than most of 
 our modern piety to Olivet and Gethsemane : " Thyself, 
 my God, I love, for thyself, and above all things. Thy 
 self for thyself, and not for aught else, I will always 
 and in all things seek : with my heart and all my 
 strength, with groaning and weeping, with continual 
 labor and grief. What, therefore, wilt tliou give me as 
 my final end ? If thou givest me not thyself, thou 
 givest me nothing. Thou dost not then reward, but tor 
 ture me. If thou deniest me thyself, and that forever, 
 whatever else thou givest me, shall I not always lan 
 guish, mourn, and weep, because I remain ever empty ? 
 Grant therefore, my gracious God, that in the present 
 life I may ever love thyself for thyself, above all things ; 
 and in the future world may I find thee and hold thee 
 forever." " To him that overcome th shall be given a 
 white stone, and in the stone a new name written, 
 which no man knoweth saving he that receive th it." 
 
 III. Another branch of the same great truth, and one 
 that we of these times need much to realize, is that a 
 Christian piety is to be prized for its secret intrinsic 
 quality, rather than for its quotable results. No man 
 knoweth it like him that hath it. Its hidden testimonies 
 are worth more than its public demonstrations. Those 
 who look for the latter will be perpetually discovering 
 disappointments ; and then, if their faith leans on the 
 
264 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 visible return, faith fails with the failing harvest. Some 
 things must be held as settled, whether they gain many 
 converts or few. The moment we begin to measure the 
 actual power or blessedness of our convictions by count 
 ing the number of their disciples, we have inflicted the 
 grossest affront on the spirit of truth. This constant 
 reference to outward responses and results vitiates the 
 very essence and spirit of righteousness, as it does of 
 every pure and sacred feeling. Being religious for effect 
 spoils the effect, like being honest for effect, or hum 
 ble for effect, or affectionate or chaste for effect. It 
 runs straight to a base hypocrisy, and not only abolishes 
 its own influence, but begets a general scepticism of 
 sincerity which blights every high interest, and unsettles 
 virtue itself. Faith must dwell in her own sanctuary, 
 see by her own light, feed on her own secret and immor 
 tal manna, be content with her own joy, cling to the 
 white stone with the ineffable name, and wait for 
 her spiritual, justification and victory. It is when re 
 ligion begins to think more of keeping the people safe, 
 civilization progressive, and the public decent, by its 
 forms and professions, than of keeping the heart clean 
 and holy by its silent intercourse with God, that it 
 ceases to be religion, and degenerates into a policy. 
 The grandest testimony to Christianity is a soul pene 
 trated and hallowed by its light. No influence like real 
 conviction. No plea like consistency. Society will 
 come right when its members have overcome in their 
 private warfare, and are inwardly at one with Christ. 
 The people will be safe when individual worldliness is 
 dislodged, and the searching Spirit of God finds the hid 
 den doors of the heart open. Institutions will be vital 
 enough, and " broad " enough, and full enough, when 
 
 
THE SECRET OP THE NEW NAME. 265 
 
 this personal soul, and that one, and each one, has 
 given its affection and its trust to the Head and 
 Former of the Fold. 
 
 There is encouragement, as well as trial, in this sharp 
 demand on the individual. The promise goes with the 
 command. True, it makes it hard to commend the real 
 satisfactions of a Christian life to those that will not 
 try them. That can never be very effectually done. 
 Literal descriptions of the delights of believing inspire 
 no adequate emotion. Language itself is too feeble a 
 medium. After you have exhausted the rhetoric of ju 
 bilant encomium, the untouched hearer says, "If that is 
 all, the poets and painters of this world s joy match your 
 kingdom of heaven." The sense is wanting which can 
 appreciate or even comprehend what you say. Far bet 
 ter serve these dim but large and moving symbols of 
 Scripture, like the image of the text, stirring hope but 
 never bounding it : the white stone with the new name 
 which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. 
 What Jeremy Taylor says of mysticism is true, in 
 some degree, of all deep Christian spirituality, that 
 whereas, in other sciences, the terms must be known 
 first, and then the rules and conclusions, here the expe 
 rience must first be obtained before we can so much 
 as know what it is. But then, on the other hand, the 
 end is not dependent on language, nor on mortal 
 tuition. It comes by the simple and ever- waiting gift of 
 God, like the light in the sky, to every willing and be 
 lieving heart. Formularies are not its vehicles. Terms 
 are not necessary to it. Articles and rules do not mo 
 nopolize it. If thou believest with all thine heart, thou 
 mayest be baptized into the full, deep peace of a dis 
 ciple. He that doeth righteousness, in every nation, is 
 
266 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 accepted. Understanding shall grow with growing ear 
 nestness of purpose. And he that tries heartily to 
 do Christ s will shall know of the doctrine ; know it 
 more and more ; know it deeper and deeper ; know all 
 that he needs. 
 
 To selfish, earth-bound hearts no secrets are revealed. 
 No tokens of personal remembrance, no signs of secret 
 favor, come from the Master. True redemption is our 
 deliverance from that restless selfishness, and our return 
 to union with God So far the old mystics were right. 
 No mastery among men, no conquests of self-promotion, 
 no prosperous economy, no career of politic success, 
 contains a joy so exquisite, and so full, as that pledge of 
 friendship from the love and power and wisdom that 
 fill the throne of Eternity. If any reply that it has a 
 strange, unpractical sound, the believer can only take 
 up his Master s repeated saying, with its undertone of 
 mournful compassion, appeal and lamentation together, 
 " He that hath ears to hear let him hear." Treatises 
 011 the laws of sound would not bear in the music 
 upon our finer sense, if heavenly anthems were to float 
 down upon us through the midnight air. As I write 
 these sentences an illustration comes to me through 
 the outward senses. A stately company of sorrowful 
 mounted soldiers are bearing out the lifeless form of 
 their commander to burial. His horse, saddled but 
 riderless, walks alone behind the hearse. Rising and 
 falling on the waves of the solemn Sunday evening 
 wind come, from the blended instruments, the melodi 
 ous measures of that wonderful, weeping, supplicating 
 dirge, the Dead March in Saul, swelling slowly 
 through the streets, winding over field and river, pene 
 trating the silent chambers of the sick and dying, hush- 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 267 
 
 ing even the children s talk in a hundred homes, till all 
 the sympathizing elements and features of the scene 
 the still trees and waters, the drooping clouds, the 
 fading sunset seem to join the funeral procession, 
 and weep with them that weep. But withdraw yourself 
 a moment from that august impression, where death is 
 made so real, look along the crowded groups that 
 gather to gaze and listen. On some subdued faces the 
 moving power has visibly descended, and they wait, 
 perhaps they worship, in this awful sanctuary of grief, 
 amidst these irresistible harmonies. But others 
 prattle and gossip and jest, even there. Levity must 
 have its laugh, and the frivolous must trifle, and irrev 
 erence see only the glitter of the uniforms and the 
 sable plumes, even where the faithful tomb is unveil 
 ing its bosom to take this new treasure to its trust, and 
 Life and Death are lifting together the curtains of the 
 " illustrious morn." yes ! It is ever so, and ever 
 must be. There are shut souls, that having eyes will 
 not see, and having ears will not hear, though the 
 vision be open, and the voice as the voice of many 
 waters, and of a great thunder, and of harpers harping 
 with their harps. None the less do the Eternal Truth 
 and the Eternal Way stand fast, and offer themselves 
 in mercy inexhaustible to the needy heart of " whoso 
 ever will." Christ is that Truth. Personal union with 
 him is that Way. To know him thus in the first faint 
 feeling of grateful trust is the beginning of disciple- 
 ship. To know him finally, in the fulness of his media 
 tion and Lordship, by his " New Name," will be glory 
 and honor and immortality. Then will be the joy of 
 recognition, the Great Friend seen no longer as 
 " through a glass, darkly," but " face to face." And 
 
 23 
 
268 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 then, not as the believing little child, who asked, when 
 dying, that her Testament might be buried in her hand, 
 that she might hold it up on coming into the Saviour s 
 presence, lest otherwise he might not know her in the 
 great multitude, but as the victorious seer of Patmos 
 expected, we shall receive from himself the token of 
 an immaterial covenant, the "New Name," written not 
 in the outward letter, but in the secret testimony and 
 intuition of the "Word that is from the beginning and 
 Everlasting. 
 
 IY. It has been implied all along, as a chief doctrine 
 lying at the very heart of this passage, as it lies at the 
 heart of the Gospel itself, that the special character and 
 privilege of the Christian rest in a personal and con 
 scious union between him and his living Redeemer. 
 We vex our ingenuity straining after comprehensive 
 definitions of the distinctive thing in Christianity. They 
 are all superficial and irrelevant compared with this. 
 How uniform and majestic the testimony that rises from 
 all the lands and ages of faith to this simple truth, 
 that it is not rules of conduct, not systems of ethics, not 
 patterns of propriety, not eloquent expositions, that 
 inspire the believing and faithful heart with its immor 
 tal energy and peace, but the simple, secret as 
 surance of being at one with the Lord Jesus, and rest 
 ing in his Almighty friendship ! Where is the fiery 
 furnace deep enough to burn despair into our souls, if 
 we can see walking with us through the fire the form of 
 the Son of God ? What, then, is the tribulation, or 
 famine, or sword, or nakedness, that shall separate us 
 from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord ? The 
 mystery of that unity where He who is one with God 
 yet cried, " Not as I will, but as Thou wilt," is not for 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 269 
 
 us to understand. Yet the prayer of promise, " They 
 shall be with me where I am," is fto us to lay hold of, 
 and breathe again and again, when we are aching and 
 alone and troubled. So the believers have found. 
 When the brilliant, amiable, and accomplished young 
 Italian woman, Olympia Morata, whose learning and 
 loveliness graced the splendid epoch of Leo X., had 
 become the persecuted victim of Romish tyranny for 
 honoring Christ above a polluted priesthood, then pov 
 erty, sickness, desolation, exile, tried their worst upon 
 her constancy. After she who had been the delicate 
 nursling of courts and letters had fled across the 
 stony fields of Bavaria, with literally bare and bleeding 
 feet, the strength of the frail body failing, she bent 
 under the roughness of fortune, and quietly lay down 
 to die. To one of her noble friends in Italy she wrote, 
 " Let the word of God be the rule of thy life, the lamp 
 upon thy path, and thou wilt not stumble." As the 
 purple flood of life ebbed in her thin, white frame, she 
 said, " I desire to die, because I know the secret of 
 death. The cunning mechanism is near to its dissolu 
 tion. I desire to die, that I may be with Jesus Christ, 
 and find in him eternal life. Do not be disturbed at 
 my death, for I shall conquer in the end; I desire to 
 depart and be with Christ." With Christ! So, the 
 world over, and through all ages, in the first century or 
 the last, the true heart of faith answers, in its final and 
 glorified hour, to the prayer of Jesus, " "With me, 
 where I am." 
 
 And the same devotion to God s will that is the 
 solace of distress is the inspiration of labor. We have 
 not ascended to the loftiest and worthiest motive of all 
 well-doing till we have reached this mark. You and I, 
 
270 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 in this little day of life, and with these poor powers, 
 can verily do something to further the purposes and 
 glory of the ineffable Name. Could that thought pene 
 trate our common avocations, business, hospitality, 
 trades, studies, to what a height of sacred dignity 
 would it lift them, and of what dross and meanness, 
 and selfish grossness, and besotted care, would it purge 
 them clean ! 
 
 We have, in our present state, a visible institution or 
 household, which is meant to stand as the image and 
 the threshold of the future society or family of those 
 who are with Christ and in him. We call it, as Christ 
 called it, the Church. It is the company of men and 
 women, not presuming to have yet attained, but know 
 ing in whom they have believed. There are many rea 
 sons for a sincere soul s belonging to it ; and one of the 
 best of these is, that a divine wisdom has so fitted it to 
 our wants, that it is found that in its ordinances and 
 its communion the heart has a special sense of being 
 near to the Master, and strengthened by him. On the 
 ground of this reasonable and affecting privilege, it 
 throws wide open its hospitable arms, and bids all that 
 think it good to be Christ s and Christlike, to come in. 
 To the busy, tempted, world-beset man it offers guid 
 ance, and a memorial of him whom all the kingdoms of 
 the world could not bend from right. To the anxious, 
 suffering, loving, dependent, or fashion-urged woman, it 
 offers the better part that nothing can take away, and 
 the bliss of sins forgiven. To the dying it gives the 
 bread and cup, the nutriment of that life which the 
 body cannot imprison nor death detain. To thought 
 ful, prayerful, right-hearted youth it extends just the 
 guidance, protection, encouragement, that youth needs. 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 271 
 
 The only condition the New Testament requires is a 
 heart desiring it, and a sincere and settled faith in him 
 who founded it. Baptism really seals the infant as the 
 proper future subject of it. There is no mystery to 
 puzzle a child s understanding, for it speaks only of 
 love, sacrifice, a Saviour ; and these are the very reali 
 ties that we all have to become like little children to 
 comprehend. The reckless, the selfish, the false, the 
 profane, or those of ungoverned temper, will have no 
 fitness for it ; for there is too little in common between 
 its hallowed meaning and them. But all who have 
 been taught to love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, 
 and have yielded to the Shepherd s call, shall be placed 
 like the lambs in his bosom, that they may not stray 
 neglected outside the blessed home-fold, but be shel 
 tered and guarded within its endearing and loving en 
 closure. Tender hands can grasp the " white stone " 
 that hath the new name written in it. 
 
 Nor are we without witnesses how, in answer to faith 
 and prayer, to baptismal vows and the motherly call of 
 the Church, bright and clear discernments of spiritual 
 things, such as all of us might covet, sometimes shine 
 out in the soul of childhood. I knew of a disciple of 
 Christ whose whole earthly life was measured by nine 
 short years. In her sickness she said to one of the 
 family, " When I am dead, I wish my pastor might 
 preach a sermon to children, to persuade them to love 
 Jesus Christ, to obey their parents, and think more 
 about heaven. I have been thinking I should like to 
 have him preach from the text about the prophet Elisha 
 and the child of the Shunamite, Is it well with the 
 child ? and she answered, It is well. The prophet will 
 come to see you after I am gone, and when he says, 
 
 23* 
 
270 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 in this little day of life, and with these poor powers, 
 can verily do something to further the purposes and 
 glory of the ineffable Name. Could that thought pene 
 trate our common avocations, business, hospitality, 
 trades, studies, to what a height of sacred dignity 
 would it lift them, and of what dross and meanness, 
 and selfish grossness, and besotted care, would it purge 
 them clean ! 
 
 We have, in our present state, a visible institution or 
 household, which is meant to stand as the image and 
 the threshold of the future society or family of those 
 who are with Christ and in him. We call it, as Christ 
 called it, the Church. It is the company of men and 
 women, not presuming to have yet attained, but know 
 ing in whom they have believed. There are many rea 
 sons for a sincere soul s belonging to it ; and one of the 
 best of these is, that a divine wisdom has so fitted it to 
 our wants, that it is found that in its ordinances and 
 its communion the heart has a special sense of being 
 near to the Master, and strengthened by him. On the 
 ground of this reasonable and affecting privilege, it 
 throws wide open its hospitable arms, and bids all that 
 think it good to be Christ s and Christlike, to come in. 
 To the busy, tempted, world-beset man it offers guid 
 ance, and a memorial of him whom all the kingdoms of 
 the world could not bend from right. To the anxious, 
 suffering, loving, dependent, or fashion-urged woman, it 
 offers the better part that nothing can take away, and 
 the bliss of sins forgiven. To the dying it gives the 
 bread and cup, the nutriment of that life which the 
 body cannot imprison nor death detain. To thought 
 ful, prayerful, right-hearted youth it extends just the 
 guidance, protection, encouragement, that youth needs. 
 
THE SECRET OP THE NEW NAME. 271 
 
 The only condition the New Testament requires is a 
 heart desiring it, and a sincere and settled faith in him 
 who founded it. Baptism really seals the infant as the 
 proper future subject of it. There is no mystery to 
 puzzle a child s understanding, for it speaks only of 
 love, sacrifice, a Saviour ; and these are the very reali 
 ties that we all have to become like little children to 
 comprehend. The reckless, the selfish, the false, the 
 profane, or those of ungoverned temper, will have no 
 fitness for it ; for there is too little in common between 
 its hallowed meaning and them. But all who have 
 been taught to love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, 
 and have yielded to the Shepherd s call, shall be placed 
 like the lambs in his bosom, that they may not stray 
 neglected outside the blessed home-fold, but be shel 
 tered and guarded within its endearing and loving en 
 closure. Tender hands can grasp the " white stone " 
 that hath the new name written in it. 
 
 Nor are we without witnesses how, in answer to faith 
 and prayer, to baptismal vows and the motherly call of 
 the Church, bright and clear discernments of spiritual 
 things, such as all of us might covet, sometimes shine 
 out in the soul of childhood. I knew of a disciple of 
 Christ whose whole earthly life was measured by nine 
 short years. In her sickness she said to one of the 
 family, " When I am dead, I wish my pastor might 
 preach a sermon to children, to persuade them to love 
 Jesus Christ, to obey their parents, and think more 
 about heaven. I have been thinking I should like to 
 have him preach from the text about the prophet Elisha 
 and the child of the Shunamite, 6 Is it well with the 
 child ? and she answered, It is well. The prophet will 
 come to see you after I am gone, and when he says, 
 
 23* 
 
272 THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 
 
 4 How is it with the child ? you may say, It is well. 7 
 I am sure it will be well with me then, for I shall be in 
 heaven, singing the praises of my Lord." "Father, I 
 will that they also whom thou hast given me be with 
 me where I am." When the children in the Temple 
 cried, " Hosanna to the Son of David," Jesus said, 
 " Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast 
 perfected praise." 
 
 Rejoice not, then, in any outward or selfish success, 
 not even that the spirits are subject unto you, but 
 that your names are written in heaven, with the name 
 of your Saviour. Seats of honor, on the right hand 
 and the left, are not promised, but to drink of the 
 Master s cup, and to be baptized with the same 
 baptism. Patiently and persistently, again and again, 
 by all figures and comparisons, now by this image and 
 now by that, Christ strives to bear up the minds of his 
 followers above every material and earthly impression, 
 to the realization of the blessed and unspeakable fel 
 lowship between the believing heart and himself : show 
 ing us the water of such secret satisfaction that he who 
 tastes it never thirsts again ; meat to eat that the world 
 knows nothing of; the single inward eye lighting the 
 whole body ; the Shepherd calling his own sheep by 
 name, by name, leading them out, and they know 
 ing his voice. 
 
 Here is the conclusion. The satisfactions of a Chris 
 tian life, however generous and humane, are secret and 
 personal, as its burdens of repentance and conflict are. 
 They must be tried, to be known. Whoever waits to 
 know them by description waits in vain. He mistakes 
 the law of the heavenly mind and the condition of the 
 heavenly gift. Christ grants them to those only who 
 
THE SECRET OF THE NEW NAME. 273 
 
 give themselves to Him for their life. That life must 
 be begun by each soul alone. Penitence, duty, faith, 
 prayer, bear their own witness, and bring their own 
 confirmations. We must trust ourselves to them, or 
 they will not bless us. It is a personal experience. 
 Each name has to stand clear in the Book of Life, writ 
 ten by him whose memorial Name is above every name. 
 Only they whose names are found there shall be able to 
 interpret the glory of his own. 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 IX THE WORLD YE SHALL HAVE TRIBULATION ; BUT BE OF 
 GOOD CHEKR | I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD. Jolm Xvi. 33. 
 
 IT is worth our thought, how small that audience 
 must be that would assemble, life through, to listen to a 
 Gospel that said nothing to sufferers, nothing to sorrow. 
 How tiresome would be that monotony of superficial 
 satisfaction ! How the poor, weak hearts, aching and 
 staggering under crosses, would refuse to come to a 
 comforter that never wept, nor remembered that his fol 
 lowers must weep. Even those human companions who 
 are ignorant of grief sometimes grow insupportably 
 wearisome to our heavier moods. Their perpetual gale 
 of hilarity grates upon our sensibilities, as unsympa- 
 thizing as the east wind. 
 
 How much more unsatisfying a pretended Saviour, 
 that was not himself a sufferer, or a worship which 
 touched us only in our happier hours, but never went 
 down into the depths of our darkness, with its grand 
 condescension, to raise us in its holy arms, with the 
 lifting up of its promises and the inspiration of its 
 anthems, giving the garments of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness, and good cheer for tribulation ! 
 
A religion that should address itself only to persons 
 in a state of comfort would be like a system of naviga 
 tion that should calculate only for sailing in clear 
 weather. The hours when a voyager needs the aids of 
 science most are those when the night and the cloud 
 have conspired to wipe out all waymarks from earth 
 and sky, and robhed the rudder of its meaning ; when 
 the tempest shrieks over a sea with no north, no port, 
 no light. Very little honor belongs, it is true, to that 
 view of Christianity which represents it as suited to no 
 seasons but funereal and gloomy ones. It is meant 
 for the whole of our life, and sooner or later there 
 comes from the common human heart in us a cry that 
 nothing else will answer, and nothing else will still. 
 
 Christ confronts the fearful fact. He conceals noth 
 ing, disguises nothing, treats nothing timidly. He ac 
 knowledges the humiliating necessity for discipline. 
 He frankly prophesies it. " In the world ye shall have 
 tribulation." We have all known foolish parents that 
 were willing to entice their children into acts of disa 
 greeable submission, by promising there should be noth 
 ing disagreeable in them ; so defrauding childhood both 
 by a deception and a disappointment. The perfect 
 Father never deals in that way with the hearts he 
 would mould to his will. And so, when his Son is 
 revealing that will, you see his sublime candor. The 
 medicine, he says, must have a bitter taste ; take it, 
 nevertheless. Ye must be chastened ; it is enough that 
 the Lord loveth whom he chasteneth. Persecuted and 
 reviled ye must be ; blessed are ye, and rejoice if it is 
 for the Son of Man s sake, who took persecution and 
 reviling and pain for you. 
 
 It is no mere happiness of the jester and the trifler 
 
276 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 that God desires for you. It is not the empty merri 
 ment of a convivial company, nor the physical com 
 posure of healthy nerves, nor the complacency of self- 
 satisfaction. It is none of these. If it were, they 
 might be had, perhaps, on cheaper terms, with no costly 
 ritual of sacrifice. It is not " cheer " merely, observe, 
 but " good cheer." It is a holy joy. It is " that 
 peace which the world cannot give ; " and which, as 
 faith knows, the Saviour sufficiently describes when he 
 calls it "My peace." To have his peace, you must first 
 drink of his cup, be baptized with his baptism, take up 
 his cross. 
 
 Woes, famines, and pestilences, in the spirit if not 
 the flesh, are but the beginning of sorrows ; sec that ye 
 be not troubled. The sun of your inward world shall 
 be darkened, the moon not give her light, the stars fall 
 from that heaven ; but it is because the Son of Man 
 cometh with power and glory in your soul. " Ye shall 
 have tribulation ; " for it is through much tribulation 
 that any soul entereth into the kingdom of heaven. 
 But "be of good cheer." 
 
 The " cheer " thus offered, then, does not forget 
 trouble, but presupposes it. Christ does not undertake 
 to give us happiness here unmixed, nor to give it by 
 administering moral anodynes to blunt the sense of 
 pain. He means rather to show us the ultimate joy to 
 be gained by the suffering. He treats it as a necessity 
 to our spiritual education ; and so bids our fortitude 
 face it, our submission accept it, our faith endure it, 
 our Christian principle draw strength from it. There 
 are three points : - 
 
 I. The necessity of suffering. " Ye must have 
 tribulation." 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 277 
 
 II. The power and manner of Christ s victory. " I 
 have overcome." 
 
 III. How it is a victory for us. " Be of good cheer." 
 I. Wherein this necessity that we should be troubled 
 
 consists is a part of the insoluble problem of evil. It 
 is one of the mortifying proofs what stubborn and 
 untcachable pupils of the Divine Master we are, that 
 no way could be found of bringing us to our immortal 
 ity but through such a system of checks and penalties. 
 We must be baffled, smitten, scourged ; we must ache, 
 and weep, and die ; we must suffer the stripes of mis 
 fortune, of disease, of mortified ambition, of bleeding 
 affections, of mortal separation. The very word " tribu 
 lation" suggests this. It predicts the result, as well as 
 describes the process. The flail (tribulwri) in the hand 
 of the thresher is to bruise the sheaves and break out 
 the wheat from the straw. In every threshing-floor 
 there is tribulation ; and that is the world over. Blows 
 of pain havo to divide the spirit and flesh. The pure 
 fruit of goodness does not come from us but by break 
 ing off the worldly crust. John the Baptist shows us 
 the Mighty One that came after him, holding the fan in 
 his hand, sifting the chaff away, and thoroughly cleans 
 ing his floor. Suffering is our John the Baptist, clad in 
 grim garments, with rough arms, a son of the wilder 
 ness, baptizing us in bitter tears, preaching repentance ; 
 and behind him conies the gracious, affectionate, heal 
 ing Lord, gathering the wheat into the garner. 
 
 Let us not take so outward an understanding of the 
 Saviour s meaning as to suppose he was referring wholly 
 to sufferings that visit the soul from abroad. The 
 worst troubler of the world is a wilful heart. No man 
 ever found so dangerous an enemy as he bore in his 
 
278 
 
 own personality. Here is one of our most frequent and 
 fatal misjudgments. We reckon those to be the only 
 afflictions which befall us in the ordaining of Provi 
 dence, or in what, for want of a more reverential name, 
 we call fortune ; forgetting that the essential circum 
 stance of all real evil is that it has its root and nourish 
 ment in the bad soil of our own hearts. It was not the 
 fruit Eve tasted that " brought death into our world, 
 and all our woe," but the disobedient appetite that 
 lusted after it, and the rebellious, selfish will that 
 reached out and plucked it, and brought it to her lips. 
 That tree of good and evil grows in every child s 
 bosom. We carry the germs of our most disastrous 
 calamities about with us, and whenever the earthly 
 nature in us gets the mastery of the spiritual, some 
 one of them bursts into a luxuriant and malignant 
 growth. Vanity, emulation, love of money, envy, 
 hatred, self-indulgence, these prepare for us our 
 most dreadful tribulations. 
 
 You dread the death of a friend ; but you ought to 
 dread with deeper apprehension the dying out of spirit 
 ual aspirations from his heart. I am overcome b^ the 
 loss of a child ; but I know, if the New Testament is 
 true, I ought to grieve more heartily when some new 
 sin has defiled my conscience, and dropped a deeper 
 veil between my soul and the God of my life. Tears 
 and sighs mark all our way as we carry out our dear 
 ones to burial ; but there are no graves so mournful as 
 those that Mammon digs for our uprightness, and sloth 
 for our holier energies, and the world s flattery for our 
 singlc-mindedness. When faith in Christ ceases in any 
 of our souls, there is infinitely more cause for private or 
 public lamentation than when the most honored citizen 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WOLRD S TRIBULATION. 279 
 
 passes out of his body, or a terrible accident plunges a 
 hundred lives into visible destruction. And yet, so far 
 from rising into these spiritual judgments of our gains 
 and losses, how often we let some petty outward calam 
 ity an unsuccessful plan, a bad venture, a bank 
 ruptcy wring from us heavier groans than the sacri 
 fice of all our sympathy with Heaven ! There are shops 
 where the ruin of a bale of merchandise is more de 
 plored than a falsehood or a profane oath, as if what we 
 call " goods " were our literal good ; where a spoilt fab 
 ric or broken bargain awakens louder lamentations than 
 a tarnish on character or a sinking of principle, and 
 where a reduced income is harder to bear than a guilty 
 mind. 
 
 We can all conceive of a state of society so thor 
 oughly Christian in its customs and its estimates, that 
 the tokens of extreme sorrow which we now see misap 
 plied to the funerals of those who sleep in Jesus only to 
 reign with him in his glory, should be transferred to 
 signalize our shame when we are conquered by tempta 
 tion, or corrupted into crime. 
 
 If we learn to look on moral losses inroads upon 
 purity, swervings from holiness as the real tribulations, 
 the bitterest bereavements, we realize how in sympathy 
 with our own weak nature the whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth in pain, waiting for deliverance by Him 
 who overcometh the world. 
 
 In connection with this truth we are to look for 
 another, viz. that which reconciles to our feeling the 
 apparent severity of this law, that through suffering 
 we must be perfected. One might think, indeed, that 
 to be perfected, or spiritually completed, in any way, 
 would be honor and bliss enough, let whatever purify- 
 
 24 
 
280 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 ing anguish come, as the instrument. And so I have 
 known many and many an earnest, convicted soul, 
 thinking no more of the pain, counting that the least 
 of its evils, to entreat, " Pray for me, that by any 
 means, at all cost, through any agony, I may only be 
 purified, and these hateful, horrid fires of passion and 
 iniquity be burnt out of me." That is a real feeling 
 when the deepest passage of life comes, let our lighter 
 and easier moods call it sentiment, or fanaticism, or 
 whatsoever in their mad, blind foolishness they will. 
 It is, in its time, the most real of realities. And it is 
 so simply because our first need, and our first good, 
 unclean, fallen, lost souls as we all alike are before the 
 perfect purity of God, is to be made whole again. 
 And this healing can come only by some painful reviving 
 of the deadened sensibility, just as the lost vitality 
 of the drowning and of many morbid bodies is brought 
 back only through a physical torture that is terrible. 
 If we were in a wholesome, orderly, or sinless state, all 
 this would be different. Doubtless, our Father would 
 not then plunge us into gratuitous pains of sacrifice. 
 But we are in another condition, down under disor 
 der, diseased, broken, dying of the sin our own bad will 
 and guilty indulgence have gendered. And how to 
 raise us out of that is the problem. The Redeemer 
 alone has solved it. He has shown us, in his own cross, 
 what by our own natural experience in other things we 
 had perhaps begun to see already, that recovery conies 
 by inward suffering, by penitential tears, by sorrow. 
 Still, as at first, through much tribulation we must 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. To that end even 
 our glorious Leader, the Captain of our salvation, is 
 " made perfect," not in the infinite and eternal perfec- 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 281 
 
 tion of his nature, but in the perfectness of his conde 
 scending incarnation and mediatorial sympathy, made 
 perfect " through suffering." Sublime mystery of God ! 
 Gracious wonder of our redemption ! Why should we 
 complain of the sorrow that we ourselves, by our diso 
 bedience, have created ? of the sorrow that ends, not 
 begins, our real misery ? the sorrow that is as much the 
 needed pathway and natural preparation of the joy of 
 immortality with our Lord, joy that no eye hath 
 seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived, as the night 
 is the needed preparation of the morning, or hardship 
 the natural path from the wilderness of the far country 
 to the peace of the Father s house ? Said Thomas 
 Arnold, that pure and lofty soul still longing to be puri 
 fied and ennobled, amidst the anguish of his last dis 
 order, " I thank God for pain." 
 
 If we look deeply enough at both these two sad 
 dening facts, bereavement and sin, we shall find that, 
 though they seem to wear different aspects as they meet 
 our eyes in actual experience, yet the most sorrowful 
 element in sorrow is sin, and what makes tribulation a 
 necessary part of the world s discipline is the world s 
 guilt. God knows I do not mean to lay on any suf 
 ferer the stupid cruelty of affirming that sufferings are 
 distributed in the world according to relative degrees of 
 merit, or that afflictions are always specific or measured 
 penalties for particular crimes. But evidently, in the 
 system we live in, the two are intertangled inseparably. 
 Paul condenses the whole matter into few words : 
 " The sting of death is sin." His conclusion follows 
 legitimately : " Thanks be to God which givetli us the 
 victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Transgres 
 sion is tribulation, Just to the degree that any soul 
 
282 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 gains freedom from iniquity, it gains a conquest over 
 sorrow. If the sufferer had no sin in his heart, he 
 would have a perfect mastery over all the damage 
 that the world and its whole army of diseases and acci 
 dents and mortality could do to him. 
 
 Thus far, then, we see what it is that is to be over 
 come ; what " the world " means ; what its tribulations 
 are. 
 
 II. The next question asks, How, by what means and 
 what process, Christ has, as he declares, overcome the 
 world and conquered suffering. The most comprehen 
 sive answer we can frame is this : In his own person he 
 overcame it, by the divine fulness and richness of his 
 life. This raised the spirit of Jesus, not above the 
 reach of suffering, for to that end came he into the 
 world but above fear, above agitation, above sub 
 jection to any other tribulation than that which came 
 from his sympathy with the sorrows of man, and his 
 redemptive sacrifice. It is written of the Lord that he 
 is " afflicted in all the afflictions of his people." What, 
 then, is the real triumph of Calvary ? Is it not the tri 
 umph of that love wherewith he loved us before we 
 loved him ? What is the peace that tranquillizes the 
 agonies of Gethsemane ? Is it not the oneness of the 
 Son with the Father ? " God so loved the world." 
 We cannot hurt God s holiness. We cannot crucify his 
 love. 
 
 Then, having overcome the world in his own per 
 son, he furnishes to mankind a power by which they 
 also can overcome, through his own identifying of him 
 self in his divinity with human suffering and experi 
 ence. He takes flesh and dwells among us as one of 
 us, purposely that he may make us partakers of his vie- 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 283 
 
 tory. He undergoes the crucifixion, that by conforming 
 himself to the law that requires suffering for sin, or 
 pain for a broken commandment, he may release us 
 from both the power and the penalty of sin, stimu 
 lating us also by this pledge of forgiveness, and reas 
 suring us by the sacrificial proof that God is still just, 
 while he justifies the sinner that repents and believes. 
 
 Revert now to the point just shown. Directly or 
 indirectly, the source of sorrow is sin. When Christ, 
 therefore, by all the glorious offices of his ministry and 
 passion, breaks the power of that evil in the world, he 
 provides an infinite assuaging for sorrow. When he 
 vanquishes temptation, he prostrates pain. When he 
 puts Satan behind him and plants the kingdom of 
 righteousness, he subdues tribulation and leads cap 
 tivity captive. In other ages, you know, the rude con 
 ceptions of the church have given an objective form to 
 this great spiritual fact, and have represented the con 
 flict in actual figures, as a warfare between two 
 mighty leaders, where the Redeemer wins. So Mil 
 ton, in Paradise Lost. The imagery only shadows 
 forth a spiritual truth, the supreme truth in the 
 history of the universe. By all the influences and 
 forces of his divine mission into the world, the Re 
 deemer has overcome the world. 
 
 If we choose to divide this one comprehensive fact 
 into its parts, we find four chief methods by which this 
 mission of Jesus overcomes sin and delivers us. First, 
 by the sympathetic force of a perfectly holy life, pre 
 senting to our contemplation the most animating of all 
 conceivable spectacles, the actual presence of a Being 
 who is literally overcoming the world s evil, hour by 
 hour, at every step, in practical contact with its vilest 
 
 24* 
 
284 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 shapes ; who carries from infancy to his crucifixion an 
 immaculate conscience, such a temper that when 
 reviled ho reviles not again, an incorruptible integrity, 
 an inexhaustible charity, an uninterrupted prayer. 
 Whatever of inspiration can visit men from this con 
 summate glory and divine transfigurement of the earth, 
 a complete goodness, that power stands to over 
 come the world s baser nature, in Christ. Secondly, by 
 his message, the supreme spiritual wisdom, light in 
 forming us, not the triumph incarnate in a living 
 example now, but uttered in the word and preserved on 
 the page, the precept and the promise assured by 
 infallible authority. Thirdly, by his death, the propi 
 tiation, gathering up the whole spiritual efficacy of his 
 mediatorship, and concentrating it in the submission of 
 his agony, the bloody sweat of the garden, the mysteri 
 ous torture that rent the veil, and darkened the sky, 
 and shook the earth, the free offering of the blood of 
 the Lamb of God for the sin of the world. Fourthly, by 
 his resurrection, bright demonstration that death has 
 no command over the Giver of life, confirming the 
 promise, " Because I live ye shall live also; " showing 
 us our God in Christ ascending up on high, leading cap 
 tivity captive, giving gifts unto men. Slain, indeed, for 
 our offences, but raised again for our justification ; and 
 reigning forever as Lord of the heavens above, and 
 head over all things, and in all things, to his church 
 below ! 
 
 But, after all our feeble attempts to analyze and 
 explain it, be our words few or many, by argument or 
 illustration, by paraphrase or definition, the chief part 
 of the evidence must be left to the secret apprehension 
 of the soul, touched by the Spirit. The most we can say 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 285 
 
 of it is, that the soul and its Saviour are divinely fitted 
 each to each ; so that, in ways transcending all our 
 knowledge, by powers moving in a holy mystery which 
 faith rejoices to confess, sorrow feels herself at peace in 
 her Lord, and is satisfied. By what moans he hath 
 opened her eyes, she does not know. This only she 
 knows, that whereas she was blind, now she sees. 
 There is light ; there is strength ; there is peace. 
 What the world never gave is given. It is its own 
 explanation ; and henceforth neither death, nor things 
 present, nor things to come, nor height of pride, nor 
 depth of affliction, shall be able to separate her from 
 this love. 
 
 III. The other inquiry is the practical one, on which 
 both the others bear their whole weight, How are we 
 to be personally overcomers with him and by him ? 
 The answer is not mine, but his own. By believing 
 on him: not with that heartless assent which never 
 touches the practice nor moulds the affections, leav 
 ing the whole man in his business as Christless as a 
 Pagan ; but by believing on him in that all-controlling 
 and all-compelling faith which draws practice after it, 
 and regenerates the familiar dispositions of home and 
 work, as well as the secret springs of piety in church 
 and closet. 
 
 Brethren, even our saintliest saints only partially 
 apprehend the joy and benefit of their position. We 
 profess to believe Christ has overcome the world, and 
 that we have a right to be of good cheer because he has 
 overcome it, and then, straightway we go and act and 
 speak as if the gloomy burden rested on us of over 
 coming it unaided, ourselves. The very consolation 
 of his assurance is that he has overcome it. It is a 
 
286 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 fact wrought. It is a triumph accomplished. Yet look 
 on the nominal Christians, catch the half-faithless and 
 complaining tones of unreconciled mourners, read the 
 despair on the cheerless faces of so many avowed disci 
 ples, and who would ever dream we were the heirs of a 
 glorious liberty obtained, and the children of a day whose 
 morning beams, as they mounted the sky, were the ban 
 ners of an everlasting victory ? Fellow-Christians, we 
 have not yet to find out the secret of redeeming the 
 world to God. God so loved the world that he gave 
 his Son. He has baffled evil by his prayers, trodden it 
 under the feet of his virtue, and rebuked it by his word, 
 and nailed it to his cross. What is for us is to take 
 with living gratitude the divinely-offered gift, to clothe 
 ourselves in his purity, to lean our sorrows on his 
 breast, to come unto him, the Way, the Truth, the 
 Life. Yes, fourfold as his saving offices for us are, 
 living as example, enlightening as teacher, dying as 
 redeemer, rising as advocate and intercessor, four 
 fold must our acceptance be, following the guide, 
 obeying the word, moved to penitence and faith by the 
 cross, kindled to holy praise by the hopes of the resur 
 rection. 
 
 Out of this vital and spiritual assimilation of our 
 souls to his the true motive and fountain of the 
 noblest action will come the consistent obedience. 
 If the real fellowship of our affections is with him who 
 has overcome the evil of the world by good, right 
 eousness will be our cheerful and unfaltering aim. 
 Every morning afresh we shall take the new day God 
 has given us as a new occasion for sharing in the great 
 spiritual conquest over evil. In trials of faith and 
 wounds of love, in the weeping houses that renew the 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 287 
 
 griefs of Bethany, in the dying of wife, child, mother, 
 father, husband, sister, brother, in the public anguish 
 that rends all the air with some loud cry of perishing 
 hosts, when a foundering vessel goes down into the 
 waters with its hundreds of shrieking victims, we shall 
 be steadfast and immovable. We shall not lose our 
 faith in God. We shall "be of good cheer," always 
 abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we 
 know in whom we have believed, and that our labor is 
 not in vain in the Lord. 
 
 We must never forget that this is a victory which 
 comes from no other source but one. So manifest is 
 this, that if you were to take even an unsympathizing 
 sceptic and lead him silently around to the scenes 
 where believers, one with Christ by faith, are suffering 
 and dying, if you would conduct him through these 
 successive wards in the great hospital of our mortality, 
 simply leaving him to contrast the pain of faith with the 
 pain of unbelief, he would have to say, as the Pagans 
 exclaimed in the midst of their persecutions, " See how 
 these Christians die ! " Put the most terrible tortures 
 that flesh and blood can feel on the disciple, there will 
 yet remain an overcoming of holy submission, of sweet 
 serenity, of blessed triumph, which, as a simple human 
 fact in the world, can be accounted for, even to the 
 rational mind, by nothing else than the presence of 
 Christ, not by science, not by philosophy, not by acci 
 dent, not by temperament, not by the bracing up of the 
 will, nor by mortal courage. And this has been going 
 on ever since the first Christian whose death is recorded 
 cried, in the pangs and joy of his departure, " Lord 
 Jesus, receive my spirit ! " It is going on in ten thou 
 sand Christian dwellings, this blessed day of the Lord. 
 
288 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 Place beside all the haughty and frigid boasts of the stoics 
 the tender minglings of affection and resignation from 
 Christian sorrow ; contrast Dr. Arnold s tranquil words 
 in the last hours, when every breath was fierce distress, 
 with the letters and treatises of Seneca ; see the yearning 
 love of kindred, the meek humility, the loss of self, the 
 confession of unworthiness, the patient waiting for re 
 lease, the whispered promises of the New Testament, the 
 lips too faint to speak still moving in prayer, the clear 
 smile and upward look when the glories of the other 
 world begin to shine out and take form as the veil 
 grows thin, the calm parting with the best beloved, the 
 visible light on the face when the name of the Saviour 
 is spoken, the simple phrases, "Christ is all," 
 " -Come, Lord Jesus," "Rock of ages, cleft for me, 5? 
 " I know in whom I have believed." Either there is 
 reality here, a reality of which faith alone is witness, or 
 there is no reality anywhere, and nature, history, 
 the world, and life, and thought, and time, and love, 
 are all a delusion and a dream ! 
 
 So have the true believers overcome. Have we not 
 sometimes seen them ? The long line of witnesses 
 reaches down from the Saviour s time to ours. The 
 last willing followers of the immortal train have just 
 ascended from our side. We listen to their Elder s 
 assurance, " These are they which came out of great 
 tribulation, and have washed their robes and made 
 them white in the blood of the Lamb ! They are before 
 the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his 
 temple ; and God shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes." We listen again, and the eternal benediction 
 still falls in peace from Heaven, "In the world ye 
 shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have 
 overcome the world." 
 
CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 289 
 
 How often, through the world s literature and history, 
 have we heard some ambitious commander or emperor 
 babbling, in his vain waking dreams, of a world s con 
 quest ! We turn from these poor visions of cruelty and 
 blood to the meek army of the living God ; from the 
 false victories of force to the true victories of faith. 
 Here, on a lowly bed, in an EngHsh village by the sea, 
 as I was lately reading, fades out the earthly life 
 of one of God s humblest but noblest servants. Worn 
 with the patient care of deserted prisoners and male 
 factors in the town jail for twenty-four years of un- 
 thanked service, earning her bread with her hands, 
 and putting songs of worship on the lips of these pen 
 itent criminals, she is dying; and as the night falls 
 some friend asks, " What shall I read ? " The answer 
 of the short breath is one firm syllable, " Praise ! " To 
 the question, " Are there no clouds ? " " None ; he 
 never hides his face. It is our sins which form the 
 cloud between us and him. He is all love, all light." 
 And when the hour of her departure was fully come, 
 " Thank God, thank God ! " And there, as I read 
 again, in his princely residence, surrounded with the 
 insignia of power, but in equal weakness before God, 
 expired a guileless statesman, nobleman by rank and 
 character, calmly resigning back all his power into the 
 Giver s hands, spending his last day of pain, like many 
 hours of all his days before it, with the Bible and 
 Prayer-book in his feeble hand, saying, at the end, "I* 
 have been the happiest of men, yet I feel that death 
 will be gain to me, through Christ who died for me." 
 Blessed be God for the manifold features of triumphant 
 faith ! that he suffers his children to walk toward him 
 through ways so various in their outward look ; Sarah 
 
290 CHRIST S VICTORY OVER THE WORLD S TRIBULATION. 
 
 Martin from her cottage bed, Earl Spencer from his 
 gorgeous couch, little children in their innocence, 
 unpretending women in the quiet ministrations of 
 faithful love, strong and useful and honored men, whom 
 suffering households and institutions and churches 
 mourn. All bending their faces towards the Everlast 
 ing Light, in one faith, one cheering hope, called by 
 one Lord, who has overcome the world, and dieth no 
 more ! 
 
 " One army of the living God, 
 To his command we bow. 
 Part of the host have crossed the flood, 
 And part are crossing now." 
 
 The sun sets ; the autumn fades ; life hastens with 
 us all. But we stand yet in our Master s vineyard. 
 All the days of our appointed time let us labor righ 
 teously, and pray and wait, till our change come, that 
 we may change only from virtue to virtue, from faith to 
 faith, and thus from glory to glory ! 
 
SERMON XVI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 REST IX THE LORD, AND WAIT PATIENTLY FOR HIM. 
 
 Psalms xxxvii. 7. 
 
 IT has been sometimes believed that the common dis 
 tinction between active virtues and passive virtues is 
 unreal. And the suspicion gains strength when one is 
 arrested by some such tranquil, ponderous thought as 
 this, out of the old Hebrew faith. Hebrew faith, and 
 not Hebrew philosophy. For philosophy, Hebrew, 
 Greek, German or Scotch, Oriental or Western, with 
 all her wealth, never gave to the world so rich a piece of 
 wisdom as this simple precept ; never let in, by all her 
 speculations and discoveries, so clear and steady a light 
 on the dark problems of human destiny as shines in 
 this artless confession of David s piety. David was a 
 monarch and a sage ; but his royalty blessed his people 
 with no protection so secure and no campaign so profit 
 able, his sagacity contrived no maxim so profound, as 
 when he said, in his psalm, " Rest in the Lord, and wait 
 patiently for him." It was a more illustrious honor to 
 the great Israelite, we should say, to have uttered that 
 divine truth to his audience, an audience reaching 
 from Jerusalem around the globe, and down history till 
 
 25 
 
292 CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 sorrow ceases, to have cast that unpretending word 
 on the everlasting stream of spiritual life,* to have added 
 that imperishable tribute to mankind s stock of holy 
 confidence, than to have carried victory over an hun 
 dred battle-fields against the Philistines, or even to have 
 planned the Temple for Mount Zion. For he who com 
 municates a spiritual impulse to human souls does a 
 diviner work than the builders of empire or of temples 
 made with hands. 
 
 One of our hardest lessons is to find out the wisdom 
 of our hindrances ; how we are to be put forward and 
 upward by being put back and put down ; encouraged 
 by being rebuked ; prospered by being baffled. When 
 the company in the " Pilgrim s Progress " had to sit 
 up watching all night at the house of Gaius, Great- 
 heart kept them awake with this riddle, " He that 
 would kill must first be overcome ; " and the truth in it 
 has been practically dug out, by trials that broke sleep, 
 through many a hard fortune, in every Christian expe 
 rience since. It needs wakeful watchers, spiritual eye 
 sight, to read that riddle of life, how defeat helps pro 
 gress ; how a compulsory standing still speeds us on ; 
 how humiliation exalts ; how putting a cross on the 
 shoulders lightens the burden of the race. But Christ 
 has solved the wonder in his own cross, humbling him 
 self, becoming obedient unto death, and in his humili 
 ation having his judgment taken away. 
 
 Gradually, to believing eyes, the fact comes out. 
 Standing still at the right time, in the right way, for 
 the right purpose, is the surest advance. Waiting on 
 God brings us to our journey s end faster than our feet. 
 The failure of our favorite plans is often the richest suc 
 cess of the soul, Let the pressure of trouble drive you 
 
CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 293 
 
 down from your heights of health and pride, and you 
 will come upon the primary foundation, and grow 
 strong out of the rock. Be exiled from the convivial 
 fellowships of comfort and popularity, and you make 
 new acquaintances with stronger friends, Christian 
 self-possession, and wholesome repentance, and a mas 
 tery of your moral forces, and faith in your Lord. 
 
 " Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him." It 
 sounds at first like the lesson of a very easy master, 
 a negative sort of duty ; too tame for a spirited ambi 
 tion. " Rest and wait ! " you say ; " no : give us a 
 positive doctrine, and we will listen ; give us a task 
 worthy of our energies, and we will be up and doing ; 
 sound a bugle-note that calls to close contests, and we 
 will follow ; but no such effeminate, spiritless, quietistic 
 creed as resting and waiting ! " We must see, if we 
 can, what force there is in this answer. Possibly, if we 
 search deep enough, we shall find that where some of 
 us fancy our religion ends, it is only feebly begun. 
 
 And first, as to the popular distinction just referred 
 to, between active and passive goodness. Now, good 
 ness in the spiritual representation of Christ is a cer 
 tain interior disposition, a frame of the soul, where the 
 first fixed choice is for righteousness, and the first fixed 
 love is for God. Goodness, then, lies not so much in 
 specific deeds as in the faithful heart ; not so much 
 even in special attainments as in that principle of a 
 consecrated will which presides over all our doings and 
 gettings ; not so much in this or that act, or even series 
 of acts, as in that pervading and supreme purpose or 
 motive, which, having been appropriated from Christ 
 himself, rules the general tenor and course of life into 
 harmony with his spirit ; not so much in outward mani- 
 
294 CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 festations, as in an internal aspiration, strong and con 
 stant, for newness of life, and fellowship with God by 
 his Son. In other words, a Christian righteousness con 
 sists in being first, and doing afterwards ; in a right 
 spirit before there can be a right life ; in a changed and 
 reconciled heart, in order to a noble and beautiful con 
 duct. We must be purified within, or no outward 
 cleansing avails. We must do Christian works from a 
 love of them, or else we never do them Christian 
 works at all. We cannot make our hands serve 
 Heaven profitably, while our faces are turned another 
 way, looking after self-promotion or sensual comfort. 
 It may be the whip of conscience, or the spur of threat 
 ened punishment, that stirs us out of our sluggishness ; 
 but till we begin to serve Christ because the love of him 
 is superior to every other passion, we are not born 
 again. Make the tree a good tree, or the fruit will not 
 be good fruit. 
 
 Notice how this principle affects the common notion 
 of passive and active goodness. If the principle is 
 true, what is often called passive goodness is the neces 
 sary condition, nay, the interior fountain .of active 
 goodness. A man, that is, must be a silent believer in 
 his heart before he can be a powerful Christian worker 
 with his arms, or speaker with his lips. He must pray 
 in his closet before he can honor his Maker in the multi 
 tude or shop, in pulpit or street. He must trust God 
 secretly, or he will not glorify him publicly. He must 
 stand reverently looking upward, ready to receive the 
 Holy Spirit, before the Spirit works through his body, 
 to will and do Heaven s business. That is, precisely, 
 he must " rest " his soul " in the Lord," and " wait 
 patiently" for his direction, or he is not his Lord s 
 man, a disciple. 
 
CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 295 
 
 This is one way of exalting the passive virtues, so 
 called, and at the same time of honoring our doc 
 trine, and opening the text ; i. e. by an analysis of the 
 nature of real goodness. Another way is, by com 
 paring the two classes of virtues, and observing what 
 each requires to sustain it. If there is any such divi 
 sion founded in reality, submission would be likely to 
 fall on the side of the passive graces. Take submis 
 sion, then, Christian submission ; look for a test case. 
 Suppose a providential loss of any of your heart s dear 
 est ownerships, your fondest hope, your cherished plan 
 of future welfare, your best friend, your brightest child. 
 Remember that Christian submission is not stupid indif 
 ference, not proud self-command smothering sighs and 
 stanching tears, not sullen stoicism playing a dreary 
 game with fate. It is gentle, tender, mighty trust ; it 
 is as full of sensibility as of strength ; it is willing 
 ness that God should take his own ; it is that trium 
 phant, " Not as I will, but as thou wilt," which could 
 come from no other spot but Gethsemane ; it is resting 
 in the Lord, and waiting patiently for him. 
 
 We need not hesitate to say of such submission, that 
 in all the compass of human graces and achievements 
 there is not one that more tasks the stoutest energies of 
 the soul ; not one that brings into intenser action the 
 most vigorous capacities of the spiritual life ; not one 
 that demands a more resolute gathering up of all the 
 resolution left, and the bracing of a firm resistance 
 against denial and despair. And yet, this celestial at 
 tainment, this submission, the mourner s glory and 
 privilege, the compensation of patient suffering and 
 crown of spiritual victories, this resting in the Lord, 
 and waiting patiently for him, is one of your passive, 
 secondary, ignoble virtues ! 
 
 25* 
 
296 CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 Gentleness 01 temper, and of speech, would be reck 
 oned, probably, among the passive excellences. And 
 no doubt there is such a thing as a constitutional 
 amiability that has no very fragrant odor of Christian 
 sanctity in it, because there is no valiant struggle spent, 
 in gaining it ; such fortunate temperaments must en 
 large their Christian proportions in other directions, 
 and go on to perfection in other paths ; because judg 
 ment is according to gifts. But do we not also know 
 some persons that need all the weapons in the Chris 
 tian armory, and all the watchfulness of the camp, to 
 reach that plain achievement, the " soft answer " that 
 " turneth away wrath " ? Do we not know others, who 
 so damage their public usefulness and philanthropic pro 
 fessions by petulant manners, vituperative eloquence, 
 and an ungoverned appetite for immediate effects, that 
 it would have seemed a profitable exchange for Chris 
 tian symmetry and decency, if they could have given 
 half of their out-door zeal for a grain of that " pas 
 sive " grace that sweetens the temper, and softens the 
 tongue, and handles even a doubtful reputation char 
 itably, and makes him that " ruleth his own spirit " 
 greater than he that electrifies an assembly, or " taketh 
 a city " ? 
 
 If we learn to measure the bravery of Christian ac 
 quirements rather by the inward effort they cost than 
 by their display, if we estimate character more by the 
 standard of Christ s beatitudes than by what we short 
 sightedly call " results," we shall find some of the 
 sublimest fruits of faith among what are commonly 
 called passive virtues : in the silent endurance that 
 hides under the shadow of great afflictions ; in the 
 quiet loveliness of that forbearance which " suffereth 
 
CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 297 
 
 long and is kind : " in the charity which is " not easily 
 provoked ; " in the forgiveness which can be buffeted 
 for doing well and " take it patiently ; " in the smile 
 on the face of diseased and suffering persons, a transfig 
 uration of the tortured features of pain brightening sick 
 rooms more than the sun ; in the unostentatious hero 
 isms of the household, amidst the daily dripping of 
 small cares ; in the noiseless conquests of a love too 
 reverential to complain ; in resting in the Lord, and 
 waiting patiently for him. Have you yourself never 
 known the time when you found it a harder lesson to 
 learn how to be still in your room, than to be busy in 
 the world ? Of masculine natures that is apt to be the 
 special cross. And so that may be the point where 
 faith and virtue need to rally their strength, if you 
 would be a triumphant disciple. It is a fact which not 
 all of us may have noticed, that of the nine beatitudes 
 of our Lord, all, unless it be one, pronounce their bless 
 ing on what the world would call tame and passive 
 traits, from the "poor in spirit" to those who are 
 reviled and persecuted without revenge. So does 
 Christianity turn upside down the vulgar vanity of 
 our ambition, and empty our worldliness of blessedness. 
 But the subject reaches on to wider applications yet. 
 " Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him," is a 
 counsel addressed to the habit and tendency of these 
 times ; and no time perhaps ever needed to listen to it 
 more; a time whose veins are full of blood, of a 
 restless temper and a busy body ; more eager to con 
 quer the world by putting girdles of intelligence and 
 bonds of travel about it, than to feel its dependence on 
 Heaven ; readier to run, to work, to build, to ask ques 
 tions, to yoke the elements, than to kneel, to believe, to 
 
298 CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 have patience, and to pray. It is not a character to be 
 sweepingly condemned, nor to be bettered by com 
 plaint ; not deserving petulant blame any more than 
 complacent idolatry ; but one of which it would be wise 
 to see the tendencies, and wholesome to understand the 
 weakness. To require the unquiet mind of such a gen 
 eration to be still is like bidding a person of strong con 
 stitution and brisk blood go away by himself and think ; 
 and yet both have to be often done before to them or 
 the people is shown the word of God. Indeed the 
 dangers of an age, like those of an individual, often run 
 parallel with its chief merits. Social action and mate 
 rial enterprise and aggressive discovery, which are the 
 grand characteristics of modern society, bring along 
 with them the hazard of an irreligious self-reliance, a 
 scepticism about all that is invisible and impalpable to 
 sense, and a feverish propensity to judge everything by 
 its show and its returns. So the bulk of our enterprise 
 outgrows its strength ; and in the pride of all his push 
 ing schemes, and marvellous machinery, man comes to 
 esteem himself little less than a critic of Revelation 
 and copartner with the Almighty, whom the Church of 
 Christ ought to consider herself much beholden to if he 
 condescends to say kind things of her, and whom God 
 himself cannot fail to covet as an ally for so much busi 
 ness and motion, if indeed there is any other God than 
 the science that perfects the engine, and the nature- 
 power that turns the factory-wheel. As long as you 
 preach to such a man about his stupendous capacity, 
 and stimulate his arrogant activity, he hears. But 
 tell him of the deeper things ^>f God, of self-renun 
 ciation and repentance, of a cross and a consecration, 
 of silent worship and solemn faith, of resting in the 
 
CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 299 
 
 Lord, and waiting patiently for him, and yon seem to 
 clash against his glorious career of aggrandizement. 
 All the more do we need this deeper and stiller element 
 in our piety. We want not only to work, but to believe 
 that God in Christ works, and with mightier forces than 
 we ; works through and by us, or without us, as he 
 will ; and that we are at best but inapt and incompetent 
 instruments in his hands. " Be still, and know that I 
 am God ! " let our loud march of audacious civiliza 
 tion hearken to that. Self-righteousness is farther from 
 the kingdom of heaven than the publicans and sinners. 
 Will-worship gets no answer to its prayers. The 
 strength of all enterprise is in the faith of its managers. 
 We lose salvation when we lose the awful sense that 
 God is near, loving righteousness, hating iniquity, 
 bringing good and evil to judgment. The strength 
 of a community, the strength of New England to-day, 
 is not in its enterprising, self-confident, profane or 
 prayerless great men, but in the men, be they few or 
 many, who while they are " diligent in business," and 
 faithful in public spirit, " rest" secretly " in the Lord," 
 and " wait patiently " every day " for him." 
 
 The farther we carry our study into the heart of the 
 matter, the more we shall see that this waiting for the 
 word and will of Heaven is no idle abstaining from 
 labor, but in fact the highest result and crown of the 
 best spiritual labor. Resting in the Lord, is not rest 
 ing in indolence. It is a rest which is nobler than a 
 mere cessation from employment, or a flinging down of 
 weary and baffled powers to breathe on the nearest 
 couch. It is the truest balance of all our spiritual 
 powers ; and how can that be but by incessant vigi 
 lance and toil ? It is rest by being in harmony with 
 
300 CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 God s wise, pure will ; and, for tempted men like you 
 and me, with wild desires to quench, and passions to 
 curb, and sins to be forgiven, how can that be save by 
 warfare with the flesh, and daily sacrifices of the spirit ? 
 It is a rest that is earned, a peace that is conquered, a 
 silent joy that comes by the godly sorrows of repent 
 ance, not to be repented of. 
 
 See, again, what besides righteous labor such a still 
 ness supposes. To wait patiently for God is to hold the 
 heart open for what God gives. Subjection, then, it 
 implies. It is to expect his love ; and so it implies the 
 penitence that goes before pardon. It is to believe he 
 will give and guide ; and so it implies faith. It is to 
 hold all insubordinate and hasty impulses in restraint ; 
 and so it implies self-renunciation. It is to ask for his 
 coming ; and so it implies prayer. It is to rejoice in 
 his presence ; and so it implies thanksgiving. Subjec 
 tion, penitence, faith, self-renouncement, prayer, thanks 
 giving, these are not elements of man s infirmity. 
 
 Having thus rather intimated than shown how the 
 precept stretches its broad significance over our whole 
 religious life, and expands into that duty which in 
 fact is the sum and substance of all religion, viz. a 
 vital trust and spiritual communion in God, I wish to 
 give it an application to some of the prominent pas 
 sages of actual Christian experience. 
 
 And first, there is both comfort and courage in it 
 for those of us that yearn for a speedier advent of the 
 Christian Kingdom, for the unity of a divided and dis 
 cordant church, for the healing of the terrible breaches 
 in Christian charity and Christian peace. There can 
 not be many Christian souls that have not sometimes 
 been visited by such wishes ; have not longed to witness 
 
CHKISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 301 
 
 a reconciling of hostile creeds, to live in a fellowship of 
 regenerated sects, to hear a blending of all litanies, and 
 all lives, in one great harmony of praise, ascending 
 from one choir of the nations. " Rest in the Lord, and 
 wait patiently for him." If it took four thousand years 
 at the least, from man s first residence on it, to fit the 
 world for the Messiah s feet, what wonder if it should 
 need as many more to understand his message, and 
 breathe in his love, and see the building of his Fold ? 
 Be content if you discern any signs of that great recon 
 ciliation ; if any foretokenings of that fresh Baptism 
 and of the Spirit descending again like a dove, shine out 
 here and there on the cloudy theological sky ; if you 
 hear the voice of any Johns crying ever in the wilder 
 ness, " Prepare ye the way " for that second coming of 
 the Son of Man ! Be it enough for us to bear some 
 trifling part, in some corner of the vineyard, in purging 
 out some of the poisonous suspicions that cumber the 
 ground, and then to die without the full harvest in 
 sight. God .does not die, nor change, nor retreat ; wait 
 patiently for him. 
 
 There are doubts of Providence that spring up from 
 other quarters. What the inquisitive and perplexed 
 intellect of man needs, as it stands dismayed at the 
 ghastly spectacle of suffering, slavery, warring nations, 
 starving families close by bloated wealth, virtue bought 
 and sold as merchandise, government perverted into 
 the trade of tyrants and their tools, patriots broken 
 hearted, and a thousand other forms of misery and 
 crime, what it needs is that calm assurance from the 
 Bible, like the voice of Christ to the anger of the storm, 
 or the demons of human hate, " Rest in the Lord, 
 and wait patiently for him." His work-day is Eternity. 
 
302 CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 His plan runs from the beginning of days to the end 
 of years. Every sigh and groan of anguish comes up 
 into remembrance before him, and every oppression and 
 cruelty survives for Judgment. The burdens of hu 
 manity grow already lighter, not heavier. The justice 
 of the Almighty is not foiled. The year of his re 
 deemed shall come. There is a Future, and it belongs 
 to Christianity ; and there waits the redressing of 
 every wrong. It is an inspiring lesson of faith the 
 Scriptures teach us, when they show us the old Jewish 
 prophets and kings bending forward as if to catch some 
 note of the Bethlehem welcome, waiting to see their 
 Messiah s day, and yet dying in faith " without the 
 sight." There are two vivid scenes in the life of the 
 great Hebrew Lawgiver, not often brought forward 
 among the wonders of his mission, which are affecting 
 disclosures of that indwelling faith, which was the 
 hiding of all his power : one, where he stood on the 
 top of the mountain, not afraid, with a tranquil expec 
 tation, amid thunders and lightnings, and clouds and 
 darkness, waiting confidently for the Lord God to speak 
 at the beginning of his great work ; the other, when, at 
 the end of his trials and his life, he went up to look off 
 from the top of another mountain, over the Canaan he 
 could not enter, and then walked firmly down, without 
 murmuring, to die. To us the Lord God always speaks 
 by his Son, if we will listen ; and to us the whole 
 Future is a Land of Promise, and every hour an out 
 look from Nebo, if only we have that unshaken faith 
 that is ready to wait or to work, and asks only to be led. 
 Bring the same consolation into the discontent that 
 hangs about your own private failures in duty, and the 
 slowness of your advances in character. Loosen no 
 
CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 303 
 
 nerve of resistance ; slacken no effort to press on ; sus 
 pend no prayer for the Spirit. Otherwise you do not 
 rest in the Lord, but rest from Him, and instead of 
 waiting, like the blind man, for the Saviour s coming, 
 you wait for him to pass by. But inasmuch as the 
 struggle is long, and you are mortal, and life without 
 your Father is orphanage, keep very near to your Lord ; 
 rest in him, wait patiently for him. " With him is 
 plenteous redemption." Leave all issues and results 
 with him, saying reverently, as Luther did of his 
 greater work, " Let the Lord God look to that." But 
 wait with open eyes and willing feet. The splendor of 
 noon may be in the sky, but if the eyes be shut it is 
 quenched to them. Preserve an open soul, that the 
 truth as fast as it rises may pour in. And since you 
 know not on what errand of duty or sacrifice God will 
 call you to go first, hold your lamp trimmed and burn 
 ing as those that wait for the Bridegroom s voice. 
 
 In the midst of our own houses there are more secret 
 sorrows than I need to name. Every life has its own. 
 Perhaps there are erring, ungrateful, and ungracious 
 children, with parents hearts breaking and bleeding 
 over them, and agonizing in daily prayers for their 
 return. " Have faith in God ; " every prayer pierces 
 the Heaven of heavens ; the Intercessor and Mediator 
 pleads with it ; and its answer is committed to some 
 strong angel at the right hand of the Throne. There 
 are anxieties, alienations, unavailing affections, crossed 
 desires and hopes. There are memories running back 
 from pews in this house of prayer to the graves of those 
 that worship no more in earthly temples. Rest, mourn 
 ers, in the Lord. Seek not the living among the dead. 
 Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all else shall be 
 
 26 
 
304 CHRISTIAN RESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 added. " Let us lie still beneath God s hand ; for 
 though his hand be heavy upon us, it is strong and 
 safe beneath us too : and none can pluck us out of his 
 hand." 0, impatient griefs, and sorrows that have no 
 hope, be still ; and ye hopes that would outrun the wis 
 dom of a healing Providence and a saving mercy, be 
 still ; all unreasonable and rebellious thoughts, be still : 
 know that the Lord, he is God. Remember that 
 " the darkness is God s as well as the light," and " if 
 we cannot walk " and work therein, " we can " at least 
 kneel down and " pray." 
 
 " Here," exclaimed John, in one of the visions of the 
 Apocalypse, here " is the patience and faith of the 
 saints." Patience and faith are one. Faithful waiting 
 is one of the grand duties of the Christian life. Till 
 the Resurrection, the whole creation, groaning and trav 
 ailing together, waiteth for the manifestation of the 
 sons of God. A disciple, at his private post, must wait 
 for the lifting up of many folds of mystery, for deliver 
 ance from his last temptation. The Church waits to be 
 " made whole," and to be made " one." The lovers 
 of concord and friends of oppressed nations wait for 
 the dawning of peaceful liberty on the hill-tops, for the 
 fulfilment of prophecy, for the leopard to lie down with 
 the kid. The tattooed savage of the Southern Islands 
 waits, leaning his ear over the surf, to catch the sound of 
 the Gospel. The Ethiopian and Arab and Chinaman 
 and Nestorian wait, stretching out their hands unto God, 
 that he, whom they ignorantly worship, may be declared 
 to them. And God watches and hears, and counts every 
 heathen s sighs and Christian s prayers ! 
 
 Let our subject terminate, then, in these three rules 
 of practice : 
 
CHEISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 305 
 
 Let it regulate Christians judgments of one another. 
 Our Maker has graciously diversified the forms of char 
 acter that he will admit into his kingdom. Action is 
 honorable, and so is contemplation. Not all the accepted 
 saints are bustling men. If there are only, deep in the 
 heart, a steadfast faith and a holy love, then a sincere 
 piety may be grafted on the quiet temperament and the 
 noiseless constitution, as well as on the men of much 
 enterprise and speech. The heart is all. If there was 
 a stirring Peter in the Apostolic band, so was there a 
 meditative John. If in Christ s favorite household 
 there was a moving Martha, so was there a contempla 
 tive Mary. There was service in both, and not the least 
 in her who chose the stiller part. Nay, we are told that 
 in the glorious ranks of celestial spirits there are some 
 who only" stand and wait," and that " they also serve." 
 Let us expand our charity by the measure of God s 
 spiritual economy. 
 
 Again, let the subject save us from morbid discontents 
 at our opportunities. Let us not suspect that Christ is 
 to be served only where there is room for outward 
 action, only in the ministering mercy of hospitals, and 
 the stir of fields and shops and public scenes. He may 
 be served as faithfully sometimes on sick beds, in help 
 lessness, in prison cells, and within the limitations of 
 many a narrow circumstance. These compel us to 
 stand still and hear God speak. To learn the limitations 
 of our ability is wisdom, as well as the exercise of that 
 ability. " "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
 with thy might," is one precept. " Be still and know 
 that I am God," is another, carrying us up to the au 
 thority, and down into the depths of Christian peace. 
 Paul singing praises at midnight in the prison was as 
 
306 CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 
 
 majestic a figure as Paul eloquent before King Agrippa. 
 Martyrs and confessors bore testimony as sublime in the 
 long hours of dungeons as out in journeyings, or in 
 fights with wild beasts in the amphitheatre. Many a 
 man has been valiant in the use of his strength, but a 
 coward when his muscular vigor abated, showing that 
 his courage was not of faith, but of the body. We 
 are called to be disciples of a Master made perfect 
 through suffering. The essence of Christianity is self- 
 renunciation ; and the discipline that brings us to feel 
 our childlike dependence is the perfecting of our piety. 
 Grief after grief brings us to joy. Broken in spirit, we 
 are made whole ; humbled, we are exalted. We gain 
 the great victory through a succession of defeats. Bun- 
 yan s riddle is a true oracle. Presently after Saul was 
 stopped in the city to hear the word of the Lord, we are 
 told, he was led up into " the hill of God." So we are 
 struck down that we may ascend into the mount ; 
 troubled, that we may have peace ; worried into the rest 
 of our Father s arms. We sin when we chafe against 
 the providential conditions of our lot. Submission is 
 brave achievement. There is no state where you may 
 not win acceptance, because there is none where you 
 may not give your affections, and " rest in the Lord, 
 and wait patiently for Him." If we are obedient, in 
 all the gentleness of faith, to the voice that says, " Be 
 still, and know that I am God," then will Christ do 
 more for us than Samuel for Saul, showing us his word, 
 giving us "another heart," and anointing and crowning 
 the least among us, not princes and captains of armies 
 here, but " kings and priests unto God," because ser 
 vants of himself. 
 
 And, finally, remember that it is in " the Lord " that 
 
CHRISTIAN BESTING AND WAITING. 307 
 
 we must "rest," and that it is for his Almighty 
 Will that we must " wait." Any other rest will be 
 guilty indolence ; any other waiting will be faithless 
 self-love. It must be a religious repose. It must be 
 that holy and consecrated frame in which every sub 
 dued and submissive energy shall breathe the con 
 sistent prayer, " Thy will be done." This will be 
 casting all our care on Him who careth for us. This 
 will be the peace and joy of believing. 
 
 26* 
 
SEEMON XVII. 
 
 THE ADVENT. 
 
 HE CAME UNTO HIS OWN, AND HIS OWN RECEIVED HIM NOT. 
 BUT AS MANY AS RECEIVED HIM, TO THEM GAVE HE POWER 
 TO BECOME THE SONS OF GOD, EVEN TO THEM THAT BELIEVE 
 
 ON HIS NAME. John i. 11, 12. 
 
 THESE expressions look backward. The verbs are in 
 a past tense. They seem to point to a transaction that 
 is done. The question springs up, Why should we go 
 back with them? Christianity is here, as hospitably 
 lodged as most other interests. We reckon our time by 
 " the year of our Lord ; " the very chronology of civil 
 ization dating forward and backward from his coming. 
 His name is stamped on the seals that accredit the best 
 authority, in thought, education, and empire. The 
 symbol of his sacrifice surmounts the highest buildings 
 men raise, in village or city. Even a great deal of 
 modern infidelity insists on calling itself Christian. 
 The Gospel is recognized ; we are familiar with the 
 letter of its lessons. What occasion is there for recall 
 ing its beginnings ? Why take our places, even for an 
 hour, with the Evangelist, and Philip, and Andrew, 
 and Simon, by the shores of Galilee ? Why celebrate 
 the season of the Saviour s advent ? 
 
THE ADVENT. 309 
 
 There is a reason why. Christ s coming into the 
 world was not for a particular generation, nor for a par 
 ticular country. The causes for his coming are in 
 every heart in this place, every heart that beats any 
 where, with life, and love, and sorrow, and sin, in its 
 blood. The wants he came to satisfy, the alienation 
 he came to heal, the depravity he came to atone for, the 
 unbelief he came to scatter, and the misery he came to 
 bless, were not local, nor of one age. The need of that 
 day spring which broke when " the Word " was manifest 
 was not Syrian, Roman, nor Grecian, not Jewish nor 
 Ethnic. Humanity did not exist four thousand years 
 or more with none of the elements and susceptibilities 
 that Jesus would personally meet, and after an interrup 
 tion of thirty years or thereabouts return to that con 
 dition. " He came to his own ; " to a race that be 
 longed to him "from the beginning;" since "in the 
 beginning he was with God, and was God." His out 
 ward appearance, limited as to time and place, was 
 necessary to give form and force to the inward work he 
 was to do. Christ must be seen, must be historical, 
 must enter into time and into space, though having all 
 time and space in himself. It wanted all the signals 
 and efficacy of his physical presence and suffering : the 
 houseless head ; the speech of which it was said that 
 man never spake like it; the look that was like no 
 human look, now healing the sick, and now sending 
 a storm through Peter s conscience, comforting timid 
 women, and striking down the stout soldiers to the 
 ground as by their own swords and staves. It wanted 
 the body and the blood, the countenance that was 
 marred more than the countenance of any man, the 
 shape that had virtue in the hem of its garments and 
 
310 THE ADVENT. 
 
 arose visibly to walk again after death had done its 
 work, because death could have no power over it. All 
 this was needed. As John relates it, the word must be 
 " made flesh, and dwell among us." 
 
 Notwithstanding this, and indeed as a part of this 
 truth, it is a low view of the Saviour which insulates 
 his ministry within a brief section of the reigns of two 
 earthly emperors. The true view makes his physical 
 advent only a type of what goes on in each single dis 
 ciple s soul. Any one of us without a Saviour is like 
 the world without him : wandering, weak, lost. What 
 the world had to do each of us has to do ; to receive 
 him, to prepare a place for him, to welcome his spirit, 
 to obey him as the friendly Lord, and trust him as the 
 Redeemer. 
 
 The text presents three things in connection : the 
 Coming, the Reception, the Blessing. " He came unto 
 his own, and his own received him not. But as many 
 as received him, to them gave he power to become the 
 sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." 
 
 I. The Coming. This had an object, a motive, and a 
 method. 
 
 To find the object, we might go either to the direct 
 declarations of Christ himself and his apostles, or to 
 the actual state of the world when he appeared. Both 
 would give us the same account. Men had lost sight of 
 God. Some nations, rather, had lost it; others had 
 never had it. All alike, if we except a small class of 
 Hebrew believers like Simeon and Nathanael, lingering 
 about the old Temple, and keeping their devout sim 
 plicity, Israelites in whom there was no guile, all 
 were destitute of it. Three kinds of selfishness had 
 blinded them. Three rank roots had struck into the 
 
THE ADVENT. 311 
 
 soil, sending up growths of superstition and sensuality 
 which overshadowed all pure religion ; self-admiration, 
 self-will, self-indulgence : three forms of sin ; three 
 usurpers of the human soul. One, self-admiration, 
 perverts and makes a rebel of the intellect ; another, 
 self-will, of the conscience ; the other, self-indul 
 gence, of the passions. The whole head was sick; 
 the whole heart faint ; the whole practical direction un 
 strung. In this threefold treachery and corruption, the 
 world had grown giddy, rapacious, and godless. Curi 
 osity was all that was left as the highest aim in science ; 
 war, in enterprise ; and a sensuous enthusiasm for the 
 beautiful in art. Alexandria, Rome, and Athens repre 
 sented these three ambitions. In losing his God, man 
 had lost himself, as always happens. The Fall was com 
 plete. Faith in God and the dignity of man went down 
 together. With divine worship fell human rights and 
 liberties. The scholars and the priests mystified the 
 people, the Epicureans tempted them, the Stoics flattered 
 and despised them. Seneca, with his dainty doctrine 
 that " the finding out of things useful is not work for a 
 philosopher, but drudgery for slaves, * stood for the 
 world s idea of learning ; Caesar, for its idea of politics ; 
 Corinth, for its idea of pleasure. There were gods 
 enough : one for every propensity. But they were 
 either patrons to be purchased, or abstractions to be 
 apostrophized, or demons to be propitiated. Religion, 
 where it was not a voluntary deception, had degenerated 
 into an incantation and a ceremony. The priest, if he 
 was a pagan, was a juggler or a dupe ; if he was a Jew, 
 read the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, and its 
 eightfold woes on the hypocrites, to know what he was. 
 There was intellect enough ; but the amount of all that 
 
312 THE ADVENT. 
 
 was, as Paul put it, that " the world by wisdom knew 
 not God," and never would, till that " Logos," or Mes 
 siah, came, who was to the Jews a stumbling-block 
 and to the Greeks foolishness, but, to them that believe, 
 Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God unto 
 salvation. And the literatures of the nations confirm 
 his saying. Leave out two names, nay, leave out not 
 even Plato and Cicero, and nothing puts a gloomier 
 aspect upon the Christless world than to take up and 
 really read, as seeking spiritual satisfaction, the works 
 of antiquity that are oftenest quoted in company with 
 the Bible. 
 
 The object, then, of the Advent is plain. Men had lost 
 sight of their God, their Father. Christ came to show 
 him unto them. Manifestation was the purpose ; reve 
 lation ; the bodying forth of the Divine ; to show God ; to 
 reveal the Father. Not first by a book : that would have 
 reached not one in ten thousand, nor him in his heart. 
 Not chiefly by oral instructions, which have to be certi 
 fied to the understanding before they can inspire faith. 
 Not by a mere creature-image of Deity, for that would 
 have been only adding another to the old Pantheon of 
 idolatries. This infinite goodness, this One Spirit of 
 God, must come in a life. Christ must be the Son of 
 the Father ; must touch humanity and enter into it ; 
 must wear its flesh ; must lift its load ; must partake its 
 experience; must be tempted with it; must be seen, 
 nay, felt, suffering for it. This will complete the mani 
 festation. This will be, not an education, not an inspi 
 ration, not a human self-elevation, which neither history 
 nor logic hints at ; but a coming of Heaven to earth ; a 
 theophany, or manifesting of God. This is perfect com 
 passion, and effectual relief. This gets the sundered 
 
THE ADVENT. 313 
 
 souls together. Even stolid and blinded eyes will now 
 begin to behold their Lord. And when they not only see 
 him, but see him in disinterested agony, giving the last 
 gift, life itself, in the most torturing anguish of body 
 and spirit that human death can bring, an ever-living 
 God mysteriously passing through the valley of the 
 shadow of death, this will move and melt and convince 
 of sin, and arouse to holiness, and release from the bond 
 age of law, if anything. He who could do this must 
 know how to reconcile Law and Love, how to legislate 
 and forgive, how to be just and justify the sinner, and 
 thus be able to atone and able to renew, a Redeem 
 er, such as all weak and wandering hearts like ours 
 need. We cannot fathom the metaphysical composition 
 of his incarnate being. But we can bow before him, 
 and follow after him, and be grateful, and cry gladly 
 and gratefully, with Thomas, " My Lord and my 
 God!" 
 
 You see, then, the object. The Advent of the Mes 
 siah was not a movement to establish an original right 
 of possession in men. He came to his own. It was 
 not to create an original religious capacity. It was to 
 open the way, and fill out all the conditions of salva 
 tion. It was to gain men s faith. It was to quicken 
 them with trust and love. It was to acquire, not a 
 legal title to their persons, but the free will offering of 
 their hearts. Why that? Because the one needed 
 thing, a living goodness, could be produced in the 
 world in no other way. Because sin could not other 
 wise be conquered. 
 
 And in finding the object of the Advent, we begin to 
 find also the motive and the method. There could be 
 but one motive : " God so loved the world." The 
 
314 THE ADVENT. 
 
 method : " The form of a servant," " born in a man 
 ger," " the death of the cross." 
 
 II. The Reception. This is man s part in the Ad 
 vent ; the coming was Christ s. It was for a few of the 
 purer, simpler, more advanced spirits, of the age of his 
 outward appearance, to welcome him : with what spe 
 cial illumination or help from on high, in that unspirit- 
 ual time, and uncongenial people, we can never know. 
 Here and there a stranger or foreigner clung to him. 
 When it was told him, just before his crucifixion, that 
 some Greeks were inquiring for him, Jesus seeing in 
 that a promise that the self-sufficient mind of the world 
 was feeling its way to him, cried, " The hour is come 
 that the Son of Man should be glorified." 
 
 A true reception of Christ, for every man alike, is of 
 three parts : belief, sympathy, service. These together 
 make up the righteousness of faith, the great character 
 istic and criterion of a Christian. 
 
 There must be, first, a belief that he is what he says 
 he is, the Only-begotten of the Father, Emmanuel, God 
 with us, the Giver of Eternal Life, the Sender of the 
 Comforter, the Everlasting and Almighty Head of his 
 Church in heaven and earth, the Vine of which his fol 
 lowers are the branches, the Friend of the poor, the 
 Foe of oppression, the Forgiver of sin. For any mes 
 senger, ambassador, prophet, the first condition of ac 
 ceptance is that he be found to be what he claims 
 to be : much more for the Saviour of mankind. He 
 knows who he is, or not. If he does, he is all that 
 these terms mean. If not, ignorance or deception 
 would make him less than one of the honest soldiers 
 that obeyed orders and led him away to the judgment- 
 hall. The text makes this part of receiving him plain : 
 
THE ADVENT. 315 
 
 " As many as received him," i. e. it adds, they " that 
 believe on his name." 
 
 But, again, there is no receiving the Saviour with 
 out sympathy. A plenipotentiary from one court to 
 another, a bearer of despatches, a commercial agent, or 
 a purely mental operator, does not need this. But the 
 moment you include a moral purpose, spiritual influ 
 ence, the kindling of any new life, there must be a com 
 mon feeling ; there must be assimilation. The interests 
 must be felt as identical. Loyalty must bind the 
 subject to his King. Enthusiasm must mount at 
 the mention of the Leader s name. If the Saviour s 
 purpose was to fill human breasts with love, we cannot 
 be his without loving him. 
 
 " His own." There are two ways of belonging to 
 another : unwilling and inevitable, or willing and 
 hearty. You may belong to a nation by birth, and 
 dislike it ; to a family, from dependence or self-interest, 
 and care for no welfare in it ; to a university, and be 
 out of harmony and out of temper with its administra 
 tion. But so you cannot belong to the brotherhood 
 that is the body of Christ. You must be in sympathy 
 both with the brotherhood and its head. The legal 
 ownership you cannot help ; it brings no animation and 
 no comfort. By your creation you are the Lord s, 
 his to be disposed of, to live or die, to be judged. The 
 business of your new heart, " receiving Christ," is to 
 change this reluctant belonging for the closer and grate 
 ful loyalty of affection ; the legal bond for the gracious 
 one of faith. 
 
 Yet there will be service too ; only not the service of 
 compulsion, but such service as they that love each 
 other render without calling it service. "Lovestthou 
 
 27 
 
316 THE ADVENT. 
 
 me ? then feed my sheep ; " " Inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it 
 unto me." There is a cross to be taken up. There 
 are the hungry, the sick, the ignorant, bondmen and 
 prisoners, all around you. In them the Lord makes a 
 new advent to your door and your heart, every winter, 
 every week. For the illiterate and the educated alike 
 there is always a field for good Samaritanism : some 
 body lying half-dead by the roadside. Christ will 
 not be received by society, by governments, by us, till 
 everybody within our reach is made, somehow, better by 
 our faith in the Saviour of us all. 
 
 III. After the Coming and the Reception, is the 
 Blessing. " To as many as received him, to them gave 
 he power," and gives he power, " to become the sons of 
 God." That is the sublime promise : have we ever 
 thought, deeply, how much it means? Servants we 
 were before, creatures of God, and, in the sense of 
 owing life and comfort to his impartial providence, his 
 children ; but not in the full and glorious significance 
 " the sons of God." They are the royal line. They 
 are the heirs of immortality. They are the conquerors 
 that overcome the world, and the sufferers that rejoice 
 in the midst of affliction, and the lowly saints that come 
 spotless and beautiful out of their great tribulation. 
 Persecution perhaps has purified them. Ridicule per 
 haps has made their regeneration perfect. Temptation 
 trampled down has brought angels to minister to them. 
 Born now, not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of 
 man, but of God, their immortal seed remaineth in 
 them. They are the multitude whose praise no unbe 
 lieving tongue can join, whose joy no arrogant and 
 unrepenting heart can understand. 
 
THE ADVENT. 317 
 
 It was thus that the moment Christ appeared, he 
 became a judgment, or a judge. There was no visible 
 bench, no formal sentence. He was even anxious to 
 remove the impression that condemnation was his 
 earthly errand. He said, " I came not to judge the 
 world, but to save the world." Nevertheless the judg 
 ment comes, and by a law inwrought into all your 
 souls. No one of you can ever be as if Christ had not 
 appeared on the earth. To hear the name of Christ 
 alters the relations of every human being to the highest 
 facts, to God, to eternity. It was not so much any spe 
 cial saying ; it was his character, his very nature, that 
 was judicial. As soon as he was manifest, the whole 
 world of men about him fell apart, and souls took their 
 places on the right hand and the left. It was as if that 
 divine presence located instantly every human life on 
 earth. And so he added : " Though I came not into 
 the world to judge it, though that is not my special 
 mission here in the body, but to manifest God to you, 
 yet afterwards, in the world to come, and in conse 
 quence of that manifestation, judgment will come, sol 
 emn, awful, inevitable, sudden as a thief in the night. 
 The word that I speak unto you, that shall judge you." 
 
 The question, then, for the individual is this : Do we 
 see Christ ? Do we recognize and own our Lord ? 
 Whether he has come, where he is, whether he can 
 be found, is riot the matter we have to consider ; nor 
 whether we belong to him. He has come : he lives : 
 he is visible to the eyes of faith : his life goes forth into 
 the race forever, flowing into all hearts that will open 
 to receive it, making them sons and kings and priests 
 unto God. 
 
 " He came to his own, and his own received him 
 
318 THE ADVENT. 
 
 not." Can we let the passage go without a penitent 
 conviction ? See how pathos and rebuke are mingled 
 in it ! The sentence of a heavier condemnation never 
 was written. Severity never spoke in a tenderer com 
 passion. It is not weak complaint. It is not bitter 
 sarcasm. It is not sentimentalism bewailing its own 
 impotence. It is not tyranny exulting over its victim, 
 and saying, " You would not give me your heart, and 
 so I rejoice to see your heart crushed." It is another 
 spirit, and has another sound. " He came to his own, 
 and his own received him not." It is the sadness of 
 parental affection repulsed. It is the sorrow of a heart 
 that bleeds, not for itself, but for children lost, and 
 knowing the misery before them as the children them 
 selves cannot know it. It is one audible note of the 
 unutterable pity of God for ungrateful souls. 
 
 And who are they ? Men of the past only ? Peas 
 ants and Pharisees of Palestine only ? Students in the 
 schools of the Scribes, and the Scribes that taught 
 Hebrew learning only ? Answer for yourselves. In a 
 day that is coming, we must all answer for ourselves. 
 Who are God s ungrateful children ? " Last of all he 
 sent his Son," saying, They have slighted my common 
 mercies ; they have ridiculed or criticised my mortal 
 messengers : I gave them food from Heaven and fruit 
 ful seasons, and they feasted and drank and were mer 
 ry and profane, and forgot me : I gave them friends, 
 and they tempted them, misled them, dragged them 
 down to their own level of denial, vanity, selfishness, and 
 shame : they stoned my prophets : but " they will rev 
 erence my Son." " He came to his own ; they re 
 ceived him not." 
 
 As was said at the beginning, it is the language of 
 
THE ADVENT. 319 
 
 narrative. But in what we have to do with the Eternal 
 One, to whom there is no yesterday and no to-morrow, 
 nothing old and nothing new, the past brings no 
 excuses for the present. Time does not alter truth. 
 There is no partiality for ages, nations, or persons. As 
 John writes, there was an advent and a rejection : a 
 bodily advent, a bodily crucifixion : the image and outer 
 form of the Word that was from the beginning, the 
 ever-living Emmanuel, the Christ that comes to-day. 
 If he is rejected to-day, it is by the pride and fashion 
 and self-indulgence of to-day. It is our compromising 
 consciences, it is our well-dressed sensuality, it is our 
 commercial cunning, it is our literary conceit, it is our 
 making merchandise of men and of men s virtue, our 
 covering up cruelty, and calling it patriotism ; dishon 
 esty, and calling it regular trade ; hollowness and mu 
 tual flattery, and calling it good society ; prayerless self- 
 idolatry, and calling it a rational religion ; it is these 
 things that prepare and build his cross, and crucify him 
 afresh. 
 
 How to receive the Son of God : they that, in any 
 sense, believe on his name will seek earnestly the full 
 answer to that question. They will seek it through the 
 giving up of the dearest preference that hurts the sim 
 plicity and humility of their faith. They will seek it in 
 the New Testament, in Christian instruction, in prayer, 
 in doing every hour all of God s will they know, in 
 counting belief, not doubt, the glory and power and joy 
 of man. Strong and ample minds will reverently 
 bring their strength and amplitude, a free and noble 
 offering to their Saviour s cause, yet not thinking it 
 much to give Him who, knowing all that is in men, hav 
 ing all the science they are striving after, the wisdom of 
 
 27* 
 
320 THE ADVENT. 
 
 which their learning is but a broken alphabet, the Master 
 of that world of Nature whose margin they are holding 
 up dim lamps to explore, and commanding, that spark 
 of life at whose mysterious, silent secret, all their 
 knowledge of phenomena stops short, and is dumb, 
 not much to give Him who, having power and honor 
 like this, yet gave his own mortal life for them. The 
 young will bring the freshness and dew of their youth. 
 Life and lips will not give too much emphasis to that 
 good confession. No energy of health, no affection of 
 the heart, will be willingly excused. 
 
 And if you have sought elsewhere, but find some 
 thing lacking yet, then candidly and cordially consider 
 whether some further help may not possibly be held 
 waiting for you, where thousands upon thousands of 
 stronger minds and humbler hearts than any here have 
 found it, at the foot of his cross, in the communion of 
 his body and his blood, the sacraments of his presence, 
 the memorials that he has come, the symbols of his sac 
 rifice, the images of his bread of Truth, which whoso 
 eateth never hungers, and of his spirit of Life which 
 whoso drinketh never thirsts. 
 
SEKMON XVIII. 
 
 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING* 
 
 THIS IS OF A TRUTH THAT PROPHET THAT SHOULD COME INTO 
 
 THE WORLD. John vi. 14. 
 THAT HE MIGHT BE A MERCIFUL AND FAITHFUL HIGH-PRIEST IN 
 
 THINGS PERTAINING TO GOD, TO MAKE RECONCILIATION FOR 
 
 THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE. Hebrews ii. 1 7. 
 THEN PILATE SAID, ART THOU THE KING OF THE JEWS ? JESUS 
 
 ANSWERED, MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. John 
 
 xviii. 33, 36. 
 
 THE subject is so distinctly threefold that it may be 
 properly introduced with these three sentences of Scrip 
 ture. Jesus Christ is presented by them in three offi 
 ces, different in kind, but neither of them inconsistent 
 with the other two, and all of them together serving to 
 manifest the completeness of his Messiahship, or his 
 character as the spiritual Guide, the propitiatory Sav 
 iour, and the reigning Lord of men. 
 
 * This sermon was first preached in an extemporaneous form, Sunday 
 before Easter, (April 17,) 1859. It was written out and repeated else 
 where, May 1. Early in that montti an excellent article on the same 
 subject, the authorship of which I do not know, but an article entirely 
 independent of this discourse, and very likely in type when this was first 
 delivered, appeared in the " American Theological Review." The lines 
 at the end, and one sentence beside, are now borrowed from that paper. 
 
322 CHRIST OUE PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 Each of the statements stands for a class, with many 
 other examples to be found in the Bible. Within each 
 class the forms of expression vary, following the free 
 dom of individual constitution and culture in the writ 
 ers and speakers, or else suited to the special object, 
 the argumentative connection, or the moral tempera 
 ture and coloring, of the passage. But the agreement 
 between them is substantial. They are all grounded in 
 one absolute reality belonging to the Saviour s nature 
 and ministry. 
 
 Thus there is one large class of declarations which 
 place him before us as a prophet. In the Biblical sense, 
 the prophet is a teacher. Prediction is one part of his 
 office, but only one. As being the most surprising to 
 common minds, it gives a name to the whole. But 
 it is not the whole. The prophet predicts by virtue 
 of that larger vision, or insight, which is a deep 
 and general endowment of the prophetic soul, ena 
 bling him to look both before and after, over and 
 beneath, inside and throughout the matter prophesied 
 upon. He is related not so much to time or times, 
 as to the eternal truth of God which is beyond time, 
 and the same in all times, unchanged amidst the 
 changeable. Hence his power of penetrating to the 
 heart of a matter, reading its secret laws, and by 
 that means knowing how it will act and come out 
 in the future ; a divine gift, an inspiration. He fore 
 tells to other men because he sees deeper than other 
 men. He sees from the centre, and so takes in conse 
 quences and relations by detail in their just place, and 
 their interior or heavenly order. Accordingly, the old 
 Hebrew prophets were a race reformatory and agitat 
 ing. They were far-sighted because they were deep- 
 
CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 323 
 
 sighted. One of their names signifies this : Seers. By 
 the same piercing wisdom they knew at once how men 
 would act, and how they ought to act, and then what 
 would be the consequences of their acting. This they 
 stood up and told aloud. It demanded courage, as it 
 always does. It made them the heroes of their age. 
 They rebuked kings and people. They called the 
 national customs and institutions to judgment. They 
 not only knew the lower and craftier elements of 
 human nature, which is the knowledge of human 
 nature possessed by what are called " men of the 
 world," but the loftier and more disinterested elements 
 just as well. Acquainted with God, and gifted with 
 internal admissions of his counsel, they could discern 
 what retributions would come upon guilt, and what 
 blessings upon the righteous. The report of what they 
 saw was their message, now terrible, then consola 
 tory. Brave by their conscious nearness to God, and 
 earnest because walking in his light, they kept nothing 
 back shown them in the " Thus saith the Lord." Mere 
 speech of this sort is heroic and sublime. What we 
 call action is for others. Yet this is the soul s action. 
 The organizing part of a reform may belong elsewhere. 
 In the case of Moses, David, Samuel, and Gideon, the 
 two were united : they were the prophets, both of legis 
 lation and empire. But Elijah, Miriam, Isaiah, Malachi, 
 and many more only spoke ; they roused and directed 
 the active force of others ; and thus, intermediately, 
 they made revolutions boil and commonwealths grow. 
 
 Besides this, there may be other and different gifts of 
 prophecy. But in the largest sense it is the communi 
 cation of religious wisdom. And this, everywhere 
 throughout the New Testament, Christ is exhibited to 
 
324 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 us as doing. His earthly ministry was greatly occu 
 pied with revelations of truth and expositions of duty ; 
 with openings of the secrets of Heaven and earth; 
 with showing men their sins, and the way out of them ; 
 the possibilities of their nature, and the abuse of it ; the 
 judgment and the life to come. No reader of the New 
 Testament need be told that the four Gospels are in 
 great part records of these teachings or prophecies of 
 Jesus. He knew all that was in man ; and he came 
 forth from God. This made him, not only one of the 
 prophets, but that one Greatest of prophets that should 
 come. The long line of ancient seers, whose highest 
 errand it was to prepare the way for him, whose most 
 glorious predictions foretold him, whose longing and 
 aspiring souls had it for their grandest joy that they 
 saw his day, culminated at last in his supreme and 
 complete person, the Light of the World. And 
 accordingly his teachings, or prophesyings, had power 
 and created effects, with which no others can bear any 
 comparison. They were the words of God. 
 
 In another class of passages Christ is represented as a 
 priest ; indeed as the great High-Priest of the universe, 
 as much above any mortal priesthood in power and dig 
 nity, as his nature transcends mortal limitations. 
 
 This name points us to a distinct office, and is tracea 
 ble to a distinct fact. The prophet, we saw, communi 
 cates divine wisdom to men. The priest makes an offer 
 ing for their sins. The prophet would enlighten and 
 admonish men, to prevent their falling into trans 
 gression. The priest would reconcile and restore them 
 after they have fallen into it. The prophet has to meet 
 the want of ignorance ; the priest, of repentance : both 
 equally real. 
 
CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 325 
 
 The two are found standing side by side through all 
 the Biblical periods. When religion became instituted 
 in the Hebrew commonwealth, and entered into the 
 national organization, or rather became its theocratic 
 law, the two lines appeared in official representatives, 
 Moses rising as the head of prophets, and Aaron of priests. 
 These were not arbitrary arrangements, but rooted in the 
 necessities of history and the soul. And so things con 
 tinued, till the external priesthood disappeared, being at 
 once spiritually superseded and historically fulfilled by 
 the one offering of the Kedeemer : " who needeth not 
 daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice, for this he 
 did once when he offered up himself; " " who is made 
 priest, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but 
 after the power of an endless life ; " who, " not by the 
 blood of goats and of calves, but by his own blood, hath 
 obtained eternal redemption for us ; " and who hath, not 
 every year, but " once," appeared " to put away sin by 
 the sacrifice of himself." Says John, " Jesus Christ the 
 Righteous is the propitiation for our sins, and not for 
 ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 
 
 "By the sacrifice of himself: " this brings into view 
 another part of the truth ; that as all the old sacerdotal 
 apparatus was to be now taken up and borne away, hav 
 ing its types, shadows, and significances realized in the 
 Saviour, so under the general term " priest," in the 
 evangelical usage, are included the several portions of 
 the priestly work. Thus the New Testament abounds 
 in the application of all manner of sacerdotal imagery 
 to Christ. He makes the offering, and he is the offer 
 ing itself. He is greeted on his first manifestation as 
 the " Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
 world." From the first, his suffering and death, as the 
 
326 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 grand necessity of salvation, are foreshadowed to his 
 followers, as they are able to bear it, in mysterious inti 
 mations. They form the clearer subject of the high and 
 awful converse amidst the splendors of the Mount of 
 Transfiguration. Every thorough reader feels that the 
 account of them by the Evangelists is the central and 
 vital thing, the heart of the Gospel record. Scarcely a 
 page of the New Testament expressing the Christian 
 consciousness of the Apostolic Church, and dealing with 
 events coming after the crucifixion, fails to set them 
 forth in their sacrificial character, and under an array 
 of sacerdotal symbols. The Apostles preached it, wrote 
 it, reasoned it, exulted in it, put it into their ascrip 
 tions and thanksgivings. It was the fire and ecstasy of 
 their apostleship. Every place and utensil of the old 
 altar service came in to help the redemptive impression. 
 All that long, wonderful, providential Hebrew economy 
 had prepared the moulds of thought and images of 
 speech which are now taken up, spiritualized, and filled 
 out. And the last voices we hear, as the sublime story 
 of Revelation ends, and the apocalyptic visions of ages 
 sweep away before us, are the voices of the mighty mul 
 titude, saying, " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to 
 receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
 and honor, and glory, and blessing." 
 
 In still another class of descriptions our Saviour is 
 represented in royalty. A kingship pertains to him. 
 He is the Ruler of an empire, the Leader of his people, 
 a Prince of life and peace, the Captain of salvation, the 
 Head of the tribes of the earth. In some rude and 
 dim way all prophecy saw him in this imperial suprem 
 acy. That conception was local and national, and 
 Christ himself had to expand and correct it by show- 
 
CHRIST OUE PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 327 
 
 ing that his kingdom is not in the geography or the 
 blood of Judaism, but in all the believing and loving 
 hearts of men. Still, the idea is never abrogated nor 
 forbidden. It is repeated rather, and certified. * So 
 before Pilate: "Art thou a king, then?" Jesus, an 
 swered, assenting, " Thou sayest that I am a king ! " 
 But " my kingdom is not of this world," " not from 
 hence." His apostles are always ascribing to him, in 
 the abundance of their veneration and their trust, royal 
 honors. They behold him " far above all principalities 
 and powers," and " on his head many crowns." The 
 truth which all these civic symbols only feebly shadow 
 forth is the truth of his mighty protection, his magisterial 
 elevation, and his personal guardianship over the spirit 
 ual organization of his Church. He was to be, as he is, 
 the Lawgiver to the Society of Christendom, every 
 where and forever, in his personal presence and in the 
 principles that must govern the social progress and 
 make man the brother of man. 
 
 From this glance at the positive representations 
 of Christ s character let us turn back to ourselves. 
 What can give the truths of religion a heartier 
 welcome, than to find that they meet and satisfy 
 wants that are waiting and perhaps aching in our 
 own souls? Of the two indispensable methods of au 
 thenticating a revelation, that which starts from ex 
 ternal authority, and that which starts from these inner 
 cravings that revelation supplies, this latter is apt to 
 seem the most natural. Only we are not to take our 
 individual sense of need as measuring the real needs 
 of mankind ; and not to forget that many sacred 
 wants of which we have not yet ourselves become con 
 scious may begin to burn and cry within us, under 
 
 28 
 
328 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 some new experience yet to come. So that we cannot 
 limit or deny, with respect to what lies beyond our 
 wants ; while yet in what really meets and fills them no 
 other testimony is so valid. 
 
 The three several characters or offices of Christ 
 already named have in them, we shall find, just this 
 interior testimony : they are suited to deep, strong 
 needs that spring up sooner or later in the sincere 
 heart and earnest life of men. And there they offer 
 their convincing proofs that he is what the Bible rep 
 resents him, the perfect Master of humanity, the 
 Saviour of the soul, and Lord of the race. 
 
 Beyond question, one of our great, universal relig 
 ious wants is knowledge of the truth. The moment we 
 wake into life, or into the consciousness of life, the 
 moment we begin to see what we are, and where we 
 are, and what is given us to do, and what is put upon 
 us to bear, then the souls within us begin to beg for 
 light. Just as the intellect hungers for acquaintance 
 with its own fields of action and laws of motion, and 
 goes for that to its teachers, to the prophets of sci 
 ence, and the prophets of art, and the prophets of soci 
 ety, who read nature deeply, and by their insight unfold 
 her secrets, prognosticate her activities, or imitate her 
 forms, so the spiritual nature longs for its own illu 
 mination, light upon itself, its path, its origin, its 
 duty, its hereafter, its Maker. It says to whatever 
 has God s wisdom in it, Prophesy to me ! Darkness 
 settles down on many questions ; mysteries brood over 
 each deeper sorrow of our life ; we cannot wave them 
 away with our hand nor scatter them with our breath. 
 Veils hang across the path before us, so impalpable that 
 our blind gropings cannot lift them. And as the things 
 
CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 329 
 
 we wish to know lie beyond this world, or can only be 
 interpreted from beyond it, we get only a partial satis 
 faction from the wisest of the mortal sages and all 
 the human periods. Hence Christ came as a teacher. 
 " This is that prophet that should come into the world." 
 He opened his lips, we are told, wherever he came, and 
 taught the people. They wondered at the gracious 
 words which proceeded out of his mouth. Waysides 
 and hills and common dwellings were the simple ap 
 paratus and open halls of his lessons. He unveiled 
 the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Men wanted 
 to know their parentage, and he taught them of the 
 Father ; their duties to each other, and he told them by 
 parables and precepts ; their destiny, and he uncovered 
 the retributions and joys of their immortality. He 
 laid bare the profound and vital meaning of all man s 
 feeling, suffering, longing; of regeneration, and prayer, 
 and charity ; of spiritual unity, and worship, and the 
 resurrection ; of the relation of the spirit to the letter, 
 of the new to the old ; of the Father, and the Son, and 
 the Comforter to each other. Men saw, and knew, and 
 felt that the greatest of prophets was risen up among 
 them. 
 
 But, as religious creatures, we have another want 
 than that of religious knowledge, or of the impulse that 
 knowledge gives. Already we have more knowledge 
 than we have used. Hence this new want, wakened 
 by a reproachful, insulted conscience : a heart peni 
 tent, convicted, shamed. How will a republication of 
 legal requirements bring peace, when the misery is that 
 we have broken those we had, and so have found out 
 that " by the law is the knowledge of sin " ? 
 
 Exactly, then, our second want is deliverance from 
 
330 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 our evil, including both forgiveness for the past and 
 strength now ; something to 
 
 " Be of sin the double cure, 
 Cleanse us from its guilt and power." 
 
 Manifestly this cannot come from ourselves. It must 
 come from Him whom our ingratitude has offended ; 
 from the Ruler whom our selfish wickedness has 
 wronged. It must come from God. 
 
 Look closely at this want : for it is that vital spot in 
 all humanity where sorrow is most keen, and where 
 relief is most joyful. The sure result of evil is pain ; 
 of persistent sin is death. Hence the voluntary sur 
 render to pain, pain even unto the body s death, is felt, 
 and has been ever felt, to be the natural expression of a 
 penitent soul. It is propitiation : not because God 
 takes pleasure in his children s suffering, but because 
 that is the soul s fitting tribute to the just majesty of 
 goodness and the holy authority of Eight. Government 
 without penalty is gone, and all its blessed protections 
 are dissolved. Hence the honest heart cries out in its 
 shame and fear, " Let me suffer for my sin." Suffer 
 ing for it there must be somewhere ; transgression is a 
 costly business ; so it must always be and always look ; 
 right must stand at any rate ; law must be sacred, or 
 all is gone ; and since nothing is so dear as life, and 
 blood is the element of life, life itself must be sur 
 rendered, and " without the shedding of blood is no 
 remission." 
 
 Take the next step. Just because this life is so dear, 
 He who loves us infinitely, and to whom it is dearer than 
 to us, will be willing to lay down for us his own. He 
 will not even wait for our consent ; but in the abun 
 dance of that unspeakable compassion, in the irresisti- 
 
331 
 
 ble freedom of that goodness, he "will do it beforehand, 
 only asking of us that we will believe he has done it, 
 and, accepting our pardon, be drawn by that faith into 
 the same self-sacrificing spirit. Herein is love indeed. 
 Suffering for our peace ! Sacrifice, not that our service 
 may profit and pay him, but that our transgression of a 
 Perfect Law may be pardoned, and the noble life of dis 
 interested goodness may be begotten in ourselves. Be 
 fore, we had seen God as Creator, Providence, Ruler, 
 and all the motives to obedience furnished by those 
 characters had been offered, and had failed. His ser 
 vants, the prophets, had come, and come in vain. But 
 now we see him in the new, more wondrous, and more 
 gracious character of Sacrifice. The last proof of ten 
 derness is given. Says Robertson, and how truly ! 
 " Is not the mystic yearning of love expressed in words 
 most purely thus, c Let me suffer for him ? " We want 
 to feel that our God of infinite love feels that. Calvary 
 is the full answer to that want. In the person of the 
 Son he so comes down among us, and into us, as to 
 suffer for us. We have a High-priest that can be 
 touched with the feeling of our infirmities, nay, takes 
 those infirmities upon him, bears our sicknesses, is 
 bruised for our iniquities, is delivered for our offences, 
 dies that we may live. All the priestly offices are ful 
 filled. " Herein is love ; not that we loved God, but 
 that God loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitia 
 tion for our sins." The atonement by Christ becomes 
 the inmost and grandest power of the world. It is the 
 one peculiar, characteristic, crowning, glorious truth of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 And then if you turn from what it does for us, as a 
 redemption, to what it does within us, as an inspi- 
 
 28* 
 
332 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 ration, the fruit of it is not less divine. For it appeals 
 directly to what is noblest, most generous, most disin 
 terested, in all the brave affections and aspirations of 
 humanity. It rises up in harmony with, and sur 
 mounts with its grandeur, all the heroic and martyr 
 sacrifices of mankind. Mechanical and mercantile con 
 ceptions of salvation vanish before it. Right becomes 
 more venerable ; love, more lovely ; charity, more beau 
 tiful. It was of charity that the Saviour suffered. His 
 cross teaches us, not that each one is to be looking out 
 for a selfish salvation, but that self is to be forgotten in 
 hearty consecration to him, and in free service to our 
 brethren. It carries us clear of the belittling notions of 
 escaping Hell as a punishment or earning Heaven as a 
 reward. It makes the lofty sentiment of gratitude the 
 mainspring of piety ; faith, the pure inspiration of right 
 eousness ; love, the sacred secret of beneficence. We 
 learn from the Redeemer, who gave himself for us, to 
 give ourselves for one another. We take up that cross 
 which signifies an atoning sacrifice, a voluntary, vicari 
 ous humiliation, a making of no reputation, and becom 
 ing poor, a taking of the form of a servant, and being 
 made an offering for sin, for others sake. Henceforth 
 we abhor sin. for itself, for our brethren s sake, for 
 Christ s sake, and not merely for its penal consequences. 
 We love goodness, and are loyal to it for itself; not 
 merely for its wages. We not only " admire philan 
 thropy," but we " love men," as those for whom Christ 
 has been willing to die. We cease longing for rest, and 
 begin to have joy in God, in the " spirit of liberty," and 
 in the eternal life begun. 
 
 This is what is meant by Christ our Priest. This is 
 that profound, penitential, sorrowing, unutterable want 
 
CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 333 
 
 in human souls which the Redeemer meets, and which, 
 because he meets it, makes the heart that is thus con 
 sciously set at liberty leap with gratitude and gladness 
 to join the praises which give blessing, and honor, and 
 glory to Christ. It will not be for any of us to say 
 there is no need of a blessing so deep and a joy so great. 
 You may say you have not yet felt the need of it ; and 
 that pity of God ! may be mournfully true. But 
 close by you is a heart which feels that beside this want 
 and its bitterness all the common griefs of mortality are 
 trifles of the air : the want of reconciliation with the 
 Father in heaven ; the want of an assured forgiveness ; 
 the want of Christ and him crucified. Where that is once 
 stirred and alive, and the first object of the New Tes 
 tament is to stir it and make it alive, because that is the 
 only way to peace and power, there you find a heart 
 that only one word of earth or heaven can reach. You 
 may tell it that its sorrow is all needless and irrational ; 
 that all we have to do in this world is "to do right," or 
 as near it as we can ; but it will only look back upon 
 you with speechless wonder. Do right ? What if, with 
 the strongest of apostles, I do not " find how "to do 
 right ? What if the right seems to me too high and 
 holy a thing, and too far off, that I should do it of my 
 self? What if, all my life long, by doing or leaving 
 undone, I have come all too terribly short even of the 
 right I knew ? Then let me have, what the blessed, 
 merciful Gospel gives me, a Redeemer ! Let me rest 
 my heart upon the cross ! Take not away my Lord ! 
 
 " Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in thee ! 
 Let the water and the blood 
 From thy riven side which flowed, 
 Be of sin the double cure, 
 Cleanse me from its guilt and power ! 
 
334 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST. 
 
 " Not the labor of my hands 
 Can fulfil thy Law s demands ; 
 Could my zeal no respite know, 
 Could my tears forever flow, 
 All for sin could not atone : 
 Thou must save, and thou alone ! " 
 
 Another real want of men whose Christian sensibility 
 has been made alive, is that of a conscious and friendly 
 and loyal relationship to the Saviour now. If those 
 who do feel and utter this want misinterpret by it the 
 feeling of some others who have no such want, it is 
 very evident that they do not mistake the almost uni 
 versal and unbroken testimony of the Christian world, 
 declared in ten thousand trusting and supplicating and 
 thankful voices from age to age. We look to a Lord 
 who knows his own, watches and remembers them from 
 his merciful throne in the heavens, calls them by 
 their names in the personal faithfulness of his affection, 
 and lends them secret powers from his kingly fountain 
 of power. The mediation did not end with the sacrifice 
 and the earthly theophany. It is a living Lord that we 
 worship. It is an abiding as well as royal Shepherd 
 that we follow, significantly typified in the shepherd 
 king of old. Again, fulfilling a far earlier type, he is 
 the true Melchisedek, as the argument of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews so beautifully proves, blending the 
 sacerdotal and the regal offices together ; Prince while 
 also he is Priest. Consult the inmost faith of the truly 
 believing heart, which has once given all to Him who 
 gave himself for us, and see what a bleak bereavement 
 would fall like midnight upon it, if you were to sweep 
 away from it this perpetual privilege of confiding, loyal, 
 adoring fellowship with its ascended, crowned, and yet 
 ever condescending King. 
 
 Observe then, also, how these several titles of majesty 
 
CHRIST OUE PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 335 
 
 not only apply separately, to affirm the cordial ascrip 
 tions of the Church to the Son of God, but how they 
 mutually sustain and fill out one another s appropriate 
 meaning. We need the Prophet, to give us the knowl 
 edge and arouse in us the feeling of what religious 
 duty is. We need the Priest of Sacrifice, to restore and 
 reconcile and pardon us when duty has been lost. We 
 need, too, the holy and governing Head, to preside 
 over and guide and intercede for and quicken us, till 
 we come into the assembly of the Just, the Church of 
 the First-born, when the kingdoms of this world are 
 all made the kingdoms of our Lord. In these three 
 celestial characters of the Son we find the manifesta 
 tion of what we are taught to believe are the three 
 great attributes of God, wisdom, love, power, wis 
 dom in the Teacher, love in the Sacrifice, power in 
 the King. To the end of days, every redeemed soul 
 confesses to the Master, " My faith looks up to thee ! " 
 Christ gathers a community. He binds together a 
 brotherhood. He is the "Prince of Peace," a peace 
 that he has made through the blood of his cross, break 
 ing down or melting away the " walls of partition." 
 Each individual believer rejoices in the social consola 
 tion. Indeed, every one of the three offices, with the 
 three corresponding dispositions in us, docility to the 
 Teacher, faith in the Propitiator, loyalty to the Ruler, 
 becomes a theme of thanksgiving. No one of them 
 depresses, disempowers, or restrains our energies. They 
 all uplift, encourage, and liberate. They are full of 
 animation, promise, gladness. The Teacher enlightens ; 
 and what more glorious or gladdening gift than light ? 
 The living Sacrifice rolls away the burdens of remorse, 
 and sets us in a world where love is seen forever victo- 
 
336 CHRIST OUR PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 
 
 rious, with the cross for its sign. The " Head over all 
 things to his Church " inspires us with the felicity of a 
 Divine friendship, opens to us the inviting doors of that 
 kingdom which is not of this world, embracing earth 
 and heaven, the holy life here and the holy life ever 
 lasting. 
 
 It is not strange, then, that, from the beginning, 
 these great names have been chosen by the highest 
 souls in the Church and the deepest-sighted believers, 
 like Chrysostom and Augustine and Aquinas, like Me- 
 lancthon and Gerhard and Krummacher, to set forth 
 the homage due to the Master. Only three centuries 
 of Christian history had passed, when Eusebius, the 
 early historian, spoke of it as the prevailing conception 
 of the Messiah. "High-priests, kings, and prophets," he 
 writes, " were anointed as types, so that they all had 
 respect to the true Christ, the Logos full of God, who 
 is the only High-priest of the whole, the only King of 
 all creation, and the only Arch-prophet of the prophets 
 of the Father." 
 
 It is the right of the Church to celebrate her Head. 
 Let us come without misgiving or miserable reserva 
 tions to our privilege, having apostles and confessors 
 and the holy teachers of centuries, and the heart of 
 Christendom, to join us. It is no speculative nor barren 
 praise. No words nor work of ours, when the spiritual 
 currents that flow through us and the laws of divine 
 impression are laid open, will be found more practical. 
 Every honest tribute to Christ quickens that life within 
 which Christ alone kindles. To exalt him is to ennoble 
 ourselves. To venerate the Prophet is to open the mind 
 to his wisdom. To thrill with faith in the Heavenly 
 Priest is to yield the heart to the power of his love. To 
 
337 
 
 behold the King s majesty is to let the will find joy in 
 obedience. All life will be simpler for this reverence ; 
 the world more beautiful ; religion more real. We 
 shall come from the high mount of communion with 
 Jesus inspired for a nobler week-day righteousness 
 among men. 
 
 For, finally, we are not to forget another practical 
 and immediate lesson. In such differing measure as 
 their capacity renders possible, all disciples are to bear 
 their own faithful and cheerful part in the same three 
 offices of holy influence in which our Saviour has now 
 been passing before us. Whoever lets his Christian 
 light shine daily before men, in the humility and 
 charity and beauty of holiness, teaches the heavenly 
 wisdom. Whoever surrenders self to truth, to man 
 kind, to Christ, enters into the grandeurs of disinter 
 ested sacrifice, and, with the Crucified, dies unto the 
 world. And we know that whoever shall suffer thus 
 with him " shall reign with him." In these immortal 
 ways, as the Spirit signifies, the sons and daughters of 
 men shall " prophesy," and the patient servants be 
 made " kings and priests unto God." 
 
 Unto the Saviour, then, glorious Head over all things 
 to his Church, and blessed Lord of each disciple s life, 
 only Name under heaven given among men whereby 
 we can be saved, faith shall bring us with unquestion 
 ing adoration. 
 
 " Live in me, Prophet, Priest, and King ! 
 As Prophet, lead me in thy light ! 
 As Priest, present my offering ! 
 Lead and restrain me by thy might, 
 So that, as King, thou mayst fulfil 
 In me thy kingdom, all thy will ! 
 Live, Christ, live thou in me ! " 
 
SEEMON XIX. 
 
 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY* 
 
 AND AS THEY CAME OUT, THEY FOUND A MAN OF CYRENE, 
 SIMON BY NAME ; HIM THEY COMPELLED TO BEAR HIS CROSS. 
 
 Matthew xxvii. 32. 
 
 BUT GOD FORBID THAT I SHOULD GLORY, SAVE IN THE CROSS 
 
 OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Galatians vi. 14. 
 
 HERE are two kinds of suffering : two ways of bear 
 ing the cross. "We are struck, first of all, with the con 
 trast between the positions of these two men, the effects 
 they have wrought, the impressions they have made, 
 the memories they have left in the world. 
 
 One of them is a mere name on the reader s tongue ; 
 the other is a living power in the heart of Christendom. 
 One is a vague, feeble, uninspiring form ; the other is a 
 clear, radiant person, standing erect close to the centre- 
 point of the world s grandest revolution, and moving 
 distinct and strong among the most vivid and hal 
 lowed realities of history. Why this difference ? 
 
 As the executioners, the paid officers of the govern 
 ment, and the willing servants of the priests, after 
 the judicial mockery was over, led the Lord of Life 
 
 * Good Friday, 1858. 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 339 
 
 away to the place of his crucifixion, they found their 
 victim physically unable to bear the weight of the wood 
 whereon he was to be nailed and to die. It was not 
 unusual, in such cases, to require some substitute to 
 take up and carry that burden. Simon the Cyrenian 
 happened to be by the way, a convenient drudge for 
 the cruel purposes of the men : a stranger, a mere 
 looker-on at the spectacle, not worse, not better, so far 
 as we know, than the crowd that usually follows a pass 
 ing procession, or gazes at a public punishment. It 
 does not appear that any sympathy had been kindled 
 between him and the sufferer ; that he had any glimpse 
 of the meaning of the Messiah or of his message ; that 
 one touch of spiritual illumination from that " Light of 
 the World " had reached him, nor that one thought of 
 the glory of the august sacrifice that was preparing 
 made the cross feel lighter to him. It must have 
 been heavy, and it must have seemed hard, as many 
 crosses seem. As far as appears, he was the reluctant, 
 stolid instrument of an arbitrary command, compelled 
 to a menial service by an insolent and overbearing po 
 lice. So Simon bore the cross of Christ. 
 
 Some years after, but, remember, long before the 
 cross had come to be the badge of honor and of beauty 
 it is now, or anything but a mark of criminal disgrace, 
 as the gallows, the penitentiary, and the pillory are to 
 us, while the Crucified was yet a name of general 
 reproach, ridiculed in courts, despised by the religious 
 and respectable, scarcely known to learning and fash 
 ion, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks 
 foolishness, Paul, convert and apostle, was writing to 
 a little company of believers he had gathered at Galatia 
 in that outcast name. He, too, had seen Christ, but 
 
 29 
 
340 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 
 
 not in the body ; had come after him in another sense ; 
 had gone to his crucifixion in a reverent, tender, sym 
 pathizing faith ; had bowed his whole believing spirit 
 with his body under the burden ; had been hunted, hated, 
 impoverished, stripped, scourged, imprisoned, banished, 
 for that Crucified One s sake. It was not compulsory 
 with him, but voluntary. He did not do it like Simon, 
 because he must, save as the necessity lay in his own 
 willing conviction, the free choice and irrepressible love 
 of his heart. So Paul bore the cross of Christ, and 
 he said of it, God forbid that I should glory in any 
 thing but that, boast of anything but that infamy, count 
 anything gain but that loss, be proud of anything but 
 that humiliation ! 
 
 To-day, Simon is but an insignificant and buried unit 
 in the vanished multitude of the Past. Paul is alive 
 among us ; preached and preaching ; converting man 
 kind to truth, influencing nations, forming the ages, a 
 master-builder still in the Church. 
 
 These two men represent two different attitudes of 
 the soul or states of feeling, neither of them very 
 uncommon, before the divine facts. Corresponding 
 to them are two ways of meeting the inevitable disci 
 pline of Providence, two ways of dealing with that 
 deep exercise of the conscience which makes the cross 
 necessary, two ways of interpreting the signification 
 and power of the cross itself, the Saviour s suffering. 
 Let iis take each in its order ; for there is a natural 
 order among them. 
 
 I. First, there is the constant, ordinary discipline of 
 human life. By discipline we commonly understand 
 some degree of pain, because we have all found out that 
 we cannot learn, nor grow, nor prevail, without that. 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 341 
 
 There must be some restraining of desire ; some denial 
 of propensity ; some yoke on the passions ; some sacri 
 fice of the less for the greater, of the present for the 
 future, of pleasure for right, of inclination for duty. 
 In all this there is suffering. Life, whenever it is ear 
 nest, contains more or less of this sacrificial element. 
 Owing to temperament, to external influence, to inher 
 ited tendencies, to various causes, some of which we can 
 explain and more that we cannot explain, this ingredi 
 ent of sorrow differs in amount, differs in form. The 
 principal fact is that every individual experience has, 
 soon or late, its painful side, its crucial hours, when 
 there is darkness over all the land, and we cry out to 
 know if God has forsaken us. For the time, longer or 
 shorter, we taste only the bitter, and feel only the 
 thorns. The separations of death, the distance between 
 our aspiration and performance, unsatisfied ambition, 
 laboring year after year in vain, affection returned 
 by indifference, the symptoms of fatal disease, former 
 energy prostrate, a friend alienated, a child depraved, 
 an effort to do good construed into an impertinence, 
 unconquerable obstacles that we cannot measure and can 
 scarcely speak of, heaped up against our best designs, 
 these are some of the most frequent shapes of the 
 misery ; but no list is full. The one essential thing is 
 that the will is crossed, crucified. Character is every 
 where put into this school of suffering. 
 
 Without any pretence of insight, we know, for we are 
 very plainly told in two separate volumes the volume 
 of past experience and the volume of the Book why 
 this is. It is Paul s old warfare of the law of the flesh 
 and the law of the spirit. It is the conflict of two neces 
 sary moral opposites, on the great scale of humanity. 
 
842 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 
 
 There is a battle of Good and Evil, and these special 
 miseries are the bruises of the blows that fill the air, 
 sometimes seeming to fall at random, and perplexing 
 our reason, because we cannot rise to such height of vis 
 ion as to take in the whole field at once. It is a mixed 
 engagement ; we are socially responsible ; we suffer both 
 with and for one another, all the time. Suffering is the 
 tax we have to pay for the privilege of being free to 
 choose. Only this is but half the account of the matter ; 
 and we are hopelessly, desperately puzzled, till we see 
 running through all this sorrow, working freely in all its 
 various griefs, and using every pain for a means of purity, 
 the steady wisdom and all-controlling Love of God our 
 Father. In other words, sin is in the world, and death 
 by sin Evil has but one source. There is a Law, 
 which is Love. The commandment is holy, just, and 
 good. Evil comes of the chafing of our disobedient, 
 finite, selfish will against that perfect will of God. But 
 the distribution of its natural pains is clearly not simply 
 according to personal deserving : it is for an end of good 
 thoroughly foreseen only by the All-seeing. We are 
 helpless to explain our cross ; but we have it to bear. 
 
 Here are presented those two sorts of moral condi 
 tion, two postures of the soul, indicated in the two 
 men of the text. One takes his troubles bitterly, un 
 willingly, unthankfully. He dreads them when he sees 
 them coming. He runs from them while there is space 
 to run. He struggles against them as long as he can. 
 And then, as their fearful, irresistible step presses on 
 him and overtakes him, he is borne down. He is their 
 victim, not their pupil. They conquer him, and are not 
 conciliated as his friends. If they are little troubles, 
 they fret his temper and disfigure his dignity ; he com- 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 343 
 
 plains sentimentally or curses profanely. If they are 
 larger, he only yields in terror or sinks in stupor. Be 
 reavement has then but two reliefs : either he must be 
 so cool-blooded that his affliction is really tolerable, or 
 so proud that he is ashamed to weep ; these failing, self 
 ish affection mourns without hope. He is afraid to die, 
 because it was not for Christ and man that he lived. 
 He hates the world he has abused. He blames the 
 Providence he has thwarted. He satirizes the life he 
 has spoiled and emptied. He calls it poor, a mockery, 
 calls the world hollow, men hypocrites. He suffers ; 
 no doubt of that. None knows it better than he. The 
 sorrows have got hold upon him, and he aches under 
 their hands. But there is no faith ; no submission ; no 
 stronger heart, nor sweeter patience, nor gentler charity, 
 nor growing hope. He suffers because he cannot help 
 it ; dull, hard, dark, comfortless pain. " Him they 
 compelled to bear the cross." 
 
 The other, too, suffers. Agony is not abolished for 
 him. The grand laws of mortal travail are not revoked 
 for him. The nerves of believers are not callous, nor the 
 sensibilities of saints deadened. For evils in them and 
 evils around them they suffer. But they suffer as 
 Paul suffered, turning tribulation into victory, drawing 
 peace from pain. The sorrow laid on them they take up 
 so cheerfully that it loses half its weight. They can 
 put off the body without alarm, because they subdued 
 it long ago to the spirit. They can be disappointed in 
 their plans, because the Almighty has other servants. 
 They can say, as Dr. Arnold wrote in his journal late 
 on that last evening of his life while yet in perfect health, 
 after alluding to other and more public aspirations, 
 aspirations for England and for the Church, " Above 
 
 29* 
 
344 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 
 
 all, let me mind my own personal work, to keep my 
 self pure and zealous and believing, laboring to do 
 God s will, yet not anxious that it should be done by 
 me rather than by others if God disapproves of my 
 doing it." They can endure the departure of trusted 
 things and even trusted persons, as by faith seeing the 
 invisible which never departs. They can let their chil 
 dren, their mothers, the most beautiful and the most be 
 loved die, not unsorrowing, but consenting, because they 
 know that their Redeemer liveth. They can be crucified 
 unto the world, because the world is already crucified 
 unto them. They can lift their cross up, and glory in it. 
 
 So every common trouble a sickness or a broken 
 scheme, a bruised heart or a defeated will comes with 
 a cross which is like two crosses in its hands. Feel no 
 God to be there, and it-sorely wears you down, down 
 till you die under its weight. Take it up in Christ s 
 name, bear it for his sake, and it is light, lighter than 
 air. It is a " changed cross." It lifts you up as you 
 bear it.* 
 
 II. But as we carry our search inward and down 
 ward, we reach a trouble deeper, darker, than any of 
 these I have named. If we really feel it at all, we feel 
 that no other sorrow can be compared with it. Till we 
 have felt it, all descriptions of it by others must sound 
 extravagant, austere, unmeaning ; but when it has once 
 come in and taken hold of our souls then we say no 
 language, no penitent s self-reproach, no prodigal s cry 
 of unworthiness, not Augustine s burning confessions, 
 not the hot anguish of the fifty-first Psalm, is over 
 wrought or too earnest. For what words can tell too 
 
 * " Si crucem libenter portes, te portabit." THOMAS A KEMPIS. 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 345 
 
 strongly the wretchedness of feeling self-condemned? 
 My friends, that is an actual feeling. That is one of the 
 states of a human soul like yours and mine. We may 
 be awkward and faulty in our attempts to define it. 
 We may put the wrong name to it. We may use the 
 words of systems, or of creeds, or of other people, when 
 we ought to take the first plain word that leaps to our 
 lips ; and so men may say, That is not a true image ; 
 that does not show the thing as it is. No matter, so 
 you only know the thing. We are not thinking about 
 the artist s skill, nor about words, but about a pressing, 
 personal fact. It is a fact ; and therefore even com 
 mon sense will accept it. It is a state where men are 
 found ; and science, which has to consider storms as 
 well as light, pain as well as comfort, must look at it. 
 It is an experience of the human soul ; and therefore 
 philosophy, to say nothing of faith, would have to take 
 it into her studies. But all these, when they have done 
 their best upon it, will be glad to send us back to the 
 New Testament, and hand the problem over to the 
 Great Reconciler. Ah, if it were not a fact, no such 
 Great Reconciler would have come. There would have 
 been no Good Friday, no Gethsemane, no Calvary, no 
 Pascal Sacrifice, no " Lamb slain from the foundation 
 of the world." Nay, there would have been no Church, 
 no altar of communion, no anthem of affliction, no 
 wailing Miserere, such as to-day prepares our adoration 
 of the Redeemer. SAVIOUR would be a word without 
 a meaning. There would be no cross for Simon to 
 bear ; none for Paul to glory in. 
 
 This, at least, we know : when that hour of a great 
 conviction, that sense of a new and awful necessity, has 
 come, it finds a secret voice of its own, broken perhaps 
 
346 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 
 
 with penitence, incoherent with remorse, humble with 
 shame ; but the same voice that has breathed itself into 
 the confessions of prostrate congregations, into the lita 
 nies of the kneeling thousands of the Church. It says, 
 I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever 
 before me. Lo, thou art my Father, and yet I am not 
 thy filial child. Thou art Love itself, and I have not 
 loved thee ; Truth itself, and I have not been true to 
 thee ; Purity itself, and I have been unclean, unclean 
 before thee ! All the affection of mother and of father, 
 of sisters and brothers, of friends and lovers, gathered 
 into one bright and beaming sun of tender and unchang 
 ing sympathy, would be only a shadow of thy kindness, 
 for thy nature is infinite, and all that nature is mercy ; 
 yet to that I have been ungrateful, and against that have 
 I been insensible. Yerily, against thee, thee only have I 
 sinned ! Thou didst shape and fashion my body, and in 
 thy book all my members were written ; yet selfishness 
 has been in my heart and reins, in my blood and my 
 bones, in my nerves and my motions. I am " shapen in 
 iniquity." Thou desirest truth in the inward parts ; 
 yet inwardly and outwardly, in myself and in society, 
 in my business with the world and in my bosom, in 
 tongue and deed, how often have I been false, false 
 to the best I knew, false to duty, false to thee ! Nay, 
 thou didst make and order the way of holiness to be the 
 way of safety and peace and joy for me ; and not even 
 that would draw and keep me. Thou didst bid me, in 
 eating and drinking, and in whatsoever I should do, do 
 all for the glory of God ; and I have lived for myself, for 
 a paltry pleasure, for an empty admiration, for a passing 
 breath of fame. Thou didst give thy dearly beloved 
 and only begotten ; and practically I have denied him. 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 347 
 
 He came down to the earth, and I would not let him lift 
 me to heaven. He took my poor nature and infirmities, 
 and was tempted with me, yet I would not become a 
 partaker of the divine nature with him. He groaned 
 and prayed in the olive shade, and did sweat great drops 
 of blood, and died for me ; and I would not live for him. 
 Lord, most merciful ! Saviour and Redeemer most 
 pitiful ! purge me, wash me, and I shall be clean ! For 
 give, spare, renew, recover me ! I am not worthy to 
 be called thy child ! My God ! my God ! 
 
 Just here, then, appear to us again the two aspects of 
 the Cross. Hard, loveless, unwilling, drudging duty: 
 shall that be our way ? A cross, indeed, but not Christ s 
 cross. " Him they compelled to bear the cross." All 
 life will be crucifixion, and all our consciences will be 
 servile Cyrenians. It will be law, and nothing but law. 
 "We shall be eye-servants, not loving children. Exist 
 ence will be a task, and not a privilege ; our service will 
 answer to an exacting homily, and not a hymn of praise. 
 We shall work at it, or grind under it, in bondage to 
 the commandment, not in the cheerful liberty of the 
 sons of God with which Christ makes his people free. 
 Lingering in the old Judaism and its legality, keeping a 
 score of merits, weighing and gauging our own stock of 
 virtues, bent in self-inspection till the energies are crip 
 pled and faith consumptive, we shall never get beyond 
 " Thou shalt." If we see ourselves as we are, by the 
 law itself, we shall be terrified, and work only from 
 fear, and the world will be covered with gloom. If we 
 natter and deceive ourselves that we are as good as we 
 need be, we shall stand still, and that is destruction. 
 Our God will not be a Father, but a Judge. Christ, in 
 his true character, as a disinterested, life-giving Pro- 
 
348 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 
 
 pitiator, who takes the soul over from its condemnation 
 to its freedom and acceptance, we shall not know at all. 
 Here is exactly the point where so many of Paul s argu 
 ments, utterly unintelligible without this key, but clear 
 as day with it, converge, and write their conclusion in 
 letters of light. " By the deeds of the law shall no flesh 
 be justified," not Jewish law only, but Divine law 
 everywhere, anywhere, in Rome, England, America, 
 simply because the Divine law is always vastly greater 
 and higher than human performance, and so always a 
 broken law, of course no man justified by its deeds. 
 Our blessed Eedeemer has taken all the misery and suf 
 fering and penalty of the broken law upon him, and sent 
 the believer on his way joyous, unburdened, free. " The 
 law made nothing perfect ; " it only told what the perfect 
 was, did not inspire the motive, the love, to keep it. 
 If kept at all, as law, it would be by fear, or a selfish 
 seeking for safety from its penalty, not by self-forgetting 
 loyalty. "If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under 
 the law, but under grace." Law is compulsory ; grace 
 is free. Law is obligatory ; the Gospel is attractive. 
 Law is command ; the covenant in Christ, which " the 
 law cannot disannul," is promise. Law is terrible ; the 
 Spirit is animating, pardon, peace, love, joy, gentle 
 ness, goodness, faith. 
 
 Yes : Law alone is a cross. Here stands the anxious 
 conscience, troubled, discouraged, looking far up at the 
 blazing standard, the commandment, and then looking 
 back at its disordered and miserable self ; no way of 
 bringing the two together. It needs a Reconciler, who 
 shall not lower the law, but keep it, honor it, magnify 
 it, and at the same time lift up, forgive, reinvigorate 
 man, and breathe a new life of the Holy Spirit into him. 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 349 
 
 It needs that mediator; another cross, not Simon s 
 cross now, but Paul s. Man is in need, -not of another 
 commandment, but of a consistent pardon for not keep 
 ing and of a new affection impelling him to try to keep 
 the old one. By the law was the knowledge of sin; 
 what he wants is a way, a deliverance, a justification. 
 " The law made nothing perfect," " but the bringing in 
 of a better hope did." 
 
 Do we then make duty less important, less sacred ? 
 Infinitely more important, infinitely more sacred, be 
 cause it is duty, not to a stern judge, but to a Father ; 
 not to one ready to condemn, but ready, through his 
 own gracious atonement, to accept. " Do we make void 
 the law ? Nay, we establish the law." Law, con 
 science, the sense of duty, did great things for us ; it 
 pointed us to the right, it showed us our weakness ; it 
 disciplined us, and made us ready for a higher and a 
 more spiritual relation. " The law was our schoolmaster 
 to lead us to Christ," and " Christ is the end of the law 
 for righteousness to every one that has this faith." Nor 
 has it done with the disciple yet ; only since Christ has 
 died, it is transfigured into invitation, become " spirit 
 ual," " good." 
 
 The believer is not exempt then from work, nor from 
 pain. He works with tenfold the legalist s earnestness ; 
 he may suffer with tenfold the moralist s pain. But he 
 longs to work, and he is willing to suffer, in the joy of 
 his thankful faith. Paul bore the cross no less than 
 Simon ; and it was a cross ; no easy figure nor fanciful 
 image of it. Yet it was a cross not laid on reluctant 
 shoulders. He took it up, and lo ! it grew light in his 
 hands. He welcomed it, and it glowed with lustre, as 
 if it were framed of the sunbeams of heaven. He em- 
 
350 THE CKOSS A BURDEN OB A GLORY. 
 
 braced it in the arms of his trust ; and then he could 
 say, God forbid that I should glory in anything but 
 that! 
 
 III. Thus, thirdly, the same spiritual contrast, the 
 same principle of difference between compulsory and vol 
 untary service opens to us two interpretations of the suf 
 fering of the Saviour himself. Neither the cross of 
 Simon nor the cross of Paul was both literally and actu 
 ally the cross of Christ. Simon s was literally ; the same 
 cross, but how different in fact ! Paul s was not literally ; 
 but iii kind, in moral sympathy, in religious purpose, in 
 the unity of faith, only not in degree, as the disciple 
 may resemble the Master, the same. We pass up 
 now above them both to the one cross original, supreme, 
 all-sufficient, on which were laid the iniquities of us 
 all, by which the world was redeemed, on which, as the 
 Sufferer himself said, even as Moses lifted up the ser 
 pent in the wilderness, that whosoever looked might be 
 healed, the Son of Man was lifted up, that he might 
 draw all men unto himself. 
 
 We mistake utterly both the attraction and the power 
 of that sacrifice, the moment we regard it as a reluctant 
 compliance with necessity. Its charm was that it was 
 chosen. Its power was that it was free. " No man 
 taketh my life from me ; I lay it down of myself. I 
 have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it 
 again ! " The divine dignity of those words ! as divine 
 as the mercy. 
 
 Such, in kind, observe, is the wonderful transforming 
 energy of the spirit, of the soul, of its affections, its 
 charity, even in man. Outward things are pliant, plas 
 tic, completely subject to it. The plainest face, to eyes 
 that love really looks through, has a kind of beauty in 
 
THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 351 
 
 it, not of the features. A child s deformity comes to 
 wear a grace in the mother s tender beholding. Prison 
 walls are palaces to the martyr whose heart holds 
 daily court there, for the King of kings. All measure 
 ments are reversed, all criticisms are reconsidered, all 
 blemishes are beautified, when this transfiguring light 
 of love touches them. That special sign of debasement, 
 of mingled servility and crime, the slave s scourge, the 
 cross, becomes glorious when the Son of God takes it 
 up ; there is goodness enough in him to exalt it. The 
 pain of dying was joy to him, because the compassion 
 of Heaven flowed down through the pierced and bleeding 
 body. Then was the Son of Man glorified. The nails, 
 and the thorns, and the spear, and the reed, and the 
 rough soldiers insulting hands were honorable to him 
 and welcome, because they only signalized that sacrifice 
 where self was forever crucified for love. / 
 
 Yes ; the freeness of the sacrifice was its efficacy. It 
 was no device of perplexed counsels, no expedient for an 
 emergency, no escape from a surprise. If we make it 
 so in our poor systems, we put a compelled cross on the 
 Lord of all our liberty. It was the way chosen from 
 the beginning. God so loved the world. It was not 
 the offering of the Father alone, nor of the Son alone, 
 but of the Divine heart of God in them both, a heart 
 that was loving before the foundation of the world, and 
 finding this overwhelming utterance at last. There, at 
 Calvary, was set up the one immovable, unfailing, 
 everlasting barrier against the tyranny and triumph of 
 Evil. There the waves of hatred, oppression, envy, 
 unbelief, scorn, sensuality, and every sin, break their 
 force, dashing in vain, and dying away against that 
 planted cross ; for its living roots are wound by God 
 
 30 
 
352 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLORY. 
 
 into the centre and core of the world. No wonder the 
 sufferer was " amazed/ as he went to the garden ! No 
 wonder, as the shining ones, prophets of the elder cov 
 enant, met him on the Mount of Transfiguration, this 
 was the theme of their high communion, and they 
 spoke together of " the decease which he should accom 
 plish at Jerusalem. * No wonder, as the hour drew on, 
 sorrow and victory took their sway by turns in his feel 
 ing, for he was the son of Mary as well as the son of 
 God. " Now," he said, " Now is the Son of Man glori 
 fied ; " and then, with natural anguish, " My soul is 
 exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," and in the dear 
 craving for human sympathy that brings him down 
 from Tabor and Zion so near to us in our mortal Geth- 
 semane, " Tarry ye here and watch with me." Now it 
 was the cry, " If it be possible, let this cup pass from 
 me ; " but immediately after, " Daughters of Jerusalem, 
 weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children." 
 Amidst the pangs of the crucifixion, now it was a 
 prayer for himself, Son of Man ; " My God ! my God ! 
 why hast thou forsaken me ? " and then a prayer for 
 his murderers, out of the bosom of his own divinity, 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
 do." And just in the measure that the spirit of his 
 sacrifice is in us shall we be praising him that the 
 path of his eager choice was the march to the Passover, 
 to his Passion. 
 
 Doubtless there was a necessity. Sufferings like that, 
 in all the Father s universe, are nowhere borne super 
 fluously. Crosses are nowhere laid on, save as there is 
 necessity. It is the necessity that comes of the inevita 
 ble conflict of right with wrong. It is the irreconcilable 
 issue of the law of God and the disobedience of man. 
 
THE CROSS A BUKDEN OR A GLORY. 353 
 
 The first must stand, have its way, be honored, be vin 
 dicated, be maintained. If Justice, blessed Justice, holy 
 shield and safeguard of all our peace both human and 
 divine, should falter, and falter up there in its very 
 throne and fountain, the order of nature would be shak 
 en into anarchy. But then, the goodness that encom 
 passes all that necessity, wiser than the wit of human 
 legislation, knows how to solve its hopeless problem ; 
 and the cross is its solution. It is freely borne ; it is 
 chosen ; it is gloried in. He that gives himself, saying, 
 " I and my Father are one," how shall he not move, 
 and save, and atone ? He that gives his Son, and is in 
 him, reconciling the world unto himself, how shall he 
 not forgive ? Well might Paul, and the Church, and 
 the Christian ages, and our grateful rejoicing eyes, look- 
 ing up to that " miracle of time," " God s own sacrifice 
 complete," glory in it. 
 
 Our Ruler is our Father. He is "just, and the justi- 
 fier of him that believeth in Jesus." God forbid that 
 we should not glory in this ! 
 
 And if we glory in it, friends, in the only practical 
 way, and with a living sympathy, we shall share in the 
 spirit of that sacrifice. Daily self-denials, cheerfully 
 undertaken, will lighten life of its gloom, and make the 
 burdens of all about us easier. Pride will not join 
 with the Pharisees, nor indifference with Pilate, nor 
 luxury with Caiaphas, nor unbelieving learning with 
 the scribes, nor cruelty and slavery to man with the 
 soldiery, nor sensuality with the rabble, to crucify the 
 Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame. 
 False manners, false living, false speaking, will not 
 deny him. Pretending to be Christians, we shall not, 
 by coldness on the one hand, nor by bigotry toward 
 
354 THE CROSS A BURDEN OR A GLOEY. 
 
 brethren on the other, make the blood of this meek and 
 holy " Lamb of God without blemish and without spot," 
 to be an unholy thing. Hardship will not be a hopeless 
 burden. Pain will not make us forget our patience. 
 Trouble will not turn us away, ungrateful, from our 
 Father s face. Repentance will not be compulsory. 
 Faith will not be reluctant. Love will cast out fear. 
 Nay, in all these things, we shall be conquerors, and 
 more than conquerors, through Him who hath loved us 
 and given himself for us, by whom the world is crucified 
 unto us, and we unto the world, that, being dead 
 unto sin, we should live, new creatures, in the Spirit. 
 
SEKMON XX. 
 
 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN IN THE 
 DIVINE TRINITY. 
 
 GO YE, THEREFORE, AND TEACH ALL NATIONS, BAPTIZING THEM 
 IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF 
 
 THE HOLY GHOST. Matthew xxviii. 19. 
 
 THE Saviour spoke these words at a moment fitted 
 above all others for a clear and full declaration of the 
 fundamental article of Christian belief. It was at the 
 end of his visible ministry on earth and his outward 
 connection with his people. It was when he was com 
 missioning his chosen disciples to their work, a work 
 which was to take up and bear on his own work 
 through all the future ages. In every respect, it was 
 the natural and fitting time for the decisive, explicit 
 communication of the one essential characteristic truth 
 of his religion. The " teaching Church " was then to be 
 told what was to be taught. That central and sublime 
 verity on which the whole matter of the Gospel rested 
 was to be condensed into a brief, comprehensive, sig 
 nificant sentence. This is the last hour. It is the crit 
 ical and awful meeting and commingling of two won 
 drous periods, the period of the Incarnation, and of 
 the everlasting age of the organized Christian common- 
 so* 
 
356 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 wealth. Now, if ever, Christ will distinctly proclaim 
 the doctrine of Christendom. We listen with breath 
 less anxiety to hear what Christianity means. Under 
 these solemn conditions, at this unparalleled crisis, it is 
 remarkable that our Lord gives his Church three things 
 necessary to its life, a Ministry, an initiatory Ordi 
 nance, a Creed : Go and teach, baptize, in the 
 Triune name. "What concerns us now is, not the order 
 of Preachers, nor the Sacraments, but the Doctrine. 
 We find here no recapitulation of moral and spiritual 
 precepts, as the ethical view would lead us to expect ; 
 no array of what are sometimes called practical direc 
 tions. We find something more grandly profound and 
 more intensely practical. Our faith is summoned to 
 the three persons of the one God : the Father, the Son, 
 and the Holy Ghost. No hint is given that there is any 
 difference of nature, dignity, duration, power, or glory 
 between them. There is nothing in the situation, the 
 relations, or the contents of the Divine formula to sug 
 gest that either of the three is less than the others, or 
 less than God. The obvious, unforced, natural inter 
 pretation is that the Three are persons, and that the Per 
 sons are three. Each of them is elsewhere in the Scrip 
 tures referred to as God. Each of them is distinguished 
 from the others by the personal pronouns. To each of 
 them Divine attributes and Divine acts are ascribed, 
 and to each Divine worship is offered. So, by a vast 
 preponderance, the Church of Christ has received and 
 held these words. So all the parts and powers and 
 operations of the entire Gospel agree. The term 
 Trinity is not applied to the doctrine in the Bible ; but 
 it is a definite and just description of what the Bible 
 teaches ; and there is no reason why it should not be 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 357 
 
 adopted and used. It is sanctioned by the venerable 
 and hallowed custom of Christian centuries, and of 
 innumerable hosts of confessors, sages, and saints. 
 There is an especial reason for using it if from its 
 omission the inference should be anywhere drawn that 
 the truth itself, which the term conveys, is denied. 
 Calvin said he was willing that the name " Trinity " 
 should be " buried and forgot," if only this could be 
 the accepted faith of all, that Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit, each distinguished by a peculiar property, arc 
 one God. Equally willing ought we to be to take up 
 and assert that name, if thereby we may render to this 
 " accepted faith " any more unambiguous or unreserved 
 honor. 
 
 Let the solemn and tender spirit of that parting 
 scene where the doctrine was announced with such 
 august authority be given to our unworthy attempt to 
 reaffirm it ! It ought to be the last of all subjects to 
 be handled in a hard, technical, jejune, or merely dog 
 matic treatment. Still less should the sharp, fierce 
 temper of dialectical ambition or partisan controversy 
 intrude to embitter the discussion. How different might 
 have been the result, for the interests of a true theology 
 and an undefiled religion, if, in their arguments and 
 expostulations for their Master s divinity, believers 
 had always remembered the gentleness of his exam 
 ple ! May that Lord of perfect love breathe a better 
 influence over the studies, reasonings, and persuasions 
 of those who seek to behold and publish his glory ! No 
 apprehension, however clear or deep, of the great real 
 ity of the Three-in-one can justify a defence with the 
 unhallowed weapons of pride, denunciation, or dogma 
 tism. We must remember there is also a threefold 
 
358 LIFE, 
 
 unity of the complete human goodness, as of the being 
 of our God, and that of this charity is the perfect bond. 
 If we break it, earnestness may plead in extenuation 
 for us, but it never expunges the wrong. And with 
 charity let us try to keep humility ; try to keep it the 
 more, since one of the" plainest offices of the special 
 mystery of faith before us is to require and preserve 
 this lowliness of the Christian mind. Where the arro 
 gant, self-asserting intellect has to veil its face, pre 
 sumption in judgment may well lie still. If in all the 
 circle of sacred themes there is one where both the dry- 
 ness of scholastic speculation and the acerbity of polem 
 ics should be laid aside, where the method should be 
 spiritual, the tone devout, and all the thoughts pene 
 trated and tempered with the fragrancy of holy affec 
 tions, it surely is this.* 
 
 It may furnish an aid to this catholicity, as it cer 
 tainly is an impressive testimony to the doctrine itself, 
 that the Christian world has been so generally agreed 
 in it. Truth is not determined by majorities ; and yet 
 it would be contrary to the laws of our constitution not 
 to be affected by a testimony so vast, uniform, and 
 sacred as that which is rendered by the common belief 
 of Christian history and the Christian countries to the 
 truth of the Trinity. There is something extremely 
 painful, not to say irreverent, towards the Providence 
 which has watched and led the true Christian Israel, in 
 presuming that a tenet so emphatically and gladly re 
 ceived in all the ages and regions of Christendom as 
 
 * " So that we may rather experience the power of these mysteries 
 of the Trinity in the heart than speak about them in lofty words." 
 
 TwESTEN. 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 359 
 
 almost literally to meet the terms of the test of Vin- 
 centius, believed always, everywhere, and by all,* 
 is unfounded in revelation and truth. Such a conclu 
 sion puts an aspect of uncertainty over the mind of the 
 Church scarcely consistent with any tolerable confi 
 dence in that great promise of the Master, that he 
 would be with his own all days. We travel abroad 
 through these converted lands, over the round world. 
 We enter, at the call of the Sabbath morning light, the 
 place of assembled worshippers : let it be the newly- 
 planted conventicle on the edge of the Western forest, 
 or the missionary station at the extremity of the East 
 ern continent ; let it be the collection of northern 
 mountaineers, or of the dwellers in southern valleys ; 
 let it be in the plain village meeting-house, or in the 
 magnificent cathedrals of the old cities ; let it be the 
 crowded congregation of the metropolis, or the " two or 
 three " that meet in faith in upper chambers, or in log- 
 huts, or under palm-trees ; let it be groups in dark and 
 by-way alleys, companies of rescued vagrants, victims of 
 persecution in caves of the rocks and hiding-places of 
 the hills ; let it be regenerate bands gathered to pray 
 in any of the islands of the ocean, or thankful circles 
 of believers confessing their dependence and beseeching 
 pardon on ships decks in the midst of the ocean. So 
 we pass over the outstretched countries of both hemi 
 spheres : it is well-nigh certain, so certain that the 
 rare and scattered exceptions drop out of the broad and 
 general conclusion, that the lowly petitions, the fer 
 vent supplications, the hearty confessions, the eager 
 thanksgivings, or the grand peals of choral adoration, 
 
 # " Quod semper, quod ubjque, quod ab omnibus," 
 
360 
 
 which our ears shall hear will end in the uplifting ascrip 
 tion to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the one 
 ever-living and almighty God of all the earth. This is 
 the voice of the unhesitating praise that embraces and 
 hallows the globe. Or we stand still, and look back 
 ward, to see what teaching it has been that has achieved 
 all the great results that we glory in, as constituting our 
 Christian civilization ; and we find that in simple, his 
 torical fact, this very doctrine appears in immediate 
 and significant connection with nearly all. It is this, 
 or at least that system of which this is a characteristic 
 and inseparable element, which has reverently reared 
 the majestic and humbler temples, has piled up the vast 
 cruciform structures by the hands of generations which 
 crumbled one after another as the slow toil proceeded, 
 has written the ancient creeds and modern confessions, 
 has prayed the earlier and later litanies, has sung the 
 glorias and misereres of exultant or penitent millions, 
 has lifted the sweet hymns of East and West, has or 
 ganized missions and sent forth their messengers, has 
 called councils and subdued nations to the cross, has 
 conserved the order and reformed the abuses of imper 
 fect administrations, and has presided over the learning, 
 the philosophy, and the poetry in the literature of the 
 Christian centuries. Throughout all these diversities of 
 sacred operation, this old and vital truth, reaffirmed, 
 hardly questioned, if omitted soon resumed again, kept 
 clear and confident, has wrought, has builded, has pre 
 served. And then, if we enter into the private expe 
 riences, the griefs, and strifes, and sorrows of the 
 unnumbered multitudes that have been born in pain, 
 and died in the midst of tears, it is this truth which has 
 kept its vigils by the weary processions of sufferers, and 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 361 
 
 consoled them. All this is the undeniable report of 
 facts. That there have been some, in different places, 
 limited communities, or scattered individuals, avowing 
 belief in the religion, and honorable in character, who 
 have rejected the doctrine, is evident. Yet it keeps its 
 place, never more firmly established, or widely wel 
 comed, with its related and attendant truths, than to 
 day. Grateful for a support so comforting, and a sym 
 pathy so large, its advocates can afford to leave all 
 impatience and intolerance to less privileged men.* 
 
 The object of the present discourse is not to offer a 
 systematic, much less an exhaustive statement, of the 
 grounds, Scriptural or extra-Scriptural, for a belief in 
 the Divine Trinity. Such of these as may appear are 
 incidental to the different and practical purpose of 
 showing how that belief ministers to the spiritual 
 life, salvation, and comfort of the believer. Only 
 to prepare the way, possibly, for a more favorable 
 entertainment of this latter attempt, we introduce it 
 with the briefest sketch of the form of the doctrine 
 
 * Hardly anything respecting the history of the Trinity is more remark 
 able than the substantial agreement amidst the large variety of forms and 
 shades under which the doctrine has been theologically presented. In the 
 face of the libraries of close controversy, and the number of schools, all 
 of them signs of the intense vitality and power hidden in the inmost spir 
 itual economy of the article, the strong thinkers upon it are, after all, 
 essentially and persistently at one : the early and mediccval Fathers, the 
 Continental and English reformers, the Anglican scholars, the Puritan 
 and American divines, Athanasius and Tholuck, Fenelon and Knox, 
 Augustine and Anselm, Calvin and Taylor, Luther and Bossuet, Bull and 
 Baxter, Horsley and Howe, Pearson, Newman, Pascal, Cudworth, Wolf, 
 Butler, Tauler and Hopkins, Waterland and Edwards, Sherlock and 
 Dwight, Stuart, Neander. Nice, Trent, Augsburg, Westminster, Prince 
 ton, Andover, New Haven, with their symbols, notwithstanding their differ 
 ences, are Trinitarian. 
 
362 
 
 as it is accepted in our own thought, always striving 
 to remember, and entreating the reader to remember, 
 the inadequacy of both thought and language to com 
 prehend or to define what is too high for everything in 
 us but faith. With another we can say, in no ostenta 
 tion of modesty, that we " do not undertake to fathom 
 the interior being of God, and tell how it is composed. 
 That is a matter too high for us all." And, with the 
 penetrating . and healthy mind of Robertson, in no 
 strained sense, we can say, of the things of religion, 
 "the doctrine of the Trinity is the sum of all that 
 knowledge which has yet been gained by man." 
 
 In the transcendent, removed, and awful depth of 
 his Absolute Infinitude, which no understanding can 
 pierce, the Everlasting and Almighty God lives in 
 an existence of which our only possible knowledge is 
 gained by lights thrown back from revelation. Out of 
 that ineffable and veiled Godhead, the groundwork, 
 if we may say so, of all Divine manifestation, or theo- 
 phany, there emerge to us in revelation the three whom 
 we rightly call persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 with their several individual offices, mutual relations, 
 operations towards men, and perfect unity together. 
 Holding fast the prime and positive fact of this unity, 
 we have given us, as an equal matter of faith, the 
 Threeness. We know of no priority to that Threeness ; 
 of no epoch when it was not ; of no Deity independent 
 of that threefold distinction. A question at that point 
 takes us over into realms utterly inscrutable to thought. 
 We conceive of God always, not as Absolute Being, but 
 as in relations, in process, in act. And in such rela 
 tions, process, act, we behold him only as Three : the 
 Son eternally begotten of the Father, not subordinate 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 363 
 
 in nature or essence, nor created, nor beginning, but 
 consubstantial with the Father : the Holy Ghost ever 
 proceeding from the Father and the Son, not in time, 
 nor made out of nothing, but one in power and glory 
 and eternity with them both.* Christ comes forth out 
 of the Godhead as the Son, the Saviour, and, being born 
 of Mary, is Jesus, the Messiah. We could not know 
 him in those very characters which he must sustain in 
 order to be our Redeemer except as he really takes 
 upon himself our nature, a voluntary human subjec 
 tion : as it is precisely written, " the image of the invis 
 ible God " in humanity. This is the mystery of the 
 Incarnation. This was the precise mercy to be wrought 
 for the solution of the problem of the world s sin. He 
 was to leave " the glory which he had with the Father 
 before the world was," and " be made in fashion as a 
 man," be " tempted like as we are, yet without sin," be 
 " a High-Priest that can be touched with the feeling of 
 our infirmities," " God manifest in the flesh," " God 
 with us." To this agree all the Scriptures. f 
 
 It was to be expected that, in repeated instances, this 
 incarnate Son, engaged on his redeeming and interces 
 sory work would be shown as dependent on the Father, 
 who now represents to us the unseen personality of the 
 Godhead, as submissive, suffering, deferential, obedi 
 ent even unto death, perfect in humiliation. Volunta- 
 
 * " These (Nicene) documents do not mean that God, at some date 
 called " Eternity," begat his Son and sent forth his Holy Spirit, but that, 
 in some high sense undefinable, he is datelessly and eternally becoming 
 Three." 
 
 t The author s reasons for believing in the proper Divinity of Christ 
 have been partly stated in "Sermons for the People/ XVIII, XX., 
 XXII, XXVI 
 
 31 
 
364 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 rily, to this end, and for the time, things which only the 
 Father knoweth are veiled from the Son, and he says 
 (in language which we have only to suppose put into 
 the mouth of any other being to find it in fact a proof 
 of his divinity), "My Father is greater than I." He 
 prays ; how else could he be the Intercessor ? He 
 obeys, is sent, lessens himself to dependency for the 
 sake of mediation. How else could the Divine will 
 and perfection be displayed under human conditions ? 
 Hence the whole of that instrumental inequality be 
 tween Son and Father, which is wrought into the 
 Biblical language, remains in all our devotional habit, 
 and which ought to remain there to give us a realiza 
 tion of the wondrous fact of the redemption, that we 
 may apprehend our Saviour both as God and as man. 
 Nor is there any great practical difficulty, as experi 
 ence abundantly shows, in disconnecting from this 
 endearing conception the notion that this is a per 
 manent or subjective subordination. The apprehen 
 sion is by faith, or by the spiritual power. And yet 
 the understanding itself receives help and illumination 
 from this Scriptural and consistent view of the whole 
 august theme. A Trinity of co-equal persons, with 
 diverse offices, is, if we may so express it, the sublime 
 working-scheme of Revelation and Redemption. 
 
 Minds just passing away from the opposite view, and 
 first adopting the faith that Christ is verily their Lord 
 and God, are liable to a kind of surprise when they are 
 called back from this new contemplation of his actual 
 divinity by those texts which represent him as doing 
 nothing " of himself." But a deeper reflection will dis 
 cover that this very language is one way of referring up 
 the springs of his personal action into the Godhead ; 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 365 
 
 and that the human representations are just as essential 
 to the completeness of the twofold view of the Saviour 
 in his incarnation, the mediator sharing the two 
 natures of the parties mediated, as the language 
 which tells us so distinctly of his divinity. Consider, 
 too, if the Incarnation was to be a fact at all, how 
 the Saviour could possibly lead the rude and unpre 
 pared men about him, who saw him every day " in 
 fashion as a man," to conceive of him in his higher 
 character, except by exactly the gradual and accommo 
 dating process of language which he employed. 
 
 Nothing is much easier, of course, when the spiritual 
 faculty is not in harmony with the truth announced, 
 than for the critical reason to go to work and thrust 
 upon it any number of difficulties. All readers of 
 theological controversy know well enough beforehand 
 what they will be. And if the deeper want has been 
 awakened in them, they know presently just as well 
 how unsatisfying these objections are, as well as their 
 steady proclivity to a bold and extreme negation of 
 what they regard the peculiar glories of the religion 
 of the Gospel. Still, we must expect to hear them 
 announced, again and again, with all the conscious 
 complacency of a supposed originality. We shall have 
 arithmetic, mechanics, common sense, psychology, dil 
 igently invoked to prove our absurdity. Meantime, 
 faith will be probably just as little disturbed in the 
 future as she has been in the ages past, and those 
 excellent mathematical and metaphysical sciences will 
 keep their places of utility, with no serious damage 
 from the false appeal made to them. To all such oppo 
 sitions, the believer has to make a single and sufficient 
 answer : " I know in whom I have believed ; " and if he 
 
366 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 may do so without presumption, lie will repeat those 
 great words of the Apostle, written from 1 Cor. i. 23 to 
 the sixteenth verse of the second chapter, beginning, 
 " But we preach Christ crucified." 
 
 For those who do not see the literal divinity or 
 deity of Christ it appears difficult to entertain the idea 
 that the Saviour s perfect humanity is just as dear to the 
 Trinitarian, and just as theologically important as his 
 perfect divinity : indeed that each is indispensable to 
 the whole mediatorial office. For him who has " all 
 power in heaven and earth " to say " Of that day and 
 hour knoweth not the Son " is condescension indeed ! 
 It brings God near, as in his unabated attributes he 
 could not be brought. But the objector, if he recog 
 nizes the Scriptural authority at all, will still have other 
 passages, just as explicit and undeniable, to dispose of, 
 before he has adjusted the scheme of his Christology. 
 The Eternal Son is seen remaining rooted forever 
 in the Godhead, having the basis of his being un 
 changed, deific, uncreated. Then he speaks to say, " I 
 and my Father are one ; " " He that hath seen me hath 
 seen the Father." With these decisive affirmations ac 
 cord a large class in the New Testament, both direct 
 and indirect. Paul speaks of Christ as set " far above 
 all principality and power, and might and dominion, 
 and every name that is named, not only in this world, 
 but also in that which is to come." Can this be a crea 
 ture ? " That at the name of Jesus every knee should 
 bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord." Is not 
 this a being to whom prayer is to be offered ? " The 
 God of our fathers raised up Jesus ; him hath God 
 exalted," preached Peter and the rest, "to be a Prince 
 and a Saviour for to give repentance to Israel and for- 
 
IN THE DIVINE TEINITY. 367 
 
 giveness of sins." Is it not right to ask him who gives 
 " repentance and forgiveness of sins " to do it ? "He 
 is the propitiation for our sins," writes John, " and not 
 for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 
 A man, a mortal and finite nature, the " propitiation 
 for the sins of the whole world ! " At last, when all 
 the purposes of the propitiation are accomplished, in 
 that dim, far-off, well-nigh inconceivable future toward 
 which a prophetic eye once ventures to reach, this 
 incarnate " Head over all things to the Church " will 
 render up the kingdom to the Father, and resume his 
 place in the co-equal Three, the indivisible One. Mark 
 the expressions (1 Cor. xv. 24, 28). It is the Son who 
 hath put " all things under his feet," " all rule, author 
 ity, and power," who is " subject unto God (viroTa- 
 yrfa-eTaiy " arranged under "). Just after, it is God that 
 " hath put all things under him." In this sense, there 
 fore, God and the Son are the same, for the same mas 
 tery is asserted of each. But the Son, in his char 
 acter of Sonship, is retaken, so to speak, into the ever 
 lasting, almighty, ineffable, undivided One, where the 
 distinctions of office which had aided us so greatly in 
 apprehending the glorious Trinity are lost to our sight. 
 It is not anything peculiar to one of the Three Per 
 sons, but God in whom they all are One, who then " is 
 all in all." * 
 
 * The following paragraphs, indicating a particular and original line of 
 proof, are taken from Bushnell s " Nature and the Supernatural." 
 
 " There is yet another point related to this, in which the attitude of 
 Jesus is even more distinct from any that was ever taken by man, and is 
 yet triumphantly sustained. I speak of the astonishing pretensions as 
 serted concerning his person. Similar pretensions have sometimes been 
 assumed by maniacs, or insane persons, but never, so far as I know, by per 
 sons in the proper exercise of their reason. Certain it is that no mere man 
 31* 
 
368 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOE MAN 
 
 Both in the interior necessities of the evangelical sys 
 tem as a consistent whole, and in the ordinary habit of 
 theological thought, a proper acceptance of the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation and of the true Divinity of the Sec 
 ond Person is attended with a prompt assent to the Divin- 
 
 could take the same attitude of supremacy toward the race, and inherent 
 affinity or oneness with God, without fatally shocking the confidence of 
 the world by his effrontery. Imagine a human nature saying to the world, 
 I came forth from the Father/ ye are beneath, I am from above ; 
 facing all the intelligence and even the philosophy of the world, and say 
 ing in bold assurance, Behold a greater than Solomon is here/ I 
 am the light of the world/ the way, the truth, the life ; publishing 
 to all people and religions, No man cometh to the Father but by me ; 
 promising openly in his death, I will draw all men unto me ; address 
 ing the Infinite Majesty, and testifying, I have glorified thee on the 
 earth ; calling to the human race, Come unto me/ follow me ; 
 laying his hand upon all the dearest and most intimate affections of life, 
 and demanding a precedent love, He that loveth father or mother more 
 than me, is not worthy of me/ Was there ever a man that dared put him 
 self on the world in such pretensions ? as if all light was in him, as if to 
 follow him and be worthy of him was to be the conclusive or chief excel 
 lence of mankind ! But no one is offended with Jesus on this account, 
 and, what is a sure test of his success, it is remarkable that, of all the 
 readers of the Gospel, it probably never occurs to one in a hundred thou 
 sand to blame his conceit or the egregious vanity of his pretensions. 
 
 " Nor is there anything disputable in these pretensions, least of all, any 
 trace of myth or fabulous tradition. They enter into the very web of 
 his ministry, so that if they are extracted and nothing left transcending 
 mere humanity, nothing at all is left. Indeed, there is a tacit assumption, 
 continually maintained, that far exceeds the range of these formal preten 
 sions. He says, I and the Father that sent me ! What figure would a 
 man present in such language, I and the Father ? He goes even beyond 
 this, and, apparently without any thought of excess or presumption, class 
 ing himself with the Infinite Majesty in a common plural, he says, We 
 will come unto him and make our abode with him/ Imagine any, the 
 greatest and holiest of mankind, any prophet or apostle, saying We of 
 himself and the Great Jehovah ! What a conception did he give us con 
 cerning himself when he assumed the necessity of such information as this, 
 My Father is greater than I ; and above all, when he calls himself, as 
 he often does in a tone of condescension, the Son of Man/ See 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 369 
 
 ity of the Third.* A just Christology carries with it a 
 just Pneumatology. The baptismal formula, in the text, 
 would alone put the personality of the Holy Spirit on a 
 ground of reasonable certainty, through the most natu 
 ral understanding of the words. If He is personal, no 
 considerable number of men have ever been found to 
 question that he is God, nor to hesitate at the Tri-unity. 
 How forced would be the suppression, and putting 
 what a repulsive ambiguity on this final and moment 
 ous commission of the Lord s followers for the conver 
 sion of the world, if he first mentioned two names 
 which, as all alike agree, are names of distinct persons, 
 
 him also on the top of Olivet, looking down on the guilty city and weep 
 ing words of compassion like these, imagine some men weeping over 
 London or New York, in the like, How often would I have gathered 
 thy children together as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, 
 and ye would not ! See him also in the Supper, instituting a rite of 
 remembrance for himself, a scorned, outcast man, and saying, This is my 
 body, this do in remembrance of me. 
 
 " Come now, all ye that tell us in your wisdonf of the mere natural human 
 ity of Jesus, and help us to find how it is, that he is only a natural develop 
 ment of the human ; select your wisest and best character ; take the range, 
 if you will, of all the great philosophers and saints, and choose out one 
 that is most competent ; or if, perchance, some one of you may imagine 
 that he is himself about upon a level with Jesus (as we hear that some of 
 you do), let him come forward in this trial and say, Follow me, 
 be worthy of me/ I am the light of the world, ye are from 
 beneath, I am from above, behold a greater than Solomon is here ; 
 take on all these transcendent assumptions, and see how soon your glory 
 will be sifted out of you by the detective gaze, and darkened by the con 
 tempt of mankind ! Why not ; is not the challenge fair ? Do you not 
 tell us that you can say as divine things as he ? Is it not in you too, of 
 course, to do what is human ? Are you not in the front rank of human 
 developments ? Do you not rejoice in the power to rectify many mis 
 takes and errors in the words of Jesus ? Give us then this one experi 
 ment, and see if it does not prove to you a truth that is of some conse 
 quence ; viz. that you are a man, and that Jesus Christ is more ? " 
 
 * See Hare s " Mission of the Comforter." 
 
370 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 and then slipped in, without notice or explanation, a 
 name which purports to be just as much the name of a 
 person as the other two, but which is only a common 
 noun signifying an immaterial influence ! How despe 
 rate the shifts of a determined theory ! The fifteenth 
 and sixteenth chapters of John are equally explicit. 
 No personality was ever more clearly pronounced, by 
 the appropriate attributes and pronouns, than is that 
 of the Comforter there. In those tender and solemn 
 conversations, charged with the only hope and counsel 
 to the disciples about to be bereaved, and indeed to the 
 world of mankind, is it possible our Saviour was deal 
 ing in dark paradoxes or uninterpreted figures of rhet 
 oric ? Many other passages in the Gospels and Epistles 
 can be wrested from their obvious meaning only by a 
 similar violence. It is so with the Apostolical bene 
 dictions, which were evidently intended to be, what 
 they have so generally proved, the familiar reposito 
 ries and often-repeated symbols of the great central 
 facts of Christian theology. Apart from some pre 
 conceived purpose, who would ever suppose there was a 
 sudden lapse or deviation from the personal to the im 
 personal style, on getting half or two thirds through 
 that worshipful and pre-eminent blessing : " The grace 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and 
 the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all ever 
 more " ? 
 
 That the influence emanating from that Person 
 should be sometimes represented as subject to im 
 personal or passive conditions, as "poured out," 
 " given," " transmitted," " shed abroad," and the 
 like, is not strange ; nor that these influences should 
 be so personified that they and the Person they proceed 
 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 371 
 
 from should be sometimes designated under the same 
 term. "VVe say of the spirit of a man that it is diffused, 
 imparted, communicated, in the same manner. But 
 who supposes that this denies the personality of the 
 man ? On the other hand, there is no usage nor anal- 
 ogy to justify us in reversing this popular practice of 
 language, and concluding that because principles may 
 be personified, persons, clearly described and shown to 
 us as such, may be stripped of their personality, and 
 refined away into impressions. The other class of 
 passages remains undisturbed, where this personality 
 is affirmed, passages to be disposed of, on the anti- 
 Trinitarian hypothesis, only by constructions to which 
 Reason herself should be very reluctant to offer her 
 protection. 
 
 Thus, in the internal and permanent basis of their 
 eternal being, the Three are one and the same, as much 
 so as three different intermingling oceans, underflowing 
 and encircling the continents, are one sea. In God 
 revealed these three personalities issue forth to take 
 up their merciful and glorious offices as Father, Son, 
 Spirit. It lias been justly observed that the strictly 
 evangelical origin of the term " Father," or its applica 
 tion simultaneously with the appearance of Christ, and 
 in immediate connection with the new economy of the 
 Incarnation, is itself a suggestion of the Tri-une belief, 
 as implying that not all of God is expressed till the 
 " Son " also, the necessary correlative of " Father," is 
 known. And thinking patiently a little further, we shall 
 see that human language could not so well represent 
 these infinite realities as by using the same term, 
 " Father," sometimes for the absolute Godhead, and 
 sometimes for that relative paternal Person in the 
 
372 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOB MAN 
 
 Godhead brought to view only when the Son and the 
 Spirit appear ; as also by using the term " Son " some 
 times for the condescending and accommodated nature 
 of Christ in the flesh, " tempted like as we are," and 
 sometimes for the Christ who is " the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and forever," " in whom dwelleth all the ful 
 ness (pleroma) of the Godhead." The qualities of 
 the unutterable, deific substance are present in each. 
 Christ Jesus, as we imperfectly say, brings God near to 
 us.* So that the suspicion that any homage, reverence, 
 gratitude, worship, paid to the Son is so much taken 
 away from the Father will instantly betray its origin, 
 as arising in another conception of the whole subject. 
 To the Trinitarian, as to Christ himself, it is impossible. 
 " That all men should honor the Son even as they honor 
 the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth 
 not the Father which hath sent him." f 
 
 * " The Son of God became incarnate in order that man might have 
 a way to the God of man through the Man-God." ST. AUGUSTINE S 
 " City of God." 
 
 t Olshausen s exposition of our text may, perhaps, furnish some assist 
 ance to a willing apprehension of it ; and we quote from it at some length. 
 " But it is worthy of notice that the Saviour does not here give the name 
 of God directly, but the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as the 
 exalted object to which the votary of baptism becomes pledged. This is 
 the only passage in the Gospels in which the Lord himself names the 
 Three Divine persons together. In many passages the Saviour, it is true, 
 describes both the Son and the Holy Ghost individually as Divine person 
 alities. Here, however, they appear together, and are styled in common 
 the object to which believers bind themselves by baptism. The elements 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity are thus given in Christ s identical words. 
 But the dogma is presented in an entirely undeveloped form, and the un 
 folding of the mystery is committed to the scientific activity of the Church. 
 The established doctrine of the Church on this subject is essentially that of 
 the Bible also, but the symbolically derived term Person involves a degree 
 of inconvenience, and may easily lead to error. Human language, how- 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 873 
 
 Consistent, simple, and sublime as this ancient and 
 prevailing doctrine is thus made to appear to us, it is 
 none the less a mystery offered to faith, on faith s own 
 evidence. It is obvious that most of those difficulties 
 which puzzle the mind in attempting to grasp it spring 
 from some form of our notions of personality. Hence 
 it is pertinent to remember that, strictly speaking, per 
 sonality is a human conception, applicable to God at all 
 only by an extreme liberty, and not at all competent to 
 include the measures of Infinitude ; and that this is so 
 generally held by all Trinitarian scholars that any at 
 tempt to press them into embarrassment by the consid- 
 
 ever, furnishes no expression by which the connection between a unity of 
 essence with an independence of consciousness in Father, Son, and Spirit 
 can be more appropriately indicated. We cannot therefore charge the 
 teachers of the Church with error because they have made choice of this 
 expression. "We can only lament the imperfection of human language, 
 which renders it inadequate to designate the most exalted and absolute 
 relations which arc clearly comprehensible to the purified reason only by 
 precise ideas and words corresponding to them. The chief error to which 
 the word Person leads, and which has constantly been opposed by all 
 the more profound teachers of the Church, and especially by Augustine, in 
 his acute and profound work on the subject of the Trinity, is this. We 
 are led by it to conceive of Father, Son, and Spirit as locally or mechani 
 cally distinct from one another, whilst we should view them as livingly 
 interpenetrating one another. To this view we may advantageously op 
 pose whatever there is of truth in Sabellianism (which rightly recognizes 
 this unity in the existence of the Deity), yet without adopting at the same 
 time its erroneous denial of the individual independency of consciousness 
 in Father, Son, and Spirit. The only means we possess for illustrating the 
 unity of the essence, and the severalty of consciousness in the Godhead, 
 consists in the corresponding analogy which we find in the spiritual nature 
 of man, the image of God. As in man there is not only spiritual being, 
 but also the knowledge of that being, so also in the Divine nature, if we 
 apprehend it as a living God, not as a dead notion, we must suppose both 
 being and the knowledge of its peculiar being. This knowledge which 
 God possesses of himself is designated as the Son : in him dwells the 
 Father himself, and through him effects everything that he does effect. 
 
374 LIFE, 
 
 eration now before us is nugatory to the last degree. It 
 is now as commonly admitted by the highest philosophy 
 as it is cheerfully confessed by religious humility, that 
 a proper, intellectual conception of the personality of an 
 Infinite Being is impossible. Yet it graciously pleases 
 our Heavenly Father to show himself to his children, 
 as we are soon to see more fully, in a personal charac 
 ter. Nothing in all our religion is so precious and so 
 powerful as this manifestation. We are taught, and we 
 all believe, that God absolute is a being who has no form, 
 motion, place, measure, color, and never literally thinks, 
 reasons, remembers, plans, considers, or believes. Yet 
 
 But, as all the powers of the Father concentrate themselves, as it were, in 
 his self-consciousness, so do they also continually revert from the Son to 
 their primary source, the Father, and this return is designated as the Holy 
 Ghost. This view explains the phraseology of Scripture, where it is said 
 that the Father draws to the Son/ but, the Son leads, in the Holy 
 Ghost, back again to the Father. All knowledge of God proceeds 
 from the Father, as absolute power, through the Son, as perfect love, to the 
 Holy Ghost, as complete holiness. But, regarded conversely, the Holy 
 Ghost leads back directly to the Father, so that the end again issues in the 
 beginning/ And thus in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is represented the 
 eternal being of God in its essential, internal movement and interaction. 
 To apprehend, however, the idea of the individual as something limited and 
 bounded within itself, and totally separated from all other spiritual life, 
 would be the very error which has been already pointed out ; and the 
 Scriptures, in their entire mode of expression, show that in this sense it 
 apprehends neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost as a person. The Son, 
 indeed, appears individualized in the person of Jesus, but he labors by 
 regeneration to transform all humanity into his own nature, on which 
 account the whole Church is simply called Christ (1 Cor. xii. 12); and 
 the Holy Ghost also appears shed abroad in the hearts of all believers, 
 like the Father, who is omnipresent throughout the whole universe. As, 
 therefore, the consciousness of God in itself can be conceived of only as 
 all-comprehending, so also must the notion of Person, under the true idea 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity, be understood in an all-comprehensive 
 sense. By this means a great deal of the difficulty which, from the earli 
 est times, has surrounded the doctrine of the Trinity, will be obviated." 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 375 
 
 what thought have we which is absolutely able to clear 
 itself of these limitations, and still hold fast the notion 
 of a properly personal existence ? None the less are we 
 so made under Christ as by a secret force of conviction 
 to believe and affirm that God is both Infinite and a 
 Person. None the less do our Christian Scriptures con 
 tinually draw up and lead on our souls to a loftier and 
 clearer communion with our God by setting him before 
 us, heart to heart, through human relations and images, 
 as having in him, and towards us, that which answers to 
 thoughts, emotions, and experiences in ourselves. The 
 inference is not remote nor obscure. We have no more 
 reason to disbelieve God s declared Tri-unity, on the 
 score of any inadequacy in our rational conceptions, of 
 it, than we have to disbelieve his infinite personality. 
 We know both only in revelation, where the one is dis 
 closed in immediate connection with the other. What 
 we have to do is to be sure we do not either offend re 
 ligious reverence, nor assert a literal tri-theism, by fast 
 ening on a metaphysical idea of persons.* " As we can 
 say that God is a Person without any real denial of his 
 infinity, so we can say that he is three Persons without 
 any breach of his unity." A great deal of our common 
 allegation of " mystery " as an objection to believing is 
 the most shallow self-illusion. In this parlance, mystery 
 
 * So says Dr. Taylor, " Who docs not know that Trinitarians claim, in 
 the statement of their doctrine, to use the terms being and person, not in 
 their ordinary, but in a peculiar meaning, demanded by the nature of the 
 subject ? " A considerable part of his course of lectures on the Trinity is 
 devoted to an elucidation of this peculiarity. It is to be hoped that it is by 
 a defect of information, and not of candor, that, in the face of similar state 
 ments from Bishop Butler, Whately, Neander, and other leading writers 
 on the Trinitarian side, their opponents persevere in overlooking the fact 
 that any such distinction is made. 
 32 
 
376 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 means something like a compound of the unfamiliar 
 and the unwelcome. But we live amidst mysteries, 
 keep house with them, walk over them, lie down and 
 rise up with them, are folded in by them, are born out 
 of them, breathe them, and die into them. When we 
 have told ourselves how the tree that shades us gets out 
 of the seed blown from our finger s end, or when we 
 have explained how one person influences another with 
 out sight or touch, we may perhaps be emboldened to 
 make our comprehension the criterion of the verities of 
 God.* 
 
 * To refer to Mr. Hansel s very full and striking illustrations and demon 
 strations of the general principle that the human consciousness is unequal 
 to the speculative conception of a Being at once absolute, infinite, and per 
 sonal, while yet faith in such a Being is the soul s privilege and duty, does 
 not involve an assent to all the conclusions he reaches in the same remark 
 able course of reasoning, much less to all those which impetuous and 
 unfair critics have attributed to him. That Sir William. Hamilton s view 
 of the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, and his pupil s, of the Limits of 
 Religious Thought, contain original ideas which are calculated, with 
 whatever modifications, to encourage the coming generation in Scriptural 
 convictions of the Divine Nature, is what nothing but either the Rational 
 ism or the Dogmatism which they both so powerfully assail can venture 
 to deny. 
 
 " The objection, How can the One be many, or the many one ? is so 
 far from telling with peculiar force against the catholic doctrine of the 
 Holy Trinity, that it has precisely the same power or want of power, 
 and may be urged with precisely the same effect or want of effect against 
 any conception, theological or philosophical, in which we may attempt to 
 represent the Divine Nature and attributes as infinite, or indeed to ex 
 hibit the infinite at all." <f How can there be a variety of attributes, each 
 infinite in its kind, and yet all together constituting but one Infinite? 
 or how, on the other hand, can the Infinite be conceived as existing with 
 out diversity at all ? " " The doctrine of the Son of God, begotten of 
 the Father, and yet co-eternal with the Father, is in no wise more or less 
 comprehensible by human reason than the relation between the Divine 
 essence and its attributes." "If there is sufficient evidence, on other 
 grounds, to show that the Scripture, in which this doctrine is contained, 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 377 
 
 If, however, there are any who will insist on the sup 
 ports of intellectual consent, let them be so far met by 
 the facts of history as to be obliged to own where the 
 real strength of men s thought has deposited the power 
 of its testimony. Against all pretences of rational ad 
 vantage or literary patronage, let it be freely said that 
 this doctrine has been cordially accepted, and in count 
 less illustrious instances zealously advocated, by the 
 vast majority of the logicians, philosophers, statesmen, 
 men of the largest dialectic and thinking energy, of the 
 keenest penetration and most comprehensive faculty of 
 generalization, that have lived in Christendom : and let 
 the fact stand for what it is worth, and persuade whom 
 it will. Respectable cases of exception can, it is true, 
 be readily referred to. Constitutional biases, or those 
 of education, the passion for difference or innovation, 
 inevitable reactions from extreme positions; all these 
 have occasioned an anti-Trinitarian party, including 
 examples of sincere, able, honorable dissent from the 
 
 is a revelation from God, the doctrine itself must be unconditionally re 
 ceived, not as reasonable nor as unreasonable, but as Scriptural. If there 
 is not such evidence, the doctrine itself will lack its proper support ; but 
 the reason which rejects it is utterly incompetent to substitute any other 
 representation in its place." " Let religion begin where it will, it must 
 begin with that which is above reason." " We may seek as we will for 
 a religion within the limits of the bare reason, and we shall not find it, 
 simply because no such thing exists," c., &c. HANSEL S Bampton 
 Lectures, VI. 
 
 " But if he denies that three can be predicated of one, and one of three, 
 let him allow that there is something in God Avhich his intellect cannot 
 penetrate, and let him not compare the nature of God, which is above all 
 things free from all condition of place and time and composition of parts, 
 with things which are confined to place and time, or composed of parts ; 
 but let him believe that there is something, in that nature, which cannot be 
 in those things, and let him acquiesce in Christian authority, and not dis 
 pute against it." ANSELM. 
 
378 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 accepted belief of the Church. But when we look from 
 these we emerge into an almost boundless field of the 
 eminent names of moral and intellectual science, his 
 tory, theology, and general Christian letters, all un- 
 doubting in that article of faith of which one of their 
 number, Coleridge, says, " The article of Trinity is 
 religion, is reason, and its universal formula ; " and 
 another, Neander, "It is the fundamental article of the 
 Christian faith, the essential contents of Christianity 
 summed up in brief." The ascendant school of philo 
 sophical thought to-day is unequivocally Trinitarian. 
 Even the most imperial intellects of unchristianized 
 antiquity recognized a truth corresponding to this as 
 a necessity of the great laws of being, Plato speaking 
 as distinctly in the belief of a Trinity as Aristotle in 
 that of the Unity, the "One Lord who ordaincth all 
 things." Not much stress can be laid on any mere sci 
 entific manipulation of a truth so dependent on spiritual 
 revelations as this. And yet it may be something,. 
 especially as against a contrary assertion, to see that 
 where the heart is made ready for it, the ablest heads 
 have been just as willing to credit it as the simplest.* 
 
 * Possibly there may be some reader of these pages who will be the 
 more favorably inclined to admit the spirit of this paragraph for finding it 
 uttered from a soul so clear-sighted, so purged of all cant or hearsay 
 notions, of all make-believe and deference to mere tradition, so apprecia 
 tive and large in sympathy, and so widely loved and trusted, as Rev. F. "W. 
 Robertson. In several of his sermons he avows his faith that in God there 
 are " three distinct personalities, consciousnesses, yet all these three are 
 one ; " that " Trinitarianism is true." He also pleads : " There are those 
 who are inclined to sneer at the Trinitarian ; those to whom the doctrine 
 appears merely a contradiction, a puzzle, an entangled, labyrinthine enigma 
 in which there is no meaning whatever. But let all such remember that, 
 though the doctrine may appear to them absurd, because they have not the 
 proper conception of it, some of the profoundest thinkers and some of the 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 379 
 
 It would seem, then, to require some audacity to toss 
 about such charges as " absurdity," " self-contradiction," 
 " impossibility," " scholastic figment," and others even 
 more opprobrious, as fitted to a faith on the most un 
 speakably momentous and affecting of the themes of 
 thought, deliberately adopted and earnestly expounded 
 by nine tenths of those master-minds whose logic and 
 learning have been applied to the subject at all. What 
 shall be said of the mental proportions of men who per 
 sist in the dull fallacy of imputing to believers in the 
 Trinity of " God, who is a Spirit," the notion of an 
 arithmetic relation, with the complacent inference that 
 this vital and everlasting confession of Christendom is 
 to be silenced or dispossessed by a frivolous allusion to 
 mathematical incompatibilities ? Can it never be con 
 sidered that, when all our current ideas are sifted and 
 analyzed, every attribute and act of the Self-existent 
 One is exactly as inexplicable to us as his Threeness ? * 
 
 holiest spirits among mankind have believed in this doctrine, have clung 
 to it as a matter of life or death. Let them be assured of this, that, wheth 
 er the doctrine be true or false, it is not necessarily a doctrine self-contra 
 dictory. Let them be assured of this in all modesty, that such men never 
 could have held it unless there was latent in it a deep truth, perchance the 
 truth of God." 
 
 * When the philosophical line of investigation is carried out still fur 
 ther, it will doubtless be made to appear, as ancient and modern thinkers 
 have more than once intimated, that it is three, not less, not more, which, 
 in the nature of numbers and of forms, admits the greatest relative combi 
 nation of simplicity and variety, and especially meets the abstract condi 
 tions of the ontological problem. Some minds are also able to hold the 
 doctrine in such a way as to find a comforting relief in it from a certain 
 cheerless impression of solitude in Deity, gaining the idea, as they think, 
 of a sharing of counsels, a reciprocity of affections, and a divine joy of 
 participated, reflected, and so intensified beatitude, as a part of the con 
 ception of Trinity in Unity. But these are speculations beyond the 
 Bible. 
 
 32* 
 
380 LIFE, SALTATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 Of quite a different character is the objection some 
 times alleged against the doctrine, that it belongs to a 
 class of opinions which are of no practical consequence, 
 and which may be received or rejected with equal un 
 concern, provided men are careful to maintain a correct 
 conduct. Granted that this cheap estimate borrows 
 some plausibility from dogmatic exaggerations and in 
 tolerant pretensions too often associated with the advo 
 cacy of the most important ideas, partly because they 
 are important. Yet when we are pointed by doctrinal 
 indifferentism to right living as a proof of the insignifi 
 cance of right believing, we have to ask some questions 
 in return. How are we to achieve that not altogether 
 easy or every-day matter, right living ? What are the 
 powers, and whence come they ? Is it living rightly to 
 live ignoring or denying realities which our God has 
 graciously unveiled, by costly revelations, touching his 
 own nature and our salvation ? Is it living rightly to 
 fail of gratitude to Divine benefactors, as Divine, with 
 holding praise from the Son and the Spirit, into whom 
 we are bidden to be baptized ? Do almsgivings, kind 
 nesses, moral integrities, noble as they are when spring 
 ing from the sacred stock of true faith, release us from 
 " coming to Christ," " receiving the Holy Ghost," trust 
 ing in the Cross, and walking humbly with our God ? 
 Or, since the boldest egotism in any man will hardly 
 pretend that his own life is now " right," has ever been 
 " right," or ever will be " right," or otherwise than ter 
 ribly wrong, is it not a very reasonable thing, and the 
 very first thing, for a soul in this position of conscious 
 weakness, guilt, and shame, to be searching earnestly 
 after the Divine relief ? Following in the path of these 
 inquiries, let us notice some of the practical fruits of 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 381 
 
 the doctrine before us, especially in furnishing a posi 
 tive foundation for piety, the way of deliverance from 
 evil, and an animating inspiration to Christian service. 
 
 I. The Tri-unity of God appears to be the necessary 
 means of manifesting and supporting in the mind of our 
 Race a faith in the true personality of God, a faith 
 indispensable to the foundation and to the vital opera 
 tion of Christianity. The impossibility of a speculative 
 cognition of the infinite personality has already been 
 adverted to, and apart from that, neither the resources 
 of philosophy nor the demonstrations of history encour 
 age us to believe that anything like a Christian mono 
 theism could keep its place in the world from generation 
 to generation, through all the divergencies of speculation, 
 and the degradations of materialism, at least beyond the 
 limits of direct manifestations like those granted to the 
 Hebrews, save by the revelation of God as One in Three 
 and Three in One. The actual departures from this 
 faith have been in two directions. On one side, the 
 religious sentiment, subjected to a process of intel 
 lectual generalization, has resulted in Pantheism. God 
 ceases to be a person. Everything is God, and God is 
 everything. We are ourselves a part of him, and in 
 such a sense that he would not be complete without us : 
 we are not subjects of his personal will, created, di 
 rected, swayed, led, punished, saved by the act of that 
 personal will toward us, lying very humble before the 
 supreme majesty of his infinite holiness, or walking in 
 the light of his conscious love, and ascribing all that is 
 good and great on earth, " not unto us," but to his per 
 sonal power. We are rather partners in his omnipo 
 tence. We are in him, not by faith or spiritual posses 
 sion, but as setting up rights. So with the universe. 
 
382 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 Responsibility ceases. Prayer is absurd. Worship is a 
 lost idea, even if the form survives by force of old 
 tradition or of better instincts that refuse to be killed 
 by a domineering and perverted understanding. The 
 heart of faith is chilled. Conscience is systematically 
 divested of the sense of personal retribution. Sorrow 
 has no comforter. Nature is admired, and this admi 
 ration of her beauty and order is called religion. 
 All the ten thousand blessed influences which attend 
 the feeling of religious dependence gradually sink away, 
 and a poor, restless, unsatisfied, self-asserting conceit 
 takes their place. 
 
 On the other side, the religious sentiment, subjected 
 to a process of sensual limitation, results in some form 
 of idolatry. Something less than God is taken for God, 
 and worshipped as God. It may not be a visible object. 
 Paganism is not confined to fetichism and image-wor 
 ship. Some man, some hero, some fabulous story of a 
 man, or some conception of humanity in a single indi 
 vidual indefinitely enlarged, is set in God s throne and 
 adored. 
 
 These two errors have divided the unchristianized 
 world between them. They do still. Either the person 
 ality of God is sacrificed to the infinity, or the infin 
 ity is sacrificed to the personality. In the former case, 
 men may imagine they recognize an Infinite Being ; 
 but it is only an abstraction, or a principle, or a bundle 
 of laws, or a loose mass of sequences and phenomena, 
 from which the attribute of infinity itself as well as of 
 personal consciousness is soon found to have ebbed 
 away. In the latter case, the innate longing for a 
 veritable Divine Person, with personal traits answering 
 to ours, may be met ; but it will soon begin to appear 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 383 
 
 that, though a Person remains, the Eternal and Uncre 
 ated and Almighty God of Glory is gone. The ad 
 vancement of learning, the scientific mastery of out 
 ward nature, and other characteristics of modern times, 
 have shifted the danger very largely from the latter to 
 the former of these tendencies, as every thinking mind 
 must see, and as so many tongues are saying. But 
 probably both the errors spring from desires and de 
 mands of man s nature which in themselves are right. 
 This human soul will ever seek in some way to identify 
 God with the humanity in which it shares. This 
 human mind, exploring the method and magnificence of 
 the external universe, will ever seek to identify God 
 with the different works of his hand. Or, to state the 
 matter in different relations, despairing to conceive of 
 personality without limitation, some men rush over to 
 Pantheism. Others, despairing of retaining a Deity near 
 enough for love and sympathy who is literally infinite, 
 stop short with a deity who is not God. 
 
 These implanted wants are wonderfully satisfied in 
 the Divine Trinity. In the Absolute and one only God 
 head, all man s highest, purest, largest, most far-reach 
 ing conceptions, stretching away into the regions of 
 Infinitude, Eternity, Almightiness, have their full and 
 complete exercise. In the incarnate Christ, taking up 
 our humanity, the longing for a personal, sympathizing, 
 companionable Deity, is blessedly answered, and yet 
 God is there ; there is no loss of the essential and veri 
 table Deity. In the Holy Spirit, the natural desire of 
 the devout mind to connect God with all the operations 
 of the present world, the processes of creation, the wel 
 fare, renewal, revolutions, sanctification, of the Human 
 Family, finds its lawful verification. If they only would, 
 
384 LIFE, AND SALVATION, COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 the reverent Pantheist, humanitarian, naturalist might 
 here, in the beauty and symmetry and fulness of the 
 Gospel doctrine, obtain the true and grand interpreta 
 tion of their several yearnings, see their partial and 
 fragmentary views of the Divine filled out, and their 
 mistakes corrected. For the dangers of the separate 
 systems are here forestalled. If in the ardent attach 
 ment to the historical Christ, the " Word made flesh," 
 the disciple is tempted to deny the Unseen and Ineffa 
 ble, to forget that no man hath in a complete sense 
 " seen God at any time," this doctrine holds ever up 
 before him the God and Father of our Lord and Sav 
 iour, from whom the Son comes eternally forth. If, 
 again, we incline to let our speculations wander in the 
 cold and rare atmosphere of a purely deific energy, join 
 ing the deistic multitude so easily misled by the auda 
 cities and flatteries of a false philosophy, we are forth 
 with brought back to the warm and cheerful household 
 of Faith by beholding the face of the Gracious Shep 
 herd and Bishop of our Souls, and being assured that 
 whoso hath seen Him hath seen the Father, Or if thus 
 fixing our inward gaze either on the Infinite above, or 
 on the Jesus of Nazareth and of history, we come to 
 locate our Lord only in the heights, or in the limited 
 enclosures and events of a visible Messiahship, then we 
 are taken again into the juster thought of the New 
 Testament ; the Holy Ghost is witnessed in His ever 
 lasting and blessed goings forth into the world of men 
 to regenerate and comfort it, the Paraclete proceedeth 
 ever from the Father and the Son, thus taking up and 
 including the powers of the Incarnation, not an im 
 palpable essence or airy influence, but the third and 
 living person of the ever-blessed and glorious Trinity. 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 385 
 
 The adorable mystery becomes a practical and precious 
 fact to the toiling and praying soul. The baffled intel 
 lect rests from the aimless beating of its wings, and 
 while it discovers fields of boundless contemplation for 
 the expansion of all its powers, abides in the peace of 
 that holy benediction, " The grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the 
 Holy Ghost be with us all evermore." 
 
 Nor have we any record of even the more negative 
 of these effects, namely, the escape from the pantheistic 
 and the mythologic paganism, nor any reason to suppose 
 that would take place, on any extended scale, in the 
 religious experience of mankind independently of this 
 doctrine. Christendom furnishes the only instance of 
 this security, and Christendom has been Trinitarian. 
 If the Christian conception of God s personality has sur 
 vived in minds or localities or periods where the Trinity 
 has been denied, it must be remembered that in such 
 instances the conservative energies of the surrounding 
 and general belief always exert a considerable power. 
 The logical consequences of a doctrinal denial do not 
 appear at once ; they are often largely counteracted, 
 even where the denial is not revoked. But it cer 
 tainly is a fair and serious question whether the 
 denial of this particular doctrine has not carried, 
 at least in a striking proximity and association with 
 it, a special movement toward the extremes of deistic, 
 pantheistic, and rationalistic conclusions. Bereaved of 
 their real Lord, men grope after some vague, subli 
 mated entity, like Brahma, " sleeping on eternity and 
 the stars," or "literary freethinkers begin to speak 
 familiarly of 6 the gods, repairing their loss of a Trin 
 ity by embracing a classic Pantheon." 
 
386 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 II. The Trinity of God is the necessary groundwork 
 of the whole Scripture doctrine of the atonement for 
 sin, or the reconciliation between God and man. Under 
 the former head, man has been regarded in his normal 
 conditions, needing a development through Divine grace 
 and worship, irrespective of the fact of his lapse and 
 bondage under evil. But transgression has introduced, 
 from the beginning, a new element and a new relation. 
 Sin is not an act only, but a state, a state of the indi 
 vidual and a state of the race. Hence the great need 
 of the race was that God should come into it anew in 
 a quickening, healing, life-giving, personal mediation. 
 Lost humanity was to be restored, how plainly ! only 
 by an Incarnation of God himself in the Son, making 
 a perfect union of it with his own spirit by the " Word 
 made flesh." 
 
 One of the chief practical dangers of our life, as well 
 as one of the chief sources of laxity, confusion, and weak 
 ness to theology, is that we are so apt to contemplate 
 the disorder, mischief, and enormity of sin only from 
 our human point, with only natural and immediate 
 notions of its character and effects, without estimating 
 its deadly antagonism to the holiness of the Almighty, 
 the good of all that live, the integrity and peace of the 
 universe. There never can be a religion of vitality and 
 commanding majesty, where enfeebled conceptions pre 
 vail of those two primal and terribly hostile forces, 
 the sovereign holiness of God and the wicked will of man. 
 The depth of that wickedness, the all-pervading taint of 
 ungrateful iniquity, the unreasonableness and profanity 
 of disobedience in the child of a Parent so gracious and 
 so good, these are not to be described, nor can any 
 adequate and lively impression of them be made except 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 387 
 
 as the soul is startled and awakened from insensibility 
 by the strong touch of that renewing Spirit, which con- 
 vinceth of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Yet 
 it would seem as if a tolerable degree of intelligence 
 and thoughtfulness applied to the simple and plain con 
 ditions of the problem might so discover the sanctity of 
 God s immaculate will, the venerableness of his law, 
 the absolute indispensableness that his government 
 should stand firm and unimpeachable, in the sight 
 of all his subjects, in order to the welfare, stability, 
 and joy of his whole family in earth and heaven, as to 
 remove all reluctance at receiving the sublime demon 
 strations of the method of redemption revealed in the 
 Cross. When their look is first directed to the lofty 
 heights and purity of that law, and then to the utter 
 ugliness of the transgression, men avert their eyes ; 
 they call it a hard and gloomy system. Till some pro- 
 founder feeling is moved, till some spiritual sympathy is 
 kindled with the whole mercy and blessedness of the 
 plan, they find no beauty nor loveliness in it that they 
 should desire it ; they pronounce it harsh, forbidding, 
 strange ; they turn away to what they consider a milder 
 and pleasanter scheme. But hast thou not learned yet, 
 sorrowing man, born of woman, of few days and full 
 of trouble ! that the hard and sad way is very often the 
 short, sure way to comfort and light ? that it must be 
 hard and sad only because thy own heart is hard, and 
 thy sinfulness is sad ? Has it not begun to dawn on 
 thy soul that the very severity and terror of the law are 
 the stern necessity which yields afterwards the unutter 
 able peace of renunciation, the gladness of submission 
 unequalled by all the gladness of self-will, the bliss of 
 reconciliation, the rest of faith? Cheerful views are 
 
 33 
 
388 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 views that bring the true and everlasting cheer, not 
 those that cheat us with the image of a fond or indul 
 gent deity, too soft-hearted to punish, too weak to exe 
 cute justice, views that cry " Peace ! " when there is 
 no peace, only to leave us at last mocked and betrayed. 
 Nothing that is milder than God s word and will is happy 
 for us in the end. Nothing is gained by winking out of 
 sight the facts. God s way is the brightest way, for he 
 is perfect love. The uniform and accordant testimony 
 of the millions from the morning hour of the Church, 
 who have believed in this redemption and known it in 
 their experience, is that it brings the soul to joys be 
 yond all that can be spoken in language, beyond all the 
 joys they had ever found in the assurances of an easier 
 salvation, and a more indiscriminate compassion. Is 
 that testimony nothing ? Would to God it might be 
 borne in upon all our minds by his own Spirit, how 
 much wiser, how much more cheerful, is the strong 
 piety that is won through intense and painful experi 
 ences of the real contradiction of God s will against 
 self-will, creating the need of a Divine sacrifice, than 
 the superficial contentment which mistakes the benig 
 nity of Providence for a repeal of his statutes, and mis 
 interprets all his promises of forgiveness into a denial 
 of his repeated declarations that he hateth iniquity, that 
 his wrath abideth on the impenitent, and that the 
 sinner shall not stand in his sight. Forgiveness! If 
 our God were the yielding and ever-repealing Lawgiver 
 that some teachers sedulously represent him, he would 
 have nothing to forgive ! 
 
 The atoning sacrifice of Christ may be regarded 
 either in relation to the needs of the individual soul, 
 or in relation to the whole paternal and royal admin- 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 389 
 
 istration of the government of God. In each of these 
 relations it will be found that the Divine Tri-unity, 
 including the actual and complete divinity of the 
 Redeemer as the second person of that Tri-unity, is 
 the secret of the power. 
 
 In any really deep Christian experience, the great 
 feeling of need, the energy of repentance, the agony of 
 conviction, connects itself with a conscious estrange 
 ment from the Heavenly Father, through a violation of 
 his holy and merciful law ; not merely a single act of 
 sin ; not merely a scries of such acts ; but a state of the 
 nature and a habit of the life ungratefully and wickedly 
 separated from God. Of course, so long as there is a 
 feeble or lax sense of God s holiness, of the sanctity of 
 his requirements, of the exceeding height and breadth 
 and length of his commandments, and of the wide 
 spread mischief and unutterable wrong even of a single 
 infraction of it sending its jar of discord through the 
 spiritual world and directly offending such a Being as 
 God is, so long this piercing and bitter conviction will 
 not be realized. Some lighter and easier solution than 
 the Cross, therefore, will satisfy the mind, or seem to 
 satisfy it, till a deeper movement agitates the heart and 
 breaks up its inmost fountains. Whenever that hour 
 comes, there comes with it a cry for full redemption, 
 such a redemption as only the suffering of Him who is 
 both man and God can give. The different theories of 
 Christ s nature and sacrifice appear and pass before the 
 stricken and self-condemned soul. Is Christ a consist 
 ent man only, a brave martyr, a glorious instance of a 
 well-finished career, meeting an inevitable death with 
 exemplary firmness ? But what is that to a sorrow and 
 remorse like this ? However animating to other moods, 
 
390 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOB MAN 
 
 after the alienated conscience is reconciled and knows 
 that its condemnation is blotted out, such an example 
 can now be only an aggravating and unattainable vis 
 ion, mocking the disabled and disordered will. Besides, 
 however blameless and disinterested the death of Jesus 
 may be, if we speak of human firmness or courage, 
 these have been apparently equalled, as has often been 
 noticed, by other sufferers. The scenes of Gethsemane 
 and Calvary have been surpassed in the mere quality 
 of silent, human endurance, more than once. On the 
 humanitarian hypothesis, the tears and prayers and 
 groans and shrinkings of the "Lamb of God who 
 taketh away the sin of the world" sink to an inferior 
 place in the victories of fortitude. It is only as we 
 find there the nameless and inexpressible anguish of a 
 Divine and Infinite Being, bearing the iniquities of us 
 all, and purposely taking up all the tenderest sensibili 
 ties of our ordinary frame, in the benevolent mystery 
 of the Incarnation, that the signals of the Passion are 
 lifted into any genuine honor. Without this, they are 
 less than they assume to be, and fail even of respect. 
 Nor is the grand want supplied by supposing the Sav 
 iour to be exalted into some superhuman dignity of 
 endowment, yet remaining only a creature and a sub 
 ject. Subject he certainly was in his mediatorial and 
 earthly office. But the union of the two natures was 
 real, organic, not apparent only, not dramatic, nor 
 mechanical ; so that when the Saviour suffered, God 
 suffered. God did not perish : how strange and sad 
 that the thoughtless perversions or wilful misrepresen 
 tations of hostile theologians should have ever made 
 such a statement necessary. But when the mortal part 
 of the Saviour died, God suffered in him. The shed- 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 391 
 
 ding of the blood of such a body was more than a hu 
 man sacrifice. The sundering of that eternal life-prin 
 ciple from that sacred flesh was a divine death. This is 
 what faith means, when, rising into its unquestioning 
 joy, and breaking forth into lyrical thanksgiving, it 
 sings its holy hymns of praise to a " dying God." He 
 died as man, who also liveth ever as God. And in that 
 dying, by the intimate and transcendent sympathies of 
 the divine and the human in him, incomprehensible 
 indeed, but just as truly comprehensible as any creative 
 act of the Infinite, there was involved God s anguish 
 for his sinning children, and his free sacrifice for the 
 broken law. The sacrifice was not confined to the ninth 
 hour. It was in the garden ; it was on the heavy jour 
 ney thence to Calvary. It began to be manifest even at 
 the supper and the judgment-hall. It was consummated 
 at the cross ; for " without the shedding of blood " there 
 could be " no remission of sin." 
 
 And now this is precisely what any inferior faith 
 fails to gain. Raise your conception of Christ s rank 
 in the scale of created being high as you may ; carry it 
 to the mark of Ebion or Arius ; assign the point of 
 Christ s beginning at whatever period in time you will : 
 still both practically and logically the needed atonement 
 fails. The eternal Lawgiver is not bearing the disinter 
 ested pain and wondrous penalty for all his creatures 
 " in that all have sinned." God is not himself in the 
 suffering. This was the requirement of the case. This 
 was the longing of the guilty heart. This is what the 
 Gospel, from end to end, in plain and full and glorious 
 language, declares. Read it again, and see how in the 
 interpretation of this principle all becomes consistent 
 and simple ; all occasion for forced explanation and 
 
 33* 
 
392 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 abatement ceases ; all the strong and earnest speech is 
 luminous with meaning, and abounding in comfort. It 
 is not meant that the understanding, in the presence of 
 a work so vast and a goodness so august, should be able 
 to describe every part of the wonder, and put in place 
 every element of the redemptive power. But enlight 
 ened by the Holy Spirit, which delights to teach and 
 satisfy so docile a mind, it does seize enough to cling 
 to, and cheerfully hands over the remaining marvel to a 
 Christian trust. And trust gladly accepts the charge. 
 The soul is free. Conscience is at the same moment 
 released and roused to an unprecedented and sanctified 
 activity. Duty never looked so dear. Obedience was 
 never so eager. Practical righteousness was never so 
 noble, because never animated by so grand a motive. 
 " The cross " has now no accommodated, strained, per 
 plexing signification, but its entire evangelical force 
 rings clearly and directly on the inmost sense of faith. 
 And underneath is a peace, which, as they that have 
 found it humbly testify, differs from all the consolations 
 ever felt before, and surpasses them all, as the love of 
 God in Christ passes the love of man. 
 
 To undertake here an exposition of the inseparable 
 connection of the truth of the Trinity with the doctrine 
 of the atonement which has prevailed in the Church, in 
 respect to the integrity of the Divine government and the 
 general welfare of the race, would lie somewhat aside 
 from the immediate design of this discourse. Indeed, it 
 is one great danger of treating this governmental aspect 
 of the subject, that it is apt to pass into hard, unspiritual, 
 economic representations. The almost necessary employ 
 ment of terms borrowed from civil polity, and the de 
 parture of the discussion one remove from the personal 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 393 
 
 interests and affections of a human experience, create 
 impressions of a cool and legal handling of the theme 
 offensive to the deeper religious instincts. Yet there is 
 a very short and simple process of thought, by which 
 nearly every person is capable of arriving at the conclu 
 sion that, after all claims to the contrary, the exact and 
 fearful problem of the world s redemption is not solved, 
 and cannot be, save as Christ is seen to be " very God of 
 very God." There was a thorough alienation of the 
 subject race from the Sovereign. So deeply rooted was 
 it, so universal, so interpenetrating all institutions, rela 
 tions, faculties, activities of man, that no insurrection 
 or rebellion against human government, in all history, 
 serves for a reasonable or proximate illustration of the 
 disobedience. How was this lapsed and lost race to be 
 restored ? Words, declarations, promises, would not do 
 it. Human virtues, converted generations, godly lives, 
 bright examples, however multiplied, could not heal this 
 unrighteous Past, nor atone for it. Not in the race any 
 more than in any one individual among us, could any 
 amount of future goodness weigh one iota towards dis 
 charging all this foregoing waste and guilt. Let man obey 
 thenceforth perfectly, if he could, and he would do no 
 more than each moment s own duty ; and even less than 
 that he is sure to do. The load accumulates instead of 
 being lightened. Now, for the Ruler to say, " No mat 
 ter about all these days of rejection and disobedience ; 
 no matter about all these wanton and repeated affronts 
 against a blessed Will in which stands not only the ve 
 racity of God and the honor of your King, but the wel 
 fare and stability of the world ; " this will certainly 
 have a very singular effect on the reverence and faith 
 and virtue of mankind. No : it is God, the wise and 
 
394 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 gracious Lord of the worlds, who has been disobeyed 
 and offended. Both for the moral renewing and the 
 retrospective satisfaction the atonement must clearly 
 come forth then from God. All the obediences of 
 ten thousand legions of saints would not touch one 
 unreconciled heart s position, either to regenerate or 
 acquit. In the person of the Messiah the Divine Life 
 was to stream again into the withered and crippled 
 body of humanity. In his Sacrifice, who alone was 
 competent to make a sacrifice which should at once sat 
 isfy and transcend the law, taking all its penalty and 
 leaving it unharmed in majesty, the restoration was to 
 be made complete, and the pardon free forever and for 
 ever. Now man lives again, and lives a new and glori 
 ous life. He sees and feels what is done for him. In 
 difference melts away. Ingratitude is changed to con 
 secration. The dull and sluggish heart of humanity is 
 quickened to repentance and newness of life. The 
 streams of human thought and feeling and aspiration 
 begin to set sublimely heavenward again. Faith looks, 
 and lives. As the serpent was lifted up in the wilder 
 ness, so the Son of Man is lifted up ; and whosoever 
 gazes, believing, is healed, is saved. It is as if the 
 Father said, " All else has been done ; I have created, 
 guarded, guided, supported, blessed, forborne ; Provi 
 dence and revelation, in nature and in the inspired ora 
 cles of Moses and the prophets, have exhausted their 
 possibilities. Lo ! one mercy more ; the last and might 
 iest. I can suffer for my children, I can come in the 
 flesh, I can be one of them. In that incarnation I can 
 ache and weep and sorrow for them and with them : 
 all their stripes can be laid upon me. All their infirmi 
 ties can cling to me. I can die as they die, the last 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 395 
 
 of the evils they dread, the penalty of the broken law. 
 This shall both move and release them. This shall be 
 the regeneration and the redemption of all mankind 
 who will believe it." infinite compassion ! Herein 
 is love ! This is the " mystery hid from the foundation 
 of the world." The Holy Spirit ever comes, from the 
 Father and the Son, to make the whole work effectual 
 for the Church and the heart. We behold, we begin at 
 least to behold, why God is forever ONE, is forever 
 THREE. 
 
 III. We have now seen the need and the power of 
 this truth in the positive operation of the personal 
 Fatherhood toward man, and in the remedial action 
 required by man s fall under sin. A third element of 
 its practical efficiency is found in the manifold and vital 
 connections it establishes between itself and the his 
 toric development and practical piety of the Church. 
 The fact of its prevalence in Christendom, a prev 
 alence so general that it may be taken as a character-* 
 istic and a law, has already been noticed. Each of the 
 great Christian movements, from the apostolic age to 
 our own, whether for the missionary extension of the 
 Gospel, or for the reformation and revival of its spirit 
 ual power in communities where it was nominally re 
 ceived, has held up the Triune confession as the in 
 scription on its standard. But that confession has been 
 more than a conventional battle-cry or password for 
 the hallowed aggressions of the Church militant. It 
 has expressed realities very precious to the heart, and 
 its chief potency has been in the moral energy of those 
 realities. It is in vain to say that other views of the 
 New Testament, other interpretations of the Bible, 
 other conceptions of the Divine nature, are equally ef- 
 
396 LIFE, 
 
 fectual. The impressive and obvious fact stands forth, 
 that they have not been. Whether we are able to ac 
 count for this or not, a rule so uniform in its operation 
 becomes itself an argument. It is true, no prevalence 
 of the anti-Trinitarian belief in Christendom has existed 
 on so wide a scale as to furnish a very large oppor 
 tunity to test its self-sacrificing, organizing, and con 
 verting capabilities, and this in itself is significant testi 
 mony. Amidst all its other changes of form and dog 
 ma, of administration and policy, of culture and sim 
 plicity, however violent or radical the revolution, the 
 Church has remained in this respect essentially unal 
 tered. Oriental and Western, mediaeval or modern, it 
 has been equally clear, confident, and full in the recog 
 nition, nay, in the ever-repeated and jubilant affirma 
 tion, of this great practical mystery of faith. Protes 
 tantism has been essentially just as Trinitarian as 
 Romanism ; the spontaneous modes of worship, as the 
 Liturgical. From age to age, from land to land, the 
 living Body of the Lord has delighted to take up the 
 ^substance of that only primal creed, given by the Sav 
 iour himself in the text, on which her other creeds have 
 been justly founded, and to repeat, to reiterate, to lift 
 in reverential praise, to sing in holy triumph, voice 
 answering to voice, and multitude to multitude in the 
 lofty chorus, "Glory be to the Father, and to the 
 Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the begin 
 ning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end." * 
 
 * Testimony to the reality of effects here only briefly touched, as unex 
 pected as it is eloquent, has lately been given by one of the gifted writers of 
 our day whose whole .public career has been associated with denomina 
 tional connections opposed to the Trinitarian faith, Rev. James Mar- 
 tineau, of England. What cause he would assign for those effects AVC are at 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 397 
 
 But we are not left without insight into reasons for 
 this result. The inwrought implication of the doctrine 
 in all the great steps of man s spiritual education and 
 recovery from sin to God, as we have already observed 
 it, would alone be reason enough. The farther down" 
 into the heart of the matter our study is carried, the 
 more directly will the strength and the satisfaction of 
 the Christian life be found indebted to the forces pro 
 ceeding from this source. Then there is great religious 
 
 a loss to imagine. Speaking of those who deny the Trinity, he says : " I am 
 constrained to say, that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral 
 admiration goes heartily with their heroes, sects, or productions of any 
 age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably 
 with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far 
 less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am 
 conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in 
 almost every department to writers not of my own creed. In Philosophy 
 I have had to unlearn most that I hsvd imbibed from my early text-books, 
 and the authors in chief favor with them. In Biblical interpretation, I 
 derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Bel- 
 sham. In devotional literature and religious thought, I find nothing of ours 
 that does not pale before Augustine, Tauler, and Pascal. And in the 
 poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of 
 Charles Wesley, or of Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and 
 make all else seem poor and cold. I cannot help this. I can only say I 
 am sure it is no perversity ; and I believe the preference is founded in 
 reason and nature, and is already widely spread amongst us. A man s 
 Church must be the home of whatever he most deeply loves, trusts, 
 admires, and reveres, of whatever most divinely expresses the essential 
 meaning of the Christian faith and life ; and to be torn away from the 
 great company I have named, and transferred to the ranks which com 
 mand a far fainter allegiance, is an unnatural, and for me an inadmissible 
 fate. That I find myself in intellectual accordance with the Socini, or 
 Blandrata, or Servetus in one cardinal doctrine, and that a doctrine not 
 distinctively Christian, but belonging also to Judaism, to Islam, and to 
 simple Deism, is as nothing compared with the intense response wrung 
 from me by some of Luther s readings of St. Paul, and by his favorite 
 book, the * Theologia Germanica. " 
 
398 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOB MAN 
 
 value in keeping ever prominent before the mind of the 
 believer a formula like this, which perpetually reasserts 
 the superiority of the things of faith to the realm of 
 intellectual comprehension. It offers a ceaseless testi 
 mony to the inspired character of Revelation. It is a 
 kind of moral monument showing that the regions of 
 knowledge and of faith, and also of natural and re 
 vealed religion, while perfectly harmonious, are yet dis 
 tinct. It administers a strong and wholesome rebuke 
 to the " wisdom of the world " which, even with devout 
 minds, is so terrible a temptation to self-conceit and a 
 pride of the brain. It is a merciful safeguard to vener 
 ation and humility, not beyond the reach of abuse, 
 and not always restraining the arrogance of human 
 nature even in those that formally admit it, but, on 
 the whole, of large and saving influence. Besides, a 
 certain solemnity of tone invests the symbols which 
 convey the doctrine, certainly to such as receive it, of 
 unwonted and elevating grandeur, lifting the soul very 
 near to God. Definiteness is given to the religious 
 experience. Under the distributing and ordering effect 
 of this central, threefold fact, all the parts of an intel 
 ligent, evangelical belief fall into place. The ideas 
 of divine justice and love, requirement and forgive 
 ness, legislation, ransom, and sanctification, play freely 
 within the tri-personal activity, each strong and full, 
 each in balance with the others. Theology has a more 
 scientific development, worship a more unhesitating 
 confidence, each sacrament a more opulent grace. 
 Preaching appeals to a surer authority; it is charged 
 with a more authoritative and Biblical unction ; it 
 contemplates a more specific end ; the undertone of a 
 more conservative and apostolic fervor is heard in it. 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 399 
 
 Whether the theme is man s want or God s greatness, 
 the Father s perfections, the Son s condescension, the 
 Spirit s influence, there is found prepared a great adap 
 tation of thought and word, a lively apparatus of instru 
 ments, phraseology, imagery, symbolism, all growing 
 out of this threefold conception, arranged by the 
 Spirit for reaching and moving each portion of man s 
 manifold constitution, reason, imagination, sympa 
 thy, trust, hope. The doctrine of the personality of 
 the Holy Ghost becomes the indispensable inspiration of 
 all those special and social revivals of religious zeal, 
 which quicken the slumbering vitality and replenish 
 the wasted fires of a formal or worldly ecclesiastical 
 community. Does sensual laxity dissolve, or material 
 prosperity paralyze, the spiritual faculties ? Here is a 
 teaching of the Almighty, and his unyielding, retribu 
 tive law, which sends its terrible warnings upon the 
 careless conscience, and arouses to repentance with 
 Pentecostal power. Does the penitent heart long and 
 seek for the way to the Father s house ? Here is a 
 voice, saying, " Whosoever shall call on the name of 
 the Lord shall be saved." Do earnest inquirers after 
 eternal life begin to look with sympathy on one another, 
 and see the windows of heaven opened, and welcome 
 the Messenger of the covenant who comes as a refiner 
 and purifier ? The assurances, the promises, are heard, 
 " Jesus hath shed forth this which ye now see and 
 hear ; " " The times of refreshing shall come from the 
 presence of the Lord." 
 
 On the other hand, when this view is denied, if one 
 may offer such a criticism with no affront to Christ s 
 own charity, the bond of Christian perfectness, it 
 appears that, besides the direct loss of positive evan- 
 
 34 
 
400 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOB MAN 
 
 gelical resources, there is also a general decline of 
 Christian efficiency. There is a diminished attach 
 ment to the person of the Saviour, a cooler loyalty 
 to him, a feebler sense of indebtedness to him with 
 a corresponding abatement of all those inspiring and 
 grateful emotions toward him which the thought of 
 God " found in fashion as a man and humbling 
 himself to become obedient unto death, even the 
 death of the cross," is calculated to sustain. Moral 
 obedience takes on a prudential, calculating aspect. 
 The exultant thankfulness at release by the cross 
 from a deserved misery is gone. Even the belief in 
 Christ s personal presence with his people often be 
 comes an abstract notion, and the joy of it fades 
 away. In not a few instances, a living faith in any 
 divine personality gives place to a frigid intellectual 
 nature-worship, and God either subsides into a philo- 
 sopliical abstraction, or is tied up in the changeless 
 and fatal continuity of his own physical laws. The su 
 pernatural grows unreal ; its glories vanish from the 
 scenery of the soul, and all the tangible communi 
 cations it opens between heaven and earth are shut. 
 Deism is followed by naturalism, naturalism by mate 
 rialism, a materialism not a whit the less Pagan be 
 cause adorned with taste, learning, and a liberal 
 application of those terms of Christian phraseology, 
 -and those external habits of decorum, which are the 
 inestimable boon and heritage transmitted from the 
 disowned creed of the Gospels. The doctrine of the 
 Holy Ghost dwindles into an attenuated, aesthetic im 
 pression of a regular, natural Providence. The spe 
 cial act of that Person, regeneration, is dwarfed into a 
 self-improvement by the human will. The liberty of 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 401 
 
 genuine prayer is shortened, if prayer survives in 
 articulate forms at all, into a dull and barren pro 
 cess of self-stimulation which yields effects like drop 
 ping new or multiplied buckets into empty wells ; 
 for a fixed order of events cannot hear supplication, 
 praise, or thanksgiving. The life dies out of both 
 private and public devotion. Man s part of the busi^ 
 uess usurps the interest that belongs to God s part ; 
 the professed worshipper is more anxious to be 
 enlightened or entertained or electrified by figures of 
 rhetoric or bursts of declamation or ethical lectur 
 ing, than to be pardoned for his sins, or to have his 
 soul borne up in self-forgetful homage. Through a 
 sentimental fear of charging God with severity, a cruel 
 blow is struck at his equity, and his majestic attri 
 bute of mercy is construed to mean a fond indulgence 
 of all sorts of people in all sorts of things. The very 
 possibility of mercy or forgiveness is taken away, for 
 where there is no penalty there is no clemency ; indif- 
 ferentism has nothing to forgive. A general infirmity 
 creeps into religious action. A taste grows up for that 
 sort of instruction which leaves all consciences equally 
 at ease, substituting descriptions of a desirable goodness 
 for the Apostle s abrupt and searching rebuke, "Repent, 
 and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out," or 
 the Saviour s own, " Except ye repent, ye shall all like 
 wise perish." Other themes than those which lie close to 
 the heart of the Gospel are the popular subjects of the 
 pulpit, till Paul s magnifying of his office is exchanged 
 for an effectual obscuration of it in a wonderful variety 
 of offices. Of course the distinctive ecclesiastical hon 
 ors are lowered. Missions are languid or unknown. 
 Enthusiasm is chilled. Not replenished by the reac- 
 
402 
 
 tionaiy strength of an aggressive and progressive zeal, 
 the parishes are deadened at home. Discussions or 
 diversions occupy the empty room of the prayer- 
 meeting. The Sunday school fails to supply its pu 
 pils with an answer to those that ask them what they 
 believe. " The world " reaps an easy harvest. And of 
 course, where these tendencies predominate, the ques 
 tion whether anything which can properly be called a 
 Church of Christ will continue is only a question of 
 time.* 
 
 Were it to be affirmed that these tendencies always 
 work themselves out immediately, or in all individuals 
 who reject the Triune declaration, the insult to com 
 mon sense would be as gross as the breach of catholic 
 amity. Devout men and women who turn a revering 
 and affectionate heart to Christ, and yet persist in that 
 dogmatic rejection, are found in our day as they have 
 been in other days. To us they seem exceptional cases, 
 standing somewhat apart from the vigorous currents of 
 Christian life in the Church, indebted after all to hered 
 itary influences which they do not acknowledge, not 
 very successful in handing down their piety from one 
 generation to another, and denied some opportunities 
 and privileges which, in a clearer doctrinal agreement 
 with the ancient standards, would enlarge their useful 
 ness along with their satisfactions. They also seem to 
 
 * That the term " Trinity " is not Scriptural furnishes no argument against 
 the Scriptural authority for the doctrine, so long as the truth is asserted 
 and reasserted in the Scriptures. So the terms "Divinity," "Deity," 
 " Humanity," " Incarnation," " Missions," even " Christianity," and 
 many more, are not less used as true because not found in the Bible. 
 The veneration for the letter of Scripture which thus insists on a mere 
 name, if consistent, would involve other conclusions for which the sup 
 posed objector would hardly be prepared. 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 403 
 
 us, if the remark may be allowed, to suffer soon or 
 late under a degree of theological inconsistency, exalt 
 ing Christ in their reverent affections to a place which 
 they refuse him in a deliberate and express confession. 
 But it must be a narrow construction of the substance 
 of faith which does not cheerfully and gratefully recog 
 nize in them a sincere and beautiful imitation of much 
 in the Master s example. We are aware that there are 
 those who fail to connect the evils we have just enumer 
 ated with the cause to which we have ascribed them. 
 But when we consider how marvellously God binds 
 causes and effects together, and how at last he blends 
 all revealed truth with righteous practice and accepted 
 institutions, it does not seem very strange that an error 
 respecting so supreme a reality as the nature of God, 
 Christ, and the Spirit, should entail damaging conse 
 quences not readily traced in all the links of their suc 
 cession, by the eye, on all the interests of personal 
 and social religion. Undoubtedly, too, there are faults 
 enough in those branches of the Church where the 
 truth we are advocating is fully held. But the com 
 mon imperfections of human nature are not to blind 
 us to the existence of real contrasts, nor justify us in 
 ignoring conclusions equally enforced by the interior 
 nature and the exterior history of the Christian system. 
 
 Having thus set forth, too cursorily and too feebly, 
 the principal points designed to be included in the pres 
 ent discussion, it only remains to mention two or three 
 more incidental religious advantages of this element in 
 " the faith once delivered to the saints." 
 
 1. It is found to be an aid to clearness of thought in 
 respect to the nature and place of Christ, and thus indi- 
 
 34=* 
 
404 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 rectly an encouragement to reverent sentiments in re 
 ligious discourse and worship. Clinging tenderly to his 
 humanity, with Fe nelon " adoring even the childhood of 
 the Word made flesh," and finding at every step of his 
 earthly way some fresh touch of sympathy, we are also 
 assisted to a less perplexing view of him on the Throne 
 of his Glory. It is not uncommon for those who regard 
 the Trinity of God as inconsistent with his Unity, to al 
 lege that the devout mind is confused and perplexed by 
 the Threeness. And where the understanding presses 
 itself in so cogently as to subordinate the proper office 
 of pure adoration, constantly taking up and turning 
 over, as in the fingers of its intellectual curiosity, the 
 relations or rank of the persons, this is not unlikely to 
 occur. What is claimed, on the contrary, is that this 
 very thing is a departure from the just attitude of the 
 mind in prayer ; that the selfhood of the mind is meant 
 to lie looking very humbly upward ; to be still and 
 know that its Lord is God. And further, it is claimed 
 that the objection cited is apt to be urged only by those 
 who have not first entered into the conception with sym 
 pathy, but judge it from without ; whereas such minds 
 as first receive the doctrine, and then worship in it, dis 
 cover not only that this objection disappears, but that 
 the liberty and satisfaction of their devotions are much 
 advanced by their belief. It suits, in fact, the actual 
 states of most worshippers to turn in different moods 
 to each of the Three in the One, and, according to its 
 joy or need, to praise and entreat each with the whole 
 heart, the Father as Creator and Providence, the Son 
 as Redeemer and Embodied Friend, the Spirit as the 
 Dispenser of a diffused and sanctifying influence which 
 permeates and comforts the sensitive soul. More or 
 
^IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 405 
 
 less clearly there arise thus, before the thought, and 
 impress the feeling, in these hours of high communion, 
 the grand and moving facts of the evangelical history. 
 The holy imagery that peoples the audience-chamber of 
 the Eternal and the mansions of heaven stirs itself in 
 the presence of the suppliant. Ere it is aware, the 
 heart is encompassed with the verities and events of 
 the redemption. Then, there is the very precious mys 
 tery of Christ s Intercession, the power of which it is 
 exceedingly difficult to support in a mind which con 
 sistently rejects the Trinitarian view. It would be, 
 perhaps, the easiest, though not the most agreeable or 
 grateful method of exhibiting what we would here bring 
 forward, to refer at length to the difficulties encoun 
 tered by persons of that class in adjusting any de 
 finable, satisfactory account of their actual estimate of 
 the Saviour. We often hear it asserted that the anti- 
 Trinitarian view is the simplest, as just now observed. 
 But it is a " simplicity that brings disappointment," the 
 " clearness of a wintry day." Take any form of it, 
 from the highest to the lowest in the honor paid to 
 Christ. Is it easy for the earnest and thoughtful mind 
 to rest in it, we will not say intellectually, but relig 
 iously ? If it is the theory, now somewhat prevalent, 
 which attributes moral as well as natural limitations 
 and even moral imperfections to Jesus, then of course 
 the language of his Gospel, including what he expressly 
 says of himself, is ruthlessly abandoned. If the com 
 mon humanitarian hypothesis is assumed, the honest 
 devotee will be sorely puzzled in taking upon his lips 
 such language as we have quoted, the Saviour s own 
 declarations, the Apostolical ascriptions, the epistolary 
 benedictions, the litanies of the heavenly host as given 
 
406 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 in the Revelation, the ancient chants, lauds, anthems, 
 or the familiarized and almost universal homage of b&. 
 lievers. Ascend to some view more nearly conformed 
 in its terms of statement to the Evangelical standards, 
 whether Arian, Sabellian, or any modification of these, 
 and does not the same sense of inadequacy linger ? 
 Does any such conception fill out, fairly and naturally, 
 the language of the New Testament, as that in Christ 
 dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ? We put 
 it as a matter of personal experiment. Does not praise 
 halt or hesitate at this wide diversity between the theo 
 logical opinion and the evangelical homage ? At one 
 moment the mind coolly concludes that Christ is a cre 
 ated being, made in time. But it is seen very soon that 
 this really reduces him at once from all proper divinity, 
 and, by crossing the immense gulf between infinite and 
 finite, the Creator and the creature, it places him essen 
 tially on the human plane, however high up upon it. 
 Turning unsatisfied from this conclusion, driven from 
 it by the terms of Scripture, and of the Saviour himself, 
 who must at least be supposed to have known who and 
 what he was, the doubters seek to find some position for 
 their Christ midway between the human and divine, 
 but really belonging to neither. And here they may 
 seem to pause. You ask, then, " What think ye of 
 Christ ? " and they answer, they believe he is " not God, 
 but the Son of God." But press the inquiry what they 
 mean by " the Son of God," and there is no answer. 
 Does the Son follow the nature of the Father ? Is he 
 the Son otherwise than as created ? Is he superangel- 
 ic ? But how well can the boasted " definiteness and 
 simplicity " tell us what a superangelic being is, who is 
 not God ? Is he omnipresent ? If not, how speak of 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 407 
 
 his presence with you and the Church? If he is, is 
 omnipresence an attribute of any but God ? Do you 
 confine his personal stay on earth to his visible min 
 istry ? But then you take up the Epistle to the Ephe- 
 sians, or that to the Philippians, or his own conversa 
 tions with his followers just hefore he suffered, or his 
 parting words, " I am with you always," and you have 
 to drop that idea instantly. You pray for his interces 
 sions as your Advocate ; but how can he intercede and 
 advocate if he does not know your thoughts and all 
 your personal history ? You think to escape your con 
 fusion by adhering strictly to the language of Scripture ; 
 but as soon as its glorious sentences begin to fall from 
 your lips, the startling inquiry forces itself back, What 
 ever I may make these words mean now, would they 
 ever have been chosen and used in the first place on any 
 other belief than that Christ is properly and truly divine, 
 Eternal, Almighty, as the Church of his Heaven-guided 
 people has believed and taught ? So tossed between one 
 untenable supposition and another, the strength and the 
 peace of faith are sadly missed, unless, indeed, through 
 a happier admission of God s grace, the truth which 
 was lying all the time plain and persuasive before the 
 eyes is seen, that Christ has the nature of God and the 
 nature of man perfectly united and spiritually wrought 
 together in his glorious Person ; having " all power in 
 heaven and earth" as God, even as it is written, and 
 having that power " given" to him, as man ; and thus 
 " God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." * 
 2. The truth here presented goes far to exhibit the 
 mutual interdependence of the parts of Revelation, and 
 to confirm the historical and moral unity of the Bible. 
 
 * See Note at the end of the volume. 
 
408 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 That volume appears in a character of greater dignity 
 and consistency in the light of it. All its successive 
 disclosures and utterances fall into one symmetrical 
 plan. The Incarnation begins to appear, in its prepara 
 tions and foretokenings, at the very beginning of the 
 Biblical period, as the one central fact and supreme 
 glory of the whole. The Eedemption is the theme of 
 the sublime chorus of inspired voices from Genesis to 
 the Apocalypse. As on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 so in the high seats of Prophecy, Psalm, Sacred His 
 tory, and typical anticipation, the elders speak of the 
 decease which should be accomplished at Jerusalem. 
 Those difficulties of exegetical explanation, which lay 
 so elaborate and puzzling a task on the anti-Trinitarian, 
 lift and disappear, like mists before the morning. " The 
 Light of the World " scatters them. Christ is the Lord 
 of the Old Testament as well as of the New ; and because 
 he is the universal Lord, ruling over the souls of the 
 heathen as well as the souls of Christendom, it is he 
 who saves every heart that is saved, to the utmost cor 
 ners of the earth, even of those who, not having heard 
 his name nor knowing his law, yet do the things con 
 tained in the law, and feel the secret workings of his 
 Spirit. Those traces of the Divine Trinity in the for 
 mer Scriptures, which are not arguments, are yet natu 
 ral and beautiful illustrations or confirmations. The 
 plural name of the Creator, his speaking of himself as 
 " we " and " us," the repeated appearance in vision of 
 the Jehovah- Angel as anticipating the visible Messiah, 
 these things, to the believer, have a meaning as symbols 
 if not as proofs. They appear at a divine call. The 
 royal and sacerdotal figure of Melchisedec arises before 
 us in the Patriarchal age, and moves through the twi- 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 409 
 
 light of history, as being, according to the great argu 
 ment of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the living typo of 
 the new king of Righteousness and Peace, and of the 
 " Priest forever," after the heavenly order of priest 
 hood, which is " without descent," " having neither 
 beginning of days nor end of life," " not after the law 
 of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an 
 endless life." Abraham did see the Saviour s day and 
 was glad. Moses, as Lawgiver, did predict the Re 
 deemer, and the law given him was the purposed prepa 
 ration for the " truth and grace by Jesus Christ." 
 Shiloh does coine, with his never-departing sceptre of 
 peace, as Israel promised. All the immense and costly 
 system of sacrifices does verily serve its predestined end 
 as the " shadow of better things to come," things which 
 did come in him who " once offered up himself," the 
 Refiner and Purifier of all the sons of Levi, at once 
 High-Priest and Victim, " made higher than the heav 
 ens," " continuing ever," " having an unchangeable 
 priesthood," "ever living to make intercession." David, 
 chieftain of kings, takes his singular exaltation, not only 
 from the personal worth of his penitence and the inspi 
 ration of his song, but as the regal ancestor of the hu 
 man part in the Prince of all the kings of the earth. 
 The prophecies, from age to age, and along the pages of 
 the Bible, resound the ever-strengthening and ever- 
 clearer cry, " He cometh ! The Wonderful Counsellor, 
 Mighty Cod, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace ! 
 Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is he that 
 cometh in the name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the 
 highest ! " 
 
 Now the disciple, taking his stand on this immutable 
 and far-reaching ground of interpretation, finds it a 
 
410 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 vantage-ground of incomparable superiority. The en 
 tire domain of Scriptural revelation spreads itself out 
 under a more luminous sun and a more hallowed air. 
 Let literal criticism ply its needful and honorable labor 
 as it will ; let this and that other and less broad expla 
 nation be adduced ; let cavillers dissent and deny be 
 cause that is not demonstrated which the Spirit offers 
 only to the reception of faith ; nevertheless, once seen, 
 the all-pervading and underlying Christian oneness of 
 the sacred writings is inestimably impressive. They 
 become a new creation to us ; not a disjointed, dissev 
 ered, unequal, heterogeneous compilation ; but, in the 
 express design of God, a manifold and many-voiced 
 affirmation of a single message, They are read, in all 
 their parts, even those remoter in subject from our 
 selves, with fresh enthusiasm. The poor presumption 
 that proposes to set aside any member of the one sacred 
 whole comes to appear a flippant, superficial tampering 
 of unholy hands with what God has joined together. 
 No wonder the Saviour says of the older Scriptures, 
 " These are they which testify of me ! " The volume of 
 the BOOK is written of HIM ; of the " Lamb slain from 
 the foundation of the world." The Forerunner, last in 
 the line of Hebrew prophets, exclaims, " Behold the 
 Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world ! " 
 And as the record closes, amidst the ineffable openings 
 of the Apocalypse, the worshipping multitude about the 
 throne, many angels and elders, and every creature 
 from heaven and earth and sea, ten thousand times ten 
 thousand, and thousands of thousands say, with a loud 
 voice, " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive 
 power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and hon 
 or, and glory, and blessing ! " 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 411 
 
 And finally, we also, yet on the earth, taught and re 
 assured by these heavenly and holy voices, take up our 
 praise and prayer, saying, " Glory be to God in the 
 highest, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, the 
 Preserver of all things, the Father of mercies, who so 
 loved mankind as to send his only begotten Son into the 
 world to redeem us from sin and misery, and to obtain 
 for us everlasting life ! Vouchsafe, our God, to rep 
 resent thyself and all the excellences of thy nature, and 
 all the testimonies of thy love, so powerfully to our 
 souls, that we may seriously reverence thee, un- 
 feignedly love thee, and worthily praise thee ; rejoice 
 in thee incessantly, trust in thee heartily, adhere to thee 
 zealously, and serve thee devoutly all the days of our 
 lives ! 
 
 " Glory be to the Eternal Son of God, who for our 
 sakes was made man, and dwelt among us, and died for 
 us : who purged away our sins by the sacrifice of him 
 self, and hath given his body and blood to be our spir 
 itual food and sustenance ! Glorious things are spoken 
 of thee, Jesus, the image of the invisible God, the 
 Light of the World, the Lamb of God that takest away 
 sin, our Great High-Priest who art set down on the 
 right hand of the Majesty on high, and appearest in the 
 presence of God for us, and art our advocate with the 
 Father : who also shalt come again with glory to judge 
 both the quick and the dead ; and whose kingdom shall 
 have no end : blessed Jesus, we acknowledge thee 
 to be the Lord, the Holy One of God. We adore 
 and worship thee, and look for all blessings through 
 thy hand alone, who hast all power in heaven and 
 earth. Out of thy fulness, most gracious Lord, let 
 us receive grace for grace! Give us humility and 
 
412 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOR MAN 
 
 meekness ; purity, holiness, and universal charity ; rev 
 erence and constancy in devotion ; attentiveness and 
 recollection of mind in hearing thy word ; patience in 
 waiting upon thee ; weanedness from the world ; resig 
 nation to thy holy will and contentedness in all condi 
 tions ; sincerity and uprightness of heart towards thee 
 our God, and towards all men. 
 
 " Glory be to the Holy Spirit, of the Father and of 
 the Son, who regenerates and sanctifies us and unites 
 us unto Christ; who enlighteneth our understandings 
 and disposeth our wills; who helpeth our infirmities, 
 strengthened us against temptations, and maketh us to 
 fulfil our duty ; who directeth us in doubt, and com- 
 forteth and supporteth us in troubles I Blessed Spirit, 
 pardon, we beseech thee, our grievings of thee and our 
 rebellions against thee ! Be not provoked to leave our 
 souls destitute of thy heavenly influence. Graciously 
 assist us, and make us meekly and readily obedient to 
 all thy holy inspirations. Cherish and increase any 
 good motions thou hast ever wrought in us towards a 
 more complete participation of the Divine nature. And 
 so sanctify us throughout, that our whole spirit, soul 
 and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ ! 
 
 " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
 Holy Ghost ; as it was in the beginning, is now, and 
 ever shall be, world without end ! Amen. 
 
 [For the sake of giving as faithful a representation as possible of the 
 attitude of the subject as it has offered itself to the author s mind, and as a 
 due acknowledgment of many valuable impressions upon it, the following 
 extracts are made here from a Sermon on " The Christian Trinity a Prac 
 tical Truth," by Rev. Horace Bushnell, D.D., himself, in his own lan 
 guage, though not applied to himself, " a lover of the doctrine as related 
 to the life of religion and the working of Christian experience, preach- 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 413 
 
 ing, praying, worshipping, climbing up unto God through an experience 
 shaped in the moulds of Trinity "] 
 
 " There is yet another class of witnesses, even a great cloud of them. 
 "We mean those living myriads of God on earth and above, who, apart 
 from all scholarship and philosophy, have been raised to a participation of 
 God so transcendent in the faith of this adorable mystery, Why or how it 
 is a truth they have not been able, it may be, and as little cared, to find ; 
 for it had proved itself to their experience in such a raising of their con 
 sciousness, and a communication to them of the Divine nature so indispu 
 tably witnessed, as to make them inaccessible to all the colder assaults of 
 scepticism. Sometimes they have stated a Trinity to which there have 
 been abundant reasons for exception, and yet they have found such prac 
 tical virtue in that, as to be raised quite above the encumbrances added ; 
 and seem even to have had it for a part of their joy, to see how the fires of 
 their faith could burn up all the chaff of their head, The Avise ones of the 
 Church and the speculative schools sometimes give them pity ; or, what is 
 not far different, set them forth as the weaklings of the faith, who make a 
 virtue of their ecstasies over what has been imposed upon their superstition ; 
 but the revelations of eternity will show who were weakest and most on a 
 level with pity, they who could so readily fall into the abysses of the Di 
 vine mystery, or the wise pretenders who stood questioning over syllables 
 and refining in distinctions, till they had shut away all mystery, and taken 
 up for God a dull residuum just equal to the petty measures of their under 
 standing. 
 
 " Could we bring up this great cloud of witnesses, and hear them speak 
 to the question we have here on hand, or could we but gather up the words 
 in which they have recorded their experience in the faith, even these would 
 contribute a weight of evidence to the truth we are asserting, and shed a 
 glory over it such as to quite forbid the need of any other argument. 
 Thus, for example, we should hear, at Heidelberg, two centuries and a 
 half ago, the distinguished Professor of Divinity, Francis Junius, testifying 
 that he was in fact converted from atheism by the Christian Trinity, or by 
 the sense of God rolled in upon his soul by means of that stupendous mys 
 tery of the Gospel. Having fallen into great looseness of living, and be 
 come an atheist in his opinions, his Christian father kindly puts a New 
 Testament in his hands, requesting him to read it ; and the result is, that, 
 opening on a passage most of all likely as it would commonly be supposed 
 to offend and fortify his scepticism, he is visited, in its mysterious and sub 
 lime words, by such a sense of God as overwhelms and instantly stifles the 
 doubts which no mere argument of books and treatises had been able to 
 remove. He shall give the account in his own words : Here therefore I 
 open that New Testament, the gift of heaven ; at first sight and without 
 design, I light upon that most august chapter of the Evangelist and Apos- 
 
414 
 
 tie St. John, " In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, 
 and the word was God," &c. I read part of the chapter, and am so affect 
 ed as I read, that, on a sudden, I perceive the divinity of the subject, and 
 the majesty and authority of the writing, far exceeding all human eloquence. 
 I shuddered, was confounded, and was so affected that I scarce knew my 
 self. Thou didst remember me, O Lord my God, for thy great mercy, and 
 didst receive a lost sheep into thy flock. (Bayle s Dictionary ) 
 
 " The testimonies of Christian experience rejoicing in this truth are of 
 course more frequent. Thus the mild and sober Howe, explaining in what 
 manner the Trinity is to be connected with Christian experience, says, co- 
 incidently with what we have advanced concerning the relational nature of 
 the fact : When, therefore, we are to consider God as related to us as our 
 God, we must take in and bring together each of these notions and concep 
 tions concerning him ; we must take in the conceptions of each of the per 
 sons, " God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, is my 
 God." How admirable a thing is this ! How great and high thoughts 
 ought we to have concerning the privileged state of our case ! Indeed there 
 is nothing that we have to consider of this God, or to look after the knowl 
 edge of, to answer the curiosity of a vain mind, but everything and any 
 thing that may answer the necessity of a perishing soul. Whatever is 
 requisite to our real felicity and blessedness, we may look to all that is in 
 God, as determined by a special relation unto us. (Works, p. 1100.) 
 
 " Jeremy Taylor, holding the truth of the Christian Trinity to be a truth 
 entirely practical, apprehensible therefore in its real evidence only by expe 
 rience, says : He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the Trinity, 
 and does it by words and names of man s invention, talking of essences 
 and existences, hypostases and personalities, priorities in coequalities, and 
 unity in pluralities, may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head, 
 and talk of something he knows not what ; but the good man who feels the 
 power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctification, 
 and righteousness, and in whose heart the Spirit is shed abroad, this 
 man, though he understands nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone 
 truly understands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 " Again, the Marquis de Renty, a distinguished French disciple of the 
 seventeenth century, opens the secret of his own living experience in these 
 words : I bear in me ordinarily an experimental verification and a pleni 
 tude of the most holy Trinity, which elevates me to a simple view of God; 
 and with that I do all that his providence enjoins me, not regarding any 
 thing for the greatness or littleness of it, but only the order of God, and 
 the glory it may render him/ (Life of De Renty.) 
 
 The testimony of Edwards, a man whose intellectual sobriety and 
 philosophic majesty of character are not to be disrespected, corresponds : 
 And God has appeared glorious unto me on account of the Trinity. It 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 415 
 
 has made me have exalting thoughts of God that ho subsists in three per 
 sons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The sweetest joys and delights I have 
 experienced have not been those that have arisen from the hope of my own 
 good estate, but in a direct view of the glorious things of the Gospel. 
 (Life, pp. 132, 133.) 
 
 " The celebrated Lady Maxwell, a follower of Wesley, is more abundant 
 in these revelations. She says : Yesterday he made his goodness to pass 
 before me in a remarkable manner, while attending public worship. I was 
 favored with a clear view of the Trinity, which I never had before, and en 
 joyed fellowship with a triune God. 1 was in the spirit on the Lord s day, 
 and felt my mind fixed in deep contemplation upon that glorious incom 
 prehensible object, the ever-blessed Trinity. Hitherto I have been led to 
 view the Holy Ghost chiefly as an agent, now 1 behold him distinctly as 
 the third person of the Trinity. I have, in my own soul, an experimental 
 proof of the truth of this doctrine, but find human language perfectly insuf 
 ficient for speaking or writing intelligibly on the subject. Eternity alone 
 can unfold the sacred mystery ; but in the mean time what we may and do 
 comprehend of it is replete with comfort to the Christian. (Life, p. 258.) 
 
 " It is impossible not to admire the Gospel formula that can so flood the 
 human soul in its narrowed and blinded state with the sense of God, and 
 raise it to a pitch of blessing so transcendent. The amazing power of the 
 Trinity, acting thus on the human imagination, and the contribution thus 
 made to Christian experience, cannot be overestimated. 
 
 " After we have discovered, in this manner, how closely related the 
 Christian Trinity is to Christian experience, and all the highest realizations 
 of God, it will not be difficult to account for the remarkable tenacity of the 
 doctrine. No doctrine is more paradoxical in its terms. None can bo 
 more mercilessly tortured by the application of a little logic, such as the 
 weakest and smallest wits arc master of. None has been more often or 
 with a more peremptory confidence repudiated by sections of the Church 
 and teachers of high distinction. The argument itself, too, has always 
 been triumphant regarding the mere logical result ; for the fact is logically 
 absurd, and there is no child who cannot so handle the words as to show 
 that no three persons can be one. And yet, for some reason, the doctrine 
 would not die ! It cannot die ! Once thought, it cannot be expelled from 
 the world. And this for the reason that its life is in men s hearts, not in 
 their heads. Impressing God in his true personality and magnitude, 
 impressing and communicating God in that grand twofold economy, by 
 which he is brought nigh to our fallen state and accommodated to our 
 wants as sinners, showing us God inherently related both to our finite 
 capacity and our evil necessity, what can ever expel it from the world s 
 thought ? As soon shall we part with the daylight or the air, as lapse into 
 the cold and feeble monotheism in which some teachers of our time are 
 35* 
 
416 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT FOB MAN 
 
 ready to boast as the Gospel of reason and the unity of a personal father 
 hood. No : this corner-stone is not to be so easily removed. It was plant 
 ed before the foundation of the world, and it will remain. It is eternally 
 woven into the practical economy of God s kingdom, and must therefore 
 stand firm. Look up, O man ! Look up, thou sinner ! in thy fall, and 
 behold thy God, eternally Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, bringing all his 
 vastness down to thy littleness, all the power of his will to release thee 
 from the power of thy will, acting, manifolding, circling round thee, inhe 
 rently fitted, though infinite, to thy finite want, and so to be the spring of 
 thy benediction for ever ! 
 
 " "We are fully conscious of the tameness and poverty of the illustrations 
 by which we have endeavored to set forth this greatest of all subjects. 
 "What can a mortal say that is worthy of this transcendent mystery of God 1 
 Even if he should some time seem to be raised in it quite above mortality, 
 how can he utter that which is so plainly unutterable ? Well is it if he 
 does not seem rather to have blurred than cleared the glorious majesty of 
 the subject, by the consciously dull and feeble trivialities he has offered. 
 Indeed we could not dare to offer a discussion so far below the real merit 
 of the theme, were it not for the conviction that there is a lower and feebler 
 inadequacy, in our common holding of the theme, from which it is scarcely 
 possible to detract. To hold this grand subtonic mystery, in the ring of 
 whose deep reverberation we receive our heaviest impressions of God, as if 
 it were only a thing just receivable, not profitable ; a dead truth, not a liv 
 ing ; a theologic article, wholly one side of the practical life ; a truth so 
 scholastic and subtle as to have, in fact, no relation to Christian experience ; 
 nothing, we are sure, can be less adequate than this, or bring a loss to re 
 ligion that is more deplorable, unless it be a flat denial of the mystery 
 itself. "We can wish the reader nothing more beatific in this life than to 
 have found and fully brought into feeling the practical significance of this 
 eternal act or fact of God, which we call the Christian Trinity. Nowhere 
 else do the bonds of limitation burst away as here. Nowhere else does the 
 soul launch upon immensity as here ; nowhere fill her burning censer with 
 the eternal fires of God, as when she sings, 
 
 One inexplicably three, 
 One in simplest unity. 
 
 " Who that has been able, in some frame of holy longing after God, to 
 clear the petty shackles of logic, and the paltry quibbles of a world-wise 
 speculation, committing his soul up freely to the inspiring impulse of this 
 divine mystery as it is celebrated in some grand doxology of Christian 
 worship, and has so been lifted into conscious fellowship with the great 
 celestial minds, in their higher ranges of beatitude, and their shining tiers 
 of glory, has not known it as being, at once, the deepest, highest, widest, 
 most enkindling, and most practical of all practical truths ? 
 
IN THE DIVINE TRINITY. 417 
 
 " Regarding it, then, as such, it is only a part of the argument by which 
 we undertake to commend it to faith and a practical use, that we indicate, 
 in a few brief suggestions, the manner in which its advantages may be most 
 fully received, and with fewest drawbacks of hinderance and perplexity. 
 
 " First of all, then, we must hold fast the strict unity of God. Let there 
 be no doubt, or even admitted question, of that. Take it by assumption 
 that God is as truly one being as if he were a finite person like ourselves, 
 and let nothing ever be suffered to qualify the assumption ; for the moment 
 we begin to let in any such thought as that the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost are three beings, we shall be thrown out of all rest, confused, dis 
 tressed, questioning what and whom to worship, consulting our prejudices 
 and preferences, and suffering all the distractions of idolaters. 
 
 " Holding firm the unity in this manner, use the plurality with the ut 
 most unconcern, as a form of thought or instrumental verity, by which you 
 are to be assisted in receiving the most unrestricted, fullest, most real and 
 sufficient impression of the One. We must have no jealousy of the three, 
 as if they were going to drift us away from the unity, or from reason ; being 
 perfectly assured of this, that in using the triune formula, in the limberest, 
 least constrained way possible, and allowing the plurality to blend, in the 
 freest manner possible, with all our acts of worship, preaching, praying, 
 singing, and adoring, we arc only doing with three persons, just what we 
 do with one, making no infringement of the unity with the three, more 
 than of the infinity with the one. Let God be three persons forever, just 
 as he is one person forever, and as this latter is a truth accepted without 
 difficulty, and held as the necessary truth of religion, so let it be our joy 
 that he is a being who needs for other purposes equally dear to be and be 
 thought as three. 
 
 " Meantime we must avoid all practices of logic on the persons. We 
 must take them as we take the one, which, if we will put our logic on the 
 term, will immediately turn out to be only a finite being, a man. They 
 are to be set before the mind at the outset as a holy paradox, that only 
 gives the truth in greater power of expression that it defies all attempts at 
 logic or definition. Seizing thus upon the living symbols, we are to chant 
 our response with the church, and say, God of God, Light of Light, 
 very God of very God ; and, if we cannot reason out the paradox, to like 
 it the better that it stops the clatter of our speculative mill-work, and speaks 
 to us as God s great mystery should, leaving us to adore in silence. Not 
 that we are here to disown our reason ; God is no absurdity as three per 
 sons more than as one. Fully satisfied of this, we are only to love the 
 grand abyss of God s majesty thus set before us, and rejoice to fall into it, 
 there to bathe and submerge our finite love, rejoicing the more that God is 
 greater than we knew, taller than our reach can measure, wider than our 
 finite thought can comprehend. 
 
418 LIFE, SALVATION, AND COMFORT IN THE TRINITY. 
 
 " Neither will it do for us to suffer any impatience, or be hurried into 
 any act of presumption, because the Trinity of God costs us some strug 
 gles of thought, and because we cannot find immediately how to hold it 
 without some feeling of disturbance or distraction. That is one of the 
 merits of the Trinity, that it does not fool us in the confidence that we can 
 perfectly know and comprehend God by our first thought. Simply be 
 cause God is too great for our extempore and merely childish comprehen 
 sion, he ought to be given us in forms that cost us labor, and put us on a 
 stretch of endeavor. So it is with all great themes. The mind labors and 
 wrestles after them, and comes into their secret slowly. Let no shallow 
 presumption turn us away, then, from this glorious mystery, till we have 
 given it time enough, and opened to it windows enough by our praises and 
 prayers, to let in the revelation of its glory. Let it also be an argument of 
 modesty with us, and a welcome commendation to our reverence, that so 
 many friends of God and righteous men of the past ages, such as bore a 
 greater fight than we, and grew to greater ripeness in their saintly walk, 
 bowed themselves adoringly before this holy mystery, and sung it with 
 hallelujahs in the worship of their temples, in their desert fastings, and 
 their fires of testimony. And as their Gloria Patri, the sublimest of their 
 doxologies, is, in form, a hymn for the ages, framed to be continuously 
 chanted by the long procession of times, till times are lapsed in eternity, 
 what can we better do than let the wave lift us that lifted them, and bid it 
 still roll on ? " 
 
SERMON XXI. 
 
 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE OF SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE, AND I KNOW THEM, AND THEY FOL 
 LOW ME : AND I GIVE UNTO THEM ETERNAL LIFE ; AND THEY 
 SHALL NEVER PERISH, NEITHER SHALL ANY MAN PLUCK THEM 
 
 OUT OF MY HAND. John x. 27, 28. 
 
 BOTH in the common business of Christian living, and 
 in the discouragements of Christian failure, there is an 
 inestimable power in the assurance so explicitly given 
 in these words of the Saviour. And this is the assur 
 ance : All who have become his by the communication 
 into their souls of his secret and divine life through 
 faith shall be securely and inviolably kept in that com 
 munion. They are not on the same ground with the 
 rest of the world. They live in no uncertainty. They 
 have believed to some purpose. They have not made 
 their good confession for a disappointment. The prom 
 ises of God have not imposed upon them a delusion. 
 The laws of their spiritual nature are not going to play 
 them false. There are privileges, there are safeties, 
 pertaining to them, not to be had in any other way 
 than this new way. The salvation they are told of 
 means something. The almighty friendship of the 
 Saviour, pledged to them when they consented to be 
 
420 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 his friends, amounts to something. They are not out 
 side, but inside a commonwealth, or fold, which has 
 defences, foundations, immunities. Over it is a Guar 
 dian who is not a covenant-breaker, a Shepherd that is 
 a King. No man is able to pluck them out of his hand. 
 Say nothing of that deep experience which is the only 
 competent interpreter in the case, since it brings with it 
 a new organ of discernment ; who of us, even by the 
 common knowledge of common things, does not see 
 that a new and invigorating character must be given 
 to the whole action of the religious life, when this 
 conviction about it is established as a living habit in 
 the soul ? 
 
 Take first the moods of religious dissatisfaction. 
 These are various in their occasions, various in form, 
 color, and degree, according to .individual temperament 
 and situation. They range over the whole scale of 
 man s marvellous sensibility to doubt, to fear, to pal 
 pable accusings of conscience and nameless depressions. 
 They gather up their painful elements from without and 
 from within. They shape themselves, with a multi 
 formity of suffering that is wonderful and fearful, to all 
 our individual ideas of what the Christian life is, and of 
 what God requires. If you conceive of this chiefly as 
 an obligation, you see with dismay that the command 
 outreaches your obedience. If you regard it as a 
 privilege, you are mortified that you abuse it. If you 
 take the legal view, you feel the sentence of death in 
 your self-judgment ; if the ethical, your moral standard 
 mocks and shames you. If the disinterested compas 
 sion of Christ s sacrifice moves you, you are humiliated 
 at the poverty of your return and even the dulness of 
 your gratitude. If you are inclined to look mainly into 
 
OP SANCTIFICATION. 421 
 
 the Bible for your direction, then the distance between 
 that Book and the record of your own doings is the dis 
 tance between Heaven and earth, between holy and un 
 holy. Or if you listen reverently for the voices of intu 
 ition, springing in the oracles of your own immortal 
 spirit, still the ideal dwarfs the performance, and the 
 honest conscience cries, " Unclean, unclean ! " " Mis 
 erable man that I am," " who shall deliver me ? " 
 
 If these were only moods of discontent, and nothing 
 more, they might be taken as a wholesome portion in a 
 necessary discipline ; an interior crucifixion into that 
 meekness which is of the very essence of Christian sub 
 mission ; or else as a stimulus to a stronger work and 
 warfare. For it is inevitable that a faith whose charac 
 teristic spirit is eternal aspiration should be more or 
 less a sorrowing faith. If any of us shrink from com 
 mittal to it, or toss off its Divine invitations, because we 
 are such cowards as to dread these attendant shadows 
 of its glory, still we do not mistake its grand condi 
 tions ; we only forfeit what the timid and servile soul 
 could not hold at any rate till it is transformed and new 
 born by the Spirit of courage and of liberty, the Spirit 
 of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 
 
 Nevertheless, friends, Christians, in whom this spirit 
 has begun, you know there is a bound where all this 
 dissatisfaction and unrest ought to end. Beyond that 
 limit it becomes a hinderance to Christian growth, a fet 
 ter upon Christian liberty, a chill upon Christian zeal. 
 Instead of inspiriting, it debilitates. By an easy and 
 dangerous transition it passes into a morbid self-occu 
 pation, which shuts off charity for men and service to 
 Christ. It becomes a practical denial of the supporting 
 strength and the pledged grace of God. There can be 
 
422 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 little freedom, or heartiness, or efficiency, in the wor 
 ship or the living, under this overshadowing anxiety. 
 Better far always than indifference or unconcern, it is 
 not the natural, healthy state of a disciple. If it is an 
 inevitable stage on the way to that state, yet it should 
 always be treated as just that and no more, tempo 
 rary, instrumental, immature : tending ever to peace ; 
 looking for the joy of believing ; waiting for the prom 
 ise of the Comforter; pressing on, with confident expec 
 tation, from the transient " spirit of bondage to fear," 
 which asks, " Who shall deliver me? " into the abiding 
 " spirit of life in Christ Jesus," where " there is no 
 condemnation," and into the blessed " spirit of adop 
 tion whereby we cry, Abba, Father : " "if God be for 
 us, who can be against us ? " " Neither death, nor life, 
 nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor 
 depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate 
 us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord." If it be possible, every Christian heart will feel 
 it to be a part of its Christian endeavor and prayer to 
 lay off the weight which burdens the race, exchanging 
 it for this undoubting, full assurance of faith. 
 
 And to a greater extent than even many earnest, sin 
 cere people believe, it certainly is possible. The Lord 
 of our salvation has made it possible. It is possible, not 
 in our might, or wisdom, or self-lifting, but by his own 
 Spirit, given to those who seek in simplicity. It is pos 
 sible, by our seeing him as he is, receiving him as he is 
 offered, following him, not for our own sake, but for his 
 sake. It is possible that we should " be of good cheer," 
 because he has overcome the world s tribulation. It 
 is possible we should " fear not," because " it is the 
 Father s good pleasure to give us the kingdom." It is 
 
OF SANCTIFICATION. 423 
 
 possible we should " fear none of those things which we 
 shall suffer," because our Saviour has suffered for us. 
 It is possible for us to do our work cordially, without 
 misgiving of failure, without dread of a separation from 
 the great Source of our safety and strength, because 
 " no man shall be able to pluck " his people " out of 
 his hand." 
 
 There is an anecdote of the saintly and learned Arch 
 bishop Usher, not unfamiliar to religious readers, which 
 is meant to illustrate his spiritual modesty. It relates 
 how a friend frequently urged him to write his thoughts 
 on Sanctification, which at length he engaged to do ; 
 but, a considerable time elapsing, the performance of his 
 promise was importunately claimed. The Bishop replied 
 to this purpose : " I have not written, and yet I cannot 
 charge myself with a breach of promise, for I began to 
 write ; but when I came to treat of the new creature 
 which God formeth by his own Spirit in every regener 
 ate soul, I found so little of it wrought in myself that I 
 could speak of it only as parrots, or by rote, but with 
 out the knowledge of what I might have expressed ; 
 and, therefore, I durst not presume to proceed any fur 
 ther upon it." Upon this his friend stood amazed to 
 hear such a confession from so grave, holy, and emi 
 nent a person. The Bishop then added : " I must tell 
 you, we do not well understand what sanctification and 
 the new creature are. It is no less than for a man to 
 be brought to an entire resignation of his own will to 
 the will of God ; and to live in the offering up of his 
 soul continually in the flames of love, as a whole burnt- 
 offering to Christ ; and 0, how many who profess Chris 
 tianity are unacquainted, experimentally, with this work 
 upon their souls ! " 
 
424 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 As an example of personal self-distrust, this is touch 
 ing and beautiful. But to infer from it that there are 
 themes of spiritual thought unfolded in the Gospel 
 really and finally beyond the reach of sincere and con 
 secrated souls would be a perversion of it. By large 
 confidences in the Saviour s promises Christians do 
 not extol themselves, but honor him. The New Tes 
 tament writers never misapprehend man s spiritual 
 nature. They never overstate God s encouragements. 
 Sanctification is an actual and frequent theme of Evan 
 gelical meditation and exposition. Sooner or later, 
 therefore, a declaration of " the whole counsel of God " 
 requires that it be gratefully and solemnly and rever 
 ently opened. If we stammer and blunder, the same 
 " Faithful Promiser " will pity, correct, forgive. There 
 is a shortcoming of faith which nothing else will en 
 large. There is a religious anxiety that nothing else 
 will console. I spoke of the variety of forms that re 
 ligious anxiety assumes. Yet down at its deepest source 
 it is probably very much one and the same thing, hav 
 ing one and the same cause. It springs from a feel 
 ing of one fact, the distance between what we ought 
 to be and what we are. In one way of putting it or 
 another, that is the solemn difficulty : the great, deep 
 gulf that still opens between what the Holy Father in 
 heaven must require of us, and the lives we live : a 
 gulf so great and deep, and so imperceptibly narrowed, 
 if at all, that it threatens to keep us apart forever. 
 Apart ! Patiently examine, analyze, and confess it, and 
 see if this is not the secret of the fear. Quicken any 
 soul into a more delicate sensibility, and this is the real 
 question that distresses it. To be left apart from its 
 Lord ! It is deeper than any selfish alarm. It is 
 
OF SANCTIFICATION. 425 
 
 grander than the suffering of any material penalty. 
 It is the sorrow of love, of loyalty, of devoted and 
 honorable friendship. It belongs to the noblest view, 
 and the most generous philosophy, of Christian truth. 
 
 Hence it is that the passage where the text occurs 
 meets profoundly just the inmost nature of the trouble, 
 in all its diversity of action. Christ is conversing with 
 his disciples about their future. He knows, and they 
 begin to feel, that in that future is involved one secret 
 which contains all other interests, hopes, terrors. What 
 is to become of their connection with him ? Is it to 
 cease ? Is it to last forever ? Tell them that, and you 
 solve the one darkest doubt that haunts them. 
 
 Their Master tells them. Already he had revealed to 
 them, as their slowly opening minds were prepared for 
 it, one and another of his great designs and offices in 
 their behalf. He had told them, in imagery beautifully 
 and touchingly diversified, many sublime marvels of his 
 Messiahship ; that he was " the Door," by which alone 
 every man must enter in ; " the Light," by which every 
 man who sees must be lighted ; the " Living Water," 
 quenching every thirst ; ai\d, at last, rising to a more 
 personal and intimate representation, that he was the 
 " Good Shepherd " of all souls, in heaven and earth, 
 keeping the frail, recovering the lost. Still something 
 remained untold. Doubtless the very object of these 
 startling statements was to arouse their thoughts to fur 
 ther inquiries, and so prepare them, by a natural edu 
 cation, and not a blind compulsion, for the greater truth 
 to come ; just as he still often waits to bestow on us 
 his richest blessings, till ripened affections are stirred to 
 seek them. The Jews come at last, and say, " How 
 long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the 
 
426 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE. 
 
 Christ, tell us plainly." He answers their unbelief 
 plainly ; and then, turning to the few hearts which he 
 knew were struggling with the weight of a more serious 
 premonition : " My sheep hear my voice, and I know 
 them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eter 
 nal life, and they shall never perish ; neither shall any 
 man pluck them out of my hand." Let who will 
 among them take comfort from the assurance ! 
 
 Even so far back as the Patriarchal period our 
 Lord began to reveal himself as a Promise-maker 
 and a Promise-keeper, a God of covenants. And 
 not only were these promises literal and Scriptural. 
 Sublime signs attested him. The stars of the Eastern 
 sky were marshalled into his witnesses over the Mount, 
 when the angel pointed Abraham to them in the re 
 demptive promise of his posterity : " In thy seed shall 
 all the nations of the earth be blessed," - - " as the stars 
 of heaven for multitude." Bethel, the solemn pasture- 
 ground whence the ladder of light sprang up to heaven 
 while Jacob slept, was bright with the same eternal 
 promise, and when he awoke into the splendor he cried, 
 " How dreadful is this place," "house of God and 
 gate of heaven." Peniel, where the Patriarch wrestled 
 in the long, dark night, and cried at length, " Let me 
 go, for the day breaketh," and gained his new name, 
 " Israel," as a pledge of " power with God," became a 
 monument of promise. The whole Mosaic apparatus, 
 from the " circumcision in the flesh " to the Temple on 
 Moriah, and from the Garden of Eden to the Garden 
 of Gethsemane, was a system of historic symbols and 
 instruments to persuade men they had to do with a 
 Jehovah that remembered his pledges. All the sacred 
 lands were dotted over with the tokens of these divine 
 
OP SANCTIFICATION. 427 
 
 covenants, like the signature to a bond. That Oriental 
 territory became a kind of outspread scroll, its hills and 
 rivers printed with promissory memorials speaking from 
 one generation to another. It vivified the people s faith 
 and strengthened their hands to fight for the personal 
 God who had agreed to stand by them. And when the 
 Messiah was born, the old promises were at once ful 
 filled and grew more articulate, while " new," " more 
 glorious," " better " promises were added. " God was 
 manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, 
 preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
 received up into glory." United now with humanity, his 
 assurances had a human sound as well as a divine au 
 thority, and every word was " glad tidings." It was a 
 Testament, a covenant. Its great pledge was that of a 
 redemption to the ends of the earth and the end of time. 
 A Personal " Comforter," " a Paraclete," was to come, to 
 " abide," apply it, and give it an everlasting practical 
 energy. He was promised to come from Christ, and 
 dwell in the Church, and carry forward its reconciling 
 work forever. 
 
 If we begin to read the New Testament for the first 
 time with this truth for a key, we shall find that the 
 light of a new meaning begins to shine along the pages. 
 Take, for example, those conversations Christ held with 
 his disciples just before his separation from them, writ 
 ten in John. Do we not all acknowledge that, in our 
 human sympathies, the first sad thought which intrudes, 
 after the establishing of a new and valuable friendship, 
 or the assured possession of a coveted affection, is the 
 question about its duration ? What will endanger it ? 
 Can anything break it ? To meet that fear, Jesus took 
 much of those last hours of communion to reassure his 
 
 36* 
 
428 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 friends, in every form of promise, that he would not 
 leave them exposed or forsaken or comfortless, but 
 come back to them, abide with them, watch over them, 
 deliver them. " That where I am, there ye may be 
 also." Nay, it shall be an internal union. " At that 
 day ye shall know that ye are in me, and I in you." 
 There shall be not only union, but love, Almighty 
 love. " He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, 
 and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him." 
 " I and my Father are one." Hence all alarm must 
 disappear. " Let not your heart be troubled, neither 
 let it be afraid." Nor shall it be merely a negative 
 thing, this absence of terror, but a positive and 
 settled peace : " My peace I give unto you." And this 
 shall pass into active, productive righteousness. " Every 
 branch in me that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it 
 may bring forth more fruit." Besides, all new wants 
 shall be supplied : " Abiding in me, ye shall ask what 
 ye will, and it shall be done unto you." " The Spirit 
 of truth will guide you into all truth." " Father, I 
 will that they also whom thou hast given me be with 
 me where I am : " " No man shall pluck them out of 
 my hand." What promises are these ! 
 
 Turning, then, to the corresponding confidence created 
 by them in the mind of the Apostles, we have resplen 
 dent instances of the assurance of faith responding. 
 Hear Paul to his fellow-witness : "I suffer ; neverthe 
 less, I am not ashamed : for I know whom I have be 
 lieved;" the tranquil and triumphant answer to all 
 persecution, sophistry, hatred, ridicule, to all unbelief, 
 in all ages : " I know whom I have believed, and am 
 persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have 
 committed unto him, against that day," the day that 
 brings "life and immortality to light." 
 
OF SANCTIFICATION. 429 
 
 Or listen to those majestic affirmations of assurance, 
 in the Eighth to the Romans, a kind of echo to the 
 promise of our text, assurance answering to assur 
 ance, rising and gathering power as it rolls on, each 
 clause coming with the certainty of a decree, solemn 
 at once and jubilant : " For whom he did foreknow 
 he also did predestinate, to be conformed to the image 
 of his Son. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them 
 he also called ; and whom he called, them he also justi 
 fied : and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 
 If God be for us, who can be against us ? " 
 
 Now all these passages, and too many more to be 
 even mentioned, present our most holy religion to us 
 in a light not only very different from what our feeble 
 faith, sinking below its high calling, is too apt to linger 
 in, but one that is of unspeakable interest in the actual 
 and necessary difficulties of the Christian life. We are 
 not left to ourselves, with a mere guide-book in our 
 hands, and the mere reminiscence of a vanished voice 
 behind us. The grand peculiarity, the divincst charac 
 teristic, of the Christian Gospel is, that it does not stop 
 with telling us how to act, but enters in, by the living 
 person of the Lord, and becomes an indwelling force, 
 by which we act. It is not only a precept before our 
 eyes, but a power in our hearts. The spiritual world 
 is not only an expectation, but all its channels of in 
 spiring influence have been set open by the Media 
 tor, and, through him, henceforth, the believer lives in 
 direct relations and immediate intercourse with God. 
 The disciple is encircled and touched with the celestial 
 presence. Another will than his own has begun to 
 work within his own, both to will and to do. In 
 proportion to his faith in that, he can do all things, 
 
430 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 " through Christ strengthening him." Nothing shall 
 by any means hurt him. So much stronger is this Holy 
 Spirit felt to he in him, than anything self-derived, that 
 he says with Paul, " It is no more I that live, hut 
 Christ that liveth in me." The superficial delusion of 
 the senses passes away ; this invisible reality is more 
 plain to his consciousness than anything the senses take 
 knowledge of. He has nothing to fear ; for nothing 
 can pluck him from that Hand of Power in which he 
 rests. 
 
 Furthermore, the true disciple s faith is not a means 
 nor a merit by which either salvation or peace is bought. 
 The Gospel says, " Believe and live." And the moment 
 any soul hears that, it believes, if it believes at all, 
 simply because it must. It is true, the assurance, the 
 peace, does not come till the faith comes. But neither 
 does it come if the faith is brought as a deserving equiv 
 alent for it. In other words, we are not to believe for 
 our own sake, but for Christ s sake : because he su 
 premely deserves it, by his infinite love and sacrifice. 
 The mind of Christendom has yet to undergo a great 
 change at just this point, as well as the preaching. 
 We are not sanctified in order to be justified, but sanc 
 tified because we are justified. This is the Divine order. 
 Faith ; more faith ; assurance ; sanctification ; peace. 
 This makes the Christian service and progress a free, 
 joyful tribute of gratitude. " He that hath this hope 
 in him purifieth himself." The believer is not still 
 struggling, down under the bondage of compulsion, 
 trying sorrowfully to get faith enough, any more than 
 works enough, to be saved by. He is up on the heights 
 of spiritual liberty, no longer under law, but in grace. 
 He has lost sight of self and its solicitudes. He knows 
 
OF SANCTIFICATION. 431 
 
 in whom he has believed, and is assured that he is 
 " saved already " in that he does believe, " passed 
 from death unto life." And thus, being emancipated 
 from the hinderance of self-interest, he obeys from love, 
 brings his body more and more under, for the pure 
 Master s sake, goes from grace to grace, and has " peace 
 with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." In the same 
 way it may be said that we have not to go in search of 
 a Saviour, but only to be found of him who so tenderly 
 has come out into the cold mountains of our pride and 
 unbelief, in search of us, according to that affecting 
 " hymn of faith and hope " of Bonar, 
 
 " The Shepherd sought his sheep, 
 The Father sought his child, 
 They followed me o er vale and hill, 
 O er deserts waste and wild. 
 They found me nigh to death, 
 Furnished, and faint, and lone ; 
 They bound me with the bands of love ; 
 They saved the wandering one ! 
 They spoke in tender love, 
 They raised my drooping head, 
 They gently closed my bleeding wounds, 
 My fainting soul they fed. 
 They washed my filth away, 
 They made me clean and fair ; 
 They brought me to my home in peace, 
 The long-sought wanderer ! " 
 
 It is not to be forgotten that with some of the sincer- 
 est disciples in the world, misgivings not only exist, 
 but even take up a defence more complex, more subtle, 
 and harder to yield than those we have examined. 
 Such persons know indeed that religion is not a set 
 of legal or ethical requirements. They tell you they 
 do not expect to save their souls by keeping all the 
 
432 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 commandments, nor by anything they can do. That 
 system of self-righteousness, or judgment by merits, 
 they have seen through and left behind. Still, they 
 believe that acceptance has its conditions, and these 
 conditions they fear they have not fulfilled. God s for 
 giveness, Christ s reconciliation, are not given, they say, 
 but to a soul that really seeks. Progress too they know 
 to be a law and test of conversion. And daily they sor 
 row with conscientious grief, lest their faith should be a 
 delusion, their hopes unfounded, and all " the blessed 
 ness they knew when first they saw the Lord," as " a 
 dream when one awaketh." 
 
 Granting, then, the value of whatever earnest self- 
 examination these questionings may prompt, granting 
 that there are conditions and tests, and, most of all, that 
 condition which consists in a self-renouncing consecra 
 tion once for all to God ; yet there is another line of 
 thought, equally Scriptural, equally humble, equally 
 adapted to impart energy to effort and fervor to prayer. 
 It starts in the conviction that our Father coming to us, 
 and coming for us, in his Son, does not want our loss, 
 but our gain ; not our destruction, but our life eternal ; 
 not our performances, so poor at the largest to his 
 Infinitude, but our affections, confidence, gratitude, and 
 such earnest service as these filial feelings will inspire. 
 Christianity, let us remember, is from first to last a 
 divine movement in our behalf. It is an offer, promise, 
 compassion, help, redemption. Love for us was the 
 motive, sacrifice for us the means, and an opportunity 
 to pour out into receptive and willing hearts the same 
 infinite and everlasting affection is the end. Suppose, 
 now, any soul comes to feel this, and believe it. Can it 
 then believe it the object of him who has died for us 
 
OP SANCTIFICATION. 433 
 
 once, to thrust us back, and cast us away ? to set up 
 measurements of exercise for our new-born and thank 
 ful faith ? to enter with captious criticisms into the 
 failures and shames of our faltering but quite earnest 
 discipleship ? to say back to us with frigid severity, 
 " Yes, you believe or try to ; you love me, or you think 
 you do ; you long to resemble me and live my life, or 
 honestly suppose you do ; yet you are not quite up to 
 the mark I require, and so I am watching to catch sight 
 of every flaw, and score every shortcoming, and shall 
 shut the entrance against you, if by any possibility of 
 justice I can ? " Is this the sound of the Gospel ? Is 
 this the language of a Saviour who has once shed his 
 life-blood to recover us ? Is this to be a " Door " and a 
 " Light " and a " Good Shepherd," to his own feeble 
 flock ? No ! His words are : " I know them, and they 
 follow me ; I give unto them eternal life ; they shall 
 never perish ; neither shall any man pluck them out of 
 my hand ! " 
 
 Consider, finally, whether all this undue distrust, 
 besides being far less nutritive to a useful and active 
 piety among men, is not in danger of holding in it some 
 ingratitude and irreverence to Him whom it professes 
 and really intends to honor. Which honors him most ; 
 to believe that he will keep those that have sincerely 
 come penitent and longing to him, or that he will 
 scorn them ? that he will fulfil his promises, or break 
 them ? When shall we learn this, till we do learn it 
 we have missed the one deepest and most special and 
 distinctive thing in the Gospel of our redemption, viz. 
 that Christianity does not expect of us to be perfect 
 people first, in order that we may be entitled to salva 
 tion, nor Christians first, in order that we may earn 
 
434 THE PROMISE AND ASSURANCE 
 
 Christ for a Saviour ; but quite the opposite thing, 
 that we should believe we have a Saviour in order to be 
 consciously saved ; and that we should know the need 
 ful way to be already opened, that we may walk in it by 
 the attraction of our Leader s spirit ? Every miracle 
 the Saviour wrought on earth, every sentence he spoke, 
 every pain he bore, is a new ground of assured com 
 fort for every soul that has once come heartily to him 
 confessing, "I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" or 
 asking, " What shall I do that I might work the works 
 of God ? " Hear his explicit answer : " This is the 
 work of God, that ye should believe on him whom he 
 hath sent." " Whosoever believe th in me, though he 
 were dead, yet shall he live." " Him that cometh to 
 me, I will in no wise cast out." " No man shall pluck 
 them out of my hand." " Why art thou cast down, 
 my soul ? and why art thou disquieted within me ? 
 Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the 
 health of my countenance and my God ! " 
 
 Whichever way you look, with the purpose of look 
 ing, you see persons with whom you are confident the 
 one strong and ruling desire of life is to be Christlike, 
 and to know him in whom they believe, yet troubled, 
 uncertain, anxious, and very often painfully anxious, 
 about their acceptance with him. Some time ago, a 
 year or years, they resolutely, thoughtfully took up 
 their choice, half a cross and half a recompense, but 
 all a joy, and yet they sometimes return to the beg 
 garly elements of the question whether their Master will 
 keep that which they then committed to him ! Does 
 not this betray some erroneous conception of the very 
 nature of his faith, putting something of our own in 
 place of him, some will- work for childlike humility, 
 
OF SANCTIFICATION. 435 
 
 some self-hood instead of the gracious Spirit whence 
 every good thing comes ? 
 
 To each of these the Redeemer tenderly approaches, 
 saying, " Fear not ; I have called thee ; thou art mine ; 
 this work of thy great redemption is done ; it has not to 
 be done again ; I have overcome the world ; be of good 
 cheer. Thy work is first to believe, and then out of thy 
 faith, impelled by holy thankfulness and love, undoubt- 
 ingly, to do daily all the will of God thou knowest, 
 which shall then be known to thee more and more. 
 That which makes thy work effectual is the Spirit I 
 have given thee, and the pardon with which I have 
 pardoned thee. Fear nothing, weary and troubled 
 heart ! any more. Doubt nothing any more. Forget the 
 things that are behind. The ascension day has come. 
 Thou hast an advocate with the Father. Thinkest 
 thou not I have as much desire and interest to keep 
 thee as thou hast to be kept ? Already thou mayest 
 say, Abba, Father ! Peace waiteth for thee. Thy 
 Lord is in earnest with thee. Behold what he has told 
 thee about the finished work of thy redemption. Re 
 turn, and be at rest. Enter again thy forgotten home, 
 and take thy prepared place, for all things are now 
 ready, and rejoice with them that rejoice over thee. 
 Fear nothing. I have called thee by thy name. I 
 know my sheep, and am known of mine. I give unto 
 them eternal life. No man shall pluck them out of my 
 hand ! " 
 
 37 
 
SERMON XXII. 
 
 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 CONSCIENCE, I SAY, NOT THINE OWN, BUT OF THE OTHER. 
 
 1 Cor. x. 29. 
 
 THE form of the expression is accommodated and 
 idiomatic. Strictly it would be, " Conscience, not only 
 thine own, but of the other as well." For it is only 
 through my " own conscience " that I can morally re 
 spect the conscience of that " other." If I regard his, it 
 must be by obeying my own ; and my thoughtfulness for 
 his must be proportioned to the sensibility of my own. 
 
 By all who believe that there is any such thing as a 
 moral authority for human life, that duty is a word 
 with a meaning, and that responsibility is a fact, it will 
 be granted that each of these three propositions is ap 
 plicable to our intercourse and connections with each 
 other ; that is, that the moral significance of life is 
 nowhere more vitally manifest than in what we do or 
 fail to do for the characters of our neighbors ; that a 
 large part of what is included in the term duty is what 
 we owe to other men s welfare, or their goodness, which 
 is the same thing ; and that society presents a scene of 
 personal responsibility, peculiar to itself, where the ma 
 terials of judgment are always accumulating. 
 
 But, as in other cases, so here : the consent to a gen- 
 
THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 437 
 
 eral statement of a principle is one thing, while a cour 
 ageous loyalty to its personal requirements is another. 
 There may be a wide gap between the storehouse where 
 we keep a supply of respectable abstract notions loosely 
 laid away for quotation, something between the ear 
 nestness of conviction and the inconvenient disrepute of 
 scepticism, on the one hand, and the living embodi 
 ment of these notions in a self-denying practice, on the 
 other. It is easy enough to agree that we ought not 
 to weaken and damage and degrade other men s con 
 sciences ; but to give up the gratification, the amuse 
 ment, the pleasant and otherwise harmless habit, which 
 will certainly damage and mislead them, is not always 
 very easy. Besides, there are some questions of right, 
 how far, in particular cases, this ought to be done, or 
 is demanded to be done. These questions may really 
 complicate the matter to honest minds; or they may 
 only furnish a subterfuge for cowardly and evasive na 
 tures to escape a disagreeable sacrifice, without at the 
 same time losing all self-respect by abandoning the gen 
 eral principle. The New Testament takes pains to pro 
 vide directions for a settlement of both these classes of 
 difficulties. Whether it will be of any use to appeal to 
 that source of instruction will depend on another point, 
 viz. whether we have determined to make the spirit and 
 word of the New Testament, when we have found them 
 out, the law of our lives, let them cut in upon whatever 
 comfort or indulgence ; let them rebuke, and chasten, 
 and humiliate, and tax our fortitude as they may. 
 
 We begin with the broadest obligation belonging to 
 the matter. This is, that every man shall make his 
 relations to other men s characters, and the effects of 
 his actions on other men s actions, a direct part of his 
 
438 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 regular religious culture. It shall be more than a sen 
 timent, a concern; and more than a speculation, 
 a practice. To this both the nature of the case and the 
 word of the Gospel agree. On the ground of the nature 
 of the case, it can be denied only by one of three classes 
 of objectors. It may be consistently denied by asceti 
 cism, by indifferentisin, or by the mere impulsive theory 
 of morals. A monk, or rather an utter anchorite, might 
 refuse to pay a religious regard to- social relations, on 
 the ground that in solitude, as a higher state of man, the 
 relations do not exist. A thorough-going indifferentist, 
 or practical fatalist, or antinomian, might refuse, on the 
 ground that the result of things is beyond the influence 
 of ethical distinctions as recognized by the human will. 
 Or a believer in the absolute legitimacy of sheer im 
 pulse, whether sensual or supersensual, might object, on 
 the score of the philosophy which, in professing to follow 
 Nature with peculiar fidelity, confuses her legislation of 
 just liberty, and turns the beauty of her economy and 
 the order of her subordinations into a mob of ungov- 
 erned desires. These three are intelligible defences of 
 that recklessness of other men s principles which denies 
 that we are answerable for our influence on every life 
 of those around us. 
 
 Quite as clear as the reason of the case is the word of 
 the Gospel. The Christian faith is eminently a social 
 principle. Its ideas are social ideas. Its development 
 is a social development. It contemplates each heart as 
 having interdependencies and communications with its 
 fellows. The forms it takes on are domestic and asso 
 ciative. It proposes fellowship. It founds a church. 
 It advocates the common weal. It is always asking, 
 from the beginning, of every cruel Cain, " Where is thy 
 
THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 439 
 
 brother ? " It calls every exclusive, oppressive, abusive, 
 corrupting community, or person, to account for the 
 lost, the neglected, the betrayed, the weaker members 
 of the household. It says, with the solemn voice of 
 God, " Thy brother s blood cries from the ground," 
 the blood of his soul no less than of his body. One half 
 of its twofold commandment is, " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself." If it declares, in one breath, that 
 " every man shall bear his own burden," in the next it 
 says, " Bear ye one another s burdens." It predicts an 
 infinite misery for them that tempt, betray, misguide, 
 deprave one another, for them that form companies, 
 clubs, societies, to make each other frivolous, profligate, 
 dissolute. It treats with terrible severity any one that 
 presumes to reply, when called to reckon for such out 
 rages, "Am I my brother s keeper?" virtually rejoin 
 ing, " Yes, you are ; all men are each other s keepers, 
 educators, helpers or hinderers, saviours or seducers." 
 It requires all to give not only food, clothes, and money, 
 but the ministry of encouraging words, patient endur 
 ance, honest living, aspiring thoughts. So, negatively, 
 it forbids theft and killing ; and if we study the whole 
 religion through and through, we shall see that this 
 means the robbery of any particle of virtue, honor, tem 
 perance, truth, the killing of the spiritual and immor 
 tal part, quite as much as the theft of a garment, or the 
 murder of the body it covers. In fact, all the pages of 
 our Book of Faith are marked with these earnest coun 
 sels and expostulations about caring for other souls. It 
 is always adjuring us to work for, to think for, to suffer 
 for and to that end to love other people. Such is 
 the compass of its charity. "Whether it commands or 
 forbids, its intent is the same. If you examine both 
 
 37* 
 
440 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 prohibitions and injunctions, you will find they run into 
 each other, and are only the two sides of one bright 
 truth, the positive and the negative being only meas 
 urements in opposite directions of the universal law of 
 affection and service. The lives of the Apostles were 
 throughout consecrated, abstemious, self-sacrificing la 
 bors for the souls of their fellow-men. And we have 
 only to look into any period of the earthly ministry of 
 Christ to see how constantly and scrupulously he acted 
 for the internal state of those he met. He did, and re 
 frained from doing, he spoke and kept back, he came 
 into danger and went away from it, all for the sake of 
 the souls of others. Nay, his whole earthly career, his 
 humiliation into a body, and his human suffering, are 
 instances of what a true and faithful Spirit will do for 
 human need. Suppose he had said, " Why should I 
 take the form of a servant, make myself of no reputa 
 tion, become obedient unto death, bear the ignominy of 
 the Cross ? Men must live according to the laws and 
 condition of their own being. My communion is above. 
 My joys and tastes are heavenly ; why condescend to 
 these miserable, unintellectual, uncultivated creatures ? 
 They have their own pleasures, associations, their own 
 set in society. Why should I deprive myself of some 
 of my best and highest enjoyments for them ? " Do we 
 never hear language a little like that about us here ? 
 His doctrine was that nothing on earth or in heaven can 
 possibly be higher than serving, lifting up, saving the 
 spiritual life of God s children ; and that, compared 
 with that, all social fastidiousness and all intellectual 
 self-seeking are vulgarity and shame. 
 
 Or is it said that in this respect the Son of God is no 
 example for us ? This is practical infidelity, to make 
 
THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 441 
 
 excuse that we are not called to live in the same spirit 
 in which our Saviour lived. That is the very thing we 
 have to try to do ; and if we try devoutly God will help 
 us to it more and more. But even if the Master s self- 
 sacrifice were set aside as too exalted, the same condem 
 nation of our letting other people s virtue take care of 
 itself would come down from every nobler and holier 
 life of his great followers and confessors of every age. 
 And were this testimony to fail, I should still be sure of 
 a nearer witness to the essential reality of the doctrine, 
 even a voice speaking in the loftier moods of your 
 own breasts. This silent decree within will reaffirm 
 the living oracles of the Evangelists. Together they 
 will pronounce him to be the only truly conscientious 
 man who is ever applying the discriminations of his 
 sense of right to new regions, new connections, new 
 questions of conduct ; and will pronounce that it must 
 be a very limited conscience indeed which only inquires, 
 of a course of action, how it will affect the individual 
 performing it. " Conscience, I say, not thine own, but 
 of the other." 
 
 Now, the helps men render to one another s virtue 
 are, for the most part, rendered without any express 
 attempt at what is called " setting an example." That 
 is, all excellence is more impressive when it is seen liv 
 ing and acting by a certain independent force from 
 within itself, looking for its motive above the world, 
 than when it is prepared and put on exhibition for a 
 pattern. At the best, a man can give only what he has, 
 and work only with what is in him. To begin a correct 
 life with the notion of being a model is, to say the least 
 of it, beginning a good way from the heart of the mat 
 ter, and is likely to end with a mere surface morality. 
 
442 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 In agriculture and mechanics, producers do sometimes 
 raise stock, or finish fabrics, merely for a show ; and ii 
 they do it to stimulate other brains and muscles in the 
 line of their profession, it is plainly more honorable 
 than to do it for the premium or the admiration. So 
 it is higher to conquer passion for the sake of encour 
 aging other strivers for that mastery, than for self-inter 
 est, or a politic vanity. But goodness is a more delicate 
 thing, and has quite another nature than machinery or 
 animal symmetry. The danger is, that if we undertake 
 to manufacture it for a pattern, we shall spoil it in the 
 making. It will not be genuine. The very idea of 
 making it a spectacle will have taken the authenticity 
 out of it. Pattern-behavior, putting the foreign effect 
 before the spiritual essence, is Pharisaic, just as any 
 declaimed righteousness, where speech gets before con 
 viction, is cant. When words are felt, or sincere, they 
 instantly and infallibly become efficacious, as health 
 always is. Of Sterling s saying, " First realize your 
 cant, then put it off," the last half is not wanted ; for 
 cant turned into reality is put off already ; when vital 
 ity or sincerity went into it, the thing was changed, and 
 it ceased to be cant. Besides, goodness is not a convey- 
 able or merchantable substance. It has to strike its 
 root deep in an individual consciousness, a personal 
 faith. And for all these reasons, men are very far 
 from being morally acted on, to the best purport, by 
 what is aimed directly at them. 
 
 But this does not at all deny the quick sensibilities of 
 the social constitution, nor our obligation both to do 
 some things, and not to do some other things, out of a 
 simple regard to their social effects. " Thine own con 
 science " is not thorouo-hlv active, unless it bears a 
 
THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 443 
 
 sacred respect to the conscience of the " other." In 
 fact, the case seems to be clearer about refraining from 
 what will injure others, than about doing what they 
 may imitate. Christian modesty may shrink from the 
 thought of being exemplary ; but Christian principle 
 will eagerly renounce what is hurtful. Is it not likely 
 that we are set into society for this very end, that by 
 sacrifices for others moral purity as well as their physi 
 cal comfort, by relinquishing some pleasures for our 
 brethren s inward as well as outward abundance, we 
 may be disciplined into a more Christlike disinterested 
 ness ? I can see no great sense in the maxim of Cecil, 
 that " society shows us what we are, and solitude what 
 we should be." If we only catch up its overt manifes 
 tations, its current criticisms, or look into the mirror of 
 its manners, society will only show us what we are, and 
 in fact very imperfectly show us that. But if "we look 
 at it on the side of its moral powers, and moral wants 
 and exposures, it will eloquently teach us what we 
 ought to be, and furnish the very school for making us 
 that. He has not half awaked to the majesty and the 
 mystery of his being, who can tolerate in himself the 
 atrocious levity of living as if the integrity of his com 
 panion s conscience were never a cause for the abridg 
 ment of his own pleasures. 
 
 The complicated case, undoubtedly, is where some 
 habit, or some indulgence of taste, or some gratification 
 of appetite, is felt to be perfectly safe to yourself, but 
 would probably be unsafe to others by reason of their 
 less guarded position or weaker principles, while they 
 are the more likely to go astray for your practice. There 
 is the real issue and strain. Have we no guide, in the 
 Christian teaching, to a right decision, even there ? 
 
444 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The defence set up for a continuance of the gratifica 
 tion is this : 4 Rules of meat and drink, amusement and 
 display, are not definite nor absolute. Each must adjust 
 his habit to his constitution and circumstances, and 
 stop there. Everything is likely to be abused that is 
 used. I cannot look after all abuses, nor people, nor 
 positions. I am to strike out a way of living that seems 
 lawful enough for myself, and expect everybody else to 
 do the same. I am not the appointed guardian of my 
 neighbors, and need not forego what I consider the 
 good things of life lest some weaker heart should be 
 ensnared or enslaved by them. 
 
 This answer will carry different degrees of plausi 
 bility to different persons. Christianity certainly com 
 ments upon it. 
 
 In the first place, it may be said, without argument, 
 that to many ears this language has, in its very tone 
 and its first impression, a sound of hardness and self 
 ishness. A certain intuitive moral judgment pronoun 
 ces that it is not the final nor the highest view of duty ; 
 that, whatever the truth may be, this is not the whole of 
 it ; that, whatever the difficulty may be, this does not go 
 to the bottom of it. It is not a disposition of the case 
 that satisfies the best demands of a self-denying relig 
 ion. It is not the sort of response we expect from the 
 nobler order of men, who live for the good of their race, 
 and not for themselves, live before their times and 
 beyond their fellows, prophets and apostles. But 
 this is only an appeal to sentiments, which may not be 
 universal. 
 
 Another remark, not conclusive but pertinent, is that 
 this defence is not one very likely to be presented by 
 any of us, where the party endangered by our gratifica- 
 
THE-SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 445 
 
 tion should be very near to our affections, a child, or 
 a brother by blood. There the gratification would prob 
 ably be waived. But Christianity recognizes no such 
 limitation of responsibility as this : it declares all man 
 kind one family ; and, by the lips of its Divine Founder, 
 affirms that, for the purposes of doing God s will, every 
 human being is a mother or a brother or a sister. 
 
 But furthermore, when it is said that all things used, 
 however lawful, must be abused, let it be remembered 
 that this tendency to abuse by no means excuses him 
 who so uses, beyond the line of actual necessity or 
 imperative duty, that the abuse comes in. If " offences 
 must needs come," none the less " woe to him by whom 
 the offence cometh." The question now is, not whether 
 men are extremely liable to do wrong on occasion, but 
 whether I shall add to that liability by offering a fresh 
 occasion, and under the plea that other men do so, or 
 will do so, if I do not. In full view of that likelihood 
 Christ said, " It were better for a man that a millstone 
 were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned 
 in the depths of the sea, than that he should cause one 
 of these weak ones to offend." 
 
 And further still, if you say that, so long as your act 
 is not in itself wrong, Providence, in the general ongo 
 ing of affairs, must see to it that no harm comes of it : 
 may it not reasonably be put back to you that Provi 
 dence is quite as likely to see to it that no harm conies 
 to you when you deny yourself, as that no harm comes 
 to those weak natures when your self-indulgence has 
 tempted them ? Besides, when we speak of an act as 
 " right in itself," let us consider what is included in 
 " itself," and take in all its necessary elements and rela 
 tions. For no act can be said to be right in itself 
 
446 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 which is so done that the spirit of the doer or the 
 situation of its occurrence binds it up inseparably with 
 wrong. 
 
 And further yet, if it is urged that nothing ought to 
 be given up which makes for the genial and happy pro 
 cesses of social life, then let it be fully established 
 that the practice, the luxury, the pleasure in question, 
 does belong to the best order of life, and is essential to 
 it, and that its advantages are not outweighed by the 
 evils that spring directly out of it. Above all, let a sol 
 emn examination of the motives and sources of action 
 make it clear, whether the thing is really done from a 
 conscientious and comprehensive regard to the public 
 good, or whether that is only an afterthought of apol 
 ogy, a sophistication to palliate what is actually done 
 only because it is agreeable and entertaining. 
 
 There may possibly be instances let it be granted 
 where the mind honestly hesitates whether the good to 
 be done by a compliance with a luxurious custom will 
 not overbalance the possible mischiefs of leading others 
 to transgress. But if the foregoing principles are kept 
 steadily before us, if, in every such emergency, we go 
 directly to the Master, who never mistakes, to correct 
 and clear up our moral judgments by communion with 
 his unselfish and blameless soul, we shall find that class 
 of perplexities reduced to a very narrow line. And if 
 then we are ready, with self-command enough, in every 
 case that is only doubtful, to resign our ease or enter 
 tainment, and stand on the side that is sure to be safe, 
 rather than run the risk of putting any human soul on 
 that which is wrong, if we make and keep it a matter, 
 not of inclination, but of conscience, we shall hardly go 
 far astray, "Conscience, I say, not only thine own, 
 
THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 447 
 
 but of the other," for light will fall from the uner 
 ring Sun on a spirit so seeking and so sincere. 
 
 Let us now set over against the defence we have sup 
 posed the following words of the Apostle Paul, sub 
 mitting it to each hearer, which seems to ring clearest 
 from the heights of Christian clearsightedness and truth, 
 and which sounds most as if the heavenly testimony was 
 in it, " None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth 
 to himself. Let us therefore judge this, that no man 
 put a stumbling-block, or an occasion to fall, in his broth 
 er s way. If thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now 
 walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with 
 thy meat, for whom Christ died. It is good neither to 
 eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy 
 brother stuinbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. 
 When ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their 
 weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. If meat make 
 my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 
 standeth. For the kingdom of God is not meat and 
 drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy." 
 
 The more frequent obstacle to this thoughtful and 
 generous behavior, at least among decent men, is the 
 absence of any glaring evidence that our luxuries do 
 tempt our neighbors. What is the delight of a palate, 
 or of an amusement, that any of us would not hurl from 
 him with all the intensity of disgust, if he saiv before 
 his eyes one fellow-creature, however weak or ignorant, 
 who, from an unhappy childhood, or any misfortune of 
 condition, was plunged over the edge of safety into all 
 the shame and wretchedness and filth of profligacy by 
 a questionable liberty of his own ? But surely, in such 
 a matter, a doubt is grave enough to dictate a Chris 
 tian s conduct. A very earnest moral nature will not 
 
448 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 be willing to imperil a fellow-creature s purity on the 
 slender difference between a conjecture and a certainty. 
 The likelihood of a poison taking effect will be pon 
 dered, not without a prayer for help. And, as if to 
 assist us in such discoveries, human beings are often 
 thrown together, in such local connections, such close 
 ness of contact, and such peculiarity of relationship, as 
 to bring out and exhibit plainly these mutual interact- 
 ings of moral conduct and impression. Of that kind is 
 every collection of givers and receivers, of teachers and 
 pupils, every seminary of learning, or family, or class 
 associated for a common pursuit. There spring up new 
 obligations, new occasions for restraint, new calls for 
 cheerful and voluntary sacrifices, peculiar to the struc 
 ture of the society. He that does not feel them, or is 
 not equal to them, may well reconsider the fitness of his 
 presence. There, too, as he will find who ever takes 
 pains to inquire, these influences come to light. The 
 older is quoted by the younger ; the more advanced by 
 the new-comer ; the instructor by the pupil. There the 
 laxity of an esteemed acquaintance is made to take sides 
 with some appetite that burns in the body. There the 
 neglects of the more experienced are thrown up as 
 shields for the irregularities of the novitiate. There 
 the irreligion of the mature fosters and encourages the 
 recklessness of youth. And little as they may suspect 
 it, who eat, drink, and are merry, without a religious 
 scruple on their pleasures, all the while, in many a 
 building not far away, the beginnings of vice are tak 
 ing a terrible warrant and license from their freedom. 
 " No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. 
 Let us judge this, that no man put a stumbling-block, 
 or an occasion to fall, in his brother s way." 
 
THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 449 
 
 Brethren, there is no self-denial deserving the name 
 that is not willing to give up any privilege of the palate 
 or the passions rather than endanger the least or lowest 
 of God s children. And then if it is demanded, " Why 
 should I be deprived of the lawful use of some agree 
 able thing, merely because some less guarded, less expe 
 rienced, or less coolly constituted neighbor will abuse 
 it ? " we will leave the ground of justice altogether, and 
 come upon that of magnanimity and of privilege. We 
 will ask, not what we have a right to do, but what is to 
 be gladly chosen because it is right to be done. In the 
 estimates of God and eternity, the generosity that shields 
 a human heart from shame will stand above a genial 
 style of hospitality. Xot till comfort shall become the 
 creed of Christendom, can free living be the testimony 
 of faith. 
 
 After all, we must raise our minds before a higher 
 judgment than our own. We need not terrify ourselves 
 with an imaginary tribunal ; it is enough to anticipate 
 the reality. There is to come a time when no one of 
 us will be satisfied to have been here eating and drink 
 ing and making merry, sporting with the virtues of our 
 companions, quenching the better life of those for love 
 of whom Christ was willing to die, or entertaining our 
 selves at the cost of their integrity. Again, the voice 
 of the Lord God will be heard at the end of the day, 
 asking of you and me, " Where is thy brother ? " How 
 little will it avail us then, having that brother, and all 
 the past, standing revealed before us, to stammer with 
 the impotent mockery of self-defence, " Am I my broth 
 er s keeper ? " His blood will cry from the ground, and 
 Heaven will hear. Whosoever shall cause one of these 
 to offend, it were better that a millstone dragged him 
 
450 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Too little, too little, will there appear in that day of 
 any positive achievements of ours for God and his truth, 
 proportioned to our opportunity. But at least let it not 
 be found that, when some frail fellow-creature was in 
 clining to baseness and to ruin, any frivolity or uncon 
 cern of ours made his downward way easier and swifter ; 
 or, if any other soul was struggling up into light and 
 victory, that our faithlessness discouraged him, our 
 inconsistencies confused him, our self-love drew him 
 back. 
 
SERMON XXIII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION.* 
 
 FOR HE LOVETII OUR NATION, AND HATH BUILT US A SYNA 
 GOGUE. Luke vii. 5. 
 
 THE two thoughts are joined, not accidentally, not 
 artificially, but by a natural law. In the habit of the 
 Hebrew mind, which was speaking, in the character 
 of the public-spirited officer for whom that praise and 
 that plea were spoken, those ideas lived harmoniously 
 together, a bond of organic unity between them, and 
 each more vital for the other. By the march you have 
 just made from the State-House to this sanctuary, you 
 have given another deliberate confession, and offered 
 one more public symbol, that both ideas were true, and 
 that their mutual relation is a truth also. The love of 
 country and reverence for God ; their conjunction here 
 was no rhetorical device, nor local Judaistic sentiment, 
 but a permanent, philosophical, unchangeable reality. 
 It was not a fact then for the first time, or the last. 
 No matter though the centurion was a citizen only by 
 adoption. The association was just as vivid, for that, 
 
 * Delivered before His Excellency Henry J. Gardner, His Honor 
 Henry "W. Benchley, the Honorable Council, and the Legislature of 
 Massachusetts, at the annual Election, Wednesday, January 6, 1858. 
 38* 
 
452 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 between the people s good and the worship of the Most 
 High. It is not the rule, but it happens, it happened 
 then, that the foreigner, by the very freshness with 
 which the genius of an advanced economy salutes him, 
 and by its contrast with oppressive institutions that he 
 has outgrown, enters farther into its real meaning than 
 the sluggish and sordid native. Probably the centurion 
 was more profoundly imbued with the central life of 
 the Hebrew system than many of the straitest of the 
 Pharisees. It seems he was discontented with Pagan 
 ism, and found his aspirations encouraged and his affec 
 tions attracted, by the sublime monotheism of Moses ; 
 it seems he loved a slave, and was so catholic as to be 
 stow his liberality on a nation of which he was not 
 born ; it seems he was so modest and reverent as to 
 shrink from letting the Lord of life come under his 
 roof. These are not slight nor provincial virtues, in 
 any age or land, certainly not too common in our own. 
 Nor ought it to surprise us to find, in a nature so lofty 
 and comprehensive, a practical faith that patriotism and 
 religion, the State-House and the synagogue, be 
 long together. 
 
 "We can go farther yet. Down at their lowest roots 
 and life-springs, these principles not only interlock, but 
 become essentially one and the same. Patriotism, that 
 is, when it is a principle, and not a mere blind instinct 
 of the blood, is an outgrowth and a part of the faith and 
 honor of the Almighty. Analyze it, and you will see it 
 so. For patriotism is only disinterested devotion to the 
 justice, the power, the protection, the right, embodied, 
 after a certain fashion and degree, in the State and its 
 subjects. It is not attachment to the parchment of a 
 constitution, to the letter of an instrument, to the visi- 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 453 
 
 ble insignia of authority, to a strip of painted cloth at a 
 masthead, to a mass of legal precedents and traditions, 
 nor always to the person of the sovereign. It is not a 
 personal interest in the people of the nation, for the 
 most of one s fellow-citizens are unknown, and the few 
 that are met may awaken no special regard. Instituted 
 ideas, as justice, power, protection, organized into 
 a national government, and lifted up for the defence of 
 the country, arc what inspire an intelligent loyalty, and 
 the same ideas have their perfect embodiment in the 
 person of God. On the other hand, religion, veneration 
 for the Creator, involves a consistent regard for the wel 
 fare of great bodies of his family. By the laws of the 
 human nature he has fashioned, this will mount to en 
 thusiasm, as our relations to any one body grow inti 
 mate, or look back to an antiquity, or own a history of 
 common sufferings. Less elevated elements may inter 
 mix. But whichever you take first, the feeling for 
 the State, or for the God of States, the other clings 
 to it, and comes logically with it. . 
 
 So the State, through you, its temporary representa 
 tives and civil ministers, bends here to-day before the 
 Ruler of rulers. Legislation comes to the Church, not 
 primarily to hear a sermon from a man, but to adore 
 the Supreme Lawgiver, and to supplicate light. Our 
 fathers, best builders of empire, on the whole, that the 
 world has ever seen since the great Emancipator of 
 Israel compacted a commonwealth of fugitives, of which 
 Jehovah was the head, our fathers, taking that for 
 their model, when they ordained this ceremony of Elec 
 tion worship, believed in it. With them the ceremony 
 was a faith. If it ever sinks into a mere routine, the 
 ghastly effigy of a departed sincerity, it will be be- 
 
454 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 cause some generation has not honesty and courage tc 
 drop the form with the life, but is willing to keep credil 
 with superstition by continuing, for considerations o: 
 policy, a sanctimonious pageant out of which the sou 
 has ebbed away. For, saying nothing either of religior 
 or of patriotism, it is only when man is emptied of his 
 manliness, that he consents to go through a solemn per 
 formance that is emptied of its heart. And, let it be 
 added just here, when there are cant and make-believe 
 at Church, it will not be strange if presently there are 
 fraud and falsehood at the State-House ; for it car 
 scarcely be expected with reason that men who under 
 take a deception on the Omniscient^ and act a parl 
 before themselves, will be restrained from overreaching 
 one another, and cheating the people. 
 
 I have no occasion, therefore, to wander far for m) 
 subject. It lies before me in your coming here, and we 
 are shut up to it. I have to speak first of the personal 
 character of a Christian citizen, and then of the honesl 
 legislator ; and since it is the blessing of our system 
 that citizen and legislator are united in one, oui 
 rulers, as the prophet put it, being of ourselves, and 
 our governors proceeding from the midst of us, the 
 one of these topics will pass, by a natural transition 
 and progress, into the other. 
 
 I. Nor need I detain you with much amplification 
 on the propensity in all partially Christianized states of 
 society to separate what are here joined, to divorce 
 public affairs, that is, from the control of the Gospel, 
 and so to unchristianize government. Such a tendency 
 may be briefly disposed of in this way. If it will stand 
 out in the light and defend itself, and not merely 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 455 
 
 creep under the poor shelter of an unthinking timidity, 
 or an irrational selfishness, it must pursue one of 
 three lines of argument ; for there is no fourth for it. 
 It must maintain either, 1. That religion is inferior to 
 politics, as an interest of humanity, which would be 
 virtual atheism, a denial of God, as God, supreme ; 
 or, 2. It must maintain that religion and politics are 
 naturally hostile to one another, the admission of relig 
 ious obligation damaging political success, which is 
 practical infidelity, i. e. a denial of the absolute character 
 which religion takes in the teaching of Christianity ; or 
 else, 3. It must maintain that, while both are legitimate 
 ideas, and capable of being represented by legitimate 
 institutions, their provinces are distinct, and their ob 
 jects best achieved by keeping them apart ; which, so 
 far as it is not atheistic and infidel both, is simply ab 
 surd ; because it amounts to saying that, a man, or a 
 community of men, can have such a thing as a Chris 
 tian character separate from those vital social relations, 
 and those duties of life in which the character is formed. 
 So much of attempts to wrench asunder what the Divine 
 constitution of things has married into one, and what, 
 as I said, were one in the centurion of the text, as in 
 every Christian citizen. 
 
 But what is more deserving of your careful notice, 
 because a truth apt to be disguised by subtler kinds of 
 sophistry, is, that every such attempt, whether open or 
 occult, ends practically in the first of the three errors 
 just supposed, i. e. in subordinating the claims of re 
 ligion to the claims of politics, which then instantly 
 become, by that act, false and vicious politics. When 
 a people begin to sever their obligations as Christians 
 from their obligations as citizens, it is never long before 
 
456 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 the first class of obligations become secondary, and they 
 are ready to break the laws of God, in managing the 
 machinery that dispenses the offices and patronage of 
 the State. God and Mammon never become co-ordi 
 nate powers, nor even enter into treaty ; and as soon 
 as any department of life, like political action, bereaves 
 itself of religious guidance, it becomes at once unmiti 
 gated mammon. If they divide, religion sinks into a 
 mere client. Because, there are always commercial 
 advantages which Government is able to multiply, and 
 material interests which it can secure, trade, ustom- 
 houses, corporations, post-offices, public works, legal 
 protection to property, and these will be had at any 
 rate, by men who are willing to turn religion into a 
 corner, or lock it up in a meeting-house. 
 
 In such a sense as this, the subjection of the Church 
 to the State is a mischief of much larger extent than 
 the theory technically known by that name. In the 
 time of the civil wars in England, the doctrine took 
 a specific shape, and, reaching out from its Germanic 
 origin, formed a British sect that made it known to 
 history. But there is a virtual Erastianism, where 
 there is no church establishment, and no crown to 
 wrangle for its patronage. Let the Church represent 
 the Christianized life, power, and principles of a people ; 
 and let the State represent those regulations that pro 
 vide for the external welfare of society, which was 
 Mr. Webster s definition, and there has been no age 
 when the State has not aggressed upon the Church. 
 For there has been no age when men s outward com 
 fort has not seduced their conscience ; no country 
 where grasping passions have not made war upon 
 righteousness ; no people in the whole period since 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 457 
 
 the office-seeking sons of Zebedec applied for places 
 at the right hand and left of the expected Prince, 
 down to the city of Washington as it has looked since 
 the first of December, in which multitudes have not 
 been more willing to attest their affection for their 
 nation by accepting its emoluments, than, like the cen 
 turion, by building its synagogues. 
 
 And yet what warrant is afforded, either by expe 
 rience, or by the word of Heaven, or by the nature of 
 things, for supposing that national safety is compatible 
 with any less strictness of moral life than individual 
 safety is ? or that those retributive rules of God, which 
 require the loss of power as a penalty for the abuse of 
 privilege, which drag every secret abomination to judg 
 ment, linking sin to damnation, will be somehow evaded 
 by masses of men, while they hold for men one by one ? 
 as if God s hand were too unskilful to feel through the 
 intricacies of a crowd, or his eye so infirm as to be be 
 wildered by the pompous iniquity of office !. Whenever 
 America shall be thoroughly committed to a line of 
 policy that rejects those officers which are peace and 
 those exactors which are righteousness ; whenever it 
 shall resign the election of its law-makers and rulers 
 into the hands of cunning cabals, to the chicane of 
 talkative persons whose only principle of suffrage is a 
 determination to put certain labelled candidates in, 
 right or wrong, and to keep certain proscribed candi 
 dates out, wrong or right, so giving over its Capitol 
 and Cabinet to brawling tongues and embezzling fin 
 gers ; whenever it shall consent to seat on the high 
 Bench of Justice political debaters instead of Judges 
 of the Law, and to take from that Bench sophistries 
 and special pleas of partisan self-interest instead of 
 
458 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 impartial interpretations of the Constitution, when 
 ever it lifts to power those who care more for the 
 world s applause and money than for God s worship, 
 so violating the condition given in the text, then, in 
 fallibly shall the warning also of the context be fulfilled. 
 Enemies shall come from the East and West, and God 
 shall take away the kingdom from you, and give it to a 
 nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. 
 
 God knows who can be trusted. Bad governments 
 seem to succeed for a while ; but their fame only lifts 
 them up into a more conspicuous post, that the mock 
 ery of their coronation and fall may be more widely 
 instructive. For the permanence of power there needs 
 a select sacramental band, and enough to control the 
 community, of brave-hearted, God-fearing, consecrated 
 men, needs these more than the amplest revenue, the 
 most splendidly appointed navy, the mightiest fortifi 
 cations, or the loftiest roofed arsenals. If " saints " 
 meant, as ijb ought to mean, men of manly righteous 
 ness, and not men of cunning or cruel piety, we might 
 all join the Fifth Monarchists, and pray for " the reign 
 of God s people." The best system of national defence 
 is the organization of character. No State-House pre 
 sents a venerable front, after it becomes a nest of 
 unclean birds, demagogues who have bartered their 
 principles to get there, or carried them there for a 
 market. If Congress is to be the country s council, 
 or indeed if it is to leave any country long to be coun 
 selled for, you must stock it with hearts whose faith 
 is vital, and not traditional, in the justice of Almighty 
 God. No judiciary can decree law or equity from a 
 durable bench, if the men that sit there, however 
 learned or large of brain, have forgotten that they 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 459 
 
 are themselves forever on trial at the great assize of 
 eternity. It is little that the members of a cabinet 
 talk in twenty tongues, or issue diplomatic papers that 
 rouse domestic pride and foreign jealousy, if they never 
 speak the one simple language of childlike hearts to 
 the Father of Truth, with whom lies are abominations. 
 And what is spiritual law for the president and his 
 secretaries, for judges and legislators, is law for the 
 humblest of the subjects. It will be seen yet, truly 
 as the maxims of passing dynasties and parties must 
 be adjourned for the ideas of the New Testament, that 
 every faithful disciple, standing in his lot for the com 
 mand to love God and man, is a better patriot than the 
 statesman who seeks every kind of honor but that which 
 comes from on high. For the statesman ought also, 
 and first, to be Christ s man; patriotism without Chris 
 tianity is not a strong sentiment ; he who has resolved 
 to stand on the side of God is the best friend of his 
 country that any country can have ; and there is no 
 earthly country good enough to be loved safely, except 
 the love of it be hallowed by faith in a better country, 
 even an heavenly. 
 
 In this spiritual sense, not by an ecclesiastical or pre- 
 latical control, the State is really but a dependent on 
 the society of Christ. Instead of the church being a 
 subaltern to the government, government is ancillary 
 to the church. The church is the religion of Jesus 
 organized, of all sects where faith in Jesus is, going 
 forth to redeem and bless humanity with the heavenly 
 doctrines of freedom, equality, holiness, and love. Has 
 the civil State any higher function than that ? Has 
 any empire so exalted a sovereign ? So far the theo 
 cratic idea is just, that every nation should have God 
 
460 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 for its acknowledged Ruler, and make every custom 
 and institution in it loyal to that heavenly supremacy. 
 We can imagine no loftier conception of human society 
 than that. Every avenue of the national life should be 
 a channel for the free course of the Divine Spirit, every 
 legislature a school of practical theology, every court 
 house a solemn vindicator of the oppressed, and every 
 city, village, and home, a nursery of strong and beauti 
 ful souls. 
 
 II. Christian citizenship, then, is the true founda 
 tion of national greatness. But who are Christian 
 citizens ? Something more definite and determined 
 than mere men of compliance with the conventional 
 decencies of civilization, not mere " barbarians in 
 broadcloth." 
 
 Something more is necessary to being the citizen of 
 a Christian State than barely living in it. Because I 
 tread under my feet, as I go about my private business, 
 a certain soil which has been marked off by surveyors, 
 and called by the geographic name of Massachusetts, 
 and because I avail myself of its various local provisions 
 for the more advantageous pursuit of certain selfish 
 ends, do I therefore deserve to be recognized as one 
 of the State s proper citizens ? In matter, mere physi 
 cal presence constitutes a claim to be called by a local 
 name. Holyoke, whatever the character of the pros 
 pect from it, is a Massachusetts mountain ; and Co- 
 chituate, whether its waters be pure or foul, is a Mas 
 sachusetts lake, as a quantity of building materials 
 fashioned into a dwelling within the limits of this city 
 makes a Boston house. So, for the mere purposes of a 
 census, or for the assessment of a capitation-tax, or for 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 4G1 
 
 convenience of description, it may be said of a person 
 that he is a Massachusetts man, irrespective of his con 
 victions or his character, his loyalty or his treachery. 
 But you will see that the moment you take up such a 
 designation for thoughtful reflection, or a sober analysis, 
 you must make it cover something besides the bare fact 
 of inhabiting. You can apply the term citizenship, 
 then, only to such as possess a certain Massachusetts 
 spirit, and are morally assimilated to the genius of the 
 State s institutions. 
 
 We shall begin at a safe point if we say that the first 
 qualification consists in an intelligent understanding of 
 the principles which the government organizes, and of 
 the ideas which it represents. Every political institu 
 tion is the visible exponent of an invisible thought. 
 Every charter, compact, bill of rights, written law-book, 
 or established custom of civil administration, is an at 
 tempt to realize in practice some idea in the governing 
 mind. If that governing mind is an autocrat, or even 
 monarch, you will have embodied the idea of irrespon 
 sible dominion, or pure despotism, like the old eastern 
 tyrannies, or like modern Russia, where only the small 
 est check is imposed by the prerogative of the nobles. 
 If it is a landed aristocracy, of caste, conquest, or 
 hereditary rank, you will have Feudalism, as in the 
 middle ages. If it is a combination of royal preroga 
 tive and popular will, you have a limited monarchy, 
 with parliament and crown, as in Great Britain. If it 
 is a majority of the people, you have a limited democ 
 racy, .as with ourselves. Sometimes this central and 
 radical idea of the government is formally set forth in 
 a declaration, as with a constitutional power like the 
 United States. Sometimes it is expressed only in the 
 
462 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 aggregate of usages, precedents, and maxims of an em 
 pire, or of some petty court or chieftain s castle. But 
 whether its utterance be direct or indirect, in words or 
 practices, it does somehow get uttered, and by its con 
 sequences it is felt. The business of an historical stu 
 dent is not merely to learn the outward succession of 
 events, the sayings and doings of the several kingdoms, 
 but it is to comprehend those hidden principles lying 
 below the surface like seeds under the ground, out of 
 which empires and their epochs have germinated, and 
 sprung up, opening their beneficent or baleful foliage, 
 bearing their nutritious or poisonous fruit. 
 
 So also of the present. It is one thing to go through 
 the mechanical functions of voting for law-makers year 
 by year, or obeying laws after they are made, and quite 
 another to enter into an intelligent apprehension of the 
 great thoughts which lived in the minds of the men 
 "by whom the whole structure of the government was 
 founded, and which still live in the heart of the govern 
 ment itself. It is this last which every man ought to 
 have attained before he is worthy to be regarded as, in 
 any lofty acceptation, a citizen. 
 
 Libanius, quoted by Montesquieu, says, that at 
 Athens a stranger who intermeddled with the assem 
 blies of the people was punished with death. If this 
 was summary and cruel, it proved the sanctity attached 
 to political action, the faith that a distinctive civil 
 education was indispensable to it, that the popular 
 sources of power should be kept pure, and thus it at 
 tested the reality of the democratic profession. An 
 illegal vote was usurpation, and ignorance was a milder 
 form of rebellion. 
 
 I am not referring here to the advantages of a gen- 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 463 
 
 eral education. I accord, of course, heartily with all 
 that can be argued in behalf of that. There can bo no 
 right citizenship at this day without intellectual activ 
 ity. But over and beyond this I insist on the impor 
 tance of a special branch of science, of a better 
 understanding of the fundamental principles which un 
 derlie and animate our political system. Proudly as we 
 boast of our promiscuous cultivation, I believe that we 
 are in great danger of national damage from indiffer 
 ence just at that point. We take too much for granted. 
 We are driven to the ballot-box once a year in gangs, by 
 little knots of self-constituted leaders in caucuses, who 
 mean, by indirect process, to dictate the votes and take 
 the offices. Or else we follow some party champion, who, 
 let him know never so much, is certainly not endowed 
 with a vicarious knowledge that shall atone for our igno 
 rance, and who may possibly, on the very theatre where 
 he has gained his experience and his eloquence, have 
 encountered temptations, too strong to be resisted, to 
 imbibe the duplicity and the trickery of a demagogue. 
 
 I would have every child, therefore, carefully and 
 conscientiously taught those distinctive ideas which con 
 stitute the substance of our constitution, and which 
 determine the policy of our politics. He should know 
 wherein his own government differs from other govern 
 ments. He should be able, on his own information, 
 and not depending on any interested meddler, to tell 
 when there is a departure from the true course, where 
 an abuse begins, and where a peril threatens. And to 
 this end, there ought forthwith to be introduced into 
 our common schools a simple, comprehensive manual, 
 adapted to juvenile minds and to the whole country, 
 whereby the needed tuition should be planted at that 
 
 39* 
 
464 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 early period. It is absurd that our pupils should go on, 
 through the whole term of their preparation for life, 
 committing the rules of a grammar, the facts of geog 
 raphy, and the calculations of arithmetic, to the total 
 neglect of the principles of the legislation under which 
 they are to live, of the facts of the country to which 
 they belong, and of the constitution of their liberties. 
 It may be the low instinct of a money-making age to 
 desire only a knowledge how to reckon profit and loss. 
 But will it not be at least as sensible, and far more pa 
 triotic, to covet an acquaintance with those grand laws 
 of social order and protection under which all our traf 
 fic is prosecuted, by which all our prosperity is shield 
 ed, and which alone can make any successful or honor 
 able enterprise possible ? 
 
 Among us, a neglect of this sort of culture is without 
 excuse. It is made so, equally by the freedom of op 
 portunity, guaranteed by all the arrangements of our 
 educational apparatus, and by the simplicity of the gov 
 ernment itself, which is to be studied. An Austrian 
 peasant, a Russian serf, Italian lazzaroni, have a plausi 
 ble apology for being in the dark respecting the laws 
 they live under, for the laws themselves are kept in the 
 dark ; and then the subject is held so far under them, 
 that he cannot lift himself up to look at them. In 
 some of these cases, no school-house door stands open 
 to him ; a stifled press defrauds him, or a mercenary 
 one hoodwinks him ; an " Index Expurgatorius " screens 
 from him what he most wants to know, and tyranny 
 silences the instruction which he has the best right to 
 hear. To say that it is otherwise with us, is only to 
 repeat the commonplace of two hundred and twenty- 
 seven election sermons. Yet professional and trading 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 465 
 
 politicians, for purposes of their own, have the effron 
 tery to tell us that nobody is fit to legislate, nor to form 
 parties, nor to discourse on public matters, but those 
 who, like themselves, hold a professional key to the 
 secret. Doubtless, if legislation consists in making the 
 many the tools of promoting a few, if drilling parties is 
 tantamount to framing a conspiracy of plunder, and if 
 discoursing on public matters is the art of compounding 
 falsehood, detraction, and insolence, then they may be 
 left to enjoy a monopoly of political science. Such 
 characters flourish among us, just as the rankest 
 weeds :grow in the fattest soil, for the very reason 
 that our admirable system of government is so well able 
 to go alone, that the consequences of individual apathy 
 are slow to appear. But those consequences will not be 
 postponed forever ; the everlasting laws of national ret 
 ribution are not to be defeated : ignorance and careless 
 ness are seeds that will yield their harvest of calamity 
 and shame. 
 
 The next qualification for good citizenship I mention 
 is a sympathy with the spirit of the government. There 
 needs a feeling in the heart for one s country, as well as 
 a comprehension of its presiding principles and its in 
 forming ideas by the intellect ; because a nation, which 
 is only a kind of collective and conscious person, has, 
 in some sort, a heart of its own, as well as a brain, 
 and so a characteristic temper, or quality, to be loved 
 or hated, to be sympathized with, or repelled by. It is 
 on this moral sympathy between citizen and govern 
 ment, that loyalty and patriotism depend, hardly less 
 than on intelligence. You know how loyalty is roused 
 to enthusiasm, how patriotism flames up into an ardent 
 passion, at the sight of a national edifice, fortification, 
 
466 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 ship, or the sound of national airs or watchwords. 
 There is no intellectual process in these cases, no 
 deliberate recurrence to ideas, but a sudden rush of 
 feeling, a throb out of the heart. Hence the mere sen 
 timent of loyalty, half-blind but enthusiastic, has often 
 been found most impetuous and most heroic in those 
 periods of the world and those states of society when 
 there was little thinking, but an abundance of feeling. 
 Still, any government is weak which has not this vital 
 sympathy between the spirit of its institutions and the 
 spirit of the citizens. 
 
 Now it often happens in a State, as it does in a family, 
 that individuals are found in it who are out of all nar- 
 mony with its prevailing sentiments. There is mere 
 physical presence, but a moral discord, an absence, 
 or alienage, of the heart. The body is native, but the 
 soul foreign, and needing some other naturalization 
 than a formal oath of allegiance or subscription before 
 a magistrate. Wherever there is one or more of such 
 uncongenial inmates in a family there is a chill on the 
 intercourse of the household, an iceberg in its sunny 
 climate. And wherever there is such an element of 
 estrangement and distrust in a State, there must be so 
 much hindrance to its prosperity, so much material for 
 disorganization in trying times. It reminds us of what 
 De Maistre, by one of his lively paradoxes, calls France, 
 at one period of her history, "A republic without 
 republicans." 
 
 In this country we are exposed to two classes where 
 this want of sympathy has a tendency to appear. One 
 is a class of essential anti-republicans, partly monarch 
 ists and partly aristocrats, sometimes cast in upon us 
 by accident, and sometimes growing up among us by 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 4G7 
 
 anomaly. People are found in our democratic society 
 who belong, by natural affinity, under a transatlantic 
 emperor, among ultramontane ecclesiastics, or back in 
 the feudal centuries. They are full of the pride of 
 caste, full of hereditary ambition, coveting exclusive 
 privileges, fond of badges of rank, absolutists in their 
 real notions, and ridiculously contemptuous of their fel 
 lows who suffer external disadvantages. Such persons, 
 however democratic their professions, have no more 
 place here than a cardinal s hat has in a Methodist 
 meeting, simply because they are out of all affinity with 
 the inmost life of the land. If they have their way, 
 unrestrained by custom or policy, they yoke the weak 
 and the poor into a vassalage, they pamper their 
 estates and add splendor to their equipage out of the 
 earnings of the laborer, they would toss up their caps 
 for a bold and conceited adventurer with a crown of 
 gems on a brainless head, or they would institute a self 
 ish oligarchy, taking good care to be themselves inside 
 its counsels. A great many restraints may keep this 
 class from ever openly acknowledging themselves ; but 
 they are none the less out of all hearty fellowship with 
 the true spirit of the country, and are bad citizens. 
 
 There is another class, who, instead of being anti- 
 republicans, are ultra-republicans ; or rather they are 
 disorganizes and destructionists, and so are as truly 
 anti-republicans as their opposites ; for their wild and 
 irresponsible notions are incompatible with any order or 
 law, and so are among the worst enemies a legitimate 
 democracy has to dread. The main desire of this class 
 is a total solving of all restraints on the passions and 
 the individual will. Their first postulate is that every 
 body is as good as anjbody. The liberty they lust after 
 
468 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 is liberty to swallow their fill at the first stall, the lib 
 erty of untamed animals. 
 
 There grows up among us an excessive and morbid 
 individualism, begetting an arrogant irreverence. It 
 obstructs domestic discipline, going down into the 
 brains of young children, and inflaming in them a 
 prurient eagerness to spurn at parental authority. It 
 runs into destructionist speculations on theories of so 
 cial order. It caricatures the generous conceptions our 
 national existence grew from. It writes an egotistical, 
 fevered, passionate, foolish literature. It rallies mobs. 
 It perverts democracy into demonism. It longs for no 
 Christian republic, but a wild riot of the lusts in its 
 heated blood. Sometimes it sits in its study and phi 
 losophizes unbelief; sometimes it haunts a German 
 beer-shop, sometimes a reckless pulpit ; sometimes it 
 simmers in social bogs and fogs ; sometimes it sparkles 
 brilliantly on the top of the rocks. Everywhere it is a 
 traitor and a rebel to the country, and because it spoils 
 the Christian citizen, robs the nation of its rights. 
 Construe independence to mean an unlimited license to 
 do as you please, and instead of the just arbitraments of 
 law, with precedents and experience, calm adjustment 
 and sober equity, you retreat, at best, upon the sum 
 mary instincts of the injured party, and the matches of 
 brutal violence. Paul, of Russia, when a French am 
 bassador incidentally spoke to him of some man of con 
 sequence in St. Petersburg, instantly and impatiently 
 replied, " There is no man of consequence in this em 
 pire, save the man with whom I happen at any moment 
 to be speaking, and so long only as I am speaking to 
 him is he of consequence." Where every man in the 
 nation feels himself of the size of an emperor, that laii- 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 400 
 
 guage will be in the bearing if not the mouth of all the 
 crowd. And what is impertinence in manners soon 
 becomes insubordination in temper. It is the misfor 
 tune of all liberal movements to attract about them 
 malcontents and radicals. Such false alliances try the 
 strength of a government. If it takes up this crude 
 ingredient, wisely regulates it, converts it and assimi 
 lates it, it is strong. But if the disordered matter 
 proves too much for the digestive energy of the consti 
 tution, and remains discordant, then it poisons the 
 whole health of the body. 
 
 A third qualification for a right citizenship, besides 
 an understanding of the principles of the government 
 and a sympathy with its spirit is a practical respect for 
 the operation of its forms. One might suppose, indeed, 
 that where the first two exist the third must necessarily 
 follow. I think we do find instances, however, where 
 the government is both understood and loved, while its 
 regular and necessary functions are treated with a neg 
 lect amounting very nearly to contempt. Because the 
 forms are free, and the acts are voluntary, it does not 
 follow that they are trivial, but the contrary. Among 
 us respect for the government is shown in performing 
 all the primary duties that attend the right of suffrage. 
 Our early fathers certainly enjoy a reputation for dig 
 nity quite as high as we can emulate ; yet they did not 
 deem it beneath them, whatever their station, to take 
 the most active participation in all the initiatory steps of 
 an election. Those of our citizens who stand aloof from 
 the little local meetings and movements which are the 
 fountains of all democratic power, are actuated by a 
 very false view of their responsibilities, or else by a very 
 foolish pride ; and they are handing over the reins of 
 
470 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 rule or misrule, as fast as they can, into the fingers of 
 jobbers and charlatans. Neither business, nor pleasure, 
 nor unconcern, nor disgust at vulgar proceedings, nor 
 any other cause ought to deter you from this duty. If 
 it does, the country holds you chargeable for its dis 
 grace, and you are not good citizens. 
 
 III. So we pass up from the citizen to the legisla 
 tor, which two, by the felicity of our system, meet in 
 the same person, the citizen-legislator. 
 
 Nothing belongs more precisely to this occasion, than 
 a fresh conviction of the necessity of a high personal 
 character, in the public makers of law, to the honor 
 and safety of the Commonwealth. Let us not be de 
 ceived. There are laws of moral influence and moral 
 life, above those that are voted and recorded, so in 
 wrought into man and his institutions by the Eternal 
 God, that nothing can tear them out without dislocat 
 ing the joints of the structure, and nobody can break 
 them without being an " architect of ruin." One of 
 these is, that wrong principle, in every workman whose 
 work is moral, creeps over, and subtly spreads itself, to 
 contaminate and damage the thing he works in. Now, 
 the legislator s work is largely moral. It has constantly 
 to do with the everlasting distinction between right and 
 wrong. It professes to guard and foster equity and 
 truth. It is the avowed organ of justice. It is the 
 terror of evil doers, and the praise of them that do well. 
 It touches the most sacred interests of society. Its spe 
 cial and legitimate sphere is rectitude, peace, order, 
 between man and man. It deals with the very first 
 demonstrations of overt integrity and systematic moral 
 ity, so far as external measures can. Nor are the laws 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 471 
 
 merely an enactment and execution of the moral con 
 victions of a people, as is so often implied : they are an 
 indirect but effectual educator of these convictions also, 
 constantly forming the public conscience, and raising 
 or lowering the tone of moral life. They are not only 
 an expression, but an influence, not only a sign of 
 morals, but a power upon them. 
 
 Now, a business so august and so sacred as that 
 cannot be intrusted to any but good men, righteous 
 men, sound at heart, right with God, true to hu 
 manity, men that can neither be bought off, nor 
 reasoned off, nor frightened off, nor flattered off, from 
 the simple and immutable right. 
 
 The State and the law, persons and property, educa 
 tion and industry, marriage and life, are not safe in the 
 hands of any other order of men. You say, good laws 
 may be made by unprincipled men. So may pious ser 
 mons be preached by a Godless clergy. But that does 
 not affect the truth, that down at the secret channels of 
 things, and finally, in the long run, up on the open 
 fields of history, what man is works itself into what 
 man docs spirit determines life principles shape 
 institutions. Public virtue does not graft nor grow on 
 personal iniquity. Men do not gather figs of thistles, 
 nor of a bramble-bush grapes, nor of tricky and profane 
 legislators a noble and Christian State. 
 
 True, the form of the government is by no means a 
 matter of indifference. Here it is not likely to be un 
 derrated. Yet personal character will sometimes over 
 ride even the sharpest distinctions in that, and it is 
 certainly a grander element. A Mexican republic can 
 hardly be pronounced better than an English monarchy. 
 Unless we live in some consistency with the pure ideas 
 
 40 
 
472 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 out of which the Revolution sprang, we shall have 
 gained no more by a change of rulers thaTi Rome 
 gained by the expulsion of the Tarquins. Despotism 
 may be " democratized," but it is still despotism. A 
 people may destroy their tyrants without destroying 
 tyranny ; so the Romans did ; but they cannot corrupt 
 their law-makers without debilitating their laws. 
 
 See, by a little careful notice, how the mischief 
 results, and why a Massachusetts legislator should be 
 practically, as well as nominally, an honest, Christian 
 man. First of all, you, whom the people have chosen 
 to represent them in the government are set, in some 
 measure, to be exponents of public virtue. An au 
 thority is committed to you. Each of you in his own 
 town, village, or city, is marked by his election as a 
 man that may be trusted. Responsibility widens with 
 respect. The young look to you for example. The 
 unsteady quote your practice. If you are self-indul 
 gent, mean, coarse, double-tongued, you will harm your 
 neighborhood on a larger scale, you will diffuse corrup 
 tion with a more fatal facility, and to a heavier judg 
 ment, for your office. 
 
 Again, a legislator s personal sins disgrace the insti 
 tutions he tampers with in the eyes of the community, 
 and so they are unpatriotic as well as impious. Rev 
 erence for the appointments of law is certainly not too 
 common. It declines alarmingly. The generations are 
 not growing up with an excess of loyalty. For this 
 waning veneration toward the dignity of government, 
 the " powers that be," the place, the assemblies, the 
 processes of governmental control, it is for you to con 
 sider how far the bearing of official persons is account 
 able. You say, institutions may be revered whether 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 478 
 
 their managers are noble or vulgar. But it happens 
 that men are influenced by the living representatives 
 and spokesmen of things, quite as much as by the 
 things themselves. Mental association is a fact ; and 
 a government is judged by the governors. 
 
 Thirdly, moral weakness blunts the intellectual per 
 ceptions. Every time a man is false to the highest 
 leading of his soul, he dwarfs his mind. Law-makers 
 need every faculty their Creator gave them, and in 
 something better than the natural condition, sharp 
 ened, stimulated, made solid and strong. Measures 
 come before you that require the mind s nicest touch 
 and boldest stroke, the keenest discrimination and 
 the firmest grasp, the quick insight and the patient 
 reason. These are intellectual abilities that go only 
 with habits of truth, temperance, chastity, honesty. 
 The man that drags himself up to his seat after a night 
 of convivial carousing, his brain still foggy and his eyes 
 vacant with the profligacy that has drenched his soul, 
 is no fit servant to stand for the interests of man or the 
 powers ordained of God, among wise statesmen or 
 pure patriots, in the encounters of dignified debate, 
 or the difficulties of entangled times. Clearsightedness 
 of the head waits in the end on clearsightedness of con 
 science. The sentence of retribution against that evil 
 work may not bo executed speedily, but it comes at 
 last. The voluptuary will not abrogate the immutable 
 penalty. God is the God of our whole life. Pure 
 waters of pure fountains. Never wisdom out of folly ; 
 never right by compromise or collusion with wrong. 
 The cunning and selfish bargainer of the shop and the 
 market, the farmer that cheats in weight or measure, 
 the fraudulent mechanic, the lawyer that makes excep- 
 
474 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION^ 
 
 tions in Heaven s command of truth for professional lies, 
 the exorbitant money-lender, the gambling broker, 
 all these will carry their disordered natures and their 
 mutilated honor with them to the legislature, and there 
 they will barter away rectitude and themselves for fees 
 or votes. Then a carnival of the appetites will supplant 
 the dignities and sterner joys of our beginnings ; then 
 we shall be ashamed to recur to our ancestral annals, 
 just as the Roman authorities, of a corrupted age, were 
 afraid to show the populace the old code of Numa, after 
 it had been dragged from its obscurity, lest the palpable 
 inconsistency should rouse indignation into rebellion ; 
 then pleasure will become the scandalous substitute for 
 patriotism, just as enervated Athens, when truth and 
 honor were lost, " dreaded Philip, not as the enemy of 
 her liberty, but of her luxury," or as the emasculated 
 subjects of Augustus, angry at his severities, quelled 
 their factions, and were tamely pacified, when he let 
 Pylades, the comedian, come back to make sport for 
 them in the theatre. It will avail nothing that we 
 have built up a splendid prosperity, and that our num 
 bers have increased eightfold since we were a people 
 and a power. Numbers and property and territory are 
 as effectual to break an overgrown and corrupt policy 
 to pieces as to confirm a sound one ; and we shall sink 
 under a law of God framed before Numa meditated, 
 or Philip fought, or Columbus sailed. My friends, you 
 will see the ancient glories of our Commonwealth re 
 stored, just as far as you restore the scrupulous con 
 science and the righteous character and with them 
 the high-bred manners and commanding thought of 
 those men who approached the magistrate s trust with 
 awe, as a temple holy to the Lord. 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 475 
 
 Would to Heaven we could only realize this simple 
 and everlasting law of moral life ; that the stream can 
 not rise above the fountain ! There is an unsightly 
 spectacle, not unknown in our own legislative annals. 
 In some fitful mood of conscience, of philanthropy, a 
 people, or its representatives, legislate some measure 
 altogether beyond the average and common level of 
 their moral life. What then ? How long can such a 
 statute stand ? What will be its efficacy while it 
 remains ? Statute-book and people both are only 
 disgraced presently by a retreat into their inferior 
 morality. Anybody that professes, in creed, or in civil 
 decree, above its faith, is guilty of cant, if not of hy 
 pocrisy, and its life silently eats out the heart of its 
 written law. We do nothing effectually but what we 
 do from the full head-waters of honest conviction. 
 Bring up the personal sources of goodness, and your 
 acts will put on a consistent grandeur. 
 
 The complaint appears to gain emphasis and cur 
 rency, that both in the National and the State bodies, 
 the course of independent and impartial legislation is 
 seriously obstructed by the use of ambiguous machin 
 ery, and by appeals to sordid motives. I do not profess 
 to know the absolute or the relative reason for this com 
 plaint. This, however, is certain, and challenges con 
 sideration ; within a few years past, in our State legis 
 lature, the subject-matter of legislation has undergone 
 a remarkable change. There is a vastly increased pro 
 portion of private bills measures that look to the im 
 mediate interests of individuals or corporations. At 
 the last regular session, considerably more than half the 
 Acts and Eesolves were of this nature. Partly this is 
 inevitable ; with the passage of time, the growth of 
 
476 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION, 
 
 commonwealths, general laws get settled. The same 
 advance calls into being an increased number of special 
 enterprises, seeking the protection, or patronage, of the 
 State. Obviously there comes in, with this tendency, 
 an accumulating temptation to external interference 
 with the opinions, judgments, consciences of senators 
 and representatives. This needs no proof. The lobby 
 speaks for itself, and whatever may be said of its tac 
 tics, its geography needs no description. Now, let it be 
 granted that gross bribery, that open and direct bids of 
 money or of custom in business, are rare. Granted that 
 in this honorable body of men before me, there is not 
 one that would not spurn such an approach away from 
 him as an atrocious insult to his manhood, and with 
 shame and pity for the depravity capable of proposing it. 
 Much, I say, yet remains behind all that. It remains, 
 I suspect, proverbially and notoriously true, that a bill 
 is by no means secure which is left simply and solely to 
 its merits. It remains proverbially and notoriously 
 true, that not a few measures are no sooner proposed, 
 than a systematic arrangement and plan of attack are 
 made to carry it, without or within, by other appeals 
 than those to the clear judgment, the unbiased will, 
 the impartial and honest sense of the members. Com 
 mittees may be packed, weeks beforehand ; prejudice 
 may be enlisted ; base passions envy, jealousy, ava 
 rice kindled. Make what allowance or qualification 
 you please. If such things happen only once in a ses 
 sion, it is cause for anxiety and alarm. Or, make the 
 case one of pure hypothesis ; your notice of the matter 
 will still be profitable. 
 
 Remember, then, first, that every possible question, 
 proposition, grant, charter, or measure whatsoever, that 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 477 
 
 can come before you, has in it the elements of right or 
 wrong, justice or injustice, and is to be judged by you 
 accordingly, and not by any inferior judgment. Re 
 member that it is as true to-day as in the days of the 
 Hebrew legislator, that " a gift," that is a bribe, "blind- 
 cth the wise," and that the capability of being bribed has 
 ever gone with treachery, signalized a decaying state, 
 and has been held the sure precursor of anarchy and 
 overthrow. Remember that bribery is none the less 
 bribery for coming, not in the shape of gold or bank 
 notes, but in that of an electioneering lift, or a profes 
 sional assistance, or a supper party. Surely it must be 
 a strange and intolerable morality that distinguishes 
 whether the price of dishonor is paid into an itching 
 palm, or on to a proud pair of shoulders, paid to a 
 man s pocket, or his politics, or his palate. Financial, 
 political, professional, convivial, they are all of one de 
 bauched and accursed brood. 
 
 I know it may be said, many measures are brought 
 forward that seem to have no specific quality of good or 
 evil ; it is immaterial whether you vote for or against 
 them ; you do not see far enough into them, or trace 
 them out to such consequences, as to make it an imper 
 ative duty to favor or to oppose them, and so you may 
 follow your own interest in doing the one or the other. 
 This seems to be taking refuge from moral responsi 
 bility in intellectual stupidity. But it will not serve, in 
 fact, in logic, or in ethics. The truth is, no measure 
 proposed is thus indifferent. Every one you ought to 
 countenance, or you ought to oppose. Understood, the 
 bill, however small, will reveal that positive character. 
 And to begin to tamper with your power of discrimina 
 tion, your legislative fidelity, your private manliness, by 
 
I 
 478 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 balancing off your own interest or your pet project with 
 some fellow-member s, helping your railroad in the 
 western county by supporting his, justified or not, in an 
 eastern one ; carrying a bank charter at home by help 
 ing out an infirm bridge-corporation for your neighbor ; 
 or making an insurance company in the city, or next 
 autumn s canvass, pay the way of a company where you 
 are a stockholder, or your nephew is a director, or your 
 political friend wants to be president, all this is to pro 
 nounce yourself below the level of the moral dignity of 
 your place. These are only the tempter s plausibilities, 
 Satan transformed into the angel of mutual accom 
 modation. More than that, it is just as profligate, and 
 just as dishonest, to be hired to run from your seat, 
 when a vote is to be taken, as to be hired to stay there 
 and vote on the wrong side, only in that case you add 
 the meanness of a coward, with the ignominy of a tru 
 ant and a trimmer, to the guilt of a knave. Gentle 
 men, whatever else we lose, let us cling to our brave, 
 unspotted, ancestral honor. No one measure can possi 
 bly be put before you, by governor s message or people s 
 petition, in all this session, so vital, so momentous, so 
 supreme, as that principle. Imagine James Otis and 
 Samuel Adams foisting projects through the forms of 
 law by mutual compensation ! Imagine John Adams 
 and Benjamin Lincoln dodging a vote ! You must par 
 don the half profane hypothesis. And that you may 
 spare the State a reproachful contrast, take care that 
 the time never come to us, when it can be said, in 
 our capitol, as by an old statesman of another stamp 
 and grade, that he could never obtain the grant of six 
 pence for a poor and deserving claimant, but that he 
 could always carry a felony without benefit of clergy. 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 479 
 
 Doubtless it is a deplorable condition of a people if 
 they do not recognize their divinely appointed leaders, 
 do not know their best men when they see them, 
 and, having the republican privilege, do fail to put them 
 at the head of affairs. But it is a sadder sight yet, 
 when those who have been raised to power under the 
 impression that they were the best, noblest, purest, fal 
 sify that confidence, betray that trust, and turn the 
 glory and the hope into shame. That happens when 
 men imagine they can neglect the law of a heavenly 
 estate, because they are chosen to enact laws for an 
 earthly. That happens, if they dream that they can 
 lay off their principles when they take up an office, or 
 because they begin to be legislators cease to be men. 
 That happens, when they forget that from the moment 
 they enter the Halls they become the unpurchasable 
 servants of the least and lowest of the people of the 
 State, and can take no other furtherance to their pri 
 vate fortunes but their lawful salary. That happens, 
 when they come to the Capitol of the State to practise 
 in secret, out of sight of their families, the vices that 
 always corrupt commonwealths, and then go back to 
 their constituents unclean and guilty. That happens 
 when they postpone the integrity of the soul to political 
 Shibboleths, making it a test where a man was born 
 rather than what he is, or else subordinating the 
 mighty virtues of humanity to the cabals arid cau 
 cuses of a party. Above all, do not be enticed into 
 any measure, direct or indirect, which can possibly be 
 construed into connivance at the overshadowing Ameri 
 can crime, the enslaving or re-enslaving of man. 
 
 I go back just a century in the history of Massachu 
 setts. It is striking to see how the sins of one age are 
 
480 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 the sins of another, because the same old human heart 
 remains. There is no extinct species in the Flora of 
 iniquity. A hundred years ago the 25th of last May, 
 before the election day was changed, and when the first 
 duty of the Colonial Legislature was to elect the coun- 
 cilmen, the minister of the New Brick Church, in Bos 
 ton,* preached the anniversary sermon. Calling on the 
 magistrates before him to " arise and teach the people," 
 to " fear God and keep his commandments," that it 
 might be well with them and their children forever, he 
 continued his faithful exhortation thus : " Animated by 
 this divine principle, we trust you will proceed this day 
 to the choice of His Majesty s Council, and give your 
 votes for men who have an awful regard for the laws of 
 God. You will choose men of wisdom to discern the 
 times, more zealous to advance the public welfare 
 than their private advantage, men who will hazard 
 their credit and estates rather than unite in any 
 schemes of oppression and injustice, men who will 
 venture to displease the highest authority upon earth, 
 rather than give a vote for a person unqualified for the 
 office to which he is nominated, men that will not 
 sell their country for a bribe, but will generously 
 neglect their private affairs when the public requires 
 their attention, men that will recommend religion, 
 not only by wholesome laws, but by their instructive 
 example." 
 
 This immaculate, invincible uprightness in public 
 station is no dream of visionaries. We cannot dismiss 
 it as a glory of the Past, impracticable and fabulous at 
 present. That is infidelity to Providence, to history, to 
 
 * Ebenezer Pemberton. 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 481 
 
 the ever-living heart of Christ. Besides, instances stand 
 forth, illustrious and imperial, in every Christian nation, 
 the honor of statesmanship, the defence of govern 
 ments, the strength of their age against all partisan 
 or selfish conspiracies. Look, for a single example 
 of that power, into the last generation and the legisla 
 tive halls of England. Trained in the best refinement 
 and learning of his time, coming forth from the midst 
 of London fashions and palaces, where the frowns of 
 the world are most formidable and its flatteries most 
 seductive, familiar from his childhood with the luxuries 
 of fortune and the policies of a false expediency, yet 
 with his vision quickened by Christian faith, and his 
 whole nature lightened and invigorated by the lessons 
 of Olivet and Calvary, Wilberforce enters Parliament. 
 Many a hard test tries .his steadfastness. Erect, and 
 yet courteous, he never swerves. He sees straight 
 through every moral sophistry, and no chicanery can 
 cheat him into one doubtful compliance. Hardest of 
 all, Melville is impeached. Friendship, favor, interest, 
 social alliance, popularity, all importune this Christian 
 statesman to take up the cause of the accused. There 
 was the eloquent countenance, and the trumpet tongue, 
 of Pitt, pleading the same way. But there was one 
 voice on the other side, stiller, grander, the voice of a 
 righteous sincerity, and from that " he was accustomed 
 to take no appeal." He knew Melville was wrong, the 
 accusation just. Not an instant s hesitation. He stood 
 up to speak for Right, stripped bare of all enchant 
 ments, and he knew that, speaking for that, he spoke 
 for man, for his country, for God ; because he who 
 obeys a law higher than that of states, obeys a law in 
 which alone any state is safe. Proud and powerful 
 
482 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 men looked on with disappointment, not to say with 
 wrath. Every sentence was like hacking away old and 
 precious bonds of fellowship. Melville was condemned, 
 and how ? Let the words of another s history answer : 
 " It was felt that in a question of simple integrity, where 
 casuistry had to be eluded and plausibility swept aside, 
 this religious tongue was the last authority in England. 
 In the British Senate, in the nineteenth century, when 
 a point of morality was to be settled, it was not to the 
 man of duelling honor, it was not to the philosophic 
 moralist, that men looked for a decision ; it was to the 
 Christian senator whose code was the Bible," kneeling 
 every morning before the All-seeing Eye, " going up to 
 his seat from his closet," through all the perplexities of 
 his place saying ever secretly to his God, " Lead me 
 only by thy Light." 
 
 I am sure, gentlemen, you respond this day to any 
 earnest call for public fidelity, and welcome any exalted 
 standard of public duty. You are at the outset of great 
 perils as well as great labors. Whether you make a 
 conscientious study of all measures and schemes and 
 subjects put before you or not, be certain there are 
 those who are already making a politic and interested 
 study of you, your prejudices, tastes, habits, associa 
 tions, your weaker and stronger side. You are in 
 danger of losing your single-mindedness, your inde 
 pendence, your manhood. You are charged to-day with 
 the responsibility, first of keeping a Christian conscience, 
 and then of Christian legislation for Massachusetts. 
 Immense trusts both, the last vain without the first. 
 So you need this hour of prayer, and are thankful for 
 it. If any of you, on the other hand, are carrying up 
 to the Capitol now such poverty of principle, or such 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 483 
 
 salable convictions, that you will be seduced into mak 
 ing merchandise of your soul to the first or richest 
 buyer in the passage-way, then, in the name of the 
 State, in the name of all public credit and faith, in 
 the name of common decency, in the name of the 
 truth of God, I adjure you to resign and go home to 
 night. It will be the best service you ever rendered 
 to the Commonwealth, and more to the advantage of 
 the statute-book than all the votes and speeches of a 
 session. 
 
 Gentlemen, these are solemn hours for our country, 
 for this Commonwealth, for the whole Republic. They 
 are solemn hours for you, who hold for a little while 
 the awful trust of the character of one member in the 
 great confederation. It is no vision of alarmists that 
 sees tendencies busily at work which will sweep us first 
 to political prodigality, and then to oblivion of freedom 
 and justice both, and then to revolution, unless some 
 new-born conviction of the eternal rectitude comes to 
 check the madness of the hour, and restore religion to 
 her control. Be the immortal honor of building the 
 order which the early patriots founded, yours. Yours 
 also are the fathers, and yours the adoption, the glory, 
 the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, 
 and the promises ; and to you Christ has come. The 
 just nation, the just state, like the just soul, shall live 
 by its faith. No height of privilege, no swelling census, 
 no width of territory, no perfection of political construc 
 tion, no wealth or splendor of cities or of citizens can 
 save the faithless people from perishing. 
 
 Lovers of the nation, then, still build its synagogues ! 
 Ye that would be patriots, be believers. Have men of 
 veracity for your officers, men of intrepid uprightness 
 
484 CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 
 
 for your law-makers, men that fear only God and keep 
 his commandments for your citizens. For he that rev 
 erences our holy religion in the sanctuary, and replen 
 ishes it in the closet, and acts it in his life, is a more 
 effectual priest in the temple of our liberties, than the 
 cunning statesman that diplomatizes in a cabinet, or the 
 orator that talks administrations and parties into power 
 or out of it with a crafty tongue. For it is as true now, 
 in our ancient, beloved, Christian Commonwealth, as in 
 the days of the eloquent prophet-king, that " over the 
 faithful of the land the eyes of Mercy keep watch." 
 
 Let us conclude, then, with the most comprehensive 
 affirmation of our subject. Above and beneath all civil 
 constitutions, the foundation of their stability, the 
 dome of their protection, their corner-stone, their wall 
 of defence, their genial and sheltering sky, is the relig 
 ion and Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Virtue is 
 loyalty. Goodness is patriotism. The best citizenship 
 is the best Christianship. The best legislator is the 
 truest and wisest man. Character is the strength of 
 the State. They are the friends, the ornaments, the 
 defenders of the country and its constitution, who will 
 not swerve from its three original, immortal ideas, 
 Faith, Freedom, Fraternity. These, rightly interpreted, 
 comprehend the wealth of our heritage, the boundless 
 promise of our Future. We spoil that heritage, we for 
 feit that Future, only as we disobey God, injure man, 
 and worship ourselves. 
 
 To the retiring Chief Magistrate I offer the respectful 
 salutations of the place and the hour, congratulating 
 him on the honors of his office, on the successes of its 
 administration, on the release from its cares, on every 
 independent and unselfish act in its discharge, on every 
 
 inWflVfl m niifwnrrl -tacfimrmv r\f 
 
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION. 485 
 
 For the honorable Senate, Council, and House of 
 Representatives, I invoke here the spirit and blessing 
 of the God of our fathers, the God of our beloved 
 Commonwealth, the God of Honor, Justice, Truth, 
 and Peace. May all their members be honest legis 
 lators, Christian citizens, lovers of the nation, servants 
 of Christ and his Church ! 
 
SERMON XXIV. 
 
 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING* 
 
 WHO IS A WISE MAN AND ENDUED WITH KNOWLEDGE AMONG 
 YOU ? LET HIM SHOW OUT OF A GOOD CONVERSATION HIS 
 WORKS WITH MEEKNESS OF WISDOM. James ill. 13. 
 
 IF we remember that the term here rendered " con 
 versation " bears a larger signification than we com 
 monly attach to that English word, meaning the 
 whole action of life, the development of character, 
 the way a man works, turns, or behaves himself in 
 the world, avaarpo^, and if we remember that on 
 that term falls the main emphasis of the sentence, we 
 shall get from the whole passage a general declaration 
 of remarkable point, and quite appropriate to the spe 
 cial bearing of this service. 
 
 The scope of the writer s thought, paraphrasing the 
 statement a little, will be something like this : You 
 speak of knowledge. You value intellectual attain 
 ments. You honor wise or learned men. But why do 
 you value those attainments ? Who are your wise 
 men ? Let Christian truth tell you. The use of 
 
 * Delivered before the Graduating Class of Harvard College, June 15, 
 1856. 
 
LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 487 
 
 knowledge is to guide and elevate the life. Wise 
 men, or well-educated men, are those that make 
 what they know illuminate and enrich what they do. 
 The proper end and aim of study is a strong, simple, 
 consistent character. The best attainments always pro 
 duce a certain humility, or reverence, a sense of de 
 pendence on the great Source of Light, God, what is 
 called " the meekness of wisdom." This feeling is an 
 inspiration to religious actions. The more learning a 
 true man gets, the more widely, the more accurately, 
 the more profoundly, he will see and think ; and so, by 
 consequence, the more he will see what earnest labors 
 there are to be done ; the more he will think of the 
 claims of God and man upon him to turn all his re 
 sources and energies into the channel of a beneficent 
 activity. His attainments will be worth having, just in 
 proportion as they are assimilated with the vital forces 
 of his manhood ; and, by entering into the currents of 
 spiritual purpose and affection, they will inspire and 
 nourish his soul. If you would find out who among 
 you is endued with knowledge, and who is not, you can 
 apply this proof. Inquire who puts his knowledge into 
 a " good conversation," a noble or beautiful manner 
 of living, K a\rj avaarpo^ij. In a word, Character is 
 the final cause of study. Life is the test of learning. 
 
 I cannot help asking you to notice, in passing, how 
 exactly this idea fits in with the peculiar characteristic 
 of James, the Apostle that wrote this letter to the 
 churches. There is always a moral interest in a coinci 
 dence between a man and his speech. It makes the 
 man more valid, and the speech more credible, besides 
 confirming and comforting our faith in human sincerity 
 generally. The New Testament is full of these marks 
 
488 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 of genuineness. And they are nowhere seen in a more 
 striking and unconscious appearance than in James. 
 Pre-eminently, he was the Apostle of practical service. 
 The first question about everything with him was, What 
 will it render of living, human goodness ? Or, in our 
 common phrase, How will it work ? Let it be opinion, 
 or faith, or preaching, or charity. What are its fruits ? 
 What docs it come to ? So, here, of knowledge. Con 
 duct is the criterion of knowledge. Unless it yields a 
 goodly harvest here, much study is only a weariness to 
 the flesh, and a vanity of the mind. 
 
 A moment has come when you, my friends, whom it 
 is my privilege to address especially to-day, can hardly 
 help putting to yourselves the question, whether your 
 education, thus far, is worth what you have given for 
 it. The providence of God, who interests himself so 
 paternally and solemnly in every new step we take, and 
 who puts a voice of his own into every event, though it 
 seems the most regular, or natural, or incidental, is 
 urging that question home upon you. The interrup 
 tion of a routine that has lasted several years casts us 
 back upon individual choice and absolute principle. It 
 is divinely intended to. And so the closing up of one 
 long and important term of intellectual training, so 
 costly of time and means, and faculty and strength, 
 presses in the Christian inquiry, whether what has been 
 gained is equal to such pains expended. 
 
 An unprofitable and possibly a dismal question, if the 
 answer were not still in your own power ! But it is. 
 The great test of life is yet to be applied. And the time 
 is coming. Whether what you have gathered here is to 
 lie a crude and unproductive mass, in sluggish brains ; 
 or whether it is to be perverted to the baleful purposes 
 
LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 489 
 
 of a selfish and headstrong will, all the elaborate ap 
 paratus of education turned into an engine of more 
 effectual mischief ; or whether it shall be given to the 
 noblest objects of human hope, and thus consecrated to 
 Christ ; this is the threefold choice that awaits your 
 determination, not to be evaded by any ingenuity, not 
 to be forfeited by any neglect. It is certainly a fit 
 time, then, to meditate the true and righteous uses of a 
 Christian scholarship. Three easy and tempting mis 
 takes seem to me to lie directly before you, I might 
 say before us all, exposing all our past industry to 
 failure. 
 
 I. The first danger is indifference. False objects in 
 life are positive destroyers: but the absence of any 
 clear object is a waster almost equally consumptive, and 
 with one order of minds even more seductive. It would 
 seem as if the natural effect of a comprehensive system 
 of discipline must be to rouse the will and direct its 
 aim. Why translate the tongues of so many tribes of 
 men, if not to collect from them some completer inter 
 pretation of the riddle of our destiny ? Why explore 
 the mysterious geography of the mind itself, and inter 
 rogate the wondrous faculty by which all knowledge 
 comes, if not to gain new data towards the solution of 
 the oldest and deepest problem, Why was I born ? 
 Why do I breathe ? Whither do I tend ? How is it 
 possible to trace the moving processions of the ages, 
 through paths seeming so trivial while they were trod, 
 but so solemn in the echoes of their desertion, and not 
 be sent back to watch with a wiser eye which way our 
 own steps lead ? The whole contemplation of history 
 is an incitement to live purposely and earnestly. It is 
 the very dignity of science, that it reads off to us not 
 
490 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 only the thoughts but the plan of God, a plan whose 
 unity and method demand some reflection and some 
 copy, even in natures so fantastic and wayward as ours. 
 Every lesson from creation proposes a task to be done. 
 Every disclosure of the Creator presents an end to be 
 achieved. 
 
 Yet I need hardly remind you how often we miss 
 this practical and personal issue of the most intelli 
 gent study, ever learning, but never coming to the 
 knowledge of that simple truth ! The lives of scholars, 
 so peculiarly solicited and stimulated to the straitest 
 determination, are given over, as often perhaps as oth 
 ers, sometimes it appears oftener than any others, 
 and certainly with a more palpable and melancholy 
 abortiveness, to aimless, nerveless, desultory chance. 
 How the treasures rust in our hands ! The smooth 
 stones out of the brook drop unused from our grasp. 
 The sling hangs loose at our side. Giant Error walks 
 defiant and unchallenged at the head of his Philistine 
 troops. The years run on, and no resolute helm guides 
 the rocking keel toward a land of distinct and sacred 
 promise. We are idly busy with living, careless of life. 
 Two causes encourage this apathy. 
 
 One is, that the structure and habits of our industrial 
 commonwealth expose the recent graduate from college 
 to a period of uncertainty in his employment. It can 
 not be denied, I think, that at present there is some 
 want of happy adjustment between the academic career 
 and the public stations it precedes. The places of the 
 higher and more intellectual labor are not organized in 
 proportion to the mechanical and trafficking vocations. 
 The developments of modern civilization have much 
 widened the range of selection, and almost bewilder the 
 
LIFE THE TEST OP LEARNING. 491 
 
 judgment. Two or three clean-cut professions, techni 
 cally learned, do not, as formerly, distribute and absorb 
 the whole educated force. The same professions, mean- 
 tune, for better or for worse, cease to be technically, if 
 not in any other sense, learned, and are occupied by 
 candidates who have rushed up to their gates by a 
 shorter road. The fact, however it comes about, seems 
 to stand, that an increasing number of college-bred men 
 wait, with an awkward pause, after their graduation, 
 undecided yet of what their " commencement " shall be 
 the beginning. Unless some positive predilection or 
 early bias has happened to settle their choice for them, 
 an interval of doubt disturbs and enfeebles the steady 
 drift and tenacity of their resolves. It is a crisis of 
 trial and peril. Some men are hurried by it into a 
 choice that is foolish and profanes the after-existence. 
 Others are diluted by it into a spongy softness, and fall 
 off into habits of literary generality, or sentimental 
 imbecility. What is wanted is a Christian efficiency of 
 purpose, a Christian decision not to let haste spoil 
 the material, a Christian decision not to be content 
 with vacillation. Delay too long, and there creeps 
 upon the soul a fatally satisfied unconcern. The de 
 scent is easier, because the goads and exactions of a 
 systematic discipline have just been taken off; the indo 
 lent free-will often finds the charming liberty to do what 
 it pleases a wretched liberty to do nothing. Be guarded 
 against this dull catastrophe. Let not the bright begin 
 ning slouch into a stupid sequel. What thy hand or 
 thy brain findeth to do, do it with thy might. For he 
 only is the wise man, and endued with knowledge 
 among you, who keeps his life lively, and shows fruits 
 of his study in a goodly conversation. 
 
492 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 Another cause of indifference to any lofty and relig 
 ious uses of education is a subservience to the routine 
 of professional tasks. When the profession has been 
 chosen and entered, it may still put on a yoke. Recur 
 ring drudgeries deaden enthusiasm. The first ardor 
 fades off. Monotony sings its drowsy tune. Common 
 place efforts will do for commonplace business ; why 
 stretch the powers beyond their wonted mood ? Medi 
 ocrity is safe and practicable ; why spur the aspirations 
 by a swifter measure ? Because, answers Christianity, 
 they are the glory of your being. Because unbounded 
 powers are insulted by arbitrary limits. Because the 
 conquest of the possible into the actual is the keenest 
 fascination of true courage. Because God never made 
 us, and his institutions never nurtured us, to be slug 
 gish grinders in the mill of repetition, but fellow- wrest 
 lers with the heroes and apostles, striving for the 
 great mastery, pressing toward the mark. And there 
 is but one victory, but one mark. However sloth may 
 sleep, or cowardice despair, or infidelity deny, there is 
 nothing less than a practical and progressive ripening of 
 the whole man for the glory of God that can fill out 
 the passion of the really " wise man endued with knowl 
 edge among you." The first sentence of Milton s tract 
 on the Reforming of Education is an exposition of my 
 text : " I am long since persuaded that, to do or say 
 aught worth memory or imitation, no purpose should 
 sooner move us than simply the love of God and of 
 
 mankind The end of learning is to repair the 
 
 ruins of our first parents by learning to know God 
 aright, and out of that knowledge to be like him, as 
 we may the nearest be by possessing our souls of true 
 virtue, which, being united to the heavenly grace of 
 
LIFE THE TEST OP LEARNING. 493 
 
 faith, makes up the highest perfection." And how well 
 he insists on this definite and living purpose of the 
 scholar, when he speaks of " that methodical course 
 wherein our gentle and noble youth must proceed, by 
 the steady pace of learning onward, till they have con 
 firmed and .solidly united the whole body of their per 
 fected knowledge, like the last embattling of a Roman 
 legion ! " 
 
 II. But beyond indifference whether learning has any 
 grand object, and sometimes, indeed, this side of it, 
 lies the hindrance of a poor self-seeking. Undoubt 
 edly it is one of the most appalling proofs of the vigor 
 of the selfish passions, that they survive as they do 
 through all the liberalizing influence of a catholic cul 
 ture, and resist the generous impressions of science, 
 and even triumph over the charities of good-fellowship, 
 in the base hunger for luxury or comfort. The Apostle 
 does not say it is in a lucrative conversation, or a 
 famous conversation, or a comfortable conversation, 
 that the works of the real wisdom are shown forth, 
 but in a " good conversation." Nor is it in the pride, 
 the distinction, the notoriety, or the emoluments of wis 
 dom, the office, the salary, the applause, the furni 
 ture, but in " the meekness of wisdom. It is Wis 
 dom for her own pure and precious sake, or rather 
 for His sake who possessed her of old, in the beginning, 
 when he laid the foundations of the earth, that he 
 loves and pursues. If scholarship holds itself affronted 
 by being degraded into the low wrangle of appetites, 
 religion has a sterner rebuke, and calls it sacrilege. 
 The question, when you are laying your plans for the 
 future, is not, Which will yield me the best living? 
 but, Which will yield me the best life ? It cannot be 
 
494 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 that you have been out in the fields of learning seeking 
 jewels, to bring them in and lay them down as pur 
 chase-money for equipage or compliments. The legit- 
 mate children of Mammon, schooled, not as you have 
 been, in the ample and serene atmosphere of unselfish 
 thought, but in the closer chambers of mercenary cal 
 culation, trained, not, as you have been, in the royal 
 company of great persons from antiquity downward, 
 but in the scramble and devices of gain, will beat 
 you in that rivalry ; and they ought to. How your 
 educated strength shall be devoted, should be settled by 
 another reference than the stock-list or the tax-bill. All 
 honest callings are honorable. If you carry your ac 
 quirements into commerce, you may enter into a wor 
 thy and magnanimous competition. There is scope 
 there for your largest faculty, and there is need there 
 of the broadest philosophy. But you cannot decently 
 go to turn your talents into merchandise, to forget the 
 communion with high examples, to square your notions 
 of civil affairs by the self-interest of the market, to sell 
 the nobility of art and letters for some rich bargain, to 
 barter conscience for tariff or dividends, to let your 
 independent duty as citizens and as patriots be appoint 
 ed for you by the narrow gossip of the exchange or the 
 contracts of brokers boards. Bear into whatever mer 
 cantile engagements or profitable alliances you encoun 
 ter a spirit that is genial with the sympathies of all 
 the peoples you have conversed with, self-denying 
 with old sacrifices, fragrant with the mountain air of 
 meditation, sacred with the veneration of holy traditions. 
 Breathe the spirit of your studies into the haunts of 
 trade. Touch the rough customs of shops with the 
 grace of a genuine refinement. And do all that mod- 
 
LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 495 
 
 esty will allow to raise the strifes of property into a 
 statelier degree, by asserting everywhere the supremacy 
 of thinking man ovor his possessions, and of simple 
 justice over all the policies and expediencies of the 
 hour. Maintain everywhere the absolute dignity of 
 Truth who has chosen you once as her disciples and 
 heralds, and never forget, however affluence bids for 
 your souls, that you were here set apart and dedicated 
 as priests in the unsordid Temple of Learning. 
 
 Consider, too, that there is a greediness of praise just 
 as radically selfish, if not quite so carnal, as the lust for 
 money. And precisely because it wears a more intel 
 lectual look it is a sin that offers a more acceptable bait 
 to cultivated men. But there is nothing in it of " the 
 meekness of wisdom." The selfishness of vanity is at 
 its root, and the selfishness of ostentation is in its 
 branches, and green jealousies are canker-worms on 
 all its leaves. He is not half-educated, not the wise 
 man, nor endued with knowledge among you, who 
 suborns the common largesses of the past into a step 
 ping-stone to personal renown, and prizes the light that 
 is sent to warm the whole race into a brotherhood, only 
 for the distinctions it reveals between himself and his 
 kind. Not that is the genuine scholar s temper, nor the 
 goodly conversation. 
 
 III. Thirdly, it is no business of the liberal and 
 Christian scholar to become the hired servant of party 
 prejudice or sectarian interests. Science is given and 
 got for no such contemptible uses. Students are con 
 gregated in a still and separate spot, on neutral ground, 
 remote as may be from all political and ecclesiastical 
 chicanery, on purpose that they may grow and expand, 
 aloof from the warping forces of controversy. But, in a 
 
 42 
 
496 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 social state like ours, it would take more than a Chinese 
 wall, or the rules of monastic seclusion, to shut out even 
 from academic groves the Intruding conflicts of the fo 
 rum and the convention. Before you have passed out 
 of the hearing of the College bell, the recruiting officers 
 of state and church will besiege you for your pledge. 
 Consider carefully, I pray you, before you give it to any 
 of them, how much you give with it, whether your 
 manhood, whether your individuality, whether your lib 
 erty of speech, whether the sanctity of a fearless con 
 viction. Here again scholarship and Christianity both 
 unite to put you on your guard. There are little 
 coteries enough, in art, in letters, in social opinion, 
 in public policy, in theologic speculation, that will be 
 delighted to enroll a new name on their lists. Their 
 
 D 
 
 captains will electioneer for you while you are free, 
 flatter you when you consent, patronize and cajole 
 you when you are caught, use and pay you while 
 you succumb, abuse and torment you when you 
 rebel. Can you afford that servitude ? Can learning 
 afford it in your persons ? And who, in all these 
 truckling and hard-drilled times, shall be honest and 
 free, if not they whose minds have been balanced and 
 poised by contemplating the reasons of things ? 
 
 It is not against the more open and offensive aggres 
 sions of such combined interests that these warnings are 
 directed, so much as against devices that are more spe 
 cious and plausible. We have committed ourselves, in 
 our social experiment, to the government of public 
 opinion, even more than of public law. Unless the 
 original fountains of it are kept healthy and pure, we 
 are in the most complicated and disastrous of anarchies. 
 Already, thoughtful men cannot look far about them 
 
LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 497 
 
 without seeing what beginnings of ruinous and despotic 
 power, of misjudgment, of defamation, of vituperation, 
 are craftily growing up in these bigotries of our democ 
 racy. Truth is scarcely seen for what it is, but only for 
 the image and superscription it bears, nor prized for its 
 beauty, but for its currency. The few that venture on 
 a practical assertion of the boasted liberality, have to 
 be catechized, and menaced, and ostracized, so far as 
 the puny persecutions of wordy violence can ostracize. 
 Oppose to these degrading dictations all the massive 
 resistance of your knowledge, the muscle of your man 
 hood, and the sincerity of your faith. 
 
 Faith, I say. For it is not the independence of self- 
 will, not the vain ambition of peculiarity, not the inso 
 lent contempt of the past, or of other men, or of right 
 eous authority, that I exhort you to. It is the honest 
 loyalty to the one only Authority, instead of mortal 
 counterfeits. It is the appeal from custom to Christ, 
 from party and sect to the Holy Spirit, from mortal 
 majorities to God. There is no right religious rever 
 ence which does not fear the one only Master more than 
 unpopularity or reproach. What we want is that hu 
 mility, growing ever deeper with all growing heights of 
 attainment, that penitential confession of sins, that 
 meekness of wisdom, which bends with unutterable awe 
 before the secret voice of the Most High, before the 
 open command of the Bible, and which, being turned 
 " into a native and heroic valor," makes men " hate 
 the cowardice of doing wrong." 
 
 Let us ponder, then, the great claims that are laid on 
 our educated men. The country has claims, never 
 more than now. We need more of that sort of educa- 
 
498 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 tion which stirs and fosters, from beginning to end, a 
 loyal zeal for the central and dominant ideas that lie 
 at the foundation of the Republic. The scholar is not 
 well trained that has not been formed day by day into 
 a Christian patriot. Our universities ought all to be 
 nurseries, not of national exclusiveness, or national 
 vanity, but of a just national honor, virtue, and devo 
 tion. They should rear and send forth prophets for the 
 American Israel, prophets brave and blameless, and 
 speaking ever with a "Thus saith the Lord," proph 
 ets that no sophistry can bewilder, no tyrant silence, no 
 bludgeon terrify, no flattery blind. Out of libraries, 
 and out of laboratories, and out of the forearming con 
 tests of debate, let them send forth, for each impending 
 struggle of Right with Wrong, thinkers and speakers 
 " fraught with a universal insight, ingenuous and 
 matchless men." For, as said that stanch old English 
 republican of two centuries ago, in language suiting us 
 to-day, There is a study of politics worthy of Christian 
 scholars, " that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the 
 commonwealth, be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, 
 of such a tottering conscience, as many of our great 
 counsellors have lately shown themselves, but steadfast 
 pillars of the state." 
 
 Universal humanity has claims. That " good con 
 versation " of the Christian scholar condescends to 
 converse with the lowest offshoot of the human stock. 
 That " meekness of wisdom " stoops gladly to help the 
 weakest wayfarer ; to hear the story of wrong or weak 
 ness from the faintest or most unlettered lips ; to sym 
 pathize with the wants of the vagrant, or the sorrows of 
 the slave ; to bring all the sublime resources of culture, 
 the magic of invention, and the facilities of genius, to 
 
LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 499 
 
 ease the burdens of penury, to open the path to the 
 helpless, to pay respect and wages to unpaid toil, to 
 inspire brute force with intelligence, to marshal idle 
 men and women and children into ranks of self-sustain 
 ing labor. This is a worthy end for the best scholar 
 ship of the age, 
 
 " How best to help the slender store, 
 How mend the dwellings of the poor, 
 How gain in life, as life advances, 
 Valor and charity more and more." 
 
 Above all, Christ has claims. And his claims are 
 supreme. They transcend, they underlie, they encom 
 pass, all beside. The Lord of souls is Lord of the 
 sciences as well. Common gratitude challenges obe 
 dience and love for Him, in whose name every hope of 
 civilization moves to its fulfilment, and every affection 
 of mankind realizes itself in peace. It must be a per 
 sonal obedience, a personal love. No general and 
 cold confession, no vague and rhetorical loyalty, no 
 heartless and high-sounding praises, can satisfy that 
 Gospel of regeneration on which salvation depends. 
 Penitence, trust, consecration, prayer, righteousness, 
 these will ; for God is Love, and his forgiveness waits. 
 Every thought and imagination must be brought into 
 captivity to the holy obedience of the Son of God. All 
 knowledge that is not rooted and centred there vanishes 
 away. " Who is a wise man. and endued with knowl 
 edge among you ? " He is the believing student, the 
 studious disciple. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Graduating Class, our doctrine 
 culminates here. 
 
 Every considerable change in the form of our life is 
 
 42* 
 
500 LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 
 
 meant to suggest to us something original as to its 
 spirit. The dissolving of one set of relations moves the 
 question by what law new sets shall be organized. 
 When farewells and distance threaten manly friend 
 ships, what is more unavoidable than to think what arm 
 shall keep the friend that is parted from, and whether 
 there is not one Friendship in whose Eternal and Al 
 mighty clasp every human affection finds its safety ? 
 The separation of classmates opens spaces about each 
 one s personality which let in light from above on all 
 your plans and habits. A change of residence puts us 
 to asking why we live at all ; how long we shall need 
 any earthly dwelling ; whether we deserve any. How 
 shall your tuition justify these years, and your future 
 be adequate to the past ? 
 
 That question, like every other that an earnest expe 
 rience asks, God s Book of Life answers. 
 
 Life is the test of Learning. Character is the crite 
 rion of knowledge. Not what a man has, but what he 
 is, is the question, after all. The quality of soul is 
 more than the quantity of information. Personal, spir 
 itual substance is the final resultant. Have that, and 
 your intellectual furnishings and attainments will turn, 
 with no violent contortion, but with a natural tendency 
 and harmony, a working together, conversation, ava- 
 (TTpo^ri, to the loftiest uses. Add faith to knowledge, 
 and your education will be worth what it has cost. 
 Your lives will honor and justify your preparation. 
 Say, every morning, with the simple confidence of the 
 holy child in the Temple, " Lord, here am I ! " and he 
 will send you to noble and effectual victories. Your 
 wisdom will tell to issues that are divine, and that wis 
 dom the Eternal Providence will watch, because it is 
 
LIFE THE TEST OF LEARNING. 501 
 
 matured in the spiritual school of Him who knows all 
 that is in man. 
 
 " Lift up your eyes to the fields ; they are white 
 already to harvest." With the blessing of that Provi 
 dence, go to the field of your slow, patient work. That 
 slowness of the result may be the bitterest elemelit in 
 the discipline. 
 
 " To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time." 
 
 Be content to wait for Him with whom ages are days . 
 
 " If but this tedious battle could be fought, 
 With Sparta s heroes, at one rocky pass, 
 One day be spent in dying, men had sought 
 The spot, and been cut down like mower s grass. 
 If in the heart of nature we might strive, 
 Challenge to single combat the great power, 
 Welcome the conflict ! But no ; half alive, 
 We skirmish with our foe long hour by hour." 
 
 Nevertheless, nevertheless, in due season ye shall 
 reap, if ye faint not. Go out with faith, with supplica 
 tion. Ye shall come again in the Jubilee and Sabbath 
 of the Resurrection rejoicing. And then, be content if 
 it shall be with you as with the solemn pictured figures 
 of the returning warriors, in the historical galleries of 
 the Italian city, where the reverent and pious victors 
 are seen, not in chariots, nor with sceptres, nor on 
 thrones, nor with crowns on their heads, but kneeling, 
 the crowns lifted in their hands, looking upward, and 
 giving, thanks to God. 
 
SEKMON XXV. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER.* 
 
 MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. Mat 
 thew xxi. 13. 
 
 BY the permission of the Infinite One, through whose 
 wisdom the first purpose was shaped, of whose love the 
 bounty was given, and in whose strength the builders 
 have labored, this sacred work, begun a little more than 
 two years ago, stands complete. It betokens a truth 
 old as the human soul. It registers a want of our 
 nature ever-new and ever-present, communion with 
 our Creator. It attests a life at once above and before 
 us, of loftier joy and everlasting goodness. It helps 
 perpetuate the promise of man s redemption from his 
 only real evil and of his forgiveness for his only terrible 
 wrong. It is, in design, a copy, all unworthy, but such 
 as our mortal penury could bring, of that mysterious 
 Pattern of perfect social adoration " in the Mount," of 
 which the praise is pure, whence they go no more out, 
 " eternal in the heavens." May the Ancient of Days, 
 the Father of all that now live, and the God of all 
 
 * A sermon preached at the dedication of the " Appleton Chapel," of 
 Harvard University, in Cambridge, October 17, 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 503 
 
 hope, God and Father of Jesus Christ our Lord, who 
 was dead, and is alive again, and who liveth evermore, 
 accept it into his keeping, save it from profanation, 
 guard it from misuse, and hallow it as his own House 
 of Prayer ! 
 
 It would seem to form a fit introduction to the 
 course of thought hest suited to this service, and at the 
 same time duly honor the noble spirit of Christian 
 beneficence which, from one generation to another, pro 
 vides and renews these instruments of faith and inlets 
 of a heavenly inspiration, if we notice first the events 
 that led to the rearing of the edifice, and the special 
 generosity that has been thought worthy to give it the 
 name by which it is to be known. 
 
 Since the time of the amicable withdrawal of the 
 College community from its connection with the First 
 Parish, in 1814, the public worship of the Lord s Day 
 and other religious services have been held in Univer 
 sity Hall. That building, as is well known, was reared 
 and has been occupied for the united purposes of recita 
 tion-rooms and a Chapel. For a time, also, there were 
 uses of some of its apartments still less in keeping with 
 the designs of a sanctuary than the ordinary secular ex 
 ercises of the week. Two of the rooms were devoted to 
 a commons ordinary, and the basement was given over to 
 a store-room, a kitchen, and lodgings for servants. To 
 invest such a spot with the select and hallowed impres 
 sions of a sanctuary would be quite too difficult for 
 minds the most disciplined and a devotional habit the 
 most mature. To attempt it amidst the less fixed con 
 victions and the forming influences of a seminary for 
 the young seems still more hopeless. 
 
 The inconvenience and interruptions were felt and 
 
504 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 deplored long before a way could be found for their 
 remedy. A specific official notice of these unfavorable 
 arrangements appears to have been first taken in a re 
 port to the Overseers from the Treasurer of the Corpo 
 ration, Samuel A. Eliot, just twelve years ago last 
 week, October 12, 1846. They are there mentioned as 
 " the most important of existing deficiencies " connected 
 with the Institution. " The present Chapel, says this 
 judicious paper, " is at once too small, and ill adapted, 
 from its appearance and its connection with adjoining 
 apartments, to its peculiar purpose. It may seem to 
 those accustomed to the severe simplicity of our Puritan 
 church architecture that the effect of the mere appear 
 ance of a room used for religious worship could not and 
 ought not to be great, and it may be freely admitted, 
 that, if it were used for once or for a few times only, it 
 would not be important } but nothing which must be 
 often repeated is insignificant, and it is therefore of no 
 doubtful utility that the worship of God, which is to be 
 often renewed, should be so conducted as to attract and 
 not to repel." On the last day of the same year, Presi 
 dent Everett, in the first of his annual reports, dis 
 tinctly recommends " the erection of a Chapel exclu 
 sively consecrated to religious exercises," as " one of the 
 most pressing wants of the Institution." An earnest 
 recurrence was made to the subject in each of the two 
 remaining reports of the same presiding officer. At the 
 close of the last of these documents, his large observa 
 tion and thoughtful regard for every higher object of 
 education, of learning and the State, led this devoted 
 son and friend of the University to remark as follows : 
 " Wholesome habits, salutary traditions, winning exam 
 ples, revered memories and generous sentiments, are 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 505 
 
 more imDortant toward effecting the great purposes for 
 which the societies of men are formed, than the letter of 
 the law. But of influence more vital and controlling 
 than all are the softened temper and gentle spirit which 
 nothing but a religious principle can create. The de 
 votional exercises of the Chapel are the foundation of 
 the discipline of the place, and apart from their higher 
 office, are all-important in this respect. Nothing which 
 can make the Chapel-services interesting and duly af 
 fecting should, in the judgment of the President, be 
 spared. They should be regarded, throughout the 
 Institution, as the first of duties. The aspect and 
 arrangements of the Chapel should invite to meditation, 
 and the organ and a solemn chant of select portions 
 of the Psalms, or c the imperishable hymns of the 
 Church, should be united with the reading of the 
 Scriptures and the offering of prayer." He further 
 expresses his belief that a service of this description, 
 with auxiliary measures for the spiritual culture of the 
 students, " would, by the blessing of Providence, do 
 more to increase the usefulness " of the seminary 
 " than an indefinite multiplication of means and appli 
 ances purely secular." 
 
 It was found, however, and reluctantly confessed, by 
 the author of these views and by all the departments 
 of the government, that such a structure as was needed 
 was entirely beyond the funds at the command of the 
 Corporation, and that, if the object was to be effected 
 at all, recourse must be had to the Christian liberal 
 ity of " the children and friends of the University." 
 
 From the enlightened dispositions of a few men be 
 longing chiefly to the last of the two classes here desig 
 nated, the friends, wise and liberal, of the University, 
 
506 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 though not its children, the patronage so deeply needed 
 was, not long after, to be gratuitously proposed. 
 
 Samuel Appleton, a merchant of Boston, was of a 
 family of which it has been noticed that from a very 
 early period in the colonial settlements it has been re 
 markable for the " uniformity in the character of the 
 individuals embraced in it ; " and of that character it 
 may be said, with equal justice, that among its promi 
 nent traits have been integrity, firmness, enterprise, and 
 patriotism. Two of its members have been eminent in 
 their relation to the interests both of learning and relig 
 ion in New England. The first settler of that name 
 emigrated in obedience to the stanch convictions of a 
 Puritan believer. He afterwards refused to share in 
 the persecution of the Antinomians and Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son, and lost office for that liberality. It is an agreea 
 ble association in the thoughts of this occasion, that one 
 of his descendants, as this audience will remember, was 
 for the long period of about sixty-seven years of the 
 last century the pastor of this College, as the minister 
 of the First Parish in Cambridge, was the brother-in- 
 law of one of its most efficient and celebrated Presi 
 dents, Edward Holyoke, and was the second divine on 
 whom it conferred a degree for theological and ministe 
 rial eminence, the faithful Christian teacher, a record 
 of whose simple-hearted wisdom, apostolic devotion, and 
 patriarchal dignity, is to be sought in the after-lives of 
 the two thousand graduates that listened to his preach 
 ing and observed his life; and whose motto, " Ortho 
 doxy and Charity," was recorded not only on the can 
 vas of the portrait which still preserves his likeness in 
 our gallery in Harvard Hall, but on all his profession 
 and discourse and labor, as a servant of the College and 
 the Church. 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 507 
 
 Another of the kindred was, at a later period, a can 
 didate for a theological professorship in this University, 
 received one of its honorary degrees, and was twelve 
 years President of Bowdoin College, in Maine. 
 
 A common ancestor of theirs, Samuel Appleton, was 
 in public service at an earlier time, was appointed com 
 mander of the Massachusetts forces in Philip s war, 
 because he was a person " very sensible of ye cause and 
 people of God," was counted factious by the Royal Gov 
 ernors Randolph and Andros, on account of his repub 
 lican principles, and appealed to the people from a rock 
 at Lynn, still called " Appleton s pulpit." His de 
 spatches, dated at Hadley, abound in proofs of skill, 
 bravery, and piety. 
 
 Our benefactor belonged to that worthy class of New 
 England men who are born in frugal homes, gain their 
 balanced power of character by a modest conquest of 
 many hardships, and pass out into large usefulness 
 through a course of discipline and achievement as 
 favorable to the attributes of a genuine manhood as 
 almost any in the world. Forbidden a personal share 
 in the culture of the higher seats of learning, they 
 become the patrons of letters, the founders of institu 
 tions and chairs of instruction, and command the 
 esteem and confidence of scholars. Bred to habits 
 of acquisition and calculation, they rise superior to 
 the meagre prospects of a mere mercenary ambition, 
 not only dignifying commerce by their public spirit, but 
 forwarding science itself by their practical sagacity and 
 energy. For that part of education which consists in 
 the study of books Mr. Appleton was limited through 
 his early years to the district school and such private 
 hours as made the margin of a busy and laborious 
 
 43 
 
508 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 employment. But by assimilating and using what he 
 learned, by an intelligent intercourse with men, by 
 travels abroad, by a self-knowledge and sterling sense 
 ever prohibiting in him the assumption which is the 
 fatal mark of ignorance, and by that conscientious dis 
 cipline of his faculties which is the nobler part of wis 
 dom, he entered in unchallenged among our foremost 
 order of men. The fullest and highest heads found a 
 manliness in him that made him their peer. In the 
 stainless justice and frankness that ruled his dealings, 
 " he knew but one way of speaking, and that was to 
 say, straight on, the truth." In a suit at law, a jury 
 once found in his favor, even against some apparent 
 odds of evidence, on nothing but the plain declaration 
 of his word, with this almost unexampled explana 
 tion of their verdict, that " they were quite sure Mr. 
 Appleton would not dispute the payment of the note, 
 except on the certainty that he did not owe it." Eager 
 gainseekers, bewildered by financial success, or enslaved 
 by a lucrative opportunity, saw in him the fine example 
 of a self-control which subdued the passion for wealth 
 just when it is most apt to grow despotic, voluntarily 
 withdrew him from all the tempting prizes of fortune 
 before he was sixty years old, and devoted the rest of his 
 life to doing good. There was, indeed, as all who knew 
 him will confess, and as it is more than proper here to 
 remember, a singular sweetness and simplicity in the 
 old age of this venerable, benevolent, unpretending citi 
 zen and Christian, master of his possessions and of 
 himself. There were sufferings and infirmities of the 
 body, but he could better bear all these than the pain 
 of turning back the humblest deserving applicant from 
 his door, or closing his bountiful hand on a dollar that 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 509 
 
 was needed by Christ s poor. Such cheerfulness did 
 this charity breathe through his household, that it 
 would seem as if all the new gladness and the hearty 
 benedictions of the wretchedness he brightened came 
 back and pitched their permanent tents about him. 
 Simple as a child, the generous steward of God s 
 bounty sat there amidst his affluence, listening, pity 
 ing, giving, till sordid riches were transfigured before 
 him, till the pursuits that we commonly call worldly 
 looked divine, the curse that clings to Dives s lot was 
 loosened, and even money wore the stamp of Jesus of 
 Nazareth. Let me say that the only time I ever saw 
 him I went to ask help for the education of a minister 
 of the Gospel ; and that when I went away, with his 
 willing gift, he said these rare words, rare even from 
 generous people, " When you know of some other very 
 good object, I wish you would come to me again." 
 Mercy, in each of its benignant forms, and religion, and 
 literature, and great industrial enterprises full of bene 
 fit to the people, felt the force of his disinterested pur 
 pose. As little narrowed by the vanity which makes a 
 merit of straitened beginnings as by the other vanity 
 which is ashamed of them, he only said, when he heard 
 the circumstances of his youth and age contrasted, 
 that but for a physical constitution naturally feeble he 
 should have been as well content with the early labor 
 as the later leisure. He remembered the humble work 
 men in the Eastern woods who used to lend him their 
 arms in lifting logs beyond his strength, and even their 
 children saw kindnesses falling into their dwellings 
 from the same unknown and unforgetful giver. For 
 several of his last years he consecrated the entire in 
 come of his estates to charity. And when nature was 
 
510 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 putting a term upon his personal munificence, by his 
 will, after numerous and ample specific legacies, he 
 bequeathed two hundred thousand dollars in trust to 
 his executors, in the language of the instrument, 
 " to be by them applied and distributed for scientific, 
 literary, religious, and charitable purposes." He died 
 on the twelfth of July, 1853, in the eighty-eighth year 
 of his age. 
 
 Both by the consistent practice of the original donor, 
 then, sustained through a long career of benefactions 
 in this kind, and by the special directions of his last 
 testament, we are justified in honoring Samuel Apple- 
 ton of Boston as the source of this welcome accession 
 to the resources and right conduct of the Institu 
 tion. Happily, however, for the University, the dis 
 charge of these trusts fell to executors who partook of 
 the liberal designs and temper of the testator. In 
 November, 1854, these trustees, Nathan Appleton, 
 William Appleton, and Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, 
 communicated to the Corporation their decision to 
 appropriate the value of fifty thousand dollars of this 
 fund for the purpose of erecting " a building of gran 
 ite, freestone, or marble, as a Chapel for religious ser 
 vices." The gift was accepted, in the words of Presi 
 dent Walker, as " timely aid to supply a pressing want 
 of the University." At the same time it was voted 
 by the President and Fellows " that the Chapel to be 
 thus erected shall be named the Appleton Chapel, in 
 memory of" this "munificent benefactor of learning 
 and humanity." The plans were soon after proposed 
 and submitted ; the ground was broken in July, 1856, 
 and the corner-stone of the structure was laid, with 
 suitable ceremonies, on the second day of May, 1857. 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 511 
 
 We are gathered to thank the providence of God, to 
 acknowledge the faithfulness of good men, and to set 
 the building apart as a " House of Prayer." 
 
 The College has not waited these two hundred and 
 twenty years for the appointment of God s worship 
 within its walls. Knowing well that grand article of its 
 faith, that " God is a spirit," and that " they that wor 
 ship him must worship him in spirit and in truth," its 
 guardians have provided for the daily homage of each 
 generation, within such plain substitutes for the sepa 
 rate sanctuary as poverty, or other needs, and the times 
 allowed. Through a line of reverend teachers, its pre 
 siding and other officers, and the ministers of the 
 churches, it has striven not to falter from the elevated 
 standard of its two early charters : the first of 1642, 
 proposing as the object of the seminary, " piety, moral 
 ity, and learning ; " the second, of eight years later, 
 " knowledge and godliness." From the dawning hour 
 of its distinction it has never been wholly unmindful of 
 its loyalty to the Messiah. The leaves of the vine 
 planted by the hand of the Son of Man have been 
 patiently dropped into this fountain of learning. At 
 last a day of better outward appointments has come : 
 God grant it may prove a day of nobler spiritual zeal ! 
 We see laid on these grounds, sequestered already to 
 science and letters, this stately token of another reality, 
 faith in things not seen ; and this we are to conse 
 crate to the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only 
 wise God ! 
 
 The chief meaning of our assembly and the first 
 cause of this day s festival is that this building repre 
 sents Religion. And since Christ has come, and died, 
 and risen, we apprehend religion only in him. Histori- 
 
 43* 
 
512 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 cally we know the Father only in the " Word made 
 flesh." Experimentally, we know the power of the 
 Spirit only by the life Divine communicated to ours. 
 The upward-looking welcome of that Spirit, with its 
 fruitful transmission into a practical and consistent 
 action, is the organizing law of the Church ; a social 
 body with conscious members, under its living Head. 
 Here is the one essential principle of a devout, humane, 
 indestructible church-life. A sanctuary is one of the 
 chambers of its retirement, one of its places of replen 
 ishing and strengthening, one of its oratories of prayer : 
 not its only home : that is the whole field of the world 
 where men work, arid love, and suffer, and sin, and die. 
 The house of the spiritual Church has no roof but 
 heaven : no walls but the ever-widening bounds of 
 space and time ; nay, it abides in infinitude ; " the true 
 tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man." 
 
 Now, this religion is of three elements, with a need, 
 a nurture, and an expression for each. 
 
 First, it is an idea; and as an idea, held by the 
 understanding, its need is to be cleared ; its nurture is 
 instruction ; its expression is doctrine. Perfect this, 
 and you rid the Church of intellectual error. 
 
 Secondly, religion is a faith, and as a faith, held in 
 the soul, its need is to be purified. Its nurture is 
 spiritual communion ; its expression is worship. Per 
 fect this, and you rid the Church of superstition on the 
 one hand, and unbelief on the other. 
 
 Thirdly, Religion is a life ; and as a life, bred in the 
 practical force of the will, its need is freedom ; its nur 
 ture is action ; its expression is righteousness. Perfect 
 this, and you rid the Church of its selfish indolence 
 and mammonism. 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 513 
 
 For each of these elements a place is found in the 
 well-ordered symmetry and solemn beauty of a genuine 
 Fold of Christ. To lend each of them energy, simpli 
 city, constancy, is the direct end of the public meeting 
 of the sanctuary. 
 
 Interests like these, according to the common dic 
 tates of our nature, and the best interpretations we can 
 put on God s providence with man, tend to clothe 
 themselves in institutions. The State, the Family, 
 Education, Commerce, and the less definite and less 
 systematized form of human intercourse that we call 
 Society, furnish sufficient analogies. History, heathen 
 hardly less than Christian, is the record, for, mixed 
 with all the surface-dust of the globe moulder the frag 
 ments of altars, priests, temples, shrines. Results are 
 the argument. Round the world, and through the cen 
 turies, men embody their strong thoughts and dearest 
 hopes in shapes presentable to the senses. If reasons 
 are asked, the plainest seems to be that men, at pres 
 ent, are neither ghosts, nor brutes, but are of both body 
 and spirit. With such convenience as their culture has 
 contrived, with such grace or majesty as their taste can 
 admire and their skill create, with such durability as 
 the transient materials or fugitive fashions can com 
 mand, they found and build and adorn the dwellings 
 of their deep desires. Legislation, armies, marriage, 
 learning, exchange, and the social custom that ever 
 varies but never dies, all seek shelter, method, signs, 
 forms. So along with statesmanship and generalship, 
 with the husband, the soldier, the scholar, the mer 
 chant, and the neighbor, religion also, in the persistent 
 organization of its designs, taking on the externals of a 
 Form, sends for the architect: and to Him who is a 
 
514 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 spirit, filling the universe, invisible, temples are built 
 " with hands." 
 
 Passing, then, from the interior view, by the steps of 
 an analysis so obvious, we come to inquire the precise 
 objects of the outward structure of God s house. They 
 may be gathered from what has already appeared. 
 
 I. First is Worship : worship, old as humanity ; yet 
 a worship springing for us only at the call of that Gos 
 pel of reconciliation which blends Fatherhood, Medi 
 ation, and Brotherhood together, its threefold and 
 absolute Revelation. " Whom therefore ye ignorantly 
 worship, Him declare I unto you : " how right that this 
 should have been spoken from the Athenian Areopagus, 
 =. the hill-top of that luminous centre of the old Pagan 
 civilization : where stoics and epicureans and soldiers, 
 philosophy and pleasure and power, Alexandria 
 and Corinth and Rome, and the three continents, could 
 hear ! The kneeling devotees must bend in a lowlier 
 prostration, and then rise to a wiser work. The won 
 dering sages, men of intellects so mighty and impe 
 rial that no after-age discredits the originality and com 
 prehensiveness of their genius, must confess a diviner 
 wisdom than the Academy s. The most seeing poets, 
 like that Aratus whom Paul s scholarship could quote, 
 must awake from dreaming to the solid convictions 
 that no daylight scatters. The patient sufferers must 
 turn their aching eyes to a more miraculous oracle, to 
 feel their pain touched and released by the great Healer 
 of Nazareth. And the prayer and the praise were 
 thenceforth to ascend with the promise ever falling, 
 " Seek, and ye shall find : " " Whatsoever ye shall ask 
 in my name, I will give it you." 
 
 Worship is the docility of the soul. Whence does it 
 
THE HOUSE OF PEAYEIl. 515 
 
 come ? It is of reverence, the most august and pro 
 found of man s capacities, because it reaches instantly 
 from his humblest self-distrust to the loftiest sufficiency, 
 laying the trembling arm of his infirmity on the Al 
 mighty throne. An attribute of all the stateliest and 
 broadest men from the beginning ! How justly it has 
 been said, " Whatever is wise, or strong, or loving 
 enough in this world to outlive the changes of human 
 admiration, will be found to have the tincture of in 
 tense faith. They who have most affected the fates 
 of mankind have not attained their great dimensions 
 without bearing a divine secret in their souls ; they 
 have been men of trust and prayer ; and, familiar with 
 an Infinite presence, have reached the stature which 
 throws so grand a shadow over history." It is of aspi 
 ration ; the filial, fallen spirit longing and struggling 
 for its source and its rest again ; this aspiration differ 
 ing from ambition as soaring straight up, with open 
 mind, from creeping obliquely with a face averted in 
 shame ; or as self-promotion is different from sacrifice. 
 It is of confession, crying out of a prodigal s penitent 
 home-sickness, and a publican s sincerity, " I have 
 sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight ; " " God be 
 merciful to me, a sinner." 
 
 Without worship our knowledge grows arrogant, and 
 therein grows weak, crawling back by vanity to igno 
 rance, hiding its own lamp, and cheating itself with 
 knowingness, or sciolism, for wisdom, a blunder that 
 more than one chapter of the sullied pages of literary 
 biography recites. Without worship enterprise is for 
 ever investing for final failure. Just as undevout sci 
 ence, in the largest view of creation, is unscientific, 
 because it stops between causes and the Cause, (is geo- 
 
516 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 centric, or at most heliocentric, but not theocentric) so 
 invention and labor deny their true principles and ends 
 by Atheism, because they retreat unbelieving from the 
 one " open secret," and forfeit the supreme blessing. 
 Their rebellious architecture is of the order of Babel and 
 Babylon, in every country they colonize, in every city 
 they crowd. For in rearing the mansion of their civili 
 zation and multiplying its machinery, they lose the one 
 world-wide language of brotherly love. They get con 
 founded with the dialects of caste and hate. They 
 weave purple and fine linen for oppression and lust. 
 They pile their walls so high that they shut off 
 the beams of heaven. Without worship manhood is 
 dwarfed, for it ignores the only supreme intelligence, 
 the only irresistible power, the only infinite love, the 
 Highest, the Greatest, the Best One ; and he who ought 
 to open out on every side of him, by every breathing 
 pore of his constitution, and every thirsty passion of his 
 immortality, towards the boundless realm that encom 
 passes, invites, and waits to transfigure him, shrinks 
 self-limited. His very acquisitions and accomplish 
 ments, which ought to lift his position and ennoble 
 his attitude, by the veil they interpose between his 
 inmost life and Heaven only cramp his proportions and 
 blind his eyes. The curse of pride and the fall, on the 
 fruit of the tree of knowledge, returns. 
 
 Corresponding to human worship, its object, its an 
 swer, is the influence of the Spirit. This is the Com 
 forter Christ promised and gave, to abide forever, to 
 testify of him, to help our infirmities ; to convince of 
 righteousness, of sin, and of judgment ; to revive the 
 hearts of the humble and contrite; to renew, to 
 quicken, to sanctify ; to make intercessions for us 
 
THE HOUSE OP PRAYER. 517 
 
 with unutterable earnestness. Faith in that heavenly 
 gift, which would seem to be the simplest act of Chris 
 tian consciousness, is now the foremost want of the 
 Race, within the Church, I think, and without. All 
 the graces of a richer and more genial piety wait on its 
 growth. It would be at once the restoration of primi 
 tive zeal in the brotherhood, of simplicity in adminis 
 tration, of holy fire in the preaching, of pure and noble 
 manners in society. It would melt the Pantheist s 
 frosty speculation. It would vitalize the formalist s 
 routine. It would irradiate the dulness of materialism. 
 It would shame sectarian suspicions and silence the big 
 ot s malediction. It would reinstall the apostolic catho 
 licity amidst the " diversities of gifts " begotten of 
 these periods of discovery and inquiry. " Ask, and 
 ye shall receive " it. To the Holy Spirit, then, we ded 
 icate this place. 
 
 II. Secondly, Ordinances : Those slight but stead 
 fast bonds which join the successive spiritual genera 
 tions together, and by the mysterious adjustment of 
 their simplicity to our twofold constitution, as of an 
 outward and inner life, becoming, what Augustine 
 called them before falsehood put them in between the 
 heart and God, " life-giving sacraments " to the heart 
 from God. Surely experience is lost, and Christian 
 progress is hopeless, if we cannot retain what was of 
 reason and of grace together amidst the mistakes of our 
 fathers, nay, if we cannot find the limit where reac 
 tions exhaust their office, and so recover, after a reform 
 atory suspension, any of those affecting ceremonies, 
 which Truth had to tear off when she played the icono 
 clast for God and stripped away the fetters of idolatry. 
 
 The special function of our two sacraments, as setting 
 
518 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 forth to the believer, at impressive intervals, what is 
 most personal in our Lord s ministry and redemption, 
 harmonizes certainly with the deeper intuitions of na 
 ture. Seizing on the universal emblem of purification, 
 it pours the water of baptism, finding the great ex 
 ample of Christ s humility, in condescending to it that 
 he might " fulfil all righteousness " and be in all things 
 an example to his disciples, to lie at the very beginning 
 of his public ministry, while the charge was issued, 
 just when he was about to ascend up out of their sight, 
 " Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Ghost:" the one universal formula of the creed 
 of Christendom affirmed in its initiatory rite. Then, 
 retiring, with awe and wonder, to the shaded upper 
 chamber, just before the agony, Gethsemane to-night 
 and Calvary to-morrow, it receives from the same 
 " holy and innocent and immortal hands " the common 
 food and the common drink of his countrymen and his 
 time, the sign of the body broken, of the blood poured 
 out, the living, redeeming, infinite sacrifice for man. 
 And there hearing him say, " This do in remembrance 
 of me," with gladness and trust and love quite unspeak 
 able, penetrating, thrilling, exalting all the heart, faith 
 cries eagerly in answer, " This, Lord, this now and 
 ever, and with all thy saints on earth, will I do in 
 remembrance of thee ! " 
 
 For the impressive celebration of both these uniting 
 and animating ordinances of the Church wise and gen 
 erous thought has been taken, as you will witness, in 
 the arrangements of this building. To Christ Jesus, 
 then, whose personal life regenerates, whose death re 
 deems, and whose intercessions redeliver his people 
 
THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 519 
 
 from all the bondage and misery and waste of sin, 
 making them that were dead alive, and causing that 
 " whosoever loveth and believeth in Him shall never 
 die," we dedicate it. 
 
 III. Thirdly, Human Duties, both in men and 
 towards men. All worship and ordinances, Divine 
 influence and the Messiah s mission, terminate, for 
 man, in the production of holiness, in the growth of 
 character, and thus in the glory of God. Disturb that 
 uncompromising law, break utterly apart the solemn 
 solitudes of devotion from the market and the house 
 hold, sever the mount of vision from the multitude 
 where justice and mercy are tempted, and then the 
 sanctuary becomes only the cowardly retreat of an 
 imbecile religious sentimentalism, or else the shameless 
 parade-ground of hypocrisy. Derange the just propor 
 tion ; let form encroach on substance ; let the letter 
 that killeth overlay the spirit that giveth life ; let an 
 indolent expectation of supernatural compulsion mis 
 take itself for the energetic trust which rests vigilantly 
 in the Lord, laboring for him, and then the deadliest 
 conceivable sacrilege has desecrated your temple, and 
 undone the deed of to-day. Be it not forgotten, that 
 this Chapel is raised for the proclamation of liberty, 
 purity, charity, of right for all men, truth in all action, 
 temperance in all pleasure, the keeping under of the 
 body, the eternal ascendency of conscience. In the 
 early ages of our faith, the victim of wrong, fleeing 
 from his oppressor, took refuge in the sanctuary of 
 Christ, and was safe. Let his cause still find security, 
 hiding in that pavilion. I read again that warrant 
 of the preacher, published in the Synagogue of Naza 
 reth, " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 
 
 44 
 
520 THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. 
 He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
 deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to 
 the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
 preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 Wherever this communion has been forgotten, there 
 was a failure, not of Christianity, but of its unfaithful 
 trustees. Wherever it was evaded, by self-love, by 
 cowardice, by an excess of ceremony or an exaggera 
 tion of dogmatic conformity, there was a betrayal of the 
 Son of Man. And there may be no end of that dreary 
 contradiction, till the very rubric and eucharist become 
 monuments of a lie, or till the barbarous priesthood 
 of infatuation and cruelty, like the Mexicans, build 
 even their temples with bloody hands, and build them 
 of the skulls of men. But wherever the Commission 
 was heeded, the genuine fruits of the celestial seed 
 sprang up in the good soil of the world, an hundred 
 fold, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good 
 ness, faith, meekness, temperance. There the twofold 
 completeness of the kingdom, the love of God and of 
 the neighbor, was witnessed, not in name only, but in 
 deed ; there faith was not in word, but in power ; there 
 all the blessings of the beatitudes clustered and turned 
 the wilderness into Eden ; there the eternal life began. 
 " Where two or three are gathered together in my 
 name," saith the Master, " there am I in the midst of 
 them." And therefore we dedicate this Chapel to hu 
 manity, in all its weakness and suffering, in its want 
 and aspiration, in its tears and its triumphs, in the 
 grandeur of its capacity and its immortal destiny. 
 
 But, my friends, the purpose of this edifice is not 
 merely to provide a shelter for our persons, while our 
 
THE HOUSE OP PRAYER. 521 
 
 spirits unaided meditate, commemorate, and adore. 
 The structure itself is a part of the homage. Or 
 rather it is a part, most expressive and helpful, of 
 the sacred symbolism by which the homage is made 
 real. We have mistaken the whole relations of the 
 form of our devotions to their spirit, if we regard this 
 house as only a physical accessory, a dead wall between 
 our senses and the noises of the street or the inclemen 
 cies of the sky. Fitness and decoration, and emblems 
 and images, in form or color, already do, or hereafter 
 will, more and more, disown that poor subordination 
 of art, in its most consecrated creations, to the dull de 
 mands of the animal economy. A dread of the exag 
 gerations and perversions of the Past, not less peniten 
 tial, nor less merciful . in intention, perhaps, after all, 
 than the Present, shall not always disarray and dis 
 figure the Church. 
 
 Nor is this Chapel merely a show of veneration before 
 the criticism of men, meant to put our professions of 
 piety on exhibition. We have not laid these stones and 
 spread this arch, I hope, to notify passengers that we, 
 for our part, have concluded to believe in God, and can 
 afford to spend something handsome to prove it. No ! 
 the building itself is a part of our conversation with 
 Heaven : it is an invocation of trust : a sentence of 
 praise: a voice uttered to the Maker of heaven and 
 earth, no less than the hymn we sing, or the verbal 
 petition we speak. It is an article in the confession of 
 our faith. It stands in the solemn, hereditary line with 
 the stone of Betjiel, in the Eastern pasture, that Jacob 
 called " House of God," with the Shekinah over the 
 cherubim, the temple on Mount Moriah, the synagogue 
 of Nazareth, where the Saviour stood up to read, " The 
 
bXZ THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. 
 
 Spirit of the Lord is upon me," with the upper cham 
 ber where the bread from Heaven and the blood of the 
 true Yine furnished the sacramental supper, and 
 with the room at Jerusalem where the tongues of fire 
 preached at the dedication of Christendom, and the 
 Pentecostal spirit inaugurated the visible Church for 
 the nations. 
 
 And if any object that this makes a superfluous form, 
 then what do all our signs of adoration signify ? our 
 postures, our ordinances, our very words of supplica 
 tion ? What has a vocal sound to do with any heart s 
 secret communion with Him, who heareth in secret, 
 and needs no voice ? What but this, that He who 
 alone knows, and who alone has a right to require, has 
 adapted mortal means to immortal ends, and has made 
 the fulness of the blessing to depend on the appointed 
 way? 
 
 For this reason, and to such an end, the very place 
 itself is sacred ; and we find a precept for the venera 
 tion in which every reverent mind will hold it and 
 every hand that is ever lifted or clasped in prayer will 
 treat it. By humble postures and subdued tones, by 
 the suppression of levity and haste, by steps that re 
 member to follow His who purged of its profanations 
 even the temple enshrining a Ritual that was to vanish 
 before his New Covenant, by the Christian thought- 
 fulness which never enters but to confess, " Lo, God 
 is here," and yet is none the less but more sure that 
 he is everywhere, by the stillness that hears a 
 voice ever saying in the separated air, " The Lord is 
 in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before 
 him," we shall gladly, gratefully, hallow the courts of 
 the House of our Lord. Like all things set apart to 
 
THE HOUSE OF PR A YES. 523 
 
 reserved and holy uses, it will evermore repeat to us 
 the silent admonitions of Him from whom we came, of 
 Him who came to us, of the eternity and the Judg 
 ment that are yet to be. The more these holy associa 
 tions gather about it, the more natural, the more irre 
 sistible will they grow. The faith of generations will 
 invest and crown it. 
 
 Assembled here, therefore, with these occasions of 
 praise, within the walls that a Christian munificence 
 has reared in honor of Religion and Learning, assisted 
 by the officers and members of the several departments 
 of the University, in presence of those who represent to 
 us the founder and the efficient agents of his design, of 
 the majesty of the Commonwealth, the Government of 
 the Institution and its past Presidents, in humility 
 and trust and gratitude, confessing, " Lord, we believe," 
 entreating, " Help our unbelief," recalling the high 
 examples of ancestral piety, blessing the God of our 
 history, in the same names into which the true be 
 liever is ever bidden to be baptized, of the Father, and 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we now dedicate 
 this Chapel to the Maker of all, to the Saviour of the 
 world, to the Comforter. We dedicate it to its hal 
 lowed uses, a fervent and reverent worship, sincere 
 and holy ordinances, an earnest and enlightened study 
 of all wisdom and righteousness. We dedicate it to the 
 immortal heart, conscience, soul of man. We dedicate 
 it to Faith, and Hope, and Charity. We dedicate it, 
 as the successive inscriptions of the College Seal have 
 taught us, to Truth, to the Master s glory, to Christ 
 and the Church. 
 
 44* 
 
NOTE TO SERMON XX. 
 
 THE course of the author s experience, if such a reference may 
 be allowed, prompts a few words further on two or three difficul 
 ties connected with the subject in minds hesitating to receive the 
 form of the doctrine, while yet inclined by their reverence to offer 
 to the Saviour exalted honors. The phrase " Son of God," by an 
 inadequate conception of the Sonship, and a neglect of other Scrip 
 tural terms, is sometimes made to obscure instead of disclosing our 
 Lord s real Divinity. A vague view is taken which is not high 
 enough for the Trinitarian, as the Trinitarian must say, is too high 
 for any other, and is either too high or too low for self-consistency. 
 A less lofty place cannot be assigned to Christ, with the Bible lying 
 open and with Christendom in sight ; nor, on the other hand, can so 
 much of dignity and majesty be consistently ascribed to him without 
 a full recognition of his absolute and proper Divinity ; that is, with 
 out confessing that the basis or ground of his being is so identical 
 with that of the Father, so truly Deity, that his personality is " very 
 God of very God," from eternity, self-existent, and supreme. The 
 whole issue is close and brief. Jesus is either the Incarnation, not 
 of an abstraction, a quality, or a principle, but of God, or else he is 
 a created being, who began to be in time, so that there was a time 
 when our Lord and Eedeemer was not. There is a devout class of 
 men who speak earnestly of Christ as divine, and who yet acknowl 
 edge that they date the beginning of his being from the hour of his 
 birth as the Son of Mary. But is it possible that such offices and 
 prerogatives as the New Testament assigns to him could belong to a 
 creature, coming into existence in the midst of the little history of 
 this planet, after multitudes of its inhabitants had lived and van- 
 
NOTE TO SERMON XX. 525 
 
 ished ? Could the very life of Him to whom belong judgment, om 
 nipotence, intercession, the gift of eternal life, and the pardon of sin, 
 date from any late or any early day in mortal calendars ? 
 
 Closely analyzed, the idea of Incarnation which is advanced by 
 some writers, who yet deny that Christ is God, seems to signify 
 nothing really distinct in kind from what takes place in any living 
 child of human birth. We may partially cover the question up with 
 sounding words, or try to exalt the subject by dignified generalities ; 
 but unless there was a Divine Personality incarnated, there were 
 only those abstract notions or ideas which, in some sense or other, 
 may be said to be incarnated in every human character. More 
 than this is certainly affirmed in the mighty sentences of the Gospel. 
 More than this would seem to be demanded by hearts that the Gos 
 pel has quickened and enlarged. In the attempt to maintain that 
 middle position there appears to be a constant struggle between the 
 moral posture of the student and the intellectual ; between his senti 
 ments toward the Saviour, which are essentially adoring, and the 
 abating definitions of his formal statements. The right conclusion of 
 that struggle is a great joy. 
 
 In the view under remark, it is common to represent the original 
 substance or groundwork of Christ s being as human, and the divin 
 ity as supervening upon that ; whereas the strong declarations of the 
 Record put the truth exactly the other way, making the original 
 substance, or the root, of his being to be divine, and his humanity to 
 be assumed. So he " took on " the form of man. He " humbled 
 himself" to be human. He "came forth," "came down," "was 
 made flesh," "left the glory he had with the Father before the 
 world was." This representation is so continual, the statements are 
 so multiplied^ so varied, and so natural, that the argument would be 
 irresistible even if it were not supported by the more distinct and 
 emphatic passages, such as " Before Abraham was I am," passages 
 disposed of by the objector only through exegetical expedients which 
 illustrate at once the emergencies of a hard-pressed theory and the 
 ingenuity of its defenders. These passages establish a personal pre- 
 existence ; and establishing this, they establish a proper Divinity ; 
 for Arianism is so untenable that it is well-nigh extinct. By the 
 Church doctrine we are furnished with a conception of the Incarnation 
 far more clear, and more religiously inspiring, as well as more Scrip 
 tural, than by any other. Our Lord s humanity was a development ; 
 
526 NOTE TO SERMON XX. 
 
 his Divinity is perpetual, " from everlasting to everlasting/ As man, 
 and as men speak, he " grew in wisdom and favor ; " but as God he 
 is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever" and is there 
 fore worthy to be worshipped, 
 
 In these observations, we are not making " rationality " a test for 
 the reception of this doctrine, any more than of other religious and 
 revealed truths. "VVe only exhibit it as an advantage of the doctrine, 
 that when faith has welcomed it, the intellect has its reward also in 
 discovering its internal harmonies and the beauty of its relations. 
 The faith of the Church and the ages, while confessedly outreaching 
 the finite intelligence, satisfies our highest reverence, and feeds and 
 gladdens the inmost soul of piety, while the other has no such offset 
 to its obscurity, but would leave us in the double grief of an unset 
 tled mind and unsatisfied affections. The backwardness shown some 
 times in reconciling this adoration of our Lord with the terms of 
 dependence and limitation which are applied to him in connection 
 with his mediatorial mission and earthly ministry, arises largely from 
 an education in opposite habits. Yet, when we consider the real 
 problem and conditions of that mediation, how can we fail to behold 
 the simple necessity and complete naturalness of all these represen 
 tations ? What other explanation do we need of the Messiah s earlier 
 reserve in unfolding the fulness of the Godhead which dwelt bodily 
 in him, a reserve laid more and more aside, however, as the 
 time of his crucifixion and glorification drew near ? That he did 
 take this method of a progressive disclosure of his truth, adapting it 
 in a degree to the condition of his hearers, appears from many in 
 stances ; as from his saying, " In the beginning I said not" thus and 
 thus "unto you;" "Ye cannot bear them now;" "When he, the 
 Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." Suppose 
 that while appearing in that human form, among the rude men of 
 his day, he had been continually affirming, in the most unqualified, 
 sudden, peremptory manner, his divine supremacy. How could it 
 fail to confuse and bewilder them, if not to exasperate them, all un 
 prepared for it as their ignorance was, and while his visible shape 
 appeared before them ? Even the comparatively few expressions 
 which he did employ, made more distinct and frequent as his " hour " 
 approached, threatened to put an end, and did finally help to put an 
 end, to his ministry in the body. The truth could not shine forth at 
 once, in its peerless glory, upon eyes so dull. He contented him- 
 
NOTE TO SERMON XX. 527 
 
 self, in his wise and tender condescension, with pronouncing these 
 comprehensive and weighty declarations of his complete oneness with 
 the Father, and left the further doctrine of his mysterious nature to 
 unfold itself in the ripening wisdom of his Church, under the Holy 
 Spirit which he promised. This it would accomplish more simply 
 and powerfully than was possible while he was associating as man 
 with his untaught countrymen. Yet we observe also that he did 
 not refuse to be worshipped when worship was offered him. He suf 
 fered Thomas to call him Lord and God. He declared himself the 
 Judge of all souls. He is "Emmanuel." He "hath power to for 
 give sins." He is " the propitiation for the sins of the whole world." 
 " All power " is his " in heaven and earth." The Being of whom 
 the Bible says this is to be worshipped in his glorified state and 
 majesty. " All things that the Father hath are mine," he says. This 
 raises him to the height of adorableness. Even " the Comforter," he 
 declares, " shall glorify me" How can we believe that he meant to 
 refuse his disciples the dear delight of praising him and entreating 
 him " in the midst of the throne," yet near and tender as when he 
 wept for those he loved on earth, and bade them come unto him, 
 and told them that " without him they could do nothing," and was 
 never sought by any sincere petition in vain ? He said, too, speak 
 ing of the sad impending hour of separation, when he foresaw that 
 the hearts and minds of lu s followers would be torn with anguish and 
 doubt, half paralyzed by fear, and alternating between fond remem 
 brances of his bodily appearance and new thoughts of the spiritual 
 relation to subsist thenceforth between them, "In that hour ye 
 shall (or will) ask me nothing." But, he adds, very considerately, 
 to console them, Nevertheless, your halting faith shall not forfeit the 
 blessing. " Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will 
 give it you ; " and again, " If ye shall ask anything in my name, / 
 will do it." The whole passage evidently relates to the distinction 
 between his outward and his eternal presence, between the visible 
 and invisible intercourse of his followers with him. In a remoter 
 and calmer period his worship would take its place spontaneously in 
 their hymns, ejaculations, and litanies. Meantime, he points them 
 to the Father in whom they are already believing with a more set 
 tled and definite faith. Whoever prays truly to that Father prays 
 to God, and fulfils the spirit of prayer ; for God is one. There is no 
 division and no jealousy there. Some Christians never pray to any 
 
528 NOTE TO SERMON XX. 
 
 other than the Father ; yet if they pray heartily, and " in the name " 
 of Christ, that is, with true faith in Christ, and do not merely repeat 
 his literal name at the end of their petitions, they surely must be 
 heard and accepted. Still, there comes to many other disciples a 
 time, and not seldom, when their devotional aspirations seek a more 
 direct and personal communion with their Saviour, to whom they 
 owe their everlasting life, their peace and hope and strength. They 
 long to utter the language of this communion, in gratitude and sup 
 plication ; and theirs, if they do utter it, is the richer worship. It is 
 not so much enjoined as an obligation as it is offered graciously as a 
 privilege. It is not to be forced, nor rejected. The believers who 
 share this veritable and unquestioning fellowship, the fellowship 
 between the suppliant and the Lord, who set forth the holy fruit 
 thereof in their daily living, and " show it accordingly," these 
 have the blessing peculiar to those who, in this respect as in others 
 also, keep the Master s own word, and " honor the Son even as they 
 honor the Father." " Not unto us," not unto them, " but unto thy 
 name, O Lord, give glory ! " 
 
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