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 GHESHUNT COLLEGE 
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 Presented by 
 Rev. Stuart Johnson Reid 
 
 (Old Student) 
 
 April, 1928
 
 UNIVERSriT AND OTHER SERMONS
 
 ,9-^
 
 COMPLIMENTS. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 AND OTHER 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. JAMES ERASER, D.D. 
 
 Second Bishoi) of Manchester 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JOHN W. DIGGLE, M.A. 
 
 VICAR OF MOSSLEV HILL, LIVERPOOL 
 AUTHOR OF "godliness AND MANLINESS," ETC. 
 
 AnOBANriN ETI AAAEITAI 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1887 
 
 The Right of Translation and Bejn'odnctlon is Heserved,
 
 KicHARD Clay and Sons, 
 
 LONDON AND BUNGAY.
 
 ^^oJ.^-iH^-l^^ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Sermons in this volume divide themselves into 
 two separate portions ; each portion being arranged 
 Avith a view to chronological order. The first portion 
 consists of seventeen Sermons preached, upon various 
 occasions, during the term of Bishop Fraser's Epis- 
 copate. Ten of the seventeen were preached before 
 the University of Oxford ; one before the Notting- 
 ham Church Congress ; one at the re-opening of 
 Chester Cathedral ; one in Manchester Cathedral, 
 before the British Medical Association ; one in York 
 Minster, before the British Association ; one at St. 
 Andrew's Church, Holborn ; two in Westminster Abbey. 
 Moreover, of the ten Sermons preached before the 
 University of Oxford, five were also preached in West- 
 minster Abbey, and one before the University of 
 Cambridge.
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 The second portion of tlie volume consists of five 
 Sermons jDreaclied in Bishop Eraser's earlier days ; 
 although the last of the five — Christ the Healer — was 
 preached upon several occasions after his call to the 
 Episcopate. The Bishop's sympathies were doubtless 
 enriched, and his way of thinking, as well as of 
 expressing his thoughts, wonderfully ennobled by his 
 contact with the masses of toiling humanity in Lanca- 
 shire ; yet the deep, broad, lofty, practical utterances 
 which signalized his conspicuous episcopal ministry, 
 had signalized also his secluded parochial ministry. 
 His entire teaching, from its commencement to its 
 close, flowed from the fountains of intense communion 
 with God and intense fellowshij) with liis brother 
 men. 
 
 The Vicarage, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, 
 
 St. Matthew's Day, September 2lst, 1887.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ABRAHAM 1 
 
 11. 
 
 CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH 18 
 
 III. 
 MYSTERIES 29 
 
 IV. 
 
 SOME CHURCH PROBLEMS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURT , 41 
 
 V. 
 
 ■responsibility 55 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES 67 
 
 VII. 
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIR USB AND ABUSE 83 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD 97 
 
 IX. 
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX ; OR, THE MORAL BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY 118
 
 \ iii CONTENTkS. 
 
 X. - 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DEBORAH 137 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE 154 
 
 XI r. 
 
 IMMORTALITY 167 
 
 XIII. 
 
 BIGHTE0U8XESS 183 
 
 XIV. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER ON INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS . 204 
 
 XV. 
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE 213 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE GIFT OF PROPHECY THE SUPREME NEED OP OUR AGE 225 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES 236 
 
 XVIII. 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION 248 
 
 XIX. 
 
 ST. ANDREW 263 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING 275 
 
 XXI. 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD's LOVE THE DISTINCTIVE CHARAC- 
 TERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL 288 
 
 XXII. 
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER 200
 
 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 I. 
 
 TEE TYPICAL PERSONS OF THE PENTATEUCH : THEIR 
 MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH IN ALL AGES. 
 
 I.— ABEAHAM. 
 
 " Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the 
 children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God 
 would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the 
 gospel unto Abraham, saying. In thee shall all nations be 
 blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with 
 faithful Abraham." — Galatians iii. 7 — 9. 
 
 The principle of typology, it must be confessed, 
 stands in need of justification ; and the adoption of 
 this mode of interpreting Scripture has been, by some 
 theologians, so profuse, so indiscriminate, and so ex- 
 travagant as to throw a slur upon the principle itself, 
 and to indispose minds of a critical and philosophic 
 order to the reception of any teaching based upon what 
 they consider to be such illusive ground. Even a pious 
 purpose cannot be allowed to justify an unsound 
 deduction. 
 /'J B
 
 2 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 "What mean you," we are scornfully asked, "by 
 these tyincal men ; men made, so to speak, to order ; cut 
 out and shaped after a pattern ; stereotyped in every 
 thought and action down to the most insignificant; 
 set, as it were, immovably in the block ; mere painted 
 pictures ; automata, moving only at another's will ; 
 their whole life, therefore, a mechanical result ; and so 
 capable of meaning whatever the artist who designed 
 it might choose that it should mean : but a result, 
 judging by the processes we experience in ourselves 
 and believe to take place in others, utterly impossible 
 under the conditions of moral existence : at variance 
 too, with all that common sense, and science, and 
 Scripture unitedly attest to be the normal phenomenon 
 of humanity ? " 
 
 Such a theory, if it were what were really held, 
 of the typical relationship between one human being 
 and another, whether human or divine, or between a 
 human being and a dispensation, would be incredible 
 and therefore untenable. If Adam, Noah, Abraham, 
 were living historical men, they were not, they could 
 not be, types in the mechanical sense — as a mere 
 external act or ceremony might be, the sprinkling of 
 the blood of the Paschal Lamb on the doorposts, or the 
 propitiatory rites of the Great Day of Atonement — nor 
 even in the etymological sense, as impressions struck off 
 with hard, defined outlines from a fixed die or mould. 
 They must have been " types " in a higher, freer, 
 diviner, idealised meaning of the word. 
 
 They were " types " in the region of mind, not of 
 matter ; of moral and spiritual laws and workings, not
 
 ABRAHAM. 3 
 
 of physical ; "types" of the law of liberty which, operate 
 in what matter it will, is still a law of uniformity. It 
 is the Pauline sense of the word, as when he tells the 
 Romans that Adam was a " type " of Him that was to 
 come; or, philosophising history to the Corinthians, 
 teaches them that all that happened to Israel in the 
 wilderness were " types " written for our admonition : 
 or bids the Philippians walk as they had him for a 
 " type " ; or exhorts Timothy to be a " type " to the 
 believers ; or praises the integrity of the faith of the 
 Thessalonians, that they were " types " to all that 
 believed in Macedonia and Achaia. A type that is 
 sought, not in a single isolated act, but in the whole 
 career of a living human being, making him a jmUern 
 to after generations of the power of divine grace and 
 the possibilities of human nature, must be a type 
 governed by human, that is, moral or spiritual laws, 
 and cannot consist in mere symbolism — mere literal, 
 physical conformity. 
 
 There is a phrase of St. Paul which appears to me to 
 imply these ideas. It was God the Father's purpose, 
 says the Apostle, in the dispensation of the fulness of 
 time " to gather together in one all things in Christ, 
 both things in heaven and things on earth," that so, 
 as he teaches the Colossians, He might be not only the 
 "image of the invisible God," but the "first born of 
 every creature." 
 
 The force of the Greek word dvaKe^a\ai(oaaa6ai is 
 very inadequately rendered by the expression " to gather 
 together in one." That is a vague phrase, and the 
 Greek word is a most precise one, meaning " to bring 
 
 B 2
 
 4 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 to a head," "to collect as in a focus," "to sum up in 
 an organic whole" what has before been dispersed, dis- 
 jointed, dismembered, spread over a wide surface ; "to 
 recapitulate," as the Latins call it ; to reproduce to the 
 eye, or ear, or understanding, in a compact, complete, 
 living way, that which before had been fragmentary, 
 partial, disconnected, apparently incongruous, or sepa- 
 rated in its parts by long intervals of place or time. 
 Thus the Gospel was the dvaKe^akaiwaL^ of all previous 
 revelations — " the dispensation of the fulness of time ; " 
 and Christ was the dvaKe^a\ai(ocn,<i of all previous mani- 
 festations of the power of grace in the soul of man. 
 
 In Him they were reproduced, summed up, harmo- 
 nised, developed, culminated. He was " the first-born, 
 of every creature." " Things," says Aristotle, " which 
 are philosophically, and in the order of ideas, first; 
 naturally, and in the order of time, are last." Jesus 
 Christ, in the perfection of His human nature, and not 
 Adam, was the archetypical idea of man. Adam was 
 conformed to Him, not He to Adam. He was the 
 type, the mould, the pattern-form. They that were 
 saints and heroes did but take off the impression of 
 His sainthness and heroism, as clearly as the coarser 
 clay of which they were fashioned allowed its outlines 
 to be seen. And so they, were as shadows in the 
 morning, projected before the body which generated 
 them, whose outline they represent, and whose ap- 
 proach they herald, but which contract themselves 
 more and more, and are finally absorbed, when the 
 sun reaches his noonday height, and pours down in a 
 direct ray his glory upon the earth.
 
 ABRAHAM. 5 
 
 Thus the principle of typology, even when applied 
 to the whole life of a human being, is relieved from all 
 just exceptions, and the simplest justification of it is 
 also the truest. For it stands upon the relationship 
 which may be claimed to exist between Christ the Head 
 of the Church, and those who have belonged to His 
 mystical body in every age. This relationship, issuing 
 as it does from the verity of His human nature, rests 
 upon the great philosophical dogma of the immutability 
 of the laws — that is, of the will and purposes — of God. 
 
 These laws, which are simply the expression of His 
 will, determined by the essential attributes of His 
 character, are as unchanged and unchangeable in the 
 moral and spiritual, as in the physical, world. The 
 phenomenon which complicates the question here, and. 
 renders it philosophically inexplicable under our present 
 conditions of thought, is that, in the moral world you 
 have free agents, exercising their freedom, and by that 
 exercise fashioning their character and their destiny, 
 under a system of necessary and immutable laws. 
 
 So, when we speak of typical men, we mean those 
 whom the conscience, the divine instinct within, re- 
 cognises as the ideals of humanity, illustrating the 
 capacities of the race, showing in what infinite variety 
 both of ways and of degree the natural man may 
 become spiritual, and the heirs of a fallen nature may 
 once again become partakers of the divine. 
 
 " The types of the Book of Genesis," says an ingenious 
 and pious writer, " exhibit God's great dispensational 
 purposes and the course appointed for man's develop- 
 ment." By the phrase "dispensational purposes," he
 
 6 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 means " the mode in which God, at various periods 
 since the Fall, has dealt with man, in different degrees 
 of intimacy, and in a certain sense, also on different 
 principles." " Throughout all He has had one purpose 
 in view — to reveal what He is, and to show what 
 man is ; but this one end has been brought about in 
 different ways and under various repeated trials." 
 
 I demur, however, to the statement that in the course 
 of this development the Creator has dealt with the 
 creature even " in a certain sense," on different prin- 
 ciples. The outward manifestation of the principle 
 may have been different, but the inward power and 
 energy of it have been the same. The God of the 
 Old Testament is the God also of the New. The 
 • proclamation of the name of the Lord to Moses on 
 Mount Sinai — " the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and 
 gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and 
 truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, 
 transgression, and sin ; yet that will by no means clear 
 the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
 children and upon the children's children unto the 
 third and fourth generation" — is as true now as it 
 was then. 
 
 The God of the Jews, says St. Paul, is also the God 
 of the Gentiles. Faith is the condition of justification 
 to ' the circumcision ' and ' the uncircumcision.' " The 
 righteousness of God manifested without the law;" 
 rather perhaps should it have been translated, " mani- 
 fested without an accompanying code of rules," em- 
 bodied in a Divine Person, was yet " witnessed by the 
 law and the prophets " (Romans iii. 21).
 
 ABRAHAM. 7 
 
 " God," says the text, " preached the Gospel to Abra- 
 ham." The very oath sworn to him by his Maker was, 
 according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, designed to 
 show to the heirs of promise, down the whole stream of 
 time, the immutability of God's counsels. God forbid, 
 cries St. Paul, that any one should think that the law — 
 the schoolmaster who was to bring us to Christ — was 
 against the promises of God, Though the sanctions of 
 the two covenants might be different — a circumstance 
 which does not in the least affect the moral obligation 
 — the terms on which they dealt with man were the 
 same. This development may be more complete, more 
 uniform, more equable, more progressive, under the 
 Gospel than under the law, but the direction of that 
 development was ever, if not consciously towards Christ, 
 at least towards Christianity. " Your father Abraham 
 rejoiced to see My day," said Christ, " and he saw it and 
 was glad." 
 
 And so these men, living under what we sometimes 
 call "another dispensation," and certainly surrounded 
 by very different circumstances, may yet be regarded 
 as typical. They have their message for us " on whom 
 the ends of the world are come." " They sought a 
 country," a brighter, better land than any which their 
 feet had ever trod, or on which their eye had ever 
 rested. " They died in faith," " confessing themselves 
 strangers and pilgrims," " persuaded of the promises " 
 and embracing them, though they never actually re- 
 ceived them — indeed, they seemed ever to retreat from 
 their yearning gaze. Even now they are waiting with 
 us for their perfection. Even now their impatience,
 
 8 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 perchance, has to be quelled, like that of the souls seen 
 beneath the altar, who cried with a loud voice, " How 
 long ? " They must rest yet for a little season until 
 the number of their fellow-servants is fulfilled, and the 
 better thing revealed, which God is providing for both 
 us and them. 
 
 And of this patient, saintly, faithful band, who being 
 dead yet seem to speak — the cloud of witnesses by whom 
 we are compassed about as we run our Christian race — 
 Abraham is the foremost figure. It is with him that 
 we shall sit down to eat meat in the kingdom of God. 
 In his bosom they that sleep in Jesus find a resting- 
 place. In the steps of his faith we are to walk. 
 The Israel of God are "the seed of Abraham, His 
 friend." 
 
 This man^s life-story must have something in it that 
 it concerns Christians of every age to know. Three 
 chief features strike me as prominent and characteristic 
 — the way, namely, in which it illustrates 
 
 (1) What faith is. 
 
 (2) What it is to walk by faith. 
 
 (3) What it is, with the eye of such faith, to see 
 Christ's day. 
 
 (],) It was evidently the faith of Abraham that so 
 attracted and riveted the interest of St. Paul. To the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles, the Hebrew pilgrim, dwelling 
 even in the land of promise as in a strange country, is 
 the great type of what it is to believe in God, to possess 
 a faith which shall be counted for righteousness, not 
 " instead of righteousness " (as though it had been dvrl 
 BiKaioavvT]';) : but et9 BiKaLoavprjv, as that which con-
 
 ABRAHAM. 9 
 
 stituted, or was put to the account of, his righteousness 
 (Romans iv. 5). 
 
 And so Abraham, to the eye of St. Paul, before and 
 above any other saint in the annals of his race, is the 
 representative of the nature of faith, and of its power : 
 faith, not as opposed to reason — for faith must be 
 rational, or it degenerates into fanaticism or credulity — 
 but as opposed to sight. Faith, not so much a function 
 or faculty of the intellect, as a posture or condition of 
 the will : moral in its nature rather than intellectual ; 
 "casting down imaginations and every high thing 
 that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and 
 bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience 
 of Christ." 
 
 Never, perhaps, was there a time in the history of 
 the Church of Christ in which there was greater need 
 to ascertain carefully what this typical faith of our 
 father Abraham was. It was not the acceptance of 
 a highly-developed, articulated creed. It was not the 
 investiture of the act of worship with an elaborate 
 ceremonial symbolism. It was not a fanatical concep- 
 tion of the media through which the spirit of man 
 seeks, and finds, communion with the Spirit of God. 
 The simple Bible record of it is, "Abraham believed 
 God ; " and " it was counted to him for righteousness," 
 because his whole life was the continued evidence of 
 the reality of his faith. It was not perfect, but it was 
 real. It rested on the simplest verities — on the pro- 
 vidence of God and His sovereignty. His rewarding 
 those that diligently seek Him, the efficacy of prayer, 
 the reasonableness and the comfort of worship — these,
 
 10 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 and little more than these truths and practices, made 
 up Abraham's creed, his religion. 
 
 Some have thought that revelations were made to 
 Abraham which would have enabled him to see as far 
 into the purposes of God as did St. John or St. Paul ; 
 and particularly that after the averted sacrifice on 
 Mount Moriah the whole mystery of Calvary was un- 
 rolled before his eyes — that this is the sense in which 
 ^ he saw Christ's day/ We will try to discover presently 
 whether there may not be a more congruous inter- 
 pretation of our Lord's word than this. Suffice it to 
 say now that all this is mere assumption, foisted 
 into the Scripture record, not only gratuitously, but 
 utterly marring the proportions, and structure, and 
 development of the revelation of God's purposes to 
 man. It is not only a vain invention ; it is an 
 anachronism. 
 
 No ; the merit of Abraham's faith lay not so much 
 in the hreadth as in the intensity of its view ; not so 
 much in its comprehensive grasp of the whole scheme 
 of God, as in its deep persuasion of the duty of man. 
 It was the faith of a saint rather than of a theologfian. 
 So was it also in the older and better days of Christen- 
 dom. The faith that could remove mountains — and 
 there was a grace even higher than that — was simply 
 the intense energy of a soul throwing the whole force 
 of its being upon the promises of God. The condition 
 of the Saviour's j)utting forth His healing power was, 
 " Believe only and thou shalt be made whole." When 
 the Ethiopian eunuch asked his Heaven-sent Teacher 
 whether, through the mystic instrument of the new
 
 ABRAHAM. 11 
 
 birth he might enter into the " better covenant " with 
 God, Phihp said, "If thou behevest with all thine 
 heart thou mayest ; " and he answered and said, " I 
 believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." When 
 St. Paul proclaims the word of faith which he preached, 
 it is simply this : " If thou shalt confess with thy mouth 
 the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that 
 God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be 
 saved." The Gospel that he delivered to the Corin- 
 thians, wherein they stood, by which also they were 
 saved, contained expressly only three grand articles — 
 " how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose 
 again the third day" (1 Cor. xv. 1 — 4). 
 
 I know, of course, what is involved in these grand, 
 simple utterances of primitive faith, but I am dealing 
 only with what is expressed. The implicated truths 
 are not formulated : the inferential dogmas are not 
 authoritatively imposed. It seems to have been the 
 purpose of the Church in her earliest and best days to 
 make men religious rather than theological ; to limit, 
 rather than to extend, the field of authoritative dogma ; 
 to discourage speculative, gnostic tendencies ; and to 
 win her way against those that opposed themselves 
 rather by the power of living convictions and saintly 
 graces, than by the canons of councils, and the 
 elaboration of creeds. 
 
 A simple, earnest faith in the mission and work of 
 Christ ; a deep profound consciousness of the sinfulness 
 of man, and of his need of something beyond himself to 
 lift him out of the mire ; a strong conviction that God
 
 12 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 is ever to be found by those that seek Him, and that 
 He will, " with every temptation make a way of escape," 
 that He is the believer's " shield and exceeding great 
 reward"; and a consistent endeavour to walk before 
 Him in perfectness, as One to whom we owe the best 
 service of our lives — this, or something like this, would 
 be the faith of Abraham illuminated by the light of the 
 Gospel ; adapted to the phenomena of the revelation 
 which has thrown a fresh tint over the life that " now 
 is as well as on that which is to come." Sure I feel 
 that it is faith enough to be " counted " to us " for 
 righteousness " ; faith enough to fix our hopes " on the 
 city which hath foundations " ; faith enough to sustain 
 us under earthly trials and disappointments, " as seeing 
 Him Avho is invisible." 
 
 (2) A consistent endeavour to frame the life so as to 
 be in accordance with these convictions, so that what 
 we are should be an expression to others of what we 
 believe — avoiding the greatest of moral contradictions, 
 the spiritual state which has the " form of godliness " 
 but is dead to its power — this is what the Apostle 
 means by " walking by faith and not by sight " ; being 
 " saved by hope " ; living with the eye fixed, not on 
 the things which are " seen and temporal," but on the 
 things which are " unseen, and eternal." 
 
 The faith of Abraham is the sufficient account of all 
 the moral phenomena of his character : of his obedience, 
 his unselfishness, his courage, his generosity, his placable- 
 ness, his patience, his power of self-surrender. He 
 seems never to have needed to sit down first and count 
 the cost of what he was about to do. The divine
 
 ABRAHAM. 13 
 
 instinct of his faith in God superseded the necessity of 
 all such laborious calculations. To him, the Almighty 
 God — the Lord who had provided and would still pro- 
 vide, the God who had listened to his intercessory 
 prayer, and remembered him when He destroyed the 
 cities of the plain and spared Lot for his sake, the 
 Great Being with whom he had entered into covenant 
 — was not a mere name, had not been petrified into a 
 conventionalism, nor become a metaphysical abstraction. 
 He was his God ; a constant source of strength and 
 energy ; the God before whom he lived and who was 
 with him in all that he did. 
 
 It was a faith almost evangelical in its nature. It 
 stretched far beyond the horizon of this present world. 
 It never looked back ; it was always looking forward. 
 His whole life declared plainly, as the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews testifies, that "he sought not 
 the country from which he came out," to which he 
 might have returned, but that "he desired a better 
 country — that is, an heavenly " ; " wherefore God was 
 not ashamed to be called his God, for He prepared 
 for him a city." 
 
 (3) Seeking God's blessing, not as his children were 
 taught by Moses to seek it, in the fruit of his body, 
 nor in the fruit of his cattle, nor in the fruit of his 
 ground, but " in the joy and peace of believing " ; in the 
 precious gift of a " conscience void of offence towards 
 God and towards men " ; realising the higher life of the 
 Spirit, and leaving it to others to quarrel about pasture- 
 lands and flocks and lierds, do we find the evangelical 
 temper of his faith. Not in any fancied anticipatory
 
 14 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 revelation of the great mystery of godliness, afterwards 
 to be Avrought out by Him who, when He came to 
 deliver man, "took not on Him the nature of angels, 
 but the seed of Abraham " ; but in this higher and more 
 natural sense, I conceive we are to understand that this 
 great saint of God " rejoiced to see the day of Christ, 
 and saw it, and was glad." He saw it, not at one 
 particular place, nor at one particular time ; not only 
 on Mount Moriah, when " in a figure " he had received 
 his only-begotten son from the dead, but all his life 
 -through — wherever he pitched his tent, and built his 
 altar, and waited patiently for the promise, and found 
 himself strong from his trust in God. 
 
 For what is " Christ's day " but that measure of 
 knowledge of the will of God which it is our privilege to 
 enjoy, and those opportunities of access to Him which 
 all have, though all may not use ? Even to us who 
 live in the middle of that day, the light can be called 
 neither clear nor dark. The knowledge is partial and 
 fragmentaiy ; the view is " through a glass " and full of 
 riddles (ei/ alviy/juari) : the hojDes, but not the eyes, 
 enter into that which is within the veil. And just so, 
 with less precise knowledge perhaps, but perhaps also 
 with even intenser insight, fared Abraham. 
 
 What does Christ do for those who consciously live 
 in the light of this day ? He lifts them up from earth 
 to heaven ; " sets their affections on things above " ; 
 helps them to understand what that meaneth — " Ye 
 are dead, and your Hfe is hid with Christ in God." 
 
 It must have been the same influence, the same 
 divine light, which guided the steps of Abraham when
 
 ABRAHAM. 15 
 
 he left house, and substance, and friends, at what he 
 believed to be the bidding of God, and went out a 
 homeless wanderer, " not knowing whither he went " : 
 that let Lot have the best of the land, instead of going 
 to a judge and saying, " Bid my brother divide the 
 inheritance with me " : that waited those five and 
 twenty years '"' because he knew Him faithful that 
 had promised " : and, clearest instance of all, that 
 taught him on Mount Moriah that sublime lesson of 
 self-sacrifice which can cheerfully surrender everything 
 to the even suspected will of God. 
 
 And so when the blessed Jesus would reprove the 
 eye-service and hypocrisy of those "who honoured God 
 with their lips, while their heart was far from Him," 
 He can find, no more effective contrast by which to set 
 forth the hoUowness of such service than the faithful 
 Abraham "rejoicing to see His day." They might be 
 Abraham's natural seed, these hypocritical worshippers, 
 but they were not Abraham's spiritual children. They 
 might call Abraham their father, but they did not the 
 works of Abraham, They thought it impossible that 
 they could ever lose their spiritual prerogatives ; but 
 they were told that God, if He pleased, could even of 
 the stones of the highway "raise irp children unto 
 Abraham." 
 
 The Psalmist's account of the forfeiture by the 
 Israelites of their spiritual privileges, and their gradual 
 degeneration as a people, is " that their heart was 
 not whole with God " ; and so " they continued not 
 steadfast in His covenant." Abraham was a marked 
 contrast to his posterity in this respect. If ever there
 
 16 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 was a man whose heart might be called ivliole with 
 God, it was he : more so certainly than David : more so 
 perhaps even than Moses. It was the special charac- 
 teristic quality of his faith : its entirety, its roundness, 
 its complete submission to the will of God. Do not 
 dwell on its few specks and flaws, on its equivocation 
 in the courts of Pharaoh and Abimelech, on its im- 
 patience evidenced by the marriage with Hagar : reckon 
 its triumphs, its achievements. The Bible, with its 
 rare truthfulnesss, portrays the whole man for us, in 
 his strength and in his weakness, and, as ever, that 
 "strength made perfect in weakness." 
 
 No character drawn in Holy Writ seems to be the 
 property of all time more than he. There is nothing 
 Jewish about him ; nothing local ; nothing essential 
 that can be called the product of his age, the result of 
 his peculiar circumstances. He is a grand, statuesque 
 type of the grace of faith : faith in its essence rather 
 than in its development : faith in the power, the 
 providence, the sovereignty of God. Alas ! how much 
 more truly did he see Christ's day than we see it ! 
 How much nearer did he reach the measure of the 
 stature of Christ's fulness than we can ! How far 
 beyond our poor attainments was he penetrated with 
 that transcendent Christian grace which "believeth 
 all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, and 
 finally, never fails." 
 
 In the inquisitive temper of a realistic age, an interest 
 has been re-awakened in the Hebrew patriarch's grave. 
 To have visited the mausoleum at Hebron is one of 
 the achievements of Eastern travel. There, in their
 
 ABRAHAM. 17 
 
 sepulchres, though in outward form strangely different 
 from that natural cave " in the end of Ephron's field " 
 where first their bones were laid — cave and field and 
 trees having long since disapjaeared — there still lies the 
 dust of Abraham, and Sarah, and Isaac, and Jacob, " the 
 heirs with him of the same promise." It hardly needs 
 a visit to the tomb to realise the lesson it conveys. " Of 
 illustrious men," said the great Athenian statesman, 
 " every land is the sepulchre." The grave of Abraham 
 is dear even to those who count not their descent from 
 him. Standing in imagination, reverently before either 
 the memory of his life or the sepulchre of his dust, our 
 hearts are kindled with the sinofle thought of the con- 
 quering might of true and living faith. " The victory," 
 cries one who himself had proved its power, " the 
 victory that overcometh the world is faith " (1 St. 
 John V, 4). 
 
 Preaclied— St. Mary's, Oxford, March 18, 1870.
 
 II. 
 
 THE TYPICAL PERSONS OF THE PENTATEUCH : THEIR 
 MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH IN ALL AGES. 
 
 II.— CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH. 
 
 " The good of all tlie land of Egypt is yours."— Genesis xlv. 20. 
 
 The questions to which I invite your attention are, 
 
 (1) What is the true principle of interpretation to be 
 applied to a jjarticular class of so-called " types ; " and 
 
 (2) What is the relation in which Christ's people have 
 a right to consider themselves as standing to that outer 
 world, which in some schools of theology is described as 
 " their spiritual enemy " ; and in all schools is allowed 
 to be the sphere of their trial. 
 
 (1) In what sense do we use the words, when caught 
 by, and gazing on, some old saintly or heroic character, 
 whose deeds are chronicled in the history of the jaeople 
 of God, we say instinctively, " Here is a plain t}^e of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ ? " He Who first by His bodily 
 presence and counsel, and afterwards, and still, by the 
 Spirit Whom He sent, " comforted His Church ; " He, 
 the Preacher of an evangelical righteousness, is the true
 
 CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH. 19 
 
 Noah. He, Who from the post of glory on His throne 
 in heaven, is " not ashamed to call us brethren ; " Who 
 feeds us with His hidden sustenance through years of 
 drought and famine ; Who makes our homes glad for us 
 in the days of our pilgrimage, is the true Joseph. He 
 Who is the Mediator of the New Covenant is the true 
 Moses : the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, 
 the true Aaron : the Captain of our salvation, the true 
 Joshua: in Whom are hid, and not hid only, but to 
 Whom are imparted, all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge, the true Solomon : out of whose loins, as it 
 were, springs renewed, restored, regenerated humanity, 
 the Second Adam. What do we mean by this manner 
 of speaking ? What sort of relation between type and 
 antitype do our words imply ? 
 
 For, mark you, it is quite a different thing from 
 saying that the Paschal Lamb, or the Scape Goat, or 
 the High Priest's " going once a year into the Holiest 
 of all to make Atonement for the sins of the people," 
 were types of Christ, or of corresponding acts of Christ. 
 That a ceremony, an institution, or even a prescribed 
 and formal human act, in which freewill is not con- 
 cerned, and which therefore could be moulded and 
 fashioned after any rule, or (in the hands of Omniscience) 
 for any purpose — that things like these should be 
 tjqjical and prefigurative, and should shadow out the 
 outlines of a coming and better dispensation, is possible 
 enough and intelligible enough. But the fact is placed 
 under altogether different conditions — is removed, in- 
 deed, into another department of thought, and as it 
 seems to me, has to be interpreted by a different 
 
 c 2
 
 20 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 principle, when we take such a wonderfully complex 
 organism as a living, thinking, free-acting man, and set 
 him up and say, " Mark that man, and read his history 
 well ; for he is a sign of things that shall be hereafter." 
 
 " Whatsoever things are true," says the Gospel's most 
 renowned jDreacher, "whatsoever things are honest, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
 good report ; if there be any virtue, if there be any 
 praise — think on these things." Think of them as 
 exhibited one by one — by each man according to the 
 measure of his gift — in the saints of old. Think of 
 them as the diadem of grace that crowned the head 
 of Him to whom the Father " gave not the Spirit by 
 measure ; " " Who was made flesh and dwelt among 
 us" that we might behold what is indeed "the glory 
 of the only-begotten of the Father ; " AVho made for 
 Himself one glorious crown of all these precious jewels, 
 and set it upon His head that all men might behold 
 its beauty, and Who now weareth it on His throne in 
 the heavenly place for evermore. 
 
 Was compassion ever shown by man to man ? No 
 pity, we are told was like His pity. Were words of 
 wisdom ever uttered by human tongue ? He spake, 
 we are told, with a power and constrainingness such as 
 never fell to the lot of orator or philosopher before. 
 Did men ever go forth with brave calm hearts of 
 heroism on missions of peril and to battle-fields ? None 
 ever went with so cheerful, so calm a heart as He, to 
 that tremendous blood-weltering agony, where Sin, 
 and Death, and Satan combined and intensified their
 
 CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH. 21 
 
 power to distract and rend His soul. Have there been 
 saints who have drawn draughts from the cup of 
 suffering ? He drained it to the very dregs, when 
 every ingredient had been poured into it that could 
 enhance its bitterness, without one quivering nerve, 
 one angry, or self-justifying, or reproachful word. 
 
 So He was the perfect man ; the " recapitulation " 
 of humanity, the incarnation — the prototype, rather 
 than the antitype — of all that men had ever seen, 
 or dreamed of, or pictured to themselves in fancy of 
 the heroic, the pure, the altogether lovely and sjDotless, 
 the godlike in man. "He was full of grace and truth ; " 
 and men have but received in divers and unequal 
 measures, " of His fulness." 
 
 If the patriarchs were " types " of Christ — as no 
 doubt they were — it was in this sense only, that the 
 Spirit of God, which dwelt in Him in its fulness 
 bodily, struck out from their natures too, from time to 
 time, sparks of fire and gleams of light, which men's 
 consciences and spiritual intuitions recognised and 
 canonised as Divine ; and which kept alive faintly but 
 not altogether vainly, the true conception of goodness, 
 and beauty, and saintliness, in a world upon which a 
 murky darkness was fast settling down — conceptions 
 that should revive, and once more become impersonate 
 when the epoch of the new creation, " the time of 
 refreshment," " the manifestation " of the archetypal Son 
 of Man, should dawn. 
 
 No one type is adequate to set forth the image of 
 "the King in His beauty." He exhausts, and more 
 than exhausts, the significance of them all. He realises
 
 22 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 and gathers into one, all that men. had" ever admired, 
 loved, honoured, well-nigh worshipped, in what they 
 rightly saw were the j)erfectible capacities of man. In 
 Him dwelt " all the fulness " not only of Godhead, but 
 of manhood, bodily. These old saints were not dumb, 
 incomprehensible signs, but living, manifest interpreters 
 of the purj)oses of God. They taught men incompletely, 
 but approximately, to discern the lineaments of that 
 form of perfected humanity which the Son of God 
 should wear when, in the dispensation of the fulness 
 of time, He should leave His Father's glory to visit and 
 redeem a perishing world. 
 
 (2) " The good of all the land of Egypt is yours." So 
 spake Joseph to his kindred ; so speaks Christ to us 
 who are members of His body. We are in Egypt, or at 
 least on the edge of it, in Goshen — the " land of 
 approaching " — and though our trade and calling be an 
 abomination to its people, yet because we claim kinship 
 with the True Josei^hjthey shall not, dare not, harm us. 
 We can dwell safely there, ay ' increase and multiply. 
 There is a wonderful parallel in those twin histories : of 
 the little family of Israel, three score and ten, multi- 
 plying in scarce 200 years, and in spite of scorn and 
 tyranny, op^jression and bloody edict, into a nation of 
 600,000 that were grown men alone ; and the history of 
 the little stone, as King N ebuchadnezzar saw it, smiting 
 the bright and terrible image, and becoming a great 
 mountain that filled the whole earth. Both speak of 
 powers at work in the world greater than are ofttimes 
 dreamt of in our philosophy. 
 
 We dwell in Egypt, and all its good things are ours.
 
 CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH. 23 
 
 We are not taken out of the world ; but by providences 
 and graces, inscrutable in their jjrocesses, palpable only 
 in their results, are kept from its evil, and suffered, 
 bidden to enjoy its good. 
 
 "Good in Egypt?" asks one sharply and scornfully. 
 " Good in a world lying dead in trespasses and sins ! 
 As well good in a charnel-house of festering corpses and 
 mouldering bones." 
 
 Ay, "good " ! and plenty of it : " good " to the out- 
 ward eye and to the inward : "good " to the senses and 
 to the fancy : fair visions of beauty and noble objects of 
 as23iration : " good " wherewith to sublime the intellect, 
 and " good " wherewith to enlarge and enrich the soul. 
 For is not ours the New Creation — the initial epoch of 
 the restitution of all things ? As St. Paul says, " All 
 things are yours — Paul, Apollos, Cephas " — might we 
 not add, RafFaelle, Shakespeare, Dante, a hundred 
 more — " the world, life, death, tilings ])rescnt, things to 
 come, all are yours ; for ye are Christ's, and Christ is 
 God's." 
 
 Oh ! What glorious scope this gives to the idea of 
 Redemption ! How worthy the end thus contemplated — 
 the restitution of all things : not the mere salvation of 
 a few picked and chosen souls — though that were more 
 to be desired than rubies — but the Ecdemption of the 
 Universe, of " the whole creation that groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain together." How worthy the end 
 seems of the means by which it was accomplished — 
 the personal manifestation, the humiliation even to 
 the death of the cross of the only -begotten Son of 
 God!
 
 24 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 " The eye sees nothing," says the poet, " but what it 
 brings with it." And so the change of which we speak 
 is not in the world, but in us who have to use the 
 world. It was a problem that puzzled the, as yet, 
 half-taught mind of St. Jude — "Lord, how is it that 
 •Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the 
 world ? " It is still a jjuzzle to the mere reason. What 
 charm do the heirs of glory bear about with them that 
 disinfects for them this living lazar-house ; that keeps 
 them scathless from moral plague and pestilence ; that 
 enables them to walk loose in the midst of the furnace 
 even at its whitest heat, and when they come forth, as 
 they assuredly will, men mark with wonder that upon 
 them " the fire hath had no power, neither is a hair of 
 their head singed, nor has so much as the smell of fire 
 passed upon them " ? 
 
 For it is possible " to use the world as not abusing 
 it ; " and not only so, but to use it and he the letter for 
 the use. A Christian man may come in contact with 
 what is loathsomest and foulest, and instead of being 
 defiled he shall be the j)urer, the saintlier, the nearer 
 and the liker God. We do not necessarily become clean 
 and chaste by immuring ourselves in a convent, or 
 leading the lives of anchorites. A Greek legend taught 
 men that foul lusts and passions could break through 
 even a brazen wall. With a pure conscience and a 
 Christ-like purpose, a man may touch anything — go 
 anywhere. Our Blessed Lord did not shrink from the 
 contact even of the woman that had been a sinner. 
 " To the pure all things are pure." 
 
 Men have no ris^ht to come to their neighbours with
 
 CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH. 25 
 
 their " Touch not, taste not, handle not ; " to set up 
 their arbitrary conventionaHties as though they were 
 Gcd's eternal laws ; to dogmatise about proprieties and 
 improprieties ; to sanction this and condemn that ; to 
 lay down tyrannous laws how far the world may be 
 used in this direction, how far in that. There are no 
 two human souls, perhaps, so identical in their consti- 
 tution that they can use it with equal safety in all 
 directions. In the true, but homely, proverb, "What is 
 one man's meat is another man's poison." The echoes 
 of that voice which was heard by St. Peter on the 
 housetop at Joppa still teach each regenerated man, 
 " What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." 
 
 " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." 
 " All things indeed are pure ; but it is evil for that man 
 who eateth with offence." These are two of the very 
 grandest principles of the Gospel. They will cut 
 sheer in twain, with their keen trenchant edge, a 
 hundred thousand knots that the most delicate mani- 
 pulation of the subtlest casuistry would never be able 
 to untie. 
 
 We are made so unwisely scrupulous, £0 needlessly 
 austere, by the narrow views we take of the Redemp- 
 tion — its scope and purpose. We do not believe, or 
 else we do not know, how to handle the truth that "all 
 the good things of Egypt are ours." We think that 
 everything that savours of Egypt — that grows there or 
 has even passed through it — must be contaminated. 
 We are slow and niggard to realise the great fact that 
 a Christian may be in the world — may mix in its 
 concerns and even share its pleasures — and yet not be
 
 26 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 worldly ; may dwell in Goshen, yet with his heart and 
 all his best affections not merely travelling back by an 
 act of memory, or onward from time to time by an 
 effort of hope, but fixed abidingly, and habitually, upon 
 the hills and valleys and babbling brooks of Canaan. I 
 defy any one to prove that it is God's purpose that I 
 should embitter, and in fact disutilise, my life on earth 
 by crying out ever and anon, " Wo is me," like David 
 when he was constrained to abide among the tents of 
 Kedar. We may claim our inheiitance in the New 
 Creation with a bolder, hopefuller heart than this. 
 
 I do not mean to ignore the evil and coiTuption that 
 are in the world. Egypt is Egypt still : a land lying 
 under a curse : visited ofttimes with plagues : where 
 idols are worshipped with more zeal than God. But 
 if I am Christ's this Egypt is mine. Its curse shall 
 not scathe me. Its plague-spots shall not infect me. 
 When the " darkness that could be felt " was spread 
 like a funeral pall over it " all the children of Israel 
 had light in their dwellings." 
 
 But although I may use the world freely and law- 
 fully, and though its evil cannot harm me if I am of 
 Christ's kin, yet the very existence of this evil imposes 
 upon me certain cautions and limitations. " All things 
 are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient." 
 "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that 
 thing which he alloweth." " The kingdom of God is 
 not meat and drink ; but righteousness and peace and 
 joy in the Holy Ghost." What noble, disenthralling 
 doctrines ! How they make me feel at once that it is 
 only when I am serving God tliat I am really free :
 
 CHRIST, THE TRUE JOSEPH. 27 
 
 only when I am following conscience that I am truly 
 pure. 
 
 While, then, I assert unfalteringly my claim to all 
 the good things of Egypt, I shall limit myself in the 
 use of them by three main considerations : — 
 
 (1) By my neighbour's good. 
 
 (2) By the possibility of misconstruction. 
 
 (3) By a wholesome fear of becoming secularised. 
 
 I know not that we need any other safeguards ; and 
 I do not find that the Gospel has multiplied restraints. 
 A few great guiding princijales are better than many 
 subtle, fine-drawn rules. " All is yours." Do not let 
 go your hold of this. Godliness, remember ! has " the 
 promise of this life as well as of that which is to come." 
 God placed us in this world not to be miserable, but 
 happy. The purest happiness is the truest, the most 
 permanent. Egyj^t is not Israel's home. They are 
 but tarrying there. The " good land " is far away. 
 The fulness of the Divine blessing cannot be tasted 
 even in Goshen. Joseph will not have even his bones 
 to lie there. His faith desired a better country, which 
 he knew God would give His people in His own 
 good time. 
 
 And so though we live and die in Egypt, we hope to 
 rest in Canaan. As the True Joseph has placed us in 
 Goshen, so we trust the New Moses will guide us 
 through our pilgrimage in the wilderness; and that 
 under the True Joshua we shall be able to pass, with 
 brave, calm hearts, through the swelling waters of 
 Jordan. Then may the New Jerusalem open to us 
 her gates of pearl, and our good angel bring us to the
 
 28 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 footsteps of the throne of God and of the Lamb, there 
 to serve Him, and see His face, " and have His name 
 written on our foreheads, and reign with Him for ever 
 and ever." 
 
 Preached — St. Edmiincr?, Salisbury, December 7, 1859. St. Mary's, 
 Oxford, November, 9, 1862.
 
 III. 
 
 MYSTERIES. 
 {With allusions to the Death of Charles Dickens.) 
 
 "Great is the mystery of Godliness," — 1 Timothy iii. 16. 
 
 It ought to be no valid objection to Christianity that 
 it concerns itself with mysteries. 
 
 If Revelation had undertaken to clear up all doubts 
 and difficulties that might beset or cross the path of a 
 man travelling from earth to heaven, then, that any- 
 thing were left dark, that all were not so plain that 
 even he that ran might read, would naturally, and 
 might fairly, be occupied as a vantage-ground by 
 gainsayers. 
 
 But such notoriously is not the case with that 
 revelation which we Christians believe to have come 
 from God. Over the mind of the Jew, as he tried to 
 fathom the meaning of the Old Testament, we are 
 distinctly told by St. Paul, there was spread " a veil." 
 " Verily thou art a God that hid est thyself," was almost 
 a complaint of the evangelical prophet — and though
 
 30 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 that veil is done away in Christ, and much that before 
 was dark is now made clear, still we see only " as 
 through a glass darkly " — as men interpreting a riddle. 
 Even the Apostle, who had been caught up to the 
 third heaven, and there beheld visions and revelations 
 of the Lord, found it impossible, when he returned to 
 the conditions of terrestrial life, to utter what he 
 had seen. 
 
 If any one were asked beforehand what he would 
 expect a revelation, given by such a Being as God to 
 such a being as man, to contain ; he would answer, if a 
 person of reflection, that such a revelation might be 
 anticipated to reveal nothing more of the nature of 
 God than it concerned the recipient, for the purposes 
 of his probation to know, that it would be intended not 
 to gratify curiosity, but to cstahlish faith. 
 
 It seems to me that the mysteries of what is called 
 " Nature " are every whit as inscrutable as the mysteries 
 of what is called ' Grace.' The student of science, as 
 well as the student of theology, must halt again and 
 again on the verge of the unknown, and find himself 
 confronted by barriers which he cannot pass. Of all 
 natural phenomena, the phenomena of life are the most 
 mysterious. What marvel, therefore, if the phenomena 
 of spiritual life are governed by a parallel law, and 
 are found too subtle for analysis, and hide themselves 
 from the mere speculative inquirer ? 
 
 I shall not attempt to explain the great revealed 
 mystery of the Triune Godhead, which we beHeve 
 simply because it has been revealed. No doubt it is 
 an exceeding mystery. It has been put into words,
 
 MYSTERIES. 31 
 
 but still, in a certain sense, it remains unutterable. 
 The mind attempts to grasp it, yet it eludes the grasp. 
 Even the Creed, which has attempted to adjust the 
 doctrine to the proportions of our finite intellect, re- 
 coils, as it were, baffled from the task, and confesses that 
 the Father is " immeasurable," the Son " immeasurable," 
 and the Holy Ghost " immeasurable." 
 
 But to live on the edge of myster}'- is the very 
 condition of our being. " I seem like a boy," said Sir 
 Isaac Newton, " playing on the seashore, and picking 
 up a few pebbles here and there, but with the great 
 ocean of truth undiscovered before me." "There are 
 mysteries," said Leibnitz, " infinite in number, where 
 moderate minds may find an explanation sufficient to 
 enable them to helieve, though inadequate to enable 
 them to comprehend. The fact that a thing is, is 
 enough for us to know ; how it came to be is beyond 
 our ken, and is not even necessary for us to know." 
 
 It is the mark, not of a philosophic, but of an 
 unphilosophic mind, to ask for explanations of a 
 phenomenon which, from the very conditions of its 
 existence, or else from the limitation of the powers 
 of the investigating mind, must of necessity be 
 inexplicable. 
 
 The field of religious inquiry is one thing : the field 
 of rigid mathematical demonstration is another. Each 
 has its own proper methods, its own evidential cogency 
 You cannot demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity as 
 you can the truth that two sides of a triangle are 
 greater than the third ; nor can it be called a self- 
 approving axiom, as that two straight lines cannot
 
 32 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 inclose a space, or that the whole is greater than 
 the part. 
 
 The Trinity is a matter of express revelation, and 
 of Christian revelation. If the Jew knew it at all, which 
 may justly be doubted, he saw it as he saw so much 
 of the Divine purpose, through a glass darkly. 
 
 We cannot even presume to say that the doctrine of 
 the Trinity is the utmost knowledge of the Divine 
 nature to which man may ultimately attain. There 
 are things concerning ourselves and our own future 
 which St. John tells us " have not yet been revealed." 
 If the jorecise character of our own future existence is 
 not yet fully revealed, surely we may be prepared to 
 admit that there may be further and fuller revelations 
 in store for us of the nature of the Ancient of Days. 
 
 Some would bid us retain the moo^ality of the Gospel 
 and discard its doctrines. But it is impracticable 
 counsel. Doctrines and precepts are woven into one 
 tissue. The morality of the Gospel all depends on one 
 fundamental axiom, that sin need not have dominion 
 (jver those that are under Grace : that human nature 
 can achieve any conquest over Satan through Christ 
 strengthening it. 
 
 And in that same single axiom lies wrapped up 
 the whole mystery of Redemption : the dogma of the 
 Father's eternal counsel consummated by the adminis- 
 tration of the Son, and applied to the sanctification 
 of each individual soul by the opert^tion of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 If we begin to discard doctrines from the Christian 
 scheme because they are mysterious, it is hard to say
 
 MYSTERIES. 33 
 
 Avhere the process will end. Discard the Trinity : there 
 remains the Incarnation. Discard the Incarnation : 
 there remains the Atonement. Discard the Atone- 
 ment : there remains the life of Christ — the miracles 
 of Christ. Discard Christ Himself : there remains St. 
 Paul — so mighty an evidence that one acute writer 
 was not afraid to put the whole strain of the proof 
 of Christianity to it alone. Discard St. Paul : there 
 remains the Church, Discard the Church : there re- 
 mains without adequate explanation the world's history 
 for eighteen hundred years. 
 
 Attempt to analyse the phenomena of the world's 
 present social life — the facts that make up the sum of 
 human existence — the facts that are involved in the 
 development of a single soul in what all instinctively 
 acknowledge to be its noblest, highest form ; and at 
 the first step backwards you are brought face to face 
 with mystery, with a sequence of causes and effects, or 
 at least of phenomena that look like causes and effects, 
 which certainly find their readiest reason for existence 
 in the hypothesis that God, in the person of His Son, 
 by the power of His Spirit, has taken possession of, 
 and is redeeming, the world. 
 
 There is no attempt in the Bible to conceal the fact 
 that the Revelation which it conveys is mysterious. 
 St. Paul speaks of the " mystery of the faith," the 
 " mystery of Godliness," the " mystery " of the relation 
 between Christ and His Church, the " mystery " of the 
 change which is to clothe this mortal with immortality, 
 and to swallow up death in life. Without going the 
 length of his paradox who said " I believe because it is 
 
 D
 
 34 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 impossible," it would argue an ignorance of the condi- 
 tions under which alone the revelation of an Infinite 
 God to a finite creature is conceivable were we to say, 
 " I refuse to believe because it is mysterious." 
 
 It is not unnatural that the human mind, in its pride 
 of conquest and of power, should chafe impatiently 
 under limitations which make it conscious of its feeble- 
 ness. But it is not for us to fix the conditions of the 
 Divine gifts. The brightest things are ever the most 
 dazzling-. We cannot gaze full in the face of the 
 noonday sun : and the darkness in which God hides 
 Himself is simply, we are told, "light unapproachable." 
 
 Our Blessed Lord once spake certain " hard words " 
 which so offended some of His disciples that they 
 walked no more with Him. Simon Peter's temper was 
 cast in a better mould, or had been more wisely trained. 
 He would not forsake One who, he felt, had "the 
 words of eternal life ; " because there dropped from 
 His lips other words past his comprehension. The 
 poor fisherman, besides, was not too wise to be 
 conscious of his needs : he knew not where else 
 to go. 
 
 If Christianity is no better than a cunningly devised 
 fable, will philosophy condescend to listen to human 
 nature's deepest, most agonising cries; help it out of 
 its darkness and unrest; answer Pilate's question, 
 whether proceeding from cynicism or despair, and 
 tell the world " what is truth ? " 
 
 A wise writer, dealing with the subtle problem of the 
 union of the Divine foreknowledge with the freedom of 
 the will of man, recommends him who would approach
 
 MYSTERIES. 35 
 
 the subject with auy hope of a satisfactory result, to 
 begin his inquiry from below — with the experienced 
 fact that his own individual will is free. It is the 
 maxim of Aristotle over again that in all speculations 
 in the field of moral inquiry, the best beginning is from 
 the facts that lie closest to ourselves. And so in ap- 
 proaching the contemplation of all mysteries, it is 
 safest to start from the phenomena of our own ex- 
 perience. When the whole of Asia was turning away 
 from him, and counting him nothing better than a 
 fanatical dreamer of dreams, nothing could shake the 
 stedfastness of the faith of St. Paul. "I know," he 
 cries, " in Whom I have believed, and I am persuaded 
 that He is able to keep that which I have committed to 
 Him against that day." 
 
 All minds, it must be admitted, have not passed 
 through the same discipline, nor can build their hopes 
 on the same foundation. To some, one truth has 
 proved more precious than another — more full of light, 
 or strength, or comfort. Saul might feel safe in the 
 battle in his armour of proof, David when trusting to 
 nothing better than his shepherd's sling and stone. 
 
 But any truth, that is held as truth, is a help towards 
 attaining further truth. It is the posture of the tvill 
 before the Divine message that is the condition of 
 knowing the doctrine. The temper in which we believe 
 is much more important than the greater or less articu- 
 lation of our creed. A stout ship, ere now, has rode 
 out the wildest gale on a single cable. It is a dragging 
 anchor — an unstable mind — that tells of the coming 
 wreck of faith. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Says the poet of his friend : — 
 
 " He foi;glit Ms doubts and gathered strength : 
 He would not make his judgment blind : 
 He faced the spectres of the mind, 
 And laid them : thus he came at length 
 
 " To find a stronger faith his own ; 
 
 And Power was with him Ln the night, 
 Which makes the darkness and the light, 
 And dwells not in the light alone." 
 
 Yes : God hath said, " I dwell in the thick darkness ; " 
 and what we see and know of Him are but, as it were, 
 the outskirts of His inarch of Majesty. "To see Him 
 as He is," is the beatific vision reserved as the crowning 
 glory of that day when " we shall know even as also we 
 are known." 
 
 Admitting this principle, we must not shrink from 
 accepting its legitimate and necessary conclusions. If 
 this be the condition of all knowledge of things Divine, 
 we may well tolerate differences of opinion where " the 
 foundation standeth sure," and we have no reason to 
 suspect insincerity, or that any dishonour is intended 
 to the Name of our God. 
 
 The wisdom and tenderness — some would say the 
 happy fortune of the early Church — is shown in the 
 simplicity of her creeds: and even they are more de- 
 veloped, or to borrow a word of Jeremy Taylor's, more 
 " articulated," than that Gospel v/hich St. Paul preached 
 to the Corinthians, which he says " they received, 
 wherein they stood, by which they were saved," and of 
 which the three corner stones were the Death, the 
 Burial, and the Resurrection of our Lord.
 
 MYSTERIES. 37 
 
 From the multiplication of dogmas, or at least from 
 the growth of the spirit of dogmatism, which is always 
 more or less imperious and tyrannical, sprang the 
 schism of the \ Eastern Church from the Western ; the 
 rupture between Catholics and Protestants, the 
 " varieties of Protestantism." The issue may have been 
 inevitable under the circumstances, but it certainly has 
 not been an issue favourable to the propagation of truth. 
 " Varieties of judgments and opinions," says sober 
 Richard Hooker, "argueth obscurity in those things 
 whereabout they differ." " What has been held by 
 all Churches, in all places, at all times," is the re- 
 markable test of a great Doctor for discerning catholic 
 truth. 
 
 To fulfil these conditions we must reduce our 
 dogmas. Bishop Jeremy Taylor thinks, to the grand, 
 simple outline of the Apostles' Creed. There you find 
 the doctrine stated, not as a dry theological abstraction, 
 but in its direct relation to man's spiritual needs. The 
 creed called after St. Athanasius (though none of his) 
 more abstract in form, and cumbered with that in- 
 vention of a later age, when councils and doctors 
 thought that the traditionary deposit of faith must be 
 guarded by anathemas, is yet simple in substance; 
 while the Nicene Creed, though more explicit and 
 detailed in statement, can hardly be considered as a 
 development of ideas. If the maxim, Quod semper, quod 
 uhique, quod ah onmihis " can be applied to any body of 
 truth at all, it surely can be applied to the truths 
 summed up in the Christian creeds. 
 
 On other points, we must agree to differ : or if not
 
 38 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 that, we must at least convince, not by appeals to 
 authority, but to reason, and proof, and argument. I 
 never can be brought to admit that the principle of 
 reasou is contrary to the principle of faith ; or that a 
 measure of procedure which would be proper in any 
 other field of cognate science is improper in Theology, 
 which aspires to be the Queen-science of all. 
 
 And even if we fail to persuade, we can still respect 
 those who differ from us conscientiously, however wide 
 the divergence, and however eiToneous we deem the 
 views, if only we see proof of sincerity in steadfast pur- 
 pose and loftiness of aim. If the hope of a re-united 
 Christendom be nothing better than a soothing dream, 
 let us not disturb it needlessly by misrepresentations, 
 suspicions, rivalries, jealousies, heart-burnings. 
 
 There may be unity of purpose beneath divergence 
 of thought, and in spite of apparent differences of aim. 
 St. Paul, earnest as any for what he beheved to be the 
 truth, still bore with those who were " otherwise 
 minded;" still could pray that God's grace might 
 be with all those that loved the Lord Jesus Christ 
 in sincerity. Even though the tongue pronounce 
 " shibboleth " with a perceptible dissonance, earnest 
 hearts still beat, if not in unison, at least in harmony. 
 Because she has lost the note of Unity, there is no need 
 that the Church should lose — there is all the greater 
 need that she should cherish — the higher and more 
 blessed note of Love. 
 
 It will not be out of harmony with the line of thought 
 we have been pursuing, suggested by the contemplation 
 of the great mystery of to-day, certainly it will be in
 
 MYSTERIES. 39 
 
 keeping with the associations of this place/ dear to 
 Englishmen, not only as one of the proudest Christian 
 temples, but as containing the memorials of so many 
 who, by their genius in arts, or arms, or statesmanship, 
 or literature, have made England what she is ; if in the 
 simplest, briefest words I allude to that sad and un- 
 expected death which has robbed English literature of 
 one of its brightest ornaments : and the news of which, 
 two mornings ago, must have made every household in 
 England feel as though it had lost a personal friend. 
 He has been called in a notice that I have read of him 
 " an apostle of the people." I suppose this means that 
 he had a mission from God to man. He preached not 
 in a church nor from a pulpit, but in a style and fashion 
 of his own — a gospel, a cheery, joyous, gladsome 
 message, which the people understood, and by which 
 they could hardly help being bettered. 
 
 It was the gospel of kindliness, of brotherly love, of 
 sympathy in the widest sense of the word, of humanity. 
 I am sure that I have felt in myself the healthful in- 
 fluence of his teaching. Probably we might not have 
 been able to subscribe the same creed in relation to 
 God, but I think we should have subscribed the same 
 creed in relation to man. 
 
 And he who has taught us our duty towards our 
 fellowmen better than we knew it before ; who knew 
 so well how to weep with them that weep, and to 
 rejoice with them that rejoice ; who has shown, with all 
 his knowledge of the dark places of the earth, how 
 much sunshine may rest upon the lowliest lot ; who 
 } Westminster Abbey.
 
 40 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 had such evident sympathy with suffering, such a love 
 of innocence, such a natural instinct of purity that there 
 is scarce a page of the thousands he has written which 
 might not be put into the hands of a little child, may 
 be regarded by those who recognise the diversity of the 
 gifts of the Spirit as a "teacher sent from God." 
 Surely he would have been welcomed as a fellow- 
 labourer in the common interests of humanity by him 
 who has asked the question — " If a man love not his 
 brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom 
 he hath not seen ? " 
 
 Preached— Westminster Abbey, Trinity Sunday, 1870. St. Luke's, 
 Cheetham Hill, Manchester, Trinity Sunday, 1872.
 
 IV. 
 
 SOME CHUECH PROBLEMS IN THE NINETEENTH 
 CENTURY. 
 
 " I say unto all 'Watch.'" — St. Mark xiii. 37. 
 
 The picture of the lattei' days, which the Divine 
 Master unfolded to the gaze of His four Apostles, as 
 they sat together that quiet eventide upon the Mount 
 of Olives over against the Temple, was by no means 
 one to reassure men whose hearts were already not free 
 from apprehension at the prospect of the work which 
 lay before them. The walls of the holy city of which 
 He was the architect, and they the master builders, 
 were indeed doomed to rise in troublous times. There 
 would be enemies without — deceivers and traitors 
 within. The hindrances would be many ; their mun- 
 dane supports but few. The signs of the times should 
 be so portentous, so perplexing, as to shake, if that 
 were possible, the faith even of the elect. No doubt 
 there were lights, here and there, streaming across 
 this dark canvas. There was the promise of the assist- 
 ing presence of the Holy Ghost ; the promise of safety
 
 42 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 to him that endured to the end; the promise for the 
 elects' sake of a shortening of the days, that the burden 
 of them might not be simply insupportable ; the pro- 
 mise of the final revelation of the Son of Man in the 
 plenitude of His sovereign power and glory, when it 
 might be hoped the same voice which once calmed the 
 raging waters of Gennesaret would again say to a yet 
 more furious storm, " Peace, be still." 
 
 But these promises, besides the indefiniteness of some 
 and the remoteness of others, were too few and far 
 between to lighten up with any appreciable effect the 
 depth and awfulness of the surrounding gloom. So, at 
 least, might have murmured a feeble or a desponding 
 soul ; and to such a one the words must have sounded 
 almost like bitter irony, which bade men "not be 
 troubled," for whom even the "beginnings of such 
 sorrows " were in store. But they were not feeble nor 
 desponding souls that were listening then. They were 
 men who had given up all to follow Him. And though 
 one of them, with a not unnatural impulse, had once 
 asked the question — " What shall we have therefore ? " 
 neither he that asked the question, nor they that heard 
 the answer — that they should have their reward, but 
 " with persecutions," /u,eTa Sccoyficov — repented of their 
 choice, or turned back again. 
 
 Not only did the simplicity of their love revolt from 
 the idea of seeking another master, but the simplicity 
 of their faith too felt — deeply, strongly, over-masteringly 
 — that amid all the dark riddles and hard sayings that 
 dropped occasionally from His lips — the Master, Whom 
 they were following with such an indefinite sense of
 
 SOME MODERN CHURCH PROBLEMS. 43 
 
 awe and wonder, had, as none other had, " the words of 
 eternal life." He had touched their faith at its very- 
 root — in the moral basis of their being : and the anchor 
 on which their ship rode was strong enough to keep her 
 to her moorings, even though all these waves and storms 
 beat over them. One — not, it is true, of these four, but 
 who had either heard or read their tale — has pictured 
 to us the condition of his soul — " troubled on every 
 side, yet not distressed : perplexed, but not in despair : 
 persecuted, but not forsaken : cast down, but not de- 
 stroyed." It was the very text of the first Evangelists 
 as they travelled to and fro, publishing the Gospel, and 
 confirming the souls of the disciples, that spiritual 
 conquests are not won by carnal weapons; that the 
 Cross, both in time and in the order of the Divine 
 Counsels, precedes the Crown ; that " we must through 
 much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 I shall not occupy your time with any detailed 
 examination of the times and seasons — real or sup- 
 posed — in which the various parts of this Divine 
 prophecy may reasonably be thought to have been 
 fulfilled. Expositions and interpretations of prophecy, 
 after the manner of Bishop Newton, are, to my mind, 
 singularly unsatisfactory, and are apt to generate a 
 self-sufficiency and spiritual pride on the one hand, or 
 an uncharitableness and polemical rancour on the other, 
 which are as far removed as possible from that temper 
 of simple religious dependence upon God — that con- 
 fidence that the cause of truth and righteousness will, 
 against all appearances, ultimately prevail — which I 
 conceive to have been the chief educational purpose of
 
 44 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 tliat light, " shining in a dark place," -to which, we are 
 told, " we do well when we take heed." The main 
 function of prophecy is not to tempt us prematurely to 
 draw aside the veil that hides the future, but to enable 
 us to interpret on true principles the phenomena of 
 "this present time." 
 
 But this, I may take for granted, will be generally 
 allowed to have been the Church's career — a career, 
 however, not peculiar to herself, but shared in common 
 with many another great and good cause, whether 
 working apart from the influences of the Gospel, or in 
 conscious union with them, for all alike are governed by 
 one apparently irreversible and universal law — " out of 
 weakness she has become strong." She has made her port 
 not with favouring gales, but " against winds that are 
 contrary : " she holds the moral conscience of the world 
 in subjection, not because the world loves her rule, but 
 because it cannot gainsay her claims : she has wrestled 
 with principalities and powers, and has prevailed. Even 
 with shrunk sinew and halting upon her thigh, she has 
 had power with men : and her King, though He does 
 not reign everywhere with equally undisputed sway, is 
 yet the King of all that is noblest, best, purest, loveliest, 
 upon the earth. 
 
 I know that unfriendly minds have given, and will 
 give, a different philosophy of the Church's history. 
 They will say she has won her way by unholy secular 
 alliances — by superstitions, and wily priestcraft — by un- 
 derstanding only too keenly bow to redeem the time — 
 k^ayopd^ea-dat rov Kaipov — and turn it to marketable 
 account — by compliance with the vices and follies
 
 SOME MODERN CHURCH PROBLEMS. 45 
 
 either of monarchs or of the age — in a word by serpent- 
 like wisdom, rather than by dove-hke innocence. And 
 no doubt there have been passages in her history which 
 give only too true a colour to these taunts : but they 
 have been passages of the Church's shame, not of her 
 glory : moments when she seemed to be gaining strength, 
 but was really losing it: apparent victories, bitterly 
 rued by subsequent defeats. No : the Church's course- 
 has been chequered, but on the whole it has been 
 triumphant. And it has been, not by the help, but in 
 spite of, this soil and taint of evil, in spite of men — 
 Princes, Popes, Bishops, Statesmen — who have used 
 her holy name, and blessed offices, for purposes most 
 alien, most unholy, that her progress has been achieved. 
 Even Gibbon confesses the " victory " to have been 
 " remarkable ; " and endeavouring to discover the 
 "secondary causes" which led to its rapid accomplish- 
 ment, allows that the four prominent causes (for 
 though he enumerates a fifth — the assumption of 
 miraculous powers — he only mentions it to scoff at it), 
 — allows, I say, that the four prominent causes which 
 he considers to have brought about this indisputable 
 success were all of them causes operating in the moral 
 sphere, — the union and discipline of the Christian 
 republic, the inflexible zeal of the Christians, their pure 
 and even austere lives, and that doctrine of a future 
 state, without the support of which, as Paul testifies, 
 they would have been of all men the most pitiable 
 {Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xv.). 
 
 One word of explanation before I proceed. I have 
 been using the word " Church " in a way that would be-
 
 46 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 utterly unreal, if I limited it to the' senses that are 
 often imposed upon it by this, or that, nan-ow eccle- 
 siastical school. I am not thinking of the primitive 
 Church merely, nor of the Eastern Church, nor of the 
 Western, nor of the Anglican Episcopal Church, nor of 
 Protestant non-Episcopal Churches. My conception 
 was generalised from all these concrete, individual 
 bodies (under none of whose forms is the perfection of 
 the typical idea adequately realised), and was meant to 
 express the aggregate of those spiritual forces radiating 
 from Christ ; which, even under the limitations of flesh 
 and blood — of earthly passions and human alloy — have 
 done so much for man, and, " if they had free course 
 and were glorified," would seem to be capable of the 
 entire regeneration of the world. We all remember 
 Bishop Butler's description of a perfectly virtuous 
 kingdom, when he argues for the future triumph of 
 good over evil from present apparent tendencies in the 
 nature of things. The dream might have been long 
 since realised, if, according to the measure and scope of 
 the divine purposes, the kingdoms of the world had 
 become, in any true and sufficient sense, " the kingdoms 
 of the Lord and of His Christ." Of these regenerating 
 spiritual forces, the visible organisation to which we 
 belong may fairly be allowed to claim her full share. 
 But she has no exclusive proprietorship of them : and 
 though I am preaching to a Congress of Churchmen, I 
 should be defeating my own purpose if I tried to fortify 
 them in what would be a superstitious, rather than a 
 rational, belief; that the Church, to which we are justly 
 and loyally attached, and whose power of influence wo
 
 SOME MODERN CHURCH PROBLEMS. 47 
 
 desire to strengthen and extend by every means at our 
 command, enjoys any monopoly of divine grace, or can 
 presume to invite members of other communions, 
 certainly not destitute of tokens of the Divine Presence, 
 to seek refuge within her pale, on the ground that their 
 salvation is impossible, or at best precarious, where they 
 are. Untenable pretensions react in honest minds on 
 those who make them. To those who appreciate the 
 value of a solid basis for unity — of a primitive, apostolic 
 form of government — of the security that is given by 
 law to freedom — of a ritual at once sober and reverent 
 — of a Liturgy breathing the very spirit of a devout 
 and chastened piety — of a parochial system which, if 
 truly carried out, would be the perfection of an eccle- 
 siastical organisation — the Church of England can 
 commend herself on solid and sufficient grounds. We 
 shall not strengthen our cause, but the reverse, by 
 associating with it prej)osterous or unsubstantial 
 claims. 
 
 But to pass on. 
 
 It seems natural to the human mind to exajjoferate 
 the importance both of the achievements, and of the 
 failures, of its own day. And there are those who think 
 the Church, and the great cause she holds, are passing 
 now through a trial-fire, seven times hotter than any 
 she has passed through before. Perhaps, as those whom 
 we deem enemies have not fully disclosed themselves 
 — are still uncertain about the positions they will 
 eventually occupy, we are not in a condition to measure 
 the force or the direction of the attack — cannot, per- 
 haps, be sure that the attack will ever come, or that
 
 48 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 those who show so menacing a front are, in fact, or at 
 heart, enemies at all. I utterly refuse to recognise as 
 enemies those who, in the field of scientific inquiry, are 
 trying patiently, laboriously, honestly, to solve some 
 of the problems of nature — " questioning God," as one 
 of the most eminent of them calls it (Huxley), in a 
 spirit of loyal allegiance to truth, and to truth alone. 
 I cautiously distinguish true sons of science from those 
 agcrressive sciolists, who, in that wantonness which 
 seems to cleave to all half-knowledge, thrust their puny 
 spear in the face of beliefs which they forsooth have 
 discarded, but which the better and wiser part of man- 
 kind still entertain with reverent regard. The true 
 labourers in this field, by whom it is being really 
 cultivated and bringing forth fruit, frame their hypo- 
 theses, it is true, sometimes, Ave may think, with a 
 somewhat perilous rashness ; but they are careful to 
 tell us that they offer them only as hypotheses, as a 
 provisional and possible explanation of phenomena, and 
 they are content to wait patiently and hopefully till the 
 truth, upon which they can plant their feet as upon 
 solid ground, shall be revealed. "For the Darwinian 
 hypothesis," said Professor Huxley three days ago at 
 Manchester, " I do not think there has been, and I do 
 not suppose there will be, obtained, for a centur\' yet, 
 anything more than probable evidence." " I can wait 
 200 years," said Kepler, " for my views to be believed, 
 if the Almighty has waited 6,000 years to pubHsh 
 them." And when, if ever, the time comes, if the 
 evidence prove irresistible, the human mind, from its 
 very constitution, rmist receive it. Meanwhile, it is not
 
 SOME MODERN CHURCH PROBLEMS. 49 
 
 ill for the Church to have before her eyes the spectacle 
 of men who are seeking truth, in any field of inquiry, 
 for the truth's sake ; and not claiming men's acceptance 
 of anything which they cannot prove. 
 
 In the programme of our discussions which has been 
 sketched out, and which I may presume is in the hands 
 of most of you, we are attempting to define with some 
 precision — or at any rate to examine — the existing 
 relations of the Church to the various powers and forces 
 with which she is surrounded, and by which she cannot 
 but be affected either for good or harm. You will 
 attempt to ascertain the relations of the Church (1) to 
 Education — i.e., to the intellectual forces of the age ; 
 (2) to the State — i.e., to the political phenomena ; (3) to 
 other Christian, and even non-Christian bodies — i.e., to 
 the religious developments; and (4) to that complex 
 system which we call Society — i.e., to the moral tone 
 and tendencies of the age. Difficult, perhaps insoluble, 
 problems ! problems, too, some of them, the solution 
 of which, if attempted, is not likely to be that which 
 we, as Churchmen, should desire : but problems which 
 we shall certainly do well to approach without the bias 
 of prejudice or prepossession — with an earnest desire, 
 above all things, to be guided into truth, and with an 
 honest wish to realise the position of others who may not 
 look at these phenomena as we ourselves have been taught 
 to do. One of the features of the Jewish mind in our 
 Lord's day was an inability to discern the signs of their 
 time — that they applied different measurements to 
 phenomena which seemed to touch their traditional 
 faith, from those which they applied to other phenomena, 
 
 E
 
 50 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 or would have applied to the same -phenomena under 
 other circumstances: as our Lord asked them, "Why 
 even of your own selves " — by your ordinary standards 
 of right and wrong, truth and falsehood — " Why, even 
 of your own selves, judge ye not what is right ? " 
 (Luke xii. 58.) Let us try to get rid from our delibera- 
 tions of all " idols " (as Lord Bacon calls them), whether 
 of the tribe, or of the cave, or of the market, or of the 
 theatre. We have two special dangers, those of us at 
 least who are clergymen. We are a tribe, and many of 
 us live in caves, more or less secluded from the busy 
 walks in life, outside the stream of active thought. 
 And so we sometimes dream our distempered dreams 
 in solitude, and never attempt to check them by 
 experiment : or we follow blindly those who set up 
 to be our leaders, without reckoning whither they are 
 leading, or we following. 
 
 And so our teaching is weak and aimless, and effects 
 no lodgment in men's souls ; or we have no sense of the 
 relative value of the great issues that are being tried in 
 the world of thought outside our own, and to men who 
 are craving bread, we have nothing better to offer than 
 a stone. 
 
 " In our day," says a modern French preacher, " in 
 all classes of society (strange phenomenon !), what piety 
 there is seems confined almost exclusively to women. 
 Just as a family consisting only of brothers would be 
 found lacking in grace, in sweetness, in modesty, so the 
 piety of the nineteenth century lacks force, vigour, 
 robustness. Need I paint its weakness ? Need I say 
 that it consists in a sensibility either morbid or
 
 SOME MODERN CHURCH PROBLEMS. 51 
 
 affected ? Need I tell its mincing manners ? or 
 reproduce its languid, methodised utterances ? In our 
 meetings, in our books, in our works, one breathes a 
 sort of insipid perfume, which sickens and disgusts 
 masculine and sober minds. Ah ! let enter in here 
 the fresh air, keen and free, such as God made it in 
 His wisdom." — {Colanis Sermons, i. 813.) 
 
 And so let us scatter our dreams and visions, and 
 confront the actual situation manfully, trustfully. We 
 are not living in the fourth century, nor the tenth, nor 
 the sixteenth, but in the nineteenth — 
 
 " The old order change th, giving place to new ; 
 And God repeats Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good ciistom should corrupt the world." 
 
 Let us try to recognise and appreciate the permanent 
 principles underlying all these changes. The founda- 
 tion of God standeth as sure as it ever did. It is the 
 only thing really worth earnestly contending for. The 
 technical and conventional language of theological 
 schools is fast disappearing, even from sermons ; but all 
 earnest men's hold on the vital truth's of Christianity 
 is tightening, rather than relaxing. But the age will 
 not be kept in leading-strings. It does not turn a 
 deaf ear to teachers ; but when it has listened, it claims 
 a right to judge. Who shall deny it that right ? or 
 deny that it has the faculties proper for the safe 
 exercise of it ? Would he, think you, " who would 
 have every man fully persuaded in his own mind " ? 
 Or he, again, who writes to a Christian community in 
 this strain, " Ye have an unction from the Holy One, 
 
 E 2
 
 52 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 and ye know all things " ? At any rate, whether there 
 ever was a time or not when it was desirable, in the 
 interests of religion, that a caste or order of men should 
 be considered exclusive authorities of divine truth, or 
 exclusive depositaries of divine grace, that time has 
 passed away, and from all present appearances is little 
 likely to return. But I do not think we are living in 
 an age that is unfavourable to the calm and dis- 
 passionate consideration of solemn questions. There 
 is a restlessness of inquiry, no doubt; but that very 
 restlessness betokens, not the triumph of doubt, but 
 rather an anxious search for truth — 
 
 " There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 And our wisdom is to direct this spirit of inquiry, not 
 to spend strength in vain, endeavouring to stifle it. 
 Men are yearning for certainty — for something, like 
 Noah's dove, to rest the soles of their feet upon. But 
 they are quick to catch the ring of unreality — they will 
 not be put off with phrases or conventionalisms. They 
 want a religion that will help them in the battle fray. 
 Have you, my brethren of the clergy, got such to offer 
 them ? Do you believe, and therefore speak ? Are 
 the counsels that drop so glibly from your tongues 
 counsels borrowed at second-hand, or counsels that you 
 can recommend from an experimental conviction of 
 their worth ? 
 
 Never, as it seems to me, was there a nobler oppor- 
 tunity of usefulness spread out before any Church than 
 is now spread out before the Church of England ; and
 
 SOME MODERN CHURCH PROBLEMS. 53 
 
 yet it is just possible, that either from some unhappy 
 conjuncture of circumstances, or from want of faith, or 
 want of wisdom, we may miss it. It is with us, as it 
 once was with Paul at Ej)hesus — "A great door and 
 effectual is opened ; but there are many adversaries." 
 But we have just grounds for hoping for the ulti- 
 mate success of any cause in which we are conscious 
 of labouring with single aims, with directness and 
 earnestness of purpose. " All things are possible to him 
 that believeth " ; and where there is true faith there is 
 certain to be no obliquity of conduct. The worst evil 
 that could befall us would be that our people should 
 suspect our loyalty, our truthfulness, our honesty. 
 
 " We shall all gradually advance," wrote Goethe to 
 Eckermann, " from a Christianity of words and faiths 
 to a Christianity of feeling and action." It may be 
 questioned whether the two can really be separated ; 
 but there can be no doubt that what men are seeking 
 in Christianity is, not a technical system, but a vital 
 power : something not taught in catechisms or formu- 
 lated in creeds, but entering into their souls and 
 quickening them with the conviction that, in Christ, 
 the dead can be made alive. Catechisms and creeds 
 will still have their scientific or theological value : 
 cannot be dispensed with in thorough Christian train- 
 ing : but their power over the heart is small ; their 
 worth as motives to right conduct is insignificant. 
 The spiritual lever that has moved the world has been 
 the simjile revelation of the love of God in Christ ; the 
 fulcrum on which it has acted has been the sense of 
 the need of such love in the human soul. Bring these
 
 54 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 forces together, either through the medium of holy 
 discourse, or reverent worship, or Blessed Sacrament, 
 and you have done all that man can do for the 
 regeneration of his fellow-man. The rest we leave, in 
 faith and hope, to the free and sovereign action of the 
 Spirit of our God. 
 
 Inaugural Sermon, preached before the Church Congress at 
 Nottingham, October 11, 187],
 
 EESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, 
 because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought 
 that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. He said 
 therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to re- 
 ceive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his 
 ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto 
 them, Occupy till I come." — St. Luke xix. 11 — 13. 
 
 I SUPPOSE it would be true to say that it is the 
 Parables of its Divine Author, rather than any more 
 formal and dogmatic exposition of its principles, which 
 have impregnated the world with the genius of Christi- 
 anity, In those divine discourses — now a simple tale, 
 now an exquisite allegory, now a glorious vision — we 
 see mirrored, as on the bosom of a deep lake, the very 
 " mind of Christ." " Without a parable spake He not 
 unto them : " and with that j^erfect adaptation of means 
 to ends, which marked all His conduct as a Prophet, or 
 Teacher of men, we may be sure He chose the aptest 
 vehicle for conveying into the soul, at least of ordinary 
 hearers, the great truths He willed to dwell there. If 
 a systematic course of theology would have accomplished
 
 56 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the same purpose more effectively, 'we cannot doubt 
 that He would have taught as a theologian teaches, as 
 Augustine, or Aquinas, or Calvin, or Bishop Pearson 
 taught. That He taught otherwise is sufficient proof, 
 if proof were needed, that theology, however valuable in 
 its place and for its proper purpose — and in its place it 
 is mvaluable — is not the fittest instrument for kindling 
 in the soul of man that intense yearning for an insight 
 into the things of God, which is the true correlative of 
 the manifested and revealed love of God to man. 
 
 If we would know those secrets of the kingdom of 
 heaven, which it most vitally and intimately concerns 
 us to know, which not only enlighten the understand- 
 ing, but supply an adequate spring to the will, let us 
 place ourselves in imagination among those who 
 gathered round Him, now as He taught out of a boat 
 on the Galilean lake ; now as He sat at meat in the 
 Pharisee's house on the Sabbath day ; now as He turned 
 to the multitudes who followed Him on His journeys ; 
 now as He spake to the publicans and sinners who found 
 in Him what they could not find elsewhere, One who sym- 
 pathised with them, and Whom they could understand ; 
 now, as sitting on the Mount of Olives, over against the 
 temple, He expounded to the chosen four, far more 
 plainly in parable than he had before expounded in 
 prophecy, the signs of His second coming, " and of the 
 end of the world." 
 
 It is true there is one dark, mysterious reason why 
 He spake to them in parables : " Because they seeing, 
 saw not ; and hearing, they heard not, neither did they 
 vmderstand." But the wilfully blind never can see ;
 
 RESPONSIBILITY. 57 
 
 the wilfully deaf never can hear. It needs a will — a 
 purpose — to do the will of God, in order to understand 
 the doctrine. The foolishness of preaching — ?; [jbcopla 
 Tov Krjpvjfiaro^; — has ever proved a stumbling block 
 to those who " seek after wisdom, or require a sign." 
 The difficulties of Christianity, at the present day, are 
 felt by those who demand a complete theological or 
 scientifically developed system : not by those who are 
 satisfied if they find a " testimony of the Lord giving 
 wisdom unto the simple " — " an undefiled law, convert- 
 ing the soul." The metaphysical bases of belief have, 
 at times, been rudely shaken : the moral basis has 
 stood like a rock, upon which a man may build the 
 structure of his spiritual life without fear. 
 
 It may be assumed that one of the reasons for the 
 variety in our Lord's parabolic teaching was that dif- 
 ferent images were likely to exercise different degrees 
 of influence upon different minds. Farm labourers 
 would be caught by every allusion to the operations 
 of nature or the processes of husbandry ; fishermen 
 would discern some of the purposes of His mission 
 under the figure of the net cast into the sea and 
 gathering of every kind ; thrifty housewives would 
 learn spiritual lessons from the parable of the leaven, 
 or of the piece of silver diligently sought with broom 
 and caudle till it was found ; speculators on the nature 
 of the human soul would ponder the story of the 
 unclean spirit driven out once by a potent spell, yet 
 returning again, because the power of the charm was 
 not maintained ; speculators on the nature of the life of 
 the world to come, and its relations to the life of this
 
 58 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 present time, would discover food for thought in the 
 parable of the ten virgins, or the vision of the King 
 seated upon His throne. It was hardly possible that 
 any one who was really seeking light for his steps 
 amid the darkness of the world — clearness of vision 
 amid the uncertainties of doubt, and the perplexities 
 of speculative inquiry — should fail to find it, in one or 
 other of these gracious words, in which the grandeur of 
 the thought stood in such marked apparent contrast to 
 the simplicity of the form. 
 
 Of all these Avondrous parables there is none, perhaps, 
 that touches the soul with a profounder sense of so- 
 lemnity and awe, than that from which I have taken, 
 what I may call, the opening scene, for my text. It 
 meets us in the sacred narrative in two forms. There 
 is no irreverence, I hope, in supposing that our Blessed 
 Lord repeated from time to time these figurative illus- 
 trations of the laws of His kingdom, and did not 
 always care to repeat them in precisely the same form. 
 And so we meet this parable once in the form of 
 an unequal distribution of talents, and again in the 
 form of an equal distribution of pounds. Both forms 
 have their expression in the actual phenomena of life. 
 There are those who make a disproportionate use of 
 equal opportunities ; and there are those who make a pro- 
 portionate use of unequal ojoportunities. One man with 
 his five talents makes them other five ; another who has 
 received but two, gains other two. Here one intrusted 
 with a pound, gains ten ; there another, with the same 
 trust, and possibly the same opportunities, gains but 
 five. Under both forms of the teaching- there is the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY. 59 
 
 same picture of the unprofitable servant, with the 
 wretched, transparent, self-condemning excuse for his 
 unprofitableness, spoiled of his hoarded, and there- 
 fore wasted, wealth, " cast into outer darkness," the 
 appointed portion of unbelievers. 
 
 It is not necessary for my present purpose to discuss 
 these differences of detail ; they may have been acci- 
 dental (as we speak of accidents), or they may have 
 been essential to the aims of the teacher, governed, as 
 these are likely to have been governed, by the circum- 
 stances of the place or time. I wish to confine your 
 thoughts, and my own, simply to one feature in the 
 tale, which constitutes its awfulness — its solemnity. 
 
 The Great Master is gone into " a far country," 
 He tells us, " To receive for Himself a kingdom, and to 
 return." Meanwhile, we see Him not, and hear no 
 direct tidings of Him. " Yea, though we have known 
 Christ after the flesh; yet now, henceforth, know we 
 Him no more." There are no tokens of Hiin for many 
 days and many years. All things stand, or seem to 
 stand, as fast as they have stood from the beginning 
 of the creation. Some, who speak as prophets, tell us 
 " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together," and that they who have the first-fruits of 
 the Spirit are waiting anxiously, with outstretched 
 necks and yearning eyes, for a deliverance from " the 
 bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God." But the world calls such men 
 dreamers, visionaries, enthusiasts ; and hardly cares 
 to tariy and listen to them as they tell, or else try 
 to interpret, their dreams. With man-iages to be made,
 
 60 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 and houses to be finished, and gardens to be laid out 
 and planted, and contracts to be fulfilled, and great 
 schemes of policy to be developed, practical men can't 
 stay and lend an ear to the Noahs of the age ; who, 
 believing themselves warned of God, prepare an ark 
 for the saving of their house, preaching the while of 
 righteousness. The world " which is " has got to make 
 very light of the faith in the world " which is to come." 
 It is an old wives' fable to frighten children with, but 
 of no avail with men " who are learned in all the 
 wisdom of the Egyptians." The Master, however, tells 
 us that He is gone ; that the time of His absence is 
 utterly uncertain ; the very angels know it not ; but 
 that " in a day and hour when they think not ; " in the 
 very heart and midst of all the busy pre-occupations of 
 the world, " He will come again and reckon with His 
 servants." 
 
 Whatever interpretation we choose to place upon 
 this ficrurative lansfuage — for it is figurative and not 
 literal — whatever sense we choose to assign to the 
 coming or to the reckoning — if there is any reality in 
 the words at all, there is one inference (and that the 
 only practically important one) from which we cannot 
 escape, and that is, that we are all of us living in a 
 state of responsibility. I do not think we could divest 
 ourselves of that consciousness without breaking in 
 upon the harmony of our spiritual being, even if the 
 horizon of our hopes and fears were bounded by the 
 limitations of this present scene ; but if we believe in a 
 hereafter, the consciousness of responsibility naturally 
 becomes a motive to action, doubled in its constraining
 
 RESPONSIBILITY. 61 
 
 and controlling power. The variations in this con- 
 sciousness of responsibility are probably determined by 
 the variations of belief in this vital article of the 
 Christian Creed. " If there be no resiirrection of the 
 dead," cries Paul, no change awaiting all, no life beyond 
 the grave, " preaching is vain, and faith is vain." " Let 
 us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 
 I do not know with sufficient accuracy what Oxford 
 is now ; but I know pretty well what the general world 
 is now, and I remember what Oxford was thirty-five 
 years ago. That great religious movement, which owes 
 its origin to this place, and which with all its faults, its 
 waverings, its extravagances, even with its disloyalties, 
 quickened the pulse of the moral conscience in England, 
 and taught men that they had other and higher duties 
 than mere self-seeking, was accompanied by, if it did 
 not spring from, a heightened sense of personal responsi- 
 bility. The great leaders of that movement, and their 
 more conspicuous followers, were men of lofty aims, 
 severe self-control, simple habits, self-denying, almost 
 mortified, ascetic lives. Oxford felt — I recollect the 
 feeling myself as a young man — as she has hardly felt 
 since, that there was a spirit moving within her, which 
 could not be called even by those whom it did not 
 touch, a spirit of this world. Men had convictions, and 
 exhibited them in their lives. They believed, and their 
 practice was according to their belief. That the move- 
 ment took an unhappy turn I am ready to admit, 
 but, in its best and brightest days, it was a move- 
 ment governed by noble impulses, aiming at a lofty 
 end. There were signs on every side of quickened
 
 62 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 consciences; not ostentatiously sensitive, nor morbidly 
 restless, but alive, keenly alive, to the sense of duty ; 
 so that even careless lookers-on began to see a meaning^ 
 in those deep dark words, " Ye are dead, and your life 
 is hid with Cbrist in God" (Col. iii. 3). Much has 
 changed since then, and we have reached " an age of 
 light, light without love," in which subtle questionings, 
 whether for good or evil, have displaced simple believing, 
 and what wsbS faith then is deemed credulity now. We 
 live in an age of cold calculating cynicism, in which en- 
 thusiasm is ridiculed; earnestness deemed unfashionable; 
 self-sacrifice reputed folly. An age when " knowledge 
 is increased," but " wisdom lingers " ; when passions 
 are strong, wills weak ; when high ambitions are tainted 
 by self-seeking, and noble gifts sometimes prostituted 
 to ignoble purposes. An age, in which boys and girls 
 know as much of the world, in some of its least pleasant 
 forms, as mature men and women used to do : an age of 
 social chasms daily widening : of the various classes 
 which constitute society becoming more and more 
 separated from, more and more ignorant of, each the 
 other ; an age of yearnings, vast, but impotent because 
 aimless ; of sympathies waxing weaker and colder, 
 because never suffered to develop into the activities 
 of benevolence. On all sides one hears the uneasy 
 cry of discontent ; on all sides one discerns symptoms 
 of that weary restlessness Avhich is the proper retribu- 
 tion of desires fixed on objects which fail to content, 
 even when they are realised. With aching heart, one 
 beholds the spectacle of the rich in their luxury, " en- 
 larging their desires as hell," yet still " unsatisfied '^
 
 RESPONSIBILITY. 63 
 
 (Hab. ii. 5) ; of the poor in their deep poverty, sinking 
 into more and more hopeless brutality and degradation. 
 And neither care to learn a parable from the fig-tree 
 (Mark xiii. 28, 29) or look up and lift their heads, as 
 though a " redemption " from a life, in which all the 
 conditions of health are reversed, " were nigh," or 
 even possible. 
 
 Yet here, from this place, speaking to the young 
 heart of England, to those who will be the strength 
 and stay both of the Church and of the Nation, both of 
 Religion and of Society, when we, whose sun has passed 
 its meridian height and is now sloping towards the 
 west, shall be sleeping in our quiet or unquiet graves, 
 one would fain try to rouse spirits that cannot yet be 
 fally steeped in the narcotic, deadening influences of 
 the world, to an adequate sense of what an apostle 
 calls " their high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
 
 " He went about doing good," is at once the simplest 
 and truest description of the work which the Lord Jesus 
 set Himself to do upon this earth. " To go about doing 
 good," wherever his hand finds good to do, — and he will 
 not need to look far for opportunities — is the surest token 
 still of a man having the mind of Christ; of a man 
 having his spirit touched by the Spiiit of Christ. To 
 wrap oneself up in an isolating selfishness, to stop our 
 ears and close our eyes to everything likely to disturb 
 the softness of our slumbers, the sweetness of our 
 dreams, — to say to our soul (if such be our portion), 
 " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; 
 take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry ; " this, even 
 men who have no spirit of faith, see to be a temper as
 
 64 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 alien from the projDer temper of a Christian as anything 
 can be conceived to be. Yet this is the temper which 
 the luxurious, self-indulgent habits of the age have an 
 almost irresistible tendency to form. You must exercise 
 conscious efforts of watchfulness, and self-restraint, if you 
 would struggle successfully against their slumberous, 
 paralysing influence. "A useless life," said Goethe, "is 
 but an early death." (Ein unnutz Leben ist ein friXher 
 Tod.) Many of your young hearts are leaping up with 
 wild, and as yet unfixed, ambitions. You naturally 
 and rightly desire to make your mark on your genera- 
 tion, to hand down your names to them that come 
 after, as those who have been among the foremost 
 men of their time. I know not whom you have 
 selected from the page of history, by whose career to 
 fashion your own. But if the ideal of Jesus Christ be 
 deemed too hic^h — and, of course, it is so far too hiofh 
 that no mortal man can hope to attain to it — you could 
 not probably propose to yourselves a nobler example to 
 be conformed to than that of Paul. I do not mean in 
 what may be termed the accidents of his life (for you 
 may be called to far other work than his) : but in what 
 constitutes the moral basis of his character, its chivalry, 
 its generosity, its tenderness, its true refinement, its 
 almost superhuman devotion to duty, its sustaining 
 faith in the unseen. Souls of this stamp are what our 
 diseased social condition emphatically demands ; souls, 
 willing to spend, and be spent for a noble cause ; souls 
 loving on, even though winning back scant love in 
 return; souls steadfast though standing alone, firm 
 where others waver, loyal where others betray, because
 
 RESPONSIBILITY. 65 
 
 "they know in whom they have believed, and are 
 persuaded that He is able to keep that which they 
 have committed unto Him against that day." 
 
 And so we are brought back to the thought with 
 which we began. We need hopes " entering into that 
 within the veil " — reaching beyond the confines of this 
 lower world — to sustain, in a day when " our tokens are 
 not so clearly to be seen " as once they were, fainting 
 hearts and drooping hands. " If in this life only we 
 had hopes in Christ, we should be of all men the most 
 miserable." We shall hardly make the use of our five 
 talents, or of our single pound (if that be all that has 
 been intrusted to us), that we ought to do, unless we 
 believe that the Master, Whom we serve, will one day 
 " come and reckon " with us. No need to ask captiously 
 or querulously, " What are the signs of His coming ? '' 
 nor again, " Will His reward when He bestows it satisfy 
 us for all the toil that we have borne ? " The value of 
 the reward will depend upon the expectations we are 
 forming of it. If we are dreaming of places " at the right 
 hand or the left," perhaps they never may be ours. If 
 our hearts are set upon some gross, almost material and 
 sensual payment in kind, that certainly never will be 
 ours either. But if we have so longed to see Him " in 
 His beauty " here, that hereafter to " see Him as He is " 
 will suffice us, we shall have that. If it be enough to 
 share His joy, though we know not of what sort it be, 
 we shall have that for our portion too. If, by heaven, 
 we mean a place where there shall be infinite scope for 
 almost infinite development of all that is best, and 
 purest, and noblest in oui- nature, that heaven shall 
 
 F
 
 66 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 be ours. This much we are told plainly and without 
 figure ; and more than this we need not ask nor care 
 to know. We must not elevate the reward into the 
 rank of a primary motive ; it is but a subsidiary support 
 to a frail and wavering heart. The work itself carries 
 with it the highest, the most abiding reward. No prize, 
 either in earth or heaven, so rich as that which the 
 conscience ofiers, unasked, unprompted, to him who 
 simply strives to do his duty. "Thus," according to 
 the beautiful thought of the Christian Year (Advent 
 Sunday), 
 
 " Thus bad and good their several warnings give 
 Of His approach, whom none may see and live ; 
 
 Faith's ear, with awfnl still delight, 
 
 Counts them like minute bells at night, 
 Keeping the heart awake till dawn of mom, 
 While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne. 
 
 " But what are heaven's alarms to hearts that cower 
 In wilful slumber, deepening every hour, 
 
 That draw their curtains closer round, 
 
 The nearer swells the trumpet sound ? 
 Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die, 
 Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh." 
 
 Preached— St. Mary's, Oxford, October 29, 1871.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIEACLES. 
 {As a Motive Power in Spiritual Life.) 
 
 " Then certain of the Scribes and of the Pharisees answered, 
 saying, Master we would see a sign from Thee." — St. 
 Matthew xii. 38. 
 
 On examining the records of Holy Scripture which 
 contain the story of miraculous events, I cannot help 
 arriving at the conclusion, that the evidential value of 
 miracles, as a basis of belief, is and always was, 
 considerably less than is commonly assumed or sup- 
 posed. Not only do we read the story, and dwell on 
 the thought, of them now, less as proofs of a revelation, 
 than as illustrations of the character of Him who partly 
 by and partly with them, was revealing Himself to man : 
 less as repara or even Bvvd/ji€i<; than as ar^ixela (the 
 word by which they are most frequently designated) ; 
 less as tokens of a physical, than of a moral, governor of 
 the world — but it would seem to have been always so. 
 When Jesus raised the widow's son at Nain, there came 
 a fear — an awe-inspiring, reverent fear — upon all ; and 
 they glorified God, saying " that a great prophet is risen 
 
 F 2
 
 68 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 up amongst us," and "that God -liath visited His 
 people." (Luke vii. 16.) 
 
 Not but what the miracles are set, so to speak, in a 
 stratum of historical facts, from which it is impossible 
 to dislodge them, retaining the truth of the remaining 
 history. As it has been well put by a distinguished 
 French writer, " The whole Gospel is one tissue of 
 supernatural events; is the birth of a Virgin's son ; is 
 the resurrection of one dead ; begins and ends in 
 miracle." And yet we do not build — not one of us, I 
 suspect, has built — the foundation of our spiritual life, 
 or even of our faith, on these things merely as " super- 
 natural events." It is not in this aspect that they affect 
 us. We do not consciously separate them from the 
 system to which they appear to belong. The whole 
 march of Christ was a march of mystery. We seem to 
 see in it the outlines of a purpose, each step in which 
 we cannot pretend to understand. And the miracles 
 seem almost a necessary part of the process of the 
 evolution of this purpose. We should be surprised if 
 we did not find them. We are brought so very near to 
 God or rather God is brought so very near to us, that 
 we feel we must be, if not in the midst, yet on the 
 edge, of marvels, which the keen eye of mere physical 
 investigation, endeavouring to trace the footsteps of 
 Law everywhere, cannot pretend to penetrate. A 
 revelation of God to the world, supposing such a thing 
 to have occurred, which should contain nothing tran- 
 scending the ordinary limits of human knowledge and 
 human power, and even of human method, would, in the 
 very absence of those signs of its divine origin, furnish
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. G9 
 
 a presumption of improbability. I do not say, as some 
 have said, that what we call " miracles " are necessary 
 for a divine revelation ; but at any rate they are in place 
 in it, and strengthen rather than weaken the validity of 
 its claims. There they are, and they are in harmony 
 with their surroundings. 
 
 I admit that it is not a very easy thing to fix the 
 proper place and just value of miracles among the evi- 
 dences of Christianity. It is not very easy to define a 
 miracle — to say with any philosophical accuracy what 
 it is. It is utterly out of keeping with the whole train 
 of Scientific processes and scientific thought, to regard 
 it, as it once was regarded, as a violation, or even as a 
 suspension, of natural laws : rather, as Bishop Butler 
 has taught us, is it the manifestation of a higher and as 
 yet undiscovered law, such as that which governs the 
 course of comets, or other extraordinary cosmical pheno- 
 mena ; which, however, no one supposes, because they 
 are seemingly irregular and extraordinary, to be above 
 or beyond the domain of law. " That part of the course 
 of nature," says the philosophical bishop, "which is 
 opened to our view, is but as a point, in comparison of 
 the whole plan of Providence, reaching throughout 
 eternity past and future ; in comparison of what is 
 even now going on in remote parts of the boundless 
 universe ; nay, in comparison of the whole scheme of 
 the world." 
 
 Miracles do not seem to have had the evidential 
 power that we are apt to attribute to them upon those 
 who saw them with their eyes. It is true that in one 
 case (John x. 41) the multitude contrasted Christ's
 
 70 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 tbaumaturgic power with the absence of such credentials 
 in John the Baptist (whom, however, they acknow- 
 ledged to be a prophet, though he wrought no miracles 
 (Matt. xiv. 5). In another instance we are told that 
 " many believed in His Name when they saw the 
 miracles which He did " (John ii. 23). But elsewhere 
 it is said with equal distinctness that " though He had 
 done so many miracles before them, yet they believed 
 not on Him " (John xii. 37). The works to which, 
 in John x. 37, 38, He so confidently appealed, as a 
 token that He came forth from God, and that the 
 Father was in Him, and He in the Father, saying, 
 " If I do not the worJcs of My Father, believe Me not ; 
 but if I do, though ye believe not Me, beheve the 
 works," were not necessarily miraculous : — it is the 
 simple Greek word epya, the things He was continually 
 doing ; and might have merely pointed to His ordinary 
 march of benevolence, His going about doing good. His 
 very words accompanied with grace and power. A few 
 further Scriptural instances may be noticed in connection 
 with this subject. 
 
 1. Reflect on the case of the dreamer of dreams, 
 hypothetically stated in Deut. xiii. : — " If there arise 
 among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and 
 giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the 
 wonder come to pass whereof he spake to thee " — what 
 were men to do ? to believe his message or his dream, 
 because the sign with which he announced it had been 
 fulfilled ? By no means. They were to measure the 
 value of the apparent proof of the message ha\ing come 
 from God by the nature of its contents — " If the sign or
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 71 
 
 the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, 
 sajdng ' Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not 
 known, and serve them,' thou shalt not hearken unto the 
 word of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams ; for the 
 Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love 
 the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all 
 your soul, and that prophet or that dreamer of dreams 
 shall be put to death, because he hath spoken to turn 
 you away from the Lord your God." It is plain that 
 the message itself remained to be tested by some other 
 criterion of its truth or falsehood, its moral goodness or 
 its' moral evil, quite apart from the fulfilment of its 
 sign : and indeed that this very fulfilment was one of 
 the many modes in Avhich God designed to prove His 
 people's faith — whether " their heart was whole with 
 him," and they were minded to " continue stedfast in 
 His covenant." 
 
 2. Remember again that most remarkable pheno- 
 menon — I know not whether to call it moral or 
 intellectual — of the staggering faith of John the 
 Baptist, even after the epiphany on the banks of 
 Jordan. It might be supposed that even the shadow 
 of the shade of doubt could never have passed across 
 the mind of him who, though once he " knew Him not," 
 had seen the heavens opened (as he had been fore- 
 warned he should see them) and the Holy Ghost 
 descending in bodily shape, like a dove, upon the 
 Christ, and had heard that voice from heaven which 
 said, " This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
 pleased." Yet, in the space of eighteen months or so, 
 the effects of this vision had passed away, and we read
 
 72 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of the Baptist from his prison cell at'Machserus sending 
 two of his disciples to Jesus with the strange question, 
 " Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for 
 another ? " Plainly the most stupendous sign had not 
 been a conclusive proof to him. 
 
 3. Kemember yet again, that the Bible asserts that 
 things hostile to God have the power of working 
 miracles, and thereby deceiving the world. There are 
 " the spirits of devils working miracles which go forth 
 unto the kings of the earth to gather them to the battle 
 of the great day of God Almighty," spoken of in the 
 book of Revelation (xvi. 14) : there is that Wicked One, 
 the mystery of whose iniquity was already working when 
 St. Paul wrote his second epistle to the Thessalonians, 
 who, in his full manifestation, " shall be seen to come 
 after the working of Satan with all power and signs, 
 and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of 
 unrighteousness in those that perish, because they 
 received not the love of the truth that they might be 
 saved." (2 Thess. ii. 8—10). 
 
 Bishop Butler has shown, in his admirable way, that 
 there is no peculiar presumption from the analogy of 
 nature against miracles, so as to render them in any 
 wise incredible ; and that, on the contrary, our being able 
 to discuss reasons for them gives a positive credibility 
 to the history of them in cases where those reasons hold 
 {Analogy, p. ii,, eh. 2). You will understand, therefore, 
 that I am not raising the question of the fact of miracles 
 as recorded historical events, but simply trying to esti- 
 mate their evidential value. The question of historical 
 fact has to be determined by the criterion of historical
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 73 
 
 evidence, and not on a -priori grounds, as Hume dealt 
 with it. " And to ascertain the degree of strength 
 which belongs to the evidence for the Gospel miracles, 
 we must go into the special case of that evidence ; and 
 what we maintain is that when we do go specially into 
 the evidence for those miracles, we j&nd this high 
 degree of strength in it : that its foundation lies so deep 
 in the wonderful character and extraordinary probation 
 of the witnesses, and in the unique character and result 
 of the revelation, that it sustains the weight which it is 
 required to sustain." (Mozley's Bampton Lectures, p. 235.) 
 
 But the question of the credibility of miracles and 
 the question of their evidential value, as a basis of 
 Christian faith and a motive poioer in spiritual life, are 
 distinct questions ; and it is with the latter, not the 
 former, that I am concerned. 
 
 And here again let me recall two or three Scriptural 
 incidents to your recollection. 
 
 1. There is the case of those men of Sychar, among 
 whom Jesus abode two days. Their curiosity had been 
 stimulated by the strange story of their countrywoman, 
 who, full of the excitement of the interview at Jacob's 
 well, had rushed into the streets, bidding every one 
 whom she met come and see the man who had " told her 
 all things that ever she did." " Many of the Samaritans 
 of the city," we are told. " believed on Him " from the 
 woman's testimony ; but " many more believed because 
 of His own word," and said unto the woman, " Now we 
 believe, not because of thy saying ; for we have heard 
 Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, 
 the Saviour of the world " (John iv. 41, 42). And from
 
 74 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 analogous cases, we cannot doubt, if 'these two beliefs, 
 based, one upon a sign or wonder, the other upon teaching 
 which came home to the conscience or the understanding 
 with power, had been subjected to any severe subsequent 
 strain, which would have been the more likely to bear 
 the strain unharmed — or if temporarily weakened, to 
 recover the more rapidly its former strength. 
 
 2. A not dissimilar case occurs in the circumstances 
 of the miracle on the impotent man, whom Peter healed 
 at the Beautiful gate of the temple (Acts iii, iv.). A 
 notable miracle was wrought ; the Sanhedrim admitted 
 it, did not attempt to deny it, or explain it away ; and 
 yet they seemed to feel that the effect which had been 
 produced upon the people did not depend upon the 
 wonder, but upon another and even mightier power. 
 Peter had not merely bidden a man rise up and walk 
 in Jesus' name, but he had preached this same Jesus 
 to the wondering crowd. He had taught them their 
 covenant relation to the God of their fathers, and the 
 blessedness of the blotting out of sins, when the times 
 of refreshing should come. " And many of them which 
 heard the vjord believed ; and the number of the men 
 was about five thousand." There was more converting, 
 spiritualising power in the apostle's spoken words 
 than in his mighty deeds ; and so to prevent the 
 mischievous influence, as they deemed it, from 
 spreading further among the people, the council 
 called Peter and John before them, and commanded 
 them — not to perform no more miracles, but — "not 
 to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus." 
 
 3. St. Paul, again, coveted those gifts most which
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 75 
 
 conduced most directly to edification (1 Cor. xiv.). He 
 went about the world, emphatically as a preacher, not as 
 a thaumaturge. Christ sent him, not even " to baptise," 
 but "to preach the gospel" (1 Cor. i. 19). He tells the 
 Corinthians that he had the capacity of " speaking with 
 tongues more than they all, yet would he rather speak 
 five words with his understanding, that by his voice he 
 might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an 
 unknown tongue." He wrought, it is true, " the signs 
 of an apostle " among them " in all patience, in signs, 
 and wonders, and mighty deeds" (2 Cor. xii. 12): 
 "from Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum, through 
 mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit 
 of God, he fully preached the Gospel of Christ" 
 (Rom. XV. 19) : but it was apparently the preaching 
 itself — not the manner of it, for that was feeble, but 
 the matter of it, " in demonstration of the Spirit and 
 of power " — that carried conviction to the hearers' souls. 
 It was not as a philosophical system such as the Greek 
 mind demanded, nor as a miraculous dispensation such 
 as the Jews required, that the simple preaching of 
 " Jesus Christ and Him crucified " first subdued the 
 affections, and then satisfied the reason of the world. 
 "An evil and adulterous generation" sought after a 
 sign : and there was no sign given unto it ; but they 
 which were humble, teachable, and, in the truest sense, 
 reasonable souls, recognised Christ as "the power of God 
 and the wisdom of God " (1 Cor. i. 24). 
 
 4. The story of Philip preaching in Samaria points 
 the same way (Acts viii.). Long before the evangelist 
 came down thither, there had been a man in that city 
 who had bewitched the people with his sorceries, " to
 
 76 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, 
 saying, " This man is the great power of God." It might 
 be necessary under such circumstances that Philip should 
 put forth the thaumaturgic power, with which he, like 
 his fellow deacon Stephen, was endowed ; and so we 
 read that " unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came 
 out of many that were possessed with them ; and many 
 taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed." 
 But the jDurpose of these miracles is distinctly stated. 
 Philip's mission to the Samaritans was to "preach 
 Christ unto them." He did not wish these people to 
 regard him as they regarded Simon Magus : as a man 
 gifted with supernatural powers ; but as a man charged 
 with a Divine message, in which they were vitally 
 interested. The miracles were not so much proofs, as 
 signs ; and so we read, " the people with one accord 
 gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing 
 and seeing the miracles which he did." 
 
 This, I take it, is the proper spiritual function of 
 signs, whether we call them miraculous, and out of the 
 order of nature, or not. Their purpose is to draw — 
 we may even say, to compel — attention to phenomena 
 of a higher order than themselves : for I may assume 
 that the moral order of the world is higher than the 
 physical : the sphere of the spiritual higher than the 
 sphere of the material. The example of Moses at 
 Horeb is a typical and significant one in this regard. 
 The shepherd, on whom, remember, all the wealth of 
 Egyptian learning had been bestowed, sees a tall thorn 
 bush in the desert, burning wdth fire, yet not consumed. 
 The spirit of scientific inquiry is raised within him, and 
 he says, " I will now turn aside, and see this great sight. 
 
 i
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 77 
 
 why the bush is not burnt." He had little conception 
 of the revelation which awaited him. It can hardly be 
 said that the prodigy of the burning bush constrained 
 that lingering, almost reluctant, faith. There is no 
 reference to the portent again after that the voice of 
 the Lord God had been heard. True, some further 
 signs were given, but even they failed to nerve the timid 
 heart — to convince the mistrustful mind ; so that (as 
 the tale is told) " the anger of the Lord was kindled 
 against the man," whom no appeal seemed able to lift 
 to a consciousness of his great destiny. So again, in 
 after days, beneath the shadow of the self-same Horeb, 
 another prophet, he too of a despondent and mistrustful 
 mind — or at least, at that moment, in a despondent and 
 mistrustful mood — traced the presence of God, not in the 
 strong wind which rent the mountains ; not in the earth 
 quaking beneath his feet ; not in the fiery flashes of the 
 thunderstorm ; but in " the still small voice," which bade 
 him return to the deserted post of duty, and do his 
 work with more courage and more faithfulness. 
 
 And so, universally, the faith of mankind has not 
 rested on the miracles, though they have their place 
 among the evidences of Christianity, but on the 
 Incarnate Lord Himself, and the message from the 
 Father which He, and those sent by Him, delivered to 
 the world. We believe in the Gospel because we find 
 in it a revelation answering to our spirittcal needs ; 
 something satisfying our desire to pierce through the 
 veil of sense ; something helping us to read more clearly 
 than we otherwise could, the riddle of this puzzling 
 universe ; something which, while assuring us that " alJ 
 things work together for good to them that love God "
 
 78 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 here, tells us also of " the far more exceeding and eternal 
 weight of glory" which shall reward all faithful service 
 hereafter. If we do not feel our need of a Saviour ; of 
 some One sent from God " to bless us in turning us away 
 from our iniquities ; " of some One in whose strength we 
 can be strong, and for whose sake we can be forgiven — 
 if, with a stoical self-sufficiency Ave wrap ourselves up 
 in our own virtue, or with a light cynic sneer consider 
 virtue impossible, perhaps unnecessary, no amount of 
 miracles, considered as so many thaumaturgic acts — as 
 bare signs of supernatural power, will compel belief; or 
 make us sit, like Mary of Bethany, at Jesus' feet to 
 hear His word. As it is recorded in one striking 
 passage, " Though He had done so many miracles before 
 men, yet they believed not on Him, that the saying of 
 Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled which he spake, 
 Lord, who hath believed our report ? and to whom is 
 the arm of the Lord revealed ? " (John xii. 37, 38). The 
 truest, strongest, most stedfast, most rational faith is like 
 that of the men of Sychar, who believed Jesus " because 
 of His own word." I do not say that faith may not have 
 been strengthened, or even produced, by miracles ; but 
 not the highest, noblest, most daring, most constant 
 faith. " Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast 
 believed ; blessed are they that have not seen, and 
 yet have believed " (John xx. 29). 
 
 If the position which has been taken up is a sound 
 one, two inferences seem capable of being drawn from it. 
 
 1. First : we can see a reason why miracles are sus- 
 pended, if they have not altogether ceased. The 
 season for them is closed. There are other agencies- 
 more calculated to generate faith. The eye of the
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 79 
 
 world is sufficiently turned towards Christianity ; and 
 it, of itself, offers sufficient inducements for men to 
 examine its credentials, without being obliged to have 
 recourse to others which, in our day, would detract 
 from, rather than add to, its power. For it is quite 
 certain that in an age which prides itself upon its 
 scientific methods, any pretension to miraculous or 
 supernatural powers, would provoke incredulity instead 
 of stimulating faith. As has been well remarked, " the 
 general progress of science has been to introduce law 
 and order into ideas in which at first they did not seem 
 to prevail ; and perhaps its most fundamental effect on 
 the human mind has been to encourage the idea of law 
 and order, although in some respects it has encouraged 
 it erroneously — or rather has encouraged an erroneous 
 idea of what law and order mean." Not that arbitrary 
 and d priori limitations on the power of God are the 
 necessary accompaniments of the spirit of scientific 
 inquiry. "You never hear," says Professor Tyndall, 
 at the conclusion of his brilliant essay on the scientific 
 uses of the imagination — " you never hear the really 
 philosophical defenders of the doctrine of uniformity, 
 speaking of impossibilities in nature. They never say, 
 what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is 
 impossible for the Builder of the universe to alter His 
 work. Their business is not with the possible, but with 
 the actual ; not with a world that might be, but with 
 the world that is. This they explore with a courage 
 not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods 
 which, like the quality of a tree, are tested by their 
 fruits. They have but one desire — to know the truth. 
 They have but one fear — to believe a lie. And if they
 
 80 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 know the strength of science, and rely upon it with un- 
 swerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which 
 science ceases to be strong. They best know that 
 questions offer themselves to thought, which science, as 
 now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. . . . 
 ' Two things,' said Immanuel Kant, ' fill me with awe — 
 the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility 
 in man.' And in his hours of strength and health and 
 sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and the 
 pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator 
 finds himself overshadowed by the self-same awe. Break- 
 ing contact with the hampering details of earth, it 
 associates him with a power which gives fulness and 
 tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyse 
 nor comprehend." We can hardly expect the physical 
 inquirer to assist us with his methods in the field of 
 religious speculation : it is enough that he allows that 
 there is such a field in the sense of moral resiDonsibility 
 m -man, and that he gives us leave to pursue it by our 
 own methods, which are legitimate so long as they are 
 rational. 
 
 2. The second and last point on which I wish to say 
 a few words, is the supremacy of conscience over the 
 mere understanding, in judging of the evidences of 
 faith — the grounds of believing. Let us recall for one 
 moment the case of that dreamer of false dreams in 
 Deut. xiii. If the sign came to pass, how were men to 
 be prevented from recognising him who foretold it as a 
 heaven-sent prophet of the Lord ? Simply by the in- 
 tuitions of their conscience. So, too, the great Apostle 
 Paul. When all seemed failmg — when the cherished 
 hopes of years were vanishing, and the things for which
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 81 
 
 he had laboured were crumbling into dust — when all 
 men forsook him, and he seemed to stand in a crisis 
 such as Christianity had never passed through before, 
 and has hardly ever passed through since, almost alone, 
 his faith never wavered. He " hneiv in Whom he had 
 believed." The spiritual experience of a life was not to 
 be shattered and falsified, because he could not read 
 distinctly a few external signs. It is the spectacle of 
 such a might in faith that has upheld the Church in 
 all critical times ; that must uphold her now. Never 
 had those who fear the Lord more need of the streno-th 
 that comes from quietness and confidence than now. 
 Men are looking for the Kingdom of God to come with 
 outward show ; because they see not what they deem 
 to be its proper signs, they doubt if it exists ; they for- 
 get their Lord's warning words, that His Kingdom is 
 not without us, but within. It needs the strength of 
 a deep conviction to keep the feet steady, when the 
 earth seems rocking beneath us, and the very founda- 
 tions — principles, beliefs, institutions, that we have lono- 
 clung to — are out of course. The false prophets — or at 
 least those who prophesy the opposite of what we have 
 always held for truth — have, or seem to have, their 
 signs, able to deceive, if that were possible, even the 
 elect. And we oft-times look in vain for tokens of the 
 same mighty arm which, in the days of old, " cut 
 Kahab and wounded the dragon." Nevertheless, as 
 Paul told Timothy in a like perplexing time, a still 
 small voice within whispers, when we have commanded 
 a moment's hush amid the hubbub of the world, " the 
 foundation standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord 
 
 G
 
 82 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 knoweth them that are His. And, -Let every one that 
 uameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." 
 (2 Timotliy ii. 19.) Philosophers tell us that under 
 the influence of new ideas, the Avorld is rapidly casting 
 off its old illusions. It is easy to call what has sus- 
 tained the faith of saints, illusions ; it is easy to say, as 
 has lately been said, "l7iso7nma xana, valetc" but we have 
 a right to ask philosophy what has she to give us in 
 place of what she is destroying, more real, more trust- 
 Avorthy, more satisfying, more abiding ? Are the best 
 products of Christianity inferior to the best products of 
 philosophy? Does St, Paul stand on a lower moral 
 level than Socrates ? Does Platonism give a better 
 foundation to society than the Gospel ? As Arthur 
 Clough sings, it is easy to say : — 
 
 " * Old things need not be therefore true,' 
 brother men, nor yet the new ; 
 All ! still a while the old thought retain, 
 And yet consider it again ! 
 
 " The souls of now two thousand years 
 Have laid up here their toils and fears, 
 And all the earnings of their pain — 
 Ah ! yet consider it again ! 
 
 " We ! what do we see ? each a space 
 Of some few yards before His face ; 
 Does that the whole wide plan explain 
 Ah ! yet consider it again ! 
 
 " Alas ! the great world goes its way, 
 And takes its truth from each new day ; 
 They do not quit, nor yet retain, 
 Far less consider it again ! " 
 
 Preached— St. Mary's, Oxford, January 28, 1872.
 
 VII; 
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 "The house that is to be builded for the Lord must be exceeding 
 magnifical." — 1 Chronicles xxii. 5. 
 
 This may be regarded as an utterance, not so much 
 prompted by any direct inspiration, as of the instinct of 
 the rehgious nature that is in man. Egyptians, Brah- 
 mins, Buddhists, Mahometans, as well as Jews and 
 Christians, have striven to give expression to it. The 
 most " magnifical " buildings in the world are those that 
 are or have been connected with religion — pagodas, 
 mosques, temples, minsters. You know to what extent 
 this spirit pervades the whole — or almost the whole — 
 of the Old Testament Scriptures. You remember the 
 story of the tabernacle, which two men of constructive 
 genius were specially inspired to build, and which 
 women, skilled in various kinds of needlework and 
 embroidery combined to adorn. You remember the 
 splendours of that Temple which the Great King, in 
 all his pride of wealth and empire, erected upon Mount 
 Moriah. You remember how the poor and feeble remnant 
 returning from their Babylonish captivity did their 
 
 G 2
 
 84 UN1^^RS[TY SERMONS. 
 
 best to restore those splendours, and how the conscious- 
 ness of inability to rival the glories of the first house 
 drew tears from their eyes as they laid the foundations 
 of the second. You remember Herod's costly expendi- 
 ture of time and money on what was regarded not only 
 as the holiest, but the grandest of their national monu- 
 ments, by which he hoped to reconcile his reluctant 
 subjects to his rule. 
 
 There was indeed one period — and, so far as I know, 
 only one — in the religious history of the Jewish nation, 
 a period not of lapse into idolatry, but of a decayed, an 
 alniost dead faith — when the instinct of which I have 
 spoken seemed as though it had expired, and when a 
 prophet was specially sent to revive it. I refer to the age 
 of the prophet Malachi, when men who professed to be 
 seeking God and desirous to serve Him, offered polluted 
 bread upon His altars, and theblind and the lame and the 
 sick for sacrifice ; and though they knew that the satrap 
 of an earthly monarch would have spurned such gifts, 
 expected, or pretended to expect, that He who was " a 
 Great King," and whose " Name was dreadful among 
 the heathen," would have pleasure in them and accept 
 these offerings at their hand. (Malachi i. 6-14.) 
 
 I may be told that Christianity has changed all 
 this, and has made a sanctuary for the Lord of Hosts 
 in the hearts of men, and that the conception of God 
 dwelling any longer, if indeed He ever did dwell, in 
 temples made with hands, is alien from the genius of 
 the better covenant established on better promises. (See 
 Heb. ix.-x.) This view is perhaps true in part, but not 
 wliollv. Doubtless it matters not now — as Christ told
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 85 
 
 the woman with whom He beld converse at Jacob's 
 well — where we worship, whether on Gerizim or Moriah. 
 A Catholic Church has taken the place of a localised 
 religion. A high spiritual worship, of which every act 
 is, or ought to be, significant, has liberated the human 
 heart from bondage to the weak and beggarly elements 
 of a ceremonial law. But still the first preachers of the 
 Gospel seem to have never missed a chance, if I may 
 say so, of inspiring those who listened to their message 
 with a sense of that awe and reverence which certainly 
 must always be in place when such a being as man 
 falls down in worship before such a Being as God. 
 Those glorious visions with which the Book of the 
 Revelation of St. John the Divine is filled from end to 
 end, certaialy appeal more or less to the sensuous 
 imagination, to that aesthetic faculty of the soul which 
 feels elevated — and not only elevated but purified — 
 by what is graceful, beautiful, solemn, stately, grand. 
 
 The first Christians — those of whom we read in 
 the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of St. 
 Paul — with their surrounding difficulties of poverty or 
 persecution, could not do much of a material kind to 
 express this sense of divine awe. " Not many noble, 
 not many great, not many rich were called " then. The 
 Apostles did not teach — they were not so preposterous as 
 to try and teach — their converts to set to work to build 
 cathedrals, to raise solid towers on every hill side, or 
 soaring spires on every plain, or humbler, but still 
 graceful and picturesque churches in every nestling 
 village. There is a time, says the wise mao, " for every 
 purpose under heaven " (Eccles. iii. 1) : and the time
 
 86 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 for building stately minsters and cathedrals had not yet 
 come. But those who preached the Gospel then with 
 mighty signs and wonders, and demonstrations of the 
 Spirit and of power, did try to impregnate the minds 
 of believers with a sense of awe, without which our 
 approaches to God in worship can hardly be otherwise 
 than profane. (See Heb. xii. 18-29.) 
 
 A time came, and that before long, for greater things, 
 and for a display of the majesty of external ritual to the 
 eyes of the world ; and the religious instincts of the heart, 
 1 laving first found satisfaction of their yearnings within, 
 craved also an opportunity of expressing that satisfaction, 
 in outward form. And as in Richard Hooker's Avords 
 " Solemn duties of public service to be done unto 
 God, must have their places set apart and prepared 
 in such sort as beseemeth actions of that regard." 
 Men felt with David that the house they built 
 for God should be exceeding magnifical ; and the 
 basilicas of imperial days and the cathedrals of the 
 middle ages sprang from the same heart's desire that 
 poured itself out in so lavish an expenditure of costly 
 material and artistic skill on the plateau of Mount 
 Moriah. (See Hooker's Ecd. Pol. book v. ch. xi.) 
 
 The instinct — for, from its universality and uniformity, 
 it would seem to have been an instinct rather than a 
 mere formal or conscious effort of the mind — founded 
 itself upon, or else was accompanied by, many ideas ; 
 but one was paramount, and that was the idea of a 
 noble and (so far as human resources could make it) a 
 commensurate worship of Almighty God : that nothing 
 should be wanting to help the worshippers to feel that
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 87 
 
 the service rendered to God is and ought to be the 
 highest of all earthly services. Even materials, base 
 in themselves, like wood and stone, when built (so to 
 speak) ujDon that one foundation which God had laid — 
 consecrated as instruments in the diffusion of the 
 Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ — acquired from that 
 use a sort of sanctity, and stood as it were on holy 
 ground. 
 
 The main idea — I have said — in the minds of the 
 founders of our cathedrals, seems to have been the 
 desire to exhibit in their services the highest and most 
 perfect pattern of Christian worship. They wished to 
 unite in one great purpose all that was at once most 
 grand and graceful in architecture, most sublime and 
 elevating in music, most solemn and reverent in ritual, 
 most grave and touching in language. Beneath the 
 vaulted roof of one of our old English minsters, typical 
 in its very structure and ground-plan of the Cross of 
 Christ, with its solid towers standing for half a thousand 
 years firm and immutable, like the Church's creed ; or 
 its tall tapering spire soaring, as the soul would fain 
 soar, into the calm blue etlier which fancy dreams to 
 be the dwelling-place of the Most High ; with mellow 
 light streaminof across the inlaid marble floor : — 
 
 " From many a storied window 
 In richest colours dight ; " 
 
 while the swelling organ and clear-voiced harmonious 
 choir ring out triumphantly that glorious anthem which, 
 if anything earthly can be, must be the echo of angels' 
 songs in heaven — "Hallelujah ! for the Lord God omni- 
 potent reigneth ; " — or again, when priests and people,
 
 88 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Avith measured voice and low, with bended knees and 
 faces buried in the hands, as if to shut out for one brief 
 half-hour the disturbinsr thoughts of an evil world, 
 beseech the good Lord " by the memory of His agony 
 and Bloody Sweat, His Cross and Passion, His Burial, 
 His Resurrection, His Ascension, to deliver them ; " 
 one has felt, when the heart has been rightly attuned, 
 as it is seldom permitted to sinful man to feel in a 
 sinful world, in a passionate ecstasy, or else in a deep 
 solemn thrill of spiritual worship ; almost liise Paul, as 
 though "caught up to the third heaven;" almost as 
 able, though but for a moment, to realise what it 
 must be to stand, like Gabriel, in the presence of 
 God. 
 
 It is a natural, and when kept within bounds, a 
 legitimate desire of the human heart, when it has been 
 once touched by religious influences, to yearn after an 
 elevated and beautiful type of worship. The tendency of 
 a utilitarian ac^e is to lose to a great extent the feel- 
 ing — indeed almost the concejdion of worship — as, for 
 instance, David conceived it. It is true we have not 
 altogether " forsaken the assembling of ourselves to- 
 gether," but the motive by which we are influenced is 
 too often the attraction of a popular preacher, or an 
 elaborate and gorgeous ritual, or a highly- finished 
 musical service, rather than any desire to realise, in the 
 truest sense and highest measure, the blessedness of 
 comnmnion with God. The sentiment which prompted 
 the 68th Psalm, written, as is probable, for the cere- 
 monial of removing the ark from the house of Obed- 
 Edom to the place which David had prepared for it in 
 
 I
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEITl USE AND ABUSE. 89 
 
 Zion, would be unintelligible to many modern fashion- 
 able cons^reffations. 
 
 Men perhaps will ask — nay, they do ask — the ques- 
 tion : "How can you justify the vast expense of 
 rebuilding or restoiing those old cathedrals, which 
 perhaps had their purpose in their day, but which 
 you, when you have restored them, will certainly be 
 unable to put to any adequate use ? " Some eight- 
 teen months ago I attended a large meeting at Liver- 
 pool, held for the purpose of increasing the funds 
 required for the restoration of this cathedral, and there 
 I heard an elaborate justification of the large expendi- 
 ture that has been incurred in the work, from the lips 
 of a nobleman whose words always sink deep into the 
 minds of those who listen to him, on the ground that 
 the cathedrals of England are great historical monu- 
 ments, linking the present with the past, which we, the 
 generation who have received them, are bound to main- 
 tain. I think we ought to recognise this obligation, 
 and it is an argument which may be fairly urged, by 
 those who are engaged in such an enterprise as yours, 
 in reply to the captious question which measures every- 
 thing merely by the commercial standard of value, and 
 asks " To what purpose is this (seeming) waste ? " And 
 even upon utilitarian principles — at least upon the 
 jjrinciples of a generous and elevated utilitarianism — 
 we cannot afford to part with one single evidence of 
 a high and rightly-directed public spirit. The poet 
 Horace marked it as a token of degeneracy in his age 
 that his countrymen were lavishing all their wealth 
 upon personal and selfish objects — their villas, their
 
 90 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 porticoes, their gardens : and we should regard it, and 
 justly, as a proof that the heart of England was strangely 
 changed for the worse, if, spending as we do, untold 
 sums of money on our ' cieled houses,' we suifered our 
 cathedrals — the memorials of the piety and patriotism 
 of our forefathers — to lie waste. 
 
 But, I confess, I regard our cathedrals from another 
 point of view than merely as so many national monu- 
 ments. We may not be able to apply them to all the 
 purposes contemplated by their original founders, but 
 we can at least develop in them, as nowhere else 
 besides, the highest and grandest form of worship, 
 according to the sober and reverent mind of the Church 
 of England. It cannot be said that, as a rule, in 
 Church of England congregations the error is on the 
 side of excessive ceremonialism. The movement in 
 the direction of ritual development, which has assumed 
 in some few instances extravagant and fantastic and 
 even superstitious shapes, has been based partly, no 
 doubt, on a desir3 to exhibit certain aspects of 
 Christian doctrine ; but quite as much perhaps upon a 
 reaction from the slovenliness and irreverence of that 
 listless form of service wliich seems sufficient to satisfy 
 the spiritual yearnings of genteel and fashionable piety. 
 We need, not fewer, but more types and patterns of 
 that fervent yet chastened spirit of devotion which 
 harmonises so well with the true spirit of the Church 
 of England, and wathout which her glorious, inimitable 
 Liturgy becomes the dreariest and most unedifying of 
 forms. Any one who has seen those vast congregations 
 gathered into the nave of Westminster Abbey or beneath
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIR USE AND ABUSK 91 
 
 the dome of St, Paul's Cathedral, must allow that in our 
 cathedrals we have an opportunity, if only we will use 
 it, of exercising that " gift of prophecy " to which St. 
 Paul attributes so potent an influence both on those 
 who believe not and on those who believe. (1 Cor. 
 xiii. 2, xiv. 22 — 25.) At the same time, I entirely feel 
 — and I do not wish you to forget, and therefore I do 
 not pass it by without notice — that we may add to the 
 j)omp and external solemnity of religion, without 
 thereby proportionately increasing its power. I take 
 it that there can be no contrast so hateful in the eyes 
 of Almighty God as that of a magnificent temple, such 
 as the one in which we are now assembled, filled with 
 worshippers " of the earth, earthy " — " having the form 
 of godliness without the power." Christ's one act of 
 severity was to drive out of the courts of the temple, 
 with a scourge of knotted cords, those who, by their 
 godless trafficking, carried on under pretext of re- 
 ligion, had made God's House of Prayer "a den of 
 thieves." 
 
 But these grand cathedrals teach, moreover — or if 
 they do not directly teach, they indirectly remind us 
 of — some great moral, I may even call them some great 
 national, lessons. They teach us a lesson which, in our 
 pride of science and in our pride of strength, we have 
 much need to learn. We of this nineteenth century 
 are not in all respects better than our fathers, nor 
 wiser. In some respects, it is obvious, we have more 
 light, greater power, wider opportunities, larger capacity; 
 but in many other respects we are but copyists, and 
 copyists at a humble distance, of those who have gone
 
 92 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 before us. We could hardly biiild nowadays one of 
 these cathedrals ; nor, if we could find the money, could 
 we perhaps find the a.rchitect to design Westminster 
 Abbey, or Lincoln M luster, or Salisbury spire. And 
 even the money, the lowest of all the elements contri- 
 buting to the result, we should not find it very easy to 
 raise. We have not got the faith, perhaps we have not 
 got the piety ; certainly we have not got the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice. We boast of our far-sightedness, of our 
 advance upon the knowledge and resources of the ages 
 that are gone by ; and we forget sometimes that we are 
 but as children carried on the shoulders of a giant, and 
 on that account alone are able to see a little further 
 than our ancestors. 
 
 And yet another lesson may be learned from our 
 cathedrals. A popular and influential writer complains 
 that the civilisation of England is sadly lacking in the 
 elements of '"' light and sweetness," But life, human 
 life, needs something more than " light and sweetness " : 
 needs breadth, spaciousness, grandeur, elevation. We do 
 not want merely to bask in the sun and eat sugar plums, 
 like children on a hoHday. What we need to have 
 ever before us is a noble aim, an inspiring motive, a 
 w^orthy end : and of all these we find a type in the 
 cathedral. 
 
 I wish you working men — if, as I was led to expect, 
 this congregation is composed mainly of working men 
 — I wish you knew Greek. I would try to make you 
 understand the full force of those words of St. Paul, 
 who, in writing to the Christians of Philippi, tells them 
 that if they saw " anything true, anything honest " — the
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIH USE AND ABUSE. 93 
 
 Greek word is aefjLvd, and should have been translated 
 grand, majestic, stately — " anything just, anything pure, 
 anything of good report" — rather, perhaps, any thing with 
 that indefinable character of solemnity about it which 
 casts a corresponding influence over the soul — they 
 should " think of these things." (Philip, iv. 8.) Putting 
 aside for the moment the idea of justice, all those other 
 ideas — truth, grandeur, purity, loveliness, and the awful- 
 ness that hushes the soul — all these are found in our 
 great cathedrals. They are, or ought to be, to us as a 
 type of true nobility of life. If you that I see before 
 me are indeed working men, there must be a contrast 
 obvious to your eyes, my friends, between this grand 
 and lofty and well-proportioned cathedral and your own 
 home — perhaps a home in a dark and cheerless court, 
 where the sun hardly ever shines, where sweet sounds 
 are seldom heard, where you can scarcely find a place 
 to rest and seek quiet communion with God. Well, 
 even that contrast, sharp and painful as it is, is typical ; 
 for it portrays the contrast between this life and the 
 next. Yes, friends, there will be a change when the 
 lowest of the sons of toil shall shake off his earthly 
 tabernacle, and all the earth liness that has adhered to 
 it, and shall be clothed upon with that new house pre- 
 pared for him of God, " eternal in the heavens." The 
 change we look for — the clearness of vision promised to 
 us — the rest after labour, the Sabbath-keeping, as the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls it (iv. 9) — 
 the glory — the life of the world to come, all stand in 
 the same startling contrast to the life that you and I 
 and all of us are spending now.
 
 94 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 I admit that cathedrals have been desecrated. Go 
 where you will — I do not know the traditions of this 
 cathedral — but go to Lichfield, to Bristol, to Exeter, 
 and you shall hear tales told you by the verger who 
 takes you round to show you the sights of his cathedral, 
 of the doings of Cromwell and his troopers, or other 
 iconoclasts of that fanatical time, how they dashed the 
 statues from their niches, how they broke into frag- 
 ments the stained windows, how they mutilated the 
 curiously-carved stalls or screens, how they stabled 
 their horses in the cloisters. No doubt those men, 
 filled with a wild, unreasoning piety — for though they 
 did profane acts, they were not at heart profane men — 
 did do such things : but, in my judgment, there have 
 been worse desecrations than ever were perpetrated by 
 Cromwell and his soldiery. Cathedrals have been 
 desecrated by those who, having received them as an 
 inheritance, wasted that inheritance ; those who dozed 
 out sleepy useless lives under the very shadow of 
 influences which should have had a tendency to inspire 
 every action with a noble motive ; those who built a 
 fortune or founded a family out of what was intrusted 
 to them for far other than personal or selfish ends ; 
 those who made the very name of a cathedral a 
 synonym for formalism and spiritual death. Happily 
 for us, before it was too late, a higher sense of duty has 
 taken possession of the nation now. Acts that were 
 tolerated, if not applauded, fifty years since, would be 
 impossible to-day. Not only are cathedrals being 
 restored on every side, and there is hardly a cathedral 
 city in England where you will not find that much has
 
 CATHEDRALS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 95 
 
 been done, or is being done, of the same kind as that 
 ■which you are doing here — not only, I say, are cathedrals 
 being restored by the patriotic spirit of a generous 
 people, but deans and chapters are awakening, or have 
 awoke, to a sense of the use of them. 
 
 We cannot afford to spare these purifying, ennobling 
 and (in a secondary sense) sanctifying influences. We 
 must not let cathedrals just yet pass into the rank of 
 " national monuments," like Stonehenge ; and become 
 the objects of a mere historical interest or antiquarian 
 curiosity. We have a use for them — a need of them. 
 We have a right to make a complaint of that scepticism 
 — too often atheism in disguise — which, under the 
 pretence of exalting human nature, really degrades it 
 by making man, with his heavy downward -gravitating 
 tendencies, the measure of all things. When Paul tells 
 Christian people to think on things grand and pure, 
 which attract love and produce a solemn hush in the 
 soul, no doubt he meant them to take into their field 
 of vision the best samples of humanity in their fellow- 
 men ; but the scepticism of the day refuses to recognise 
 anything higher than man. It will not do, my friends. 
 It will not be enough to keep man even at his present 
 level. He is sure to sink if no higher type is set before 
 him than himself. 
 
 There are theories floating abroad about mankind 
 having been developed from the lowest form of savagery ; 
 and there are speculators who would persuade us that 
 human nature, having reached its present stage of 
 perfection, can never retrograde. I do not feel so sure 
 of this impossibility. To me the most frightful symptom
 
 9(5 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of the times is the savageiy that can be seen existing in 
 the midst of our boasted civilisation. I do not know 
 whether it be so in Chester, but in most great towns 
 and in many country villages, you will find savages as 
 wild and brutal, and in their conduct to their wives and 
 children as little under the discipline of self-control — 
 and that without the same excuse — as those South Sea 
 Islanders who martyred Bishop Patteson. 
 
 Another thing sometimes moves me with alarm. It 
 is the dread of lapsing into a glittering, but yet jiagan, 
 barbaric imperialism like that of Rome when, as one 
 satirist of manners tells us, the rich thought happiness 
 consisted in keeping yachts and driving four-in-hand, 
 and the poor, as another adds, cared only for their 
 victuals and the theatres. There is some peril lest, 
 with wealth increasing so rapidly in every class of 
 society without the accompaniment of a capacity to 
 spend it upon proper objects and in a right way, we 
 should relapse into types of life like these. We want 
 Christ in the influence of His high example — Christ in 
 the lofty motives of His religion — Christ in the power of 
 His Spirit — we want Christ " to deliver us from the 
 bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God." We want Christ to save us, not only 
 from the devil, hut from ourselves. 
 
 Preached — At re-opening of Cliester Cathedral, January 30, 1872
 
 VIII. 
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 
 
 " In which are some things hard to be understood." — 
 2 Peter iii. 16. 
 
 If it has pleased Almighty God to make a revelation, 
 a partial unveiling or manifestation, of Himself to 
 man ; it is not an unreasonable nor an impossible 
 hypothesis that the disclosu^'e should still be incom- 
 plete ; or if not incomplete, in many of its parts at 
 least incomprehensible and mysterious. Even those 
 whom we believe to have been the instruments and 
 media of the revelation, felt that the God who was 
 thus making Himself known was still a God who " hid 
 Himself" from their yearning gaze ; that His judgments 
 were unsearchable, His ways past finding out ; that 
 they knew in part, and prophesied in part; and their 
 spirits inquired and searched diligently into the time, 
 and method, and scope of that divine plan of salvation 
 which they were commissioned, and felt themselves 
 inspired, to proclaim. " The mystery of godliness," 
 file manifes'tation of God, whether in the flesh or 
 otherwise, the justification of His ways, whether 
 
 H
 
 98 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 spiritually or in what is called the -" light of nature," 
 the visions of Him whether by angels or by men, the 
 preaching of Him whether to Jews or Gentiles, to 
 wise or unwise, the measure both of belief and unbelief 
 Avith which He has been received in the world, the 
 final issue of the mighty purpose in that great harvest 
 of souls of which the reception of Jesus Christ into 
 glory is (so to speak) the first fruits ; all these features 
 of the dispensation under which we live are, and must 
 be (as Paul felt them to be) under our present condi- 
 tions of intelligence, a mystery, great, profound, un- 
 fathomable. And the higher we rise in the scale of 
 knowledge, the more strongly we feel the limitations 
 which the very nature of the phenomena with which 
 we are dealing, imposes upon our desire to pass from 
 the field of doubt, or gloom, into the realms of light and 
 certainty. The philosopher is more conscious of his 
 ignorance than the peasant of his. The highest minds 
 are also the lowliest. " I seem like a child," said 
 Newton, " playing on the sea-shore, and picking up a 
 fair pebble here and there, while the great ocean 
 of truth lies all undiscovered before me." " Nature 
 is only conquered," said Lord Bacon, "by obedience," 
 {Natura parendo vincitur). 
 
 It would be unphilosuphical to postulate, or suggest, 
 a revelation in those departments of human knowledge 
 in which man's natural faculties are adequate to the 
 task of invention or discovery. And yet so little do 
 we know of what the actual method or moment of 
 revelation has been or could be, so imperfectly can we 
 understand the state of that mind into which a fiood
 
 I 
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 99 
 
 of supernatural light has been suddenly poured, — 
 Moses' on Sinai, Elijah's at Horeb, Isaiah's when he 
 saw the Lord sitting upon the throne, Jeremiah's when 
 he felt a word burning within him as a fire, Peter's 
 on the tanner's house-top, Paul's when caught up into 
 the third heaven, — so sudden, too, and unaccountable, 
 so little the conscious and apparent result of previous 
 processes, even in the field of philosophical or scientific 
 inquiry, have sometimes been discoveries pregnant 
 with mightiest consequences, — as, for instance, the 
 seeming accident out of which the mind of Newton 
 evolved the great law of gravitation, — that it would 
 not be very easy, nor very safe, to limit the sphere 
 within which God vouchsafes to aid and quicken the 
 faculties of man, nor to determine with any positive- 
 ness or precision what are the fields of knowledge in 
 which the unassisted reason — the " dry light " of the 
 human intellect — is supreme. 
 
 Still, speaking generally and popularly, man has 
 discovered, or thinks he has discovered, slowly, 
 gradually, precariously, but in the strength of his own 
 intellectual resources, his relation to the outer world, 
 and his relations to his fellow-men; the great laws 
 which govern the physical universe of which he forms 
 a part, the laws also by which society is "governed, and 
 .by which civil and moral life become possible. " What- 
 soever ye would that men should do to you do ye 
 even so to them," may be the summary of a revealed 
 law and of inspired prophets, and certainly has the 
 sanction of the Divine Teacher Whom, in fulness of 
 times, the Father sent into the world — but it had 
 
 H 2
 
 100 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 already been delivered among the precepts of Con- 
 fucius, and is to be found, almost in the same words, 
 among the moral aphorisms collected by Isocrates. It 
 -would ordinarily, therefore, be called a principle which 
 the human intellect could develop without supernatural 
 aid, and the fact that it is to be found among the 
 precepts of the Gospel vindicates for it a divine 
 sanction, rather than a supernatural origin. 
 
 But the relations of man to God, the religious and 
 theological ideas which have exercised so mighty an 
 influence upon the moral and social development of the 
 race, — in spite of M. Comte, who regards them as a 
 necessary condition of a certain immature stage of the 
 human intellect, and of SI. Taine, who considers them 
 to be the product of two forces, the spirit of poetry and 
 the spirit of credulity, working together, — can hardly 
 with propriety, or with truth, be classed among 'human 
 discoveries or treated as the result of human reasoning. 
 In common parlance, I am aware, we talk of " natural 
 religion " ; and great arguments have been constructed 
 upon its asserted principles : as, e.g. the argument 
 from general consent ; the argument from design ; and 
 the a priori class of arguments which postulate the 
 idea of God as the necessary basis of correlative ideas 
 assumed to be necessary and innate in the human 
 mind ; but of these, the argument from the general 
 consent of mankind points rather to one common 
 original, and probably supernatural source, than to an 
 aggregate result of many independent concurrent 
 inquiries ; while the argument from design, though in 
 my judgment unfairly discredited by some who now are 
 
 I
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 101 
 
 leaders in the field of philosophical inquiry, has been 
 seriously impugned ; and we must all, I should think, 
 feel that the argument, as conducted by Samuel Clarke, 
 from d priori or metaphysical considerations, is alto- 
 gether wanting in the element of cogency, and indeed 
 fails to be generally comprehensible. " Canst thou by 
 searching," — was Zophar the Naamathite's question of 
 the patriarch Job, — " Canst thou by searching find 
 out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty unto per- 
 fection ? It is as high as heaven ; what canst thou 
 do ? deeper than Hades ; what canst thou know ? " 
 (Job xi. 7, 8.) 
 
 It is true that the evidences of natural religion (so 
 called) are appealed to by St. Paul in two famous argu- 
 ments. In his address to the heathen Lycaonians, sunk 
 in the degradation of an anthropomorphic polytheism, 
 he appeals to the rain from heaven and the fruitful sea- 
 sons, witnessing to the beneficence of the living God 
 who had made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all 
 things that are therein (Acts xiv. 15 — 17). In the 
 terrible picture that he paints in Romans i. of the gross 
 vices and degrading Atheism of the heathen world, 
 which the Gospel of God wa,s about to make a final effort 
 to purify, the inexcusableness of all this ungodliness 
 and unrighteousness is traced back to the fact that the 
 invisible things of the Creator could be clearly discerned 
 by the eye of the mind from the things that are made — 
 even His Eternal Power and Godhead. And yet, in 
 both these instances, the evidences of religion from the 
 phenomena of nature are alleged, not so much as 
 original or independent sources of truth, as (rather)
 
 102 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 collateral and subsidiary supports to ideas or convictions 
 already in the mind — dormant perhaps, in the case of 
 the Lycaonians, but only needing the utterance of some 
 living voice to quicken them into the energy of an opera- 
 tive faith. And indeed from the natural argument in 
 Acts xiv. 17, if it stood alone, an erroneous and even 
 mischievous inference might be drawn. For the good- 
 ness and benevolence of God might be supposed to be, 
 not only as the Psalmist felt, " enduring yet daily " and 
 spread " over all His works," but indiscriminating in 
 the moral as well as in the material world ; not only 
 " making the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
 sending rain on the just and on the unjust," but reward- 
 ing with equal measure, and AviLh equal indifference, 
 obedience and disobedience, those who resist, and those 
 who love to do, His will. 
 
 And there is one terrible burden which men have to 
 bear in the world, to which the knowledge of God's 
 Eternal Power and Deity would by no means be an 
 adequate counterpoise. I refer to the burden of the 
 consciousness of sin. No phantom of a distempered 
 imagination, brooding unhealthily upon its own. disease ; 
 no figment invented by priests to bring the human con- 
 science into bondage to their spells and charms ; but a 
 real and terrible burden, so real that we most feel its 
 crushing force just when we lie most helpless under it — 
 so terrible, that in such awful moments, when the soul 
 comprehends the reality of what it had so long tried to 
 represent to itself as a dream, the thought of God's 
 power only adds intensity to its dreadfulness — would 
 only plunge the conscience-stricken wretch into deeper
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. lOS" 
 
 depths of uttermost despair. And it is this con- 
 sciousness of the presence of sin, coupled with the 
 apprehension of its consequences, that makes us feel the 
 necessity — or at least the need — of some authoritative 
 revelation of the character of God, which shall harmo- 
 nise all His attributes in such a way that our conscience 
 may be satisfied that " mercy and truth are met together ; 
 righteousness and peace have kissed each other." " O 
 wretched man that I am," cries Paul, after that terrible 
 process of self-introspection, in the course of which he 
 had discovered " a law in his members warring against 
 the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to 
 the law of sin which was in his members : " a law so 
 mighty in its force that the good he would he could not 
 do, the evil which he would not, he seemed to be doing 
 continually. " O wretched man that I am ! " cries the 
 helpless, the almost despairing one, '"who shall deliver 
 me fi'om the body of this death ? " "I thank God !" 
 he adds, as a brighter, better light dawns upon his 
 soul, " I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 It was the revelation of " there being no condemnation to 
 them which are in Christ, who walk not after the flesh, 
 but after the spirit " — " the revelation of the law of the 
 Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus " which freed him from 
 this crushing burden of the law of sin and death. In 
 the midst of the sorrows which he had in his heart, 
 God's comforts refreshed his soul. When the conscience 
 has woke up suddenly, like David's, from the delirious 
 dream in which some Siren-hand has steeped it, to a 
 sense of its guilt — to a sense, too, of how far that guilt 
 of ours may have compromised others now beyond our
 
 104 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 reach or beyond our influence, possibly beyond the 
 reach or influence of any one — and to the further con- 
 sciousness that not one jot or tittle of all that has been 
 done can be undone ; when the bitter shameful con- 
 fession has been wrung from the lips, " I have sinned 
 against the Lord ; against Him, Him only, have I done 
 this evil, and that too in His sight," it needs the pre- 
 sence of a prophet, of some one commissioned to speak 
 to us in the name of God, at least of some voice Avhich 
 seems to eome down from heaven, to make us feel 
 that yet it is possible for the Lord to put away our 
 sin, by a plenary act of pardon ; effectively, entirely, 
 once for all. 
 
 The method of this reconciliation, the conditions of 
 this forgiveness have been revealed ; are recorded in a 
 book which the whole Christian world, though with 
 perceptible variations in the meaning which is attached 
 to the phrase believes to be " inspired " ; — the Word or 
 Message of God ; the account which He has been 
 pleased to give of Himself, the Creator, in relation to 
 us, the creatures of His hand. The Epistles to the 
 Eomans and to the Hebrews are full to the brim of the 
 high argument. The mysteries which it contains are 
 deep, unsearchable. The very terms in which the 
 doctrine is theologically conveyed are terms, familiar to 
 us all as phrases, familiar to us also, alas ! as the battle- 
 cries of parties ; terms which have exercised the wit of 
 man for centuries, but of which the precise meaning is 
 unsettled still. Need I remind you of all the strife, 
 and controversy, and word-war that have gathered round 
 the doctrine of atonement, the theory of justification,
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 105 
 
 the mystery of the new birth, the everlasting sentence 
 of God's predestination, the possibility of falling from 
 grace, the certainty of salvation, the full assurance of 
 faith, the eternity of punishment. In all, are " many 
 things hard to be understood." In all there are what 
 St. Paul calls alvLy/naTa — puzzles, riddles, hard sayings, 
 paradoxes. In this searching of the spirit into the deep 
 things of God, as in all venturous voyages, no small 
 peril has to be encountered. " So convinced am I," 
 said a thoughtful and religious-miaded woman, pre- 
 cluded by sickness from the activities of life, and much 
 given in consequence to speculation in this field, "so 
 convinced am I that it is impossible to be well with 
 such things always in one's head, that I would abandon 
 these studies if I could, and plunge into active life, 
 satisfied to do my duty as w^ell as I could, and leave the 
 rest to God's mercy. But, in utter loneliness, the mind 
 turns inwards to search into its own nature and pros- 
 pects, and this research shakes the mortal case shrewdly. 
 Few can comprehend this ; and I, who feel it, can hardly 
 describe ; but I certainly feel that those who eat largely 
 of the tree of knowledge will surely die, and that soon." — 
 (Letters of Miss Corn wa His.) 
 
 Happily for mankind, God, when He manifested 
 Himself to the world in the Person of His Son, hid 
 these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed 
 them unto babes. The doors of the kingdom of heaven 
 were easiest found by those that felt most their need of 
 entrance there ; by publicans and harlots sooner than 
 by learned scribes, or proud contemptuous Pharisees. 
 " JSfon in diakcticd complacuit Deo" says old St.
 
 106 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Ambrose, " sahum facere populum suum." " Not by 
 dialectic — by logical processes — was it God's good 
 pleasure to make his people whole." " They that would 
 do the will should know the doctrine." The word 
 was spoken as men were able to hear it. Sometimes 
 in sweet, attractive illustration drawn from the 
 homeliest concerns of life ; sometimes in brief, pregnant 
 dogmas ; sometimes in simple, intelligible precepts ; 
 sometimes in eloquent action ; sometimes in silent 
 suffering. And the simpler the act or the words, the 
 fuller they seem to be of strength, and comfort, and 
 satisfaction. From the sight of Jesus going about doing 
 good, " and healing every one that was oppressed of the 
 devil " ; from the first showing-forth of glory at the 
 marriage feast at Cana ; from the raising up to life of 
 the widow's only son, and the restoring him to his 
 mother ; from the staunching of the issue of blood in 
 her who came timidly behind Him in the crowd, and 
 touched but the hem of His garment ; from the hand 
 held out to Peter as his heart failed him amid the 
 waves ; from the tears shed at the grave of Lazarus ; 
 from the ministrations of menial service in the upper 
 chamber of Jerusalem ; we learn something of the 
 nature and the purpose of that great redemption, whose 
 highest mystery was transacted, whose bitterest suffer- 
 ings were borne, I know not whether in Gethsemane or 
 on Calvary. From simple, emphatic utterances, " Behold 
 the Lamb of God, that beareth the sin of the world " — 
 " God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten 
 Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish 
 but have everlasting life " — " This is life eternal, to
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 107 
 
 know Thee the only true God, — and Jesus Christ Whom 
 Thou hast sent " — " The Son of Man is come to seek 
 and save that which was lost " — " The blood of Jesus 
 Christ cleanseth from all sin " — " The grace of God 
 which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men " — 
 from these and a thousand like utterances, which as you 
 all know are the very symbols of the Gospel, there 
 beams forth a clearness and a force of truth for which 
 you will search in vain in " Institutes," and " Canons," 
 and " Confessions," and " Articles," and abstract 
 treatises of theology. These have their use in teaching 
 Christianity as a system ; but not in applying it 
 remedially to human needs, as a power. And " the 
 kingdom of God," cries Paul, " is not in word " — in a 
 logically developed system, "but in power." 
 
 I would exhort you, in this day of confessed peril 
 not only to Christian faith ; to belief in a revelation 
 having come from God and in a kingdom of grrace being 
 set up upon this earth by God : but of peril also, 
 flowing from this unbelief or misbelief, to those high 
 social and moral interests whicb involve all that is 
 most precious in the life botb, of the individual and of 
 the community, I would exhort you to build your faith 
 on these simple dogmas ; to frame your lives according 
 to these simple rules. 
 
 The very principle of faith — and with it, I venture 
 to think, the only sure and permanent guarantee of 
 holiness — is imperilled from two opposite sides : from 
 the dogmatisers who call upon, ug to receive, as truths, 
 propositions from which sometimes our conscience, 
 sometimes our reason, revolts ; and from the men of
 
 108 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 science who bid us, as a duty we owe to truth, give up 
 everything that the reason cannot explain. Both parties 
 make upon us what I cannot but consider unreasonable 
 demands. There are mysteries in science, as well as 
 mysteries in faith : and if philosophers are not disloyal 
 to science by accepting a " working hypothesis," which 
 they cannot fully prove, but which explains phenomena 
 sufficiently well for practical purposes, neither are we 
 disloyal to truth or false to our duty as reasonable 
 beings, for accepting as our hypothesis the principle of 
 faith — faith which can give a reason for itself in part, 
 though not wholly, and on which we think we can dare 
 " to work out our salvation, albeit in fear and trembling." 
 We believe ; we think we have some experience as a 
 ground for our belief that God is working with us ; and, 
 to borrow the words of a great and profound thinker, 
 " He who has willed that we should so act," upon 
 principles not absolutely indisputable, "co-operates with 
 us in our acting, and thereby be^ows on us a certitude 
 which rises hiofher than the logical force of our 
 conclusions." (Newman's Apologia, 324.) 
 
 But the perils from the side of ultra-dogmatism 
 are perhaps even greater than the perils from the 
 " oppositions of science falsely so called." Indeed, I 
 am misapplying the Apostle's phrase ; and the 
 yJreuBwvv/juoq yvooac'; of which he bids Timothy beware 
 is not honest, legitimate inquiry into the laws which 
 govern the physical world, but the daring or inane 
 speculations of a gnostic theology, puffed up by a 
 temper carnal rather than spiritual, and intruding into 
 things which it had not seen and could not pretend tfl
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 109 
 
 see. Under the specious names of Catholic dogma or 
 
 of infallible truth, weak minds are lured to accept 
 
 propositions about divine things which, if not simply 
 
 unmeaning, are utterly incredible, and which, when 
 
 examined, are not found to rest on any authoritative 
 
 or undoubted warrant of God's word, but upon the 
 
 precarious or over-subtle inferences of fallible man. 
 
 And when this is discovered, the inevitable law of 
 
 reaction comes into operation ; and those who have 
 
 believed most get to believe least, and the credulity of 
 
 the youth is replaced by the scepticism of the man. 
 
 " The simplicity that is in Christ," or as it would be 
 
 more correctly rendered, " the simplicity that is towards 
 
 Christ" — e'i? rov Xpiarov — was the mental quality that 
 
 St. Paul feared might get corrupted in the Corinthian 
 
 Christians. (2 Cor. xi. 3.) The eye singly fixed on 
 
 Christ as the centre of all our hopes, the source of all 
 
 our spiritual strength, is the condition of clearness of 
 
 vision in spiritual things. If you are lifting anything 
 
 else into the place which He alone should occupy, 
 
 whether it be the Sacraments, or the Church, or the 
 
 Priest, or even what you call " the faith," which means 
 
 your particular conception or formulation of truth, you 
 
 are in effect drawing a curtain more or less thick, of 
 
 more or fewer folds, between your soul and Him : and 
 
 even the thinnest, and most translucent veil will dim 
 
 somewhat of the glory of that countenance which is as 
 
 the Bun shining in his strength. No doubt we need 
 
 some veil. Our eyes are not yet trained to gaze upon 
 
 the fulness of that glory. But take heed how you 
 
 multiply veils. To take for an example the question
 
 110 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 that is so keenly agitated amongst us now, and which 
 has recently been brought into such special prominence, 
 and that is the only reason for my selecting it, there is 
 ground for apprehension, lest amid these subtle con- 
 troversies about the mode, and nature, and time, and 
 conditions of the Divine Presence in the Holy Eucharist, 
 the very object and purpose of that Presence should be 
 overlooked or thrown into the background; lest while we 
 are speculating about the virtue of the words and act 
 of consecration ; or are waiting for the elevation of the 
 chaHce or paten ; or are preparing ourselves for some 
 act of adoration of the Lord " present," as we phrase it, 
 " objectively under the form of bread and wine," we so 
 occupy ourselves with these uncertain and, at the best, 
 secondary things, as to neglect to ascertain what tokens 
 there are of the Presence there, where alone it can 
 possibly be of any benefit to ourselves — I mean in our 
 own souls. There is growing up amongst us, I fear, a 
 materialised conception of the presence of Christ in His 
 Sacrament which is as far below the spirituality of the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation, as received by intelligent 
 Romanists, as that is below the spirituality of St. Paul's 
 teaching that " the cup of blessing which we bless is 
 the communion of the blood of Christ ; the bread which 
 we break is the communion of the body of Christ." 
 There is, I repeat, a dainger of the thing signified being 
 utterly obscured and lost behind the veil of the signi- 
 fying form ; of the outward and visible sign hindering 
 instead of furthering the reception of the inward 
 spiritual grace. And the danger is not only the 
 danger that always springs from a superstition taking
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. Ill 
 
 the place of a spiritual or reasonable service ; but the 
 yet greater danger of the " form of godliness " making 
 men indifferent to, or careless of, " the power." A cere- 
 monial service has always had the effect of deadening 
 the conscience to the claims and obligations of the 
 moral law. King Saul needed to be told that " to obey 
 Was better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
 rams." In Isaiah's days men were offering their vain 
 oblations, filling the air with the fumes of their incense, 
 which was an "abomination ;" keeping their new moons 
 and sabbaths, which in the eyes of God was as it 
 were " iniquity," " while their hands were full of blood." 
 And another prophet had to teach those who were 
 offering " their firstborn for their transgression — the 
 fruit of the body for the sin of their soul " — what were 
 the first principles of commercial honesty, of consider- 
 ateness, and of fair dealing, and to remind them that 
 the primary duties which the Lord required of them 
 were "to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with their God." With all the outward show 
 of religion which surrounds us, I should like to be 
 assured that this interest in ceremonial is commensurate 
 with, and expressive of, a vital sense of religion's sancti- 
 fying, purifying power. If any of you that hear me are 
 merely, or mainly gratifying an aesthetic sentiment in 
 these matters, I may venture to tell you that you are 
 indulging in a very perilous amusement. 
 
 And with regard to points of faith or doctrine, it was 
 a memorable saying of Channing's that " men are respon- 
 sible for the ujjrightness of their opinions rather than for 
 their Tightness." The desire to be truthful at all hazards
 
 112 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 is a nobler temper than the mere desire to be what men 
 call " sound." The spirit of truthfulness is what Christ 
 tells us the Father seeks in those who worship Him. 
 There may be things hard to understand in the Pauline 
 Epistles, and in the other Scriptures ; but no one shall 
 miss their meaning utterly, still less wrest or twist them 
 to his own destruction, who seeks simply to know God's 
 will for the purpose of doing it. No doubt ignorance 
 and instability of character are serious hindrances in the 
 search after truth : but there can hardly be instability 
 where there is earnestness ; and the ignorance that 
 hinders is the ignorance of prejudice and self-suffi- 
 ciency and shallow knowledge, rather than the ignorance 
 which springs from the lack of cultivation or of educa- 
 tional opportunities. St. Paul had a strong conviction 
 that differences of opinion among earnest men would 
 ultimately be harmonised by the teaching of the Spirit 
 of God, and certainly ought not to break up Christian 
 unity. " Let us, therefore," he writes to the Philippians, 
 " as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if in any- 
 thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even 
 this unto you " (Philip, iii. 15). He has more con- 
 fidence in the power of truth to prevail by its own 
 weight, than those who would needs protect it by 
 damnatory clauses. He reserves weapons of this kind 
 for one class, and one class only : for an unbelief that 
 was moral rather than intellectual, and that believes 
 not the truth because it has pleasure in unrighteous- 
 ness. " If any one love not the Lord Jesus Christ let 
 him be anathema" (1 Cor. xvi., 22). He foresees the 
 prospects of heresies or sects springing up within the
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 113 
 
 bosom of the Church, not perhaps with satisfaction, but 
 at least with equanimity, " There must be also heresies 
 among you — Set <yap koL aipea€i<; iv v/xiv elvai — that 
 they which are approved may be made manifest among 
 you." He would not say, as some say nowadays, that 
 the existence of diversity in religious opinions was a 
 necessary condition of healthy and energetic religious 
 life in individuals and in churches ; he did not deny 
 that schisms, on the part of those who wantonly make 
 or cause them (but I beg you to remember that he who 
 makes the schism is not always he who causes it, and in 
 the lamentable schism of the last century, it is very 
 doubtful who should bear most of the blame, John 
 Wesley or the priests and bishops of the Church of 
 England) — I was saying, Paul did not deny that schisms 
 on the part of those who wantonly make or cause them, 
 were products of an un-Christian temper, tokens of a 
 carnal mind ; yet he admitted they might have a moral 
 purpose — Set yap elvat — and might be worked into the 
 foreordained issue of the Divine counsels, and even 
 accomplish their own cure or their own antidote, by 
 manifesting, and indeed helping to create, a higher 
 form of spiritual life in those who passed through this 
 trial of their faith not only unharmed, but purified. 
 For it must be remembered that the presence of diver- 
 gence in religious opinion — and even of unbelief — 
 amongst us, justly as it may be deprecated on other 
 grounds, does give opportunity for the culture and 
 exhibition of certain graces or virtues — and those not 
 of a secondary or trivial kind — in which Christians, 
 with conspicuous gifts of another order, have not un- 
 
 I
 
 114 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 frequently been found wanting. Fairness towards an 
 opponent — the charity that neither thinketh nor im- 
 puteth evil — a mind so evenly and so surely balanced 
 on the pivot of its own faith, as to be able to allow for 
 the effect of partial conceptions of truth in the minds 
 of others — power to discriminate between what is essen- 
 tial and what is accidental, what is vital in a system and 
 what does not touch its heart — abstinence from exas- 
 perating language — restraint of the odium theologicum — 
 the wisdom that knows when to resist and when to con- 
 cede — when to circumcise Timothy, when to refuse to 
 circumcise Titus, — these, and many more than these, 
 are graces which in minds fashioned in the likeness of 
 Christ's mind, are, it may be said, actually generated in 
 an atmosphere of controversy. 
 
 And, further, it must be admitted, that those who are 
 bound to uphold a particular system — especially if it be 
 a traditionary system, reverend with the hoar of anti- 
 quity — are, so far as the system cramps their freedom 
 of inquiry, less qualified to judge of truth with that 
 entire absence of bias or prepossession which the sub- 
 ject requires. " How legible the book of nature becomes 
 to me," said Goethe, " I cannot express to thee. My 
 long lessons in spelling have helped me, and now my 
 quiet joy is inexpressible. Much as I find that is new, 
 I find nothing unexpected : everything fits in, because 
 I have no system, and desire nothing but the pure 
 truth." " I had no right, I had no leave," says John 
 Henry Newman, in his Apologia, " to act against my 
 conscience. That was a higher rule than any argument 
 about the Notes of the Clmtrch " (p. 26). And on this
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 115 
 
 ground I think we must all feel, that while a certain 
 amount of agreement upon points of faith considered 
 fundamental — though even here a reasonable latitude 
 of opinion must be allowed, and the mind of a modern 
 interpreter must not dictate the sense in which the 
 terms of an ancient contract are to be understood by 
 the recipient, — while, then, a certain amount of agree- 
 ment upon so-called " fundamentals " is indispensable 
 to that unity which is the condition of organised life in 
 a Church, yet nothing is really gained, while much is 
 lost, by multiplying such points, and the creed or the 
 confession which avoids " curiosities of explication " (as 
 Jeremy Taylor calls them), is at once the surest safe- 
 guard of the cause of truth, and the truest friend to 
 honest consciences. Every one who knows the history 
 of Churches must be able to remember many points to 
 which they have formally committed themselves in 
 articles, or catechisms, or confessions, which have sub- 
 sequently, in the progress of opinion, proved dangerous 
 and well-nigh fatal, to that faith which they were meant 
 to sustain. Fabrics are weakened, not strengthened, by 
 accretions round the foundations. 
 
 And so, men and brethren, young and old, the things 
 to struggle for are not speculative opinions, which a 
 zeal not according to knowledge has unwisely tried to 
 raise to the rank of Catholic dogmas, but those truths — 
 few, simple, comprehensive,' — which you feel lie at the 
 root of your spiritual life. I think it was a remark of 
 Arnold's that only those heresies are condemned in 
 Scripture, which took their rise in a vicious conscience, 
 
 I 2
 
 116 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 and issued in profligacy of life; mere differences of 
 opinion are treated in another temper. 
 
 I have already reminded you how calmly Paul con- 
 templates the possibility of the Philippians being other- 
 wise minded to himself. He does so because he had 
 confidence in what Channing calls " the uprightness of 
 their opinions" — the clearness of their moral percep- 
 tions — their love of goodness and of truth. " Finally, 
 brethren," he writes, " whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are venerable, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely^ 
 whatsoever things are of good report — if there be any 
 virtue, if there be any praise — think of these things 
 • . . . and the God of Peace shall be with you " 
 (Philippians iv. 8). And amid all the fluctuations of 
 opinion the soul may surely rest, without disquietude, 
 on the great central truth of the unchangeableness of 
 God. He sitteth above these waterfloods, and He re- 
 maineth a King for ever. " The Kingdom of God," 
 cries Paul, weary of disputes about ceremonial observ- 
 ances, " is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and 
 peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." There may be 
 some things in those Scriptures, to which we all refer 
 for the credentials and criteria of our faith, hard to 
 understand ; but these elementary ideas are not among 
 those things. The conscience knows when it is pur- 
 suing righteousness; the heart feels when it is possessed 
 by peace and joy. Where these are, there truth is 
 most likely to be. It was said the other day that, "it 
 was better that men should be free than that they
 
 THINGS HARD TO BE UNDERSTOOD. 117 
 
 should be sober." It may be said perhaps, with still 
 more emphasis, it is better that men should be 
 righteous — truthful, generous, pure, — than that they 
 should be orthodox. The solid foundation of God 
 standeth, — o o-repeo? OefMeXio^ tov ©eoO ea-TrjKev — 
 steady amid all the roekings of human systems ; as sang 
 Arthur Clough : — 
 
 " It fortifies my soul to know, 
 That, though I perish, Trutli is so ; 
 That, howsoe'er I stray and range, 
 Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change : 
 I steadier step, when I recall 
 That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall." 
 
 Preached — Westminster Abbey, June 23, 1872. St. Mary's, 
 Oxford, November 17, 1872. Cambridge University, 
 February 9, 1878.
 
 IX. 
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE MORAL BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 " And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife DrusUla, 
 which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him con- 
 cerning the faith in Christ. And as he reasoned of rif:;hteous- 
 ness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and 
 answered : Go thy way for this time ; when I have a con- 
 venient season I will call for thee." — Acts xxiv. 24, 25. 
 
 We know, all of us, more or less of the character of St. 
 Paul, but Holy Scripture tells us little of him — at that 
 moment the master of Paul's destiny — with whom the 
 Apostle discoursed on these high arguments ; these, as 
 they might easily have become to him, perilous themes. 
 And yet, without this knowledge, the narrative of St. 
 Luke loses half its force, and St. Paul's reasoning all its 
 appropriateness. 
 
 Antonius Felix, the procui'ator of Judea, had risen 
 to his present eminence from the rank of an emanci- 
 pated slave, through the influence of his brother, the 
 freedraan Pallas, the favourite of the Roman Emperor, 
 Claudius CiBsar. Two sentences of the historian Tacitus
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 119 
 
 throw all the light we need, for our present purpose, 
 upon his character as a man, and his conduct as a 
 magistrate. " Relying upon his brother's influence, he 
 thought there was no misdemeanour he might not 
 commit with impunity." {Cunda malefacta sibi impune 
 ratus tanta potentia suhnixo. — Tacit. Ann. xii. 54.) " In 
 every form of cruelty and lust, he exercised the power 
 of a king in the temper of a slave." {Fer omnem scevitiam 
 et lihidinem jus regium servili ingenio exercuit. — JSist. 
 V. 9.) 
 
 Before this Roman magistrate, insensible to the 
 claims of justice and humanity, gratifying every way- 
 ward lust and passion remorselessly and to the full; 
 the most terrible of compounds, a slavish, brutal nature, 
 endowed with sovereign, absolute power; the fearless 
 preacher of the new principles that were beginning to 
 " turn the world upside down," had the hardihood to 
 reason, and apparently not without some success — at 
 any rate so as to command respectful attention — of 
 " righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." 
 
 And as he reasoned — not perhaps so much in the 
 form of logical argument as of solemn, passionate appeal, 
 such as we find him using subsequently as he pleads 
 his cause before King Agrippa — the dead, or stupefied, 
 conscience of a thoroughly vicious, hardened man was 
 stirred with a momentary compunction. As the satirist 
 of that bad age expresses it with such terrible emphasis, 
 '• The torment-scourge within smote his soul " {Tortore, 
 animum quatiente Jtagello), he trembled ; and not till 
 baser passions supervened, and the corrupt magistrate 
 began to hope that the bribes, for which he had so
 
 120 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 often sold his judgments, might, once more be offered 
 him by his prisoner, did the opportunity of a moral 
 recovery pass away which, if we may reverently say so, 
 the Spirit of God, like the wind blowing where it 
 listeth, was waiting to use. 
 
 Sermons vary almost infinitely in character, in 
 method, and in aim. The tendency just now seems 
 to be mainly in the direction of the emotional, or the 
 dogmatic, or the speculative aspects of Christianity; 
 which perhaps stir the sensibilities or exercise the 
 intellectual faculties, and by some are supposed to 
 furnish food for faith, but are with difficulty discerned 
 — possibly are not expected — to have any direct bearing 
 on the government of daily life. When the public 
 appetite is greedy of such highly-seasoned dishes, plainer 
 but more wholesome fare is sometimes rejected with 
 disdain ; and hearers, seeking after some attractive or 
 philosophical system, like the Greeks of old, forget how 
 simple, and yet how solemn, are those truths which, 
 again and again, in the history of mankind, have hid 
 themselves, as by a Divine law, from the wise and 
 prudent, while they have been revealed to, and dis- 
 covered by, babes. 
 
 Distracted by controversy, perplexed by speculation, 
 growing dizzy in the wild war of words, beginning to 
 doubt of all things — whether there is a God, whether 
 we have souls, whether we are free agents, whether we 
 are responsible — let us try if we cannot once more gain 
 a steady footing upon some solid bits of rock, which 
 rise above the surf of controversy, which arrest the 
 daring inroads of speculation, and which, as yet at least,
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 121 
 
 survive the wreck of faiths and creeds, by help of which 
 men once thought they could ride safely through the 
 storm. 
 
 Such considerations, indeed, are eminently in har- 
 mony with, what I will venture to call, the calm and 
 thoughtful temperament of the Church of England. 
 It has even been made a reproach to her — not justly, 
 I think — that enthusiasm of every kind is an offence to 
 her; that she has always, like the astute French diplo- 
 matist, repressed and discouraged zeal. It would be 
 fairer to say that her spirit is one of tempered piety, of 
 sober, reflective religion ; that she almost sternly subor- 
 dinates the passions to the judgment ; and that the 
 charge of St. Paul to the young Cretan bishop, that he 
 should teach men and women, young and old, "to be 
 sober-minded," as well as sound in the faith, is sj)ecially 
 congenial to her mind. " Next to a sound rule of faith," 
 says Mr. Keble, in the preface to the Christian Year — 
 that admirable manual of religious meditation which, I 
 fear, is becoming year by year less known to the rising 
 generation of English Churchmen — " next to a sound 
 rule of faith, there is nothing of so much consequence 
 as a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical 
 religion ; and it is the peculiar happiness of the Church 
 of England to possess, in her authorised formularies, an 
 ample and secure provision for both. But in times of 
 much leisure and unbounded curiosity, when excitement 
 of every kind is sought after with a morbid eagerness, 
 this part of the merit of our Liturgy is likely in some 
 measure to be lost on many of its sincere admirers ; 
 the very tempers which most require such discipline
 
 122 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 setting themselves, in general, most d'ecidedly against 
 it." 
 
 In the midst of our present restlessness, our un- 
 reasonable dissatisfaction with our position as a branch 
 of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, our passionate craving 
 after any new religious sensation, our over-readiness to 
 gird ourselves with armour by whomsoever offered, by 
 whomsoever previously worn, which we have not proved, 
 and which neither suits our stature nor our more free 
 and natural way of using our limbs, this warning voice 
 of one who in his day, and that not long past, was justly 
 deemed a master in Israel, may well be sounded from 
 time to time in our ears. 
 
 The Gospel of Christ is a discovery rather than an 
 invention. " The Old Testament," says our Church in 
 her seventh Article, " is not contrary to the New," nor, 
 it may be added, the New to the Old. The ideas of 
 life, and even of immortality — true ideas many of them, 
 so far as they went — were in the world before, and 
 were probably, in spite of modern theories of the pro- 
 gressive evolution of civilisation, coeval with the history 
 of man. Christ accepted them, illuminated them, 
 placed them on a more solid basis, illustrated them 
 by a divine example, sustained them by a new motive 
 power. 
 
 The Gospel, according to St. Paul's conception of it, 
 was a (f)av€pa)(Tt<i ; an e7n(fiaveca. Christ was o ^corlcraf; 
 ^(orjv KOI d(f)6ap(Tiav (2 Timothy i. 10). The ideas, the 
 facts, call them what you please, were there ; He shed 
 on them a new light ; made them stand out from sur- 
 rounding phenomena in fuller relief; breathed into
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 123 
 
 them, so to speak, out of His own perfect love, a new 
 and an invigorating spirit. They were no longer ideas 
 set in a philosophical or theological system. Something 
 more was required than the mere yvMo-i^i or knowledge 
 of them ; they were placed as motive forces in the 
 centre of human life and activity ; they had not simply 
 to be understood in their scientific relations, as Plato 
 or Aristotle might have tried to make men understand 
 them — to be methodised or formulated — but to be 
 believed in, realised, apprehended, applied. " I am 
 come," said the Great Teacher, " that they may have 
 life, and that they may have it more abundantly." 
 The source of the stream was the same, but certain 
 lets and hindrances which had prevented its free and 
 equable flow were cleared away. Men could now drink 
 of " the water of life freely." 
 
 And so we read the teaching of the New Testament 
 in the presence of old ideas, rather than of new ones. 
 As St. John says, " Brethren, I write no new command- 
 ment unto you, but an old commandment which ye 
 had from the beginning ; " and yet, in another sense, 
 " the old things," as St. Paul speaks, " have passed 
 away, and all things have become new " — new in their 
 adjustments, new in their deeper significance, new 
 above all, in their constraining power ; because the 
 same God Who, at the first, "commanded the light to 
 shine out of darkness," in this His new creation shone 
 with a director and less distorted ray into men's hearts, 
 giving " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus Christ." 
 
 And so there is really nothing strange in the pheno-
 
 124 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 menon, though it may have perplexed us before we 
 thought about it, that the last page of the Bible reads 
 but as a revision and republication of the first ; and the 
 ideas of life and light (only a higher life and a purer 
 light) are still the pervading idea of that revelation 
 of Himself which, " in manifold parts and ways " — 
 7ro\v/xepa)<; koI TroXvTpoTro}^ — the Invisible Father has 
 been pleased to bestow upon man. 
 
 The theocracy is set up again ; the kingdom of 
 God emerges into view. We come once more unto 
 the Mount Sion and the city of the living God, 
 " the heavenly Jerusalem," and to the King Himself 
 sitting upon His holy hill. There is still a blood of 
 sprinkling, though it speaketh better things ; still a 
 law, though one of liberty; still a worship, but in 
 the spirit of truthfulness ; still a covenant, but resting 
 upon better, because clearer and farther-reaching, pro- 
 mises ; still a mediator, but Jesus, not Moses ; still, too 
 — and this must not be forgotten — " a consuming fire," 
 but through which, though it shall " try the work of 
 every man," there is a secret power (the presence and 
 companionship of one " like unto a Son of God ") that 
 can, if we will trust faithfully, carry us unharmed. 
 
 (1) Paul reasoned of righteousness. The system of 
 invisible, divine power with which we are surrounded, 
 from which we cannot really escape, and to which we are 
 required to conform our lives, is called " a kingdom ; " 
 and the essential laws of this kingdom, the basis of its 
 constitution, have been eternally, unchangeably, the 
 same. Christ did but republish, with fuller authority, 
 more distinct utterance, the two great principles on
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 125 
 
 which all the teaching of law and prophets had really 
 hung. When God revealed himself to Moses, we know 
 not how, it was with these characters : " The Lord, the 
 Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and 
 abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for 
 thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and 
 that will by no means clear the guilty." (Exodus 
 xxxiv. 6.) When Micah — if indeed the words are not 
 really those of an older seer — would help men "to 
 know the righteousness of the Lord," it is thus that 
 he declares it. Putting aside all ceremonial propitia- 
 tions or sacrificial atonements, he proclaims aloud, " He 
 hath showed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " (Micah 
 vi. 8.) 
 
 How does this differ from the teaching of St. Peter, 
 that " God is no respecter of persons, but in every 
 nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness 
 is accepted of Him " ; or from that of St, Paul, that 
 " the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but 
 righteousness " ; or from that of St. James, that " pure 
 religion and undefiled before God, is to visit the father- 
 less and widows in their afiflietion, and to keep oneself 
 unspotted from the world " ; or from that of St. John, 
 " whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God 
 neither he that loveth not his brother " ; or from that 
 of a Greater Teacher than all, " Seek ye first the king- 
 dom of God and His rio^hteousness, and all these things 
 shall be added unto you " ? 
 
 It is from iniquity that Christ came to redeem us,
 
 126 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 rather than from hell ; from sin itself, its dominion, its 
 power, rather than from its penalties and consequences. 
 The righteousness which His Spirit works in us, and 
 which makes us, almost consciously, " free from the law 
 of sin and death," is not, as some theological schools 
 have pictured it, fictitious, forensic, imputed merely, but 
 real, inherent, our own. 
 
 I do not say it can plead for itself, or would even 
 desire to do so. Nay, to the last it cries, " sinful 
 man that I am, who shall deliver me ? " To the last it 
 acknowledges, " By the grace of God I am what I am." 
 It cannot " establish " itself, or think to be saved, by its 
 own merits, before the heart-searching Judge ; or to 
 claim reward as a wage fully and fairly earned. But 
 even in its feeblest efforts, its modest victories, it is real 
 and true. It is righteousness, and not unrighteousness. 
 It is a striving of the human soul to grow more and 
 more perfectly, though at an immeasurable distance, 
 "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ." There is a real desire not only to know, but 
 to prove — and to prove by making an honest endeavour 
 to do — the " good and acceptable and perfect will of 
 God." 
 
 It is, indeed, only through such an effort, that any real, 
 profitable knowledge of the Divine Will is possible. 
 Christian gnosis is the result and reward of action ; or at 
 least of the attempt to live up to the standard of a high 
 ideal. " If any man wills to do His will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine." As St. Paul lays it down, God reveals 
 Himself to those who are striving to be perfect. (Phil, 
 iii. 13-16.)
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 127 
 
 If there be, as has been maintained, a tendency in 
 things to fulfil the law of their being ; if there be a law, 
 a power, external to us, " which makes for righteous- 
 ness," certainly that teaching must be in harmony with 
 this law, does not contradict or contravene this ten- 
 dency, which proclaims loudly and on the house-top, 
 " Follow holiness, without which no man shall see the 
 Lord." 
 
 (2) The second topic on which St. Paul reasoned 
 with Felix was temperance — eyKpareia — "self-control." 
 The apostle, who quotes the Greek poets, was no doubt 
 more or less familiar with the systems of the more pro- 
 minent Greek philosophers. Felix, we are told, traced 
 his origin to the old kings of Arcadia, and perhaps had 
 read, in a dilettante way, the writings of Aristotle. In 
 the ethical system of that teacher, the temperate, or 
 continent man, is he who, feeling in himself the strain 
 of vicious desires, keeps them in check, and finally con- 
 quers them, by asserting the legitimate supremacy of 
 reason. Spiritualise this moral conception, make the 
 conquest possible and the triumph assured by the aid of 
 that Spirit, " Who helpeth our infirmities," that grace 
 which out of weakness makes men strong, and there 
 would be no quarrel between the heathen teacher and 
 the Christian. 
 
 In the struggle to win the incorruptible crown, the 
 Christian athlete, says the apostle, " is self-controlled in 
 all things " — kyKpareverai iravrd. Passions, appetites, 
 desires, affections, even the purest, even those which 
 move in the religious sphere, are, with him, all held 
 as with a bridle; all are under the restraining check
 
 128 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of an enlightened spiritual perception discerning be- 
 tween good and evil; all are brought firmly, even 
 sternly, yet cheerfully, under the dominion of Christ's 
 law. 
 
 Excitement, tumult, ecstasy, are not the normal, nor 
 the health-giving constituents of that spiritual atmo- 
 sphere in which the Christian lives, and moves and has 
 his being. I do not know that St. Paul himself was 
 much the wiser, or the better, for that rapture in the 
 third heaven, of which he knew not the physical con- 
 ditions, and where he heard what he found it impossible 
 to utter when the vision, or the ecstasy, had passed 
 away. We know how the Lord Jesus rebuked — or at 
 least calmed — the wild excitement of the woman who 
 cried, " Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the 
 paps which Thou hast sucked." " Yea, rather," was 
 the perhaps unexpected reply, "blessed are they 
 that hear the word of God and keep it." (St. Luke 
 xi. 27.) 
 
 The most perfect picture of one whom Christ's Spirit 
 has really and effectively subdued is that of the man 
 whose soul had once been the home of a legion of devils, 
 calmly sitting at the feet of his Deliverer, " clothed and 
 in his right mind." You will remember the magna- 
 nimity which refused to take advantage of the enthu- 
 siasm of gratitude, but bade the man bear his witness 
 and show his devotion where it was likely to be most 
 influential. " Go home to thy friends, and tell them 
 how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath 
 had compassion on thee." (St. Mark v. 19.) 
 
 In the excitement and restlessness of the age, so un-
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 129 
 
 favourable to sustained action, so apt to dissipate the 
 energies in search of visionary or sentimental ideals, 
 instead of concentrating thern upon one noble aim ; so 
 prone to mistake impulses and impressions for purposes 
 of more pith and moment ; it is well to notice that in 
 St. Paul's reasoning Avith Felix, self-control occupied 
 the second place among the notes of the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 (3) And then before he concluded his high argu- 
 ment, the teacher sought to lift his listener's mind to 
 the greatest of all thoughts — I mean " man's relation to 
 God." St. Paul spoke of "the judgment to come" — 
 the great external fact which is the correlative of the 
 sense of responsibility in man. " Every one of us," says 
 the apostle elsewhere, " shall give an account of himself 
 to. God." 
 
 We will not cumber or perplex this simple but all- 
 momentous conviction with unsubstantial or material- 
 istic fancies about heaven or hell ; nor with speculations 
 about the nature or duration of future rewards and 
 punishments ; nor with anything that might be thought 
 to belong to the class of " doubtful disputations." The 
 simplest expression of the great conviction is also the 
 most helpful. 
 
 The sense of accountability is one of those ultimate 
 facts of human nature, inconceivable to my mind upon 
 the modern molecular hypothesis, which any teacher 
 who professed to deal remedially, or even philosophically, 
 with that nature — Socrates as well as Christ — could not 
 but recognise. And so it is stamped deep and legible 
 on every page of the Gospel. "We shall be judged 
 
 K
 
 130 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 according as our works have been.; and the conscience, 
 whatever its testimony may be worth, echoes, " Ay, we 
 shall be so judged." Our Master may seem to have 
 gone for a while into a far country, but " He will return," 
 He says, " and reckon with His servants." 
 
 Banish from your system — destroy in your soul — the 
 sense of responsibility and its accompanying hope of 
 immortality, and it would, I fear, be found impossible 
 to maintain, not only the principle of religion, but also 
 the principle of morality in the world. If I understand 
 him aright, Professor Huxley abandons the principle of 
 free will. I do not see how, without that, you can retain 
 the idea of responsibility. Mr. Greg abandons as an 
 unprovable illusion the hope of immortality. The 
 weightiest consideration in favour of a future state he 
 admits to be the conviction that God enters into rela- 
 tions with man ; and such relations, such communion, 
 he holds to be inconceivable between a God and an 
 ephemeris — a creature of a day. 
 
 " This consideration," he adds, almost with pathetic 
 sadness, " no doubt must be decisive to all to whose 
 spirits communion with their Father is the most abso- 
 lute of verities, but, alas!. to them only." "Passing 
 away," says this eloquent writer, " is the destiny written 
 upon every other of the works of God or the results of 
 evolution — on the tree, the insect, the megatherium; 
 on the lark, the sun, the star, the galaxy. Alas ! why 
 is it that each fresh argument for immortality which 
 the ingenuity of desire excogitates should prove, when 
 closely grappled with, just as baseless as its prede- 
 cessors ? Why must those who long the most to live
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 131 
 
 for ever, whose hopes are the most aspiring, and whose 
 energies the least worn out ; who examine with renewed 
 eagerness each new speculation that promises to be a 
 proof, be compelled to fall back upon the old conclu- 
 sion — that Faith may be undying, but that Proof there 
 can be none ? " 
 
 And in lieu of this sustaining and invigorating hope 
 which, evidently with a reluctant hand, he thus cuts 
 from beneath our feet, this clear thinker would comfort 
 us, as Professor Hackel bids us be satisfied, with optim- 
 istic dreams, far enough at present from reaiisation, of 
 the progress and perfection of the race, Man, he says, 
 even without the prospect of a life in the world to come, 
 is not a failure. " Do we really mean to assert," he 
 asks with a solemn earnestness in harmony with the 
 grandeur of his theme, " that man, with his wonderful 
 capacities as yet only in their infancy, his strange 
 happiness, often already so intense ; with potentialities 
 of joy growing more vivid and more varied as the ages 
 roll along ; with his accumulated stores of knowledge 
 and discovery passed on, whatever we may say, from 
 generation to generation ; ay, and still more, with ele- 
 ments of character growing richer and nobler century 
 after century towards the completion of God's perfect 
 work — that such a being is not a conception worthy of 
 the Creator we imagine ? Take the best specimen of 
 the race we have yet known or read of; picture him 
 with his intellect furnished to the full with the hoarded 
 wisdom of the past, his faculties trained to their ulti- 
 mate perfection, his instincts and emotions disciplined 
 by the experience of a thousand centuries, and his life 
 
 K 2
 
 132 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 lengthened to its natural limit by all that science will 
 have taught him, and then fancy this being, this man 
 at his culminating zenith, to be, not as the good are 
 now, a mere rare and exceptional instance of what man 
 might be, but a faithful portrait of the average man as 
 he will have become ! Consider all this — which is 
 nothing more than Positivists and poetic Pagans alike 
 anticipate — and then tell us, if you dare, that the reali- 
 sation of such a conception may not fitly occupy the 
 Creative Spirit during that long fragment of eternity 
 called Time ; and that He may not, as He looks upon 
 His finished work, justly pronounce it to be ' very good ' 
 — ay, even though each individual of the race be 
 doomed, after a life of noble energy and stainless joy, 
 to pass into a dreamless and unconscious rest ! " 
 
 In reply to which great challenge I can but answer 
 that this fair vision seems to me, as he who pictures 
 it forth himself calls it, to be nothing more than "a 
 fancy" — a conviction of which " faith may be undying, 
 but proof there can be none." 
 
 I live among toiling thousands, working out the sad 
 and dreary problem of their lives in a ceaseless round of 
 daily labour, and often under conditions most unfavour- 
 able to the development of the "richer and nobler 
 elements of character " ; whom the complex thing we 
 call " civilisation," instead of elevating, depresses more 
 and more ; where, instead of life being " lengthened to 
 its natural hmits by all that science teaches," nearly 
 fifty per cent, of the whole mortality is of infants under 
 five years old ; where one cannot so much as conceive 
 the possibility of this " average man," unless the present
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 133 
 
 secular conditions are wholly changed, and life is lived 
 in the " new heaven and the new earth, wherein 
 dvvelleth righteousness," even when the " thousand 
 centuries" have rolled by, and the moment of the 
 "culminating zenith" has arrived. 
 
 Mr. Greg speaks, I can hardly suppose with indiffe- 
 rence, of the present " scheme of things " — as Bishop 
 Butler might have called it — as " either a word of God 
 or a result of evolution " ! Perhaps to the evolutionist 
 it may be a matter of theoretical unconcern that, till the 
 " thousandth century " has come, man's life upon this 
 hypothesis is doomed to be imperfect, maimed, and so 
 far frustrate ; but to anyone who believes in the "works 
 of God," it must be a difficulty quite as great as any 
 that encompasses the faith in immortality, to suppose 
 that the " Creative Spirit " would allow a thousand 
 centuries to roll away before the average man attains 
 that perfection which, ex hypothcsi, from the first was 
 intended for the race, and which is to redeem even this 
 present life from the reproach of failure. 
 
 Mr. Greg says we cannot prove the doctrine of im- 
 mortality. We cannot prove it as we can prove the 
 conclusion of a geometrical theorem. But are all the 
 hopes and yearnings and aspirations of the soul — that 
 " longing " which Mr. Greg admits, " to live for ever " — 
 to go for nothing in the argument ? How came they 
 there if they are never to be satisfied ? There are 
 proofs and proofs. As Sir William Hamilton, not 
 a cloudy thinker on such a subject, has said, " The 
 existence of God and the immortality of the soul are 
 not given us as phenomena, as objects of immediate
 
 134 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 knowledge ; yet if the phenomena actually given do 
 necessarily require, for their rational explanation, the 
 hypothesis of immortality and of God, we are assuredly 
 entitled from the existence of the former to infer the 
 reality of the latter." 
 
 " If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent 
 Him," said Voltaire. I ask you fearlessly, upon any 
 sober review of the situation, what would life be — not 
 when the myriad ages has run its course and the 
 " average man " has reached his " culminating zenith," 
 but now, and as far back as historical investigation can 
 penetrate, as far forward as the most sanguine anticipa- 
 tion that is not a mere wild dream can foresee — what, 
 I ask, would life be, " in all the nobler and higher 
 elements of its character," if you withdraw at once from 
 the moral supports — which are all too feeble ofttimes 
 to bear it up against the pressure of adverse circum- 
 stances — the sense of responsibility, the hope of 
 immortality ? 
 
 " Non complacuit Deo" said St. Ambrose, " in dialecticd 
 salvum facere populuni suum" (Not by any methods 
 of mere argument is it God's will to make His people 
 whole). But when men have found the revelation of 
 Christ come true in other respects, they will not think 
 it likely to disappoint them here. They feel that to 
 know the Father and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent 
 is eternal life — inchoate and incomplete here, but the 
 germ of what is to be developed and perfected here- 
 after. They cannot be wholly frustrate, these hopes 
 the brightest, these thoughts the deepest that occupy 
 the soul.
 
 PAUL BEFORE FELIX. 135 
 
 " But, soul say you," methinks I hear some sciolist 
 from the school of modern physical philosophy exclaim ; 
 " how do you know we have a soul ? With us, soul is 
 regarded only as a function of matter, and passes, when 
 the present molecular combinations are dissolved, ' into 
 thin air,' as heathen poets used to say." 
 
 Well, if you really believe this, if you dare to act 
 upon your belief, you may as well say, " Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die," as try to reach any higher 
 standard, to live with any nobler aim. If men in general 
 act upon this maxim, give a practical expression to this 
 theory, ivhen the " culminating zenith " will be reached, 
 I would rather that you should venture to prophesy 
 than I. But men are both better and worse than their 
 principles. Though a degrading materialism seems to 
 be infecting many types of religious thought, and some 
 of our sacramental theories, which claim to be the 
 highest, seem to me to drop into an almost unfathom- 
 able abyss of superstition and to lose the very character 
 of an act of rational worship, yet I refuse to believe that 
 there is any widespread determination to force theories 
 to their terrible conclusions. Amid all the svvayings 
 of philosophical opinion and all the varieties of religi- 
 ous belief, you may yet, upon the solid basis on which 
 St. Paul reasoned with Felix, build a life which, in its 
 simplicity, in its high-reaching aspirations, in its calm- 
 ness and peace and joy, shall realise the apostle's idea 
 of a life, lived under the conditions of humanity, but, in 
 its deepest springs, "hid with Christ in God." Amid 
 the thousand false, low standards upon the commonest 
 matters of morality accepted and acted upon by the
 
 136 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 young, the pleasure-seeking, the fashionable, the money- 
 getting, the ambitious, it is well to try to accustom the 
 mind to set before itself clearly and distinctly the prin- 
 ciples that will govern — that we feel must govern — 
 " the righteous judgment of God " ; well to anticipate, 
 to make ourselves seem to hear that terrible sentence 
 which we know will pass against us if we are deli- 
 berately leading impure, selfish, false, dishonest lives — 
 if we are resisting God's call to repentance and doing 
 despite to the Spirit of Grace. 
 
 And as St. Paul reasoned, "Felix trembled." That 
 craven fear never wrought true amendment. Repent- 
 ance may begin in fear, but it is perfected by a nobler 
 influence. It is the loxe of Christ which draws, which 
 constrains to Him. 
 
 I would fain send you away hopeful, resolute. If 
 what I have said has stirred thoughts in any of your 
 hearts, I trust they are encouraging, not dejjressing 
 thoughts. I trust you have faith enough to believe 
 that a pure and noble life is possible even to the 
 weakest, the most irresolute. " All things are possible 
 to him that believeth." The Divine strength is per- 
 fected in human weakness. The old faith will still 
 hold its ground in the hearts and consciences of men so 
 long as it is seen to be not an organized hypocrisy, nor 
 a lifeless system of formalism, but a power, bringing forth 
 the fruits of righteousness. 
 
 Preached — Westminster Abbey, February 12, 1874 ; St. Mary's, 
 Oxford, October 21, 1877 ; Westminster Abbey, June ^20; 
 1880,
 
 X. 
 
 DEBORAH. 
 
 '' Awake, awake, Deborah : awake, awake, utter a song : arise, 
 Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thon son of Abinoam. 
 Then he made him that remaineth have dominion over the 
 nobles among the people : the Lord made me have dominion 
 over the mighty. Out of Ephraim there was a root of them 
 against Amalek ; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people ; 
 out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun 
 they that handle the pen of the writer. And the princes of 
 Issachar were with Deborah ; even Issachar, and also Barak : 
 he was sent on foot into the valle}^ For the divisions of 
 Reuben there were great thoughts of heart. Why abodest 
 thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the 
 flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great 
 searchings of heart. Gilead abode beyond Jordan : and why 
 did Dan remain in ships 1 Asher continued on the sea 
 shore, and abode in his creeks. Zebulun and Naphtali were 
 a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high 
 places of the field." — Judges v. 12 — 18. 
 
 This magnificent lyric ode of the greatest of Israel's 
 prophetesses labours, as is confessed by all, under 
 manifold difficulties of interpretation. The language is 
 full of figures and allusions; the transitions of thought 
 and feeling are rapid and sudden; the spirit it breathes
 
 138 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 is fierce, and sometimes almost savage; the reconcilia- 
 tion of the poem with the history, or of the history 
 with the poem, is a task by no means free from 
 embarrassment. 
 
 Not a few difficulties, however, we have created for 
 ourselves by that mischievous and often fatal habit of 
 importing into the text of Scripture more than it 
 actually and necessarily — or even by implication — 
 contains. From the simple fact that Deborah is called 
 a " prophetess " some tremendous but unwarrantable 
 inferences have been dra^vn. It has been assumed 
 that all her words were God's words, and that all her 
 acts had a Divine sanction prompting and justifying 
 them, and that even the fierce and ruthless spirit of her 
 song was one that God inspired. 
 
 And so some have learnt to curse, and to curse 
 bitterly, those who, like the inhabitants of Meroz, have 
 stood coldly and timidly aloof when they, as they have 
 thought, have been fighting the Lord's battles against 
 the mighty ; while others have taught the strange and 
 revolting doctrine that a deed of cruel treachery like 
 Jael's — for it was both cruel and treacherous — was yet 
 defensible, and indeed righteous, because the Lord 
 blessed, even if He did not command it. 
 
 So a paradoxical principle of interpretation has been 
 adopted which has made it impossible, without violent 
 and unnatural straining, to harmonise the ethics of the 
 Old Testament with the ethics of the New ; and a 
 painful contradiction has been established, which has 
 given triumph to the sceptic and perplexity to the 
 believer. We have been scornfully asked to reconcile
 
 DEBORAH. 139 
 
 the deed of Jael with the ordinary maxims of morality- 
 accepted even by savage tribes ; and the curse of Meroz 
 with that Divine Voice, which proclaimed among the 
 mountains of Galilee the New Law, "Love your 
 enemies ; bless them that curse you ; do good to them 
 that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully 
 use you and persecute you." 
 
 I would only offer for your consideration two remarks 
 in connection with these difficulties. 
 
 1. It is adopting a perilous principle to argue that an 
 action must be right because, as we su2Jpose, God com- 
 manded it. It is a safer rule of interpretation to infer 
 that if an action, of which we know the details, or so 
 far as we know them, is manifestly wrong — opposed to 
 the instinctive sense of right, or goodness, or truth, or 
 holiness, which, if the whole world were rocking be- 
 neath our feet, we still should feel to be immutable — it 
 could not have been an act commanded by Him Whose 
 essential characteristics are equity, goodness, holiness, 
 truth. Indeed, it is nothing less than marvellous that 
 men should accept without question the morality of a 
 deed on the simple ground that God commanded it, 
 when, without such presumed command, the conduct 
 would excite feelings of abhorrence rather than of 
 admiration, and be stigmatized as treacherous and 
 bloody rather than be praised as an example of heroic 
 courage and virtue. 
 
 Casuists, I am aware, have exercised their subtlety to 
 define what deviations from the strict rule of truth and 
 right war may excuse, if it cannot justify; but Jael's 
 deed lacked even the pretext of a patriotic motive.
 
 140 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 She had no personal nor national wrongs to avenge. 
 Her wild clan, wandering Arabs of the desert, pitching 
 their tents now here, now there, were aliens from the 
 commonwealth of Israel, had no title to an inheritance 
 in the " delightsome land." They did not belong to the 
 oppressed race. There was peace between Jabin the 
 King of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. 
 Sisera fled away to Jael's tent as to a place of sure 
 refuge ; she bade him welcome ; he trusted her. 
 
 A Hebrew woman of undaunted courage but of fierce 
 spirit, in the first flush of victory chanting her triumphant 
 war-song, feeling that twenty years of cruel suffering 
 and oppression had now been signally revenged, seeing 
 the oppressor himself laid low and her nation once more 
 free, may be forgiven if at the moment she thought 
 less of the mode and instrument by which that freedom 
 had been won than of the great result achieved, — may 
 be almost forgiven, or at least understood, if, in the 
 disturbed balance of her mind, the true measure of 
 things failed to impress itself upon her conscience, and 
 the end might seem to justify the means. 
 
 But this is a very diflferent thing from saying that 
 we, who have unlearnt, or ought to have unlearnt, 
 somewhat of the fiery passions of a Jew, whose eyes 
 have been enlightened by Christ to discern the more 
 excellent way, are even, in an exceptional case, to invert 
 our moral sense, and call a deed righteous from which 
 we instinctively shrink as base and treacherous, because 
 a Hebrew prophetess three thousand years ago, in an 
 access of high-wrought poetic transport, breathing the 
 fierce spirit of her race, rejoicing to see the enemies of
 
 DEBORAH. 141 
 
 tlie Lord perish by any hand, was moved to call her 
 who wrought it " blessed above women in the tent." 
 
 2. Deborah's prophetic gift was, so far as we have 
 materials for estimating it, rather an afflatus of poetic 
 inspiration than anything deeper or more divine. She 
 spake, as Miriam had spoken by the Red Sea shore, in 
 older days than hers. The gift of poetry — certainly of 
 poetry breathing a noble spirit, aiming at a noble end 
 — must surely be reckoned among those beneficent 
 endowments, those " perfect gifts " which, St. James 
 tells us, come down from God. And even when the 
 gift is desecrated by being released from the restraints 
 of conscience and prostituted to ignoble purposes, yet 
 the gift itself is part of God's dowry to the creature of 
 His hand, whom, when He endowed him, He made free, 
 and at the same time responsible for the use he should 
 make of his freedom. 
 
 Nor, even if we were sure that Deborah was gifted 
 with predictive powers, would that necessitate, or even 
 justify, the conclusion that all her utterances, when not 
 claiming to be spoken under special guidance of the 
 Holy Spirit, were utterances of infallible truth or of 
 immutable morality. " The spirits of the prophets are 
 subject to the prophets," teaches St. Paul ; and he 
 guarded the Corinthians from confounding the words of 
 one who had received grace to be faithful — of a man of 
 ordinary or, if you please, extraordinary insight, but still 
 a man — with the absolute and sovereign '''commandments 
 of the Lord." 
 
 Nor is there any proof that Deborah possessed, in the 
 highest sense of the term, prophetic, that is, predictive
 
 142 UXIYERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 power. In the opinion of the best modern commentators, 
 and, indeed, according to Rosennuiller, of some of the 
 most learned Jewisli rabbis, the woman into whose 
 hand she foretold Barak that the Lord would sell Sisera 
 was not Jael, but herself. In the full confidence of a 
 lofty and daring patriotism, she felt assurance of victory. 
 She could not understand the hesitation of a man in 
 such a cause ; and lecause he hesitated, she felt that his 
 name would not go down to after ages on the same level 
 of honour as hers, who had never doubted, never paused, 
 never quailed. In the words of her own hymn, the 
 oppressions of her nation did not cease till " she, Deborah, 
 arose ; till she arose, a mother in Israel." 
 
 The gift of ratiocination, of high poetic song, we 
 know she had; the gift of predictive foresight, the 
 power of uttering infallible truth, we do not know that 
 she enjoyed. And so her words have no claim to 
 supersede that standard of right and wrong which we 
 believe to be implanted in our consciences by God ; and 
 by which even words professing to be divine must, in 
 the case of each individual responsible man, be ulti- 
 mately tested and weighed. " Holding the mystery of 
 the faith in a pure conscience," is, according to St. Paul, 
 the attitude of mind and will in which a man may hope 
 to escape the perplexities of unbelief, as well as to 
 overcome the power of the more ordinary temptations. 
 
 I desire specially to dwell on the thoughts expressed 
 in those verses of this noble song which I have selected 
 for my text. The prophetess, even in her moment of 
 highest exultation, cannot forget those who, in their 
 country's critical hour, when freedom, honour, inde-
 
 DEBORAH. 143 
 
 pecdence — everything that constitutes the real life and 
 force of a nation, was in jeopardy, and one bold, united 
 effort might achieve deliverance, stood apart in the 
 isolation of rivalry, or selfishness, or in the inglorious 
 love of ease, and "came not to the help of the Lord 
 against the mighty." 
 
 From the fastnesses of Ephraim in the Mount of the 
 Amalekites; from "little Benjamin"; from the cis- 
 Jordanic portion of Manasseh ; from Issachar ; but 
 above and before all, from Zebulun and Naphtali came 
 forth princes and governors — pale, quiet students even 
 — if we have caught in our version the true meaning of 
 the words — more wont to handle the pen than the 
 sword, but touched in their country's cause with the 
 daring fervour of a sublime patriotism ; from these half- 
 dozen tribes there came a people ready to jeopardise 
 their lives unto death in the high places of the field 
 — for hearth and altar, such as Romans fought for — for 
 their God and for their fatherland. 
 
 But the peril was common to all. For twenty years 
 had this Canaanitish king mightily oppressed the 
 children of Israel. The risk of encountering the peril 
 was undertaken by few. Reuben, separated from his 
 brethren by the dividing waters of Jordan, debated the 
 question, thought about it much and often — "in the 
 divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of 
 heart " — but (a council of war, they say, never fights) 
 finally preferred a safe and indolent repose, abiding 
 among the shepherds, deaf to the war-trumpet, soothing 
 his delicate ears with pastoral symphonies played on 
 shepherd's reeds.
 
 144 UXIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Gad dwelt in calm indifference among the highlands 
 of Gilead, far from the scene of war. Dan and Asher, 
 though near the peril, thought that their ships and 
 proximity to the sea would enable them to effect a 
 secure escape should the enemy's cause seem likely to 
 prevail or the tide of war roll their way. 
 
 If help was looked for, none came from these. As so 
 often in the history of great causes, the deliverance was 
 wrought, not by the many, but by the few. An oppor- 
 tunity was lost, which peoples have no right to expect to 
 be continually renewed, for knitting the nation together 
 in those bonds of union created by a sense of common 
 danger, by all shared and by all repelled, which seems 
 to be, we may almost dare to say, God's appointed 
 instrument for teaching a nation to realise its highest 
 life — indeed, the very purpose for which it became a 
 nation at all. " Blood," says the proverb, " is thicker 
 than water " ; but the greatest nations of the world 
 have not always been, in the modern sense of the word, 
 " of one blood " ; the moral forces of humanity have 
 always dominated the physical ; and confederation in 
 oreat causes has stirred even sluggish natures with a 
 j)ower, by the side of which the love of father and 
 mother, brother and sister, ay, and of life itself, has 
 seemed weak and cold. 
 
 May I venture to apply the lesson to our own 
 circumstances ? 
 
 There is a supine or a contemptuous indifference at 
 the present day as to the result of great issues which 
 are being tried at the bar of public opinion, and which 
 profoundly affect the conditions of national life ; which.
 
 DEBORAH. 145 
 
 so far as I may presume to form or express a judgment, 
 is fraught with j^eril to the highest interests, both of 
 Church and State— to all that we ought to hold most 
 precious, both in the dei^artment of religious thought and 
 practice, and in the department of social and political life. 
 Never, perhaps, was there more excitement about 
 questions of the hour and questions of the surface — the 
 trivialities that form the staple of the idle gossip of the 
 club, the dilettante conversation of the dinner-party ; 
 never, perhaps, less serious thought about questions 
 which go down into the depths, and which may affect 
 the welfare of the Church, or of society, for centuries. 
 In fact, a man who is in earnest is by common consent 
 voted to be a bore, and I don't deny that sometimes he 
 is a bore. Talleyrand's celebrated maxim about the 
 danger, or the folly, of an excess of zeal, has passed far 
 beyond those regions of diplomacy to which it was 
 originally confined. An utter carelessness for the 
 morrow so long as all is calm and undisturbed to-day 
 is the supreme achievement of the philosophy — hardly 
 a wisdom from above — which teaches men and women 
 the conditions under which the duties of life are to be 
 avoided rather than discharged. To escape a responsi- 
 bility under cover of a happy phrase, or a skilful 
 stratagem, is the kind of dexterity which the world 
 seems most ready to admire. 
 
 It is not hard to trace this temper to its source. It 
 is the product of the moral tissues, of a life — whether 
 individual or national — tainted, enfeebled, degenerated 
 by luxury, by affluence, by the love of ease, or pleasure, 
 by adopting the principle of laisser aller. In some 
 
 L
 
 14G UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 cases it may have been bred -by disappointment ; in 
 others it is the not unnatural fruit of reaction, or of 
 counter-action. The enthusiasm of ardent natures 
 intensifies the cynicism of selfish natures. St. Paul 
 and Festus represent the antagonisms of two mutually 
 rej^ellent moods of the human mind. 
 
 And so it comes to pass that, in great crises of truth 
 or righteousness, or when some large problem involving 
 conditions under which alone healthy national or 
 social life is possible — such as are some of the great 
 economical problems of the hour — requires the united 
 thought and united effort of all for its adequate solution, 
 men without high aspirations ; men with much care for 
 their party or their social status, but with little care for 
 their kind ; men who are reckoned wise in that wisdom 
 of the world which neither sees, nor cares to see, much 
 further than its hand, look coldly and sarcastically on, 
 while a few are bearing the brunt of the fra}^ ; content 
 to show the fruits of their victory, if victory is won ; 
 ready also, that they may not lose their credit for 
 prescience, to raise the first cry of failure when failure 
 is seen to be imminent, and the gallant band, for want 
 of adequate support, is hurled back, shattered and 
 discomfited, from the breach which, without duly 
 measuring their strength, they had essayed to storm. 
 
 No one can blink, or be blind to, the fact that 
 Christianity is confronted all over the civilised world 
 by a gigantic foe. I know not by what better name 
 to call it than "the spirit of unbelief:" a, mo7'al un- 
 belief in the existence of truth, rather than an intellec- 
 tual unbelief, staggered and perplexed by speculative
 
 DEBORAH. 147 
 
 difficulties. The latter spirit exists also, sometimes 
 independently, sometimes in alliance with the former ; 
 and it is only when it is so allied that it becomes, in 
 my judgment, truly formidable. 
 
 An honest mind, really loving truth, and goodness^ 
 and purity, will seldom go very far, or very long, astray. 
 Practical doubts at least will clear, even if speculative 
 doubts remain. If it be true, as old St. Ambrose has it 
 (non coinpLacuit Deo in diaUdicd popuhcm suurii scdvum 
 facere), " that it is not the divine will through logical 
 processes to make His people whole," I cherish the 
 conviction that imperfect knowledge, and even what 
 may prove to have been speculative errors, where there 
 has been a love and a yearning for trath and righteous- 
 ness, will never shut a man out from the beatific vision, 
 from the fruition of that fuller light in which we hope 
 " to know even as we are known." 
 
 The real peril is from those who, in St. Paul's words, 
 " believe a lie, because they have pleasure in unright- 
 eousness." The heart that is loyal to virtue and truth 
 is really loyal to God, Who is the essence of virtue and 
 truth — as Plato used to phrase it ? — " the Itself good, 
 the Itself beautiful, the Itself true." And often found 
 in company with the unbelief that has pleasure in un- 
 righteousness — which is earthly, sensual, devilish — and 
 working, though less directly and avowedly to the same 
 end, is another type, which I observed called by a clever 
 speaker "drawing-room unbelief"; hardly less mischie- 
 vous and infinitely more contemptible, which springs up 
 in a mind destitute of moral force — shallow, vacant, frivo- 
 lous — repeating phrases at secondhand and supposing 
 
 L 2
 
 148 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 them to be true, if it really cares for truth at all, 
 because they are new, or clever, or witty, or startling. 
 The effects produced by this vicious levity are moral 
 rather than intellectual, robbing life of its purpose and 
 aim, disabling men for high and noble efforts, and 
 making them no better than feathers tossed to and fro 
 with every idle wind. 
 
 But pure and earnest minds, which perhaps have not 
 been able to see their way to accept the Christian 
 system as it has ordinarily been presented to them : 
 who have been shocked either by the irrationality of 
 doctrines or the inconsistencies of professors : or who, 
 looking at the side of things which is most constantly 
 present to them (in the intensity of their gaze seeming 
 to forget that there is another side) cannot yet acquiesce 
 either in the unbelief that springs from vice, or that 
 springs from frivolousness. They still feel the need of 
 a religion, of something spiritual that shall bind the 
 soul to God ; and of a Church, that is, some visible 
 organisation that shall embody this idea, and exjDress 
 it, vividly to the world. 
 
 " I can conceive," said Professor Huxley, " the 
 existence of an established Church which should be a 
 blessing to the community, a Church in which, week 
 by week, services would be devoted not to the iteration 
 of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting 
 before men's minds an ideal of true, just and pure 
 living ; a place in which those who are weary of the 
 burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in 
 the contemplation of the higher life, which is possible for 
 all, though attained by so few ; a place in which the 
 
 1
 
 DEBORAH. 149 
 
 man of strife and of business should have time to 
 think how small after all are the rewards he covets, 
 compared with peace and charity. Depend upon 
 it, if such a Church existed, no one would seek to 
 disestablish it." 
 
 And why should not such a Church exist ? And 
 farther, why should not the Church of England, rising 
 to the highest of her high functions — to express the 
 highest, which is also the simplest, faith ; to satisfy the 
 deepest, which are also the calmest and most reverent 
 emotions of the nation's heart — become such a Church ? 
 I feel sure that unless we have a national Church in 
 the truest, broadest sense of the word, we shall never 
 be able to offer a haven to restless, weary souls. Our 
 innumerable sects and controversies do but multiply 
 and intensify our perplexities. It is worth considering 
 whether they who dwell in one house, and are most of 
 them beset by common foes, could not make more 
 successful efforts than they have hitherto made, to be 
 of one mind ; whether the variations of Protestant 
 Churches are still to furnish the most effective weapon 
 to infidel assailants on the one hand, and to Romanist 
 assailnnts on the other. 
 
 I fear that national life without a national expressive 
 expression of religion, that is, without a national Church, 
 would be a feeble and maimed thing. " A national 
 Church," says a recent writer, " is the only conceivable 
 expedient under which there can exist at once very 
 great varieties of spiritual conviction, and a perpetual 
 circulation of thought upon those varieties. Surely men 
 must see that a nation without any common meeting
 
 150 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 ground for the purposes of moral 'and spiritual life 
 is a nation with one great organ of unity missing ; a 
 nation needlessly shorn and crippled of its highest 
 opportunities of collective life and feehng." 
 
 Religion is not, as it has been called, the product 
 of credulity and poetry. It is the product of the 
 profoundest and truest instincts — at least if their uni- 
 versality is any test of their truth — of our nature. It 
 is the product of the sense of a life higher than that 
 which we actually live ; of the sense, too, of a power i7i 
 us but not of us, lifting us up to a desire for, an effort 
 after, its attainment. All that constitutes the true 
 nobility of human nature is proportionate to the 
 influence of th's sense in man. Without it you may 
 have philanthropists, but you will not have martyrs : 
 politicians, but not statesmen : good citizens, but not 
 patriots : soldiers, but not heroes : respectable house- 
 holders and fathers of families, but not saints. 
 
 Axe we doomed never to realise the temper under 
 which alone such higher results are possible ? Shall 
 we, broken up into miserable sects and parties, stand 
 selfishly, or suspiciously, by, while Zebulun and Naphtali 
 — the more generous spirits of the age — are jeoparding 
 their lives unto the death in the high places of the 
 field ? Oh ! how one longs to gather into one camp, 
 or to mass together in supporting columns on the great 
 battlefield, all those who, however differing on points of 
 lesser detail, are yet united in this — the great uniting 
 influence — that they love the Lord Jesus Christ in all 
 sincerity ! Oh, that some Barak would blow the trumpet 
 in Kedesh, even if not more than ten thousand brave
 
 DEBORAH. 151 
 
 hearts should feel themselves stirred and go down to 
 the battle after him ! 
 
 Is no power, human or divine, no motive Catholic 
 enough to dominate and subdue all sectarian rivalries, 
 ever to bring about the reunion " for which all the best 
 minds of all cultivated people are longing?" "He 
 who believes in Christ," says the great leader of the 
 Old Catholic party, " cannot shut himself out from the 
 expectation that a not-all -too distant future will bring 
 a Church which, in her purified form, as the true suc- 
 cessor of the first uncorrupted centuries, shall have room 
 and attractive power for those who are now sundered — 
 a Church in which freedom with order, discipline and 
 morality and purity of faith with intelligence and 
 unfettered inquiry, may be able to exist together." 
 When minds of such different temjjer, trained in such 
 diiferent schools, as Professor Huxley and Professor 
 Dullinger are dreaming the same dream, must it be, 
 need it be, only a dream, 1 
 
 I have no scheme of union to propound. Men's 
 minds are hardly yet in the temper to entertain 
 schemes. They are too captious, or too critical, or too 
 prejudiced. A scheme of reunion which would furnish 
 topics the next day for a leading article in every 
 newspaper, and would be dismissed in that dainty, 
 supercilious fashion with which we are all familiar, 
 would not be started under the most favourable 
 conditions of success. 
 
 And besides, God works out problems of this kind 
 mostly at His own time, by His own instruments, in 
 His own way. If St. Paul is to be trusted as able to
 
 152 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 estimate the forces that were operating round him, it 
 was not by means of the wise, or the mighty, or the 
 noble, that the Gahlean conquered the world. When 
 the same strong faith once more takes possession of the 
 souls of men, the wave of conquest, which now seems 
 ebbing back so far and on every shore, will again return 
 with all the might of a resistless tide. When Christianity 
 is again set up before men's eyes as the embodiment 
 and expression, " of whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good 
 report ; " when science and religion shall meet no longer 
 as foes, or even as nominal but mutually mistrustful 
 friends, but as comrades in arms against common 
 enemies — against ignorance, and superstition, and 
 suffering and sin — then men's hearts will surely be 
 drawn together to recognise the claims and the duties 
 of a common brotherhood, and to maintain, as dearer 
 than life itself, that liberty wherewith, as they will then 
 feel, " Christ hath made them free." 
 
 Meanwhile, till the advent of that golden age, we may 
 humbly and trustfidly work with God in that direction 
 to which all His purposes, all His providences, so far as 
 we can read their lessons, seem to point. That His 
 Church "should be one," was the Saviour's jjrayer. And 
 so let us woik, if not for that union which is external, 
 at least for unity which may yet underlie manifold and 
 obvious external differences. We may each, within the 
 sphere of our respective influences, add something to the 
 ground that is being won from suspicion, from uncharit- 
 ableness, from j^rejudice, from jealousy, from rivalry- 
 No doubt " there are many adversaries," but they that
 
 DEBORAH. 153 
 
 have' a good cause, and engage in it with a loyal heart, 
 may hope to "drive out the Canaanites, though they be 
 strong and though they have chariots of iron." A poet's 
 words may breathe new force into hands too inclined to 
 droop, new hopes into hearts too ready to despond. 
 
 " Say not the struggle nought availeth ; 
 The labour and the wounds are vain ; 
 The enemy faints not, nor faileth ; 
 
 And as things have been, they remain. 
 
 " If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; 
 It may be, in yon smoke concealed. 
 Your comrades chase ere now the fliers, 
 And, but for you, possess the field. 
 
 " For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making. 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 
 
 " And not by eastern windows only 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light ; 
 In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
 But westward, look ! the land is bright." 
 
 And in this spirit, in this day, v/hen as in that of the 
 prophet, " the light is not clear nor dark " — not so clear 
 as some of us may wish it were, yet not so dark but that 
 we can discern some sure outlines of truth and recti- 
 tude — do not, I entreat you, do not yet despair of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Preaclied — St. Mary's, Oxford, 1875 ; "Westminster Abbey, June 6, 
 1875 ; Manchester Cathedral, June 6, 1880.
 
 XI. 
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 
 
 " That whicli was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
 which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
 upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life — for 
 the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, 
 and show unto you that eternal life which was with the 
 Father, and was manifested unto us— that which we have 
 seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have 
 fellowship with us ; and truly our fellowship is with the 
 Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." — 1 St. John i. 1 — 3. 
 
 St. John sets forth in his writings no theory of life. 
 He cannot, or does not, formulate his conception of it 
 into a system. Nothing is more alien from the spirit of 
 a philosopher, whether jDhysiologist or metaphysician, J 
 
 than the spirit of St. John the Divine. He simply feels « 
 
 a power, not of death but of life, working in his own 
 soul. He is sure there is nothing in the world, or 
 beyond the world, that can destroy it. Its evident 
 tendency to God attested its origin from God. There 
 might be other media to other men : to him it came 
 through Christ. 
 
 Cicero tells us that Socrates was wont to say, that ii
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 165 
 
 Virtue could only descend from heaven to earth iu living 
 form, all men perforce must love her, St. John had 
 seen this incarnation of more than earthly loveliness. 
 He had looked ujaon it with his eyes. He had handled 
 it with his hands. It had stood before him in the 
 person of the Master whom he had loved and served. 
 It had penetrated his heart with a force that was not 
 yet expended. 
 
 We are all in search of ideals. This was his. He had 
 no need of a system or a theory. The life was mani- 
 fested ; and the impress it had left on his soul could be 
 told in half a dozen words — which still sustain what- 
 ever can be called faith in the world — " We know that 
 we are of God, and we know that the Son of God is 
 come, and hath given us an understanding that we may 
 know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, 
 even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God 
 and the eternal life." It was, to use a well-known dis- 
 tinction of Aristotle, an energy rather than a mere state 
 or condition. Beyond the reach of material, or even 
 spiritual, analysis, it moved in a sphere, it put forth 
 self-evidencing manifestations, which were exclusively 
 its own. Its sphere is light : " the life is the light of 
 men : " its characteristic tokens are the spirit of love, 
 and the spirit of righteousness — "we know that we 
 have passed from death unto life, when we love the 
 brethren;" "If ye know that He is righteous, ye 
 know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of 
 Him." It culminates in that " enthusiasm of humanity," 
 in which some have thought they discerned the central 
 principle of the Gospel — " Hereby perceive we love,"
 
 156 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 he goes back to his ideal, " because He laid down His 
 life for us ; and Ave ought to lay down our lives for tbe 
 brethren." 
 
 These, and such as these, were the symptoms, the 
 phenomena, of that life which God in Christ had given 
 to the world; whicb, as it became known, was placed 
 within the reach of all : and which, as it was embraced, 
 became a light and a strength to all. It is the same 
 great truth which is expressed with more passion and 
 force, but hardly with more grandeur by St. Paul — 
 " The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made 
 me free from the law of sin and death ... for to be 
 .spiritually minded is life and peace ; " " The Spirit 
 itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the 
 children of God ; and if children, then heirs : heirs of 
 God and joint heirs with Christ . . . that we may be 
 glorified together." 
 
 The result was meant to be the same, though the 
 processes were ' directly reversed in the philosophy 
 of Plato and the theology of St. John. Each wished 
 to help men to escape from a world of phenomena to 
 a world of realities — from what seemed to what was, 
 from the mists of error and falsehood and evil to the 
 clear heavens of certainty, and truth, and goodness. 
 By a dialectical process, by an intellectual effort to 
 disengacre itself from material surroundings, Plato 
 thought that the soul of man might recover truths 
 which it had lost when it submitted to gross corporeal 
 conditions, and slowly and painfully attain the con- 
 ceptions of the very truth, the very beautiful, the very 
 good. Reversing the process, in the mystery of the 
 
 I
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 157 
 
 Incarnation, St, John tliought that " the way, the truth, 
 and the life," had been manifested to men. They are 
 not his words, it is true, but the words of one who, in 
 this matter, as we have seen, thought with him. " The 
 God who commanded Hght to shine out of darkness, was 
 He who shone in men's hearts to give the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 I cannot but think that St. John's method has, by its 
 results, proved its title to be, I will not say the more 
 philosophical, but tlie more effective for the moral 
 guidance of the world. What is more, the method of 
 Plato could never have been suited to any but the few : 
 the " secret of Jesus " — as it has been called — is for all 
 alike. The Greeks, as St. Paul tells us, in their conceit 
 of wisdom, despised, what seemed to them, the folly of 
 the message that there was One who had given Himself 
 to be the life of men. But events have justified those 
 who laid, in Christ, the foundations of the power that 
 was first to revolutionise, and then to regenerate, the 
 world. Even M. Renan, from his wholly unsatisfactory, 
 and indeed incoherent, point of view, allows that the 
 life of Jesus is the highest that has ever been presented 
 to the eyes of men ; and that, for all practical purposes, 
 it may be regarded as unsurpassable. 
 
 There has been a certain type of life and character 
 formed in the world, professedly on the model of the 
 life, and character, and teaching of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. Making fair allowance for human imperfec- 
 tions and human aberrations, remembering that the 
 treasure is in earthen vessels, can it fairly be said that
 
 158 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the heights which have been attaine'cT by those who 
 have truly lived the Christian life — heights attainable 
 by all, and wliicli have been as often attained by the 
 lowly as by the high-born, by the illiterate as by the 
 wise, and far oftener by the poor than by the rich — are 
 heights which have been as often attained, and can be 
 as easily attained, by disciples in the school of Plato 
 and Seneca, Spinoza and Voltaire, as by discijiles in the 
 school of St. Paul and St. John. 
 
 Can we, without wishing to deny that the principle 
 of life may have had other manifestations, and the 
 truth (if you like to say so) other martyrs, deny that he 
 who has fellowship with Christ, in St. Jolm's sense, 
 that is, who is baptized with God's Spirit and conformed 
 to His example, becomes thereby transfigured into a 
 higher type of moral excellence than any ethical system, 
 appealing to ordinary motives and resting uj)on ordinary 
 supports, has ever been able to achieve ? 
 
 Righteousness, purity, love (St. John's tliree), are 
 identical in fact, though not in phrase, with St. Paul's 
 three — faith, hope, charity. For charity and love are 
 the same, even in word ; and purity is the fruit of hope 
 • — " he that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself even 
 as He is pure ; " and righteousness is the only proof of 
 a really regenerating and saving faith — " if ye know 
 that He is righteous, ye know that everyone that doeth 
 righteousness, is born of Him." This seems to me to 
 be a Gospel for all ranks and conditions of men — as 
 St. Paul puts it, " for Jew and Greek, Barbarian and 
 Scythian, bond and free ; for there is no difference." 
 
 I do not believe in the Gospel of Christ being a mere
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 159 
 
 system of magical arts — a mystery entrusted to a caste — 
 such as was attempted to be practised at Ephesus by 
 the sons of Sceva, the Jew. It may be expanded, as 
 everything made up of a vast number of related truths 
 may be expanded, into a philosophical system wliich 
 you may call "the Cjueen of the sciences"; as dealing 
 with the highest subject on which the mind can occupy 
 itself. But its power over the consciences and affections 
 of men does not dwell there. It is in its simpler forms, 
 as it can be taught to babes, that it is most effective. 
 
 As a rule of life, bidding us be pure and unselfish, and 
 kindly affectioned ; as a high ideal, stimulating us to 
 forget the things that are behind, and to reach forward 
 unto things that are yet before ; enlightening us where 
 we saw but dimly; enabling and capacitating us where 
 we were feeble and incompetent; purifying us where 
 appetite and passion were in danger of blunting the 
 finer perceptions of the heart, the noble purposes of the 
 soul ; laying the foundations of an ampler and higher 
 life, first for the individual, and then for society and the 
 race — it was thus that the " Word of Life " presented 
 itself to the mind of St. John. 
 
 If it had free course ; if all who preached it practised 
 it ; if there were less cant and hypocris}^, and incon- 
 sistency in the world ; if men with low, selfish motives 
 were at once detected when they endeavour to conceal 
 these motives from their fellow men under the mask of 
 religion ; if its opponents would condescend to debate 
 the question with becoming seriousness, and its ad- 
 vocates would cease to advance arguments in its defence 
 which cannot be sustained ; if the failure of other
 
 160 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 systems to explain the plienomejia of humanity, and 
 still more to relieve its admitted ills and sorrows, were 
 more fairly estimated and more fully known : perhaps 
 it would be thought and seen that Christianity had not 
 said its last word. 
 
 Christ's most common phrase for the system which 
 He was setting up on earth was " the kingdom of 
 heaven." If the two great curses of our modern 
 civilisation —drunkenness and prostitution — were swept 
 away, the streets in which you live would be more like 
 heaven than they are. If men and women were true 
 to one another, and to themselves ; if they were honest 
 — and when you speak of an honest man, still more of 
 an honest woman — you mean something more than one 
 who will not pick your pocket ; there would be more 
 types on earth than there are of what the Son of God 
 was manifested to make us all. 
 
 We first frustrate the grace of God, do despite to it, 
 trample it under our feet, and then call the Gospel a 
 failure. We make Christian influence impossible, and 
 then ask : Where is it to be found ? We first grieve, 
 and finally quench, the Spirit of God, and then say we 
 can recognise no tokens of His presence, or His power. 
 And yet, under all these circumstances of disadvantage, 
 there are to be found in palaces and cottages, pure and 
 brave and noble souls ; and where one such soul lives 
 and breathes, diffusing the fragrance of its beneficent 
 influence, and the power of its saintly life, th'Tc is the 
 proof of the truth of Christ's Gospel, there is the 
 witness that God still leaves of Himself in the world. 
 
 I did not hesitate to speak, just now of " types of
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 161 
 
 moral excellence " ; and to some pious minds that will 
 seem a poor and feeble, even a disparaging phrase for 
 the result of God's grace upon the soul. I desire to 
 utter a word of not wholly unnecessary warning on this 
 matter. 
 
 We have got into a way of talking which, I think, 
 is strangely unreal and, in many cases, fatally mis- 
 leading ; a way which regards the supernatural, rather 
 than the natural, as the proper sphere of the Divine 
 energy ; a way by which the spiritual appears to super- 
 sede and keep out of sight the moral. I am aware 
 that the word " nature " is used in various senses more 
 or less restricted ; but the phrase " supernatural " leads 
 people commonly to suppose that the ways of God's 
 Spirit are fitful and capricious rather than stated and 
 orderly ; whereas there can be no reasonable doubt that 
 the " reign of law," in the truest sense of the words, is as 
 supreme in the spiritual as in the material world. Our 
 Lord's comparison of the effect of spiritual action to the 
 effect of the wind blowing where it listeth, pointed merely 
 to the invisible character of that action, and was not 
 meant to intimate or imply capriciousness. We know 
 exactly what to do in order to receive a gift of the Spirit ; 
 and if the conditions are fulfilled, the gift is bestowed, 
 and that quite as certainly as in a chemical experi- 
 ment. What is this but saying that the effect is the 
 result of a 7iatural law, in Bishop Butler's large sense 
 of the word "nature." 
 
 Oh ! friends, beware lest you do an irreparable 
 mischief to religion by separating it from morality, and 
 that of the homeliest kind ! Beware of dissociating 
 
 M
 
 162 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 religion from sucli moral qualities as chastity, honesty, 
 truthfulness. When St. Peter has stirred our spiritual 
 impulses by telling us, as St. John also tells us, of the 
 exceeding great and precious promises by which we are, 
 as it were, made partakers of the Divine nature, he at 
 once brings us down from heaven to earth again by 
 saying : " And beside all this, giving all diligence, add 
 to your faith, virtue." When St. Paul would pray for 
 the best gifts for his Thessalonian converts, he prays 
 that God would sanctify them wholly, and that their 
 " whole spirit, soul, and body might be preserved blame- 
 less unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 No man had a keener insight than St. Paul into the 
 perils of that subtle form of self-deceit, which under 
 the mask of religion, hides a foul and corrupt heart, 
 and while claiming to possess a spiritual mind, leaves 
 some of the basest and meanest passions all wild and 
 unsubdued. " Shall we continue in sin," he asks, " that 
 grace may abound ? God forbid ! How shall we that 
 are dead to sin live any longer therein ? " To put 
 away a good conscience was the first step towards 
 making shijDwreck of the faith. 
 
 It is my firm conviction that it is not so much specu- 
 lative difiiculties which shake the faith of men in 
 Christ's Gospel as the power of God unto salvation 
 to the human soul as moral incongruities — as, for 
 instance, when a man who has made a profession of 
 godliness, who may have been even a leader of religious 
 parties, is found out to be a swindler or a libertine, or 
 is known by those who have any intimacy with him to 
 be selfish, proud, covetous malevolent, revengefuL The
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 163 
 
 natural judgment to pass upon religion, when we have 
 seen it thus associated, is to pronounce the whole thing 
 a sham. That such shams exist here, there, every- 
 where, and that they justly provoke such scoffs and 
 sneers, is only too notorious. The marvel to me is that 
 men think it worth while to wear such thin disguises, 
 beneath which the true features are only too clearly 
 seen. Can they possibly imagine that God will judge 
 them on the principle of a set-off, as though two 
 tradesmen were settling accounts together ? 
 
 As I survey the phenomena of the age, the chief fear 
 in my mind for the future of religion is lest it should 
 get dissevered from morality ; lest it should become a 
 matter of dogma and ritual, that is, of opinion and 
 sentiment rather than a principle of conduct. It has 
 been truly said that " conduct is three-fourths of life." 
 It is the main affair. Orthodoxy is good, but morality 
 is better. Even truth, when of the purely speculative 
 kind, in the sphere of theosophy or theology, is barren 
 of results, unless it can be made to bear on the regula- 
 tion of the life and the illumination of the conscience ; 
 and worship, unless it expresses and satisfies the yearn- 
 ings of the soul, unless it is used and felt as a means of 
 access to God, as a vehicle of that grace which we all 
 so sorely need, is nothing better than an organised, 
 though it may be a graceful and attractive, formalism. 
 
 It is from this point of view, and not because I have 
 narrow Puritanical ideas upon the subject, that I dread 
 the possible effects of the present extravagant attention 
 to an sesthetic and even sensuous ritualism, which I 
 trust has nearly had its day. It has gone to form a 
 
 M 2
 
 164 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 type of character whicli, I confess, is not much to my 
 raiud. There is a danger, of which St. Paul has warned 
 us, of the forms of GodHness being scrupulously cultivated 
 by those who are yet, in their hearts, strangers to its 
 power. Men and women are making religion rather a 
 matter of special observance than a principle of general 
 self-control. The leaven, if it can be so called, affects a 
 part of their nature only, not the whole. In their souls 
 there are dark, foul chambers, into which the unclean 
 spirit, once perhaps cast forth, has found his way back 
 again : or they are haunted by the spectres of sins which 
 they can hardly be said to have forsaken, although they 
 are continually reiterating their confession of them ; and 
 instead of revolting the conscience, the memory of them, 
 sometimes deliberately awakened, even gives a languid 
 sense of pleasure to the imagination. 
 
 We build sanctuaries, in which we place, not God in 
 any rational conception of His nature, but a fetish 
 whom we worship and think to propitiate ; not Christ, 
 the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe, 
 but a Christ so localised and materialised that a stranger 
 who passed by and beheld our devotion might think we 
 believed in the power of charms and spells ; and that 
 His objective presence on an altar is deemed infinitely 
 more precious than His subjective presence in the soul. 
 We think in such sanctuaries, where the air is stifling 
 with the vapid fumes of incense, we can offer to God a 
 higher and more acceptable service than is possible in 
 the outer world of activity and usefulness ; where 
 perhaps worship plays a less conspicuous part, but where 
 there is no lack of calls to duty or of motives for
 
 THE WORD OF LIFE. 165 
 
 disinterestedness and self-sacrifice. O that God would 
 raise up for His Churcli Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors 
 and Teachers who would inspire a passion for virtue ! 
 The Evangelists we have seem to me to stimulate the 
 sensibilities, but hardly to quicken the conscience. 
 
 We have need to close our ranks in defence of virtue. 
 Morals and religion have more to fear from those who 
 attempt to discredit the Sermon on the Mount than 
 from those who express (not always, it is true, in as 
 measured language as one could desire) their dislike of 
 the seeming hardness of some of the statements of the 
 Athanasian Creed. It is time that we understood the 
 meaning of that saying, " The Kingdom of God is not 
 in word, but in power." It is time we appreciated the 
 difference in value between the weightier and the less 
 weighty matter of the law ; to use our Lord's own 
 comparison, " between mercy ajid sacrifice." And so 
 strong is my own confidence in the essential harmony 
 of things, that I feel sure that a clear and authoritative 
 conscience will be found to be the surest safeguard and 
 strongest support to a rational faith ; and that he is 
 not likely to wander far, or long, from the precincts of 
 truth who keeps his feet firmly planted in the ways of 
 rectitude. 
 
 I do not doubt "that the decomposition of belief 
 which is going on so rapidly among us must — or at 
 least may — involve the most profound, probably sincere, 
 and yet alarming, recast of principles of honour and 
 principles of self-restraint hitherto commonly accepted," 
 and which constitute the substance of ordinary morality. 
 But I believe that " the ethical basis of thought is
 
 166 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 deeper than the dogmatic ; and to attempt to rehabi- 
 litate faith before you have restored the recognition of 
 the supremacy of conscience, is to build a house upon 
 the sand." " If the light that is in thee be darkness, 
 how great is that darkness." So do not suppose that 
 to preach morality is to empty the Gospel of the grace 
 of God of its proper power, or to supplement the work 
 of Christ by a righteousness of our own. The moral 
 nature of man is the true subject of grace ; and Christ 
 is only truly Lord when He is thoroughly obeyed. 
 
 Preached — Westminster Abbey, June 25, 1876. Christ Church 
 Cathedral, Oxford, December 7, 1881. Westminster Abbey, 
 July 5, 1885.
 
 XII. 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 " It dotli not yet appear what we shall be." — 1 St. John iii. 2. 
 
 This is Revelation's " last word " on a great subject' 
 which theologians have too often forgotten in their 
 positive statements and assumptions. 
 
 Our English version does not quite correctly repre- 
 sent the Greek original. It is not ovwco (jialverai, " it 
 doth not yet appear," as a result of human inference or 
 speculation ; but oviro) ecpavepcoOr], " it has not yet been 
 manifested or revealed." God Himself still wraps our 
 destiny among His " hidden things." 
 
 Even Paul, when wading in these perilous depths, 
 and talking of the " change " that awaits all, and 
 attempting to describe the properties of a " spiritual 
 body," felt himself to be confronted with a " mystery ; " 
 and while satisfied that there would be a victory over 
 the grave, and that mortality would be swallowed up in 
 life, wisely brought back his readers' thoughts from 
 dreamland to reality, by bidding them simply " be stead- 
 fast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the
 
 168 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Lord, forasmuch as they knew that their labour was not 
 in vain in the Lord." 
 
 Nor can it be said that the Great Teacher Himself, 
 when He most clearly proclaimed the doctrine of the 
 Resurrection, drew aside for more than the briefest 
 moment the curtain by which the mystery is veiled. 
 " The children of this world," He said, " marry, and are 
 given in marriage ; but they which shall be accounted 
 worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from 
 the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage ; 
 neither can they die any more : for they are equal unto 
 the angels, and are the children of God and of the 
 resurrection." One of those who heard Him tells us 
 that the words conveyed no distinct idea to him as to 
 what the after-resurrection state should be ; and an 
 equally reasonable faith, while clinging to the hope of 
 immortality as the very anchor of the soul, which if 
 let go life would drift helplessly amid the shoals and 
 rocks that surround our course on every side, will still 
 admit that coequality with the angels, and seeing God 
 as He is, do not belong to the class of definite ideas, 
 but to those vaguer shapes and imaginings which define 
 little but suggest much, and of which, even when most 
 consciously under their influence, we can hardly say 
 whence they come or what they are. 
 
 To those who hold the merely physical theory of 
 being — who see in matter the promise and potency of 
 life in every form — who account for even the pheno- 
 mena of what used to be called " volition " by the reflex 
 action of a muscle or a nerve — the very existence of 
 these imaginings, these hopes and fears, should be a
 
 IMMORTALITY. 169 
 
 problem of no slight difficulty. It is possible, as 
 Professor Tyndall has said, that " Many who hold the 
 hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent 
 to the position that at the present moment all our 
 philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, all our art — 
 Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Da Vinci — are potential in 
 the fires of the sun ; " but it would seem to require a 
 further reach of imagination in the province of science 
 to conceive that the fires of the sun, itself one day to 
 perish, could have implanted, even potentially, in the 
 human soul the hope of immortality ; still more so, if, 
 as some loudly proclaim to-day, it is a hope destined 
 never to be realised ; not even one of those visions, in 
 the language of the old Greek poet, 
 
 t| oveipoLToiv & XP^ 
 
 For there it is — a hope deep-seated in the heart of 
 man; and, like every other phenomenon, it has to be 
 accounted for. And as it is not pretended by any one 
 to be within the range of mathematical demonstration 
 or physical experiment, the most reasonable hypothesis 
 must be accepted. As Sir William Hamilton has said, 
 " The existence of God and the immortality of the soul 
 are not given us as phenomena, as objects of immediate 
 knowledge ; yet if the phenomena actually given do 
 necessarily require, for their rational explanation, the 
 hypothesis of immortality and of God, we are assuredly 
 entitled, from the existence of the former, to infer the 
 reality of the latter." 
 
 1 uEschyl. Prom. Vinct., 485, 486.
 
 170 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Nor do intermediate hypotheses and secondary ex- 
 planations exclude — rather they necessitate, or at least 
 demand — a higher and primary account of things. If 
 it be true that " between the microscope limit and the 
 true molecular limit" — though I know not what mortal 
 eye has penetrated to that unknown land — still, granting 
 it to be true, as Professor Tyndall assumes it to be tnie, 
 that in 
 
 " The undiscovered country from wliose bourn 
 No traveller returns " 
 
 to tell US what he has actually seen, " the poles of the 
 atoms are arranged, that tendency is given to their 
 powers, so that when the poles and powers have free 
 action, and proper stimulus in a suitable environment, 
 they determine first the germ, and afterwards the 
 complete organism," still there is room, and almost a 
 necessity, for God ; and we know as a fact, under " the 
 stimulus of a suitable environment," there has been 
 either developed or implanted in the mind of man the 
 hope of immortality. 
 
 And here the mere physicist is brought to a pause. 
 He cannot explain the phenomenon consistently with 
 his purely physical principles ; indeed, if these cover all 
 the problems of life, it seems to me that he ought to 
 try to explain it aivay : it is, to say the least, an awk- 
 ward and unexpected result of a concoui'se of material 
 atoms, whatever the arrangement of their poles, or the 
 tendency given to their powers : and if he can neither 
 explain it, nor explain it away, he is bound, upon his own 
 principles, at least to listen to the hypothesis of one
 
 IMMORTALITY. 171 
 
 who has been studying in another, but not an antagon- 
 istic, school. If there is arrangement, is it not possible 
 that there may have been an arranger ? if a tendency 
 was given, some one to give it ? if an environment, an 
 environer ? if a stimulus, a stimulator ? If this hope of 
 an indestructible life is there, may it not have come from 
 God ? and is not the mystery of our being best solved, 
 though not with the precision of scientific language, by 
 the Old Book which tells us that " the Lord God formed 
 man, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, 
 and man became a living soul ? " 
 
 For, admitting the fact of a Living Personal God, 
 there needs be no insuperable or even serious difficulty 
 in adiuitting the fact of a revelation, whether in the 
 narrow sense in which the idea is sometimes confined 
 to the inspired records of the Bible, or in that broader 
 and more Pauline sense in which, even to the heathen, 
 God is said to have shown His own attributes and their 
 destiny (Romans i. 19, 20). 
 
 Not that revelation supersedes reason, or removes 
 the things revealed from the field of legitimate, and 
 even exact, inquiry. Rather it offers the noblest scope 
 to a chastened and truly philosophic mind. As the 
 great author of the Analogy has so truly said : " Not 
 that reason is no judge of what is offered to us as being 
 of divine revelation. For this would be to infer that 
 we are unable to judge of anything, because we are 
 unable to judge of all things. Reason can, and it 
 ought to, judge, not only of the meaning, but also of 
 the morality and the evidence of revelation." And 
 we who call ourselves theologians have quite as much
 
 172 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 need to remember, and restrain ourselves in our specu- 
 lations by remembering, these prerogatives of reason, as 
 any other class of philosophical inquirers. 
 
 Nor, again, upon the same assumption of a Personal 
 Author of the Universe, can there be fairly said to be 
 any d priori objection to the theory of revelation. It 
 is not a thing to be called impossible, or even improbable. 
 As Mr. Davison in his introductory lecture on Prophecy 
 has admirably said, " Antecedently to a consideration of 
 the proper evidences of revealed religion, it cannot be 
 said with any show of reason that it is a thing imjDro- 
 bable in itself that a divine revelation should be made. 
 Nothing that we know of the attributes of God or of 
 His moral government, nothing that we know of the 
 nature and condition of man, would make it appear 
 unfit for God to bestow upon man an immediate com- 
 munication of His will. On the contrary, the most just 
 and rational notions we can frame of the providential 
 care of the Deity would lead us to consider it as entirely 
 suitable to His attributes and designs, that he should 
 at times impart to His reasonable creatures whose whole 
 existence and destiny are dependent upon Him, supjjlies 
 of knowledge and direction. And on the side of man 
 it is too clear, on a sober review of his condition, that 
 he is not so complete in his own natural resources as 
 to be placed above the benefit, or even the need, of such 
 supervening assistance." 
 
 We have only each to keep within our proper pre- 
 cinct, and not to advance hypotheses and conjectures as 
 though these were ascertained and irreversible laws, and 
 there need be no quarrel, no antagonism even, between
 
 IMMORTALITY. 173 
 
 the physical investigator and the believer in revelation. 
 Each is bound to give a reason for what he asserts and 
 what he believes ; and it is to my mind impossible to 
 conceive that truth in one sphere of thought will ever 
 be found to contradict or clash with truth in another 
 sphere. That, according to the author of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, God has spoken His last revealed word 
 to man by His Son, while Science, undaunted and un- 
 tired, is adding year by year to its wondrous conquests, 
 proves to my mind nothing more than that God saw 
 fit to satisfy man's spiritual yearnings before his natural 
 — presumably, because they were the more important 
 of the two. 
 
 I am astonished, indeed, at the dogmatic hardihood 
 — sometimes supposed to be confined to theologians — 
 with which it is asserted that " the whole world, living 
 and non-living," has resulted from " the mutual inter- 
 action of the forces possessed by the molecules of which 
 the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed ; " 
 and that " a sufficient intelligence could, from a know- 
 ledge of those molecules, have predicted, say the state 
 of the fauna in Britain in 1869" — the year, I suppose, 
 in which these words were written — "with as much 
 certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour 
 of the breath on a cold winter's day." But I do not go 
 so far as Dr. Beale, from whom I borrow this quotation, 
 and say that such a theory or doctrine " strikes at the 
 root of the idea of a living God, and in such a scheme 
 neither a superintending Providence, nor a personal 
 God, nor Christianity could have place." I suppose a 
 sufficient intelligence could have ijretold all that has
 
 174 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 been evolved out of the nebulous condition of tlie 
 Kosmos, if this is the true account of existing things ; 
 but till you have proved to me that spirit is merely a 
 mode of matter, or that my conscience and will — all 
 that I feel constitutes the Ego — will pass away when 
 the breath leaves my body into other beings, whether 
 living or non-living, so that the doctrine of personal 
 identity becomes an idle dream, there is room, abund- 
 ant room, for all I care to believe about God and my 
 soul. 
 
 There appears to be a sort of necessity laid upon 
 thinking minds to explain this strange and inexjDressible 
 yearning for a life after death, which all recognise 
 as among the strongest and most ineffaceable instincts 
 of the human soul. It may be worth while to notice 
 two of the most recent attempts which have come 
 under my own observation. The one is Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison's theory, in the July number of " The Nine- 
 teenth Century" of a posthumous life of influence, 
 reputation and renown — the influence exerted upon 
 posterity by a Shakespeare or a Cromwell or a 
 Savonarola — as an equivalent for immortality ; the 
 other, a view put forward with much ability — and as 
 ably answered — by a writer in last week's issue of 
 the Spectator newspaper, who holds, "as a hypothesis, 
 that some men, possibly very many men, a large pro- 
 portion, live again, but that all men do not ; that the 
 potentiality of continued existence, which we call soul, 
 is not an inherent quality or attribute of the human 
 race, but an acquired or given quality of some portion 
 of it only." Both these views, though departing from
 
 IMMORTALITY. 175 
 
 sucli different points, seem to me to be modifications 
 of that theoiy of a covins d'^lite of the human race, 
 which, under the name of Calvinism, has wrought such 
 havoc in theology, and, in spite of its cruel hardness, by- 
 its inexorable logic, has exercised so remarkable a fas- 
 cination, not merely on the fanatical and unlearned, but 
 even on hi^h and gifted minds. Both are strucrsfles — 
 I cannot but think ineffective struggles — against the 
 dark and dreary creed of annihilation, which, whatever 
 comfort it might bring to some powerful but strangely- 
 tempered minds like that of Harriet Martineau, would 
 to most men mean an end, certainly of all their fears, 
 but, as certainly, of their brightest hopes and noblest 
 motives. " We too," says Mr. Harrison, speaking in the 
 name of the School to which he belongs, "turn our 
 thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive 
 to pierce its secret with eyes as eager and as fearless, 
 and even, it may be, more patient, in searching for the 
 realities beyond the gloom. That which shall come 
 after is not of less interest to us than to you. We 
 ask you, therefore, what do you know of it ? Tell us, 
 and we will tell you what we hope. Let us reason 
 together in sober and j^i'ecise prose. Why should this 
 great end, staring at all of us along the vista of each 
 human life, be for ever a matter of dithyrambic hypo- 
 theses and evasive tropes ? " 
 
 In spite of this eloquent and impassioned appeal, we 
 must be content to answer, with the Apostle, ovttco 
 i(f)avep(o6r) ri iaofieOa. We cannot tell ^vhat will 
 "come after;" but, to us, the Scripture's promise of 
 conscious continued individual life, under conditions of
 
 176 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 indefinitely higher possible development than any we 
 have known here, in a world to come, seems a truer 
 and more verifiable account of that "great end which 
 stares at all of us along the vista of each human life," 
 than theories which, if they admit a posthumous exist- 
 ence at all, evaporate it into a metaphor, and regard 
 even that as the privilege of a selected few. 
 
 But I must ask you to observe another utterance — 
 another (so to speak) "view of life" — of the Apostle 
 who has so far led on our thoughts, and who more 
 fully than any other witness has treasured up his 
 Master's deepest words for the Church and for the 
 world. He who tells us so plainly that he did not 
 know, because it had not been revealed, what we shall 
 he, tells us with the most unfaltering conviction what 
 we are. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." 
 Paul's great assurance, too, you will remember : " The 
 Spirit itself" — what Plato might have called the avro 
 TTvev/jia — "beareth witness with our spirit that we are 
 the children of God." And to know this, to be sure of 
 this, was enough. The future was hidden, but the 
 present was clear. " For the life was manifested, and 
 we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you 
 that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was 
 manifested unto us : that which we have seen and 
 heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have 
 fellowship with us : and truly our fellowship is with 
 the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." It was, 
 perhaps, remembering the Master's own words, that the 
 disciple wrote in this strain. " This is life eternal," said 
 the Christ in His last great intercession, " that men may
 
 IMMORTALITY. 177 
 
 know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
 Thou hast sent." It did not seem strange or vain- 
 glorious to those who had followed Him in His great 
 career, as He " went about doing good," and opening 
 their eyes to understand many things that were dark 
 before, to hear such words spoken from time to time as 
 these, "lam the way, the truth, and the life" — "I am 
 the resurrection and the life " — " I am the light of the 
 world " — " I am the bread of life ; he that eateth Me, 
 even he shall live by Me." His miracles authenticated 
 His words; and His words explained His miracles. 
 They were not mere signs or wonders, but, as He so 
 often calls them Himself, works, wrought visibly on 
 men's bodies to show what He was capable of operating 
 invisibly on their souls. And we cannot deny, unless 
 we are prepared to deny all evidence of testimony, nay 
 the evidence, I should suppose, of our own frequent 
 observation, that that faculty of the soul which we call 
 "faith" — which, adopting Mr. Harrison's definition of 
 the soul, means "the consensus of all the human 
 faculties" throwing themselves and fastening with 
 intense energy on a particular object — it cannot, I 
 think, be denied that faith, possessing itself (so to 
 speak) of Christ, living, as Paul lived, in Him, and 
 by Him, and to Him, has had the power of elevating 
 humanity to heights, not perhaps unattempted, but 
 unattained before. Unless it be seriously maintained 
 that the heathen philosopher was as perfect a specimen 
 of the race in its moral aspects as the Christian saint — 
 that there were as many elements of goodness as well 
 as of greatness in a Socrates or Seneca as in a Paul — it
 
 178 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 can hardly be gainsaid that in Christianity there has 
 
 been a perceptible accession to the forces or powers 
 
 that govern the moral development of mankind. If 
 
 in the region " beyond the microscope limit," according 
 
 to Professor Tyndall, a tendency is given to the physical 
 
 powers, so that, " when they have free action and proper 
 
 stimulus in a suitable environment, they determine 
 
 first the germ and afterwards the complete organism ; " 
 
 so, in the region beyond the limit of physiological or 
 
 biological inquiry, there seems evidence of a tendency 
 
 given to the spiritual powers, so that, under the like 
 
 favourable conditions, they develop, in our Lord's 
 
 fionirative language, " first the blade, then the ear, 
 
 after that the full corn in the ear." And of this 
 
 tendency and this development you, gentlemen, while 
 
 observing primarily the phenomena of natural life, 
 
 must have been as frequently conscious as we who, 
 
 by our profession, are more concerned with watching 
 
 the manifestations of life in the soul. In the dark 
 
 and sorrowful hours of many a sick chamber — by the 
 
 side of many a bed occupied, now by one struck down 
 
 by some deathly disease in the full flush of youth and 
 
 strength, now by some hoary head going down to its 
 
 grave " as a shock of corn cometh in in its season," you 
 
 cannot, unless your eyes have been strangely holden 
 
 from seeing such things, have failed to notice with 
 
 what tenacity the human spirit clings to that eternal 
 
 life which it believes itself to have in Christ Jesus 
 
 our Lord : as one testifies, " the outward man perishing, 
 
 but the inward man renewed day by day — the eye 
 
 the while looking not at things which are seen, but at
 
 IMMORTALITY. 179 
 
 things which are not seen ; for the things which are 
 seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen 
 are eternal." 
 
 It is indeed surprising how little modern criticism or 
 modern scientific inquiry has done to undermine those 
 old foundations upon which all religion in its very idea, 
 and Christianity as religion in its highest form, must 
 ultimately repose. It is only one here and there who 
 tells us that the idea of a personal God is an unverifiable 
 hypothesis; and even such recognise in the circumstances 
 around them a manifest stream or tendency that " makes 
 for righteousness." It is only one here and there who 
 defrauds humanity of its brightest hopes and most sus- 
 taining motives by denying to it immortality ; and even 
 such, as thouo^h conscious of their wrongs, endeavour to 
 provide a substitute for the idea which they have de- 
 stroyed, which indeed proves illusory, but which they 
 seem to feel to be indispensable.^ 
 
 No doubt, there are some sad souls 
 
 " Mad from life's history, 
 Glad to death's mystery 
 
 Swift to be hurled, 
 Anywliere, anywhere, 
 Out of the world ; " 
 
 but, however much we may sympathise with them or 
 try to rescue them from their blank despair, we cannot 
 sacrifice the hopes of the human race to these. In the 
 dim gloom that shrouds the land beyond the grave there 
 
 1 Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his Posthumous Essays, admits that, 
 though the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is probably an 
 illusion, it is morally so valuable that it had better be retained. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 is yet a streak of light, like some sudden lightning-flash, 
 illuminating the darkness with hopes full of immortality; 
 in the still silence of the chamber of death, there is yet 
 a voice heard, sustaining the soul in its passage through 
 the shadowed valley, " He that believeth in Me shall 
 never die." Grant me a right to believe in a personal 
 God — in a living Christ — in an indwelling Spirit — in a 
 life of the world to come ; and, like that ship driven up 
 and down in Adria, upon which" no small tempest lay," 
 I shall have, as it were, my " four anchors cast out of 
 the stem," while I " wait for the day " (Acts xxvii. 
 20, 27, 29). Speaking for myself alone, this thought is 
 my comfort in a day when so many old creeds are ruth- 
 lessly assailed, and even we who think that the attack 
 has failed against the key of our position must, if we 
 are honest, confess that many outposts, which we once 
 thought of more importance than they have proved to 
 be, have had to be evacuated ; that we have had to part 
 with some once cherished beliefs, or, if we hold them 
 still, hold them with less tenacity and less confidence 
 than before. If the four great ultimate truths that I 
 have mentioned are wrested from us, then, I admit, 
 we must surrender Christianity. But as yet, at least, 
 we claim still to be in possession of so much Christian 
 ground. And on this ground, as " in a suitable environ- 
 ment," the human soul can live, and thrive, and errow. 
 It will find for itself, by a sort of instinct, the food that 
 nourishes it best. One is, as it were, a babe, to be fed 
 with milk ; another can digest and assimilate strong 
 meat. One draws most nourishment from prayer ; 
 another from sacraments. So lony; as each srows, it
 
 IMMORTALITY. 181 
 
 matters not much why or how. And the fact of growth 
 is the best proof that the food was wholesome, and 
 suited to the system which received it. The cases are 
 numberless in which physicians, whether of the body or 
 soul, must stand aside, and discontinue their nostrums, 
 and see, in one case what nature, in the other case what 
 grace, can do. As long as such " miracles of heaUng " 
 are witnessed, men will not seriously doubt the truth 
 of Christianity. As M. Alexandre Dumas said the 
 other day in Paris at the distribution of some prizes in 
 reward of virtue — a somoAvhat curious merit first to 
 discriminate, and then to reward — " the study of these 
 lives has done me more good than the finest treatise in 
 philosophy or wisdom ; for genius does not explain God, 
 but goodness proves Him." 
 
 Yes, I feel it : we shall have to come back more and 
 more to the simplest proofs of the " things which are 
 most surely believed among us." Christianity has been 
 too much elaborated into a system or a philosophy. 
 Erudite treatises, forcible arguments may have done 
 much in support of faith ; but a holy life does more. 
 It was the Bishop of Peterborough's great argument in 
 Norwich Cathedral before the British Association for 
 the Advancement of Science, and, I have heard, fully 
 appreciated there. Portraying to their imaginations the 
 character of a Christian man — self-sacrificing, brave, 
 humble, patient, pure — he said, " Account for that man." 
 If you cannot explain him by any known law of physical 
 development, listen to his own account of himself He 
 will tell you, as one told questioners of old, " By the 
 grace of God, I am what I am." Beyond that, no need.
 
 182 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 no place, for further questioning. He cannot explain 
 the relation of cause and effect any more than you can 
 in your physical researches. But he is aware of a chain 
 of sequences which lead up his soul to God. And the 
 invariableness of the sequences, and the spiritual growth 
 of which he is conscious, have made him, in a very real, 
 though perhaps not in a scientific sense, " know Him in 
 whom he has believed," and he is content to trust the 
 future to Him as well as the present, persuaded, with a 
 persuasion that you will not easily wrest from him, that 
 " He is able to keep that which he has committed to 
 Him against that day." " Lord," he says, with the 
 simple-hearted disciple of old, "to whom shall I go? 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 
 I trust, gentlemen, representatives of a noble pro- 
 fession, that His Spirit, who, in the strong but not 
 strained langfuage of Paul, " illuminated life and im- 
 mortality," may guide you, in your discussions, to the 
 furtherance, within your own legitimate and important 
 sphere, of those high human interests for which He 
 lived and died. 
 
 Preached — Before the British Medical Association, in Manchester 
 Cathedral, August 7, 1877.
 
 XIII. 
 
 EIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 " For tlie kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but righteous- 
 ness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." — Rom. xiv. 17. 
 
 A MAN need not be a pessimist or a cynic who says 
 that he is not cheered by the present aspects, and that 
 he feels a kind of uncomfortable shudder at the dark 
 and threatening future, of modern society. 
 
 I admit that it is easy, perhaps natural, to some 
 minds to exaggerate this. Our impression and our 
 generalisation are so much modified by temperament, by 
 association, by limitation of view, by accidental group- 
 ing or contrast of the objects which present themselves 
 to the eye at the same moment ; by defect, sometimes of 
 imagination and sometimes of reasoning ; by inability 
 to " look before and after," to discern causes and trace 
 consequences ; and not seldom by a loss of stability in 
 the moral centre, and an enfeebled, if not a shaken, 
 faith in God, that our inferences are apt to go further 
 than we are justified, upon the evidence, in carrying 
 them ; and a more sanguine, as well as a more philo- 
 so2:)hic and religious, mind would bid us see elements of
 
 184 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Lope and light in what had filled our hearts with gloom 
 and despondency. 
 
 I remember well on my last visit to Oxford, walking 
 with a thoughtful friend, and his remarking;, in a tone 
 that struck and surprised me, that he had given up all 
 hope of the birth or revival of great ideas in England 
 for this generation. What the twentieth century might 
 have in store he could not tell ; but the nineteenth had 
 " left oif bearing." Something like this, you will 
 remember, was the fancy of Aristotle in regard to races. 
 " There is a cropping-time," he says, " in the races of 
 men, as in the fruits of the field; and sometimes, if the 
 stock be good, there springs up for a time a succession 
 of splendid men (avSpe^ ireptTToc) ; and then comes 
 a period of barrenness." I am not saying whether 
 such views are true or false, nor denying that there 
 may not be a dangerous trace of fatalism in them which 
 would paralyse effort, and help the prophecy to fulfil 
 itself ; but they are natural ; and at crises like the 
 present, when there are very few objects, either in the 
 political, or the social, or the religious field of view, on 
 which a reflecting mind can rest with satisfaction, they 
 are apt perhaps unduly to depress the spirit, and almost 
 make us lose our heads in the apj^alling thought that 
 the deluge is upon us, and that we are too weak, too 
 disorganised, and, above all, too late, to do anything to 
 arrest its devastating and fatal career. 
 
 I was strengthened myself recently by a passage 
 which fell under my eye in the preface of Mr. Thomas 
 Hughes's touching Memoir of a Brother, a brother 
 whom I remember when I first became a fellow of
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 185 
 
 Oriel, thirty-nine years ago, as an undergraduate of the 
 highest type there ; a memoir, which you, young men, 
 who would fight the good fight, and pass safely through 
 the world's trials and temptations, and win its highest 
 and purest rewards, would do well to read. 
 
 Deprecating dark and gloomy forebodings of the 
 future of England, as though we were unable to do 
 what our fathers had done, Mr. Hughes bids his reader 
 look round upon and number up the various groups of 
 families scattered up and down the land, in which we 
 know that homely, simple, modest, pure lives are yet 
 being led, and which vice and luxury and selfishness 
 have not yet contrived to spoil, and he says we shall be 
 surprised at the number of such homes within the 
 circle of our own acquaintance ; and there, he adds, 
 lie the hopes and the future of England. And I ac- 
 quiesced in the truth of the statement, and thanked 
 God and took courage. 
 
 Of course, there is always a ground of hope in what 
 I may call the inherent moral resources of h\iman 
 nature. Even the darkest and most hideous pictures 
 of the condition of man — " far enough gone," indeed, 
 as every one's conscience must witness, " from original 
 righteousness," yet not so far gone as some theological 
 systems, which exercised perhaps too great a spell over 
 the imagination of our reformers, have loved to paint 
 him — have happily never been able to suppress the 
 faith of the human heart in its capacities — in what 
 Bishop Butler would probably call its " natural ten- 
 dencies." Sane men — of course one does not notice 
 the wailings of morbid minds like poor Cowper's —
 
 186 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 who, when under the necessity of acting, have broken 
 through the conventional phraseology of their schools, 
 have felt that they had, and that they could exert, a 
 moral power ; and that even when, through the failing 
 resistance of the will, they allowed themselves "to be 
 brought into captivity to the law of sin that was in 
 their members," there was yet within them that consent 
 of the conscience unto the law that it is good, and 
 those visitings of compunction for the evil that has 
 been done or the good that has been left undone, which 
 are at least evidence of a nature not wholly corrupt, 
 and guarantees that the divine image in which we were 
 made, however much disfigured, is not absolutely 
 marred. 
 
 Indeed, when our Divine Lord bids His disciples have 
 faith in God, it almost follows as a necessary implicit 
 inference that they should have faith in man, who, as 
 St. James reminds us, " is made after the similitude of 
 God." To despair of humanity — to bemoan its sad 
 estate — to picture it as, since the great mystery of the 
 Incarnation, still lying "fast bound in misery and iron" 
 — to so misread the lesson of the prophet's vision as to 
 say or think that nothing can be done in the way of 
 preparation, and of necessary preparation, which may 
 be the very condition of full success, till the breath of 
 God comes forth and shakes the bones and breathes 
 ujDon and quickens those slain — this supine and ener- 
 vating " waiting upon Providence " or upon grace — by 
 whichever name it may be excused or disguised — is as 
 irrational as it is unscriptural ; as false in theory as it 
 is fatal in practice.
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 187 
 
 Of course, results are not ours ; and we often form 
 mistaken and too eager estimates of them ; and like the 
 half-hearted King of Israel, we smite but thrice upon 
 the ground with our arrows, and stay ; or ask in a 
 murmur, which savours of mistrust, " Lord, wilt not Thou 
 stretch forth Thy hand and destroy the enemy that hath 
 done such dishonour in Thy sanctuary ? " and forget the 
 need and the discipline of that " long patience " (as the 
 Apostle calls it) with which the husbandman waiteth 
 for the precious fruit of the earth, until it receives the 
 early and the latter rain, he having done, and doing 
 still, his own part the while ; but still there is evidence, 
 and evidence enough, of a general law, and the blessing 
 for the most part comes quick and ample and reward- 
 ing, where there has been effort, and the effort has been 
 wisely calculated and adequately sustained. 
 
 Quite wonderful at times has been the vivifying 
 power of great principles and noble ideas, even upon 
 masses of men who before seemed steeped in inertness 
 and lethargy. It needs but that he whom Carlyle calls 
 the hero should give utterance to the voice ; and if it is 
 a true and inspiring one, every tongue catches it up as 
 it were instinctively, and repeats it to its fellows. 
 
 There is a harmony between the inner sensibilities of 
 the soul and the moral order and beauty of the universe, 
 if we only have the skill to touch the note which 
 wakens it. It was this harmony to which Paul so 
 unhesitatingly appealed, in spite of all the subtleties of 
 a sophistical philosophy, which so often made evil seem 
 good, and wrong right, when he trusted that the Philip- 
 pians could still discern for themselves, and love and
 
 188 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 honour whatever was true, and honest, and just, and 
 pure, and lovely, which men would not have stamped 
 with the name of virtue, or consented as with one 
 mouth to praise, if they had not felt its intrinsic 
 excellence, and recognised its genuine attractiveness. 
 
 Let no man speak lightly of, or lose confidence in, 
 human nature. It was of himself, in what some people 
 would call his unregenerate condition, that Paul said, 
 " I delight in the law of God after the inward man." 
 To forget, in any battle we attempt to fight against sin, 
 whether in ourselves or in others, that truth is more 
 natural to us than falsehood, and rioht than wron? — 
 more natural, I mean, in Bishop Butler's sense of the 
 word, more agreeable with the constitution of our 
 nature, and more in harmony with its actual facts — is 
 to go into the fray almost with our hands tied ; is cer- 
 tainly to neglect to avail ourselves of a position from 
 which we could operate with the greatest advantage. 
 The facts of human nature are not against us, but for 
 us ; we may appeal to them, and trust to the effects of 
 the appeal. And this surely is a great d(f)opfi'>] : a 
 coign of vantage of a practical kind, not, for the sake of 
 any theoretical consistency or theological prejudice, to 
 be lightly thrown away. 
 
 Society, doubtless, is not in a healthy state ; it is 
 easy to mark the symptoms of many a form of danger- 
 ous disease ; but one would not say that gangrene has 
 set in. Things have been in as desperate a plight before. 
 They were far worse in the days of Juvenal and 
 Tacitus ; far worse when Paul drew with his scathing 
 pen that fearful picture of the general foulness of the
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 189 
 
 heathen world ; of which one historian (Tacitus) him- 
 self could say that it was an age hostile to virtue 
 — " virhttihus infesta soecula " — and another, " We have 
 come to this pass: we can neither suffer our vices nor 
 their remedies." And yet this almost insandbile vulnus 
 — this corrupted body, with no soundness in it from the 
 sole of the foot even to the head, full of wounds, and 
 bruises, and putrefying sores — the wholesome medicine 
 of Christ's Gospel, applied by the hands of wise 
 physicians, in a measure, healed. 
 
 Let any one who cares to do so compare the rj6o<i of 
 St. Paul with that of Seneca, or even that of Marcus 
 Aurelius, and, if he has any feeling for such differences, 
 he will recognise how it was that evangelists succeeded 
 when philosophers had failed ; how it was that the firm 
 grasp of a few great spiritual truths (for it was so 
 unsystematic that it could hardly be called a method at 
 all) — how, I say, it was that the firm grasp of a few great 
 spiritual truths, the exhaustless love of God to man 
 being at the base of them all, and every true response 
 from the human heart gathering itself round that, 
 sufficed to convert and purify the world. 
 
 Since then we have theologised and theosophised, 
 and developed and formulated doctrines, and framed 
 our faith into creeds and articles, and defended it with 
 anathemas, and made it systematic, and think we are 
 now more fully armed than ever to encounter the 
 armies of heathendom abroad and the armies of un- 
 godliness and unbelief at home. " The Catholic Faith 
 is this," we say : and we seem to expect as a matter of 
 course that all opposition will disperse before it, as
 
 190 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 mists before tlie morning sun. It ha's hardly been so, 
 as a matter of fact, of history. The great ages of 
 formulating doctrines and of anathematising heretics 
 were not the great ages of winning souls. The spirit 
 of Paul was more truly missionary than the spirit of 
 Cyril of Alexandria, or even, grand figure as his was, of 
 Athanasius. The Council of Jerusalem, if we read its 
 effects in their spirit, did infinitely more for the relief 
 and help of the souls of men than the Council of 
 Ephesus. When men testified everywhere the simple 
 doctrines of " repentance towards God and faith towards 
 our Lord Jesus Christ," I can understand what I am 
 told about " pricked hearts," and " common people 
 hearing gladly," and souls that had long seemed to be 
 lying dead, or at least torpid, in trespasses and sins, 
 made conscious (so to speak) of new powers, recognis- 
 ing responsibilities never felt, making efforts never 
 attempted before, becoming, in the highest, truest 
 sense, " new creatures " old things passing away, and 
 all things seeming new. 
 
 When I spoke of a medicine just now, I used an 
 image which may mislead. Our popular notion of a 
 medicine is of something made up according to the 
 prescription of a doctor, or the directions of a pharma- 
 copoeia, of divers drugs in due proportions, neatly 
 labelled and put up in a graduated bottle, to be taken 
 punctually so many times a day. Nothing could be 
 less like than this to the freedom, the almost infinite 
 adaptiveness and versatility of the first preachers of the 
 Gospel. " To the Jews I became as a Jew ; to them 
 that are without law as without law : to the weak
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 191 
 
 became I as weak, that I might gain the weak ; I am 
 made all things unto all men that I might by all means 
 save some." 
 
 He is careful indeed to tell us that he recognised a 
 law : he speaks of the duty of conforming to the 
 customs of the Churches ; he preaches distinctly that 
 God is not the author of confusion ; he would have 
 everything done decently and in order; but the law 
 was a law of liberty, not of bondage ; the customs were 
 few and simple, and their aim does not seem to have 
 been a mystic symbolism, but practical edification ; 
 peace was secured and confusion avoided by the spirits 
 of the prophets being subject to the prophets, and every 
 one submitting himself to the higher powers ; and an 
 elaborate ceremonial, each part in which has to be re- 
 hearsed by its actors that the tableau may be complete 
 with a kind of mechanical completeness, would have 
 been perhaps as far removed from Paul's ideal of 
 " decency and order " as anything conceivably could be. 
 You may as well try to persuade me, as some silly 
 people, I am told, have persuaded themselves, that the 
 cloak which the apostle left at Troas with Carpus was 
 a sacrificial vestment — a chasuble. 
 
 I was much struck the other day with a passage which 
 I met in one of the late lamented Professor Mozley's 
 reviews. He notices the "melancholy fact that persons 
 have often been driven by the near presence of the 
 Church's teaching into a worse infidelity than they 
 would have had without it ; " and while he admits that 
 " the Church is not responsible for such an effect," he 
 asserts that she is "responsible for any tendencies
 
 192 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 in this direction arising from unnecessary and narrow- 
 minded intolerance," or " from obstinate continuances " 
 in courses which have grown out of date " amid a 
 wholly different state of things." (Essays, ii. pp. 88-9.) 
 At the same time, with that balanced and impartial 
 mind which was so characteristic of him, he recog- 
 nises " the great practical difficulties which always lie 
 on the side of change." " It does not appear," he says, 
 "to be the habit of institutions to dissolve on the 
 principle of accommodation, and yield a voluntary and 
 rational assent to the proofs of uncongeniality which 
 present themselves to their eyes. They expect their 
 dissolution under another form of approach, and they 
 generally wait for that final evidence, good or bad, of in- 
 compatibility, which forcible overthrow supplies." And, 
 then applying his principles to the case he had before 
 him, he adds, " The Incpiisition did what all other 
 institutions do : it went on till it was stopped." 
 
 I may utterly misread the signs of the times and the 
 drift of events. What seems to me mainly a super- 
 ficial, irrational, and wayward excitement — largely 
 materialistic, largely sensuous, and almost entirely 
 sesthetic and emotional — may be, though I don't think 
 it is, a great awakening of the conscience, the beginniog 
 of a revived religious life of the nation in higher, 
 nobler, more solid, and permanent forms. In the heat 
 of the fray, it is not easy to withdraw to a post of 
 philosophical observation : but certainly, while I see no 
 evidence to support this view, that the present methods 
 which many of us are so largely using are producing 
 over any great and discernible breadths of society a 
 
 i
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 193^ 
 
 moralising influence upon life — are making people 
 better, purer, stronger — all the a priori conclusions that 
 I should draw would go directly the other way. For 
 all philosophy requires that causes should be adequate 
 and proportionate to their effects ; and though, of 
 course, the grace of God — the Spirit of Christ operating 
 as Himself pleases — is and must be adequate to any 
 moral or spiritual effect, yet even here we expect the 
 grace to operate after a moral and spiritual, and not 
 after a magical, manner. 
 
 I do not believe that the doctrines of sacerdotalism 
 and of sacramentalism which are so much in vogue, 
 and in which some people would seem to wish to make 
 the very essence of Christianity, as a power of sanctify- 
 ing the human soul, to reside, are doctrines of a true 
 priesthood, or of a true sacramentalism. They have been 
 brought out of the ages that were plunged in the 
 grossest darkness, not out of the ages that, both in time 
 and in spirit, were nearest to the light. If they can 
 rightly be called Catholic at all — and perhaps at one 
 time — say from the 10th to the loth century — they did 
 largely pervade the Christian world, they are Catliolic 
 only in the sense of being mediaeval, not in the sense of 
 being primitive. 
 
 Hooker's definitions, whether of sacraments or of 
 priesthood, will not satisfy our new school. He will 
 have no " supernatural quality in the sacraments, 
 because they contain in themselves no vital force or 
 efficacy — are not physical, but moral instruments of 
 salvation." The ministry of the Gospel he will allow 
 to be called a priesthood — " although," with his wise 
 
 o
 
 194 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 caution he adds, "in truth the -word presbyter doth 
 seem more fit and, in propriety of speech, more agree- 
 able than priest, with the drift of the whole Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ " — but only upon the distinct under- 
 standing that " now properly it hath no sacrifice." To 
 so-called " Catholic " minds, Hooker's theory would 
 appear to rob the sacraments of all their grace, and the 
 priesthood of all its power ; and I am afraid they would 
 be as much repelled by the larger, but, as they would 
 probably call them, latitudinarian views of Robertson, 
 who saw ten thousand avenues by which grace might 
 reach the soul, and even recognised in Rome's extension 
 of the word a wholesome protest against the limitations 
 of the opposite school. " All the universe," he says in 
 one of his letters, " is God's blessed sacrament, the 
 channel of His spirit to your soul, whereof He has 
 selected two things as types of all the rest; the 
 commonest of all elements, water ; and the commonest 
 of all meals, a supper ; and you cannot find Him except 
 in seven ! Too many, or else too few ; but even in that 
 protest against the Protestant limitation of grace to 
 two channels, I recognise a truth ; only distorted and 
 petrified as usual." 
 
 There is hardly a more beautiful or touching passage 
 in the whole of Christian antiquity than that descrip- 
 tion, in the eighth book of the Apostolical Constitutions 
 (ch. xii., xiii., xiv., xv.), of the great primitive act of 
 eucharistic worship, which in that particular form of it 
 — and Bingham in his great and learned work regards 
 this as the most perfect type or pattern of all primitive 
 forms — tradition, whether rightly or wrongly, ascribed
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 195 
 
 to the institution of the Apostle James, the brother of 
 John. It is worth reading for its exquisite pathos and 
 simplicity, and the strain of simple faith and piety that 
 runs through the whole. It might almost become the 
 liturgy of any modern Christian Church which would 
 retain the old spirit and yet meet new needs, without 
 the alteration of a usage or a phrase. 
 
 Some needlessly sensitive minds might be startled to 
 find the bishop bid to put on a splendid robe (Xafiirpav 
 eadrjTa) ; and that before he commences his noble 
 prayer he makes the sign of the cross upon his brow ; 
 and that, including under the idea of the Church all 
 those who in every age and clime had been redeemed 
 by the precious blood of Christ, he is not afraid to offer 
 and to pray for all the saints who from the beginning 
 of the world, patriarchs, prophets, just men, apostles, 
 martyrs, "have been well pleasing in Thy sight and 
 whose names Thou knowest ; " but there is nothing 
 here that breathes an unscriptural or superstitious tone 
 in my ear. The prayer is nobly, grandly, sublimely 
 Catholic. It is emphatically the act of the bishop and 
 the people. The word priest is not so much as once 
 used from the beginning to the end. The simple 
 offerings of bread and wine are called dvala, but 
 antecedently to the invocation of the Holy Ghost, 
 which is the only consecration, and never afterwards. 
 There is no invocation of saints, or of angels, or of a 
 Queen of Heaven ; no incense, no lights, no mixed 
 chalice — at least, no chalice symbolically mixed — no 
 elevation, or adoration, but simply a reverent and 
 
 O 2
 
 196 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 orderly distribution and reception — /cara rd^tv fier 
 al8ov<i Koi evXa/deia^; avev Oopv^ov — no non-communi- 
 cating attendants, but all, men and women, partaking of 
 the sacred meal — and then (let no zealous Protestant be 
 alarmed at a custom which was harmless enough till it 
 got abused), the deacons gathering up the fragments 
 that remained, and, not reserving them in a tabernacle 
 for exposition or for worship, but carrying them into 
 the 7raaTO(f)opoa — chambers adjoining the church, and 
 used for various purposes — where they were ready to 
 be distributed to such as from sickness or other valid 
 cause were hindered from attending the public ministry 
 of the Church. 
 
 The point I wish to signalise is that there is nothing 
 sacerdotal — nothing implying that the virtue of the 
 offering depended upon anything that was done or said 
 by a man, standing betwixt God and the people and 
 mediating for them — in the whole rite. It is too simple, 
 too primitive, too fresh as with the air of the Galilean 
 mountains, or with thouohts drawn straight from the 
 solemn converse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, 
 for that. You must wait for this till you come to 
 liturgies of uncertain date, which, though bearing great 
 and significant names — a Basil's or a Chrysostom's — 
 were no doubt revised and interpolated again and again 
 to make them favour the growing claims of priestly 
 prerogative and the growing darkness of pojDular super- 
 stition, of a later, but not a better, age. 
 
 Here, whatever change, whether relative merely or 
 supernatural, passes upon the elements, is ascribed
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 197 
 
 solely and absolutely to the operation of the Holy 
 Ghost. This part of the eucharistic prayer is so beauti- 
 ful in itself, and ousht to be so reassurinof to Encrlish 
 Churchmen, as showing us how exactly their own 
 glorious liturgy is framed upon primitive lines, that I 
 cannot refrain from offering you a somewhat uncouth 
 translation of it. " Mindful therefore of those things 
 which for our sakes He bore, we render thanks to Thee, 
 O God Almighty, not such as we owe, but such as are 
 all we can ; and we thus fulfil His command. For in 
 the same night in which He was betrayed, when He 
 had taken a loaf in His pure and stainless hands, and 
 looking up to God and His Father had broken it, He gave 
 it to His disciples, saying, ' This is the mystery of the 
 New Testament : take of it and eat : for this is My 
 body which is broken for many for the remission of 
 sins.' And likewise having poured into the cup a 
 mixture of wine and water and blessed it, He gave it 
 to them, saying, ' Drink of this all : for this is My blood 
 which is shed for many for the remission of sins : do 
 this for a memorial of Me. For as oft as ye eat this 
 bread and drink this cup, ye do show My death till I 
 shall come.' 
 
 " Wherefore remembering His death and passion, and 
 His resurrection from the dead, and His ascension into 
 heaven, and His second coming, when He will come 
 again with glory and power to judge the quick and 
 the dead, and to recompense to every man according 
 to His works, we offer to Thee, our King and God, 
 according to His institution, this bread and this cup ,
 
 198 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 giving thanks to Thee through Him, that Thou hast 
 deemed us worthy to stand before and offer this 
 sacrifice to Thee {leparevetv (tol). And we be- 
 seech Thee graciously to look upon these gifts laid 
 out before Thee, Who needest nothing, and that Thou 
 wilt be pleased in them to the honour of Thy Christ ; 
 and that Thou wilt send Thy Holy Spirit upon this 
 sacrifice, the witness of the sufferings of the Lord 
 Jesus, that He may make {aTrofprjvri) this bread 
 the body of Thy Christ, and this cup . the blood of 
 Thy Christ ; that they who partake of it may be 
 strengthened unto holiness, may obtain remission of 
 sins, may be delivered from the devil and his wiles, 
 may be filled with a holy spirit, may become worthy 
 of Thy Christ, and may attain eternal life, Thou being 
 reconciled to them, O Lord God Almighty." 
 
 Well, if there is sacerdotalism here — and there is 
 sacerdotalism in so far as this, that we see a man ap- 
 pointed to a sacred office discharging the highest function 
 of that office in a solemn and godly manner — it is a 
 sacerdotalism which no pious or intelligent mind would 
 wish to expunge from any liturgy or any ritual. Well 
 had it been for Christendom and the world if the 
 Church in all ages had been content with such a 
 reverent and edifying form, I rejoice to think that no 
 Church in Christendom has retained probably so much 
 of its spirit and tone as the Church of England in that 
 almost inspired Communion office, which, when re- 
 verently rendered and devoutly used, seems to leave 
 nothing for the pious soul, seeking to reahse its union
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 199 
 
 with Christ, to desire. As Keble so beautifully and 
 truly said (I cannot for myself accept the posthumous 
 alteration) — 
 
 " If with tliy heart the strains accord, 
 
 That on His altar-throne 
 Highest exalt thy glorious Lord, 
 
 Yet leave Him most thine own, 
 come to our Communion Feast : 
 
 There present in the heart, 
 Not in the hands, th' eternal Priest 
 
 Will His true Self impart. 
 Thus, should thy soul misgiving turn 
 
 Back to th' enchanted air, 
 Solace and warning thou may'st learn 
 
 From all that tempts thee there." 
 
 But I must hasten on ; and I have left myself but 
 little space or time to emphasise the great lesson which 
 I desire you, my hearers, and especially you, my younger 
 hearers, to draw from the text, and from the lines of 
 thought along which I would fain have led you. " Beneath, 
 far beneath, all forms of sight and feeling," said F. W. 
 Robertson, " 1 joyfully recognise the unity of that spirit 
 which forms the basis of all true lives. At bottom, all 
 good minds mean substantially the same thing." I 
 thoroughly believe it also ; and this is why all through 
 my life I have never found any difficulty in working 
 with any thoroughly earnest-minded man. The weighty 
 matters on which we were agreed would have made us 
 seem fools one to another if we had stayed to quarrel, 
 or even to argue, on matters of less moment on which 
 haply we might have disagreed. But there is a sad 
 fact which we can neither hide from others nor ignore
 
 200 UXIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 ourselves, which destroys all the comforts that would 
 naturally flow from this conviction that all good men 
 are really labouring for what they believe to be the 
 extension of Christ's kino^dom, the cause of righteous 
 ness, and the good of the souls of men — viz., the fact 
 that excessive ceremonialism is often attended by moral 
 torpor and religious decay. 
 
 Even the man who spends, as it may seem to me, 
 most of his time, and strength, and care upon what I 
 cannot but call the extravagances of superstition, which 
 I cannot conceive as exercising any beneficial influence 
 upon the human soul, based as they are ujoon j)ure 
 irrationality, I can yet suppose, and, if he is a good 
 man, I must suppose, from his own point of view, 
 however inconceivable to me, intends this aim. But, 
 by his methods, is he likely to realise it ? To such a 
 one I could only say. Friend, will you not be taught by 
 experience ? Can history point to a single age, from 
 the womb of time, in which an excessive addiction to 
 ceremonialism and the externals of religion was not 
 accompanied by a corresponding and proportionate 
 dulness of the conscience and deadness to the higher 
 forms of duty ? It was so emphatically in Isaiah's day. 
 It was so again, though with a perceptible and instruc- 
 tive difference in outward manifestation — the hypocrisy 
 was more highly organised, the mask more skilfully 
 painted — in the days of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 How often, I wonder, as we have been reading those 
 solemn chapters of the old Hebrew prophet which he 
 spake to Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, 
 Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah its kings, from the begin-
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 201 
 
 ning of Advent until now, have the holy angels been 
 waiting with awe and wonder to see whether anything 
 would open our eyes to discern how many lessons all 
 these awful warnings have for ourselves. We go on our 
 wilful and heedless way, and trust our false prophets and 
 prophetesses who still see visions of peace for us, who 
 foretell a morrow as abundant as to-day ; who point with 
 triumph to the conquests of human skill and knowledge 
 and enterprise, and ask, " Can there be any limit to 
 wealth such as this ?" who blur the once clear outlines of 
 right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and argue that all 
 must be right which is profitable, and that anything may 
 be true which a man wishes to believe ; and who tell the 
 world like the cynic of old, as though it were the last 
 and best philosophic discovery, that all things being 
 doubtful, and immortality nothing surer probably than a 
 dream, " there is nothing better than that a man should 
 eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labour that he 
 taketh under the sun all the days of his life which God 
 giveth him. For that is his portion ; and who shall 
 bring him to see what shall be after him ? " 
 
 F. W. Robertson once said " My misfortune or happi- 
 ness is power of sympathy. I can feel with the 
 Brahmin, with the Pantheist, the Stoic, the Platonist, 
 the Transcendentalist — perhaps the Epicurean." Well, 
 I hope I am not narrow in my sympathies, either. I 
 can feel for and with much that I observe moves some 
 hearts to anger, or bitterness, or scorn. But with this 
 Epicurean cynicism, cruelly mocking at life, itself 
 secure ; abjuring every high aim in the lofty j)ursuit of 
 personal comfort; checked by no moral considerations
 
 202 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 whatever in its froward path of pure selfishness ; care- 
 lessly wrecking woman's honour, wickedly shattering 
 simple faith ; discussing the most solemn verities — at 
 least the most solemn questions, toothpick in hand, over 
 olives and wine — with this unhappy, but only too 
 legitimate, offspring of an age that has resolved religion 
 into phrases, and God's service into a gorgeous cere- 
 moniahsm, I do not feel disposed to hold either truce 
 or terms. 
 
 Christ can have no concord with Belial, nor he that 
 believeth with this type of infidel. There are limits 
 within which even Charity must intrench herself, and say 
 to him that is of the contrary part, " I cannot welcome 
 thee here." But I hope it is not the lot of many who 
 are listening to me now to be thrown into companion- 
 ship, or at any rate into intimacy, with such as I have 
 described. If you are, and if you would still preserve 
 the innocency and integrity of your souls, you have no 
 choice left. You must come out from among them and 
 be separate. It is not safe to tarry. It is not prudent 
 to look back. Even now do not your ears catch the 
 tramp as of a great army, the voice as of a captain 
 bidding you " Go forward ? " Are there none of you 
 with the noble enthusiasm of Gideon's three hundred ? 
 Are there none who will strike a blow for truth and 
 righteousness ? 
 
 There are lives worth living to be lived in England, 
 even in this unromantic age — in country villages, in 
 manufacturing towns, in the metropolis ; in trade, 
 in commerce, in the clerisy, at the bar, in Parliament. 
 England needs, as emphatically as ever, men who will
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 203 
 
 do — will try to do — their duty. And perhaps the very 
 discipline through which we are passing, severe though 
 it be, is clearing some films from the eye away. Who 
 will bind the red cross upon his arm, in a nobler cause 
 than any old crusade, and follow Christ through all the 
 perils and swayings of the fight, strong in the conviction 
 that the cause of righteousness must prevail, and that 
 there are yet powers in the living Word of God, which, 
 far from being exhausted, have as yet hardly been 
 tried ? 
 
 Preached — St. Mary's, Oxfcird, February 9, 1879 ; Westminster 
 Abbey, July 8, 1883.
 
 XIV. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CHARACTEK ON INTELLECTUAL 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 " Know ye not that they ^Yhich run in a race run all, but one 
 receiveth the prize 1 So run, that ye may obtain. And 
 every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all 
 things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown ; but 
 we an incorruptible." — 1 Corinthians ix. 24, 25. 
 
 Discipline is an eflfort, as well as a result, of will. No 
 one who watches the processes of his own inner life w^ill 
 accept the most recent philosophical and scientific 
 theories, that he is a mere result of environment acting 
 upon phj^sical organisation — a mere piece of reflex- 
 acting mechanism. Even the mappings out of a sounder 
 psychology are apt to mislead ; they make us forget, by 
 their separations and discriminations, the unity of the 
 character of each individual. It may be convenient to 
 parcel out the faculties ; but after all, they start from, 
 or converge in, a certain point ; and that is the centre 
 of the man. 
 
 According to Bishop Butler's theory, human nature 
 is only rightly organised when all its parts — if an indi- 
 visible spiritual being can be truly said to have parts —
 
 CHARACTER AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 205 
 
 are duly co-ordinated and set a-working in harmonious 
 adjustment, by conscience sitting on her sovereign 
 throne. It is this that gives character to a man. 
 Without it, there can be none. According to the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews it is the formed hahit — eft? — 
 that gives the perceiving faculties their discerning 
 power (Heb. v. 14). 
 
 Aristotle, in a well-known passage in the Rhetoric, 
 distinguishes between stable and highly-gifted natures. 
 I am not sure that these differences are so much natural 
 differences, as tendencies, whence derived I know not, 
 which develop, under certain training and treatment, 
 into what they ultimately become. Lord Bacon thought 
 that one of the effects of his new method of philoso- 
 phical generalisation would be to equalise intellects, and 
 place the great scientific achievements of the future 
 more plainly within the reach of all, or any, who would 
 use the necessary industry, and observe the prescribed 
 conditions of success. 
 
 Intellectual progress is a different thing from, and 
 should not be confounded with, intellectual success. 
 " Genius," said Buffon, " is j^atience " — and patience is 
 a part of character. " Genius," said Carlyle, " is nothing 
 but a transcendent faculty for taking pains " — and 
 industry and perseverance are parts of character. " If 
 we have done anything to advance knowledge," said 
 Bacon, " it has only been by a true and legitimate 
 humiliation of the intellect — crushing its pride, its 
 precipitancy ; teaching it to know and feel its limita- 
 tions, where it is weak as well as where it is strong." 
 No one could have had a more instinctive sense of
 
 206 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the limitations imposed by the nature of the case, on 
 even the most gigantic intellect, than Newton, when he 
 said, " I seem to have been no better than a child on 
 the sea shore picking up a few stones here and there, 
 with the great ocean of Truth lying all undiscovered 
 before me." 
 
 To philosophise in this spirit implies not only that 
 the philosopher has a character, but that that character 
 has determined, or at least modified and even regulated, 
 the spirit and the very methods of his philosophy. His 
 intellect, so to speak, has been moralised. The man's 
 conscience goes with him into the field of speculation. 
 Devotion to truth, as such and for itself, is a moral 
 quality ; a part of character ; that which perhaps more 
 than anything else stamps the truly great, as well as 
 the only good man. 
 
 The more a man is possessed with this ardour for 
 truth, the less will he be ready to project upon the 
 world, and demand immediate acceptance of, his crude, 
 unformed hypotheses — his quasi - scientific guesses, 
 which, to minds of a certain temper, are all the more 
 welcome if they come into startling collision wdth 
 previously received behefs. 
 
 Wise men recognise the responsibility of their utter- 
 ances, and shrink, in spite of the supposed necessity 
 for rounding off an hypothesis, from shocking beliefs 
 which, with all their imperfections and inconsistencies, 
 are still found to lend a support that cannot lightly be 
 dispensed with, to the moral jjurpose of mankind. 
 
 I admit that if atheistic science, or scientific atheism, 
 could be proved in the same way, or to the same extent,
 
 CHARACTER AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 207 
 
 as Newton's theory of gravitation, it would go hard with 
 theology ; but, at the same time, it would go hard with 
 everything besides. The social life of the world would 
 have to be reconstructed upon a new basis. If the 
 materialistic hypothesis becomes the order of the day, 
 it will have to be shown how society, as the word has 
 hitherto been understood — the union of men under a 
 sense of individual responsibility and with distinct 
 relative duties — could be compacted together, could 
 exist at all. 
 
 Now this modesty, this hesitancy in the proclamation 
 of opinions, this absence of presumption, vanity, self- 
 seeking, are moral qualities ; are a part of character, 
 and certainly have a connection with intellectual pro- 
 gress. Let no one suppose that that Athenian temper, 
 always in quest of the latest forms of truth, is neces- 
 sarily indicative of a fair, impartial, advancing mind. 
 It may be nothing more than the feverish restlessness 
 of one who has become so volatile and inconstant that 
 he cannot rest long upon any intellectual conviction — 
 hardly, perhaps, on any moral certainty. " He woke in 
 the morning prepared to find everything an open 
 question," may be a description of the condition of 
 mind which recognises, and truly recognises, that upon 
 no truth, other than mathematical, as it presents itself 
 to a finite mind, can the last word ever have been really 
 spoken ; but it may also characterise a weak, foolish, 
 purposeless mind, incapable of progress, because in- 
 capable of sustained application ; not recognising the 
 moral obligation of truth, and forgetting that light may 
 perplex and dazzle, as well as guide and illuminate.
 
 208 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 " More liglit," is said to have been Goethe's dying cry. 
 I wonder what light it was his soul really craved for : 
 the phantom light of some little accession to so-called 
 human science, or the " unapproachable light " of the 
 presence of God, which alone could satisfy the yearnings 
 of the heart, and the highest searchings of the soul. 
 
 The impatience of society to have its questionings 
 answered, and its problems solved, with the least pos- 
 sible delay — an impatience which many of the 
 conveniences of our modern life so powerfully tend to 
 intensify — aggravates the evil vvliich I have attempted 
 to describe, till it becomes indeed a very serious danger. 
 It is not an unnatural but an excusable, if not a praise- 
 worthy, desire to be abreast of all the best knowledge of 
 one's age. Active minds like to be in the forefront of 
 the struggle against ignorance and irrationalism. It is 
 an achievement to be the first, or among the first, to 
 destroy the idols, as we call them, before which the 
 human intellect, we think, has too long bowed down. 
 Men who think they have quahties to become prophets 
 in their generation are too ready to try the perilous 
 vocation, even though the spirit of the Lord hath not 
 spoken; too ready to run, like Ahimaaz, the son of 
 Zadok, though they have no complete or accurate 
 message to deliver (2 Sam. xviii. 26 — 30). Enough 
 if they can achieve the not difficult reputation of being 
 the first to gain the ear, whether of the king or of the 
 crowd, with their babbling paradoxes. 
 
 And to resist this temptation, particularly if the 
 speaker or writer has been enriched with the gift of 
 " utterance," requires no small self-restraint and moral
 
 CHARACTEE AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 209 
 
 courage ; and these are parts of character. Portions, 
 at least, of Daniel's vision would seem to be in process 
 of being realised. The age of men running to and fro, 
 with their doctrines and interpretations, has come ; 
 whether the age of the increase of sound, tested, pro- 
 fitable knowledge has come also, is another matter. It 
 is in the patience with which he pursued his inquiries, 
 " the long patience," as St, James calls it, as of the 
 husbandman waiting for his fruits, and in the modesty 
 with which he advances his inferences from them, that 
 Mr. Charles Darwin seems to me to be such a con- 
 spicuous example of the scientific temper needed in this 
 age, whether for observing phenomena or of drawing 
 conclusions. 
 
 If all men would philosophise in this spirit, and keep 
 their hypotheses within the legitimate range of their 
 phenomena, there would be little danger either to 
 morals or to religion ; there would be no intrusion of 
 the one into the sphere of the other. The exercise of 
 the scientific faculty in this temper is a part of 
 character. 
 
 It was, perhaps, inevitable that man, with that large 
 faculty of reason, reaching before and after, should 
 stretch forth his hand to gather the fruits of knowledge. 
 Were they not sweet to the taste, pleasant to the eye, 
 " things to be desired to make him wise " ? But he 
 was warned beforehand at what peril he tasted them. 
 He might be in danger (to make a slight change in a 
 well-known line), " 'pTO])ter scicntiam, sciendi 2^^'>^dcTe 
 causas." His knowledge might give him weakness, 
 not strength ; death, not life ; darkness rather than 
 
 P
 
 210 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 light, because it had been unlawfully gained; because 
 " the motives with which it had been sought were not 
 noble, high, and pure." 
 
 "Intellect without God," has been some one's 
 definition of the mysterious power of evil. More than 
 once in the history of the race the depravation of the 
 intellect brought about what St. Paul calls " the vain 
 puffing up of the fleshly mind," The prostitution of 
 genius, in such cases as Voltaire or Mirabeau or Jean 
 Jacques, has been followed by a scathing moral pesti- 
 lence such as the same Apostle describes with such 
 terrific power in the first chapter of his Epistle to the 
 Romans. Let us beware lest we purchase too dearly 
 even the fair and precious fruits of knowledge. 
 
 This is an age when young men especially are apt to 
 think they are scarcely responsible for their opinions. 
 My own observation is, that while opinions tell largely 
 upon character — levity in one direction producing levity 
 in the other — so, too, character is a powerful factor in 
 the formation of opinions. It is nothing to be ashamed 
 of if we are slow to resign old and helpful principles 
 which have never yet been found false or foolish, in 
 favour of some quite new system which, however ap- 
 parently philosophical, has not yet stood the brunt of 
 life, and is able to give no satisfactory account of the 
 causes of things. My will may be nothing more than 
 the reflex action of some part of my physical organi- 
 zation ; but I am hardly prepared to accept that 
 hypothesis as dispensing me from the claims of duty. 
 The theory does not equip me better, but worse, for the 
 battles of life. By the help of my moral sense — the
 
 CHARACTER AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. 211 
 
 primary intuitions of my nature — I struggle out of this 
 darkness into something that is at least more like light 
 again. 
 
 I have said nothing about the connection between 
 the moral character of a place or society in influencing 
 its general intellectual progress. The character of 
 Oxford, e.g., and the intellectual progress of Oxford, 
 have been different at different times ; different forty 
 years ago from what they are to-day. To-day, as I 
 hear, they know more of Tov<i Trepl 'Apia-ToreXrjv than 
 of Aristotle himself. And yet knowledge at first 
 hand is to almost all men better than knowledge at 
 second hand. There is no doubt that a society has a 
 character which is something different from the aggre- 
 gate of the characters of the individuals who compose 
 it, and which acts powerfully in the formation of 
 individual characters. I am quite certain that con- 
 scientiousness in reading is one of the first conditions 
 of intellectual progress ; but it is only conscientiousness 
 that will send men for their knowledge to original 
 sources rather than to the compendium or the system- 
 monger. 
 
 The age seems to be growing indifferent to moral 
 considerations ; estimates men and their works by other 
 standards ; would persuade you that if you have genius 
 you may almost consider yourselves exempted from 
 moral obligations. St. Paul says the " law is not made 
 for a righteous man." Modern society says the law is 
 not made for clever, brilliant, men ; " genius is entitled 
 to claim its privileges." But I ask you, if you have 
 any ambition to lead worthy, noble lives, to get rid of 
 
 r 2
 
 212 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 these false maxims. If you are to grdw even in intel- 
 lectual stature, your life must be dominated by a 
 purpose — controlled by a fear. It was not merely a 
 moral platitude, a text for a sermon ; it was the word 
 of a man who had philosophised, not in shallow fashion, 
 on the laws of his being, which said, " The fear of the 
 Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil, that is 
 understandincr." 
 
 Preached— St. Mary's, Oxford, February 13, 1881.
 
 XV. 
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 
 
 '* There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God 
 which worketh all in all." — 1 Corinthians xii. 6. 
 
 Professor Huxley has given the scientific inquirer a 
 choice between three theories. "Either he must beheve 
 that the innumerable variety of creatures now existing, 
 and all the forms of the long geological series, have been 
 spontaneously generated without any particular reason, 
 or that each has been produced by a special creative 
 fiat, or we must accept the doctrine of Descent." 
 
 But as this accomplished professor tells us he has 
 " all his life had a horror of limiting the possibilities of 
 things," I submissively ask, "Is it the province of science 
 to tell me what I ought to believe or what I ought to 
 know ? " Whichever of these alternative theories be 
 adopted, if no other is possible, I still fall back on the 
 higher truth, " There are diversities of workings, but 
 the same God who worketh all things in all." 
 
 A conflict between the claims of religion and the 
 claims of science upon the allegiance of the human
 
 214 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 mind, as tboiigh they were naturally exclusive and 
 antagonistic, is a conflict that no wise man would desire 
 to provoke. For it would be a conflict raised upon 
 a false issue. Each can pursue its own way, if" it will 
 only bear in mind its own limitations, without violating 
 the territory of the other. " If it is borne in mind," 
 said Sir Joseph Hooker in his presidential address at 
 Normch, "that the laws of mind are not yet relegated 
 to the domain of the teacher of physical science, and 
 that the laws of matter are not within the religious 
 teacher's province, these may then work together in 
 harmony and with good will." And he quotes Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer's dictum, " If religion and science are 
 to be reconciled, the basis of the reconciliation must be 
 this deepest, widest, and most certain of facts, that the 
 power which the universe manifests to us is utterly 
 inscrutable." I suppose he means that it has depths 
 which science, with its instruments, cannot penetrate. 
 
 " There is in reality," said Sir James Paget in an 
 admirable address on the relations of Theology and 
 Science, delivered at the Clergy School in Leeds last 
 December — " there is in reality no article of any of 
 the Christian creeds which can be the subject of direct 
 scientific inquiry. . . The disputes begin in questions 
 in which knowledge is neither clearly revealed nor 
 clearly within the present reach of science, — in such 
 questions as the method of creation ; the relation of 
 man to the lower animals ; the nature and relation of 
 mind and matter, or free will and law ; or the possible 
 nature and conditions of states of conscious existence 
 other than those in which we live. No one can
 
 BELIGION AND SCIENCE. 215 
 
 justly maintain that either revelation or science can 
 supply nearly exact knowledge on these matters, or can 
 make us sure of what may be inferred from what we 
 think of them." 
 
 And he adds, "In these discussions it is generally 
 believed that one side must be in the wrong. Yet in 
 many of them both may be right, and their opposition 
 may be due to their both being ignorant of some inter- 
 mediate truth which, when gained by increasing know- 
 ledge, will combine the truths they now hold apart. 
 . . . Both sides are, right in that which may be claimed 
 as wdl-ascertained knowledge ; and distant inferences 
 on one side should not be allowed to weigh arainst 
 knowledge or great probability on the other. If it be 
 maintained, as an inference from facts in science, that 
 miracles are impossible, or a resurrection, or that God 
 became man, so let it be ; from the purely scientific 
 point of view such things seem impossible. But from 
 the religious point of view we may hold them to be not 
 only possible, but sure ; and the religious conviction has 
 a right to be no less strong than the scientific. . . . 
 Science cannot infer or define all possibilities." 
 
 Surely the great statement of St. Paul which I have 
 prefixed to this discourse, and which contains the idea 
 that I meant to run through the whole of it, and to 
 redeem it from the charge of irrelevancy, is not in con- 
 flict with any great principle of science. Man may not 
 be able by scientific processes to find out God ; his 
 microscope and telescope and chemical experiments 
 stop on the verge of the " inscrutable," and cannot 
 penetrate its abysmal darkness ; but if another
 
 216 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 faculty can discern through the darkness " the hands 
 that reach through nature, moulding help," there is 
 nothing that compels us to reject these inferences of 
 faith, which are not irrational, which rest upon their 
 proper evidences, which in one form or other may be 
 found universal, and which have commended them- 
 selves to minds which found no natural repugnance 
 between science and piety. " Did the Christian myste- 
 ries give him no trouble ? " was a question asked of Sir 
 D. Brewster upon his death-bed. " None. Why should 
 they ? We are surrounded by mysteries. His own 
 being was a mystery ; he could not explain the relation 
 of his soul to his body. Everybody believed things they 
 could not understand. The Trinity or the Atonement 
 was a great deep ; so was Eternity, so was Providence. 
 It caused him no uneasiness that he could not 
 account for them. These were secret things that 
 belonged to God. He made no attempt to reconcile 
 the sovereignty of Grace with the responsibility of 
 man : they were both true. He could ^vait to see their 
 harmony cleared; they were not contrary to reason, 
 however incomprehensible. , . . He thanked God the 
 way of salvation was so simple ; no laboured argument, 
 no hard attainment was required. To believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ was to live." 
 
 For the idea of God is neither unphilosophical nor 
 unscientific. In two essays, published some years ago 
 in the Fortnightly Bevieiv on " the Nature of Atoms," 
 and " the Origin of Force," the late Sir John Herschel 
 — an illustrious and venerable name — distinctly arrives 
 at the conclusion that, except upon the hypothesis of a
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 217 
 
 presiding mind — a hypothesis based on the phenomena 
 of our own consciousness and the ascertained powers 
 of our own will — the organisation of atoms and the 
 derivation of force are both inexplicable and incon- 
 ceivable. Certainly this hypothesis does not seem to 
 me less reasonable or even less scientific than the 
 theory of Lucretius, who, in a famous presidential 
 address, was matched against Bishop Butler, and meant, 
 I think, to have the best of the argument, who held that 
 the atoms — the " primordia rerum " — had their source of 
 motion in themselves, and that, by virtue of a certain 
 " clinamen " that is given to them, and with the help of 
 certain little hooks which are attached to each, they 
 form their affinities — the atoms with most hooks form- 
 ing the matter of greatest density — and so constitute 
 the actual elemental substances of the world ! 
 
 " But miracles," some one may say, " both from the 
 scientific and from the philosophical point of view, are 
 impossible. You cannot expect me to believe tJic7n.'" 
 I cannot, of course, force you to believe them ; nor am 
 I prepared to say that a Christian faith cannot exist 
 without a belief in them as miracles. And I quite feel 
 the d priori objection to them as violations of, or at 
 least variations from, known law. But, as Sir James 
 Paget says, " science cannot define or infer all possi- 
 bilities." Paley's position is impregnable : " Only believe 
 that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible." 
 And as to the philosophical objection to them, the same 
 strong reasoner says, " There is a want of logical justice 
 in a statement which, while affirming the incredibility 
 of miracles, suppresses all those circumstances of ex-
 
 218 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 tenuation which result from our knowledge of the 
 existence, power, and disi^osition of the Deity ; His 
 concern in the creation and the end answered by 
 the miracle ; the importance of that end and its 
 subserviency to the plan pursued in the work of 
 nature." 
 
 "Hume's celebrated principle," says Mr. J. S. Mill, 
 " that nothing is credible which is contrary to experience 
 or at variance with the laws of nature, is merely this 
 very harmless proposition, that whatever is contradictory 
 to a complete induction is incredible. ... A miracle," 
 he goes on to say, " (as was justly remarked by Browm), is 
 no contradiction to the law of cause and effect ; it is a 
 new effect introduced by a new cause. Of the adequacy 
 of that cause, if it exist, there can be do doubt ; and 
 the only antecedent improbability which can be ascribed 
 to the miracle is the improbability that any such cause 
 had existence in this case. All therefore which Hume 
 has made out is that no evidence can be sufficient to 
 prove a miracle to one who did not previously believe 
 the existence of a being or beings with supernatural 
 power ; or who beHeved himself to have full proof that 
 the character of the Being whom he recognises is incon- 
 sistent with his having seen fit to interfere on the 
 occasion in question." 
 
 Nor can the human heart be content with that dark 
 and dreary view of the future which is all that science 
 can pretend to yield. We feel that there are invisible 
 things beyond the visible ; we have hopes that stretch 
 beyond the grave. We are not content with the assumed 
 immortality of the race, nor with the cold comfort of 
 
 1
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 219 
 
 the posthumous immortaUty of the famous and re- 
 nowned. It does not satisfy me, who am neither 
 renowned nor famous, to say with the old heathen — ' 
 " Exphho iiumentm, rcddarqite tenebris (" My life work 
 done, let darkness once more come "). The hope of 
 immortality cannot be extinguished in the human heart. 
 Conscience and fbeling alike require, demand it. And 
 the revelation of Jesus Christ alone has satisfied 
 conscience and feeling. Just as the Frenchman said, 
 "SHI ny avait pas ten Dicu, ilfcmdrait I'inventer ; " just 
 as Professor Huxley told you on Friday that " if the 
 Darwinian theory of Descent had not been presented to 
 the palseontologist, he would have had to invent it to 
 account for the phenomena before him ; " so John Stuart 
 Mill held that even if the hope of immortality were an 
 illusion, it were well maintained, so helpful was it and 
 comforting. Science certainly has neither the right nor 
 the power to rob us of it. Humanity — at least the 
 mass of it — is not so rich that it can afford to part 
 with what, to it, is no illusion, but a revealed truth, 
 which has proved to it by actual experience, in hours of 
 darkness, temptation, sorrow, trial, an unspeakable 
 comfort and stay. 
 
 It was the hope of Sir Francis Bacon, expressed in 
 the preface to his great philosophical work, the 
 Insiauratio Magna, that by his new method of scien- 
 tific inquiry he had established a true and legitimate 
 union between the two faculties, the empirical and the 
 rational, whose morose and ill-omened divorces and 
 repudiations had thrown everything into confusion in 
 the human family.
 
 220 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 It is on the same ground that I humbly but earnestly 
 deprecate even the appearance of a conflict between 
 science and Christian faith. We are each of us — our 
 teachers of science and our teachers of religion — being 
 wounded in the house of those who ought to be our 
 friends. It is a conflict in which, if fought out to the 
 bitter end, some of the highest interests of society would 
 be imperilled. It is an unnecessary and therefore an 
 unrighteous and unjustifiable war. It would seem that 
 no single resource of the human mind is adequate to 
 bear the pressure or satisfy the demands of man's 
 nature, taken at its best or at its worst ; and the 
 knowledge which feeds the soul and supplies motives to 
 moral conduct is at least as helpful and as necessary 
 for the mass of mankind as that which teaches them 
 their place in the universe of matter, or exjDlains the 
 framework and mechanism of that physical body so 
 fearfully and wonderfully made. 
 
 There is another side to this subject which ought not 
 to be passed over. There are services which the spirit 
 of scientific inquiry has rendered to the cause of true 
 religion which it would be uncandid and ungenerous 
 not to recognise. And upon this point I jorefer repeating 
 what I said in a sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral 
 just thirteen years ago, on the Sunday after the meeting 
 of the British Association in the city of Norwich. The 
 repetition will at least show that on this subject I have 
 not changed my mind. I had chosen for my text a 
 passage containing an incident in the story of the ship- 
 wreck of St. Paul, which had been read in the lesson 
 for the day ; and I remarked —
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 221 
 
 1. It is the prevalence of the scientific temper more 
 perhaps than anything else which has redeemed religion 
 from superstitious corruptions, affecting both faith and 
 practice. Observe the crude and utterly unwarranted 
 hypotheses by which those "bai-barous" Maltese who 
 received St. Paul and his shipwrecked companions 
 attempted to account for any extraordinary phenomenon. 
 They had kindly instincts ; they believed in God and in 
 the accountability of man — the two foundations of the 
 principle of religion ; but, reasoning as they reasoned, 
 this mere belief was insufficient to give either clearness 
 or sobriety to their judgment. Impatient of delay 
 unaccustomed to weigh evidence, with a theory cut- 
 and-dried to account for each fact as it emerged, entirely 
 independent of any examination of the fact itself, they 
 passed, apparently without any conscious shock, from 
 the undoubting conviction that the man before them 
 was a murderer to the equally undoubting conviction 
 that he was a god. No sane man, since the scientific 
 temper has been formed, would venture, in a matter of 
 religion, to draw such random conclusions as these. 
 
 2. Again : the philosophic has taught the religious 
 inquirer the proper frame of mind in which every 
 inquiry, if it is to have a good result, must be pursued. 
 It must be undertaken, not to fortify a foregone con- 
 clusion, but with the simple desire to discover truth. 
 " How legible," said Goethe, writing to a friend, " the 
 Book of Nature becomes to me ! Much as I find that is 
 new, I find nothing that is unexpected, because I have 
 no system, and desire nothing but the pure truth." 
 (Lewes's Life, of Goethe" p. 288.) And perhaps the Book
 
 222 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of Grace would become as intelligible to us as the Book 
 of Nature became to him, if we sought to possess 
 ourselves of its contents with the same simplicity of 
 purpose, and made our love of theological system and 
 our reverence for ecclesiastical authority bend to the 
 higher allegiance that is due to truth. 
 
 3. And once more. The philosopher has often shown 
 more faith than the theologian in the conviction em- 
 bodied in the maxim, " Magna est Veritas et proevalehit." 
 He believes in the power of truth to maintain itself by 
 its own proper evidence, without forming unnatural 
 alliances or calling in extrinsic aid. He has seldom 
 been willing to force his conclusions on those whom he 
 cannot persuade. He seeks to impose no creed by mere 
 authority. He feels that dogmas must rest upon sure, 
 or at least probable, warrants before they can be 
 thoroughly received. He would have every man able 
 to give a reason, satisfactory at least to himself, for 
 what he professes to believe. And in the selfsame 
 spirit, Paul, who, whether while sitting at the feet of 
 Gamaliel or from the natural tendency of his own 
 mind, had caught the true temper of modem philosophy, 
 tells us that the one aim of his preaching was "by 
 manifestation of the truth to commend himself to 
 every man's conscience in the sight of God," and was 
 never satisfied with the result which he had produced 
 unless he left " every man fully persuaded in his own 
 mind." 
 
 It derogates nothing from the claims or value of 
 religion to acknowledge those obligations which she 
 owes to science. She has been rendered more precious,
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 223 
 
 more attractive by becoming more reasonable. It is a 
 '■' reasonable service " — a true spiritual worship, we are 
 taught on high authority, that Almighty God demands 
 from His creatures. He would be no wise man who 
 would wish to return to the bondage of superstition for 
 the sake of escaping the possible perils of scepticism. 
 There is a safe escape from these perils — perils which 
 I admit to be real, not imaginary. The peril would be 
 past, if only the spirit of inquiry were penetrated by a 
 larger measure of " reverence and godly fear." 
 
 Indeed, how can we better express the feelings which 
 must more or less touch all hearts to-day than in that 
 exquisite " Invocatio Christi" in which the poet who 
 best interprets the spirit of this yearning age sums up 
 his hopes, and faith, and fears : — 
 
 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we that have not seen Thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove ; 
 
 " Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 
 Thou madest life in man and brute ; 
 Thou madest death ; and lo ! Thy foot 
 Is on the skull which Thou hast made. 
 
 " Thou wilt not leave us in the dust ; 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 
 He thinks he was not made to die. 
 And Thou hast made him : Thou art just, 
 
 " Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, Thou ; 
 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how. 
 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.
 
 224 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 " Our little systems have their day," 
 
 They have their day, and cease to he ; 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
 
 " We have but faith ; we cannot know ; 
 For knowledge is of things we see ; 
 And yet we trust it comes from Thee, 
 A beam in darkness : let it grow. 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell. 
 That mind and soul, according well. 
 May make one music as before, 
 
 " But vaster. We are fools and slight, 
 We mock Thee, when we do not fear ; 
 But help thy foolish ones to bear, 
 Help Thy vain world to bear Thy light. 
 
 "Forgive what seemed my sin in me, 
 
 What seemed my worth, since I began ; 
 For merit lives from man to man. 
 And not from man, Lord, to Thee. 
 
 " Forgive my grief for one removed. 
 Thy creature, whom I found so fair ; 
 I trust he lives in Thee, and there 
 I find him worthier to be loved. 
 
 'Forgive these wild and wandering cries. 
 Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
 Forgive them when they fail in truth, 
 
 And in Thy wisdom make me wise." 
 
 Sermon (abridged) preached in York Minster before the British 
 Association, September 4, 1881.
 
 XYI. 
 
 THE GIFT OF PROPHECY THE SUPREME NEED OF 
 OUR AGE. 
 
 " Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of 
 the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn 
 the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the 
 children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth 
 with a curse." — Malachi iv. 5, 6. 
 
 A STRANGE, weird figure is that of Elijah the Tish- 
 bite, suddenly projected on the page of history, a 
 unique personage with a unique mission ! 
 
 Tliere had been prophets before — Samuel, Nathan, 
 Gad, Shemaiah, Ahijah, and others ; but Elijah is as 
 of a new order. He covers a larger space, speaks- 
 and acts with greater authority. He becomes a type 
 of the man of God, speaking to men as the messen- 
 ger of the Lord of Hosts. St. John the Baptist was 
 one of his spiritual successors — his greatest; Athan- 
 asius another ; Martin Luther another ; John Wesley, 
 perhaps, another ; or at least these latter have been 
 like Elishas, catching up his mantle, baptised with a 
 portion of his spirit. 
 
 They have been the men who have accomplished 
 
 Q
 
 220 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the gi'eat moral and spiritual revolutions of the world ; 
 each according to the needs of his age, and with 
 weapons suited to the need : rough, earnest, strong- 
 willed men, most of them, not given to mince their 
 words or to stand upon courtesies; but they have 
 been the men to keep alive the flame of religion, 
 and to prevent its dying out. 
 
 Mark their ages : Elijah's an age of coarse, brutal- 
 ising idolatry. That old worship of Baal and 
 Molech and Ashtaroth was accompanied with the 
 foulest sensuality and cruelty. It was not for a 
 phrase or a dogma that Elijah contended : the con- 
 test between Baal and Jehovah reached deeper issues 
 than that. It was whether the springs of the moral 
 life of the nation should be tainted at the source or 
 not. Idolatry of this coarse type disappeared after 
 the return from Babylon. 
 
 The next Elijah was he who came in the wilderness 
 of Jordan, by the preaching of repentance preparing 
 the way of the Lord. It was an age of cold and deadly 
 formalism ; all the more perilous because men who 
 were blind thought they saw, and attempted to guide 
 others, hardly blinder ; with what result our Lord has 
 told us. 
 
 And when the simplicity of Christian doctrine in 
 the person and nature of Christ was in danger of being 
 clouded, and lost, in the mist of oriental subtlety, the 
 great Alexandrian bishop set the faith of Christ, once 
 more, firm on the doctrine of the Incarnation of the 
 Son of God ; and built up the creed of Christendom in 
 the form which the great Council of Nicsea proclaimed
 
 GIFT OF PROPHECY THE NEED OF OUR AGE. 227 
 
 to be the faith which had once for all been delivered 
 to the saints. 
 
 And, once again, in the fifteenth century, when a 
 darkness of superstition that could almost be felt 
 was settling down on the nations of Europe, and the 
 Church of Rome with her priestcraft, and traffic in 
 indulgences, and claims to a universal supremacy — 
 which one of her greater popes had said were the 
 claims of an anti-Christ — was setting up an intoler- 
 able tyranny over the consciences of men; the great 
 German reformer, with his iron hand, burst the bonds, 
 and taught men that their souls were free, and that 
 neither pope nor priest could shut them out from 
 heaven by an arbitrary will, or bar the right of access 
 that each might claim through Christ to God. 
 
 And, yet once again, in England, but little more 
 than a century ago, another prophet rose in like power 
 and spirit, and, when the Church seemed — like Sardis 
 and Laodicea — to have merely " the name of life when 
 it was dead," and a fatal lethargy kept down all high 
 spiritual aspirations, touched the deepest founts of the 
 religious life, and bade men arise from a sleep which 
 was like the sleep of death, and Christ should give 
 them life. 
 
 Whatever spiritual gifts may have been necessary or 
 profitable to the Church in other times, I am sure that 
 the gift of prophecy is the most necessary and profit- 
 able now. " Christ sent me not to baptise," says the 
 Apostle — others with lower gifts could do that — " but 
 to preach the Gospel " and he adds, " I preached it, 
 not with the enticing words of man's wisdom, but in 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Men felt 
 the power and acknowledged the teaching ; their 
 listening to him was the Apostle's highest credential. 
 Just as, in the former generation, they had felt the 
 difference between the teaching of the scribes and 
 that of the Galilean peasant Who " taught them as one 
 having authority," and of Whom some said, " Never 
 man spake like this man," so they felt the difference 
 between a Paul and a Philetus. 
 
 Man may well pray for a portion of this power, and 
 for grace to use it in the noblest cause. It is not 
 eloquence, it is not popularity, it is not the power of 
 attracting the crowd. It is something impalpable, but 
 most real, when men bend their wills and hearts and 
 consciences before the uttered truth, and find that 
 this is indeed "the engrafted word which is able to 
 save their souls." It is a spiritual power which can 
 bow the hearts of a multitude as of one man, swaying 
 them with a charm of strange, mysterious potency ; a 
 power which we feel, though we cannot describe it. 
 
 Men who are such instruments of the Spirit must 
 always be rare. We have them in England — for there 
 is no limitation of the gift to the Apostolic age — but 
 they could probably be counted on the fingers. It 
 is not the mere eloquence of the pulpit, or the plat- 
 form, of which I am thinking. This is common 
 enough, and though often utterly wanting in depth 
 and reality, yet, in the uneducated condition of public 
 taste, is mischievously over-valued, and leads men to 
 look for the secret of spiritual power where it will 
 never be found ; in declamation which is not eloquence ;
 
 GIFT OF PROPHECY THE NEED OF OUR AGE. 229 
 
 ill vajiid sentiment which is not feeling. Of this we 
 have more than enough in all the Churches, and men 
 do not seem to discover that it lacks the ring of the 
 true metal. 
 
 Of this I am not thinking ; but I am thinking of 
 utterances such as, in my old Oxford days, I heard at 
 times from John Henry Newman, such as I conceive 
 to have been those of F. W. Robertson ; such as would 
 probably have been — if his calling had been to speak 
 to his fellow-men of spiritual things — the utterances of 
 the great " tribune of the people," as he has been called, 
 whose knowledge of the Bible, and of Milton, have 
 given to him so deep an insight into the thoughts that 
 sway the hearts of men — I mean Mr. John Bright. 
 
 Such men must be rare. There were schools of th6 
 prophets in Israel ; but I do not know that the great 
 prophets of that wonderful nation were products of the 
 schools. 
 
 This age wants, and is prepared to receive, not the 
 priest but the prophet, not the man who claims to stand 
 between souls and God, but the man who can teach them 
 the truth, and help them, in their blindness, and way- 
 Avardness, and ignorance, to discover the way of peace and 
 righteousness — for men do feel their ignorance, and are 
 thankful for light, and are not indisposed to truth. It is 
 astonishing how the true pastoral character seems to win 
 the heart of the people of England. It is marvellous to 
 me, and yet most encouraging, to see how few of what 
 the world calls " gifts " are needed to fill a church and to 
 work wonders in the lives and conduct of a people. A 
 preacher acquires the truest eloquence by daily contact
 
 230 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 with his flock. I do not think a 'real pastor could 
 preach an uninteresting serfnon. The letter " h " may 
 not have its fair treatment, there may be some pro- 
 vincialisms of utterance, now and then even the 
 grammar may not be perfect ; but you cannot leave 
 that church and your mental contact with that man 
 without feeling that he has penetrated the true secret 
 of spiritual power, and without some new and higher 
 aspect of life standing before your eyes. Like the 
 Chief Shepherd Whom he is trying to follow, " he 
 knows his sheep and is known of them." Not only 
 do they know his voice but his life also ; and THAT is 
 the power I pray God to multiply a thousandfold. 
 
 Never was there a larger or more fruitful opportunity 
 for the preacher who is in earnest, who believes what 
 he preaches, and who will speak to men intelligently, 
 reasonably, sympathetically. The people are, in 
 fact, almost too ready to hear, and forget St. John's 
 warning about " false prophets," and that there is a 
 need of some tests to distinguish these from the true. 
 They forget our Lord's own warning, " Take heed what, 
 and how, ye hear." In an age such as ours has been 
 said to be, " of much excitement and unbounded 
 curiosity," the danger is a very real one ; and the 
 itching ear requires its proper correction, lest what 
 " should have been for our health become to us an 
 occasion of falling," I lament the tendency to supplant 
 the parochial principle by the congregational, as one of 
 the worst signs of an age w^hich has "itching ears, and 
 often loves fables rather than truth," and fashion- 
 ableness better than either.
 
 GIFT OF PROPHECY THE NEED OF OUR AGE. 231 
 
 Yet lieat is a sign of life : coldness and torpor are 
 symptoms of death. The prophet must be in earnest, 
 or men will not receive him as a prophet ; must him- 
 self believe his message, or he will carry no conviction 
 to his hearers. And, indeed, how can a man speak in 
 the name, and in the behalf, of God, and proclaim the 
 love of a Father to His children, and tell of the great 
 redemption wrought by Christ, and of the mighty 
 powers of the Spirit of God, unmoved ? How can he 
 vamp up the same old sermon a dozen times, if foun- 
 tains of fresh spiritual experience are ever w^elling 
 within his own soul ? Is it not because ive are so cold 
 and rigid that your hearts are so seldom reached ; that 
 we preach, and yotc are not edified ; that great 
 opportunities are given and missed ; that, even in the 
 best cases, ears often are tickled rather than lives 
 improved ? 
 
 And yet we have a message able to stir the most 
 phlegmatic feelings, and to arouse the dullest conscience, 
 if only we know how to deliver it. Of course there are 
 the " terrors of the Lord," of which St. Paul speaks ; 
 but we do not so often, nor so gladly, employ them. 
 We would rather use the arguments of love than of 
 fear : rather appeal to the generous emotions than to 
 the slavish ones. There are the hopes of heaven and 
 the rewards of the Great Day, but these are more or 
 less vague and distant ; and it has not yet been revealed 
 " what we shall be." 
 
 But if our hearts have found out the secret, we can 
 speak of present peace and joy in believing ; of the 
 kingdom of God standing in righteousness ; of the
 
 232 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 nearness of a Father to us in our dangers, difficulties, 
 and troubles ; of the " no harm that shall happen to us 
 if we are followers of that which is good " ; of the love 
 of Christ and the comfort of the Holy Ghost ; of the 
 sweetness that can be got from the life that now is, if 
 only we go the right way to seek it ; of the strength 
 that comes of faith, and the satisfaction that rewards 
 obedience. We can point to examples, full of hope and 
 encouragement, of saints that have gone before ; we 
 can tell of the perfect work of patience which we may 
 have witnessed, and so bid others persevere. 
 
 There are those who can speak of these things with a 
 strange and moving power, and their arguments will 
 rise high above the clouds of doubt and speculation, 
 till they seem to bring us almost face to face with God. 
 Such men are in very truth the Lord's prophets. Such 
 teachers build on immovable grounds the fabric of faith. 
 They are sure and trustworthy guides, for they are 
 leading men to God, through Christ, by the ways of 
 holiness. They have themselves travelled the road. 
 They are testifying to us out of their own experience. 
 " They speak that which they know." 
 
 It is a faith thus quickened — "faith cometh by 
 hearing " — that vitalises sacraments, prayers, worship. 
 Without such faith all these things are dead. With it, 
 they become living, quickening powers. It is the spirit 
 of the prophet before all other gifts that the Churches 
 need to enable them to evangelise the world. May 
 God of His goodness soon pour it abundantly upon 
 them ! 
 
 It is the pro23het with his large, true heart that is
 
 GIFT OF PROPHECY THE NEED OF OUR AGE. 233 
 
 needed — a heart as large as that of Moses when he rebuked 
 Joshua's ill-timed zeal for his honour with the memor- 
 able words, " Would God that all the Lord's people were 
 prophets, and that the Lord, would put His Spirit upon 
 them ! " Men, living agents, are at this moment the 
 Church's greatest need : not merely men cognisant of 
 ecclesiastical proprieties, whether of costume or ritual ; 
 but men with living, loving voices — voices not merely 
 repeating formulas, however reverend or ancient, as 
 though there were a spell in the very words ; (formulas 
 not intelligible to the mind awaken no echo in the 
 heart of this nineteenth century ;) but voices quick to 
 respond to the great throbs of the heart of the age, and 
 to interpret their deep significance ; their strange, 
 unsatisfied, and often lofty yearning : voices resonant 
 with that undefinable sympathy which is the one bond 
 between soul and soul ; the sweet music of Christian 
 love being discernible in their every accent. These 
 voices need to be heard and felt, and to work their 
 charm not only in dark, unhealthy courts and alleys, but 
 in the resorts of wealth and fortune and social influence, 
 if England is to retain her Christianity. 
 
 Have any of you seriously considered how little of 
 Christianity remains — I am not speaking of it as 
 fashioning individual lives, in which there is still much 
 that is noble, unselfish, Christ-like — but as a pervading, 
 governing social power, characterising and shaping the 
 life of the age ? Read what comes forth daily from a 
 teeming press ; read the contemporary literature that you 
 find on every drawing-room table. Does this proclaim
 
 234 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the supremacy of Christian motive' and Christian 
 principle, or does it indicate that both are merely 
 respectable, ancient traditions, which it is not con- 
 venient, or perhaps not decent, as yet, openly to ridicule 
 or put aside, but which no one dreams of regarding 
 either as incentives or restraints ? 
 
 " I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet " ; but I 
 see plainly enough the j^erils that threaten society — not 
 the fashionable portion of it only, but the whole social 
 structure in which we live and move — from the disso- 
 lution of religion in England, We do not put these 
 things down by law, as they foolishly try to do in 
 France ; but there is a force operating among us which 
 is at once stronger and subtler than any statutory 
 enactment — that tendency of public opinion which is 
 gradually ignoring the sanctions, and before long may 
 even dare to repudiate the name of Christianity. 
 
 At such a time, even if we like not their methods, 
 one dare not rebuke nor try to hinder any who are 
 working miracles or casting out devils in Christ's name. 
 Surely they are for Christ, not against Him. Instead, 
 then, of finding fault with others, let us bestir ourselves. 
 Too long the Church seems as though she had been 
 sleeping — sleeiaing by the crater of a volcano. If we 
 would not have the Lord " come and smite the earth 
 with a curse," let us see whether by Christian hands, 
 and Christian hearts, something cannot yet be done to 
 arrest the moral devastation of society. If the battle 
 goes against us, at least let us fall with our faces towards 
 the foe, and with the spiritual weapons of our warfare
 
 GIFT OF PROPHECY THE NEED OF OUR AGE. 235 
 
 in our hands. It is something even to hsLwe fought in 
 Christ's name and for Christ's cause. Even in this 
 nineteenth century, in the noble army of martyrs "yet 
 there is room." 
 
 Preached — "Westminster Abbey, June 25, 1882 ; Manchester 
 Cathedral, August 21, 1884 ; St. Margaret's, Westminster, 
 June 28, 1885.
 
 XVII. 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 
 
 " The people pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God." — 
 St. Luke v. 1. 
 
 What could have been this wonderful secret power 
 by which the great Prophet of Galilee drew all men 
 after Him ? We know, because the people confessed it 
 with their own lips, that He spoke to them as one that 
 had authority ; and all people are not very ready 
 to welcome authoritative and somewhat dogmatic 
 speakers. We know that He rebuked sin at times most 
 sternly, and yet many of those whom He rebuked most 
 sternly, somehow, could not resist the attraction to be 
 among His hearers. He certainly was not one of those 
 demagogues who pandered to what people call the 
 proletariat by denouncing the upper classes. A great 
 French revolutionist of the last century (Camille Des- 
 moulins, I believe) said that Christ was le hon sans-cidotte. 
 An accomplished peer in the House of Lords the other 
 evening spoke of Christianity as the most perfect 
 system of democracy ; but if so it is a democracy with 
 all its virtues developed and all its vices eradicated, such 
 
 I
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 237 
 
 as this world, at least, has never yet seen realised. The 
 Sermon on the Mount, which, I am sorry to say, I find 
 is not so familiar to all people as it ought to be, tells us 
 that the Christ did not pare down His doctrine to suit 
 the passions of the mob. It was a Gospel for humanity 
 that He preached, and not a theory of republicanism. 
 
 We can, I think — imperfectly, of course, but with 
 some measure of accuracy — trace some of the elements 
 of this power. One simple and very intelligible element 
 of it was the way in which He recognised the wholeness 
 of human nature, that, at bottom, the peer did not differ 
 from the peasant, nor the monarch on the throne from 
 the villager in his cottage. He recognised the wholeness 
 of human nature, that great truth of which St. Paul after- 
 wards spoke, when he said that the Father of mankind 
 had made of one blood all people that dwell upon the 
 face of the whole earth. And not only did Christ 
 recognise the wholeness of human nature but He 
 recognised its many diversified needs. There are two 
 kinds of physicians to-day — the specialist and the more 
 generally trained physician. The one knows all the 
 characteristics of one special disease. He has made it his 
 special study. The other looks at men with a larger, more 
 penetrating eye. Christ, the good physician, was not a 
 specialist. He not only formed a true diagnosis of each 
 disease, but He knew the remedy for the whole system. 
 
 Further, He was sinless — the spotless Lamb of God. 
 " In Him," says St. John, " was no sin " ; and He came to 
 redeem the world from sin, which was its one great 
 primal curse — that which still presses upon it most 
 heavily, and seems to make one almost despair of finding
 
 238 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 an effective remedy. He hated sin, and yet — and that 
 is a strange thing — He never had a harsh word for the 
 sinners, provided only that those sinners were not 
 hypocrites. If they were, then He had no measure in 
 His rebukes. 
 
 Once more. He had the tenderest feelings for those 
 who had enjoyed the fewest oiiportunities. It is true 
 that He recognised that great social law which some- 
 times seems to work so harshly — that to him that hath 
 much more is given. Still, you will remember that 
 other saying of His, " To whom little has been com- 
 mitted, of him little shall be required." That is a 
 comfort, I think, when we look abroad upon these great 
 cities, and see the depths of degradation in which, by 
 the very necessity of their circumstances, so many 
 thousands of our brethren are almost compelled to live 
 by what we call, with a gentle euphemism, " our social 
 arrangements," which should be rather called " our social 
 disarrangements." Christ had, I say, the tenderest feelings 
 for those who had enjoyed the fewest opportunities. 
 As to the people, whom He taught and whom He 
 described as sheep scattered upon the mountains with- 
 out a shepherd, if they were ignorant, as many of them 
 were, and if they were wayward, or hard to teach, as no 
 doubt many of them were also, whose fault was it, but 
 that of the persons who had so long neglected them, or 
 had only taught them what had given them no real 
 strength to resist temptation, and no guidance to walk 
 in better ways ? 
 
 And, once more, He recognised what I may call the 
 natural or social wants which are common to all men.
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 239 
 
 He would feed those five thousand men, and their 
 wives and children, who had followed Him out into the 
 far wilderness; He would feed them before He sent 
 them away to their homes. He would provide more wine 
 for the innocent festivities of Cana. And, remember, 
 that was not an orgy, but a simple friendly gathering of 
 friends and neighbours, met together on an occasion 
 interesting to all. He would provide more wine at 
 that festivity when the bridegroom's own scanty store 
 was exhausted. 
 
 And yet, again, He disdained no man. Nothing 
 could be observed in Him like the habitual conduct and 
 deportment of Scribes and Pharisees. The most needy 
 had always His first care ; and even women that had 
 been sinners, the most outcast and debased ones of all, 
 were not forbidden to approach Him and to express their 
 penitence in their own simple, natural way. These seem 
 to me to be the really civilising powers of the Gospel. 
 It is thus, and no otherwise, that its teaching has the 
 power of welding society together. I only ask you to 
 think what society in England, in spite of its so-called 
 civilisation, would become if, I will not say the restraints, 
 but the motives of the Gospel were withdrawn — if 
 Christ's teachings were as utterly obliterated as if the 
 waters of Lethe had washed them entirely out of men's 
 hearts and memories. 
 
 And the power of the Gospel has been none the less 
 because it has worked like the great forces of nature — 
 not by catastrophes and cataclysms, but, so to speak, 
 almost insensibly. You and I go about our daily work, 
 whatever it may be, one after this manner and another
 
 240 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 after that ; but if we had the Spirit of -Christ within us, 
 we should do that daily work in a different spirit from 
 that in which we should do it if we had it not. And it 
 is this little leaven working here and there which, I 
 will not say leavens the whole lump, but which does 
 exercise a restraining influence upon those who have 
 it not, and sets up a higher ideal before the imagination 
 of us all. It is thus that the Gospel of Christ has 
 worked in many directions — for instance, in the direction 
 of the elevation of woman. Some people think that, 
 even yet, woman has not received all her full rights ; 
 but, at any rate, her position in society is recognised as 
 being something very different from what it was in the 
 days of Socrates or in the days of imperial Rome ; and 
 yet no one could put his finger upon the precise year or 
 the precise century when this great change began to 
 come about. It has come about insensibly, each century, 
 perhaps, contributing something to the- result as it has 
 learnt more of the mind of Christ. 
 
 So, again, it has been in the destruction of slavery, 
 not fully wrought even yet, but accomplishing itself 
 gradually in the ages according as men's hearts have 
 opened themselves to receive what I have called the 
 insensible teaching of the Gospel of Christ ; and though 
 some may be slow to believe it, the power of Christ's 
 Gospel is working still towards the great aim of making 
 war morally impossible — that terrible scourge which we 
 talk of lightly when it is at a distance, though, when 
 we are in the midst of it, we go about in sackcloth and 
 ashes, weeping and gnashing our teeth. 
 
 Now, none of these things are done or have been
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 241 
 
 done perfectly, but the lines are laid down. Every one 
 who has an eye for such things can see them. The 
 ideal is lifted up, and the human race, impelled by 
 what I may call an irresistible moral force, is advancing 
 — I will not say steadily or without many retardations, 
 but on the whole is manifestly advancing — in its higher 
 and more enlightened conscience towards these goals. 
 The world may never become perfect, jorobably it never 
 will, but these are the aims of all its noblest hearts, and 
 these are the objects which they are proposing to 
 themselves, 
 
 A panic seems to have beset some sections of society, 
 as though the people who pressed round Christ to hear 
 Him were pressing upon the hitherto privileged classes, 
 and as though the old institutions of the country were 
 going down before the rush. I thought it was a wise' 
 and well-spoken word that the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury used in the House of Lords the other night, when 
 he said, " Trust the people ; give them their proper 
 rights as citizens, and have confidence that they will 
 not abuse them." 
 
 It was a great and wise saying, also, of the late 
 lamented Duke of Albany, in one of his last spoken 
 utterances, delivered last winter at Liverpool — it 
 showed an admirable " touch " with all the best aspira- 
 tions of the age — when he said that society would move 
 on both faster and safer if all moved on together. They 
 were the last words of his speech, and they are worthy 
 of being remembered by all. The privileged classes 
 are afraid of the people. No doubt there are forces 
 full of mischief at work amongst u?, and at times some 
 
 R
 
 242 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 sudden development of these forces frightens us even 
 amid these many hopeful signs ; but I confess for 
 myself that I echo with all my heart the Archbishop's 
 generous words, " Let us trust the people." 
 
 And we who stand up in pulpits, and call ourselves 
 ministers or prophets of God, and presume to speak to 
 you in God's name, cannot we do something more 
 successfully than we have hitherto done to move and 
 win these people ? I hear of the wonderful crowds who 
 throng our fashionable churches, where there is either 
 a gorgeous service or an eloquent preacher ; but though 
 I recognise the good that is being done and may be 
 done among these, I confess that I feel more concerned 
 for churches at the East End than at the West End of 
 this vast city. There, and not in your great squares 
 and magnificent roads, there are the " much people," 
 whom, as at Corinth, in the days of Paul, the Lord has 
 in this city waiting for the Word of God. Somehow or 
 other, and in spite of many discouragiug phenomena, 
 nothing has shaken my faith in the power of the words 
 of Christ to reach the hearts of men when they are 
 truly, simply, consistently, and lovingly presented. 
 These desperate theories of human depravity, which are 
 so popular in some schools of theology, if I believed 
 them, which I do not, would, indeed, cast my heart 
 down ; but I thank old Tertullian, little as I like his 
 hot African temper at times, for that grand phrase of 
 his, " Anima naturaliter Christiana " — " the soul is 
 naturally Christian." 
 
 If I had before me a congregation of ministers of 
 God's Word, I would say to them, " Oh ! fellow- 
 
 I
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 243 
 
 ministers, there is something in all those hearts which 
 can be reached — some chord that will give forth sweet 
 music if only you have the skill to touch it." In our 
 Church reforms as well as in our State reforms — and 
 the Church, I think, needs reforms as urgently as the 
 State — we must think more of the people. It was a 
 suicidal folly of that old Sanhedrin that despised alike 
 the popular ignorance which they had caused, and the 
 popular aspirations with which they had no sympathy. 
 They sent out some of their officers to apprehend Jesus, 
 and when the men came back without Him the 
 magistrates said, " Why have ye not brought Him ? " 
 The officers answered, " Never man spake like this 
 man." Then answered the Pharisees, "Are ye also 
 deceived ? Have any of the rulers of the Pharisees 
 believed on Him ? But this people who know not the 
 law are cursed." 
 
 There is no special gift in rearing prophets. If we, 
 with our academic training and culture, cannot or will 
 not speak to the people in a tongue that they can 
 understand, we must not be surprised, and still less 
 must we be angry, if they choose teachers for them- 
 selves. Mr. Spurgeon's views on many points of 
 technical theology are not mine. We have been 
 brought up in different schools, and trained to look at 
 things, perhaps, under different circumstances ; but who 
 cannot recognise the great gift bestowed on that man to 
 reach, not the ear only, but the heart of the people ? In 
 a parish at the East End of London it was announced 
 that the Bishop of Bedford was going to preach. A 
 
 K 2
 
 244 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 tradesman in the j)arish, who had been- a sort of apostle 
 of the propaganda of atheism, thought that he would 
 go and hear him. People in the church who knew the 
 man were surprised to see him among the congregation, 
 but he was there, and he listened ; and when he went 
 away he made this remark, " Now, if that Bishop had 
 argued I would have fought him ; but there was no 
 arguing with him. He preached to us simj)]y about the 
 love of God, and that touched me." 
 
 I have no fear for our Ciiurch, if we could only reach 
 the hearts of those that are sometimes called, without 
 our fully realising what weight there is in the words, 
 " the masses." It is not the parade of a gorgeous cere- 
 monial, which, however it may please the taste, I believe 
 has very little converting power in it. It is, I repeat, 
 the simple power of God's Word. " The people pressed 
 upon Him to hear ; " what they felt was " the Word of 
 God. " Paul felt it. He says, " Christ sent me not to 
 baptize, but to preach the Gospel." He did not mean 
 to disparage sacraments, but he did mean to exalt 
 preaching — not the gifts of the preacher, of which he 
 himself, in the judgment of the Corinthians, did not 
 possess many, for they said of him, " His bodily presence 
 is weak, and his speech contemptible." It was not the 
 gifts of the preacher, but the power of his message. 
 Writing again to those Corinthians, he says that it was 
 God's good pleasure, " through the foolishness of preach- 
 ino-, to save them that believe." That is our modern 
 version, but the Greek is " through the foolishness of 
 the thing preached." 
 
 1
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 245 
 
 Oh ! that God would give to all them that essay to 
 preach, and are called to preach, the grace to preach 
 this foolish thing — foolish as men estimate the forces 
 that shake the world ; but, nevertheless, the wisdom of 
 God and the strength of God, the little stone cut out 
 without hands which has smitten and destroyed so 
 many of those colossal images which the kings of the 
 earth have set up in their dreams of pride. I say, Oh ! 
 that God would give us grace to preach fully, faithfully, 
 wisely, lovingly, this foolish thing, this Gospel of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, more in that spirit and with that 
 simplicity and that abounding sympathy with which it 
 was first preached in the cities and on the mountain 
 slopes and by the lake shores of Galilee ; and then I 
 believe that the people would be found pressing to hear 
 it as they pressed then. Of course, where the popula- 
 tion has been swept away, as in some parts of the city 
 of London, perhaps it may be impossible to fill our 
 churches with people ; but I will undertake to say that 
 every church in London round which there are people 
 living may be filled if we only go the right way to work 
 to try to do it. There must be this first, the preaching 
 of the Gospel in its simplicity, lovingly, sympathetically, 
 and then, the great law of projDortion being duly 
 observed, all other needful, proper, expedient, desirable 
 things will fall naturally into their places. 
 
 Experiments might be ventured among people vitally 
 Christianised that would be 23erilous — aye, more than 
 perilous, certain to work mischief — if this great purify- 
 ing leaven were not first there. Artificial safeguards,
 
 24G UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 "we all know, are not worth much. -It has been repeated 
 till one has almost grown sick of the phrase, that you 
 canijot make people virtuous by Acts of Parliament; 
 and of course we know that Acts of Parliament operate 
 in a very narrow sphere. The principle must be planted 
 deeply within. The man must learn to be a law unto 
 himself. The conscience must be the supreme governor 
 of conduct, and the arbiter not only of right and wrong 
 but even of expedient and inexpedient. And what is 
 so much talked about now, though some of you, perhaps, 
 may liarrdly know the meaning of the word — " altiTiism," 
 or a paramount thought for others — is surely no dis- 
 covery of the positivist philosophy. They vaunt it as 
 one of their great discoveries — as their Gospel ; but it 
 had its prophet and its ideal eighteen hundred years 
 before Auguste Comte lifted up his voice and preached 
 it. It is part of our Gospel — not the whole of it, for 
 man has his duties towai-ds God as well as towards his 
 fellow-men ; but it is the second great word of Jesus, 
 like unto the first, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." To show the true bearing of this in relation 
 to the complex phenomena of modern life is our duty as 
 jjreachers of the Gospel. It was the " life " which the 
 ansel meant when he bade Peter and John "Go stand 
 and speak in the temple to the people all the words of 
 this life." 
 
 We have no need to be apprehensive of results, 
 though these are not in our hands. Words spoken in 
 love and tenderness and sympathy — words like Paul's, 
 in which "we seek not vours but vou " — words which
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE MASSES. 247 
 
 will make better husbands ,and wives, better parents 
 and children, better masters and servants, better poli- 
 ticians and citizens — surely, words such as thesCj, He 
 who is with the Church always, even unto the en3l of 
 the world, will never let fall wholly idle and profitleg^ to 
 the ground. 
 
 Preached— St. Andrew's, Holborn, July 13, 1884.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF EEDEMPTION. 
 
 ' Stir up Thy strength, and come, and help us.' — Psalm Ixxx. 2. 
 
 Whethek we regard the system of this visible universe 
 either simply with the eye of a philosopher, as the mul- 
 titudinous result of a few great laws, or with the 
 devouter sentiments of piety, as the silent witness of 
 an Eternal Power and Godhead, it alike impresses itself 
 upon the musing mind as illimitable and incomprehen- 
 sible. Go forth on some star-lit night, and gaze upward 
 on the spangled canopy of heaven, and the thoughts of 
 the eighth and nineteenth Psalms spontaneously fill the 
 mind. Look round upon the varied landscape of nature, 
 consider the evidence of power, contrivance, forethought, 
 adaptation, goodness, that it displays, and if there is 
 any warmth of piety in our heart, we find the language 
 of the glorious 10-ith Psalm more in harmony with 
 our deep emotions than the cold theories of the geo- 
 logist, or even the accurate descriptions of the physical 
 geographer.
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 249 
 
 Not that science — true, honest science, is not the 
 handmaid of theology, and the telescope and microscope 
 may not help the spiritual eye as truly as the natural ; 
 but the thoughts which a survey of the universe raises 
 in a rightly-educated mind are religious, rather than 
 philosophical. David's utterances, as he considered the 
 heavens, the work of God's fingers, " the moon and the 
 stars which He had ordained," sound more congenial to 
 our ears, more accurately express our own best moods 
 of mind, than the profound demonstrations or subtle 
 analyses of Laplace or even of Newton. They are 
 evidences of Divine Power, or rather of a Divine Per- 
 sonality, that we delight to find — not merely indications 
 of a system or traces of a law. 
 
 Yet there is something in the Psalmist's heart that, 
 as often as his mind was in danger of being lost in the 
 immensities of space, or merely occupied with a barren 
 admiration of the physical world, brings it back, by a 
 strange and generally sudden revulsion of feeling, to 
 dwell upon the mystery of its own being ; to ponder the 
 unfathomable marvels that encompass and penetrate the 
 mechanism of man. 
 
 In each of the Psalms to which I have referred the 
 transition is remarkable for its spontaneity and instinc- 
 tiveness. It is so sudden as to make it hard to catch 
 the train of thought, the association of ideas, with which 
 the religious philosopher passes from the contemplation 
 of the moon and stars which God has ordained, to the 
 thought of the son of man whom He visits " and crowns 
 with glory and worship." It is hard to trace the subtle 
 thread of feeling by which the mind, one moment
 
 250 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 gazing 11 JO ward on the sun " coming forth as a bride- 
 groom out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a giant to 
 renew his course ; " the next returning to muse upon 
 that law of God, not which prescribes the course of the 
 j)lanets, or governs the music of the spheres, but 
 " Avhich converts the soul" and gives light to the 
 eyes — a strain of feeling and thought which breaks 
 forth into an ecstatic adoration of the strength of the 
 Lord, not as his Creator, but as his Bedeemer, with 
 power to cleanse him from his secret faults and to keep 
 him from the dominion of " presumptuous sins." 
 
 If we can analyse the state of mind which found its 
 relief in the utterances of the nineteenth Psalm, we shall 
 have gained the key to much that is dark and difficult 
 not only in revelation, but in nature ; and perhaps be 
 able to understand why it was Bedcmption, rather than 
 Creation, that filled the poet's mind with a sense of 
 Divine majesty, strength, and power. 
 
 Let me approach the subject through a familiar, but 
 apt, illustration. Paley, in the opening of his well- 
 known treatise on Natural Theology, adduces a watch 
 as one of the most obvious instances of artistic con- 
 trivance and design. From the examination of its 
 parts, and the observation of their mutual action and 
 adjustment, we should at once, he says, infer power and 
 skill in the maker. It were difficult to find a plainer 
 proof of human ingenuity. Now dash that curious 
 piece of mechanism to the ground ; crush it under your 
 foot into a hundred fragments. Where is the workman 
 who can put together those broken springs and wheels ? 
 He could make it ; but he cannot restore. He could
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 251 
 
 adjust the parts into harmonious action when each was 
 entire ; but their reconstruction no-io is beyond his 
 power. 
 
 And is not man a shattered mechanism ? Do not 
 body, soul, and spirit bear marks of some deep-scathing- 
 influence having passed over them ? Is not disease un- 
 natural, and death a sort of rival of the Lord of Life ? 
 Are not the appetites sensualized, and the affections 
 degraded, and the understanding darkened, and the 
 Avill impaired, and the reason enfeebled, and the con- 
 science shaken on her throne ? And will not man's 
 lofty spirit, that should pierce the clouds, and gaze un- 
 daunted on the things that angels even have not seen, 
 bow down to stocks and stones, and accept the most 
 monstrous and revolting creeds, and worship fetishes, 
 and prostrate itself before the wheels of Juggernaut, 
 and, even in enlightened England and America, believe 
 in Mormonism, and pretend, through the medium of 
 table-rapping and the ridiculous rites of modern necro- 
 mancy, to hold — what it feels it needs — an intercourse 
 with the invisible world ? 
 
 Now we have reached the problem. Can this wreck 
 of what was once so fair and perfect be restored ? Can 
 the body triumph over sickness and over death ? Can 
 the soul recover its purity, the will its strength, the 
 reason its clearness, the conscience its ascendency ? Can 
 the spirit break the bonds of superstition and fanati- 
 cism, and rise once more to heaven with a pure and 
 lioly worship, and assert its divine birth, and claim anew 
 that privilege of approach to its Maker which it felt that 
 it had forfeited when " Adam and Eve hid themselves
 
 252 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of 
 the garden " ? 
 
 David felt that it could. His whole heart rested on 
 the hope that restoration was possible, hut possible only 
 to Omnijyotence : nay, in the words of the text, that 
 Omnipotence Himself must "stir up His strength" if 
 He would " come and help us." He cries, as out of the 
 great deep, " Lord, my strength and my Redeemer ! " 
 He who had not merely philosophised on the nature of 
 man, who had not merely drawn cold, scientific conclu- 
 sions from the pathology of disease, whether of the body 
 or mind, but who had felt in the depths of his moral 
 nature the dominion of sin — " the mystery of iniquity " 
 — had found all past watchfulness, the self-formed 
 habits of years, the discipline of a life of trial, utterly 
 unable, alone and by themselves, to stand him in stead 
 in the hour of overmastering temptation. He who has 
 presented to scoffers of every age the sad and perplexing 
 spectacle of a " man after God's own heart," given over, 
 apparently without compunction, to a deadly sin ; bound 
 hand and foot by Satan ; steeped in a lust which for a 
 time dried the fount of feeling and drowned the re- 
 proaches of coEscience; he, by an experimental sense, 
 knew what a mighty strength that must be which should 
 redeem one so loved, and yet so fallen ! 
 
 The greatest of all helps to realise the magnitude of 
 the work of Redemption is the experimental sense, the 
 inwrought consciousness, of "the exceeding sinfulness 
 of sin." It was when St. Paul had felt the powerless- 
 ness of his own unassisted moral nature, witnessing 
 though it did to the authority of the Divine law, to
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 253 
 
 resist the law of sin v/hich wrought so mightily in his 
 members, that he cried out with bitter agony, " 
 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the 
 body of this death?" It was when he felt his "free- 
 dom from the law of sin and death," when he realised the 
 blessing of a " Sj)irit helping our infirmities," that he 
 painted with all the force of an inspired imagination 
 the picture of the ''whole creation," now "groaning 
 and travailing in pain together," delivered by Christ's 
 Avork from its bondage of corruption " into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God." 
 
 His words sound strange and visionary to us, unless 
 we have something of the same kind of spiritual expe- 
 rience. With our loose, light notions of sin, the excuses 
 we make for it, the soft names we call it by, never 
 suffering it, even in some of its deadliest forms, to 
 disturb our slumbers or lessen our appetite, no 
 wonder that such language sounds unreal and ex- 
 travagant. 
 
 Take this for an axiom. He thinks lightly of the 
 greatness of Redemption who thinks lightly of the 
 power of sin. He regards Jesus as a superfluous 
 helper who regards Satan as a contemptible foe. The 
 two spiritual conceptions are co equal and correlative. 
 It is when, like David, we cry out, "Innumerable 
 troubles are come about me ; my sins have taken such 
 hold upon me that I am not able to look up," that, like 
 David also, we stretch out our hands to our mighty 
 Succourer, and feel the force of the prayer which may 
 often have passed our lips before, " O Lord, let it be 
 Thy pleasure to deliver me ; make haste, O Lord, to
 
 254 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 help me. Thou art my Helper and 'Redeemer ; make 
 no long tarrying, my God." 
 
 I refuse to limit the great work of Kedemption to 
 what is called, in the language of popular theology, 
 " the saving of the soul." I regard it as co-extensive 
 with the work of ruin. Wherever sin, in its remotest 
 consequences, has reached, there Christ's work reaches 
 also. I remember St. Paul's assertion, that " the whole 
 creation " is looking for, and has an interest in, " the 
 manifestation of the sons of God." I call to mind that 
 Jesus of Nazareth Himself was as sensibly touched by 
 the sight of physical suffering as of spiritual corrup- 
 tion. Every act of mercy wrought upon the earth is 
 but a shadow of the great act of Calvary : every true 
 illumination of the Spirit is from Him whose mission 
 in the woiid is to "guide us into all truth." 
 
 We do a fatal injury, as it seems to me, to the work 
 of Redemption, as a jDractical human idea, when we 
 disconnect it, as some are fond of doing, from the 
 temporal and even the material interests of mankind. 
 It is my full belief that the Cross of Christ has done, 
 proportionately to the matter on which it works, as 
 much for us in this world as it will do in the next. 
 The " kingdom of heaven," in the idea of its great 
 founder, began with St. John's baptism — runs its first 
 course in this lower world — throws its light on " life " 
 as well as on " immortality." There is a good time 
 coming. Who doubts it ? Have not prophets foretold, 
 and poets sung, and saints dreamed of it ? Is it not a 
 religious thought, though it may not be expressed by 
 one whom men would call a religious poet? — 
 
 I
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 255 
 
 " For I doubt not tlirougli the ages one increasing purpose 
 runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
 
 It is a satisfaction, and enlarges our ideas of the 
 height and depth of Redemption, to think of the Cross 
 of Christ as stamped upon everything that contributes 
 to the amelioration of humanity — on hospitals, reforma- 
 tories, penitentiaries, aye, if you will allow me to say 
 so, though less distinctly and with a fainter impression, 
 even on such material things as museums, treasures of 
 art, railroads. I know well enough that all these things 
 may be savours of death ; but, for that matter, so may 
 the Gospel too. On the principle of not judging any- 
 thing from its abuse : looking at the high aims by 
 which even the meanest attempts at social improvement 
 may be sanctified ; viewing things in their natural 
 tendencies, all as parts of one great, harmonious whole, 
 I will not rob myself of the comfort, which I believe 
 the Bible permits me to enjoy, of feeling that " every 
 good gift cometh down from the Father of light ;" and 
 that I may lawfully connect every endeavour to im- 
 prove the condition, and even to raise the tastes and 
 multiply the conveniences of men, with that great act 
 of love which brought the Son of God from His 
 throne in heaven to redeem a groaning and travailing 
 workl. 
 
 For the law of the Kingdom of God is progress — 
 development — of the species, speaking generally ; and 
 of the individual too, where it has free course and is 
 not frustrated. It is indeed, as our great dramatist
 
 25G UNIVERSITY SERMOXS. 
 
 says of human mercy, " mightiest in' the mightiest." 
 It works more effectually in the nobler jjarts of our 
 nature ; in the spirit than in the soul ; in the soul than 
 in the body. But there is nothing in human nature 
 that is too high to need it, too low to be susceptible 
 of its influences. Even " our vile bodies " are to be 
 changed into the " likeness of Christ's glorious body," 
 according to the working whereby He "i s able to 
 subdue all things unto Himself." The ilness of 
 spiritual discernment — the great gift of heaven — first ; 
 sanctification, that which now worketh in us mightily, 
 next ; but " the redemption of the body " also has its 
 place in the scale of regeneration, though the quicken- 
 ing spirit of the last Adam has not yet swallowed up 
 death in the completeness of His victory. 
 
 I know not, when the Son of Man cometh, whether 
 He will find faith upon the earth, bat I fully believe 
 that He will find the earth itself fuller than now it is 
 of the tokens of the ooodness and loving-kindness of 
 the Lord. I know not whether men will recognise the 
 Giver, but I believe, as the ages roll onwards, they will 
 be surrounded more abundantly and more freely by the 
 gift. Surely we ourselves have a richer inheritance — 
 have our lot fallen in pleasanter j^laces —than our 
 fathers had ; and our children may, probably icill, be 
 " better off " in every sense than we. Surely year by 
 year more ground is won, or at least attempted to be 
 won, from the domains of ignorance, and superstition, 
 and vice, and sickness, and death. Surely, as in David's 
 day, so in our own, the Lord is " renewing the face of 
 the earth : " making, literally as well as spiritually,
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 257 
 
 " its deserts to rejoice, aad its waste places to blossom 
 like a rose." 
 
 No doubt it is so, says some wise man of the world. 
 It is what we jihilosopiiers have always maintained ; 
 but why connect it with the Redemption, or the Gospel , 
 or Christianity ? We do not wish to entangle ourselves 
 with supernatural accounts of things when ordinary 
 influences, within the reach of our own experience, will 
 do as well. It is civilisation, the march of mind, the 
 schoolmaster, that has accomplished all this. 
 
 Right, O sir, if you regard these as divine instru- 
 ments, the material organisms of God's providence and 
 grace — the wheels, as it were, of Ezekiel's vision, in 
 which was a " spirit of life," moving, guiding, governing 
 them ; but utterly, fatally wrong, if you sever them 
 from God's Spirit — which, remember, is the effluence 
 of Christ's work — and attempt to magnify them as 
 manifestations of mans power. 
 
 Civilisation ! the march of mind ! the schoolmaster ! 
 Have you never heard or read of a civilisation rank and 
 towering, like the gigantic vegetation of the tropics, 
 which did but beget and conceal the deadlier poison ? 
 If not, read the histories of Athens, Corinth, Antioch, 
 Alexandria, Rome. Try the civilisation of Rousseau or 
 Voltaire, and see what it %oill beget and lias begotten. 
 
 The march of mind, again ! Why " intellect without 
 God " is some one's definition of Satan. Does the world 
 afford no instance of the most highly gifted of the sons 
 of men helpless victims to the tyranny of some foul 
 lust, or brutal passion, or sordid desire ? Can there be 
 a more striking type of the greatness and littleness of 
 
 S
 
 258 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 man than he who is the founder of all modern science, 
 the great, but as all must add, the mean Lord Bacon ? 
 
 And as for the school, what is it but the wisdom of 
 this world made foolishness ? What is education but 
 another weapon put into the hands of Satan — unless 
 God's law is its atmosphere, God's Spirit its light, 
 God's Son its corner-stone ? Build schools on this 
 foundation, and they stand upon a rock : on any other, 
 they will fall before the first storm, and will add bvit 
 another, and that the saddest, element to the scene 
 of desolation. 
 
 " But is it not rather ' far-fetched ' to attribute all 
 these mighty developments of human progress to the 
 great act of Redemption accomplished and manifested 
 by the death of Christ?" "i^«r-fetched," it is true ; 
 but if the philosophic maxim is correct, that every 
 cause exists in its effects, a most legitimate inference 
 nevertheless. I will venture on an illustration. George 
 Stephenson, the eminent engineer, the first successful 
 ajDplier of steam-power to locomotive purposes, was 
 once on a visit to the late Sir Robert Peel, at Drayton 
 Manor. " One Sunday, when the party — which in- 
 cluded Dr. Buckland, the geologist — had just returned 
 from church, they were standing together on the ter- 
 race near the hall, and observed in the distance a 
 railway train flashing along, throwing behind it a long 
 line of white steam. ' Now, Buckland,' said Mr. Stephen- 
 son, ' I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is 
 the power that is driving that train ? ' ' Well,' said the 
 other, ' I suppose it is one of your big engines.' ' But 
 what drives the engine ? ' ' Oh, veiy likely a canny
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 259 
 
 Newcastle driver.' ' What do you say to the light of 
 the sun ? ' ' How can that be ? ' asked the doctor. 
 ' It is nothing else,' said the engineer, ' It is the light 
 bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years — 
 light absorbed by plants and vegetables, being neces- 
 sary for the condensation of carbon during the process 
 of their growth, if it be not carbon in another form ; 
 and now, after being buried in the earth for long ages, 
 that latent light is again brought forth and liberated, 
 made to work, as in that locomotive, for great human 
 purposes.' " 
 
 And so the great original motive power in the moral 
 and spiritual world, ay, and even in the physical, so 
 far as it is subordinated to the moral and spiritual, is 
 the light that issues from the Sun of Righteousness- 
 Philosophers tell us that the beam which reaches the 
 optic nerve this moment from some distant star, left its 
 source perhaps twenty years ago, and has been travel- 
 ling onward all that time in the greatnes.s of its strength, 
 unquenched, unextinguishable. So the " Day-Star from 
 on high," which visited the earth more than eighteen 
 centuries ago, still illuminates the dark corners, and 
 will illuminate them to the end of time. It was the 
 great manifestation of Divine love and Divinest self- 
 sacrifice. It contained in itself, so to speak, the intro- 
 susception of all other sacrifices. As the Apostle says, 
 " They were all gathered into one, in Christ." Those 
 of the Law were not merely its types ; so far as they 
 brought peace to any conscience, they shared its power. 
 Even the bloody rites of heathen superstition, in their 
 purest and original idea as offerings of that which was 
 
 S 2
 
 260 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 best and dearest, bore witness to the' deep instincts of 
 human nature, and were feeble foreshadowings of the 
 Cross on Calvary. 
 
 " What seemed an idle hymn, now breathes of Thee, 
 Tuned hy faith's ear to a celestial melody.'' 
 
 And what if its mighty power has at times been lost 
 under the corruptions of false religions, or obscured by 
 the pretensions of false philosophy : what if luminaries 
 that shine but by reflected brightness have seemed to 
 claim its light as their own : what if clouds have come 
 across its path and hid for a while its glorious radiance ? 
 What does all this come to but an admission of the 
 truth which no one denies, that the power of the Cross 
 is subject to the conditions of humanity and of the 
 atmosphere that surrounds humanity ? 
 
 It is no reflection on the Divine Power that in this 
 or that instance it may seem to us to have failed in 
 its purpose, or to have wrought out its end by imperfect 
 or even evil agencies. For to us is committed the 
 scarcely less wonderful power of antagonism ; we, 
 Avorms of the earth, can frustrate as regards ourselves 
 — ay, and as regards others ! — the grace of God. 
 We can offend ourselves, and we can cause a weak 
 brother to offend. It is the inexplicable mystery of 
 human free-Avill, concurrent with Divine omnipotence. 
 And if the treacheiy of a Judas, or the malice of a 
 Caiaphas, or the moral weakness of a Pilate, or the 
 fickleness of an ignorant crowd, were reall}^ agencies in 
 tlie salvation of tlie world, what can we do but admire 
 the resources of that omnipotence which by a Divine
 
 THE MIGHTINESS OF REDEMPTION. 2(31 
 
 alchemy can transmute human evil into human good, 
 aud vindicate its sovereignty even by submitting to the 
 use of base instrumentalities, and, like the light of the 
 blessed sun, can pass through the foulest media, clouded 
 perhaps, and robbed of some of its brightness, but yet 
 uncontaminated and undefiled ? 
 
 Some minds have delighted, fancifully enough, to 
 trace the very form of the Cross in every true arche- 
 type — or idea, as the old Platonists called it — of nature's 
 creative power, as the " exemjDlary draught or jjattern," 
 to use Hooker's words, " on wdiich in working she fixetli 
 her eye." But it is no fancy, but a most certain and 
 demonstrable truth, that the spirit, or so to call it, the 
 law of the Cross, is stamj)ed upon everything noble, and 
 brave, and true, and good, that Nature has ever borne. 
 It is the spirit of self-sacrifice — the law of love. 
 
 Gaze not on the Cross as the manifestation of Divine 
 wrath — look to Sinai for that if thou canst bear the 
 sight — but as the token and pledge of love inexhaust- 
 ible, unalterable. Gaze on it till thou hast thyself 
 drawn from it into the pores of thy cold, selfish heart 
 the virtue of its warmth, its holy, kindling, purifying 
 fire. Let the electric spark of Divine love thrill through 
 thy sluggish frame. Place thyself under it, and ask 
 what lessons it has to teach thee. Shrink not, though 
 thou feel in thy hands the prick of the nails, or in thy 
 side the thrusting of the sj^ear. " Be crucified with 
 Christ " : so shalt thou live the better, the braver, the 
 truer, the happier life. Then shalt thou learn, with 
 St. Paul, " how to spend and be spent for the brethren." 
 Then thou shalt still love on, though thou be little loved
 
 2G2 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 in return. Then shalt thou ""fill up that which is 
 behindhand of the afflictions of Christ for His body's 
 sake, which is the Church." Then shalt thou lend thy 
 aid, feeble in thine own eyes, of no account in those of 
 the world, but marked and registered and prized in the 
 book of God, in accomplishing, perhaps in hastening, 
 the great issue to which all things have been tending 
 from the creation of the world ; which sin has hindered 
 but has not been able to turn aside, which God eternally 
 predestined, and proclaimed anew, and stamped with 
 the seal of His unchangeable counsel at the death of 
 His Son — "the deliverance of the creature from the 
 bondage of corruption into the glorious libeity of the 
 children of God." 
 
 Preached -St. Thomas's Church, Salisbury, Lent, 1858.
 
 XIX. 
 
 ST. ANDEEW. 
 
 " One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was 
 Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own 
 brother, Simon, and saitli unto him : We have found the 
 Messias (which is, being interiireted, the Christ). And he 
 brought him to Jesus." — St. John i. 40 — 42. 
 
 St. Andrew was a native of Bethsaida, a town of 
 Galilee, on the coast of the Lake of Genesareth, and 
 by trade a fisherman. His father's name was Jona, 
 and he was the brother, as most have thought, the 
 younger brother of Simon Peter. That he was, in 
 sjDite of the disadvantages of an imperfect education, 
 and a worldly calling that must have occupied much of 
 his thoughts and time, a man of inquiring mind and 
 sincere concern for the highest interests of his soul, may 
 I think be assumed from his being found among the 
 followers of that stern preacher of righteousness, St. 
 John the Baptist. 
 
 He was no man of a wavering faith or lukewarm 
 devotion who would consent to be a disciple of a 
 teacher who read men's hearts so truly, and reproved
 
 2G4 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 their sins so iinsparingiy. When we can still listen 
 gladly to a preacher who is no prophesyer of smooth 
 things, so long as we feel that he is preaching to us 
 God's truth, we may accept it as a token that it is a 
 real hungering after righteousness, and not merely an 
 itching ear, or a restless curiosity, that has possession 
 of our souls. People do not like to be spoken to as 
 plainly as John the Baptist used to speak, unless their 
 desire is not to be humoured, but to be saved. 
 
 It was at the feet of such a master that Andrew 
 originally sat; and by him, he was, in a measure, pre- 
 pared for the discipleship of Christ. He had no doubt 
 often heard the Baptist speak of the still Mightier 
 Teacher who was to come after him. He had listened 
 to him as he unrolled the ancient prophecies, and fore- 
 told their speedy fulfilment. He knew that his present 
 instructor's work was but preparatory to the richer and 
 more gracious dispensation that was on the eve of being 
 revealed. 
 
 And so, as he one day stood with his master by the 
 river Jordan, and saw a Person coming towards them, 
 upon Whom St. John looking said, " Behold the Lamb 
 of God," he seems to have felt himself ii-resistibly 
 drawn to the stranger. " He followed Him, and came 
 and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that 
 day " : and left Him a worshipper and a believer. 
 
 Any system, any philosophy, any human wisdom, 
 however profitable and instructive as far as it goes, if it 
 stop short of Christ, if it do not lead us ultimately to 
 Him "in Whom are hid all the treasures of true wis- 
 dom and knowledge," must be unsatisfying to a soul
 
 ST. ANDREW. 2G5 
 
 that has a paiuful consciousness of its own unworthiness 
 and helplessness, and is casting about, as yet in vain, for 
 some sure standing-ground on which to build its hopes. 
 Human teachers are useful in proportion to their faith- 
 fulness, and the power they have received of God, to 
 hold forth the Word of life. But they are not Christ ; 
 nor can they stand in the place of Christ. They can 
 but point out the road : it is left for our own free choice 
 to follow it. Our salvation does not depend upon the 
 gifts of any mortal guide, but upon our finding out 
 for ourselves where Jesus dwells, and abiding with 
 Him. 
 
 St. Andrew, then, was the first known follower of our 
 Blessed Lord. But he was more than this. He was, 
 so to speak, the first missionary, the first who put in 
 his sickle to the corn in the Church's harvest-field. He 
 did not spend that night with his new Instructor, in 
 His lowly dwelling, without learning that the spirit of 
 the new religion which he had accepted was eminently 
 not selfish and personal, but disseminative and corporate. 
 He realised the fact that Christ was come upon the 
 earth not so much to pick up outcast souls one by one; 
 or to make the greatest saints out of the greatest 
 sinners — which is some people's notion of the ordinary 
 results of grace — as to knit together His elect into one 
 communion and fellowship — to set up a kingdom — to 
 build a Church, and in doing so, to make the welfare of 
 each individual more or less dependent upon the growth 
 and development of the whole. 
 
 If there is one corrupt element in our nature more 
 than another that the Gospel is framed to eradicate, it
 
 2GG UNIVERSITY SERMOXS. 
 
 is selfishness, even religious selfishness^-for there is such 
 a thing — the notion, that is, that Christ died for us 
 alone : that we need only concern ourselves about our 
 own souls: that, as wicked Cain said, "we are not our 
 brother's keeper " : that it matters not if the whole 
 world perish, so long as we ourselves and a few others 
 who think like us — whom we therefore take upon our- 
 selves to call the elect, are saved. You will look in 
 vain through the Ncav Testament for countenance for 
 such views. As the Church is a universal brotherhood, 
 so is it with a spirit proper to a member of such a 
 community that every individual Christian must be 
 actuated. 
 
 St. Andrew felt this. He did not think that when 
 he had found Christ he had found a treasure to be 
 hidden and selfishly appropriated to his own comfort 
 and profit alone. No sooner was he convinced of the 
 reahty of his discovery than he wished others to share 
 it, and be the better for it too. He is the first Christian 
 example of the grace of charity and the power of 
 brotherly love. 
 
 Be assured that this is the only true evangelical 
 temper. Whatever gift or privilege, whether temporal 
 or spiritual, by God's providence we possess, we double 
 the enjoyment of it by communicating it freely with 
 our brethren. As in worldly matters, " there is that 
 scattereth and yet increaseth ; and there is that with- 
 holdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty " ; 
 so in spiritual things, so far as I have observed, the 
 religion that is self-absorbed is universally cheerless and 
 gloomy. He who would fully know what the love of
 
 ST. ANDREW. 2G7 
 
 Christ is, must be content, as was St. Paul, " to spend 
 and be spent for his brethren." Whatever he lays out 
 in such a cause will be as much for his own soul's health 
 as theirs. 
 
 St. Andrew was, moreover, the human instrument in 
 bringing the first Gentiles to Christ — " the Greeks who 
 desired to see Jesus." They had heard of Jesus, and 
 wished to see Him, and they applied for the purpose to 
 Philip, apparently because he was the first of our 
 Lord's immediate followers who fell in their way. And 
 what does Philip do ? He comes to tell Andrew. But 
 why ? Why not, himself, introduce them to Christ ? 
 especially as he was a man of like disposition, and had 
 himself before been instrumental in awakening the 
 curiosity of Nathanael to come and see the despised 
 Nazarene ? My own opinion is that he told Andrew 
 because he was sure he should find in him a kindred 
 spirit : one who would sympathise with these poor 
 inquirers : one who would know no distinction of race : 
 one who would be puffed up with no vain conceit of 
 Jewish privileges in dealing with the strangers : one 
 who followed the promptings of his own heart, and not 
 the selfish calculations of pride or prejudice : one who 
 delighted in any enlargement of the borders of his 
 Master's kingdom, and who, by the instinct of a loving 
 heart more than by the grasp of a powerful understand- 
 ing, already anticipated the time when there should be 
 neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, 
 lut all one in Christ Jesus. The great mystery of the 
 Gospel, hidden before both from priests and prophets, 
 this unlettered fisherman of Galilee, by the unerring
 
 208 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 discernment of an affectionate and unselfish soul, I will 
 not say co?npreLended, but «j9preh ended, and acted on. 
 As he was the first of the Apostles to make Christ 
 known to the Jew — his own brother Simon — so may 
 he, with equal truth, be said to have been foremost to 
 " open the door of faith unto the Gentiles." He united 
 the opposite missions of St. Peter and St. Paul. He 
 preached the Gospel to the circumcision, and to the 
 uncircumcision also. 
 
 The affectionate, brotherly temper which St. Andrew 
 cidtivated must have served as a valuable preparatory 
 discipline for that act of sacrifice and self-renunciation 
 which, in about a twelvemonth after bis first interview 
 with Jesus, he was called to perform. For some 
 months after he and his brother Peter had been first 
 brought to the knowledge of Christ, they pursued 
 their ordinary occupation as fishermen on the Sea of 
 Galilee. 
 
 I daresay often on those deep waters, as they sat in 
 their boat, those two brothers had mused and talked 
 together of the wondrous teacher of Capernaum, whose 
 deeds and sayings were in all men's mouths, and of 
 whom they themselves knew more than most who sjsake 
 of Him. And doubtless also the all-seeing eye of Jesus 
 often fell on them as they mended their nets upon the 
 shore, or perhaps conversed about Him with their 
 partners, James and John ; and read their hearts, and 
 saw that they were men fitted for His purpose, and 
 watched His opportunity to make them indeed His own. 
 We need not doubt that God does always choose His 
 instruments ; and those instruments, however unlikely
 
 ST. ANDREW. 260 
 
 they may seem to our eyes, are the fittest and most 
 proper for the work He has for them to do. 
 
 And so when Jesus would gather round Him a small 
 company of faithful followers for the attestation of His 
 mission, and the future building of His Church, the first 
 He summoned to Him were Simon Peter and his brother 
 Andrew. He bade them leave their nets and follow 
 Him — Him, a despised outcast who had not where to 
 Liy His head ; " who had no form nor comeliness," nor 
 any beauty that they should desire Him — Him they 
 were to follow and He would make them fishers of men. 
 It was free to them, of course, to have refused. They 
 might have alleged the occupation of their trade, the 
 age of their father, the necessities of their families, their 
 unfitness for the work, the doubtfulness of success. They 
 might have bargained, or asked for security, or taken 
 exceptions, or sought to qualify the sacrifice in one or 
 other of the thousand ways which Avorldly people always 
 find to evade the simple acceptance of a call which 
 they cannot help hearing but have no inclination to 
 obey. 
 
 But these less clever fishermen did nothing of the 
 kind. They heard Christ call them, and without 
 stopping to consider what worldly ties they were 
 breaking — whether it woidd be better for them in a 
 temporal point of view or not — they followed Him 
 without delay. "What a noble faith ! What a glorious 
 venture ! What a costly sacrifice ! They gave up all 
 things cheerfully because Christ hade them. 
 
 The sacrifice of self! How hard a thing it is, and yet 
 the root of the whole matter, the necessary essential
 
 270 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 fuiindatioii of the Christian character in every age ! It 
 is not likely that any of us will be called to make sacri- 
 fices of the same kind, or to the same extent, as were 
 St. Andrew and the first followers of our Lord. Their 
 work was different from ours — different from the work 
 which any set of men ever had to do, either before or 
 since. They, for a specific purpose, were required to 
 resign their homes, their families, their trades, their 
 possessions, to follow One Who had higher aims, and 
 wider s leading duties for them in view. We have to 
 follow Christ i7i our homes, among our families, on our 
 farms, m our daily labour and trade. 
 
 We should be mistaking our vocation if we thought 
 Christ bade us, as he bade His Apostles, "go forth into 
 all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." 
 We are only too ready to make a kind of vague, general 
 interest in the success and enlargement of the Church 
 serve as a substitute for the definite personal duties that 
 meet us at our own door. But these homely duties 
 cannot, any more than can missionary calls, be dis- 
 charged without the spirit of self-sacrifice. Christ 
 certainly calls us all to give up something, " and follow 
 Him." Let it be our care to find out what that 
 " something " is. It is what we shall find very near 
 our hearts, intimately associated, as we think, with 
 our daily happiness and comfort ; very pleasant per- 
 haps, and hard to part with ; a different thing in 
 different men, but in all so far the same that it is a 
 something which is absorbing too much of our thoughts 
 and care — which carnalises instead of spiritualising 
 them ; which makes them earthlier instead of heavenlier,
 
 ST. ANDREW. 271 
 
 and which like the cherished rioht hand or eye, it" it be 
 not cut off or jDlucked out, may ultimately be the cause 
 of their whole body being cast into hell. 
 
 But I must compress the remainder of this history 
 into a very few words. When the multitude who had 
 followed Jesus into the wilderness of Bethsaida were 
 fainting with hunger, and his brother-disciple Philip 
 was utterly at a loss to think how their necessities 
 could be supjDlied, it was St. Andrew who drew our 
 Blessed Lord's attention to "the lad there, who had 
 five barley loaves and two small fishes," which were so 
 strangely to be multiplied into a meal for five thousand 
 men. It is true that his faith in his Master's almighty 
 power as yet was scarcely strong enough to make liim 
 hope that his suggestion would be of any avail : " What 
 are they," he asks, " among so many ? " But we see 
 before us the same man whose portrait all along we 
 have been endeavouring to draw, ever alive to the 
 wants and exigences of others, and here as tenderly 
 solicitous for men's tempoi-al, as at other times he was 
 for their spiritual, needs. 
 
 The only other special circumstance related of him 
 is, that he was one of the four disciples who asked our 
 Lord privately to explain to them more fully the mys- 
 terious words He had dropped about the throwing down 
 of the stones of Jerusalem, and with whom He sat down 
 on the Mount of Olives three days before His Passion, 
 and confided that awful picture of the latter days when 
 the stars of heaven shall fall, and the Son of Man shall 
 come, and the elect shall be gathered in, and the Divine 
 Purpose towards the lower world shall be fulfilled.
 
 272 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Here again we see the same inquiring, yet reverent 
 and meditative, mind which first took the Gahlean 
 fisherman to John the Baptist, and then led his riper 
 judgment to believe and to follow Jesus Christ. 
 
 We catch his name once more in the sacred pages 
 of the Scriptures. He is one of the eleven who meet 
 together in the upper chamber of Jerusalem to com- 
 plete anew the apostolic number, and fill up the vacant 
 bishopric from which Judas " by transgression fell." 
 Ecclesiastical history tells us that he prosecuted his 
 missionary labours with great success in the countries 
 bordering on the Caspian Sea, and sealed a life of 
 devotion to his Master's sei^vice by a blessed martyi'dom, 
 being crucified as his Lord had been ; and, true to his 
 character even in his death-agonies, still having strength 
 and boldness enough to exhort the standers-by to " look 
 unto Jesus," and, if need were, "to resist even unto 
 blood, striving against sin." 
 
 In the same spirit he, though dead, this day still 
 speaks to us. He makes us feel, with as constraining 
 an influence as ever, the power and beauty of those 
 twin sisters of grace — the love of the brotherhood, the 
 sacrifice of self We still have our sacrifices to make, 
 though we do not look to them for expiation. We still 
 have deeds of brotherly love to show, though we claim 
 for them no recompense at God's hand on the score of 
 merit. We know that we are saved by grace, and we 
 should be slow to rest our title of acceptance on any- 
 thing but the free and undeserved mercy of Almighty 
 God. But still, Christ is our Example as well as our 
 Atonement. He, too, has taught us that the love of
 
 ST. ANDREW. 273 
 
 others, and the sacrifice of self, are things which God 
 deHghts in, and which He has promised to reward. If 
 we cultivate these graces we shall not only be walking 
 in the steps of St. Andrew, but of Jesus also. 
 
 Not unfitly therefore, as exhibiting in his life and 
 character some of the fairest fruits of faith, no less 
 than on historical grounds as the fi.rst-called of the 
 Apostles of the Lord, does St. Andrew's name stand 
 foremost in the catalogue of Christian saints. He is 
 a rejiresentative man, a type of the power of grace, of 
 the measure of possible, rational holiness. There is 
 nothing extraordinary recorded of him — no ecstasies, 
 or special illuminations, or catchings-up to the third 
 heaven, or visions, or revelations of the Lord : no 
 almost superhuman acts either of doing or suffering, 
 of patience, or courage, or saintly heroism. His is 
 simply the history of a calm, affectionate, teachable 
 heart, ripening, educated, developed into features of 
 singular loveliness under the discipline of the doctrine 
 of Christ, by the secret, permeating influence of pure 
 and guileless motives — the habitual, almost instinctive, 
 discharge of homely, active duties. 
 
 Such a character pictures forth to us " the beauty of 
 holiness " in colours that, to my eyes, are at once har- 
 monious and lovely. It is so easy for each one of us 
 to say and to feel, " I may go and do likewise." We 
 are taught, by the example of a life that runs in lines 
 parallel to our own experience, what is meant by 
 " taking up our cross and following Christ." We find 
 that it indicates a life, not of morbid asceticism, but of 
 practical piety; a life, not of selfish spiritual isolation, 
 
 T
 
 274 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 but of social intercourse and an. exercise of the affec- 
 tions ; giving a free, though governed, scope to the 
 best and purest instincts of the heart. 
 
 I cannot imagine where men get their narrow, gloomy- 
 views of the Gospel from. At least / have not so learnt 
 Christ, nor dare I so j^reach Christ. The voice of my 
 Master that I seem to hear most distinctly Avith my 
 soul's ear is this — " Go cheerfully to thy work : do 
 heartily whatsoever thy hand findeth to do : do it as 
 unto Me, and not unto men : and thou shalt not have 
 to go far to seek, or long to wait, for thy reward." 
 
 Preached — Newton Toney, St, Andrew's Day, 1853.
 
 XX. 
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING. 
 
 An illustrated in the Call of St. Matthew. 
 
 " And as Jesus passed fortli from thence, He saw a man, named 
 Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom : and He saith unto 
 him. Follow me. And he arose, and followed Him." — St. 
 Matthew ix. 9. 
 
 As Jesus jDassed from the house in which He had 
 proved, by a mighty sign, that the Son of Man had 
 power on earth to forgive sins, He called Matthew. A 
 pretty picture for the imagination to attempt to realise, 
 this call of the wealthy custom-house officer of Caper- 
 naum to follow the Teacher who had not where to lay 
 His head ! There, in his booth, with bills of lading and 
 invoices all around him, sits Levi, Alphseus's son, taking 
 toll and custom-dues from all that brought their wares 
 into the busy harbour from lands across the sea. 
 
 A keen, quick-eyed, peering man, be sure, was this 
 " Matthew the publican," as he calls himself. Not at 
 all of the strict Pharisaic school, who would not have 
 touched shekels thus earned with the tij^s of their 
 
 T 2
 
 276 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 fingers, but a money-making citizen of a laxer type ; 
 not troubled possibly with many scruples about the 
 lawfulness of his trade, and, as it would seem from the 
 company that seated themselves at his table, not over 
 particular in his choice of friends. 
 
 St. Mark calls him Alphseus's son : and in default of 
 any further mark of distinction it has been usual to 
 identify this Alphseus with the father of James the Less ; 
 in which case St. Matthew Avill have been nearly related 
 by birth to our Lord. If so, he must have been one of 
 those " brethren " of whom St. John tells us that, as 
 yet, their incredulous hearts refused to own the Messianic 
 tokens of Jesus of Kazareth. 
 
 Whether this be so or not, it is most probable that 
 Matthew — to call him by the name which he probably 
 assumed to commemorate this crisis in his history, for 
 it signifies, like the Greek name Theodore, " One given 
 by God" — had many times, before this day, heard 
 of, perhaps seen and listened to, the great Galilean 
 Teacher, who, for more than a jear past, had made 
 Capernaum His home, and Whose fame was so widely 
 spread in its neighbourhood. 
 
 These sudden conversions were not, perhaps, so sudden 
 after all. Men's hearts, no doubt, as in the case of 
 Cleopas and his companion at Emmaus, had ofttimes 
 " burned within them " ; deep questionings, and searcli- 
 ings of conscience had arisen, and perhaps again 
 subsided ; yearnings after higher truth than scribes 
 and Pharisees could teach had been felt, and half pur- 
 poses of confessing the despised Nazarene Prophet 
 formed, before conviction became irresistible, and the
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING. 277 
 
 promptings of the inner and nobler self could no longer 
 be disobeyed. 
 
 This is most probable because it is most natural ; 
 most according to experience and the ordinary methods 
 of God's grace ; most like what we observe in others, 
 or feel in ourselves. We cannot doubt that our blessed 
 Lord, with that perfect propriety that marked His whole 
 character and conduct as a man, in choosing His more 
 immediate followers chose those whom, as God, He 
 foreknew to be the fittest instruments of His purpose. 
 Nor can we doubt either that His call was one that 
 might not be heeded ; and that men were free to accept, 
 or refuse, the invitation offered to them. He would 
 have fit servants, but not unwilling ones. They who, 
 when called, began to make excuse, were not fit for the 
 kingdom of God — at least not fit for its high and 
 special places of trust, not worthy to have their names 
 written on its foundation-stones. 
 
 When Christ bade a man follow Him, be sure He 
 had marked, and waited for, His opportunity. He took 
 him at the critical point of his spiritual history. It was 
 the death-struggle between the generous, instinctive 
 " first-thought " and the prudential, reflex " second- 
 thought" ; between conscience and interest ; expediency 
 and principle ; the loss of comfort, and ease, and 
 security, and the higher aspirations of which we have 
 all, I suppose, been conscious at times. The doom of 
 that man, perchance, as far as regards the growth and 
 issues of the moral and spiritual life, was sealed by the 
 choice he made. St. Matthew was called, and his heart 
 leaped up at the Master's voice, and he obeyed the
 
 278 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 calling; and for his reward, " in the regeneration, when 
 the Son of Man shall sit on tlie throne of His glory, he 
 shall be one of those who shall sit on the twelve thrones, 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 
 
 This divine call reached St. Matthew in the very 
 midst of circumstances that, of themselves, would be 
 most likely to stifle and make it abortive. A man seems 
 hardly in the fittest frame of mind to listen to, and obey, 
 the summons of the Spirit, when he is under the excite- 
 ment of a thriving business. Yet God has often chosen 
 such times to utter His first — His last — call. He calls 
 Matthew from the receipt of custom. He calls Simon 
 and Andrew, James and John, from their father, their 
 hired servants, their boats, their fishing-nets. He called 
 Saul, even while he was persecuting Him. He called 
 another, but whose ears were deaf and his heart cokh 
 while the corpse of his father was lying unburied in his 
 house. " Unlikely seasons," we may be ready to say. 
 Yet God chose them ; and, we may be sure, chose them, 
 not without a j)urpose, wisely and well. 
 
 And in every case the call demanded, and was accom- 
 panied by, a sacrifice. It cost something then, as ever, 
 to follow Christ. There was a " right hand to be cut 
 off," or " a right eye plucked out," the stern excision 
 of many a carnal appetite and many a pleasant dream, 
 of many a fond anticipation, of not a few welcome, but 
 perilous, memories. They that walk with Christ, and 
 after Christ, must be new creatures. Matthew closed 
 his booth, gathered up his books and money-bags, gave 
 "a sfreat feast in his own house," a sort of farewell 
 entertainment to his old acquaintances and friends, and
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING. 279 
 
 " then arose, left all, and followed Christ." It was a 
 sacrifice surely — a sacrifice of which, no doubt, the cost 
 was counted before it was made. It was not a mere 
 impulse, which might be retracted, but a deliberate act, 
 irrevocable. 
 
 Not that God calls all of us to such sacrifices. Som<> 
 s^icrifice, somdhmg laid on His altar, be sure He requires 
 from every man ; but not always, not even generally, a 
 sacrifice so entire, so absolute, so unsparing as this. 
 Every Christian may be, and if he has any adequate 
 sense of the necessity that is laid upon him, is bound 
 to be, "a fellow-labourer with God": and neither you 
 nor I can labour with God without making sacrifices. I 
 do not say that the sacrifice shall not be repaid you — 
 repaid with good measure, pressed down, and shaken 
 together, and running over — but at the moment you 
 make it you shall feel it to be a sacrifice, it shall cost 
 you a pang, a regret, perhaps a tear. 
 
 These touches of natural infirmity —of the power of 
 which our blessed Lord Himself perhaps knew some- 
 thing in His agony in Gethsemane — shall not impair 
 its integrity and preciousness, even in the sight of God. 
 We may give up a thing which we have loved, heartily, 
 absolutely, unreservedly, for ever ; and yet at the moment 
 of separation, and even afterwards, till the lesson of re- 
 signation is fully learnt, sorrow shall fill our soul. God's 
 converting spirit does not C7^ush our nature, though it 
 changes it. 
 
 There was another publican, the object of our Lord's 
 notice, a child of grace, an elect vessel, a true son of 
 Abraham, whom yet Jesus did not bid forsake his trade
 
 280 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 and follow Him — I raeanZacclieus of Jericho. Matthew 
 was taken, Zaccheus was left, The one became an 
 Apostle, the other remained a publican. 
 
 The first and most natural inference I draw from 
 this is that neither in the dispensations of God's Pro- 
 vidence, nor in the leadings of His grace, are all persons 
 called upon to renounce the same things. Indeed, know- 
 ing the wonderful delicacy and subtlety of the links 
 that bind together the inner and the outer world, the 
 subjective and the objective, the spiritual aud the 
 material, we should at once allow that the same thing 
 is not the same to all persons, nor are all persons the 
 same in their relations to the same things. A business, 
 for instance, an occupation, a line of life, that either 
 inherently in itself, or from its inevitable associations, 
 would be fatal to the mind's peace or the spirit's pros- 
 perity in one man, may be, and often is, the lawful, 
 God-appointed calling of another. There is no law in 
 these things, or, if there be a law, it is assuredly in the 
 region of spiritual matters, beyond the powers of our 
 analysis, and each case must be judged and determined 
 by its own circumstances. 
 
 As thoiigh to make man conscious of his freedom, 
 and of the high despotic sovereignty of his will; as 
 though to give the lie at once, and for ever, to that 
 sordid philosophy which would represent humanity as 
 but the complex result of the influence of multifarious 
 external things — the creature of circumstances — we 
 notice it, as one of the most indisputable facts of ethics, 
 that people who move in precisely the same orbit in 
 relation to externals — whom God's Providence has placed
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING. 281 
 
 in exactly the same envelope of circumstances, are yet 
 by the action of some deeper and unanalysed law working 
 in their moral nature, nevertheless most diversely in- 
 fluenced by their surroundings. The things that, in the 
 highest moral and spiritual sense, are one man's wealth, 
 become to another " an occasion of falling." 
 
 The calling of a publican, for example, viewed in 
 itself — if we are justified in viewing any calling in 
 itself, and irrespective of the person by whom it is 
 pursued — ^could not have been favourable to godliness : 
 must liave been a sore hiudi'ance to the development of 
 saintliuess, and even to the maintenance of common 
 honesty. St. John the Baptist, in his outspoken way, 
 warned men of its dangers. Zaccheus, by his well-known 
 offer of restitution to any whom he might have wronged, 
 would appear to have experienced, or at least to have 
 become awakened to, them. It surely was not without 
 that admixture of truth and shrewd observation which 
 generally characterises proverbs and common sayings 
 that the whole class was thrown together in one com- 
 prehensive description ; and to be a " publican," in most 
 men's estimation, was much the same thing as being a 
 " sinner." 
 
 Yet in this calling, which St. Matthew was bidden 
 to renounce, Zaccheus was suffered, perhaps commanded, 
 to remain. There lay his discipline. In it he was to 
 be proved. By and with it he was to work out his 
 salvation. There that conscience, which had become 
 quickened by the gracious words of the great Teacher to 
 tlie claims of poverty and the responsibilities of power, 
 was to assert its inherent sovereignty, and exhibit
 
 282 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the miraculous virtue of Divine grace, even under the 
 most untoward circumstances, to purge and elevate and 
 sanctify the human soul. It was otherwise with St. 
 Matthew. For some secret end of Divine predestina- 
 tion, for some deep reason which we can but guess at, 
 and cannot, need not penetrate ; whether because the 
 traffic was too absorbing, and its accompanying con- 
 taminations dangerous to the purity of his heart, or 
 f(ir his special fitness for a higher and nobler work, 
 Matthew was bidden leave, then and for ever, the 
 receipt of custom at which he sat, and follow Him that 
 called him. 
 
 But I would quit the detail of particular cases, and 
 enter upon broader ground. Just here, on the frontier 
 of cases like the two quoted, lies the clebateable land of 
 morality and sociology. Just here is the region of what^ 
 in the history of human speculation, has sometimes 
 been dignified with the title of a science, but what after 
 all is a mere empiricism — the region of casuistry. Oh ! 
 what a blessed thing is this Gospel of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ to extricate us from the tortuous perplexities of 
 casuistical divines ! Truly they have laden men with 
 burdens grievous and heavy to be borne. The casuist 
 decides cases, as they never can be decided, in the 
 distract ; but the Lord's Gospel, with respect to persons. 
 The one lays snares for our feet, yea, and sets traps in 
 our way ; the other gives, and helps us to realise, a 
 liberty that makes us free indeed ! 
 
 What grand principles are those so fearlessly thrown 
 down as gauntlets of defiance before all hair-splitting 
 dogmatists by St. Paul ! What an area of difterent
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLINCx. 283 
 
 ground do they cover, where men may spin their cob- 
 webs and pursue their abstract arguments for ever, 
 without arriving at helpful, practical results ! They 
 were not learnt at the feet of Gamaliel, or in the schools 
 of Tarsus, but at the feet and in the school of Christ. 
 " Let every man," he says, " be fully persuaded in his 
 own mind." " Happy is he that condemnetli not him- 
 self in that thing which he alloweth." "All things are 
 lawful for me, but all things are not expedient." " Why 
 is my liberty judged of another man's conscience ? " 
 "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? 
 To his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea ! and he 
 shall be holdfn up; for God is able to make him stand." 
 
 I know, and St. Paul knew, that such liberty, which 
 is the moral prerogative of the children of God, may be 
 abused into an occasion of the flesh, or into a cloke of 
 maliciousness. But that fact really enhances the prc- 
 ciousness of the gift. Our Heavenly Father deals with 
 us not as with babes who need to be fed with milk, but 
 as men capable of digesting and being nourished by 
 strong meat ; and with our senses exercised, " by reason 
 of use," to discern between good and evil. He thinks 
 we ought to be able, without danger, to use edged tools. 
 He bids us be free and make proof of our freedom. He 
 raises us thereby in the scale of being ; and He quickens 
 our consciences at the same time with the keener sense 
 of our responsibilities. It is terrible when we mark 
 the evil that has sprung from the gift to realise the 
 idea of human freedom ; but God, foreknowing the 
 evil, has nevertheless seen fit to make and leave us free. 
 
 And so we do not venture to dictate to others the
 
 284 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 callings in life that they shall pursue. We dare but 
 pray God to tell ourselves what He would have us to 
 do, and to give us hearts prepared to follow, when He 
 has opened our eyes to discern the, to us, more excellent 
 way. We delight to believe that God's Providence 
 governs, and His grace sanctifies, every honest, lawful 
 human calling. 
 
 No one line of life, regarded simply in itself, has a 
 right perhaps to call itself better, or higher, than 
 another. Each is evoked by the exigencies of human 
 nature. Each in its place and time is carrying forward 
 the eternal purposes of God. For this or that man or 
 woman, one calling may be more suitable than another, 
 but they have to determine that for themselves. " Let 
 every man," says the Apostle, with that far-reaching 
 insight into the laws of human nature which is of the 
 essence of true wisdom, " let every man, wherein he is 
 called, therein abide with God." 
 
 The philanthrojjy and benevolence, and even the 
 Christian feeling of the day, lack this mark of earnest- 
 ness, and want this condition of success — that they are 
 not abiding. The evidences of faith are more frequent 
 than the evidences oi patience. The general restlessness 
 and excitement of the a^e infect even its religious 
 enterprises. Our desire to work for God is intermittent, 
 cajiricious, fitful. We grow weary of monotony, and 
 crave for chanore. We forget that 
 
 " The trivial round, the common task, 
 Can furnish all we ought to ask — 
 Room to deny ourselves — a road 
 That brings xis dailv nearer God,"
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING. 285 
 
 And tliis restlessness of mind vitiates our work and 
 makes it unfruitful : it impairs the faith which should 
 be the parent of our labours. The faith needs the occa- 
 sional sustenance of sight. If the vision is ever tarrying, 
 ever hidden, the heart sinks, the spirits droop, the 
 energies are paralysed. God, in condescension to human 
 infirmity, permits the faithful workman to see from 
 time to time, even " while he lives in the flesh," the 
 fruit of his labour : but it is only when he has the 
 temper of the husbandman who " waiteth for the pre- 
 cious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it^ 
 until he receive the early and the latter rain." 
 
 What we have each to look to seems, to me, to be 
 this : What is the definite work to which God, by His 
 providence or grace, is calling us ? And when that is 
 clear and distinct to our consciences, we must act it out 
 in the spirit of the Divine maxim, " Whatsoever thy 
 hand findeth to do : do, it heartily, as unto the Lord." 
 Let us see, each one of us, that in our calling we there 
 " abide with God." The more nearly our calling pro- 
 fesses to abide with Him — the more nearly it approaches, 
 and touches, and deals with Him — the more need to see 
 that this abiding is real, and tliat His glory is indeed 
 the constraining, animating motive of all we do. 
 
 Be sure that God's Blessed Spirit came down from 
 heaven upon this earth to sanctify, not spiritual callings 
 only, but every calling. " Every man," it is written, " has 
 his proper gift of God ; one after this manner and 
 another after that." It is no affectation, or unreal 
 figure of speech, to denominate our walk in life, what- 
 ever it may be, a " calling," a " vocation." If it is not
 
 28G UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 consciously so to us, it ought to .be. 'It is a Divine call- 
 ing, God's very voice to us. His method in which He 
 would have us work out our salvation — the process 
 through and by which our regeneration in baptism is 
 to issue in our regeneration in glory. 
 
 Every work that a man can undertake with a good 
 conscience he shall find, if he seek it, God's blessing- 
 resting upon. We need not forsake or exchange our 
 earthly calling because we desire to serve God. If we 
 wish to be owned at the last Great Day as those who 
 heard Christ's call and followed Him, we shall find a 
 thousand opportunities rising up unexpectedly, but not 
 casually, at our very doors ; by the right use of which 
 we may render unto Him as acceptable a service as if 
 we ministered at His altars, or gave up ourselves, like 
 Matthew, wholly to the ministry of the Word. Did not 
 He " that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His 
 own blood," make us, one and all, by the self-same act, 
 " kings and priests unto God and His Father ? " 
 
 We who are priests of the Lord, if we know ourselves, 
 if we have really measured the true nature of the calling 
 wherewith we are called, ought to be the last in the 
 world who should dare to say to any fellow-man, 
 " Stand by thyself : come not near to me, for I am 
 holier than thou." We whom the Lord has called with 
 a specially responsible — I will not venture to say a 
 specially holy — calling, ought to be the last who should 
 desire to magnify our office. Even St. Paul, when 
 " compelled " to vindicate his Apostolic prerogatives 
 against those who depreciated them at Corinth, does so 
 with an almost painful sense of unseemliness. If there
 
 THE DIVINE CALL AND THE HUMAN CALLING. 287 
 
 are men who should shrink from boasting of the power 
 which the Lord hath given to them, save under the 
 pressure of some overwhelming necessity, it is we. 
 
 Finally, let us all try to realise, more and more per- 
 fectly, the holiness of our several callings. What God 
 requires of every man — what He enables every man to 
 do — is to " live soberly, righteously, and godly in this 
 present world " ; doing his work " heartily, as unto the 
 Lord, and not unto men." If he leaves some of us 
 freer than others, in respect of restraints of a more 
 conventional kind, be sure we are all equally udder the 
 obligation of an immutable morality. In this region 
 of things, what is lawful and permissible in a layman is 
 lawful and permissible in a clergyman — and neither less 
 nor more. We are all under vows — or under obliga- 
 tions as binding as vows. Whether distinctly called to 
 the work of the ministry, as Matthew, or suffered still 
 to pursue a secular business, as Zaccheus, for both there 
 is but one road to the same entrance into the city of 
 God. Christ has but one answer for all who ask Him, 
 " Lord, what must I do to be saved ? " — " If thou wilt 
 enter into life, keep the commandments." 
 
 Preached— Salisbury Catliedral, St. Matthew's Day, 1859.
 
 XXI. 
 
 THE EEVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE THE DISTINCTIVE 
 CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 " God is love."— 1 St. John iv. 8. 
 
 What has Christianity done to make good its claim 
 to the proud title of the Gospel — the one good message 
 of glad tidings to mankind ? 
 
 It were easy to enumerate many eminent social bless- 
 ings, many conspicuous elements of individual happiness 
 (which we appropriate and use without stopping to 
 think whence we get, or to what we owe them) which 
 can be distinctly traced to the Christian dispensation 
 as their only authentic source ; but if I were asked to 
 name what has been its greatest gift of all, what has 
 most contributed to human progress and human happi- 
 ness, even as philosoiDhers measure those terms ; what 
 it is, more thnn any other element of knowledge, that 
 has set free the intellect ; more than any other prin- 
 ciple of conduct has instructed the conscience ; more 
 than any other object of desire has elevated the affec- 
 tions ; I should say unhesitatingly that it is the unveiling
 
 GOD'S LOVE THE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. 289 
 
 of the face of our Father which is in heaven ; the revela- 
 tion, all the more jyvegnant and influencing from the way 
 in which it was made, that " God is love." 
 
 We must remind ourselves of other forms of religious 
 thought and belief before, perhaps, we shall be ready to 
 admit this. According to Herodotus, the theory of the 
 relation in which the Supreme Being stood to the world 
 which prevailed in his time — i.e., 450 years B.C. — in 
 Greece, in Egypt, in Persia, not only among the 
 illiterate, who might be supposed to be open to the 
 influences of superstition, but among kings, philoso- 
 phers, statesmen, was that the Deity was a malignant 
 mischief-making Being who, in the possession of happi- 
 ness Himself, grudged a share of it to His creatures, 
 and even felt a malevolent joy in their sufferings. 
 
 The Scandinavian mythology — which was the religion 
 of our forefathers, and which has still left historical 
 trace of its existence in the names of the days of the 
 week — as exhibited to us in the Eddas, prepares the 
 mind of the worshipper from the very beginning for 
 " one all-destroying catastrophe," points to " a creation 
 doomed by necessity to a fatal and final destruction," 
 in which life is nothing else but the alternate ascend- 
 ency, under different symbols, of the principles of good 
 and evil till the cyclus of the great tragedy is com- 
 pleted by the fiery snake consuming universal nature 
 with all-destroying flames, from which the best and 
 greatest of the sons of earth stniggle to escape in 
 vain. 
 
 In the far East, 500 millions of minds are crushed 
 to the earth by two degrading superstitions ; in one 
 
 U
 
 290 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of which, Buddhism, the burden, of independent per- 
 sonal existence is represented as intolerable, and the 
 only rest for human nature is its re-absorption into the 
 divine : in the other — Hinduism, the favourite Deity 
 is not the beneficent Vishnu but the merciless Siva ; 
 and the horrible tortures inflicted on themselves by the 
 worshippers attest their conceptions of the character of 
 the God whom they serve. 
 
 Wherever, again, the faith of the Arabian prophet is 
 professed, and the voice of the muezzin summons 250 
 million hearts to prayer, there, though the belief in the 
 supreme sovereignty of God has kindled sufficient reli- 
 gious enthusiasm to propagate its creed by sword, yet 
 the fact that the believer's mind dwells solely on the 
 unbalanced idea of the Divine Omnipotence — the fact 
 that the evening cry heard from every minaret of Islam 
 is " God is great," not " God is love," has, perhaps, while 
 stimulating the fanaticism, at the same time crushed the 
 moral energies of the people by that natural product, 
 fatalism — which, whether in a Christian or in a non- 
 Christian, or merely philosophic form, always seems to 
 generate " either desperation or a wretchlessness of most 
 unclean living, no less perilous than desperation." 
 
 And if we turn for relief to the religious conception 
 of the Jew, even in the purest age, it is evident that 
 he regarded the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the 
 God of Jacob, with much the same feeling of awe as 
 a Greek might regard the terrible Eumenides. The 
 patriarchal sentiment still lived in all its force — was as 
 strong in Gideon and Manoah as it had been in Jacob — 
 that to see God's face, to hear His voice, to speak with
 
 GOD'S LOVE THE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. 291 
 
 a messenger from the unseen world, was a death- 
 summons to a sinful man. The dark side of the law — 
 which St. Paul tells us in its essence was a ministra- 
 tion of death — under the influence of this sentiment was 
 continually growing darker still. 
 
 The whole history of Judaism, as I read it, is a history 
 of the religious deterioration of the people under the 
 influence of a conception of the Divine nature — true 
 and wholesome in itself and in its place, but false and 
 mischievous as they distorted it — the conception of 
 " God as a consuming fire." It is plain that the 
 prophets and psalmists struggled against this down- 
 ward current of public opinion, and national belief, in 
 vain. In vain they preached the axioms of a higher 
 morality. In vain (as Mr. Davison says) " they taught 
 the doctrine of repentance with a clearness and certainty 
 which were not admitted into the original law." In 
 vain better and nobler spirits felt and testified that it 
 was a vain oblation to give one's first-born for a trans- 
 gression — the fruit of one's body for the sin of one's 
 soul. In vain David wrote the fifty-first Psalm. In vain 
 Elijah prayed to the Lord Gud that His people might 
 know Him, and that He would turn their hearts back 
 again. In vain the i^iety of Jehoshaphat, or Hezekiah, 
 or Josiah, tried to revive the Mosaic worship in its 
 ancient purity. 
 
 The gravitating tendency of human nature, under the 
 pressure of the one paramount idea that the God whom 
 it served is a God to he feared, was too mighty to be 
 resisted, or even sensibly retarded. The administra- 
 tion of Manasseh followed in quick succession upon the 
 
 U 2
 
 292 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 reformation of Hezekiah : and ev.en while there was a 
 voice sounding in Jerusalem, " speaking comfortably to 
 her, and crying that her warfare was accomplished and 
 her iniquity pardoned," and promising abundant mercy 
 to every wicked man that would forsake his way, " the 
 heart of the people was fat, and their ears heavy, and 
 their eyes closed." The charmer charmed, but the 
 adder was deaf, and in the valley of the son of Hinnom, 
 where the first high place to Moloch was set up by the 
 very king who had built the splendid fabric of the 
 Temple upon Mount Moriah, " Tophet was ordained of 
 old," and parents ruthlessly immolated their offspring 
 to the abomination of the children of Ammon ; and if 
 they could not silence the beatings of their own hearts, 
 they could at least drown the screams of their murdered 
 innocents in the roil of drums or the clang of sistra. 
 
 Under the discipline of that old divine law, human 
 nature stood — should we not rather say, lay prostrate — ■ 
 before God, like David before Nathan, with the con- 
 fession of his shame upon our lips — "I have sinned 
 against the Lord " — and there was no prophet near 
 who spoke loudly enough, or clearly enough, or authori- 
 tatively enough, to raise each penitent from the ground, 
 and pour into his heart the reassuring word, " The 
 Lord also hath put away thy sin : thou shalt not die." 
 
 This posture of the soul seems to be the natural, 
 necessary consequence of the consciousness of sin. The 
 law gave the knowledge of sin ; and one who had been 
 trained under its discipline, and had sought to fulfil its 
 righteous will with all the force of his fiery, earnest 
 soul, tells us how it fared with him : " The command-
 
 GOD'S LOVE THE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. 293 
 
 mcut came ; and sin revived ; and he died!' " And so 
 the commandment, which was ordained unto Hfe, he 
 found to be unto death :" and though he "delighted in 
 the law of God after the inward man," and felt and 
 acknowledged that " the commandment was holy, and 
 just, and good," yet upon his conscience it lay with such 
 an intolerable burden, convincing of sin, but opening 
 no door of escape to the sinner, that all he could do 
 was to resign himself hopelessly to what seemed an in- 
 evitable destiny, crying out, but with little hope that he 
 should be heard, " O wretched man that I am ! who 
 shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " 
 
 Though, as Mr. Davison has admirably shown, the 
 action of the combined influences of the moral and 
 ceremonial laws o^tght to have produced in " serious and 
 reasonable men a temper eminently Christian," and a 
 disposition to accept, if it were offered them, a better 
 atonement than could possibly be procured by the 
 blood of bulls and goats, or the ashes of an heifer 
 sprinkling the unclean, yet the mass of men, instead 
 of being "serious and reasonable," were "carnal, sold 
 under sin." The actual result of the "terror" which 
 the law " created, but could not relieve," was to drive 
 men, in their impatience or their fear, to worse atone- 
 ments, instead of waiting to see whether God would 
 provide a better. Under the influence of the convic- 
 tion that it was impossible for the " blood of bulls and 
 goats to take away sin," they sought for ease from 
 troubling thoughts either in more fantastic and bloodier 
 rituals, each man setting up his imagery after his own 
 heart ; or else they yielded to a blank and demoralising
 
 294 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 atheism, saying, " The Lord seeth us n(5t : the Lord hath 
 forsaken the eartli." 
 
 Tliis is only saying that the Law was not the Gospel. 
 It was not a message of great joy. Though it was 
 ^possible to conceive the beautifulness of his feet who 
 should bring upon the mountains tidings of good, and 
 publish peace to Sion, as yet the conceiDtion seemed 
 but as a dream. Deep in the womb of time lay liid the 
 mystery which one day should make all men know the 
 " love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and fill them 
 \vith all the fulness of God." 
 
 The law, as such, was not the vehicle of grace, and 
 therefore not the message of reconciliation. The sense 
 of its types was latent. Its sacrifices, even the expiatory, 
 were not atoning. They could but "cover" sin, not 
 take it away. Though the prophets searched deep and 
 long, and spake at times of what the " Spirit of Christ 
 which was in them did signify," and almost had their 
 hand upon the veil to draw it aside, yet St. Peter tells 
 us that they ministered rather to lis than to their con- 
 temporaries. Men " believed not their report," or did 
 not understand it ; and one of the goodly fellowship, 
 whose lips had been touched with a live coal from off the 
 altar, and who had seen the vision of the Lord sitting 
 upon His throne, yet found that light, shining upon his 
 unaccustomed eyes, as dazzling as the very darkness, 
 and cried out as one giving up the search for truth from 
 very hopelessness and perplexity, " Verily, Thou art a 
 God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour." 
 
 Had not the Lord said, " I will dwell in the thick dark- 
 ness " ? and though there was the sure word of promise
 
 GOD'S LOVE THE SPIKIT OF THE GOSPEL. 295 
 
 that He would " destroy in His holy mountain the face 
 of the covering cast upon all people and the veil that 
 was spread over all nations," the time of unveiling was 
 not yet come. " Men waited for the light, but walked 
 in darkness." 
 
 And so God, having spoken in time past partially and 
 variously by the prophets, in the last days, when the 
 time was full, spoke unto the world by His Son. The 
 darkness passed away, the true light shone. The day 
 broke, and the shadows lied away. One who had lived 
 under that darkness, and felt it, describes, in vivid and 
 emphatic language, the change that came over the spirit 
 of his mind when, as one of the Israel of God, he found 
 himself blessed with light in his dwelling. " If any 
 man be in Christ," he cries, " he is a new creature." 
 " God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Him- 
 self, not imputing their trespasses unto them. . . . For 
 He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no 
 sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God 
 in Him." 
 
 Christ, says Clement of Eome, was taught His mes- 
 sage of glad tidings by the Father, and the Apostles 
 were taught theirs b}^ Christ. And what is St. Paul 
 doing here but attesting afresh, and weaving into the 
 tissue of his own kindled thoughts, the original words 
 which proclaimed the love of God to man — "God so 
 loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but 
 should have everlasting life. For God sent not His 
 Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the 
 world through Him miurht be saved ? "
 
 296 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 I do not know that we are mucE helloed to under- 
 stand these deeply instructive, deeply comforting, words 
 by having put before us what are called "theories of the 
 atonement." I never yet met any such theory that did 
 not leave unanswered half the questions which it 
 prompted me to ask. But, sitting down before these 
 words of Jesus and of St. Paul, I am not disposed to be 
 a questioner or a disputer at all. I feel their power : 
 and it is vain to attempt to analyse a feeling. It is 
 instructive, and moralists tell us that, its legitimate 
 object being present, it must needs be excited. What I 
 feel and need is a Mediator between my sinful soul and 
 my most Just and Holy but most Merciful God. 
 
 The Gospel was not only an Atonement, it was a 
 Revelation. Not only was God in Christ reconciling 
 the world unto Himself, but God also was in Christ 
 making Himself known unto the world. The Son by 
 whom He spoke to men in the last days was the 
 "brightness of His glory, and the express image of 
 His Person." "He that saw Him saw the Father." 
 Or, as St. Paul puts it, " He was the image of the 
 invisible God." 
 
 As we gaze on Him going about with that calm, 
 steadfast mien, doing good and healing every one that 
 was oppressed with the devil, sitting among publicans 
 and sinners and eating with them, preaching deliver- 
 ance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, 
 liberty to them that were bruised, a gospel to the poor 
 — to all, the acceptable year of the Lord — we gaze, as it 
 w^ere, on the very face of God, and see it bent upon us 
 with an ineffable expression of pity and tenderness and
 
 GOD'S LOVE THE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. 297 
 
 love. " He willeth not the death of a sinner ; " that is 
 His unchangeable purpose. " Ye will not come to Me 
 that ye may have life," is His sharpest reproof, and 
 that uttered in sadness rather than in anger, to all who 
 are not obstinately hardening their hearts. " My Father 
 Himself loveth you ; " there is the balm to every 
 doubting or wounded soul. By the discovery that 
 " God loves me," many a soul has been " overwhelmed 
 with pathetic joy." If the heart is open to religious 
 convictions at all, it must be penetrated to the quick by 
 such a conviction. 
 
 There seems to be only one perversion of which this 
 doctrine of the love of God, manifested in Jesus Christ, is 
 capable ; and that is, if it should make us think that the 
 High and Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity, is indifferent 
 to sin. But against this possible misuse of its glad 
 tidings the Gospel has guarded itself to the full, as 
 effectually as did the law, " The wages of sin is death" 
 still, as ever. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as 
 in the Book, of Deuteronomy, " Our God is a consuming 
 fire." "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the 
 Lord," is an eternal principle of justice demanded by 
 the conscience, and which could never drop out of any 
 Divine Law. " Knowing the terror of the Lord," as 
 well as "constrained by the love of Christ," St. Paul 
 "persuaded men." 
 
 The doctrine of the love of God, when imbibed not 
 speculatively or conventionally, but really and jarac- 
 tically, not as the badge of a party, but as a conviction 
 of the soul, is little liable to perversion. Antinomianism 
 in a religious mind seems to me to be an impossible
 
 298 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 moral phenomenon. For whom are we more likely 
 to obey — one whom we love, and whom we know to 
 love us, or one whom we simply fear 1 Who renders 
 the more willing service, a son or a slave ? Surely, 
 under a "law of liberty," all obedience, freely paid, 
 becomes by that very freedom more hearty, more 
 trustworthy, more true. 
 
 The reformation of the ills of modem society must 
 come from a higher conception of duty, animating the 
 consciences and governing the lives of us all. The first 
 i-eform we all need, I take it, is of ourselves. We cannot 
 be made better or happier by Acts of Parliament. They 
 may remove an unwise restriction there, or impose a 
 wise restriction here ; but after all, the real improve- 
 ment must take its source within. Less selfishness, 
 less impatience, less vindictiveness, less brutality, less 
 lust. Do not you think, my friends, that you and I 
 could make this world a little better than it is ?/ loe 
 tried 1 
 
 In itself it is a terrible thought that the past is 
 irrevocable, but taken in connection with the assurance 
 of the love of God, the thought of the immutability of 
 the past almost ceases to be disturbing. At least there 
 is no need, unless it be a case of very special deep-dyed 
 guilt, for the memory or the conscience to dwell upon 
 it with morbid, superstitious fear : no need to go in 
 quest of strange atonements : 
 
 " No need to bid, for cloistered cell, 
 Our neighbour or our work farewell." 
 
 The surest remedy against bitter regret, the strongest 
 proof of true repentance, is to throw ourselves on the
 
 GODS LOVE THE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. 299 
 
 future — or rather on the j^'i'csent, \yhich. alone is ours — 
 strong in the confidence that the God who spares our 
 lives has not cast away our souls, with a steadfast pur- 
 pose to serve our Master more loyally for the time to 
 come. 
 
 And though nothing shall derange that principle of 
 the great assize which shall reward every man " accord- 
 ing as his works have been," yet it has happened 
 once, and may well happen again, that he who did not 
 hfffin his work until the eleventh hour, but began it 
 then heartily, without an excuse and without a murmur, 
 when called in to take his wage, found to his surprise 
 and joy that he received as much as those who had borne 
 the burden and heat of the day. 
 
 Preaclied— St. Thomas's Salisbury, Marcli 25, 1863. (Sermon 
 preached at Oxford in previous February largely worked in.) 
 Portions of Sermon also preached to Ashbury's men, Open- 
 shaw, April 24, 1871.
 
 XXIL 
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. 
 
 " There went virtue out of Him, and healed them all." — S'J'. 
 Luke vi. 19. 
 
 A CONSIDERABLE, and to some minds a distressing, 
 difficulty emerges, when a man, observing the phenomena 
 of the world, endeavours to fit them into a preconceived 
 theory, and to reconcile them with what he believes to 
 be the attributes and revealed character of Almighty 
 God. And this difficulty is quite as apt to disconcert 
 reason as to startle faith. It is even a more formidable 
 embarrassment to the mere Deist than it is to a believer 
 in a revelation which recognises the fact of the difficulty, 
 even if it does not explain it. 
 
 The difficulty to which I refer arises from the pre- 
 sence of evil — of sin, suffering, disease, death — in the 
 world ; and the apparent incompatibility of these evils 
 with any conception that it is natural to form of a 
 beneficent and benevolent God. If God be Benevolent, 
 and if lie be also Omnipotent, why, we are tempted to
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. 301 
 
 ask, does He not prevent misery, and sin, and all that, 
 to our eyes, seems to mar the perfection of His Creation, 
 and to rob the great redemptive act of its complete- 
 ness and efficacy ? Can it be true — as the fervid 
 Oriental mind attemjjted to solve the problem — that 
 there are two Gods : a principle of good and a principle 
 of evil ; an Ormuzd and an Ahriman ; a ©eo? and a 
 8y]/jiiovpy6<i, engaged in a perpetual conflict, of which 
 tliis sublunary world is the scene, and poor humanity 
 the victim ? Is Manicheism the soundest philosophy, 
 the truest religion, after all ? 
 
 If such dreams and speculations ever chance to 
 exercise an attractive influence upon our minds, there 
 are two or three cautions that deserve to be remembered 
 before entering upon them. 
 
 In the first place, that they are mei^e speculations, dim 
 guesses or random gropings after truth ; vain attempts 
 of the human mind to construct, out of its own resources 
 and by its own unaided powers, a satisfactory " ]3hilo- 
 sophy of the Universe ; " " systems " (as Mosheim calls 
 the Gnostic speculations in the first age of Christianity, 
 of which many of these modern theories are but the 
 reproduction or modification) — " systems which have no 
 solid foundation, and are indeed no more than airy 
 phantoms blown up by the wanton fancies of self- 
 sufficient men." 
 
 In the second place, we should recollect the limit put 
 upon all such speculative enterprises by the very con- 
 stitution of our own mind, and the utter inadequacy for 
 such high flights of thought both of our faculties and of 
 our language. We have no formula, nor even the
 
 302 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 capacity for framing one, to exjiress/with any complete- 
 ness, the full relation of Almighty God to His rational 
 creatures, or to His material world. " All grand truth," 
 said Frederick Robertson, " is the statement of two 
 opposites ; not a via media between them, nor either of 
 them alone." God is good, yet evil exists : God exists, 
 yet evil is permitted. These are truths which we must 
 hold and act on separately, but which, till the dawning 
 of that day which shall see us " equal to the angels," no 
 breadth of intellectual grasp, no keenness of intellectual 
 vision, will enable us to harmonise or comprehend. 
 
 Of course I am speaking of theoretical comprehension, 
 of logical harmony. I am not aware that the heliever 
 ever found his steps practically hindered or embarrassed, 
 even for a moment, by his faith in the goodness of 
 God being suddenly confronted with the presence of 
 evil — vtrhether material or spiritual — in God's world. 
 The phenomenon may sadden, but it does not perplex, 
 him. He does not pretend to have a theory of the 
 Universe, beyond the very simple one that all is in 
 God's hands. The believer has a distinct vision of 
 duty, and, for his comfort, he fancies he can see how the 
 very existence of evil has a transmuting power, and 
 gives to the moral and spiritual capacities of the soul a 
 scope, an energy, a development which, without it, 
 would be unknown. Even He who undertook to 
 redeem a lost world was, in the mystery of His Tempta- 
 tion, brought into certain relations with the very essence 
 of sin, in order to capacitate Himself for His high 
 mission, and to endowHimself with that quick sympathy 
 for the infirmities of others which they are ever first to
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. 303 
 
 feel who, though they have escaped the taint of evil, have 
 known and been tried by its poicer. 
 
 Perhaps, as Bishop Butler has pointed out, our con- 
 ception of Almighty God as of a Being of pure bene- 
 volence is an incomplete, and therefore an erroneous 
 one. He who has made Himself known as a God of 
 love has also revealed Himself, and on the page of the 
 Gospel too, as " a consuming fire." It is an idle, and 
 indeed not a very innocent employment, to ask why 
 He who made all things good does not more visibly 
 interfere to reconstruct His world after a pattern pre-, 
 sumed to be more in accordance with the recognised 
 features of His character. " Perhaps," says Bishop 
 Butler, " there may be some impossibilities in the 
 nature of things which we are unacquainted with. Or 
 less happiness, it may be, would on the whole be pro- 
 duced by such a method of conduct than is by the 
 present. Or perhaps the Divine goodness, with which, 
 if I mistake not, we make very free in our speculations, 
 may not be a bare, single disposition to make the good, 
 the faithful, the honest man happy. Perhaps an in- 
 finitely perfect Mind may be pleased with seeing His 
 creatures behave suitably to the nature which He has 
 given them ; to the relations which He has placed them 
 in to each other, and to that in which they stand to 
 Himself: that relation to Himself which, during their 
 existence, is even necessary, and which is the most im- 
 portant of all : perhaps, I say, an infinitely perfect Mind 
 may be pleased with this moral piety of moral agents in 
 and for itself, as well upon account of its being essen- 
 tially conducive to the happiness of His creation. Or,
 
 304 - UNIVERSITY SERMOXS. 
 
 the whole end for which God made -and thus governs 
 the world may be utterly beyond the reach of our 
 faculties : there may be something in it as impossible 
 for us to have any conception of as for a blind man to 
 have a conception of colours." 
 
 Whatever be the hypothesis, the fact of the actual 
 constitution of things remains : and what is more, it is 
 the fact with which we, as moral agents, have to deal ; 
 and upon our mode of dealing with which the forma- 
 tion of our present character, as we find by actual 
 experience, and the determination of our future destiny, 
 as we are taught in the page of revelation, principally 
 depend. In that magnificent vision which is unfolded 
 of the King upon His throne, dispensing, in the jsresence 
 of the innumerable angels, the award proportioned to 
 the work of every man, of " what sort soever it has 
 been," the ground of acceptance or rejection is the 
 character, shown by the eye which men have cast upon 
 the various forms of human suifering : whether they 
 have sought out, or endeavoured to avoid, objects of 
 sympathy : whether they have heard, or passed unheed- 
 ing by, calls for aid ; whether or not in the disguise of 
 some poor, shivering, tattered, emaciated fellow-creature 
 they have discovered their Master's form ; whether in 
 the great parable of life they have played the part of 
 the Priest and Levite, who passed by painful cases that 
 they encountered, shrugging their shoulders, regretting 
 them, able, possibly, to draw down tears of sympathy as 
 they told the piteous tale, their own hearts all un- 
 touched the while ; or shared his nobler spirit who, 
 finding a wounded, half-dead traveller on the road,
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. , 305 
 
 " went to him, and bound up liis wounds, pouring in 
 oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought 
 him to an inn, and took care of him." 
 
 Surely, if Christ's words be true, they will be nearest 
 to Him, when He sits upon His throne, who have been 
 likest to Him; who have imitated His character and 
 conduct in those points in which, to frail, sinful men, it 
 was most imitable; who, as He, have "gone about 
 doing good," and healing, as far as God had given 
 them the gift, all or any of those who " were oppressed 
 of the devil." 
 
 The heathen, who had nothing to console himself 
 withal but the fragments of a shattered faith, which 
 lived on its feeble life, apart from the illuminating in- 
 fluences of a divinely authenticated law, and anterior 
 to the dawning of the Gospel day, looked out upon a 
 world that seemed to him a chaos, with feelings little, 
 if at all, higher than despair. The earth had lost its 
 youth, its freshness, its beauty. The age of iron had 
 come. Nor day nor night was rest from woe. The 
 gods themselves grudged mortal men their brief, rare, 
 intermittent happiness. Degeneracy was the law im- 
 posed by fate on all things. As one of their own 
 prophets sang, 
 
 " Thus from bad to worse 
 All things are backward borne, by God's hand doomed," 
 
 It is easy to see how such a faith, or rather such a 
 conviction — for there was nothing in it of the hopeful 
 temperament of faith — must have prostrated all human
 
 306 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 energy ; must have made men utterly self-seeking, and 
 living for the hour ; must have reduced the hst of pos- 
 sible virtues ; must have arrested the progress of all 
 improvement by deadening the conscience, chilling the 
 affections, blunting and enervating the sympathies of 
 the soul. 
 
 Before the " enthusiasm of humanity," as it has been 
 called, can be raised to any very high energy, you and 
 I must get rid of the depressing influence of the 
 heathen creed, that this earth is lying under God's 
 curse — is unimproveable ; and we must believe that 
 the Father of lights, " with whom is no variableness 
 nor even shadow of turning," is working out through 
 us, in our place and degree as His instruments, even as 
 in His place and degree He wrought out by the hands 
 of His Consubstantial Co-eternal Son, "the regeneration 
 of the world." 
 
 It is to spiritual, rather than to material, forces that 
 the increase of human purposes and the enlargement 
 of human thought are due. It is the Gospel, penetrat- 
 ing and fashioning what is called " the spirit of the age," 
 that has elevated woman. It was the Gospel that 
 struck the fetters from the slave. It is the Gospel that 
 has mitigated, and is mitigating still, the horrors and 
 barbarities of war — would to God it could make Avar 
 impossible ! It is the Gospel that has replaced the 
 savage instinct of cruelty by the civilised instinct of 
 tenderness. It is the Gospel that created the idea, in 
 its highest sense, of a gentleman. It is the Gospel 
 that proclaimed, without perverting to revolutionary or
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. 307 
 
 communistic ends — without even showing any prefer- 
 ence of one form of government to another, but with that 
 wonderful breadth of spirit which made it possible to 
 become the rehgion of mankind — the great principles 
 that should underlie all government. It is the Gospel 
 that uttered the great political creed of the equality of 
 men, and the great social creed of the fraternity of 
 men. For those whom God hath made of one blood 
 must necessarily be equal, those whom He hath adopted 
 into one family must necessarily be brethren. 
 
 I used just now the phrase "the regeneration of the 
 world," I used it advisedly, and in the sense, I believe, 
 in which our Lord Jesus Christ used it, when He spoke 
 to His Apostles of " the regeneration, when the Son of 
 Man shall sit on the throne of His glory," and when 
 they also should sit on thrones at His side. There is a 
 first regeneration and a second, even as we are told there 
 is a first and a second resurrection. Baptised with the 
 spirit of the first, we must labour to realise, and even to 
 hasten, the glories of the last. Every conquest over 
 evil, whether material or spiritual, whether physical, 
 moral, or social, is an advance towards the " day of the 
 restitution of all things " ; is what St. Peter calls " a 
 hasting of the coming of the day of God," in which all 
 the elements of evil which mar this present economy of 
 things shall be burnt up by the " fervent heat " of the 
 purifying fire, and a renewed heaven and a renewed 
 earth shall be made, meet for the dwelling place of 
 God when He shall " take up His abode " with men. 
 
 Every effort that you make for the alleviation of the
 
 308 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 ills and sorrows that encompass- humanity in this low 
 state, if made in a Christian temper and with a Christian 
 view — if an offspring of a sense of duty to God rather 
 than of that vacjue and somewhat ostentatious thinof 
 called " philanthropy " — is what St. Paul would pro- 
 bably call a " fellow -working " with God in His grand, 
 " increasing " purpose of saving the world. Christ 
 cared for all the wants of that nature which He assumed 
 into fellowship with His own — for men's bodies as well 
 as for their souls ; for those that hungered after perish- 
 ing meats as for those whose hearts craved for the bread 
 of life ; for those who lacked health a;s for those who 
 lacked instruction. His commission to the Twelve was 
 almost equally emphatic in both directions : " Preach 
 the Gospel ; heal the sick. Freely ye have received) 
 freely give." 
 
 Do not let us attempt to divide what God has joined 
 together. The physician of the body is as truly, in his 
 vocation, a minister of God, as the physician of the 
 soul. The " gifts of healing " are as distinctly enume- 
 rated by St. Paul among the manifestations of the 
 Spirit as the gift " of prophecy," or the " word of 
 wisdom." To no man has God denied the privileges 
 and the prerogative of being a worker together with 
 Him in His Kingdom. 
 
 A hospital, in its jDlace and for its purpose, is as truly 
 a consecrated building as a church. It is consecrated, 
 not by a ceremonial act, but by a spiritual — by the 
 very presence of Christ within its walls in His sick, 
 His maimed. His poor. The services rendered unto the
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. 309 
 
 least of His brethren He reckons rendered unto Him- 
 self. " I was sick, and ye visited me." A hospital is 
 emphatically a Christian institution. It was a thing 
 almost unknown in the old pagan world. The heathen 
 had their temples where, in their ignorant way — 
 though ofttimes doubtless with a devout purpose — 
 they worshipped God ; but to provide places where the 
 aches and ailments of men might be cared for, 
 and healed, never entered into their conception of 
 philanthropy. 
 
 And, as a Christian institution, a hospital claims tlie 
 support of Christians on the broadest terms. In these 
 days of narrowness and isolation, it offers a platform on 
 which all " who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity " 
 can meet and practise at least some of their Master's 
 precepts, and copy a portion of His example. 
 
 I spoke just now of the physician as " a minister of 
 God." Such a phrase is quite intelligible to any one 
 who remembers the mode in which the dispensation 
 of the Spirit was regarded by St. Peter and St. Paul 
 — to any who recollects, for instance, St. Paul's ac- 
 count of the civil magistrate, " He is the minister of 
 God to thee for good." Of course 1 am not thinking of 
 the ministration of the Word or Sacraments ; I am think- 
 ing of him as one on whom God, in the distribution 
 of His gifts, has bestowed that beneficent faculty of 
 healing which the Apostle Paul has placed so high in 
 the list of endowments wherewith God has enriched 
 and illuminated His Church. " God hath set some in 
 the church, first Apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly
 
 310 CNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, 
 governments, diversities of tongues." " Honour a phy- 
 sician," says the wise author of Ecclesiasticus, " with the 
 honour due to him for the uses which ye may have of 
 him : for of the Most High cometh healing : and He 
 hath created him." 
 
 Every one w'ho has ascended a mountain-height 
 knows the charm of what is called a panoramic vicAV, 
 which takes in nestling villages, and verdurous valleys, 
 and silver streams, and sloping uplands, and snow-clad 
 peaks crimsoned, it may he, by the slanting rays of a 
 summer sun. So, too, I at least, am glad to mount the 
 calm heights of religious contemplation, and extend the 
 horizon of a view too often narrow-ed by the limitations 
 of party, or obscured by the mists of prejudice, and 
 survey, as from a vantage ground, untrammelled and 
 unimpassioned, the grand all-embracing purpose of God 
 in Christ to man. There, for a moment, we can discern 
 the magnificent proportions of a Gospel meant to be 
 commensurate with the uttermost — the low^est as well 
 as the highest— needs of man ; not dwarfed down to the 
 puny stature of our imperfect conceptions, nor distorted 
 in the glare of our miserable sectarian animosities. 
 
 And as we gaze, the form of Christ, transfigured as on 
 the Mount, stands out clear and palpable as the Healer 
 of the Nations. The work of the Spirit is seen mani- 
 festing itself in every high desire, in every noble effort, 
 in every chivalrous deed, that ever kindled the heart or 
 strung the energies, or rescued from baseness the cha- 
 racter, of man. And before the glory of the vision fades,
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER. 311 
 
 and the cloud of our sordid, every-day, trafficking life 
 again overshadows us, a voice, which the quick instincts 
 of our heart recognise as our Father's shall fall on our 
 entranced ears, saying, " This is my beloved Son, and 
 this is the truth to bear witness to which He was born 
 and came into the world." 
 
 Preached— Salisbury Cathedral, September 24, 1868. St. Mary- 
 lebone Church, July 10, 1870. Lincoln Cathedral, November 
 3, 1870. Manchester Cathedral, February 3, 1873. St. 
 Martin's, Leicester, July 20, 1879. St. Peter's, Cranley 
 Gardens, June 15, 1880, 
 
 THE END. 
 
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