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THE 
 GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE 
 
THE GREAT TEXTS 
 OF THE BIBLE 
 
 EDITED BY THE REV. 
 
 JAMES HASTINGS, D.D. 
 
 EDITOR OF "THE EXPOSITORY TIMES" "THE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE' 
 
 "THE DICTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS" AND 
 
 "THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS " 
 
 I CORINTHIANS 
 
 Published by Messrs. T. & T. CLARK 
 
 THE WAVERLEY BOOK COMPANY LTD, 
 
 7 and 8 OLD BAILEY, LONDON, E.G. 
 1912 
 
Printed by Moawgoii & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh 
 
.IS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 TOPICS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 THE POWER AND THE WISDOM OF Gui> . . . .1 
 
 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE . . . . .25 
 
 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE . . . . . .45 
 
 GOD'S FELLOW- WORKERS .... . f 67 
 
 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT . . . . . .89 
 
 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS . . . . . .111 
 
 OUR THREE JUDGES . . . . . . .141 
 
 JUDGING PREMATURELY ....... 159 
 
 FOR THE FEAST . . . . . . . .173 
 
 THE BODY FOR GOD . . . . . . .191 
 
 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT ....... 207 
 
 ADAPTABILITY ........ 235 
 
 FOR THE CROWN ........ 263 
 
 TRUST IN GOD AND Do THE EIGHT . . . . .281 
 
 MAN'S CHIEF END ....... 303 
 
 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH ..... 319 
 
 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL ...... 345 
 
 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT ..... 365 
 
 THESE THREE . . . . . . . .391 
 
 THE EESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD ..... 453 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT . , 483 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 TEXTS. 
 1 CORINTHIANS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 22-24 . . . . . . . ... .3 
 
 II. 2 27 
 
 II. 9 47 
 
 III. 9 . . .69 
 
 III. 11-13 91 
 
 III. 21-23 . .113 
 
 IV. 3, 4 143 
 
 IV. 5 161 
 
 V. 7,8 . . . 175 
 
 VI. 19, 20 193 
 
 VII. 29, 31 209 
 
 IX. 22 237 
 
 IX. 25 265 
 
 X. 13 283 
 
 X. 31 305 
 
 XI. 26 . . . . . . . . . 321 
 
 XIII. 1 347 
 
 XIII. 12 367 
 
 XIII. 13 393 
 
 XV. 20 . . . . . . . . .455 
 
 XVI. 13, 14 ... .... 485 
 
THE POWER AND THE WISDOM OF GOD. 
 
 I COR. I 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Alford (H.), Sermons on Christian Doctrine, 210. 
 
 Burrell (D. J.), Christ and Progress, 111. 
 
 Bushnell (H.), The New Life, 239. 
 
 Candlish (J.), The Gospel of Forgiveness, 301. 
 
 Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, iii. 101. 
 
 Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 71. 
 
 Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 120, 134. 
 
 Denney (J.), The Way Everlasting, 13. 
 
 Dykes*(J. 0.), Sermons, 34. 
 
 Edger (S.), Sermons preached at Auckland, N.Z., ii. 40. 
 
 Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 23. 
 
 Foster (J. E.), Pain, 102. 
 
 Holland (H. S.), Creed and Character, 191. 
 
 Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 141. 
 
 Ingram (A. F. W.), The Gospel in Action, 54. 
 
 Jowett (J. H.), Apostolic Optimism, 68. 
 
 Macleod (A.) 5 A Man's Gift, 23. 
 
 (D.), Tlie Sunday Home Service, 262. 
 
 Magee (W.), The Gospel and the Age, 3. 
 
 Miller (J.), Sermons Literary and Scientific, ii. 174. 
 
 Mills (B. R. V.), Tlie Marks of the Church, 94. 
 
 Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 117. 
 
 Sclater (J. R. P.), The Enterprise of Life, 244. 
 
 Stubbs (W.), in The Anglican Pulpit of To-day, 49. 
 
 Taylor (W. M.), Contrary Winds, 116. 
 
 Thomas (J.), Sermons : Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 99. 
 
 Watt (L. M.), The Communion Table, 322. 
 
 Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 156. 
 
 British Weekly, Feb. 22, 1912 (Berry). 
 
 Christian World Pulpit, xiii. 92 (Beecher) ; xviii. 246 (Stevenson) ; xxxiv. 
 219 (Spurgeon); xxxix. 369 (Fairbairn); xlii. 146 (Snell) ; Ivii. 
 273 (Jowett); Ixii. 151 (Pickett); Ixxix. 312 (Fox); Ixxx. 296 
 (Brown). 
 
 Church of England Pulpit, xxx. 13 (Panter) ; Ixii. 381 (Payne), 662 
 (Straton) ; xliii. 230 (Maturin). 
 
 Contemporary Pulpit, ii. 144 (Scott). 
 
THE POWER AND THE WISDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom : but we preach Christ 
 crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but 
 unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, 
 and the wisdom of God. I Cor. i. 22-24. 
 
 THIS chapter is full of the tragic pathos of the Apostle's life. 
 We can read, as it were between the lines, the emotions, the 
 hopes, the despairs, the fears, the loves, amid which he preached 
 in Corinth, confronted by the hate of the Jew and the scorn 
 of the Greek, and beset by the jealousies, the divisions, the 
 misunderstandings, of his heathen and Hebrew converts. 
 
 St. Paul when he arrived in Corinth was not new to the work 
 and the troubles of the missionary. Behind him were years of 
 labour and sorrow. The man of Macedonia who appeared in a 
 vision had cried, " Come over and help us " ; and to St. Paul to 
 hear was to obey. He landed at Philippi, bringing westward and 
 into Europe the gospel of Christ. But love did not leap to 
 answer his love, or faith rise to salute his coming. Instead, he 
 was beaten, smitten with stripes, set in the stocks, made fast in 
 the inner prison, till the virtue of his Koman citizenship opened 
 the door of his prison, and he passed on to Thessalonica. There 
 " lewd fellows of the baser sort " set the city in an uproar, and 
 he was forced to depart for Beroea. In Beroea he found men 
 nobler than those of Thessalonica ; for they searched the Scrip- 
 tures to discover whether his words were true. But enmity 
 followed and drove him to Athens, where he felt the wondrous 
 charm of the city and the wondrous indifference of the men. 
 Images of gods were everywhere, but nowhere was the living 
 God or godly peace of soul. The men wanted news, not of the 
 kind he preached, but of the sort that was curious rather than 
 true. So they set him on Mars' hill, and as, he unrolled his 
 
4 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 burden told of their blind quest after God, and God's ceaseless 
 quest after them they listened till he came to speak of resur- 
 rection and judgment. And then, offended rather than amused, 
 they broke in and said, " We will hear thee again of this matter." 
 And so he had to forsake cultured Athens, and make for busy 
 Corinth. 
 
 And now, as he writes, the antagonisms and the victories of 
 those early days in Corinth come back to him. His mingled 
 feelings are represented by a series of contrasts. First, he 
 contrasts the hearers who were hostile to his preaching (the 
 Jews and the Greeks) with those who accepted it (the " called "). 
 Next, he contrasts the message he had to deliver (a crucified 
 Christ) with the expectations of those hearers who asked for 
 signs and sought after wisdom. Then he contrasts the estimates 
 formed of that same message a " stumblingblock " and " foolish- 
 ness " to those who were asking for signs of power and wisdom ; 
 the "power and wisdom of God" to those who believed. The 
 subject accordingly is St. Paul's preaching, and we have three 
 natural divisions. 
 
 I. The Hearers. 
 II. The Message. 
 III. The Eeception of the Message. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE HEARERS. 
 
 What the city of Corinth was we know ; it was rich, luxuri- 
 ous, commercial, lascivious. East and West met in it, and 
 mingled their vices and their faiths. Thither had come the Jew, 
 and built his synagogue, opened his bazaar, made a place for 
 himself on the exchange, and used his knowledge of the Eastern 
 men and markets to bring their wares and their ways to the men 
 of the West. There, too, was found the Greek, subtle, full of 
 the pride of race and intellect and achievement, speculative, 
 argumentative in his very commerce, and beating out in the 
 manner of the Schools the questions connected with the prin- 
 ciples and profits of trade. There, too, was the Koman, with the 
 spirit of the soldier who had become sovereign, scornful of the 
 poor civilian and the mean merchant, thinking the world had 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 5 
 
 been made to be conquered, and he to be its conqueror. And in 
 the face of this mixed and divided community St. Paul preached. 
 You can imagine him, after a day's hard toil at his handicraft, in 
 the evening stealing along the quay, watched by few, cared for 
 by fewer, a man who could not be conquered, and who had in 
 him vaster ambitions for the good of men than could find room 
 in the mind of imperial Caesar. And if you had followed him 
 you might have seen him climb by a mean stair to a meaner 
 upper room, where the slave, set free for an hour by his master, 
 or the wharfinger escaping from loading or unloading his ship, 
 or the porter seeking release from the burden he had carried 
 throughout the day, met to hear this preacher, mean in appear- 
 ance, but great in dignity and in power. 
 
 T[ The education of the human race has been an affair of 
 unconscious co-operation. One department of it has been put 
 out to one race, another to another. For illustration look at 
 Athens and then at Jerusalem. In Greece we find the first- 
 class minds of the ancient world. Thales, Pythagoras, Derno- 
 critus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pheidias, Praxiteles, Archimedes, 
 Thucydides are, in their several ways, prophets of the intellect. 
 They stand for philosophy, physics, mathematics, art, music, 
 politics, the whole sphere of things with which the mind can 
 busy itself. They are the pioneers of research, openers of the 
 ways in which truth-seekers have been travelling ever since. 
 When you pass from Greece to Palestine you find yourself in 
 another world. Open on Isaiah or Micah, read the New Testa- 
 ment from cover to cover, and you will find scarce a word about 
 mentality. There is nothing about philosophy, or geometry, or 
 music, or painting, or the science of history, or the science of 
 politics. If you kept to the Bible, you would learn nothing 
 worth knowing about the physical universe; no hint of the 
 methods by which its secrets are to be disclosed. Summing the 
 two up, you may say : Greece is all for knowledge ; Palestine is 
 all for character. We are learning to-day the immeasurable 
 debt we owe to both. When you ask, "Which is the mightier; 
 which the more important ? " Huxley's statement (" clever men 
 are as common as blackberries ; the rare thing is to find a good 
 one "), remembering what he stood for, may well set us thinking. 1 
 
 The Apostle divides the ancient world into two classes 
 of men : those whom God has taken under His direction and 
 
 1 J. Brierlcy, Life and the Ideal, 57. 
 
6 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 enlightened by a special revelation, the Jews\ the others whom 
 He " has left to walk in their own ways," the Gentiles, designated 
 here by the name of their most distinguished representatives, 
 the Greeks. Each of these groups has its demands, and the 
 demands are different. 
 
 i. Jews. 
 
 "Jews ask for signs." 
 
 As proof that God was in their midst and as a revelation 
 of God's nature, the Jews required a sign, a demonstration of 
 physical power. It was one of Christ's temptations to leap from 
 a pinnacle of the Temple, for thus He would have won accept- 
 ance as the Christ. The people never ceased to clamour for a 
 sign. They wished Him to bid a mountain be removed and cast 
 into the sea ; they wished Him to bid the sun stand still or the 
 Jordan retire to its source. They wished Him to make some 
 demonstration of superhuman power, and so put it beyond a 
 doubt that God was present. 
 
 1. Signs were suggested to the Jewish mind whenever that 
 people thought of the past history of their nation. Almost 
 every page of their sacred books spoke of signs either past or to 
 come. Their faith had signs for its surest proof. Their greatest 
 men had exhibited most startling signs. Those epochs to which 
 they looked back with most pride were marked by a greater 
 display of signs. And so it was no wonder that with the advent 
 of the Messiah they expected signs in greater number and of 
 more surpassing brilliancy than ever before. 
 
 2. Indeed they had signs in exceeding plenty, and of a 
 character such as, from the past history of their nation, they 
 might have expected. Jesus Christ of Nazareth confined His 
 miracles to no one district, to no one section of the Jewish race 
 above another. Everywhere, before all the people, He did 
 wonders, which in number, power, and beneficence surpassed 
 anything of the kind that had ever occurred in their history. 
 These miracles, indeed, were so many signs from heaven to them, 
 but they were not signs to their mind. They really did not 
 know what they would be at. They wanted signs, and yet more 
 signs ! For it is of the nature of this desire to rise higher and 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 7 
 
 higher in proportion as it is satisfied. On the morrow after the 
 multiplication of the loaves the multitudes ask : What signs doest 
 thou then ? Every stroke of power must be surpassed by a 
 following one yet more marvellous. 
 
 Tf There is in the farther course of some Christians that which 
 is the counterpart of the Slough of Despond at the commencement 
 of it. There were cartloads of Gospel encouragements cast into 
 the Slough of Despond, and yet it was the Slough of Despond 
 still; and so into this there are carted distinctions and marks 
 of saving grace, yet it remains the counterpart of the Slough of 
 Despond still. There is no dealing with such persons ; for if you 
 give them signs of grace, they will ask for signs of the signs. 1 
 
 3. The Gospel, now as then, has to encounter the demand of 
 those who ask for signs. Do we not see the craving for the sign 
 for the display, that is, of supernatural power to crush and silence 
 all doubt resulting in the superstitious corruptions of Christianity ? 
 For what is superstition but an appeal from wisdom to power, 
 an effort to silence the reason by the terrors of the senses ? The 
 demand for a religion which shall dispense with the exercise of 
 reason and the discipline of thought is ever punished by belief 
 in a religion which outrages all reason and, at last, silences all 
 thought. Superstition is still the Nemesis, not of faith, but of 
 unbelief. And every such superstition necessarily grows always 
 grosser and darker as it grows older. For the desire of the 
 teacher for power, combining with the desire of the taught for 
 certainty, must tend always to efforts at making the sign, which 
 is to secure both, still more awful and convincing, by still greater 
 and more awful attestations. A fresh miracle must be provided to 
 silence each fresh heresy, a new prodigy to confirm each new dogma. 
 
 K When Carlyle said of God, the God in whom Christians 
 believe, " He does nothing," he gave expression to precisely this 
 mental temper. It is the temper of all to whom it is a religious 
 difficulty that there is a constitution and course of nature and of 
 human life in which things go on according to general laws, and 
 in which there is much that is bafiiing, mysterious, and unjust. 
 If we are to believe in God, they say, let Him do something. 2 
 
 ^[ The Jews asked for signs, a request which is not necessarily 
 indicative of a thirst ; it may be an asking behind which there is 
 
 J " Rabbi" Duncan, in Brown's Memoir of John Duncan, 426. 
 2 J. Denney, The Way Everlasting, 14. 
 
8 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 110 parched and aching spirit. That is the bane and peril of all 
 externalism. It may gratify a feverish curiosity without awaken- 
 ing the energies of a holy life. The Jews asked for signs. " Now 
 when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad," for he hoped to 
 see a sign. It was a restless curiosity, itching for the sensation 
 of some novel entertainment ; it is not the pang of a faint and 
 weary heart hungering for bread. " He answered him nothing." 
 The Jews asked for signs, a request which is frequently indicative 
 of a life of moral alienation. Externalism abounds in moral gifts, 
 and in externalisms men often discover drugs by which they can 
 benumb the painful sense of their own excesses. " An evil and 
 adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." They try to resolve 
 into merely physical sensations and sensationalisms what can be 
 apprehended only by the delicate, tender tendrils of a penitent 
 and aspiring heart. 1 
 
 If F. W. Eobertson in his diary makes the following resolution : 
 To endeavour to get over the adulterous-generation-habit of 
 seeking a sign. I want a loud voice from Heaven to tell me 
 a thing is wrong, whereas a little experience of its results is 
 enough to prove that God is against it. It does not cohere with 
 the everlasting laws of the universe. 2 
 
 And not for signs in heaven above 
 
 Or earth below they look, 
 Who know with John His smile of love, 
 
 With Peter His rebuke. 
 
 In joy of inward peace, or sense 
 
 Of sorrow over sin, 
 He is His own best evidence, 
 
 His witness is within. 3 
 
 ii. Greeks. 
 " Greeks seek after wisdom." 
 
 The wisdom of which St. Paul speaks appears to have been of 
 two kinds speculative philosophy and wisdom of words, i.e. 
 eloquence. The Greeks had deified wisdom. They wanted the 
 Divine intellectualized in a system eloquently giving account of 
 the nature of the gods, the origin, course, and end of the universe. 
 This people, with their inquisitive and subtle mind, would get at 
 
 1 J. H. Jowett. 
 
 - Stopfortl Brooke's Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 73. 
 8 Wliittier. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 9 
 
 the essence of things. The man who will satisfy Greek expecta- 
 tion will be, not a miracle-worker, but a Pythagoras or a Socrates 
 of double power. 
 
 1. Next to the Jews there was no people in the world that St. 
 Paul knew better than the Greeks. He had in his lifetime come 
 much in contact with them. He had, like all other men, 
 wondered at their genius. There was no feature more distinctive 
 of the whole people than their intellectual aptitudes, which they 
 never lost. Everywhere they kept strong hold of their national 
 traditions. Their language remained through ages uncorrupt and 
 unmutilated. Much of their theology and culture was gathered 
 from the Homeric poems, which were the heirloom of the whole 
 race. They excelled in all the fine arts. They were masters in 
 every branch of literature. "The Greeks," above every other 
 people, " sought after wisdom." There could be nothing equal to 
 that description in perspicuity and appreciation of national 
 character. For the Greeks from hoar antiquity had been seekers 
 after wisdom. 
 
 2. The Greek asked for no sign; he cared nothing for the 
 supernatural, he had ceased to believe in it. He believed only in 
 nature ; he sought only for wisdom to understand himself and the 
 world in which he lived ; he asked from Christ only light on those 
 problems in external nature, or in himself, on which his subtle 
 mind was ever working. He wanted a perfect philosophy, or, at 
 least, a perfect morality, which could justify itself to his intellect 
 by solving all those difficulties which beset all other philosophies 
 and all other systems of morals. Could Christianity do this ? 
 Could it tell him what was mind, and how it differed from 
 matter ? Could it tell him whether he was governed by fate or 
 by free-will ? Could it tell him whence came evil ? If it could, 
 he was willing to listen to it and to believe all that it could prove. 
 But then for such teaching there was no need of miracles any 
 more than there was for the teaching of geometry. All that was 
 true in it he would receive on its own evidence, and he would 
 receive nothing that did not so prove itself to be true. 
 
 3. From the earliest days of Christianity to our own, there 
 have been those who, like the Greeks, demand a demonstration 
 of religious truths not to the senses, but to the intellect, who ever 
 
io POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 seek to divest Christianity of all that is mysterious or super- 
 natural and to reduce it, as much as possible, to a purely natural 
 religion, to something that can be weighed and measured by 
 the understanding, or that approves itself to the feelings; to 
 something, in short, that is self-evident to the natural man. 
 
 If There is, in our day, a marvellous idolatry of talent ; it is a 
 strange and a grievous thing to see how men bow down before 
 genius and success. Draw the distinction sharp and firm between 
 these two things goodness is one thing, talent is another. It is 
 an instructive fact that the Son of Man came not as a scribe, but 
 as a poor working man. He was a teacher, but not a Eabbi. 
 When once the idolatry of talent enters the Church, then fare- 
 well to spirituality ; when men ask their teachers, not for that 
 which will make them more humble and God-like, but for the 
 excitement of an intellectual banquet, then farewell to Christian 
 progress. 1 
 
 If Artists have united with authors to strengthen this idolatry 
 of intellect. One of the great pictures in the French Academy of 
 Design assembles the immortals of all ages. Having erected a 
 tribunal in the centre of the scene, Delaroche places Intellect 
 upon the throne. And when the sons of genius are assembled 
 about that glowing centre, all are seen to be great thinkers. 
 There stand Democritus, a thinker about invisible atoms ; Euclid, 
 a thinker about invisible lines and angles; Newton, a thinker 
 about an invisible force named gravity ; La Place, a thinker about 
 the invisible law that sweeps suns and stars forward towards an 
 unseen goal. The artist also remembers the inventors whose 
 useful thoughts blossom into engines and ships ; statesmen whose 
 wise thoughts blossom into codes and constitutions; speakers 
 whose true thoughts blossom into orations; and artists whose 
 beautiful thoughts appear as pictures. At this assembly of the 
 immortals great thinkers touch and jostle. But if the great 
 minds are remembered, no chair is made ready for the great 
 hearts. He who lingers long before this painting will believe 
 that brain is king of the world ; that great thinkers are the sole 
 architects of civilization ; that science is the only providence for 
 the future; that God Himself is simply an infinite brain, an 
 eternal logic engine, cold as steel, weaving endless ideas about 
 life and art, about nature and man. But the throne of the 
 universe is mercy and not marble ; the name of the world-ruler is 
 Great Heart, rather than Crystalline Mind, and God is the 
 Eternal Friend who pulsates out through His world those forms 
 
 1 F. W. Robertson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 n 
 
 of love called reforms, philanthropies, social bounties and bene- 
 factions, even as the ocean pulsates its life-giving tides into every 
 bay and creek and river. The springs of civilization are not in 
 the mind. For the individual and the State " out of the heart 
 are the issues of life." l 
 
 U A dour old Scot upon his deathbed was informed by his 
 wife that the minister was coming to pray with him. " I dinna 
 want onybody tae pray wi' me," said he. " Well, then, he'll speak 
 words of comfort tae ye." "I don't want to hear words o* 
 comfort," said the intractable Northcountryman. "What do 
 ye want, then ? " asked his wife. " I want," was the characteristic 
 reply, " I want tae argue." 2 
 
 iii. Them that are Called. 
 
 St. Paul places this class of hearers in sharp contrast to all 
 others. He forcibly separates the "called" Jews and Gentiles 
 from the mass of their fellow-countrymen ; to the called themselves, 
 he says, as opposed to all others. The term "called" here 
 includes the notion of believers. Sometimes " calling " is put in 
 contrast to the acceptance of faith, as in Matt. xxii. 14, " Many 
 called, few chosen." But often also the description "called" 
 implies that of acceptor, as it certainly does here. 
 
 1. The Apostle exalts the Divine act in salvation; he sees 
 God's arm laying hold of certain individuals, drawing them from 
 the midst of those nationalities, Jewish and Gentile, by the call of 
 preaching. St. Paul thinks of the constituent elements of which 
 the church of Corinth was actually composed. These Corinthian 
 Christians were of no account, poor, insignificant, outcasts, and 
 slaves, friendless while alive and when dead not missed in any 
 household ; but God called them and gave them a new and 
 hopeful life in Christ Jesus. It is plain that it is not by human 
 wisdom, nor by power, nor by anything generally esteemed among 
 men that we hold our place in the Church. The fact is that 
 " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many 
 noble, are called." If human wisdom or power held the gates of 
 the Kingdom, we ourselves would not be in it. To be esteemed, 
 and influential, and wise is no passport to this new kingdom. It 
 is not men who by their wisdom find out God and by their nobility 
 
 1 N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Influence, 133. 
 
 2 Arch. Alexander. 
 
i2 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 of character commend themselves to Him ; it is God who chooses 
 and calls men, and the very absence of wisdom and possessions 
 makes men readier to listen to His call. 
 
 2. The people that are called are those who have heard the 
 voice of God and responded to it. The old theologians distin- 
 guished between a general and an effectual calling. So far they 
 were correct enough, but they erred in laying the cause of the 
 distinction on God. There is no difference in the call. The 
 difference lies in this, that in one case the heart responds to it, 
 and in the other it does not. God never fails in anything He 
 does, so far as His part of the work is concerned. God's call 
 comes forth clear and strong, a great shout of power to the wide 
 world, but only some respond and are raised to the power of 
 God, and to the enjoyment of His life. 
 
 3. In St. Paul's day this argument from the general poverty 
 and insignificance of the members of the Christian Church was 
 readily drawn. Things are changed now; and the Church is 
 filled with the wise, the powerful, the noble. But St. Paul's 
 main proposition remains : whoever is in Christ Jesus is so, not 
 through any wisdom or power of his own, but because God has 
 chosen and called him. The sweetness and humble friendliness 
 of St. Paul sprang from his constant sense that whatever he was 
 he was by God's grace. He was drawn with compassion towards 
 the most unbelieving because he was ever saying within himself, 
 There, but for the grace of God, goes Paul. 
 
 I owned a little boat a while ago, 
 
 And sailed a morning sea without a fear, 
 And whither any breeze might fairly blow 
 I'd steer the little craft afar or near. 
 Mine was the boat, 
 And mine the air, 
 And mine the sea, 
 Not mine a care. 
 
 My boat became my place of nightly toil ; 
 
 I sailed at sunset to the fishing ground ; 
 At morn the boat was freighted with the spoil 
 
 That my all-conquering work and skill had found. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 13 
 
 Mine was the boat, 
 
 And mine the net, 
 And mine the skill, 
 
 And power to get. 
 
 One day there passed along the silent shore, 
 
 While I my net was casting in the sea, 
 A Man, who spoke as never man before ; 
 I followed Him new life began in me. 
 Mine was the boat, 
 
 But His the voice, 
 And His the call, 
 Yet mine the choice. 
 
 Ah! 'twas a fearful night out on the lake, 
 
 And all my skill availed not at the helm, 
 Till Him asleep I wakened, crying, " Take, 
 
 Take Thou command, lest waters overwhelm ! " 
 His was the boat, 
 
 And His the sea, 
 And His the peace, 
 O'er all and me. 
 
 Once from His boat He taught the curious throng, 
 
 Then bade me let down nets into the sea; 
 I murmured, but obeyed, nor was it long, 
 Before the catch amazed and humbled me. 
 His was the boat, 
 
 And His the skill, 
 And His the catch, 
 And His my will. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 1. Preaching. The clear, creative imagination of St. Paul 
 could penetrate into the brain of the Eoman and look through 
 his eyes ; into the intellect of the Greek and judge with his 
 cynicism ; into the spirit of the Hebrew and feel with his heart, 
 or dream with his fancy. And as he looked at the men he could 
 read their thoughts without the help of words, translating the 
 scowl on the Hebrew's face into bitter speech, the scorn on the 
 
 1 Joseph Richards. 
 
14 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 Greek's lip into eloquent reproach. But though he knew the 
 thoughts of the men he did not dare be silent in their presence. 
 For God sent him to preach the Gospel, and he preached it 
 possessed with the passion for souls that is the image in man of 
 grace in God. 
 
 (1) "But we preach." St. Paul refused to make any com- 
 promise. He was very clearly conscious of the two great streams 
 of expectation and wish which he deliberately thwarted and set 
 at naught. "The Jews ask for signs" "but we preach Christ 
 crucified. "The Greeks seek after wisdom" but again, we 
 preach Christ crucified. To all their subtleties, whether of out- 
 ward sign or of inward wisdom he opposed the simple fact of his 
 preaching. 
 
 (2) " We preach" The word " preach " is emphatic ; it means 
 in its full signification " to proclaim as a herald does." St. Paul 
 proclaimed his Gospel simply as a fact. The Jew required a 
 sign; he wanted a man who would do something. The Greek 
 sought after wisdom ; he wanted a man who would perorate and 
 argue and dissertate. St. Paul says, " No ! " " We have nothing 
 to do. We do not come to philosophize and to argue. We come 
 with a message of fact that has occurred, of a Person that has lived." 
 
 ^[ Preaching is an institute peculiar to the Gospel. Nothing 
 can be preached but the Gospel, so nothing can be done with the 
 Gospel but preach it. It is not a mere law to be enjoined, or 
 a philosophy to be developed by human thought, or a series of 
 articles to be taught. In its naked essence, it is a fact of God's 
 doing, a Divine datum, a salvation provided, stored, and offered 
 in the person of a Saviour. As such, it is to be asserted, declared, 
 published, heralded. 1 
 
 2. Preaching Christ. St. Paul proclaimed a Person, not a 
 system of philosophy. We can adore a person, but we cannot 
 adore principles. It is not merely Purity, but the Pure One ; not 
 merely Goodness, but the Good One, that we worship. Some of 
 the Greek teachers were also teaching Purity, Goodness, Truth ; 
 they were striving to lead men's minds to the First Good, the 
 First Fair. The Jewish Rabbis were endeavouring to do the same ; 
 but it is only in Christ that it is possible to do this effectually, 
 it is only in Christ that we find our ideal realized. 
 
 1 J. 0. Dykes. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 15 
 
 U Preaching Christ is not preaching about Christ. There is 
 a well-known passage in the tenth chapter of Eomans which gives 
 a balanced account of the reason for the failure of so much 
 preaching to produce any adequate or satisfactory results. The 
 first part of the passage points to causes of failure in the 
 preachers; the second half to causes of failure in the hearers. 
 The great cause of failure in preachers is indicated in one of 
 these opening interrogations as it is translated in the Eevised 
 Version. The old version, smoothing over a difficulty of trans- 
 lation, and giving not the actual sense of the words but what it 
 was imagined St. Paul ought to have said and meant to say, reads 
 thus, " How shall they believe in him of whom they have not 
 heard ? " Now the Eevisers give us what St. Paul actually did 
 write. "How shall they believe in him whom they have not 
 heard ? " You see there is a whole world of difference in the two 
 phrases. According to the first one the difficulty of belief is that 
 they have not heard about Christ ; but according to the second 
 it is that they have not heard Christ. According to the first the 
 function of the preacher is to talk about Christ; but according 
 to the second his function is to be a mouthpiece through whom 
 Christ can speak about Himself. " They are not likely to believe," 
 St. Paul says, " unless they hear Christ." If it was true when 
 he wrote, it is abundantly true to-day. There are few indeed 
 to-day who have not heard about Christ ; but there are multitudes 
 who have never heard Christ. 1 
 
 3. Preaching Christ crucified. St. Paul's subject was " Christ 
 crucified." He would not preach Christ the Conqueror, or Christ 
 the Philosopher (by preaching which he might have won both 
 Jews and Greeks), but Christ the crucified, Christ the humble. 
 There is a distinction between preaching Christ crucified and 
 preaching the Crucifixion of Christ. It is said by some that 
 the Gospel is not preached unless the Crucifixion be named. 
 But the Apostle did not preach that ; he preached Christ 
 Christ the Example Christ the Life Christ the Son of Man 
 Christ the Son of God Christ risen Christ the King of Glory. 
 And ever and unfailingly he preached that Christ as a humble 
 Christ crucified through weakness, yet living by the power of 
 God. 
 
 U " Reason cries, ' if God were good, He could not look upon 
 the sin and misery of man and live; His heart would break.' 
 The Church points to the Crucifixion and says, ' God's heart did 
 
 1 0. Silvester Home, Relationships of Life, 139. 
 
16 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 break.' Reason cries, ' Born and reared in sin and pain as we 
 are, how can we keep from sin ? It is the Creator who is 
 responsible ; it is God who deserves to be punished.' The Church 
 kneels by the cross and whispers, ' God accepts the responsibility 
 and bears the punishment.' Keason cries, ' Who is God ? What 
 is God ? The name stands for the unknown. It is blasphemy 
 to say we know Him.' The Church kisses the feet of the dying 
 Christ and says, ' We must worship the majesty we see.' " 
 
 that Thy Name may be sounded 
 
 Afar over earth and sea, 
 Till the dead awaken and praise Thee, 
 
 And the dumb lips sing to Thee ! 
 
 Sound forth as a song of triumph 
 
 Wherever man's foot has trod, 
 The despised, the derided message, 
 
 The foolishness of God. 
 
 Jesus, dishonoured and dying, 
 
 A felon on either side 
 Jesus, the song of the drunkards, 
 
 Jesus the Crucified ! 
 
 Name of God's tender comfort, 
 
 Name of His glorious power, 
 Name that is song and sweetness, 
 
 The strong everlasting tower, 
 
 Jesus the Lamb accepted, 
 
 Jesus the Priest on His throne 
 
 Jesus the King who is coming 
 Jesus Thy Name alone! 
 
 III. 
 
 THE RECEPTION OF THE MESSAGE. 
 
 No two races, no two types of the human mind, could have 
 been more widely different, more directly the opposite of each 
 other, than the Jew and the Greek. The very fact that the 
 Gospel was displeasing to the one might therefore have led us to 
 expect that it would be sure to please the other. And yet Jews 
 and Greeks, who agreed in nothing else, agreed in rejecting 
 Christ. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 17 
 
 TJ Widely different as the demands of the Jew and the Greek 
 seemed at first, they were really asking one and the same thing ; 
 they were asking for an unspiritual religion', a revelation that 
 should not deal with the* heart at all in the way of trial or 
 discipline, that would spare them the great trial of being called 
 on to trust and to love, in spite of doubt and difficulty. What 
 they sought for, in one word, was knowledge without belief. 
 The Jew demanded a demonstration of God to his senses; the 
 Greek demanded a demonstration of God to his intellect. The 
 Jew required a revelation that should compel assent ; the Greek 
 required one that should give no occasion for doubt. Both 
 demanded a religion without faith, both asked to see, both 
 refused to believe in an invisible God, and, therefore, both 
 rejected a crucified Christ. 1 
 
 1. To the Jews, the death upon the Cross was a stumbling- 
 block, i.e. it was something which they could not get over, 
 because it was so utterly contrary and so entirely repugnant to 
 their religious ideas. It was a " stumblingblock " ; literally a 
 trap, something that arrests the foot suddenly in walking and 
 causes a fall. Here, in the very forefront of the Gospel, was the 
 stumbling-block, which they could not get over, and which pre- 
 vented them from making any effort to weigh the evidences and 
 the claims of Christianity. 
 
 (1) To the Jew, the Cross meant failure of the most evident 
 and pitiful kind ; it meant impotence and weakness ; it meant a 
 life of great apparent promise, a career of great and wide-felt 
 influence, ending in the most disastrous, the most humiliating 
 acknowledgment of helplessness. 
 
 ^f It was not only incredible, it was disgusting and abominable, 
 this "word of the Cross." That men should dare to speak of 
 One crucified, of One hung upon a tree, of One who had suffered 
 the death of the accursed as the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour 
 of the world,, the chosen Servant of Jehovah their faces reddened 
 with shame or gathered blackness with rage when they heard of 
 it. In the Jewish writings of those ages our Lord is never 
 directly spoken of. His name was to them a thing of nameless 
 horror ; He was a thing of darkness so fearful, so shocking, that 
 to speak or write of Him was by tacit consent forbidden. Only 
 in far-fetched figures and suggestions was that object of loathing 
 dimly alluded to as the arch enemy of Israel. 2 
 
 1 W. C. Magce. 8 R. Winterbotham. 
 
 I COR. 2 
 
i8 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 (2) There are multitudes of Christians who worship success ; 
 and these would reject and repudiate Christ as emphatically as 
 the Jews if it were open to them, if they were really free to 
 be consistent. Christ represents failure, weakness, humiliation ; 
 and they admire only what is successful in this world, what is 
 strong in mere physical might, what is glorified by itself. 
 
 ^f They tell us that there are men of science who stumble at 
 the Cross. There are young men and middle-aged men, and old 
 men, so we are told, who follow us sympathetically until we 
 come to the proclamation of the sacrifice of Christ as the atone- 
 ment for sin, and there they stumble. Shall we remove the cross 
 that these people may not stumble? If we do we remove the 
 world's redemption at the same time. Even though it be a 
 stumbling-block to some, we must preach Christ crucified. 1 
 
 2. To the Greek-speaking heathens the doctrine was foolish- 
 noss. The Greeks had been trained to speculation. Everything 
 iii their esteem ought to assume the shape of a theory, or a 
 system, or a well-arranged argument, and ought to invite them 
 with subtlety of discussion. The Apostle reduced them to what 
 was in their eyes foolishness ; he reduced them to a fact Christ 
 crucified. 
 
 (1) Men who sought for wisdom had to find it in other quarters 
 than these. Wisdom is of two kinds : theoretical and practical. 
 Theoretical wisdom gives an account and an explanation of all 
 things that are : of the state of the world, of the puzzles and 
 trials of human life, of the nature and character of God and of 
 man. Practical wisdom, again, teaches men how to live so as 
 to make the best of life, to avoid most evil, and to attain most 
 good. Now the doctrine of the Cross failed in every way (as they 
 thought, and not unreasonably) to commend itself to wisdom. To 
 see a man, who is said to be the best, and the prime favourite of 
 heaven, dying a horrible death amidst general detestation does 
 not explain anything ; it only makes things very much more dark, 
 and perplexed, and confused than before. Moreover, to point to 
 a man who ended his days in such a wretched way can be no 
 help in the way of practical guidance. No one but an absolute 
 lunatic could desire such a fate, or regard it with anything but 
 horror. Have we not a human nature ? Are we not made of 
 
 1 J. Thomas. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 19 
 
 ilesh and blood ? Do we not rightly shrink from suffering, cold, 
 hunger, pain, and all their kindred ills ? Do we not instinctively 
 desire to be warm, to be full, to be at ease, to be wrapped in 
 comfort and in peace ? The doctrine of the Cross, which is of its 
 very nature opposed to all this, is not wisdom but foolishness ; it 
 does not deserve a hearing from sensible people. 
 
 (2) The opposition which the Gospel met with in St. Paul's 
 day was not of that day alone. The Jew and the Greek, the 
 seeker after the sign and the seeker after wisdom, exist always. 
 Still, wherever the Gospel is preached, must the preacher expect 
 to hear from each of these the same demand that St. Paul heard ; 
 still must be found, with St. Paul, Christ crucified a stumbling-block 
 to the one and foolishness to the other. For these two the seeker 
 after the sign and the seeker after wisdom ; the man who would 
 rest all religion, all philosophy, all social polity, upon authority 
 alone, and the man who would rest them all upon reason alone 
 this Jew, with his reverence for power, his love of custom and 
 tradition which are the power of the past his tendency to rest 
 always in outward law and form the power of the present his 
 distaste for all philosophical speculation, his impatience of novelty, 
 his dread of change leaning always to the side of despotism in 
 religion and, on the other hand this Greek, with his subtle and 
 restless intellect, his taste for speculation, his want of reverence 
 for the past, his desire of change, his love of novelty, his leaning 
 towards licence in society and scepticism in religion; what are 
 they these two but the representatives of those two opposite 
 types of mind which divide, and always have divided, all mankind ? 
 
 3. Those who listened to the call of God found in this 
 preaching of the Apostle exactly what both Jew and Gentile 
 were looking for. It was both a sign and a philosophy. The 
 sign, the proof, which comes closest to us all is a change of heart, 
 an emancipated will, a risen self, a new life. The mind humbled 
 and exalted at once before the Cross of Christ, accepting the 
 message of peace and love, found itself acted on by a new power. 
 All things became new ; old habits and corruptions fell off from 
 the believers ; they began to walk in newness of life. The great 
 proof of moral regeneration was being exhibited in every Christian 
 Church, and was to every one that felt it a philosophy. The 
 
20 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 nature of the soul, the character of God, the destiny and hopes 
 of man, were now realized truths. They did not depend on the 
 capacity to follow a well-reasoned system of philosophy, but on 
 the power to lead a new and a holier life. 
 
 Tf In the life of David Hill, the Chinese missionary, it is 
 recorded that as time went on Mr. Hill was increasingly 
 impressed by the conviction that something further should be 
 done to reach the literati of the province, the proud Confucian 
 scholars, in their strong antipathy to Christian truth. Frequently 
 meeting these men he could not but be struck by their contemp- 
 tuous attitude towards the Gospel, their hatred of foreigners, and 
 their prejudice against missionary work. His whole heart went 
 out to them in genuine sympathy. 
 
 By offering prizes for essays on subjects taken from the 
 Christian classics the Scriptures he got into touch with Hsi, 
 a Confucian scholar, who carried off three out of four of the prizes. 
 A little later he invited Hsi to be his teacher in studying the 
 Chinese classics. Thus Hsi came to live with Mr. Hill, and 
 became acquainted with the New Testament. Gradually, as 
 he read, the life of Jesus seemed to grow more real and full of 
 interest and wonder, and he began to understand that this 
 mighty Saviour was no mere man, as he once imagined, but God, 
 the very God, taking upon Him mortal flesh. Doubts and 
 difficulties were lost sight of. The old, unquenchable desire for 
 better things, for deliverance from sin, self, and the fear of death, 
 for light upon the dim, mysterious future, came back upon him 
 as in earlier years. And yet the burden of his guilt, the torment 
 of an accusing conscience and bondage to the opium-habit he 
 loathed but could not conquer, grew more and more intolerable. 
 At last, the consciousness of his unworthiness became so over- 
 whelming that he could bear it no longer, and placing the book 
 reverently before him, he fell upon his knees on the ground, and 
 so with many tears followed the sacred story. It was beginning 
 then to dawn upon his soul that this wonderful, Divine, yet 
 human sufferer, in all the anguish of His bitter cross and shame, 
 had something personally to do with him, with his sin and sorrow 
 and need. And so, upon his knees, the once proud, self-satisfied 
 Confucianist read on, until he came to " the place called Geth- 
 semane," and the God-man, alone, in that hour of His supreme agony 
 at midnight in the garden. Then the fountains of his long-sealed 
 heart were broken up. The very presence of God overshadowed 
 him. In the silence he seemed to hear the Saviour's cry, " My soul 
 is exceeding sorrrowf ul, even unto death " ; and into his heart there 
 came the wonderful realisation, " He loved me, and gave himself 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 *t 
 
 for me." Then, suddenly, as he himself records, the Holy Spirit 
 influenced his soul, and " with tears that flowed and would not 
 cease," he bowed and yielded himself unreservedly to the world's 
 Eedeemer, as his Saviour and his God. 1 
 
 4. Christ the Power of God. The power of God is the force 
 from above, manifested in those spiritual wonders which transform 
 the heart of the believer ; expiation which restores God to him, 
 the renewal of will which restores him to God. We know now 
 by experience of many ages how much more powerful that 
 defeat, humiliation, overthrow, of Christ upon the Cross is than 
 any victory which God could have given Him. It would have 
 been a very small and commonplace exercise of power if God had 
 interfered to set Christ free from the Cross. Had He come in 
 darkness and flame ; had He fallen upon the murderers of our 
 Lord with sudden destruction; had He slain them as one man 
 with the breath of His mouth, it had been a very poor display 
 of the Divine power. Anybody could have done that (we may 
 say with reverence) if only he possessed the necessary physical 
 power. But to let Christ die, without a sign, without a struggle ; 
 to let Him suffer all things ; to let Him taste of defeat, disgrace, 
 and death; that was an exercise of power which was, indeed, 
 worthy of God. 
 
 (1) Christ crucified is the power of God in self-sacrifice. 
 There is no power among men so great as that which conquers 
 evil by enduring evil. It takes the rage of its enemy and lets 
 him break his malignity across the enduring meekness of its 
 violated love. Just here it is that evil becomes insupportable 
 to itself. It can argue against everything but suffering patience ; 
 this disarms it. Looking in the face of suffering patience it 
 sinks exhausted. All its fire is spent. In this view it is that 
 Christ crucified is the power of God. It is because He shows 
 God in self-sacrifice, because He brings out and makes his- 
 torical in the world God's passive virtue, which is, in fact, the 
 culminating head of power in His character. 
 
 (2) Christ is, in His sacrifice, the mighty power of God for 
 the salvation of men. This is the power that has new-created 
 and sent home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted 
 myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls. It can do for 
 
 1 Life of David Hill, 118, 132, 
 
22 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 us all that we want done. It can regenerate our habits, settle 
 our disorders, glorify our baseness, and assimilate us perfectly to 
 God. There never yet was a human being delivered from the 
 power of sin, except by the power of God ; and the Divine power 
 never was exerted upon any human being with that view, except 
 through the Cross of Christ, that is, in consequence of what 
 Christ has done and suffered in our room and stead. 
 
 If Christ can take the man at his worst and the woman at her 
 basest, and out of them make saints that can love God and that 
 God has loved; make saints that can cause the very breath of 
 the world to grow fragrant and the very heart of the world to 
 grow tender. 1 
 
 (3) The power of Christ crucified is permanent and universal. 
 Christ addresses Himself to the world; and His influence 
 transcends all external accidents that serve very well for pomps 
 and shows, because He addresses the hearts of men. The power 
 of " Christ crucified " is this, He works personally in every 
 believer, and is present to strengthen every faithful heart. The 
 power which would have gratified the Jews would have been the 
 demonstration of a moment a sign, a wonder, a triumph; but 
 the power which is to save a world must know no decay ; it must 
 exist at this moment in the same fulness in men's hearts as it did 
 of old on the day of Pentecost. The Jew would have degraded 
 and confined the power of the Messiah ; the Jew and not St. Paul 
 would have put the stumbling-block in the way of man's salva- 
 tion ; the truth, the simple truth, which was so obnoxious was 
 after all the most complete manifestation of the power of God. 
 
 5. The Wisdom of God. While the Cross of Christ, viewed in 
 its bearing upon the condition and character of men, is a most 
 striking manifestation of Divine power, it is no less striking a 
 manifestation of Divine wisdom. Wisdom is shown in the 
 adaptation of means to an end, so as most effectually to 
 accomplish the object intended. The wisdom of God is the light 
 which breaks on the believer's inward eye, when in the Person of 
 Christ he beholds the Divine plan which unites as in a single 
 work of love, creation, incarnation, redemption, the gathering 
 together of all things under one head, the final glorification of the 
 universe. 
 
 1 A, M. Fairbairn. 
 
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 23 
 
 (1) The Cross of Christ affords us a knowledge of the Divine 
 character, which is complete in all its aspects, which shows us at 
 once the just God and the Justifier of the ungodly a knowledge 
 which, as it stands revealed in His own word, and when it is not 
 perverted by the ungodliness of the human heart, brings before 
 our minds the Divine character, in the manner best fitted to 
 mould or transform us into the full resemblance of the moral 
 perfection of God. 
 
 (2) Christ crucified is to the Christian the wisdom of God 
 because the Cross explains (so far as they can be explained in 
 this world) the dark mysteries of life and death, and because it 
 is the practical guide to truth and happiness. All the wisdom 
 man needs to take him safely through the perils and perplexities 
 of life is to be learned from the Cross. 
 
 TI St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say 
 that all the learning in the world had never taught him so much 
 as the sight of Christ upon the cross. 
 
 (3) The Divine wisdom is such that it comes within the reach of 
 all. The wisdom of man would be offered to the select few. Not 
 everybody can read Plato and understand him. Very few can 
 read Hegel and understand him. There are great thinkers 
 concerning whom we take it for granted that they are great 
 thinkers, but can only say that the little we understand is good, 
 and that we assume that the rest is quite as good. But God's 
 wisdom comes to all. What if the world were to be saved 
 by the wisdom of man ? How many could thus be saved ? What 
 if we had to depend for redemption on the utterances of some wise 
 philosopher ? Thousands of the poor sons and daughters of men 
 possessing little intellect and less learning would not be able to lay 
 hold of it. But this is a wisdom coming into the hearts of all, 
 and first of all by preference into the hearts of the simple and 
 untutored and childlike. 
 
 Away, haunt thou not me 
 
 Thou vain Philosophy ! 
 
 Little hast thou bestead, 
 
 Save to perplex the head, 
 
 And leave the spirit dead. 
 
 Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go, 
 
 While from the secret treasure-depths below, 
 
24 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD 
 
 Fed by the skiey shower, 
 
 And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high, 
 
 Wisdom at once, and Power, 
 
 Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly? 
 
 Why labour at the dull mechanic oar, 
 
 When the fresh breeze is blowing, 
 
 And the strong current flowing, 
 
 Eight onward to the Eternal Shore? 1 
 
 1 Clough, Poems, 24. 
 
THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Alexander (S. A.), The Christianity of St. Paul, 13. 
 
 Benson (E. W.), Living Theology, 191. 
 
 Bigg (C.), The Spirit of Christ in Common Life, 267. 
 
 Brooks (P.), Seeking Life, 259. 
 
 Clayton (C.), Stanhope Sermons, 366. 
 
 Cooper (T. J.), Love's Unveiling, 93. 
 
 Davidson (A. D.), Lectures and Sermons, 1. 
 
 Ellis (P. H.), Old Beliefs and Modern Believers, 69. 
 
 Goulburn (E. M.), Occasional Sermons, ii. 235. 
 
 Horton (R. F.), The Triumph of the Cross, 31. 
 
 Horwill (H. W.), The Old Gospel in the New Era, 1. 
 
 Hunter (J.), De Profundis Clamavi, 74. 
 
 Little (W. J. Knox), The Hopes of the Passion, 106. 
 
 Lucas (A.), At the Parting of the Ways, 1. 
 
 Mabie (H. C.), The Meaning and Message of the Cross, 47. 
 
 Mac Arthur (R. S.), The Calvary Pulpit, 1. 
 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 19 ; A Rosary of 
 
 Christian Graces, 273. 
 Melvill (H.), Lothbury Lectures, 224. 
 Moore (A. L.), The Message of the Gospel, 16. 
 Neale (J. M.), Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, ii. 187. 
 Park (E. A.), Discourses, 45. 
 Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, i. 76. 
 Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 201. 
 Shelford (L. E.), By Way of Remembrance, 13. 
 Vaughan (D. J.), The Days of the Son of Man, 337. 
 Wardell (R. J.), Studies in Homiletics, 32. 
 Wheeler (W. C.), Sermons and Addresses, 44. 
 Young (D. T.), The Crimson Book, 71. 
 Christian World Pulpit, ii. 385 (Saphir) ; xvii. 289 (Brown) ; xxv. 219 
 
 (Shalders) ; xxvii. 38 (Rogers) ; xxxviii. 420 (Whittaker) ; Hi. 264 
 
 (Campbell) ; liii. 67 (Parker) ; Ivii. 67 (Rogers) ; Ixi. 193 (Boyd 
 
 Carpenter) ; Ixiv. 182 (Smith) ; Ixx. 58 (Lee). 
 Church of England Pulpit, liii. 230 (Boyd Carpenter). 
 Church Family Newspaper, Aug. 26, 1910, p. 676 (Tetley). 
 
 
THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, 
 and him crucified. i Cor. ii. 2. 
 
 THERE is another way of translating the text. Some have 
 translated it thus: "For I did not determine to know any- 
 thing among you. . . ." According to Godet, "the Apostle 
 does not say ' I determined (judged good) not to know . . .' but 
 'I did not judge good to know . . .' He intentionally set 
 aside the different elements of human knowledge by which he 
 might have been tempted to prop up the preaching of salvation. 
 He deemed that he ought not to go in quest of such means." 
 
 I. 
 
 THE APOSTLE'S DETERMINATION. 
 
 1. / determined. There is no doubt or hesitation in this 
 statement. These are the words of one who had weighed the 
 matter well, and knew whereof he spoke. Here is one who blows 
 the trumpet of truth with no uncertain sound, who speaks with 
 no tremor in his voice ; who has a decided conviction of what he 
 knows and believes, and who thinks, and speaks, and acts in 
 accordance with that knowledge and belief. St. Paul has decided 
 for himself what is true ; and is determined to declare it and to 
 stand by it. 
 
 K St. Paul was no hired teacher not an official expounder 
 of a system. He preached what he believed. He felt that his 
 words were Eternal Truth ; and hence came their power. He 
 preached ever as if God Almighty were at his side ; hence arises 
 the possibility of discarding elegance of diction and rules of 
 oratory. For it is half-way towards making us believe, when a 
 man believes himself. Faith produces faith. If you want to 
 convince men, and ask how you shall do it, we reply, Believe 
 
2 8 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 with all your heart and soul, and some souls will be surely 
 kindled by your flame. 1 
 
 2. Not improbably this determination of St. Paul's represents 
 a temptation conquered, a soul-conflict won. To such a one as 
 he, it would be a trial of spirit to contemplate service in such a 
 city as Corinth. Corinth was a centre of fashion. Shall he 
 essay to appeal to the fashionable crowd with " Christ crucified " 
 as the central theme ? Will he not repel them thus ? May he 
 not emphasize other aspects of Christ which will be attractive 
 and not repellent ? Thus the evil one would ply him. But the 
 God of peace crushed Satan under his feet, and his splendid 
 " I determined " rings out. Corinth was an aesthetic city. Its 
 architecture is a proverb still, and its brasses are still famous. 
 Corinth was an intellectual city. Its typical Greek love of 
 philosophy all men know. It was an opulent commercial city 
 too. Shall he not soften the truth and smooth his message? 
 Will not taste, and culture, and materialism, and wealth resent 
 the preaching of " Christ crucified " ? It may be, but, " I 
 determined," cries this hero of the Cross. He will cry out and 
 shout in the delicate ears of Corinth nothing but the crucified 
 Lord. 
 
 3. What is the ground of this intense and all-absorbing faith ? 
 St. Paul believes that he has in his hand something that will 
 explain man to himself, a man's life to himself. He is so firmly 
 convinced of this that, although his mind is large and capacious 
 and he can view with a sympathetic admiration many of the mag- 
 nificent manifestations of world-power, still, in his own estimate, 
 the sacred message which he has to give to the world is worth 
 all else besides. He is quite alive, as his letter shows, to the 
 variety of powers, the nimbleness of intellect, the ambitious skill 
 which the Corinthians possess ; he knows that they are a people 
 eager to express themselves in many ways, that they rejoice in 
 the powers of rhetoric, in the gifts of tongue, in skilful elucida- 
 tion of philosophical mysteries. But still he comes to these, and 
 he says : " I determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus 
 Christ, and him crucified." He has made up his mind that this 
 particular formula, "Jesus Christ, and him crucified," expresses 
 
 1 F. W. Robertson, 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 29 
 
 for the world a great, a central, an extensive truth. This is the 
 knowledge for which St. Paul counts all else but loss " to know 
 Jesus Christ, and him crucified." This is the simple gospel : its 
 simplicity is its offence in the eyes of many. Nevertheless there 
 are infinite depths in it. It is as when we look into the clear 
 depths of some swift-flowing river. Its very clearness had 
 deceived us. We thought it but a shallow stream, and are 
 astonished at its undreamed-of depths. So with this message of 
 St. Paul, we notice its simplicity first, its apparent narrowness, 
 its exclusiveness ; and then we see something of its depth, its 
 boundlessness, its comprehensiveness. 
 
 J Berry told some of his Bolton friends, at the time, how 
 ed and disappointed he had been at finding himself power- 
 less for a while to give help and comfort to a woman who was 
 dying, amid tragic and squalid surroundings, in one of the lowest 
 parts of the town. He had been called upon to minister to her, 
 but as he unfolded the Christian message, as he was wont to 
 preach it then the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood and the 
 Eternal Love as he told the story of the Prodigal and the 
 Magdalene, her heart gave no response, and she looked up with 
 eyes which seemed to him to ask if that was all he had to say 
 to a lost and dying woman. Under a new afflatus, that came he 
 knew not whence, he began with trembling voice to speak on 
 evangelical simplicities, to tell of Christ's death for a world's sin, 
 and to point her to the Cross for pardon. To his joy arid wonder 
 he found that in response to words as simple as those he heard 
 at his mother's knee, the sinful one found rest and peace. 1 
 
 Who speaketh now of peace ? 
 
 Who seeketh for release ? 
 The Cross is strength, the solemn Cross is gain. 
 
 The Cross is Jesus' breast, 
 
 Here giveth He the rest 
 That to His best belov'd doth still remain. 
 
 How sweet an ended strife ! 
 
 How sweet a dawning life! 
 Here will I lie as one who draws his breath 
 With ease, and hearken what my Saviour saith 
 Concerning me ; the solemn Cross is gain ; 
 
 Who willeth now to choose? 
 
 Who strives to bind or loose ? 
 Sweet life, sweet death, sweet triumph and sweet pain, 2 
 
 1 J. S. Drummond, Charles A. Berry, 35. 2 Dora Greemvell. 
 
30 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 II. 
 
 THE CONCENTRATION OF HIS MESSAGE. 
 
 Every act of self-determination involves a corresponding self- 
 repression. Every selection includes at least one alternative. 
 No man commits himself to a really practical resolution without 
 first putting away and rejecting. Many pursuits invited St. Paul. 
 They were attractive, pleasant, honourable, useful to the world. 
 He had all the instincts of a student. He was a scholar with 
 splendid capacity. He might have been, we feel persuaded, a 
 greater than Philo, than Seneca a greater than Plato himself. 
 " To know Jesus Christ, and him crucified " is the end for which 
 everything else is sacrificed. By "Jesus Christ," the Apostle 
 understands His manifestation in general His life, death, and 
 Messianic dignity. Yet, while confining himselr to this elemen- 
 tary theme of preaching, he might still have found means to 
 commend Jesus to the attention and admiration of the wise. But 
 he determined "not to know anything, save Jesus Christ, and 
 him crucified." He will not know even Jesus Christ except in 
 one aspect. That is the idea. One of our best exegetes thus 
 renders the words : " And even Him as having been crucified." 
 It is the crucified Christ alone that he will know. Observe the 
 far-reaching word " know." Not merely does he refuse to speak 
 on any other theme, but he will " know " none other. The 
 crucified Saviour shall fill the whole horizon of his mind and 
 heart. He will, so to say, severely limit his Christology to this 
 phase : " Even Him as having been crucified." 
 
 1. St. Paul disdained systems of philosophy or the teaching of 
 morality merely. The Gospel has been presented as a philosophy. 
 The development of the Church, the innumerable attacks of 
 scepticism, the rise of problems within Christianity itself have 
 rendered imperative the presentation of the Christian system 
 as a well-ordered scheme of philosophical thought. Profound 
 thinkers have arisen from time to time in the Christian Church 
 who have demonstrated the reasonableness of Christianity as a 
 philosophical system, and the work of these thinkers is of great 
 value. But where one man is converted by reading books of 
 apologetics or theology, a thousand are drawn and held captive 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 31 
 
 by the pathos of Calvary the moving, subduing story of the 
 Cross. Men of all orders and degrees, of all climes and tongues, 
 have owned the wondrous contagion of the Cross, and have 
 yielded to its strange compulsion. 
 
 ^[ We are philosophers who have found the truth, chemists 
 who have discovered (or rather been told of) the elixir of life ; as 
 we read again our Plato and Aristotle, and even the modern 
 searchers after truth, we are the children 
 
 On whom those truths do rest 
 That they are toiling all their lives to find. 
 
 To be at the centre of all things ; to have disclosed in our unde- 
 serving ears the secret of the ages ; to know for certain how the 
 world came into being; to have in the Cross the long sought 
 after key to the suffering of the world ; to be told what all this 
 curious world is tending towards that is our real position in the 
 realm of thought. 1 
 
 2. Theology cannot take the place of the Cross. Nothing has 
 been more fatal in the history of Christianity than that marvel- 
 lous intellectual curiosity which has been earnest to invent 
 doctrine after doctrine, experience upon experience, till there 
 appears a complete scheme of dogmatic ideas which is called 
 systematic theology. But theological ideas, however systematic, 
 lead only to barrenness and dryness if theologians ignore the 
 fundamental principle which the Apostle has laid down that 
 the key is not to be found in a theology apart from a person, 
 nor in a person apart from a theology. Whatever the Apostles 
 teach, they always teach Christ. They never turn their 
 teaching into dry intellectual formulae ; they abhor the exagger- 
 ated rationalism for it is nothing more of the extreme dog- 
 matist, just as they have no sympathy with the incoherent gush 
 which satisfies indolent devotion. 
 
 ^J A man may be a great theologian and at the same time a 
 great sinner. If theology could save anybody the devil himself 
 would have^been converted long ago. He is one of the most 
 expert theologians alive ; he can quote Scripture for his purpose 
 with marvellous propriety ; but he is the devil yet for all that. 
 On the other hand, there are many whose theological knowledge 
 
 1 A. F. "Wilmington Ingram, Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards, 16. 
 
3 2 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 is hardly worth the name, but whose devout and godly lives are 
 a pattern and an inspiration to all who see them. 1 
 
 3. Science cannot take the place of the Cross. Some are 
 constantly asserting the claim of science to supersede Christianity. 
 Many well-meaning Christians are spending the time which 
 might be devoted to evangelistic work in endeavouring to recon- 
 cile the book of Genesis with the latest scientific theory, or in 
 attempting, from a very superficial knowledge of the subject, to 
 reply to men who not only possess an enormously larger stock of 
 facts on scientific matters, but who also and this is far more 
 important have had the advantage of a scientific training. Let 
 us leave to experts investigation into the condition of the early 
 inhabitants of the world. The most serious question in the 
 world is not, What think ye of Darwin ? or even, What think ye 
 of Moses ? It is, What think ye of Christ ? 
 
 world invisible, we view thee, 
 world intangible, we touch thee, 
 world unknowable, we know thee, 
 Inapprehensible, we clutch thee. 
 
 Does the fish soar to find the ocean, 
 The eagle plunge to find the air 
 That we ask of the stars in motion 
 If they have rumour of thee there ! 
 
 Not where the wheeling systems darken, 
 And our benumbed conceiving soars ! 
 The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 
 Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 
 
 The angels keep their ancient places; 
 Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 
 Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, 
 That miss the many-splendoured thing. 
 
 But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) 
 Cry; and upon thy so sore loss 
 Shall shine the traffic of Jacop's ladder 
 Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. 
 
 1 H. W. Horwill. 
 
i CORINTHIANS 11. 2 33 
 
 Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, 
 Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems, 
 And lo, Christ walking on the water 
 Not of Genesareth, but Thames ! l 
 
 4. St. Paul disdained human eloquence. It is certain that 
 St. Paul was not unversed in the wisdom, or unskilled in the 
 rhetoric, which was all the vogue in his day. The Apostle could 
 have presented his message in a beautiful dress, and might have 
 recommended himself to his hearers by polished periods; but 
 he knew very well that the power of the Gospel did not consist 
 in these things. 
 
 5. St. Paul was careful to efface self. He did not mar his 
 message by any reference to himself. His eye was fixed on 
 Christ. His desire was to exalt Christ. His zeal expended itself 
 in proclaiming Christ the Saviour of sinners. There were no 
 side glances at his own prospects, his own reputation, his own 
 success. He was content to hide behind the person of Christ, so 
 that He might be seen and loved, and honoured and exalted. 
 Like John the Baptist, whose business it was to cry " Behold the 
 Lamb," and to point his hearers away from himself, saying, " He 
 must increase, but I must decrease," so it was St. Paul's business 
 to declare Christ crucified and to keep himself in the background. 
 
 If In any work which is to live, or be really beautiful, there 
 must be the spirit of the Cross. That which is to be a temple of 
 God must never have the marble polluted with the name of the 
 architect or builder. There can be no real success, except when 
 a man has ceased to think of his own success. 2 
 
 Tf As Michael Angelo wore a lamp on his cap to prevent his 
 own shadow from being thrown upon the picture which he was 
 painting, so the Christian minister and servant needs to have 
 the candle of the Spirit always burning in his heart, lest the 
 reflection of self and self-glorying may fall upon his work to 
 darken and defile it. 3 
 
 III. 
 
 THE COMPREHENSIVENESS OF HIS MESSAGE. 
 
 When the Apostle tells us that he is determined to know 
 nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he impresses upon 
 
 1 Francis Thompson. 2 F. W. Robertson. 3 A. J. Gordon. 
 
 I COR. 3 
 
34 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 our minds that this is "the hidden wisdom which God hath 
 ordained before the world." He means that to know Christ 
 crucified is the maximum of knowledge, not the minimum. He 
 means that in Jesus Christ and Him crucified all doctrines cul- 
 minate, and from Jesus Christ and Him crucified all duties 
 emanate and evolve. We live in a world which may well be 
 illustrated as a labyrinth, and as we pursue our way, there are 
 many deviating paths down which we may be tempted to wander. 
 But for us who desire practical wisdom for the conduct of life, 
 we do not want a map of the whole labyrinth ; what we do want 
 is a silver thread which may pass through our hands and guide 
 us to the secret part of all things. That guiding thread St. Paul 
 claims to give us in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and Him 
 crucified. 
 
 ^ " You are going down to the assize, my lord ? " " Yes." 
 " What do you think you will do with that remarkable series of 
 frauds committed some time ago ? " "I do not know." " What 
 do you think you will do with that case of forgery, the most 
 elaborate and intricate piece of business I ever heard of in all 
 our criminal jurisprudence what do you think you will do with 
 it ? " "I do not know." " Why, are you going down to the city 
 in a loose mind?" "No." "What have you resolved to do?" 
 " One thing. I have determined nothing except one thing." 
 " What is that, my lord ? " " That the law shall be administered 
 and justice shall be done." That is what St. Paul said. 1 
 
 ^J Mr. Guyse did not condemn, but both approved and 
 practised, the preaching of Christian morals, while he denied that 
 such preaching is all that is meant by the phrase and commission, 
 "to preach Christ." His statements on this department were 
 the following : 
 
 Preaching Christ (in a latitude of the expression) takes in 
 the whole compass of Christian religion considered in its refer- 
 ence to Christ. It extends to all its noble improvements of 
 natural light and principles, and to all its glorious peculiarities 
 of the supernatural and incomprehensible kind, as each of these 
 may, one way or other, be referred to Him. In this sense there 
 is no doctrine, institution, precept, or promise no grace, privilege, 
 or duty toward God and man no instance of faith, love, repent- 
 ance, worship, or obedience, suited to the Gospel state and to the 
 design and obligations of the Christian religion that don't belong 
 to preaching Christ. But to bring all these with any propriety 
 
 1 J. Parker. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 35 
 
 under this denomination, they must be considered, according to 
 their respective natures or kinds, in their reference to Christ, 
 that He may be interwoven with them and appear to be concerned 
 in them. They must be preached, not with the air of a heathen 
 moralist or Platonic philosopher, but with the spirit of a minister 
 of Christ, referring them up to Him, as revealed, or enjoined, or 
 purchased by Him as shining in their brightest lustres and 
 triumphing in all their glories through Him as built upon Him 
 and animated by Him as lodged in His hands who is head over 
 all things to the church as standing in the connections, uses, and 
 designs in which He hath placed them as known, enjoyed, or 
 practised by light and grace derived from Him as to be 
 accounted for to Him as acceptable to God, and advantageous 
 to our salvation, alone through Him, by faith in Him as enforced 
 upon us by motives and obligations taken from Him and as 
 tending to His glory and the glory of God in Him. 1 
 
 3 A company of young men were once met at supper in the 
 ays of Athens, and Socrates, the great teacher of morality, 
 was present. The conversation turned on their guest. 
 " Socrates," said Alcibiades, " is like the figure of the Wood-god 
 which you see in the workshops of sculptors : if you open it, you 
 shall find it filled with images of all the gods." That was the 
 highest praise which in those days of heathen worship it was 
 possible to give to a human being. It was as much as to say 
 that all the forms of Divine life imagined and worshipped at that 
 time were to be found in the one life of Socrates. And, far off, it 
 may be taken as an outshadowing of the reality presented to us in 
 this word of St. Paul concerning Christ. 2 
 
 If In Tennyson's " Palace of Art " we have the story of how a 
 soul tried to satisfy herself with an environment completely 
 beautiful. Art and Literature were drawn upon lavishly to make 
 her a meet dwelling-place. But into this paradise of all beauty 
 despair crept, and made havoc. Fear fell like a blight, and the 
 question of questions came to be 
 
 What is it that will take away niy sin, 
 And save me lest I die ? 
 
 At last, come to her true self, and awake to her need of God, 
 
 " Make me a cottage in a vale," she said, 
 "Where I may mourn and pray," 
 
 Yet Tennyson had too wide a vision of the truth to make an end 
 
 1 John Guyse. 2 A. Macleod. 
 
36 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 there. He honours the " first needs " in his poem, but he is 
 careful to leave room for all that enriches life. And so he makes 
 his penitent soul ask as a last request, 
 
 Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are 
 So lightly, beautifully built: 
 Perchance I may return with others there 
 When I have purged my guilt. 1 
 
 i. To know Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is perfectly possible to know the things that are said about 
 Christ, and not to know Him about whom these things are said. 
 Theological cobwebs have been wrapped round the gracious figure 
 of Christ with disastrous results. He must be known by 
 personal, persistent, private communion; by long, intense 
 contemplation known as He was known to Loyola, on whose 
 upturned face and uplifted hands the very stigmata of the Cross 
 started out. 
 
 1. To know Jesus Christ is to know man in ideal development. 
 In Him we behold our human nature fully inspired and possessed 
 by God. He is at once a revelation of God and a manifestation 
 of human perfection. As much of God as could be held in a 
 human mind and heart, and shown in human virtues, was found 
 in Christ Jesus. He is the Son of Man, the only perfect specimen 
 of humanity that has lived upon the earth, the ideal of what we 
 ought to be, and the type of the new creation. 
 
 "U The Cross had become the unchanging centre of my 
 thoughts, but these, as they revolved around it, had gradually, 
 yet surely, formed for themselves an orbit widely diverging from 
 the circle in which Christian consciousness is wont to move. The 
 Cross, as I looked at it more and more intently, became to me the 
 revelation of a loving and a suffering God. I learnt to look upon 
 the sacrifice of the death of Christ, not only as being the all- 
 sufficient satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, but also as 
 the everlasting witness to God's sympathy with man. The mystery 
 of the Cross did not, it is true, explain any one of the enigmas 
 connected with our mortal existence and destiny, but it linked 
 itself in my spirit with them all. It was itself an enigma fiung 
 down by God alongside the sorrowful problem of human life, the 
 confession of Omnipotence itself to some stern reality of misery 
 and wrong. 2 
 
 1 Arch. Alexander, 3 Dora Greeuwell. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 37 
 
 2. To know Christ is to know God. Christ reveals God to us. 
 The life of Christ shows us the holiness of God ; the patience of 
 Christ shows us the longsuffering of God ; the compassion of 
 Christ shows us the mercy of God ; the tenderness of Christ 
 shows us the gentleness of God; the sympathy of Christ opens 
 to us the very heart of God : while the death of Christ reveals 
 to us the justice of God. 
 
 Here hast thou found me, oh mine enemy ! 
 
 And yet rejoice not thou, by strength shall none prevail. 
 
 By noon thine arrows fly, 
 None faileth of its mark ; thou dost not tire ; 
 And yet rejoice not thou! Each shaft of fire 
 That finds me here becomes a living nail. 
 What strength of thine, what skill can now avail 
 To tear me from the Cross? My soul and heart 
 Are fastened here! I feel the cloven dart 
 Pierce keenly through. What hands have power to wring - 
 Me hence ? What voice can now so sweetly sing 
 To lure my spirit from its rest ? Oh now 
 
 Eejoice my soul, for thou 
 Hast trodden down thy foeman's strength through pain, 1 
 
 ii. To know Jesus Christ crucified. 
 
 Education, Plato tells us, is the turning away of the soul 
 from the images, shadows, simulacra of things, to the facts and 
 verities of real existence. Education is not increase of knowledge, 
 nor is it the quickening and strengthening of one faculty, such 
 as the intellect. Education is the awakening and unfolding of 
 the whole nature, due regard being had to those capacities which 
 belong to the higher range. Nothing contributes more to man's 
 education than the discovery of a great fact, the recognition and 
 contemplation of a great thought. It uplifts, expands, and 
 augments the entire being. Now "Christ crucified" is the 
 greatest, the most transcendent fact in the whole universe. It is 
 the master-thought of the Eternal. To know Christ crucified 
 is to know the meaning of life. The death of Christ is the solving 
 power of the mystery of the universe. It is also to know how to 
 live and how to die. The Cross is the moral lever for the world. 
 It lifts men above the power of sin. 
 
 1 Dora Greenwell. 
 
38 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 TJ In a letter to a friend, Elmslie describes his experience 
 among the children in an Edinburgh east-end Sabbath School : 
 " When T was ending I spoke of how Jesus deserved to be loved, 
 and that they should ask to be made to love Him. One little 
 girlie whispered, ' I will ask Him, for, oh, I do want to love Him ! ' 
 and when I said it was time to go away they cried, ' Oh, dinna 
 send's away yet, tell's mair about Jesus'; and then they came 
 round me, and made me promise to tell them ' bonnie stories about 
 Jesus ' next Sabbath. I have found that nothing interests them 
 more than what is directly about Jesus. I could not help telling 
 you all these little things, but I never had the same sort of feeling 
 in teaching a class before, and I would like you to remember 
 sometimes my poor little children down in the Canongate. I wish 
 I could take them all into a better atmosphere, for it is sad to 
 think of their chances of ever becoming good in such an evil, 
 wretched place. Harper and I have been having many nice talks. 
 I mean to preach often in the summer I want to." 1 
 
 1. To know Christ crucified is to know the meaning of life. 
 
 (1) In the Cross of Christ we come to understand the mystery 
 of human suffering. Sorrow and pain pass no man by ; and no 
 reasoning can argue them out of existence, or reduce our fight 
 with disease and suffering to a phantom battle. Living in a 
 world where the blows of misfortune are constantly falling ; where 
 the ravages of suffering are nowhere long absent; where every 
 joy is every moment exposed to blight; where development 
 yields new pain; where increasing knowledge, increasing refine- 
 ment, increasing goodness and sympathy mean increasing sorrow, 
 and men and women suffer, not for being worse, but for being 
 better than their fellows, it is no wonder that the Cross appeals 
 to human hearts everywhere as a symbol of human life, and holds 
 us under the spell of a solemn fascination. Eejoice as we may, 
 and we ought to rejoice in all that brightens and sweetens 
 life, yet the fellowship of suffering is wider and deeper than the 
 fellowship of happiness. A German poet has said that the image 
 of humanity, broken in all its limbs, transfixed in hands and feet 
 and sorrowful unto death, has become distasteful to men ; but that 
 can be true of men only in their light, careless, self-indulgent 
 hours. In all our deeper experiences our feet tread the path 
 that leads to Calvary, and we seek the Man of Sorrows acquainted 
 
 1 W, Robertson Nicoll, W. O. Elmslie, 41. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 39 
 
 with grief. Christ has not diminished the suffering of the world, 
 but He has given it a new and nobler meaning, made it appear 
 to be no longer God's wrath and curse, but God's love and 
 blessing. 
 
 ^j The Cross is the supreme instance of the law that no moral 
 or spiritual victory is won, no glorious thing can be done, without 
 suffering, and here suffering was borne to its farthest verge in 
 death. 1 
 
 (2) In the Cross of Christ we learn the meaning and power 
 of self-sacrifice. The Cross, as the revelation and symbol of 
 redemption through sacrifice, needs to be brought back to our 
 common life. So far as the principle is concerned, it is right to 
 apply, and we do instinctively apply, all the New Testament 
 phraseology of redemption to parents sacrificing themselves for 
 the good of their children, to patriots suffering and dying for the 
 sacred causes of justice and freedom, to the vast army of labourers 
 who procure for us our necessities and luxuries at the cost of 
 their nobler growth and comfort. Without shedding of blood 
 blood of body, blood of brain, blood of heart there has been no 
 remission of sins, no redemption from evil conditions, no progress 
 from a lower to a higher state of society. Figuratively, if not 
 literally, men have been crucified, their hands torn, their hearts 
 pierced through with many sorrows, in the interest of every 
 onward step and movement of mankind. The work which really 
 helps the world work of statesman and philanthropist, work 
 of poet and painter and doctor, work of teacher and preacher 
 is work into which men put their life, their heart's blood. It 
 is this power to give without counting the cost to one's self, 
 this power of suffering and sacrifice, that is the secret of all 
 redeeming work. 
 
 If There are elements of suffering for sin which are not only 
 possible to the guiltless, but which only they are capable of. 
 Not only can a good man suffer for another's sin, but it is just 
 in proportion to his goodness that he will suffer. The sin of a 
 dearly loved child will give pain to a saintly mother far more keen 
 than the child himself will feel. The child's sin blunts his 
 sensitiveness to holiness and to the evil of sin. The mother's 
 holiness and love will be the measure of her suffering. No suffer- 
 
 1 P. A. Ellis. 
 
40 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ing for sin can be so deep as that which is endured for the bad 
 by the good who love them and do not partake of their guilt. 1 
 
 (3) In the Cross of Christ we realize the meaning of sin. 
 Before that, the world treated sin lightly ; after that it could not. 
 The world will always treat sin lightly until it understands the 
 meaning of God condemning sin in the flesh where Christ died. 
 Belief in Christ means, and must mean, a sense of the guilt of 
 sin, a hatred of sin, a personal sense of sin and penitence for it. 
 Apart from this there could be no coming to the Saviour, or 
 trust in Him, since there would be no felt necessity for 
 salvation. 
 
 Tf The true cross of the Kedeemer was the sin and sorrow of 
 this world that was what lay heavy on His heart and that is 
 the cross we shall share with Him, that is the cup we must drink 
 of with Him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love 
 which is one with His sorrow. 2 
 
 (4) In the Cross we come to know the victory of failure. 
 The Cross is the revelation and symbol of victory, but of victory 
 iu failure and because of failure. There never was such an 
 apparent failure as the Crucifixion. But the Cross was not the 
 end but the beginning the beginning of victory an endless 
 victory to the cause of goodness in the world. There are successes 
 that are sadder than any failures, arid failures that are more 
 glorious than any successes. And the history of all that is best 
 on this earth is one continuous illustration of this law of the 
 Cross. The lives of not a few of the great religious leaders of 
 the last century seemed more or less a failure Kobertson's, 
 Maurice's, Colenso's; but they are having now a second and a 
 better life the victory which comes of the apparent defeat, and 
 because of it. 
 
 He passed in the light of the sun, 
 
 In the path that the many tread, 
 And his work, like theirs, was done 
 
 For the sake of his daily bread ; 
 But he carried a sword, and, one by one, 
 Out there in the common light of the sun, 
 
 The sins of his life fell dead. 
 
 1 P. A. Ellis. 2 Dinah Morris in Adam Bede. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 41 
 
 His feet never found the way 
 
 That leads to the porch of fame, 
 But he strove to live each day 
 
 With a conscience void of blame; 
 And he carried a cross whose shadow lay 
 Over every step of his lowly way, 
 
 And he treasured its splendid shame. 
 
 So life was a long, hard fight 
 
 For the wrong was ever there, 
 And the cross ne'er out of sight, 
 
 The cross of a grey world's care; 
 But right through the day to the failing light 
 He carried the cross and fought the fight, 
 
 Great-hearted to do and bear. 
 
 Night fell and the sword was sheathed, 
 
 And the cross of life laid down, 
 And into his ear was breathed 
 
 A whisper of fair renown; 
 And the nameless victor was glory-wreathed, 
 For the Voice that said, "Let thy sword be sheathed," 
 
 Said also, " And take thy crown.' 1 1 
 
 (5) To know Christ crucified is to know God as a loving Father. 
 In St. Paul's day this was an idea so new and so wonderful and 
 so wonderfully helpful that it excluded in the Apostle's mind 
 all other knowledge. God was no longer a wrathful potentate, 
 He was no longer the patron of the Jewish nation only, He was 
 the Father of all men, who willed not that any should perish. 
 In the knowledge of Jesus Christ there had burst upon the 
 Apostle's mind the all-transforming thought that God was not 
 law, but love. The death of Christ this is the great truth of 
 truths in the gospel, the great wonder of wonders, the finishing 
 and perfect proof of that love of God to us, beyond which we 
 can conceive nothing higher. All in the gospel rests upon it; 
 without it the gospel could not be understood. From the Cross 
 of Christ streams all the light which makes the gospel the 
 message of peace and comfort to sinful and dying men. 
 
 f In one of the ancient churches of Central Italy there is a 
 unique representation of the Crucifixion. Behind the Christ on 
 
 1 Percy C. Ainsworth Poems and Sonnets, 17. 
 
42 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the Cross we catch a dim vision of the Eternal Father ; the hands 
 of the Father behind the hands of the Son, and the nails which 
 pierce the Son piercing the Father also. We shrink from it at 
 first as coarse and rude, but as we think about it we feel that it 
 is the old painter saying, in the only language which he could 
 command, what has been so long and strangely forgotten, if not 
 in form yet in reality, that God is in Christ, that the Father is 
 in the Son, that His love had not to be won by sacrifice, that it 
 is His love which is embodied in the sacrifice, that the Cross and 
 Passion are the revelation in time and space, in visible and 
 historical form, of the grief and pain of a God who suffers for 
 and with His creation and His children. 1 
 
 2. To know Christ crucified is to know how to live and how 
 to die. 
 
 (1) St. Paul wanted to find a power that should be adequate to 
 cope with men's dispositions and reach down to the very centre 
 of feeling, and that should take hold of men's wills. And he 
 found that power in Christ. They who long after better things 
 find their ideal in Him ; He lives on by the cords of love, He 
 bids them live righteously and holily in this present world ; and 
 with the command comes the power. There is power in Christ 
 to transform the nature and to renew the life ; and because the 
 Apostle knew this, he made Him the theme of his preaching, and 
 uplifted Him before the longing eyes of Jew and Gentile. 
 
 Tf Does God have no heroes but those who lead on a great 
 battlefield ? Has He no saints but those in pictures, with a 
 halo about their head? Heroism in the common life, that is 
 what the world needs ; men and women who in common places 
 will do everyday duties without noise or glitter, just because the 
 heart and conscience say, " This is the way, walk ye in it." 
 
 (2) There is one study, the deepest, hardest of all, which is 
 equally and supremely necessary for every one to make some 
 progress in before the application of it comes. It is the study 
 of how to die. We cannot think how ever it will be possible for 
 us to go through that. One thing we hope. We hope that we 
 may not die reluctant, as if under doom, but with life's onward 
 action and life's hopefulness still present in us ; looking tenderly 
 back, but looking calmly, earnestly, before us. If that is our 
 hope, on what can it rest ? It is assured to us as soon as Christ 
 
 1 J. Hunter. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 43 
 
 crucified is assured to us. The saints of all time, in proportion 
 to the measure of their faith and of their self-sacrifice, have found 
 death robbed of its terrors. 
 
 Pausing a moment ere the day was done, 
 While yet the earth was scintillant with light, 
 I backward glanced. From valley, plain, and height, 
 At intervals, where my life-path had run, 
 Eose cross on cross ; and nailed upon each one 
 Was my dead self. And yet that gruesome sight 
 Lent sudden splendour to the falling night, 
 Showing the conquests that my soul had won. 
 
 Up to the rising stars I looked and cried, 
 
 " There is no death ! for year on year, re-born 
 
 I wake to larger life : to joy more great, 
 
 So many times have I been crucified, 
 
 So often seen the resurrection morn, 
 
 I go triumphant, though new Calvaries wait." 1 
 
 1 Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Experience, 31. 
 
THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Blake (K. E.), Good News from Heaven, 18. 
 
 Brown (A. G.), God's Full-orbed Gospel, 110. 
 
 Davies (J. LI.), The Purpose of God, 55. 
 
 Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 173. 
 
 Drummond (J.), Spiritual Religion, 78. 
 
 Gibson (J. M.), A Strong City, 181. 
 
 Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 77. 
 
 Hodge (C.), Princeton Sermons, 358. 
 
 Hopkins (E. H.), Hidden yet Possessed, 1. 
 
 Horton (R. F.), The Trinity, 21. 
 
 Houchin (J. W.), The Vision of God, 132. 
 
 Inge (W. R), All Saints 1 Sermons, 92. 
 
 Lockyer (T. F.), Inspirations of the Christian Life, 44. 
 
 Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Life's Journey, 34. 
 
 Voices of the Spirit, 158. 
 
 Moore (E. W.), Life Transfigured, 87. 
 Morris (W.), in The Welsh Pulpit of To-Day, 396. 
 Moule (H. C. G.), Christ is All, 107. 
 Murray (A.), The Spirit of Christ, 214. 
 Paget (E. C.), Silence, 130. 
 Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, iv. 249. 
 Kobertson (F. W.), Sermons, i. 1 ; iii. 26. 
 Shedd (W. G. T.), Sermons to the Spiritual Man, 315. 
 Shelf ord (L. E.), By Way of Remembrance, 184. 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. (1856), No. 56. 
 Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, iii. 236. 
 Westcott (B. F.), The Historic Faith, 142. 
 Cambridge Review, iii., Supplement No. 56 (Moule). 
 Christian World Pulpit, xii. 273 (Chown) ; xxix. 360 (Wickhain) ; xxxii. 
 
 193 (Westcott) ; xxxviii. 424 (Ferrier) ; Ixii. 12 (Hall) ; Ixxx. 150 
 
 (Hanson). 
 
 Churchman's Pulpit, Sixth Sunday after Trinity ; x. 430 (Shelford). 
 Homiletic Review, xlvii. 189 (Hillis). 
 
THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE. 
 
 But as it is written, 
 
 Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, 
 And which entered not into the heart of man, 
 Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him. 
 
 i Cor. ii. 9. 
 
 NOWHERE in the Old Testament are these words literally 
 found. But the source of the quotation is undoubtedly the 
 passage, Isa. Ixiv. 4 combined with Ixv. 17: "Men have not 
 heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a 
 God beside thee, which worketh for him that waiteth for 
 him . . ."; and, "The former things shall not be remembered, 
 nor come into mind." Similar combinations of several prophetic 
 quotations are not rare in St. Paul's writings. 
 
 The context of the verse is the assertion of the Apostle that 
 there is about the Gospel a hidden wisdom, an inner truth ; and 
 that this truth was invisible to the minds of those who rejected 
 and crucified the Saviour ; for, had they seen it, they would not 
 have crucified Him. And then comes in the text, to prove that 
 such blindness of the soul was recognized long before in the Old 
 Testament Scriptures as a mystery and a fact. The blindness of 
 those who slew the Lord did but answer to what " was written " 
 that solemn formula of final appeal with the Apostles and their 
 Master. Isaiah had spoken of the acts of God in redeeming 
 mercy as things beyond the reach of a, priori discovery by human 
 senses, and reason, and imagination. Man could receive them 
 when revealed ; there was that in man which could respond to 
 them when revealed ; but for that revelation there was needed 
 the action of the Divine Spirit on the spirit of man. No record 
 of facts, no witness of phenomena, without the special action of 
 the Holy Spirit, could bring them home to the heart. But to 
 
 47 
 
4 S THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 Christian believers, to St. Paul and his disciples, they were 
 brought home. And it was so, not because their eyes or ears 
 were keener than those of the Lord's executioners, or because 
 their hearts were more imaginative or more sympathetic, but 
 because the Holy Ghost had unveiled to them this wisdom, this 
 esoteric wisdom and glory of the ways of God. 
 
 The Apostle's quotation of the Prophet plainly refers to the 
 whole gift of salvation, not only to the bright eternal future of 
 the saved. The words cannot indeed exclude the thought of the 
 glories of heaven, which assuredly senses have not seen, nor 
 imagination conceived, but which God has prepared for them that 
 love Him. But neither can they exclude the wonders of grace on 
 earth ; which equally are things of eternal plan and preparation. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE THINGS OF GOD ARE NOT EEVEALED TO THE 
 NATURAL MAN. 
 
 "Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which 
 entered not into the heart of man." 
 
 1. " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
 of God." The preaching of the Apostle Paul was rejected by 
 numbers in the cultivated town of Corinth. It was not wise 
 enough or eloquent enough, nor was it sustained by miracles. 
 The man of taste found it barbarous ; the Jew missed the signs 
 and wonders which he looked for in a new dispensation ; and the 
 rhetorician missed the convincing arguments of the Schools. To 
 all this the Apostle was content to reply that his judges were 
 incompetent to try the question. The princes of this world might 
 judge in a matter of politics ; the leaders in the world of literature 
 were qualified to pronounce on a point of taste ; the counsellors 
 of this world to weigh an amount of evidence. But in matters 
 spiritual they were as unfit to judge as a man without ear is to 
 decide respecting harmony ; or a man, judging alone by sensation, 
 is fit to supersede the higher truth of science by an appeal to 
 his own estimate of appearances. The world, to sense, seems 
 stationary. To the eye of reason it moves with lightning speed, 
 and the cultivation of reason alone can qualify for an opinion 
 on the matter. The judgment of the senses is worth nothing in 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 49 
 
 such matters. For every kind of truth a special capacity or 
 preparation is indispensable. 
 
 2. By the natural man is meant the ordinary faculties of 
 man ; and it is said of these that they cannot discover spiritual 
 truth. By combining the three terms seeing, hearing, and enter- 
 ing into the heart, the Apostle wishes to designate the three 
 names of natural knowledge : sight, or immediate experience ; 
 hearing, or knowledge by way of tradition; finally, the inspira- 
 tions of the heart, the discoveries of the understanding proper. 
 By none of these means can man reach the conception of the 
 blessings which God has destined for him. 
 
 i. The Eye. 
 "Eye saw not." 
 
 1. Eternal truth is not perceived through the eye ; it is not 
 demonstrable to the senses. 
 
 (1) God's works in nature give us wonderful pleasure. Let us 
 not depreciate what God has given. There is a rapture in gazing 
 on this wonderful world. There is a joy in contemplating the 
 manifold forms in which the All Beautiful has concealed His 
 essence the Living Garment in which the Invisible has robed 
 His mysterious loveliness. In every aspect of Nature there is 
 joy; whether it be the purity of virgin morning, or the sombre 
 grey of a day of clouds, or the solemn pomp and majesty of night ; 
 whether it be the chaste lines of the crystal, or the waving out- 
 line of distant hills, tremulously visible through dim vapours; 
 the minute petals of the fringed daisy, or the overhanging form 
 of mysterious forests. It is a pure delight to see. But all this 
 is bounded. The eye can reach only the finite Beautiful. And 
 the fairest beauty is perishable. 
 
 (2) Art has many devotees. The highest pleasure of sensa- 
 tion comes through the eye. He whose eye is so refined by dis- 
 cipline that he can repose with pleasure upon the serene outline 
 of beautiful form has reached the purest of the sensational 
 raptures. The Corinthians could appreciate this. Theirs was 
 the land of beauty. They read the Apostle's letter, surrounded 
 by the purest conceptions of Art. In the orders of architecture, 
 the most richly graceful of all columnar forms receives its name 
 
 j COR, 4 
 
So THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 from Corinth. And yet it was to these men, living in the very 
 midst of the chastely beautiful, upon whom the Apostle emphati- 
 cally urged "Eye hath not seen the things which God hath 
 prepared for them that love him." 
 
 (3) Science cannot give a revelation. Science proceeds upon 
 observation. It submits everything to the experience of the 
 senses. Its law, expounded by its great lawgiver, is that if we 
 would ascertain its truth we must see, feel, taste. Experiment 
 is the test of truth. Men have supposed they discovered the 
 law of Duty written on the anatomical phenomena of disease. 
 They have exhibited the brain inflamed by intoxication, and the 
 structure obliterated by excess. They have shown in the dis- 
 ordered frame the inevitable penalty of transgression. But if 
 a man, startled by all this, gives up his sin, has he from this 
 selfish prudence learned the law of Duty ? The penalties of 
 wrong-doing, doubtless; but not the sanction of Eight and 
 Wrong written on the conscience, of which penalties are only 
 the enforcements. He has indisputable evidence that it is 
 expedient not to commit excesses : but you cannot manufacture 
 a conscience out of expediency: the voice of conscience says 
 not, " It is better not to do so," but " Thou shalt not." 
 
 2. " Eye saw not." When He came into this world, who was 
 the Truth and the Life, in the body which God had prepared for 
 Him, He came not in the glory of form : He was a root out of a 
 dry ground: He had no form nor comeliness; when they saw 
 Him, there was no beauty that they should desire Him. The 
 eye did not behold, even in Christ, the things which God had 
 prepared. This is an eternal truth. There is a kingdom which 
 is appreciable by the senses, and another whose facts and truths 
 are seen and heard only by the spirit. 
 
 TI It was rumoured that underneath a certain piece of ground 
 there was iron to be found, and two men were appointed to go 
 and inspect the land and see whether there was really iron there. 
 One man, a scientist and mineralogist, was very conscious of his 
 own limitations; and, knowing his own weakness, he took with 
 him some scientific instruments. The other man, who was 
 bueyant and self-confident, said, " I believe what I can see, and 
 what I can't see I won't believe " ; and so he walked over the field, 
 and got over it in no time. He said, " Iron ? nonsense ! I see no 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 51 
 
 iron ; there is no iron here." This man went to the syndicate and 
 said, " There is no iron there : I walked all over the field and I 
 could not see a trace of it."' The other man did not trust to his 
 eye at all. He carried in his hand a little crystal box, and in 
 that little crystal box there was a needle, and he kept watching 
 that needle. He paused, for the needle in that crystal box had 
 pointed down like the very finger of God, and he said, " There is 
 iron there." He passed on, until again that needle pointed down, 
 and he said, " There is iron there," and when he handed in his 
 report he said, " From one end of the field to the other there is 
 iron/' " Oh ! " said one of the adherents of the first man, " how 
 do you know, when you did not see it ? " " Because," he said, 
 " that which cannot be seen with the eye can be magnetically 
 discerned." 1 
 
 ii. The Ear. 
 "Ear heard not." 
 
 Eternal truth is not reached by the sense of hearing ; nor does 
 traditional knowledge reveal it. 
 
 1. The many beautiful and varied sounds of nature speak to 
 us of God, if God's existence be already thrilling our hearts, but 
 of themselves they do not reveal the things of God. How many 
 sounds there are that gladden us ! Think of the cooling sound 
 of a rippling stream, or a waterfall, or a playing fountain on a hot 
 summer evening. Think of the many pleasing notes and songs 
 of birds. Think of the human voice. There is no sound that 
 we would miss more than that. Then think of music, with all 
 its varied modes of appealing to our feelings. Think of the music 
 of the great masters, how it attracts and fascinates and subdues 
 us, how it inspires and strengthens us, how it makes us glad ! But 
 " things which ear heard not," and which ear can never hear, are 
 prepared by God for those that love Him. 
 
 2. No revelation can be adequately given by man to man, 
 whether in writing or orally, even if he be put in possession of 
 the Truth itself. For all such revelation must be made through 
 words: and^ words are but counters the coins of intellectual 
 exchange. There is as little resemblance between the silver coin 
 and the bread it purchases as between the word and the thing it 
 
 'A, G. Brown. 
 
52 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 stands for. Looking at the coin, the form of the loaf does not 
 suggest itself. Listening to the word, you do not perceive the 
 idea for which it stands, unless you are already in possession of it. 
 Speak of ice to an inhabitant of the torrid zone, the word does 
 not give him an idea, or if it does, it must be a false one. Talk 
 of blueness to one who cannot distinguish colours, what can your 
 most eloquent description present to him resembling the truth 
 of your sensation ? Similarly in matters spiritual, no verbal 
 revelation can give a single simple idea. Talk of God to a 
 thousand ears, each has its own conception. The sensual man 
 hears of God, and understands one thing; the pure man hears, 
 and conceives another thing. So that apostles themselves, and 
 prophets, speaking to the ear, cannot reveal truth to the soul no, 
 not if God Himself were to touch their lips with fire. A verbal 
 revelation is only a revelation to the ear. 
 
 3. Traditional knowledge will not reveal eternal truth. There 
 are men who believe on authority. They have heard with the 
 hearing of the ear that God is Love, they have heard that the 
 ways of holiness are the ways of pleasantness and all her paths 
 peace. But a hearsay belief saves not. The Corinthian 
 philosophers heard St. Paul; the Pharisees heard Christ. How 
 much did the ear convey ? To thousands exactly nothing. He 
 alone believes truth who feels it. He alone has a religion whose 
 soul knows by experience that to serve God and know Him is the 
 richest treasure. 
 
 I have a little kinsman 
 
 Whose earthly summers are but three, 
 
 And yet a voyager is he 
 
 Greater than Drake or Frobisher, 
 
 Than all their peers together ! 
 
 He is a brave discoverer, 
 
 And, far beyond the tether 
 
 Of them who seek the frozen pole, 
 
 Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll. 
 
 Ay, he has travelled whither 
 
 A winged pilot steered his bark 
 
 Through the portals of the dark, 
 
 Past hoary Mimir's well and tree, 
 
 Across the unknown sea. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 53 
 
 Suddenly, in his fair young hour, 
 Came one who bore a flower, 
 And laid it in his dimpled hand 
 
 With this command: 
 "Henceforth thou art a rover! 
 Thou must make a voyage far, 
 Sail beneath the evening star, 
 And a wondrous land discover." 
 With his sweet smile innocent 
 Our little kinsman went. 
 
 Since that time no word 
 
 From the absent has been heard. 
 
 Who can tell 
 
 How he fares, or answer well 
 What the little one has found 
 Since he left us, outward bound ? 
 Would that he might return ! 
 Then should we learn 
 From the pricking of his chart 
 How the skyey roadways part. 
 Hush! does not the baby this way bring, 
 To lay beside this severed curl, 
 Some starry offering 
 Of chrysolite or pearl? 
 
 Ah, no ! not so ! 
 
 We may follow on his track, 
 
 But he comes not back. 
 
 And yet I dare aver 
 He is a brave discoverer 
 Of climes his elders do not know. 
 He has more learning than appears 
 On the scroll of twice three thousand years, 
 More than in the groves is taught, 
 Or from furthest Indies brought; 
 He knows, perchance, how spirits fare- 
 What shapes the angels wear, 
 What is their guise and speech 
 In - those lands beyond our reach 
 And his eyes behold 
 
 Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers 
 told. 1 
 
 1 Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
 
54 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 iii. The Heart. 
 " Which entered not into the heart of man." 
 
 Eternal truth is not discoverable by the heart of man, with all 
 its powers of imagination and all its powers of affection. 
 
 1. Great thoughts originate from a large heart. It is a grand 
 thing when, in the stillness of the soul, thought bursts into flame, 
 and the intuitive vision comes like an inspiration ; when breathing 
 thoughts clothe themselves in burning words, winged as it were 
 with lightning ; or when a great law of the universe reveals itself 
 to the mind of Genius, and where all was darkness, his single word 
 bids Light be, and all is Order where chaos and confusion were 
 before; or when the truths of human nature shape themselves 
 forth in the creative fancies of one like the myriad-minded Poet, 
 and you recognize the rare power of heart which sympathizes with 
 and can reproduce all that is found in man. But all this is 
 nothing more than what the material man can achieve. The 
 most ethereal creations of fantastic fancy were shaped by a mind 
 that could read the life of Christ, and then blaspheme the 
 Adorable. The highest astronomer of this age, before whose clear 
 eye Creation lay revealed in all its perfect order, was one whose 
 spirit refused to recognize the Cause of Causes. The mighty 
 heart of Genius had failed to reach the things which God imparts 
 to a humble spirit. 
 
 2. The heart has the power of affection. To love is the purest, 
 the serenest ecstasy of the merely human more blessed than any 
 sight that can be presented to the eye, or any sound that can be 
 given to the ear ; more sublime than the sublimest dream ever 
 conceived by genius in its most gifted hour, when the freest way 
 was given to tne shaping spirit of imagination. This has entered 
 into the heart of man, yet this is of tne lower still. It attains 
 not to the things prepared by God ; it dimly shadows them. 
 Human love is but the faint type of that surpassing blessedness 
 which belongs to those who love God. 
 
 ^[ There are unexhausted possibilities in our lives, and our 
 human hearts are conscious of unrest. Have you never stood in 
 the presence of a commanding and lovely landscape and had the 
 thought come to you that you could conceive a landscape of 
 infinitely greater loveliness than that which unrolled before your 
 eyes ? Have you never, if you are a lover of music, been in the 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 55 
 
 midst of great music and had the thought visit you that you 
 could conceive of harmonies greater and more majestic than the 
 ear of man ever heard ? Have you not, although surrounded by 
 many of the joys of life, had thrilling moments visit you, when it 
 seemed to you that you could realize a happiness that was infinite 
 and perfect in its fulness ? And so, on the other hand, have not 
 the possibilities of suffering sometimes shot across your conscious- 
 ness with almost awful force ? As the traveller climbing the 
 mountain sometimes comes upon the deep and dark crevice 
 opening at his very foot, so has there not sometimes come to you 
 in the mysterious journey of life a realization of the potential 
 ability of your nature to suffer miserably ? It is the sense of 
 unexhausted possibility, the yearning of the heart towards 
 something beyond itself, towards the things which " eye saw not, 
 and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man." l 
 
 I know 'tis but a loom of land, 
 Yet is it land, and so I will rejoice, 
 I know I cannot hear His voice 
 Upon the shore, nor see Him stand; 
 Yet is it land, ho ! land. 
 
 The land ! the land ! the lovely land ! 
 "Far off" dost say? Far of Ah, blessed home! 
 Farewell ! Farewell ! thou salt sea-foain ! 
 Ah, keel upon the silver sand 
 Land ho ! land. 
 
 You cannot see the land, my land, 
 You cannot see, and yet the land is there 
 My land, my land, through murky air 
 I did not say 'twas close at hand 
 But land ho ! land. 
 
 Dost hear the bells of my sweet land, 
 Dost hear the kine, dost hear the merry birds ? 
 No voice, 'tis true, no spoken words, 
 No tongue that thou may'st understand 
 Yet is it land, ho ! land. 
 
 It's clad in purple mists, my land, 
 In regal robe it is apparelled, 
 A crown is set upon its head, 
 And on its breast a golden band 
 Land ho ! land. 
 
 1 C. Cuthbert Hall. 
 
56 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 Dost wonder that I long for land? 
 My land is not a land as others are 
 Upon its crest there beams a star, 
 And lilies grow upon the strand 
 Land ho! land. 
 
 Give me the helm! there is the land! 
 Ha! lusty mariners, she takes the breeze! 
 And what my spirit sees it sees 
 Leap, bark, as leaps the thunder-brand, 
 Land ho! land. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 THE THINGS OF GOD ARE EEVEALED BY His SPIRIT. 
 " Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him." 
 
 1. Only the spiritual man can apprehend spiritual truth ; and 
 only the spiritual man can comprehend spiritual experience. 
 
 (1) Only the spiritual man can apprehend spiritual truth. 
 Just as a blind man cannot possibly form any conception of 
 colour, or a deaf man of music ; so the artist, merely as an artist, 
 has no sort of title or qualification to pronounce on questions of 
 scientific research, and in like manner the scientist, as such, is no 
 more competent to discuss matters of religion than the humblest 
 clodman of the land. The man of science, therefore, who loudly 
 vaunts that in all his scientific researches he can find no trace of 
 God, is merely proclaiming to the world his own unreasonable- 
 ness ; for not as a man of science, restricting himself to one set of 
 faculties, but only as a man, giving play and scope to all his 
 faculties, can he learn the things which are hidden from the wise 
 and understanding, and revealed unto babes (Matt. xi. 25). Still 
 more unreasonable are the thoughtless and careless, who find no 
 God in all their gaiety of life, and then say there is none ; for 
 from all such God hides Himself, and His glory is absolutely 
 indiscernible by the wanton eye of worldly pleasure. What, then, 
 is the great law of knowledge of Divine things ? " If any man 
 willeth to do his will, he shall know." Obedience to spiritual 
 laws, conformity to spiritual conditions, is essential to real 
 
 1 T. E. Brown. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 57 
 
 knowledge of God, and to true insight into the Divine meaning 
 of the facts and forecasts of human life. Spiritual blessings 
 cannot be attained, cannot even be apprehended, save by the 
 humility of faith. 
 
 ^[ I remember once being present at the Geological Society, 
 when a bottle was produced which was said to contain certain 
 Zoophytes (delicate water-animals, having the form of plants). 
 It was handed round in the first instance among the initiated on 
 the foremost benches, who commented freely with one another on 
 the forms of the animals in the fluid ; but when it came to our 
 hands, we could discover nothing in the bottle but the most 
 limpid fluid, without any trace, so far as our eyes could make out, 
 of animals dead or alive, the whole appearing absolutely trans- 
 parent. The surprise of the ignorant, at seeing nothing, was only 
 equal to that of the learned, who saw so much to admire. Nor 
 was it till we were specifically instructed what it was we were to 
 look for, and the shape, size, and general aspect of the Zoophytes 
 pointed out, that our understanding began to co-operate with our 
 sight in peopling the fluid which, up to that moment, had seemed 
 perfectly uninhabited. The wonder then was how we could 
 possibly have omitted seeing objects now so palpable. 1 
 
 (2) Only the spiritual man can comprehend spiritual experience. 
 People say to us : " Your joys are imaginary, your perceptions of 
 God are self-delusions, your assurances, and hopes, and peace of 
 mind, and consciousness of forgiveness, are your own creations: 
 they are things which we do not feel, and do not understand, and 
 do not believe." It would be a wonderful thing if they did 
 understand what they have never felt. There are simple things 
 in everyday life that are closely akin to this. There are natures 
 to whom sunsets and flowers and the infinitely varied landscapes 
 of nature are utterly unattractive and meaningless. 
 
 Once in a dream I saw the flowers 
 
 That bud and bloom in Paradise; 
 
 More fair they are than waking eyes 
 Have seen in all this world of ours. 
 And faint the perfume-bearing rose, 
 
 And faint the lily on its stem. 
 And faint the perfect violet, 
 
 Compared with them. 
 
 1 Captain Basil Hall. 
 
58 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 I heard the songs of Paradise: 
 
 Each bird sat singing in his place; 
 
 A tender song so full of grace 
 It soared like incense to the skies. 
 Each bird sat singing to his mate 
 
 Soft cooing notes among the trees: 
 The nightingale herself were cold 
 
 To such as these. 
 
 I saw the fourfold Elver flow, 
 
 And deep it was, with golden sand; 
 
 It flowed between a mossy land 
 With murmured music grave and low. 
 It hath refreshment for all thirst, 
 
 For fainting spirits strength and rest; 
 Earth holds not such a draught as this 
 
 From east to west. 
 
 The Tree of Life stood budding there, 
 
 Abundant with its twelvefold fruits; 
 
 Eternal sap sustains its roots, 
 Its shadowing branches fill the air. 
 Its leaves are healing for the world, 
 
 Its fruit the hungry world can feed, 
 Sweeter than honey to the taste 
 
 And balm indeed. 
 
 I saw the Gate called Beautiful; 
 
 And looked, but scarce could look within; 
 
 I saw the golden streets begin, 
 And outskirts of the glassy pool. 
 Oh harps, oh crowns of plenteous stars, 
 
 Oh green palm branches many-leaved 
 Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, 
 
 Nor heart conceived. 
 
 I hope to see these things again, 
 
 But not as once in dreams by night; 
 
 To see them with my very sight, 
 And touch and handle and attain: 
 To have all heaven beneath my feet 
 
 For narrow way that once they trod; 
 To have my part with all the saints, 
 
 And with my God. 1 
 
 1 Christina G. Rossetti, Paradise. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 59 
 
 2. What are the things which God has revealed ? 
 
 " Things " is a short way of saying " thinkings." Everything 
 was first a thought. This world before it became a thing was a 
 thought in the Creator's mind. Every cathedral that has ever 
 been built was a thought in the mind of the architect before it 
 became a thing in the hands of the builder. Every book of 
 poems was first of all a thought in the poet's mind. The things 
 here spoken of are God's thinkings, God's thoughts; but God's 
 thoughts are realities ; they are no mere myths, they are things. 
 What are these "deep things of Gcd" to which the Apostle 
 refers ? There can be no doubt that St. Paul was thinking 
 of the glorious total of redeeming mercy and the wonders of 
 redeeming grace. 
 
 (1) The knowledge of Christ as God was to St. Paul one of 
 the most wonderful revelations of the Spirit. He had known 
 Christ after the flesh ; he was aware that He had said and done 
 certain things, and had been crucified; and the crucifixion he 
 had regarded as a triumphant refutation of His claims, and as 
 covering Him with well-merited contempt. But as soon as he 
 was changed, the veil was taken from his eyes; and what eye, 
 and ear, and intellect had sought in vain, God revealed by His 
 Spirit. 
 
 If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men 
 
 Mere man, the first and best but nothing more, 
 
 Account Him, for reward of what He was, 
 
 Now and forever, wretchedest of all. 
 
 For see; Himself conceived of life as love, 
 
 Conceived of love as what must enter in, 
 
 Fill up, make one with His each soul He loved : 
 
 Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for Him. 
 
 Well, He is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward. 
 
 But by this time are many souls set free, 
 
 And very many still retained alive; 
 
 Nay, should His coming be delayed awhile, 
 
 Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute), 
 
 See if, for every finger of thy hands, 
 
 There be not found, that day the world shall end, 
 
 Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's word 
 
 That He will grow incorporate with all, 
 
 With me as Pamphylax, with him as John, 
 
 Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this? 
 
6o THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 Yet Christ saith, this He lived and died to do. 
 Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 
 Or lost ! * 
 
 (2) The revelation of God as Love comes also by the Spirit. 
 It is in vain that you reiterate that " God is love," if my terrified 
 conscience and cruel temper shut out the very notion of love, 
 and empty the word of all true meaning. The spirit of love 
 must dawn upon our consciousness; no mere description will 
 enable us to understand it ; but as soon as its light arises within, 
 a revelation is made, and the spiritual mind apprehends what 
 was hidden from intellect and sense. 
 
 Thou as represented here to me 
 
 In such conception as my soul allows, 
 
 Under Thy measureless, my atom width ! 
 
 Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass 
 
 Wherein are gathered all the scattered points 
 
 Picked out of the immensity of sky, 
 
 To re-unite there, be our heaven for earth, 
 
 Our known unknown, our God revealed to man ? 
 
 Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole; 
 
 Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense, 
 
 There, (which is nowhere, speech must babble thus!) 
 
 In the absolute immensity, the whole 
 
 Appreciable solely by Thyself, 
 
 Here, by the little mind of man, reduced 
 
 To littleness that suits his faculty, 
 
 In the degree appreciable too; 
 
 Between Thee and ourselves nay even, again, 
 
 Below us, to the extreme of the minute, 
 
 Appreciable by how many and what diverse 
 
 Modes of the life Thou madest be ! (why live 
 
 Except for love, how love unless they know T 
 
 Each of them, only filling to the edge, 
 
 Insect or angel, his just length and breadth, 
 
 Due facet of reflection, full, no less, 
 
 Angel or insect, as Thou framest things. 2 
 
 (3) With the revelation of God as Love comes an under- 
 standing of the Divine plan of Salvation, a comprehension of the 
 meaning of the Cross of Christ. And with the sense of sin that 
 
 1 Browning, A Death in the Desert. 
 8 Browning, The Ring and the Book. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 61 
 
 this inevitably brings come also the promise of the forgiveness 
 of sin, and the still more blessed promise of the conquest of sin. 
 This boon the suppression and extinction of sin is one of the 
 great gifts which God has prepared for them that love Him. 
 
 Sin ! wilt thou vanquish me ! 
 
 And shall I yield the victory ? 
 Shall all my joys be spoiled, 
 And pleasures soiled, 
 
 By thee! 
 Shall I remain 
 As one that's slain 
 And never more lift up the head? 
 
 Is not my Saviour dead ! 
 
 His Blood, thy bane; my balsam, bliss, joy, wine, 
 Shall thee destroy; heal, feed, make me Divine. 1 
 
 
 (4) Union with Christ is one of the deep things of God, and in 
 that union are endless spiritual blessings. To conquer the world 
 by loving it, to be blest by ceasing from the pursuit of happiness, 
 and sacrificing life instead of finding it, to make a hard lot easy by 
 submitting to it this was St. Paul's Divine philosophy of life. And 
 the princes of this world, amidst scoffs and laughter, replied, Is 
 that all? Nothing to dazzle nothing to captivate? But the 
 disciples of the inward life, the humble of heart, and the loving, 
 felt that in this lay the mystery of life, of themselves, and of God, 
 all revealed and plain. 
 
 " Eye hath not seen " : yet man hath known and weighed 
 A hundred thousand marvels that have been : 
 
 What is it which (the Word of Truth hath said) 
 Eye hath not seen ? 
 
 "Ear hath not heard": yet harpings of delight, 
 Trumpets of triumph, songs and spoken word, 
 
 Man knows them all: what lovelier, loftier might 
 Hath ear not heard? 
 
 " Nor heart conceived " : yet man hath now desired 
 Beyond all reach, beyond his hope believed, 
 
 Loved beyond death: what fire shall yet be fired 
 No heart conceived ? 
 
 1 Traherne, 
 
62 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 "Deep calls to deep": man's depth would be despair, 
 But for God's deeper depth: we sow to reap, 
 
 Have patience, wait, betake ourselves to prayer: 
 Deep answereth deep. 1 
 
 3. These things God has prepared. The term used recalls the 
 words of Christ: "The kingdom prepared for you from the 
 foundation of the world " (Matt. xxv. 34). 
 
 God prepared the things that He knew man's heart would 
 long for. A thing prepared is a thing ready at the moment it 
 is needed and expected. So, when we feel the yoke of sin heavy, 
 then is the moment to accept the prepared deliverance. It was 
 prepared on the Cross, it is found at the Cross. As deliverance 
 from sin is found at the Cross, so also was union with Christ and 
 likeness to Christ prepared at the open grave of Christ, and 
 found by faith in a risen, living Saviour. The hope of our calling, 
 the riches of the glory of our inheritance, the exceeding greatness 
 of His power, these are not future blessings, they are prepared 
 here and now for those who believe and love. And what of the 
 things on before ? Truly the glory of them is past man's under- 
 standing the city prepared, the place prepared, the rest, the 
 work, the joy, the crown that God is making ready. 
 
 There is a Stream, which issues forth 
 
 From God's eternal Throne, 
 And from the Lamb, a living stream 
 
 Clear as the crystal stone. 
 
 The stream doth water Paradise; 
 
 It makes the Angels sing ; 
 One cordial drop revives my heart; 
 
 Hence all my joys do spring. 
 
 Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, 
 
 From fancy 'tis conceal'd, 
 What Thou, Lord, hast laid up for Thine, 
 
 And hast to me reveal'd. 2 
 
 4. The things are prepared by God for them that love Him. 
 
 Everything is seen by its own glass ; everything looks foolish 
 when seen through any other glass. Music is meaningless when 
 addressed only to the eye ; painting has no message to the ear. 
 
 1 Christina G. Rossetti. 2 John Mason. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 63 
 
 The deep things of man can be seen only by their own faculty. So 
 is it with the deep things of God. There are things in religion 
 which are mysteries to every organ but one the spirit of love. 
 There are depths which love alone can fathom. 
 
 The good things are for those who love. Eepentant sinners 
 they may be, like David, yet because they are forgiven much they 
 will love much. Love is the condition without which revelation 
 does not take place. No selected child of grace can remain 
 unloving and cold, and yet see and hear and feel the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love Him. 
 
 For the heart only dwells, truly dwells, with its treasure, 
 And the languor of love captive hearts can unfetter; 
 
 And they who love God cannot love Him by measure, 
 For their love is but hunger to love Him still better. 
 
 For the lack of desire is the ill of all ills, 
 
 Many thousands through it the dark pathway have trod; 
 The balsam, the wine of predestinate wills, 
 
 Is a jubilant pining and longing for God. 
 
 Oh, then, wish more for God, burn more with desire, 
 Covet more the dear sight of His marvellous face ! 
 
 (1) To love God is to love His character. God is Love : and to 
 love men till private attachments have expanded into a philan- 
 thropy which embraces all, at last even the evil and enemies, 
 with compassion that is to love God. God is Purity : and to be 
 pure in thought and look ; to turn away from unhallowed books 
 and conversation, to abhor the moments in which we have not 
 been pure, is to love God. God is Truth : to be true, to hate 
 every form of falsehood, to live a brave, true, real life that 
 is to love God. God is Infinite : and to love the boundless, 
 reaching on from grace to grace, adding charity to faith, and 
 rising upwards ever to see the Ideal still above us, and to die 
 with it unattained, aiming insatiably to be perfect even as the 
 Father is perfect that is love to God. 
 
 (2) Love is manifested in obedience. Love is the life of which 
 obedience is the form. " He that hath my commandments, and 
 keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Nothing can be love to 
 God which does not shape itself into obedience. We remember 
 the anecdote of the Eoman commander who forbade an engage- 
 
64 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE 
 
 ment with the enemy. The first transgressor against his pro- 
 hibition was his own son, who accepted the challenge of the 
 leader of the other host, met, slew, spoiled him, and then in 
 triumphant feeling carried the spoils to his father's tent. But 
 the Eoman father refused to recognize the instinct which prompted 
 this as deserving of the name of love. Disobedience contradicted 
 it, and deserved death. So with God: strong feelings, warm 
 expressions, varied internal experience co-existing with disobedi- 
 ence, God counts not as Love. Mere weak feeling may not usurp 
 that sacred name. 
 
 TI About this time I had constantly in my mind that wonder- 
 ful reconciliation of half the theological enigmas which ever have 
 arisen, which Maurice points out in one of his sermons on the 
 Temptation, and expounds more fully (tho', I think, not so 
 forcibly) in one of his latter Prayer-book series on the Consecra- 
 tion Prayer. He reminds us how " worldly men in their carnal 
 and proud hearts cannot conceive how the Father commands 
 because the Son obeys, and the Son obeys because the Father 
 commands." This had for some time given to me a most blessed 
 and practical solution of the question of Free Will. I dared not 
 apply the term " servile " to this loving and willing yet eternal 
 obedience of the Son " begotten before all worlds " ; yet surely it 
 was the fullest, completest obedience, the perfect type of all 
 imperfect obedience on earth, and likewise was the authority of 
 the Father the fullest, completest authority, the perfect type of 
 all imperfect authority on earth. This fundamental doctrine of 
 the filial subordination of the Son from all eternity (in no wise 
 interfering with His co-eternity and co-equality with the Father) 
 is hard to receive, and will always be rejected when the under- 
 standing seeks to exert an universal empire ; yet I fully believe 
 that it is the keystone of theology and humanity. 1 
 
 Tf While abhorring war, M. Coillard always had the strongest 
 sympathy with the military profession. His mind seemed to 
 move in its imagery. Christianity, as he conceived it, was the 
 march of an ever- victorious army ; to him it meant a loyalty, not 
 a philosophy, still less a ceremonial system. He had no other 
 ambition than to be " a good soldier of Jesus Christ." " A French 
 general," he once wrote, " told his aide-de-camp that the polite- 
 ness of a soldier was obedience; and I myself hold that in all 
 circumstances our duty to our Master is fidelity." 2 
 
 1 The Life and Letters of Fent&n J. A. Hort, i. 135. 
 8 C. W. Mackintosh, Coillard of the Zambezi 106. 
 
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 65 
 
 Lord of the host of deep desires 
 
 That spare no sting, yet are to me 
 Sole echo of the silver choirs 
 
 Whose dwelling is eternity 
 
 With all save thee my soul is pressed 
 
 In high dispute from day to day, 
 But, Love, at thy most high behest 
 
 I make no answer, and obey. 1 
 
 1 John Drinkwater, Poems of Men and Hours, 21. 
 
 I COR. 5 
 
GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Darlow (J. H.), The Upward Calling, 178. 
 
 Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 405. 
 
 Herford (B.), Anchors of the Soul, 77. 
 
 Hodgkin (T.), Human Progress and the Inward Light, 42. 
 
 Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 225, 230. 
 
 James (J. A.), Sermons, iii. 158. 
 
 Jones (W. B.), The Peace of God, 243. 
 
 Keenleyside (C. B.), God's Fellow-workers, 79. 
 
 Lightfoot (J. B.), Ordination Addresses, 214. 
 
 Macgilvray (W.), The Ministry of the Word, 83. 
 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 30. 
 
 Menzies (G.), Pictorial Sermons in Industries, 48, 110. 
 
 Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 140. 
 
 Percival (J.), Sermons at Rugby, 189. 
 
 Some Helps for School Life, 216. 
 
 Selby (T. G.), The Lesson of a Dilemma, 365. 
 Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 341. 
 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvii. (1881), No. 1602. 
 Stalker (J.), The New Song, 38. 
 Vaughan (C. J.), Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 437. 
 Wells (J.), Bible Images, 239. 
 Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 362. 
 British Congreyationalist, Sept. 15, 1910, p. 208 (Cadraan). 
 Christian Age, xxxiv. 258 (Diggle). 
 Christian World Pulpit, vi. 255 (Marling) ; viii. 329 (Beecher) ; xix. 104 
 
 (Woodford); xxix. 132 (Beecher); li. 364 (Armitage); liv. 70 
 
 (Snell) ; Ix. 257 (Hunter). 
 Church of England Magazine, x. 417 (Holland). 
 Church of England Pulpit, xxxii. 28 (Reed). 
 Church Family Newspaper, Dec. 31, 1909, p. 1071 (James). 
 Examiner, Dec. 22, 1904, p. 600 (Jovvett). 
 
GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS. 
 
 We are God's fellow- workers. i Cor. iii. 9. 
 
 1. THE characteristic Greek tendency to factions was threaten- 
 ing to rend the Corinthian Church, and each faction was swearing 
 by a favourite teacher. St. Paul uses the words of the text to 
 emphasize the truth that in the process of teaching and saving 
 men God's work links itself with man's, and God's work is so 
 much mightier and more wonderful than man's that it is idle to 
 weigh the work of one human labourer against that of another, 
 after the fashion of these Corinthian sectaries. We might just 
 as well pick out tiny shells in the cement binding the stones 
 of a minster and divide ourselves into factions to champion the 
 architectural honour due to the several tenants of each particular 
 primeval shell, or select striking portions of oak carving and 
 divide ourselves into factions to champion the artistic possibilities 
 of the several acorns that evolved such magnificent material. A 
 rational being has not time to think of these infinitesimal 
 questions. He wishes to save up his tribute of honour for the 
 genius who planned arch and spire, and dreamt out flowered 
 screen and stall, and guided the whole to its many-sided per- 
 fection. God's true labourers will be rewarded, not by the 
 reckless praise and short-sighted judgments of men, but by Him 
 who counts them allies, and in the strength of whose gift all 
 right work must be done. 
 
 2. Startled by the boldness of the expression of the text, as 
 if it verged on profanity, interpreters have been found, to give it 
 a different meaning " fellow-labourers under God," "fellow- 
 workers in God's field." But this is not justified by the language 
 used. The meaning of St. Paul's words is " We are at work with 
 
70 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 God Himself." And to the bold idea of joint labour with God 
 there is added the idea of dependence. "We are God's day- 
 labourers, working with Him." It is His to pay the workmen, 
 and to value their labour. For is it not His Church, His 
 field, His house ? It is to a Divine possession that the workers 
 put their hand. What gravity attaches to such labour ! To 
 cultivate a field the harvest of which is God's I To build the 
 house which God Himself is to inhabit ! God alone can estimate 
 such labour, and He will not fail to do so. These are the ideas 
 in the Apostle's mind when he says : " We are God's fellow- 
 workers." 
 
 3. The principle embodied is a very wide one, and it applies 
 in all regions of life and activity, intellectual, scholastic, philan- 
 thropic, social. Wherever men are thinking God's thoughts and 
 trying to carry into effect any phase or side of God's manifold 
 purposes of good and blessing to the world, there it is true. 
 Every man who is trying to make men understand God's 
 thought, whether it is expressed in creation, or whether it is 
 written in history, or whether it is graven in half -obliterated 
 letters on the constitution of human nature, every man who, in 
 any region of society or life, is seeking to effect the great designs 
 of the universal loving Father can take to himself, in the 
 measure and according to the manner of his special activity, 
 the great encouragement of the text, and feel that he, too, is a 
 fellow-helper to the truth and a fellow-worker with God. 
 
 If The apse of Amiens is the first virgin perfect work 
 Parthenon also in that sense of Gothic Architecture. Who 
 built it, shall we ask? God, and Man is the first and most 
 true answer. The stars in their courses built it, and the nations. 
 Greek Athena labours here and Eoman Father Jove, and 
 Guardian Mars. The Gaul labours here, and the Frank : knightly 
 Norman mighty Ostrogoth and wasted anchorite of Idumea. 
 The actual Man who built it scarcely cared to tell you he did so ; 
 nor do the historians brag of him. Any quantity of heraldries 
 of knaves and faineants you may find in what they call their 
 " history " : but this is probably the first time you ever read the 
 name of Kobert of Luzarches. I say he "scarcely cared" we 
 are not sure that he cared at all. He signed his name nowhere 
 that I can hear of. You may perhaps find some recent initials 
 cut by English remarkable visitors, desirous of immortality, here 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 9 71 
 
 and there about the edifice, but Kobert the builder or at least 
 the Master of building, cut his on no stone of it. 1 
 
 I. 
 
 WE ARE FELLOW-WORKERS WITH ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 The men who had ministered at Corinth, and around whose 
 names factions were forming, differed in their gifts. St. Paul was 
 the wisest master-builder who dealt with massive fundamentals. 
 The elaboration of his artistic successors would not have counted 
 for much without Pauline teaching for corner and foundation- 
 stone. Some people would have liked to see more paint, gilding, 
 embellishment on his granite. The task of Apollos was chiefly 
 one of garniture, useful and fitted to attract, but vain without the 
 bulwark of well-tested logic behind and beneath it. Gifts are 
 diverse no less than the crowns which shall recompense the 
 faithful use of gifts, but the work is one. 
 
 If Convenience, that admirable branch system from the main 
 line of self-interest, makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse 
 resolutions. It is probable that no speculative or theological 
 hatred would be ultimately strong enough to resist the persuasive 
 power of convenience: that a latitudinarian baker, whose bread 
 was honourably free from alum, would command the custom of 
 any dyspeptic Puseyite; that an Arminian with the toothache 
 would prefer a skilful Calvinistic dentist to a bungler stanch 
 against the doctrines of Election and Final Perseverance, who 
 would be likely to break the tooth in his head; and that a 
 Plymouth Brother, who had a well-furnished grocery shop in 
 a favourable vicinage, would occasionally have the pleasure 
 of furnishing sugar or vinegar to orthodox families that 
 found themselves unexpectedly "out of" these indispensable 
 commodities. 2 
 
 If There was a story that when the Anglo-Catholic Library 
 was being discussed, Mr. Keble said to Dr. Moberly, " Well, you 
 shall undertake the Anglo part and / the Catholic, and we will 
 fight over the hyphen." 3 
 
 (1) In the building of Solomon's Temple there were counted 
 out by the king seventy thousand men for the sole purpose of 
 
 1 Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens (Works, xxxiii. 131). 
 
 2 George Eliot, Janet's Repentance. 
 
 8 C. A. E. Moberly, Dulce Domum, 82. 
 
72 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 bearing burdens. No doubt this grew irksome to these men, 
 and they would many a time wish for some other work on the 
 structure, and perhaps envy the men who were skilful to work 
 in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in purple, in blue, and in 
 crimson. But without them the Temple could never have been 
 built. Their work was absolutely essential. And so it seems 
 that in the building of the spiritual temple, many have been 
 counted out by the king just to bear burdens. Tedious and 
 wearisome as their lots are, yet nothing they do that makes for 
 spiritual growth, purity of life, or cleanness of soul, can fail to 
 subserve God's great purpose of erecting a world-wide spiritual 
 temple upon this sin-stained world. 
 
 T[ There was a sharp discussion the other clay in a gentleman's 
 kitchen. One speaker said to another, " I am ashamed of you ; 
 we ought not to be in the same house together ; you are common 
 and vulgar-looking, besides being scratched and chipped all over. 
 Look at me ; there is not a flaw upon all my surface ; my beauty 
 is admired ; my place in the house is a place of honour." The 
 other speaker was not boisterous, there was no resentment in 
 the tone of the reply : " It is true that you are beautiful, and 
 that I am very common, but that is not the only difference 
 between us. See how you are cared for ; you are protected by a 
 glass shade ; you are dusted with a brush made of the softest 
 feathers; everybody in approaching you is warned of your 
 delicacy. It is very different with me\ whenever water is 
 wanted I am taken to the well; when servants are done with 
 me they almost fling me down ; I am used for all kinds of work ; 
 and there never was a scullery -maid in the house who did not 
 think herself good enough to speak of me with contempt/' It is 
 so with men. Some of us live under glass shades ; others of us 
 are as vessels in common wear ; but we could not change places ; 
 each must do his proper work, and each will have his appropriate 
 reward. 1 
 
 Is it the work ttiat makes life great and true? 
 
 Or the true soul that, working as it can, 
 Does faithfully the task it has to do, 
 
 And keepeth faith alike with God and man ? 
 
 Ah ! well ; the work is something ; the same gold 
 Or brass is fashioned now into a coin, 
 
 Now into fairest chalice that shall hold 
 To panting lips the sacramental wine: 
 
 1 J. Parker. 
 
i CORINTHIANS HI. 9 73 
 
 Here the same marble forms a cattle-trough 
 
 For brutes by the wayside to quench their thirst, 
 
 And there a god emerges from the rough 
 
 Unshapely block yet they were twins at first. 
 
 One pool of metal in the melting pot 
 A sordid, or a sacred thought inspires; 
 
 And of twin marbles from the quarry brought 
 One serves the earth, one glows with altar-fires. 
 
 There's something in high purpose of the soul 
 
 To do the highest service to its kind ; 
 There's something in the art that can unroll 
 
 Secrets of beauty shaping in the mind. 
 
 Yet he who takes the lower room, and tries 
 To make his cattle-trough with honest heart, 
 
 And could not frame the god with gleaming eyes, 
 As nobly plays the more ignoble part. 
 
 And maybe, as the higher light breaks in 
 And shows the meaner task he has to do, 
 
 He is the greater that he strives to win 
 Only the praise of being just and true. 
 
 For who can do no thing of sovran worth 
 
 Which men shall praise, a higher task may find, 
 
 Plodding his dull round on the common earth, 
 But conquering envies rising in the mind. 
 
 And God works in the little as the great 
 A perfect work, and glorious over all 
 
 Or in the stars that choir with joy elate, 
 Or in the lichen spreading on the wall. 1 
 
 (2) Besides seventy thousand men to bear burdens for the 
 Temple, there were told off eighty thousand men to hew stone 
 and wood in the mountains. These men had a task both 
 laborious and uninviting. Although the Temple' could never 
 have been built without them, yet the pleasure was denied them 
 of seeing, while they worked, the great and glorious edifice arise 
 on Mount Moriah. And so, to-day, the Lord has His hewers of 
 wood and stone in the mountains. To them is given hard and 
 unresponsive tasks. They labour all the day, and catch no 
 
 1 Walter C. Smith, " Work and Spirit." 
 
74 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 glimpse of the House that is being built for Jehovah, helped by 
 their labour. But still, without them, the House could never 
 have been built. 
 
 U The close sympathy between the Scotch people and the 
 Scotch gentry in most of the national struggles has been one 
 great cause of that admirable firmness of national character 
 which learnt at last to dispense with leadership. In Ireland, in 
 spite of adverse circumstances, this attachment between land- 
 lord and tenant in many particular instances was undoubtedly 
 formed, but in general there could be no real confidence between 
 the classes. When the people awoke to political life, they found 
 their natural leaders their antagonists ; they were compelled to 
 look for other chiefs, and they often found them in men who 
 were inferior in culture, in position, and in character, who sought 
 their suffrages for private ends, and who won them by fulsome 
 flattery, false rhetoric, and exaggerated opinions. 1 
 
 TJ From Bellinzona (after a day or two's excursion to Locarno) 
 Ruskin drove to the head of the lake, and took the steamer for 
 Baveno and the Isola Bella. Writing thence to his father (July 
 8), Ruskin mentions a political observation which made a great 
 impression on him, for he used it more than once as an illustration 
 in his economic writings : 
 
 " No pity nor respect can be felt for these people, who have 
 sunk and remain sunk, merely by idleness and wantonness in 
 the midst of all blessings and advantages : who cannot so much 
 as bank out or in a mountain stream, because, as one of their 
 priests told me the other day, every man always acts for himself : 
 they will never act together and do anything at common expense 
 for the common good; but every man tries to embank his own 
 land and throw the stream upon his neighbours; and so the 
 stream masters them all and sweeps its way down all the valley 
 in victory. This I heard from the curate of a mountain chapel 
 at Bellinzona, when I went every evening to draw his garden." 2 
 
 (3) There were men skilful to work in gold and silver, brass, 
 iron, stone, linen, purple, and crimson, and to grave all manner 
 of gravings and devise all manner of devices. These were the 
 outstanding men of genius, of whom only a few were needed. 
 
 Tf To Sir Christopher Wren belongs the undying honour of 
 having designed the great cathedral of St. Paul, with its world- 
 famous dome, in London. But Sir Christopher Wren could never 
 
 1 W. E. H. Lecky, A History of Ireland, i. 280. 
 8 E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, i. 517, 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 9 75 
 
 in a million years have built the dome alone. He was dependent 
 upon the humblest labourers who toiled upon the hidden base, or 
 reared the turrets of the mighty structure, as they were dependent 
 upon him. In so far as they used to the uttermost their talents 
 and opportunities, to them is due a full share of the glory. 1 
 
 ^ One day at Perth Bishop Wilkinson (late of Truro) noticed 
 a thin-faced boy looking as if he wanted to speak to him, and he 
 went up to him, asking if the boy wished to speak to him. " No, 
 sir," said the boy, " only I sing in the same choir as you are in." 
 The Bishop's friends laughed at the boy's idea of his association 
 with the Bishop in the Church, but the boy was not laughed at 
 by the Bishop. 2 
 
 Tf The world itself might be redeemed by hopefulness and 
 organized co-operation. Kuskin may have lacked the practical 
 gift ; but he was possessed by the vision : 
 
 (To his Mother) "Verona, June 18. Yesterday, it being 
 quite cool, I went for a walk, and as I came down from a rather 
 quiet hillside a mile or two out of town, I passed a house where 
 the women were at work spinning the silk off the cocoons. 
 There was a sort of whirring sound as in an English mill ; but at 
 intervals they sang a long sweet chant, all together, lasting about 
 two minutes, then pausing a minute, and then beginning again. 
 It was good and tender music, and the multitude of voices 
 prevented any sense of failure, so that it was all very lovely and 
 sweet, and like the things that I mean to try to bring to pass." 8 
 
 II. 
 
 WE ARE FELLOW- WORKERS FOR GOD. 
 
 1. Every Christian man and woman is invested with the 
 power, and is therefore burdened with the honourable obligation 
 to work for God. Man's communion with his Maker is not only 
 a fellowship of worship but also a fellowship of service. 
 
 If What were Ruskin's methods in his other and more general 
 manners, when he had the single view of making himself under- 
 stood and said what he desired in the best words he could find 
 for it ? What was his secret ? He would have told us, I think, 
 what he reported Turner as saying, " I know of no genius but 
 the genius of hard work." There is no writer who gives a 
 stronger impression of ease than Cardinal Newman a great 
 
 1 C. B. Keenleyside. 2 Life of Bishop Wilkinson, ii. 288. 
 
 8 E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, ii. 164, 
 
;6 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 master of simple and lucid English, greater in these particular 
 respects, if we take the whole body of their writings, than 
 Kuskin. Yet even Newman said : " I have been obliged to take 
 great pains with everything I have written, and I often write 
 chapters over and over again, besides innumerable corrections 
 and interlined additions." Buskin's method was the same. The 
 search for the right word, for the fitting sentence, was often 
 long; and paragraphs and chapters were written over and over 
 again before they satisfied him. And this applies equally to his 
 most simple writing, such as is to be found, for instance, in The 
 Elements of Drawing ; and to his most elaborate passages, such as 
 the exordiums and perorations in Modern Painters, The Seven 
 Lamps, and The Stones of Venice. He carried on the process to 
 the stage of proofs, revises, and re-revises. Facsimiles of pages 
 re-written on the printed proof are included in the Library 
 Edition, and in this connection Dr. Furnivall gave me an 
 anecdote. To Euskin's father the publisher came one day 
 exhibiting a thickly scored final revise and explaining that 
 continuance in such practices would absorb all the author's 
 profits. " Don't let my son know," said the old gentleman ; 
 " John must have his things as he likes them ; pay him whatever 
 would become due, apart from corrections, and send in a separate 
 bill for them to me." Few authors, it may be feared, are blessed 
 with so indulgent a parent. 1 
 
 Be strong ! 
 
 We are not here to play, to dream, to drift. 
 We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
 Shun not the struggle ; face it. 'Tis God's gift. 2 
 
 2. There is a sense in which every man is a worker for God. 
 We cannot help fulfilling His purposes. All things serve Him, 
 and He maketh even the wickedness of men work out His will. 
 
 (1) Through human agency the ancient miracle of creation is 
 repeated. One great teaching of modern knowledge says nothing 
 above a certain low level of excellence comes by natural law 
 unaided by man ; all best things in the world of nature are the 
 result of his thought and toil. It is true that man can do absolutely 
 nothing without God. He can create no new forces. All the 
 material with which he works Nature has furnished. But what 
 can he not do with it, and what has he done ? He has modified 
 
 1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, i. 358. 
 
 2 Maltbie D. Babcock. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 77 
 
 climate, made the rivers change their course and even the ocean its 
 shore, made forests grow and made new ground for them to grow in, 
 made the parched ground a pool and the thirsty land springs of 
 water. Eight hundred years ago there was no such country as 
 the Holland of to-day; God had not made it. He made it 
 possible, but man had to give it actual frame and form. The map 
 of Holland is not even now what it was at the beginning of the 
 last century; it has 120,000 more acres of land than it had then. 
 
 T[ I was deeply impressed by what a gardener once said to 
 me concerning his work. " I feel, sir," he said, " when I am 
 growing the flowers, or rearing the vegetables, that I am having 
 a share in creation ! " I thought it a very noble way of regarding 
 his work. 1 
 
 (2) In the realm of outward nature man works for God. It 
 is man's part in evolution that has developed the moss-rose out 
 of the wild-briar, the fine wheat out of the wild grasses. And 
 in the animal kingdom the same thing is seen still more strik- 
 ingly. The famous breeds of horses and cattle are man's creation 
 by development. Compare your sheep-dog or your setter 
 with the wild canine stock. Association with man has evolved 
 in them something almost of human intelligence and feeling. 
 God gives man all things in the rough, as it were, and leaves him 
 to develop them further; and without man's part faithfully 
 performed, there could not be a loaf of bread evolved out of a 
 wheat field, or a woollen coat out of a sheep's fleece. 
 
 ^[ Nature knew enough to make textile fibres, but never knew 
 enough to weave a piece of cotton. It never brought out a yard 
 of broadcloth. Nature knew how to make a worm, and the worm 
 knew how to make a garment of death for itself, but nature never 
 made silk. Nature made iron, but never made a tool not one ; 
 and yet, what are the hands of man without tools ? Men could 
 not have risen above barbarism but for them. 2 
 
 (3) In his own training and saving, in the work of developing 
 personal faculty and character, man is a worker with God. Man's 
 own will and effort constitute one of the factors in his progress. 
 You remember the little child's quaint answer to the question, 
 " Who made you ? " Said she, " God made me so long, and I 
 growed the rest myself." "Out of the mouth of babes and 
 
 1 J. H. Jowett. 3 H. W. Beecher, 
 
78 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 sucklings hast thou ordained strength ! " The little girl's answer 
 touched the very heart of the matter. We are made, intel- 
 lectually and morally, just about so long ; that is not our doing 
 " it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves " but, after 
 all, there is a good deal that we have to " grow ourselves " and 
 that we can grow ourselves. 
 
 If Theodore Parker used to say that man's life was only about 
 three parts out of the hundred freedom, the rest, necessity. 
 That is not much to claim for free-will the veriest necessarian 
 might concede that much ! But then, even three per cent, of moral 
 freedom, if made the most of, and constantly turned over, may 
 mount up gradually to a considerable increase of that stock-in- 
 trade with which man started. That little three per cent, of free 
 effort has brought man from skins to broadcloth ; from the wig- 
 wam to the modern house ; from the rough tradition chanted by 
 the camp fire to the printed book ; from the rude torch to the 
 electric light. In religion, it has brought man from the instinct 
 of fetish- worship to the communion of spiritual prayer ; and in 
 morality, from the measureless revenge of the savage to the 
 measured law "for a tooth only a tooth," and on to the 
 unmeasured law of forgiveness " unto seventy times seven " ! 
 In a word it is that little free part of man's own, even if it 
 be only three per cent., which, not buried in the napkin of 
 indolence or fatalism, but put out to interest in busy striving 
 life, has brought man from savagism up to civilization, and in 
 which lie the possibilities of further progress still the potenti- 
 alities of the hero, sage and saint in this world, to say nothing 
 of the angel in the life to come. 1 
 
 (4) It is through men that God helps and saves men and 
 creates His new heavens and His new earth. Out of humanity 
 come the Divine helpers of humanity. God in the world reconcil- 
 ing it to Himself means in human life God in Christ and God 
 in men whom Christ inspires, God choosing and using men to be 
 the instruments of His purpose, the messengers of His mercy and 
 grace, the doers of His word. There was no want of faith, or 
 reverence, or humility in Martin Luther, and yet he could say in 
 his own bold, earnest way, " God needs strong men ; He cannot 
 get along without them." 
 
 T[ The highest of all privileges is to share with God the work 
 of re-creation. There are no flowers so winsome as those you 
 
 1 B. Herford. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 
 
 79 
 
 have grown in your own garden, and there is no life that gives 
 you such joy and such delicacy of spiritual food as the life you 
 have helped to make beautiful by your own heart's blood. When 
 you have worked with the Lord in the creation of another man's 
 joy, a most delicately flavoured joy visits your own heart. Let 
 us regard every man as a possible sphere of service, and set to 
 work to turn the untilled field into a garden. 1 
 
 Wherefore hast Thou withdrawn Thee from my sight, 
 
 Shepherd? Yesterday in glad delight 
 
 1 walked serene, rejoicing in the light. 
 
 Shepherd, Shepherd, Shepherd, seek Thy sheep ! 
 
 But yesterday my soul was all aflame 
 If but the faintest whisper of Thy name 
 Ineffable to my rapt spirit came. 
 
 Shepherd, Shepherd, Shepherd, seek Thy sheep! 
 
 The waters that refreshed me yesterday, 
 
 The sweet green fields that cheered me on my way 
 
 Afford no comfort to my soul to-day. 
 
 Shepherd, Shepherd, Shepherd, seek Thy sheep! 
 
 Around me the fair world is bathed in light, 
 All nature breathes to God her calm delight; 
 And I, alone, stumble in blackest night. 
 
 Shepherd, Shepherd, Shepherd, seek Thy sheep! 
 
 Why dost Thou leave me on the mountain side 
 When all my soul cries out for Thee to guide, 
 Desiring nought in earth or heaven beside? 
 
 Shepherd, Shepherd, Shepherd, seek Thy sheep! 
 
 Why dost Thou leave me thus? If Thou art near, 
 Succour me speedily. Each step I fear. 
 Oh let Thy voice fall on my straining ear. 
 
 Shepherd, Shepherd, Shepherd, seek Thy sheep! 
 
 Thy voice ? Nay, but across the lonely track 
 
 A faint xry from a soul in bitter lack. 
 
 Is it Thy voice ? Shepherd, I turn me back 
 
 And hasten, joyful, to seek out Thy sheep. 2 
 
 * 
 
 1 J. H. Jowett. 
 
 2 Margaret Blaikie, Songs ly the Way, 39. 
 
8o GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 III. 
 
 WE ABE FELLOW- WORKERS WITH GOD. 
 
 We are fellow-workers, and we are fellow-workers for God. 
 But, more than that, we are fellow- workers with God. It is God's 
 field we are tilling, it is God's house we are building together, and 
 God is with us in the work. He and we till the field and build 
 the house together. We are God's fellow-workers. 
 
 " God's fellow- workers ! " What a title ! How august the 
 dignity ! What distinction it confers upon us ! The conjunction 
 is almost incredible. God the eternal, infinite. The omniscient 
 and omnipotent! Man, crushed before the moth, chilled and 
 smitten by the November fog! And yet these two terms, 
 significant of frailty and almightiness, are brought into this 
 marvellous association, and we are described as " fellow-workers " ! 
 We do not wonder that John Calvin, in seeking an exposition 
 of these words, describes one side of the partnership as " composed 
 of mere worms of the dust." But a worm in conjunction with 
 the Almighty becomes a powerful fellow-worker. 
 
 ^| Is there anything more fragile than the incandescent 
 mantle ? You blow upon it and it falls into dust. It will not 
 bear the rough touch even of the gentlest finger. And yet this 
 flimsy substance can co-operate with a tremendous energy and 
 contribute in the production of dazzling light. And here we are, 
 mere children of the dust, frail and flimsy as this mantle. And 
 yet, when we are in league with the Almighty, we become 
 exceedingly serviceable, and fruitful in great things. We can be 
 fellow-workers with God ; such a dignity ought to make us walk 
 with sanctified erectness. 1 
 
 ^ When a mother says to her little child who is carrying some 
 little burden from one room to another, " You are helping me," 
 what stature it gives to the little soul, and what a sense of dignity 
 and place in life's affairs. 
 
 Tf Suppose a great painter, a Eaphael or a Turner, taking a 
 little boy that cleaned his brushes, and saying to him, "Come 
 into my studio, and I will let you do a bit of work upon my 
 picture." Suppose an aspirant, an apprentice in any walk of life, 
 honoured by being permitted to work along with some one who 
 was recognized all over the world as being at the very top of that 
 
 1 J, H. Jowett 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 9 81 
 
 special profession. Would it not be a feather in the boy's cap 
 all his life ? And would he not think it the greatest honour that 
 ever had been done him that he was allowed to co-operate, in 
 however inferior a fashion, with such an one ? Jesus Christ says 
 to us, " (Some and work here side by side with Me." l 
 
 1. As we are joint-labourers with God, we must learn the 
 lesson of mutual dependence. 
 
 (1) We are dependent on God. We cannot do the smallest 
 part of our work without His co-operation. Here is the secret of 
 humility. Alike in the development of our own inner lives and 
 in our ministry for others, we must be destitute of prosperity 
 and progress, if it were not that God is working in us to will and 
 to do of His good pleasure. So let us bid farewell to every shred 
 and vestige of pride. If it were not for our Divine ally, we 
 should be shamed and driven in dishonour from the field. 
 
 TJ When first the greatness of the scientific thought of evolu- 
 tion burst upon the wondering mind of our time, there was an 
 idea that it would almost cut away the ground from under 
 religion. Perhaps this feeling was never expressed and at the 
 same time its shallowness exposed better than in the saying 
 of Frances Power Cobbe. " It is a curious thing," said Miss Cobbe, 
 " that as soon as men find out how anything is done, they should 
 immediately rush to the conclusion that God did not do it." But 
 that idea is pretty well past. God's part in Evolution becomes 
 only more evident the more the subject is examined. We cannot 
 get that idea of evolution to work, we cannot keep it working, 
 without recognizing, behind all things and in all things, some 
 mighty, mysterious power and energy, which, the more we look 
 at it, the more we have to think of it as life and will, and to call 
 it by some name of God. 2 
 
 (2) God is dependent on us. In his controversy with the late 
 John Stuart Mill, the French philosopher Comte said, " My Deity, 
 that is, Humanity, has this advantage over yours : He needs 
 help." The English philosopher met the charge by saying, " The 
 theist's God is not omnipotent ; He can be helped, great worker 
 though He be." What Mill described as " the feeling of helping 
 God " has always been cherished by the most sincere and earnest 
 believers in the power of God over all. 
 
 1 A. Maclaren. 3 B. Herford. 
 
 I COR.- 6 
 
82 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 Lord, when we pray, "Thy kingdom come!" 
 
 Then fold our hands without a care 
 For souls whom Thou hast died to save, 
 
 We do but mock Thee with our prayer. n 
 
 Thou couldst have sent an angel band 
 
 To call Thine erring children home; 
 And thus through heavenly ministries 
 
 On earth Thy kingdom might have come. 
 
 But since to human hands like ours 
 
 Thou hast committed work divine, 
 Shall not our eager hearts make haste 
 
 To join their feeble powers with Thine? 
 
 To word and work shall not our hands 
 
 Obedient move, nor lips be dumb, 
 Lest through our sinful love of ease, 
 
 Thy kingdom should delay to come ? 
 
 2. As we are fellow- workers with God let us work in harmony 
 with God and by God's method, 
 
 (1) It behoves us to work in harmony with Him. Co-opera- 
 tion with God is a question of knowing, of being conscious of it. 
 It is impossible to divorce ourselves from God. In spite of us 
 He will realize His will in us. He cannot overcome our will, 
 but even through our opposing will He will accomplish His 
 purpose. But we may be willing fellow-workers. It is the 
 difference between opposition to God's will, together with the 
 shamefaced confession that we cannot help doing His work, 
 and willing co-operation with His will, together with the 
 consciousness of being recognized by Him as fellow- workers. 
 
 ^f Says Euskin, " You will find it needful to live, if it be with 
 success, according to God's Law ; and the first uttered article in 
 it is, ' In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.' " 1 
 
 K The conduct of life becomes like the experience of the brave 
 Nansen in his attempt to reach the Pole. Men had struggled 
 northward through weary days from the Greenland side, only to 
 find at the end of each day's march that they had been swept 
 farther south by a current which moved the whole pack of ice 
 
 1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Rusk in, ii. 329. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 9 83 
 
 beneath their feet. Then the Norwegian explorer made himself 
 a labourer together with God, through the Siberian approach, and 
 gave himself to the mighty sweep of the polar current, so that the 
 law which he had discovered bore him towards the realization of 
 his dream. It is the same with every honest desire to do right. 
 The current of God's laws is under you ; the movement of things 
 is with you ; you are a labourer together with God. 
 
 (2) If we are working in willing co-operation with God, we 
 will be content to work by God's method. And if we wish to 
 know what God's method is, we have but to look at Jesus Christ. 
 Now we know that the method of God for Jesus Christ involved 
 self-sacrifice, pain, weariness, utter self-oblivious devotion, as well 
 as gentleness, tenderness, infinite pity, and love running over. If 
 we felt that side by side with us, like two sailors hauling on one 
 rope, " the Servant of the Lord " was toiling, would it not burn up 
 all our selfishness, and light up all our indifference, and make us 
 spend ourselves in His service ? 
 
 U Men's lives bear the aspects of deserts and wildernesses, 
 and God wants them to be as beautiful as the Garden of Eden 
 aye, more beautiful. The "paradise of God" in the book of 
 Kevelation is a far more lovely garden than the Garden of Eden ; 
 the first was the garden of innocence, the latter is the garden of 
 holiness. Man fell from innocence; he may attain unto the 
 garden of holiness ; but the attainment is made possible by the 
 awful happenings in the Garden of Gethsemane. Now if we are 
 to be fellow-workers in creating the garden of holiness we too 
 must know something of the agonies of Gethsemane. We must 
 know " the fellowship of his sufferings." We can do nothing of 
 this high gardening except through the ministry of sacrificial 
 blood. When we are willing to bleed, in order that other lives 
 may be beautiful, we shall be sharing the travail of the whole 
 creation. It is no use playing at spiritual gardening ; it is a thing 
 of agony and bloody sweat. 1 
 
 Whose is the speech 
 
 That moves the voices of this lonely beech? 
 Out of the long West did this wild wind come 
 Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, 
 
 Keady and dumb until 
 The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill. 
 
 1 J. H, Jowett. 
 
84 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 Two memories, 
 
 Two powers, two promises, two silences 
 Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves 
 Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves 
 
 The purpose of the past, 
 Separate, apart embraced, embraced at last. 
 
 "Whose is the word? 
 
 Is it I that spake ? Is it thou ? Is it I that heard ? " 
 "Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!" 
 "Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee, 
 
 Thou visitant divine." 
 "0 thou my Voice, the word was thine." "Was thine." 1 
 
 3. The fact that our work is conjoined with the Divine is the 
 root of motive. It ought ever to be an adequate inspiration to us 
 that the work is God's, and that He has called us into His fellow- 
 ship. Is not the motive that stirs in His heart and moves His 
 stupendous activities without ceasing sufficient for us ? What is 
 good enough to engage the majestic energies of God is surely good 
 enough for us. Does the work that beseems His matchless 
 sovereignty need commendation from us, or the high seal of our 
 rank and prestige ? Into the work He touches with His sceptred 
 hand on the one side, and which we are permitted to touch with 
 our feeble hands of flesh on the other, He reflects all the glory of 
 His attributes. 
 
 K It is said that when Phidias was preparing the figures for 
 the Acropolis, the work was perfect even in the smallest details, 
 although these figures were to stand upon a background so high 
 that nobody could see them. A sculptor was working at the hair 
 of one of them with minute fidelity, when some one said to him, 
 " What is the use of that expenditure of time and labour ? 
 Nobody will ever see your work." The workman replied, " Yes, 
 the gods will see it ! " 
 
 Christ, by Thine own darkened hour 
 Live within my heart and brain! 
 Let my hands not slip the rein. 
 
 Ah, how long ago it is 
 
 Since a comrade rode with me ! 
 Now a moment let me see 
 
 1 Alice Moynell. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 9 85 
 
 Thyself, lonely in the dark, 
 Perfect, without wound or mark. 1 
 
 4. The fact that the work is God's is our strong encourage- 
 ment. He who works for the redemption of men from the 
 deepest evil of their life will not long want the sign that God 
 works. The sign is so universal that we have perhaps ceased to 
 call it a sign. 
 
 K A short time ago I saw a well-kept flower-garden blooming 
 in the little angle of ground formed at the junction of two railway 
 lines. The helpless flowers were thriving there in spite of the 
 terrible forces that came so near them on every side. If you 
 were to put an untaught savage inside the garden hedge and let 
 him hear the screaming engines and see the files of carriages or 
 the trucks laden with coal, timber, and iron converging towards 
 this fairy oasis, he would be ready to say, " These beautiful things 
 will be torn to shreds in a moment." But behind the garden 
 fences there are the lines of strong, faithful steel keeping each 
 engine and carriage and truck in its appointed place, and though 
 the air vibrates with destructive force, and pansy, primrose, and 
 geranium live in a world of tremors, not a silken filament is 
 snapped, and not a petal falls untimely to the earth. In the very 
 angle of these forces the frailest life is unharmed. So with the 
 fine spiritual husbandries that foster faith in the souls around us. 
 The air hurtles with fierce hostilities. The mechanisms of 
 diabolic temptation encroach on every side upon our work. 
 Public- house, gaming-club, and ill-ordered home, threaten disasters 
 of which we do not like to think. The air quivers with anger of 
 demons. Yet the work is God's, and the gates of hell shall not 
 prevail against it. In the very angle of these demoniac forces 
 the work shall thrive, for the hidden lines of His protecting 
 power are round about it. 2 
 
 Just where you stand in the conflict, 
 
 There is your place ! 
 Just where you think you are useless, 
 
 Hide not your face! 
 God placed you there for a purpose, 
 
 Whate'er it be; 
 Think you He has chosen you for it: 
 
 Work loyally. 
 
 1 Padraic Colum. 2 T. G. Selby. 
 
86 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 Gird on your armour! be faithful 
 
 At toil or rest, 
 Whiche'er it be, never doubting 
 
 God's way is best. 
 Out in the fight, or on picket, 
 
 Stand firm and true; 
 This is the work which your Master 
 
 Gives you to do. 
 
 5. The fact that we are linked with God in His service is our 
 pledge of victory. If God works with us, success is sure. If God 
 is doing this work, then God's strength, God's skill, God's know- 
 ledge are employed upon it. We are no longer discouraged and 
 enfeebled by the sense of our own incapacity, our own ignorance 
 and inexperience, our own faint hearts and feeble hands. There 
 is beside us an inexhaustible fountain of ability, from which we 
 can draw. It is God's work. Therefore it must be triumphant. 
 There is no place for misgiving or despondency. No sense of 
 personal frailty, no calculation of opposing odds, no menaces of 
 approaching evil, no symptoms of immediate failure none of 
 these can appal us. God's work is eternal. Nothing can prevail 
 against it. There may be temporary defeats, partial fallings back. 
 Men may come and men may go. But what then ? " All flesh 
 is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The 
 grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away ; but the 
 word of the Lord endureth for ever." 
 
 ^J A noble cause cannot of itself make a man noble. We 
 must despair of growing great, unless we can feel that we are 
 given to the cause to work for it, and not it to work for us. In 
 the old torch races of Pan, the rule was that each runner should 
 hold his torch as long as it kept its light, but when he flagged 
 he must hand it to another who stood ready girded to follow up 
 the race. And so it must be with us. We must recognize the 
 great end of all this panting, and running, and toiling, not that 
 you or I should reach the goal, and be rich or honoured in men's 
 mouths, but that the torch of truth that was put into our hands 
 when we started should reach the people at the end all alight 
 with truth as when we took it. Let it be our hands, if we can, 
 that bring it there, and then the honour shall be ours ; but that 
 must not be our end, and when we see it sinking and going out, 
 let no petty conceit or unfledged pride keep us from giving it to 
 a fresher and stronger man, with a hearty Godspeed to run the 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 87 
 
 next stage of the same great journey. Thus we win a broadness, 
 and deepness, and fulness of character that sinks all little human 
 ventures like the sea. 1 
 
 ^ It is said that the engineer who planned the Brooklyn 
 bridge one of the most colossal triumphs of scientific skill in 
 the world was a bed-ridden invalid ; and that with the help of a 
 telescope he watched the bridge grow into shape day by day from 
 his couch of paralysis and pain. He triumphed because the 
 great thought in a fragile frame was conjoined with all but 
 exhaustless capital and the illimitable labour that capital could 
 bring into the field. 2 
 
 I cannot do it alone, 
 
 The waves run fast and high, 
 And the fogs close chill around, 
 
 And the light goes out in the sky; 
 But I know that we two 
 Shall win in the end 
 Jesus and I. 
 
 I cannot row it myself, 
 
 My boat on the raging sea; 
 But beside me sits Another 
 
 Who pulls or steers with me, 
 And I know that we two 
 Shall come safe into port 
 His child and He. 
 
 Coward and wayward and weak, 
 
 I change with the changing sky ; 
 To-day so eager and brave, 
 
 To-morrow not caring to try; 
 But He never gives in, 
 So we two shall win 
 Jesus and I. 
 
 Strong and tender and true, 
 
 Crucified once for me ! 
 He will not change, I know, 
 
 Whatever I may be ! 
 But all He says I must do, 
 
 Ever from sin to keep free. 
 We shall finish our course 
 And reach home at last 
 
 His child and He. 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks, Life, 53. 2 T. G. Sell.y. 
 
THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 111. 
 
 Alexander (S. A.), The Christianity of St. Paul, 123. 
 
 Bell (C. D.), The Name above Every Name, 165. 
 
 Burrell (D. J.), The Morning Cometh, 67. 
 
 Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, iii. 9. 
 
 Clark (H. W.), Meanings and Methods of the Spiritual Life, 121. 
 
 Dawsoc (W. J.), The Comrade Christ, 261. 
 
 Dudden (F. H.), Christ and Christ's Religion, 17. 
 
 Fraser (J.), Parochial Sermons, 259. 
 
 Gibbon (J. M.), The Image of God, 42. 
 
 Jenkinson (A.), A Modern Disciple, 49. 
 
 Jones (W. B.), The Peace of God, 243. 
 
 Lee (R.), Sermons, 464. 
 
 Liddon (H. P.), Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, 51. 
 
 Sermons on Special Occasions, 220. 
 
 Mabie (H. C.), The Meaning and Message of tlie Cross, 197. 
 Maclaren (A.), Christ in the Heart, 157. 
 
 Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 39. 
 
 Maurice (F. D.), Lincoln's Inn Sermons, v. 206. 
 Moore (E. W.), The Christ- Controlled Life, 207. 
 Palmer (J. R.), Bur den- Bearing, 50. 
 Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 103. 
 Raleigh (A.), Quiet Resting Places, 272. 
 Robertson (S.), The Rope of Hair, 71. 
 Scott (C. A.), CJiristian Character Building, 25. 
 Trench (R. C.), Shipwrecks of Faith, 62. 
 Van Dyke (H.), Manhood, Faith and Courage, 237. 
 Vaughan (C. J.), University Sermons, 170. 
 Westcott (B. F.), The Bible in the Church, 141. 
 
 Social Aspects of Christianity, 1. 
 
 Christian Age, xxviii. 146(Beecher) ; xxxii. 114 (Fisher). 
 Christian World Pulpit, xv. 56 (Snell) ; xxv. 373 (M'Cree) ; xxxvi. 385 
 
 (Liddon) ; xlviii. 68 (Varley) ; Ixii. 86 (Banks). 
 Kesivick Week, 1905, p. 164 (Moore). 
 
THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT. 
 
 For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is 
 Jesus Christ. But if any man buiideth on the foundation gold, silver, costly 
 stones, wood, hay, stubble ; each man's work shall be made manifest ; for 
 the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire ; and the fire itself shall 
 prove each man's work of what sort it is. i Cor. iii. 11-13. 
 
 1. THE vivid imagination of St. Paul puts before us here 
 an important truth in a picturesque form. Two workmen are 
 building side by side. One builds a palace, the other a hovel. 
 The materials which one uses are gold and silver, for decoration ; 
 and for solidity costly stones, by which is not meant diamonds 
 and emeralds and the like, but valuable building material, such as 
 marbles and granites and alabaster. The other employs timber, 
 dry reeds, straw. No doubt in Corinth, as in all ancient cities, 
 side by side with the temples shining in marble and Corinthian 
 brass were the huts of the poor and of slaves built of such flimsy 
 materials as these. Suddenly there plays around both buildings 
 a great fire, the fire of the Lord coming to Judgment. The 
 marbles gleam the whiter, and the gold and the silver flash the 
 more resplendently, whilst the tongues of light leap about them ; 
 but the straw hovel goes up in a flare ! The one man gets wages 
 for work that lasts, the other man gets no pay for what perishes. 
 He is dragged through the smoke, saved by a hair's breadth, 
 but sees all his toil lying there in white ashes at his feet. 
 
 Tf The building, if it be really of gold, silver, and precious 
 stones, is not destroyed. It becomes rather, in due course, the 
 foundation on which the new superstructure is reared. Is not 
 that the meaning of the somewhat difficult lines in Browning's 
 " Aristophanes' Apology " ? 
 
 And what's my teaching but accept the old, 
 Contest the strange ! acknowledge work that's done, 
 Misdoubt men who have still their work to do ! 
 Eeligions, laws and customs, poetries, 
 
92 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 Are old? So much achieved victorious truth! 
 Each work was product of a lifetime, wrung 
 From each man by an adverse world: for why? 
 He worked, destroying other older work 
 Which the world loved and so was loth to lose. 
 Whom the world beat in battle dust and ash! 
 Who beat the world, left work in evidence, 
 And wears its crown till new men live new lives, 
 And fight new fights, and triumph in their turn. 1 
 
 2. The original application of these words is distinctly to 
 Christian teachers. The whole section starts from a rebuke 
 of the party spirit in the Corinthian Church which led them to 
 swear by Paul or Peter or Apollos, and to despise all teachers 
 but their own favourite. The Apostle reminds these jangling 
 partisans that all teachers are but instruments in God's hands, 
 who is the true Worker, the true Husbandman, the true 
 Builder. That word opens up a whole region of thought to his 
 ardent mind. He goes on to speak of the foundation which 
 God has laid, namely, the mission of Jesus Christ. That founda- 
 tion laid once for all in actual reality, in the historical facts of 
 our Lord's life, death, and resurrection, had been laid in preaching 
 by St. Paul when he founded the Corinthian Church. There 
 cannot be two foundations. So all other teachers at Corinth 
 have only to build on that foundation, that is, to carry on a 
 course of Christian teaching which rests upon that fundamental 
 truth. Let all such teachers take heed what sort of materials 
 they build on that foundation, that is to say, what sort of 
 teaching they offer; for there may be gold, and silver, and 
 precious stones solid and valuable instruction ; or there may be 
 timber, and hay, and straw worthless and unsubstantial teach- 
 ing. The materials with which the teachers build are evidently 
 the instruction which they give, or the doctrines which they teach. 
 
 This, then, is the teacher's Great Text. The teacher's work 
 is spoken of as building, with the certainty that one day the 
 building will be tested by fire. Let us consider 
 
 I. The Foundation. 
 II. The Building. 
 III. The Fire. 
 
 1 J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 200. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 11-13 93 
 
 I. 
 
 THE FOUNDATION. 
 
 1. The Foundation is already laid. " Other foundation can 
 no man lay than that which is laid." It was laid in the person 
 and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was laid before St. Paul 
 himself or any of the Apostles began to teach. 
 
 A paradox which found favour with some of the earlier moods 
 of German nationalism went to the effect that St. Paul and not 
 Jesus Christ was the real founder of Christendom. How the 
 writer of the indignant appeal to the Corinthians, "Was Paul 
 crucified for you ? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul ? " 
 could ever have been seated, by the convictions of any intelligent 
 readers of his Epistles, in his Master's place, might well raise 
 our wonder, if experience did not prove that of all credulity the 
 easiest is that which is enjoined by unbelief, and of all theories, 
 the wildest are those which are put forward in order to discredit 
 the creed of Christendom. If the Church is built upon the 
 labour of Apostles, as her foundation, the Apostles themselves 
 rested on the Chief Corner-stone. And, indeed, since Schleier- 
 macher, the paradox in question has been discredited well-nigh 
 everywhere. It is one of that great man's many claims to honour, 
 that he did more than any other writer in his day and country 
 to reassert Christ's true historical relation to the Christian Church. 
 
 U In a lecture, given in St. George's, Edinburgh, Principal 
 Eainy made this comparison between Jesus and Paul : " We can 
 easily mark the tie between the two; we also easily feel the 
 difference. In both, there is goodwill to men below; in both, 
 a constant reference to One above. But in the true manhood of 
 our Lord, we own something serener, more self-contained and 
 sovereign. The love to His Father moves in great tides of even 
 perpetual flow. The love to men is a pure compassion, whose 
 perfect goodness delights in bringing its sympathy and its help 
 to the neediest and the worst, does so with a perfect under- 
 standing and an unreserved self-communication. When He 
 speaks, He speaks in the language of His time and land and 
 circumstances, but He speaks like one who addresses human 
 nature itself, finding the way to the common mind and common 
 heart of every land and every age and every condition. When 
 He reasons, it is not like one who is clearing his own thoughts, 
 but like one who turns away from the perversity of the caviller, 
 
94 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 or who, for the perplexed inquirer, brings into view the elements 
 of the spiritual world he was overlooking or forgetting. And 
 with what resource none the less His that He rejoiced to think 
 of it as His Father's does He confront whatever comes to Him 
 in life ! As we watch Him, there grows upon us the strongest 
 sense of a perfect inner harmony with Himself and with His 
 Father that lives through all changes. Finally, standing in this 
 world, He declares the order of another and a higher world. He 
 does it as one who knew it, who speaks what He had seen. 
 
 " We turn to Paul, and we perceive him also to be great ; great 
 thoughts, great affections, great efforts, great fruits are his. But 
 he is not great in the manner of his Master. He goes through 
 the world full of a noble self-censure that bows him willingly to 
 the earth, and of a passionate gratitude that cannot speak its 
 thanks but offers up its life. Like his Master, while he rever- 
 ences the order of this world and of society as God has framed it, 
 he is at the same time full of the relations of a world unseen. 
 To that world unseen he already belongs ; it determines for him, 
 and for all who will listen to him, the whole manner of thought 
 and life and feeling in this world ; it holds him, it inspires him. 
 But it is in the manner of faith rather than of knowledge, of 
 earnest rather than of possession. Especially, the influence that 
 has mastered him and is the secret of his power and nobleness, 
 has not brought him to the final harmony of all his powers. It 
 has, on the contrary, committed him to an inward conflict, a 
 fight of faith, which he will never cease to wage till the final 
 victory crowns him. This man knows the inward weakness and 
 the inward disgrace of Sin. He knows forgiveness and repentance, 
 and good hope through grace. The Lord received sinners and 
 sat and ate with them ; but this man was himself a sinner who 
 was forgiven much and loved much. That was the Saviour : this, 
 a pattern of them that should believe on Him to life ever- 
 lasting." 1 
 
 2. The Foundation is Jesus Christ. " Other foundation can no 
 man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." What 
 does the Apostle mean by " Jesus Christ " ? The one thing 
 fundamental, according to the teaching of St. Paul, and according 
 to the teaching of Jesus Himself, is faith in Jesus as the Divine 
 Eedeemer of the world. In opposition to this faith there is a 
 Religion of the Human Christ. If we look at the points in which 
 the Religion of a Human Christ differs from the Christian faith 
 
 1 The Life of Principal Rainy, i. 426. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 11-13 95 
 
 we shall see what the Apostle means when he says that the 
 foundation is Jesus Christ. 
 
 Tf Two rival views are claiming the allegiance of the present 
 generation. The one finds the basis of Christianity in the teaching 
 of a man, inspired as Moses was inspired and more inspired, 
 Divine as Shakespeare was Divine and more Divine, but now dead 
 in the sense in which Moses is dead and Shakespeare is dead. 
 The other finds the basis of Christianity in the ever-living Person 
 of God for men made Man. Such are the views which, in some 
 form or other, confront each one of us, and between which, sooner 
 or later, we must make our solemn choice. 1 
 
 (1) In the first place, the religion of a Human Christ as it is 
 represented, for example, in Kenan's Life of Jesus or in Robert 
 Elsmere, gives us as our leader, as the centre of our faith, as the 
 object of our reverence, a human hero. 
 
 If The last movement of Ruskin's mind had been away from 
 evangelical faith; it had coincided with his growing admiration of 
 the great worldly, irreligious painters; his religion had become 
 "the religion of humanity," though "full of sacred colour and 
 melancholy shade " ; his teaching had been in such exhortations 
 as may be based on intellectual scepticism. But while engaged 
 on drawing Giotto's frescoes, " I discovered," he says, " the fallacy 
 under which I had been tormented for sixteen years the fallacy 
 that Religious artists were weaker than Irreligious. I found that 
 all Giotto's 'weaknesses' (so called) were merely absences of 
 material science. He did not know, and could not, in his day, 
 so much of perspective as Titian so much of the laws of light 
 and shade, or so much of technical composition. But I found he 
 was in the make of him, and contents, a very much stronger and 
 greater man than Titian ; that the things I had fancied easy in his 
 work, because they were so unpretending and simple, were never- 
 theless entirely inimitable ; that the Religion in him, instead of 
 weakening, had solemnized and developed every faculty of his 
 heart and hand ; and finally, that his work, in all the innocence 
 of it, was yet a human achievement and possession, quite above 
 everything that Titian had ever done." This " discovery " affected, 
 first, Ruskin's estimate of painters ; and at Florence, presently, he 
 set himself to write of Giotto and his works in Florence, as twenty 
 years before, with a more reserved admiration for the master, he 
 had written of Giotto and his Works in Padua. 2 
 
 (2) In the second place, this Religion of a Human Christ blots 
 1 F. Homes Dudden. 2 E. T. Cook, The Life of Buskin, ii, 253. 
 
96 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 the resurrection out of the Gospel and gives us but a cross and a 
 tomb. Let us read Kobert Elsmere's speech to the working men 
 of East London : " * He laid him in a tomb which had been hewn 
 out of a rock ; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.' 
 The ashes of Jesus of Nazareth mingled with the earth of 
 Palestine 
 
 Far hence he lies 
 
 In the lone Syrian town, 
 And on his grave, with shining eyes, 
 
 The Syrian stars look down. 
 
 " He stopped. The melancholy cadence of the verse died away. 
 Then a gleam broke over the pale, exhausted face a gleam of 
 extraordinary sweetness. 'And in the days and weeks that 
 followed, the devout and passionate fancy of a few mourning 
 Galileans begat the exquisite fable of the Kesurrection. How 
 natural, and amid all its falseness how true, is that naive and 
 contradictory story! The rapidity with which it spread is a 
 measure of many things. It is, above all, a measure of the 
 greatness of Jesus, of the force with which he had drawn to 
 himself the hearts and imaginations of men.' " 
 
 T[ It may be true, as Mr. Nettleship has said, that "A Death 
 in the Desert goes no single step in the direction of proving 
 Christ's divinity as a dogma " ; but the poem itself is void of all 
 meaning, unless, in spite of its dramatic form, it can be regarded 
 as setting forth the deepest conviction of the poet's own soul. 
 Hence the verdict of the man who adds the final note is this : 
 
 If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men 
 Mere man, the first and best but nothing more 
 Account Him, for reward of what He was, 
 Now and for ever, wretchedest of all. 1 
 
 (3) Thirdly, the Keligion of a Human Christ offers to us a law 
 and an example nothing more; the religion of Christian faith 
 offers us a Divine power. 
 
 TI Mr. Gladstone has eloquently sketched in a few words the 
 power of the Christian church : " Christianity both produced a 
 type of character wholly new to the Roman world and it funda- 
 mentally altered the laws and institutions, the tone, temper, and 
 tradition of that world. For example, it changed profoundly the 
 
 1 J, Flow, Studies in Brmvning, 45. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 11-13 97 
 
 relation of the poor to the rich, and the almost forgotten 
 obligation of the rich to the poor. It abolished slavery, 
 abolished human sacrifice, abolished gladiatorial shows, and a 
 multitude of other horrors. It restored the position of woman 
 in society. It prosecuted polygamy; and put down divorce, 
 absolutely in the West, though not absolutely in the East. It 
 made peace, instead of war, the normal and presumed relation 
 between human societies. It exhibited life as a discipline, every- 
 where and in all its parts, and changed essentially the place and 
 function of suffering in human experience. Accepting the ancient 
 morality as far as it went, it not only enlarged but transfigured 
 its teaching by the laws of humility and of forgiveness, and by 
 a law of purity even more new and strange than these." 
 
 (4) In the fourth place, this Eeligion of a Human Christ offers 
 a temporal and local religion in place of one that is as eternal 
 and as universal as its Divine Author. Let Kobert Elsmere 
 again explain his position : " If you wish, Catherine, I will wait 
 I will wait till you bid me speak ; but I warn you there is 
 something dead in me, something gone and broken. It can 
 never live again except in forms which now it would only pain 
 you more to think of. It is not that I think differently of this 
 point or that point, but of life and religion altogether. I see 
 God's purposes in quite other proportions, as it were. Christi- 
 anity seems to me something small and local. Behind it, around 
 it, including it, I see the great drama of the world, sweeping on, 
 led by God, from change to change, from act to act. It is not that 
 Christianity is false, but that it is only an imperfect human 
 reflection of a part of truth." 
 
 1J It is a perfectly unique and very striking fact, that the 
 views of Christ do not proceed from the concretely defined 
 horizon of any age or any historical sphere, not even from His 
 own. Mark the distinction in this respect between Christ and 
 Socrates. 1 
 
 3. The Foundation is the Person of Christ Christ Himself. 
 
 This has been the teaching of the Church from the earliest 
 day till now. In every age and in every land the Church has 
 taught invariably that the one determining factor of the 
 Christian religion is the Person of Jesus. That is the absolute, 
 essential thing. The Christian religion is not a mere system of 
 
 1 R. Rothe, Still Hours, 213. 
 I COR. 7 
 
98 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 doctrine. It is not a mere ethical code. It is not merely a 
 redemptive social force. It is above all dependence on a Person. 
 And therein lies its peculiarity and its novelty. A Church 
 Father of the second century, being pressed with the question, 
 " What new thing did the Lord bring by His coining ? " replied, 
 "Know that He brought all newness in bringing us Himself." 
 The distinctive feature of the new religion is the Person of Jesus. 
 (1) It is Jesus Christ, and not doctrines about Jesus Christ. 
 To say this is not to disparage the precious guidance of Scripture 
 or Creeds or Councils. These Apostolic words, these later 
 definitions, which furnish in our day the favourite topic for so 
 much shallow declamation, are the voice of that Eternal Spirit 
 by whom the whole Body is governed as well as sanctified. 
 They guard and sustain in Christian thought the Divine Saviour's 
 peerless honour ; they forbid, in tones of merciful severity, false 
 and degrading beliefs about Him. Yet He, our living Lord, is 
 the foundation ; and no one can altogether rest upon the formulae 
 which uphold and regulate our estimate of His Glory. We 
 prize both Scripture and the Creeds for His sake, not Him for 
 theirs ; and to rest upon them, as distinct from Him whom they 
 keep before us, would be like building a wall upon a measuring 
 rule, instead of upon the block of granite, of which it has given 
 us the noble dimensions. 
 
 If I do not agree with the saying imputed to some one, that 
 God gave man religion, but the devil invented theology as a 
 counterfeit. For theology is not the natural or proper antithesis 
 to religion; still less its opposite or antagonist. It occupies a 
 different sphere ; and though dealing with the same subjects in 
 great measure, yet its aim is, or should be, different ; and it works 
 by means of different faculties. Eeligion aims at the production 
 of faith, hope and charity, and all the proper fruits of those 
 graces. It would teach us to trust in God, and love Him, and to 
 obey that second commandment, which is like unto the first both 
 in its scope and in its importance and comprehensiveness " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." It is that which brings the 
 human soul consciously into relation with God, with an unseen 
 world and a spiritual kingdom, and with a future state of 
 retribution. Religion, therefore, is an appeal to faith and also to 
 conscience, both of which it seeks to quicken and exercise; so 
 that we may be godly towards God, and righteous towards our 
 neighbour, performing all our duties from a principle of obliga- 
 
i CORINTHIANS HI. 11-13 99 
 
 tion aud reverence to the great Father who made and loves us 
 all, and requires us to love, pity, and help one another, because 
 of this our common origin and family relation. Religion also 
 requires us to be sober or temperate regulating the appetites of 
 our bodies and the emotions and affections of our minds, so that 
 we be not carried away by them beside or beyond the purposes 
 for which they were implanted, but that they may further us in 
 attaining perfection in this world, and at last eternal felicity. 
 
 Now, though theology deals in great part with the same 
 subjects with which religion is concerned, it differs from it in 
 several respects. Religion deals with those subjects in a practical 
 way, chiefly with reference to conduct or life ; and it appeals to 
 all parts of our nature, to the affections and emotions as well as 
 to the understanding. It works through hope and fear, and 
 seeks to influence, to restrain, to stimulate, and to regulate in 
 short, to make us wise, holy, good, in all manner of conversation, 
 that we may be " perfect in all the will of God." On the other 
 hand, theology is wholly theoretical or speculative. Its object 
 is to reconcile certain apparent contradictions or inconsistencies, 
 not only between different parts, or passages, or expressions of 
 Scripture, but between Scriptural statements or doctrines, and 
 the phenomena of the physical and moral world. For it must 
 deal not only with the Bible but with facts ; regarding the facts 
 of nature and providence, and of general history and experience, 
 as being, no less than the histories, doctrines and teachings 
 of Scripture, revelations or manifestations of the Maker and 
 Governor of the world. These all, proceeding from the same 
 Divine source, are and must be really consistent, however at first 
 sight they may sometimes appear to conflict one with another. 
 It is therefore the province of theology to point out the harmony 
 which underlies seeming opposition and discordance in the Word 
 or ways of God, so that we may discern a real and profound 
 order where at first sight confusion or contradiction presents 
 itself to our minds. Thus, in the natural world, the law of 
 gravitation being demonstrated to be a law operating throughout 
 the universe, it is available to explain and reconcile a multitude 
 of facts or appearances which seemed, to minds not instructed in 
 this law of gravitation, to be unrelated, or even opposed and 
 contradictory, one to another. 1 
 
 (2) Still more true is it that it is Jesus Christ, and not 
 feelings about Him. Feelings are great aids to devotion; they 
 are often special gifts of God, the play of His Blessed Spirit 
 
 1 Robert Lee, 
 
too THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 upon our life of affection, raising it towards high and heavenly 
 things. Yet what is so fugitive, so protean, so unreliable as a 
 feeling ? It conies and it is gone ; it is intense, and forthwith it 
 wanes; it promises much, and presently it yields nothing but 
 a sense of moral languor and exhaustion that succeeds it. Feel- 
 ing shouts " Hosanna " to-day, and to-morrow " Crucify " ; it 
 would pluck out its right eye for the apostle of its choice, and 
 then suddenly he is become its enemy because he tells it the 
 truth. 
 
 *f[ I will tell you of a want I am beginning to experience very 
 distinctly. I perceive more than ever the necessity of devotional 
 reading. I mean the works of eminent holy persons, whose tone 
 was not merely uprightness of character and highmindedness, 
 but communion a strong sense of personal and ever-living 
 communion with God besides. I recollect how far more peace- 
 ful my mind used to be when I was in the regular habit of 
 reading daily, with scrupulous adherence to a plan, works of this 
 description. A strong shock threw me off the habit partly the 
 external circumstances of my life, partly the perception of a 
 most important fact, that devotional feelings are very distinct 
 from uprightness and purity of life that they are often 
 singularly allied to the animal nature, the result of a warm 
 temperament guides to hell under the form of angels of light, 
 conducting the unconscious victim of feelings that appear Divine 
 and seraphic, into a state of heart and life at which the very 
 world stands aghast. Cases of this kind came under my im- 
 mediate cognizance, disgusted me, made me suspect feelings 
 which I had hitherto cherished as the holiest, and produced a 
 reaction. Nevertheless, the only true use of such a discovery 
 is this, that our basest feelings lie very near to our highest, and 
 that they pass into one another by insensible transitions. It is 
 not true to take the tone so fearfully sounded in Tennyson's 
 "Vision of Sin," or that of Mephistopheles when he sneeringly 
 predicts to Faust the mode of termination for his "sublime in- 
 tuition," after the soliloquy in the forest, when Gretchen's image 
 has elevated his soul. The true lesson is to watch, suspect, and 
 guard aspirations after good, not to drown them as spurious. 
 Wordsworth says 
 
 True dignity abides with him alone 
 Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
 Can still suspect, and still revere himself, 
 In lowliness of heart. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 11-13 101 
 
 I feel the need of works of this kind, and I shall begin them 
 again. 1 
 
 (3) It is Jesus Christ Himself, and not His teaching or His 
 work apart from His Person. His work, indeed, can be appreci- 
 ated only in the light of His Person ; His death is at best heroic 
 self-devotion (if it be so much as that) unless His Person is 
 superhuman. If Jesus is only man, or if His Person is left out 
 of view, there is no more reason for reliance on His death than 
 on the death of Socrates. His Sacraments are only picturesque 
 unrealities, unless He who warranted their power lives and is 
 mighty; apart from His Person, they have no more spiritual 
 validity than an armorial bearing or a rosette. And His teaching 
 cannot be represented as a " foundation " of Christian life, which 
 may be substituted for His Person, and enable us to dispense 
 with it, for the simple reason that the persistent drift of that 
 teaching is directly and indirectly to centre thought, love, adora- 
 tion upon Himself ; as though in Him, as distinct from what He 
 said and did, mankind was to find its true and lasting strength 
 and peace. 
 
 ^f This is the secret of Christ's power over men. He does not 
 come to discuss with them some empty conundrum, some wretched 
 enigma, that challenges only the intellect ; He sets Himself down 
 in the heart, and trains that, brings that into the liberty of His 
 blessed captivity, and out of the heart there comes His kingdom, 
 which can never be moved. 2 
 
 4. A comprehensive idea of Jesus Christ as the foundation 
 may be found in the very old representation of Him as Prophet, 
 Priest, and King. 
 
 (1) Prophet. A Prophet is not merely one who foretells 
 future events. That is but a small and, in some respects, an 
 inferior part of the prophet's work. The generic idea of a 
 prophet is one who speaks of God, who reveals the thoughts and 
 proclaims the truth of God. And in this regard Jesus Christ is 
 the Prophet of God, who infinitely transcends all others. 
 
 (2) Priest. In former times the priest stood between the 
 sinner and God, and offered sacrifice on account of his sins. The 
 Lord Jesus, as the Son of God and the Son of Man, was fitted 
 
 1 Robertson, in Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson,, 263. 
 ' J.Parker. 
 
ro2 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 to be the medium to stand between our sinful souls and the 
 righteous God ; and for sacrifice, He offered Himself without spot 
 unto God. And " If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the 
 Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for 
 our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole 
 world." 
 
 (3) King. Christ is also our King. As such He claims our 
 love, our loyal obedience, our grateful homage, and our reverent 
 worship. Instead of obeying the maxims and customs of the 
 world, instead of following our own inclinations, and the uncertain 
 and fitful impulses of our own hearts, let us obey Him. Let 
 His will be supreme. 
 
 If It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints 
 us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, 
 as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fulness 
 of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to 
 be found, in loving obedience. 1 
 
 Close gently, weary eyes, 
 
 And let the closing day sing sweetly unto thee 
 A song of rest, that so the coming day may be 
 
 A glad surprise; 
 
 Close, weary eyes. 
 
 Eest now, oh wayward heart! 
 
 Eest in submission comes; then let the swaying trees, 
 Bending, obedient, at each breath of God's light breeze 
 
 Show thee thy part ; 
 
 Kest, wayward heart. 
 
 Peace, sweet peace, struggling soul! 
 
 Waves, hills and stars will say, "Seek not to walk by sight. 
 By faith take all thy stumbling steps, through day and night, 
 
 In God's control." 
 
 Peace, struggling soul. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE BUILDING. 
 
 1. Our attention is drawn to the materials used in the build- 
 ing rather than to the building itself. The materials are of two 
 kinds (1) "gold, silver, costly stones," that is, those that will 
 
 1 Dinah Morris, in Adam Btde. 
 
i CORINTHIANS HI. 11-13 103 
 
 pass through fire unscathed; and (2) "wood, hay, stubble," 
 materials which fire will consume. There is, therefore, good teach- 
 ing and bad teaching. Good teaching is the showing forth of 
 Christ Jesus in word and life . 
 
 U We are, perhaps, beginning to recognize the need of special 
 training, but hundreds of clergymen can be found who would 
 acknowledge that they never had any kind of education in the 
 two branches of their work teaching and preaching. A young 
 clergyman recently, in conversation with me, deplored this. " I 
 did not know how to teach, and I have been obliged to try and 
 gain some knowledge of the art by listening to the teachers in 
 the elementary schools." This is the example of a man wise 
 enough to be aware of his deficiencies, and courageous enough 
 to try and repair them. But here is a strange fact. Educated 
 skill is demanded in some callings, and these not the most im- 
 portant; yet in some of the higher or more difficult callings 
 educated skill is not demanded, and is not even deemed to be 
 important. We do not allow our teeth to be pulled out except 
 by a qualified practitioner, but we entrust grave moral responsi- 
 bilities to untrained men. We require some evidence of practical 
 skill from our cab-drivers, but we hand over the direction of vast 
 national interests to men who have never learned even the rudi- 
 ments of political and economic science. It is all very puzzling. 
 It belongs to the noble faith of being able somehow to " muddle 
 through." The wonder is, not that things are done so well con- 
 sidering how much is given into untrained hands, but that things 
 are done at all. 1 
 
 2. What is bad teaching ? 
 
 (1) A man may interpret Scripture, and yet not bring Christ 
 out of it. He may delight himself in the study; he may be 
 skilful in comparing Scripture with Scripture ; he may perceive 
 with a marvellous insight the doctrinal contrasts and harmonies 
 which fill the Bible ; he may be wise in combining and reconciling 
 where careless readers see only contradiction and confusion ; he 
 may attract listeners by the clearness of his exposition and the 
 variety of his illustration ; and yet in all this there may be no 
 savour of Christ and no unction of the Spirit. Men may come 
 and go, depart and return, week by week, where he ministers ; 
 they may find information, find instruction, but not find edification, 
 because they find not Christ. 
 
 1 AY. Boyd Carpenter, Some Pages of my Life, 324. 
 
to4 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 (2) Again, a man may be a sincere Christian, and even in a 
 sense preach Christ, and yet his work may be but as the wood 
 or the stubble because in the Divine he has lost the human; 
 because, in other words, though he knows theology, he knows 
 not man, and, though he understands something of the glory of 
 the Saviour, he is ignorant of the application of that Gospel to 
 the hearts and lives of men. His doctrinal statements are correct 
 and ample ; he can discourse with feeling and beauty upon the 
 great revelations of grace; but there is no connecting link, in 
 his preaching, between heaven and earth, between truth and life, 
 between the Saviour of sinners and the sinner whom He came 
 to save. Therefore the Gospel which he enforces floats above 
 his hearers in a region cloudy and inaccessible; they hear the 
 sound thereof, but the voice they hear not; the revelation of 
 Christ is become again in his hands as the letter which kills, 
 rather than as the spirit which gives life. 
 
 (3) It may be that all the energies of a ministry have been 
 turned upon controversy ; that a congregation which came 
 together to be fed with " the sincere milk of the word " that it 
 " might grow thereby," has been occupied week by week and year 
 after year with vehement declamation or laborious argument 
 against some form of error, supposed to be the peril of the times, 
 upon which the preacher would concentrate all the anxieties and 
 all the efforts of souls given him to guide and lives entrusted to 
 him to regulate. 
 
 T[ We naturally look to our symbolical documents the 
 Creeds, Catechisms, and other standards of our several Churches, 
 for guidance as to what constitutes the main matter or substance 
 of the Christian religion. But we find upon inspection that the 
 subjects which those books treat of are neither those which are 
 in themselves most necessary and important, nor those which our 
 Lord and His Apostles chiefly insisted on ; but they are for the 
 most part the points disputed between different Churches 
 between Eomanists and Protestants, between Calvinists and 
 Arminians, and between Trinitarians and Unitarians. So that 
 the books in question set forth the differences which exist among 
 Christians, not their agreements. Now, as a general rule, their 
 agreement is both far greater and far more momentous than their 
 disagreement. I say the things they agree about are far more 
 numerous, and far more essential, than the things they disagree 
 about. These last have often swelled out into magnitude simply 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 11-13 105 
 
 by reason of the quarrels respecting them, as a barren island or 
 a sandy waste has sometimes grown into a mighty matter by 
 reason of the struggles of great nations respecting it. In itself 
 it is worth little or nothing; it is great only because of the 
 contest which is carried on. 1 
 
 (4) There is a fourth case in which a fatal deadness has fallen 
 upon a ministry in the very attempt to communicate to it a 
 vigorous life. The preacher gives himself to the one aim of 
 making his sermons lively. He counts nothing below the level 
 of pulpit gravity; nothing too secular or too mundane to be 
 made the starting-point of Sunday exhortation. He speaks of 
 giving " a healthy tone to common life," and this, not by raising 
 earth to heaven, but by bringing down the heavenly to the level 
 of the earthly. He forgets that the Christian politician and the 
 Christian student and the Christian man of business do not 
 come together in the Lord's house to hear their own subjects 
 discussed by one far less fitted to do so than themselves, but 
 rather to be reminded of a subject higher and nobler than their 
 own, a subject in which they may rest altogether from week-day 
 toils and cares, and realize a loftier aim and a deeper unity in 
 things unseen, things heavenly, things Divine. 
 
 TJ It is no part of my business to condemn this, that, and 
 the other kind of teaching, but I will tell you what is evidently 
 wood and hay and stubble. Misplaced learning; misplaced 
 speculation ; misplaced eloquence ; sham philosophy ; preaching 
 one's self ; talking about temporary, trivial things ; dealing with 
 the externals of Christianity, its ceremonial and its ritual; 
 dealing with the morals of Christianity apart from that one 
 motive of love to a dying Saviour which makes morality a 
 reality in human life. All that kind of Christian teaching, 
 remote from daily life and from men's deepest needs, however 
 it may be admired, and thought to be " eloquent," " original," 
 and " on a level with the growing culture of the age," and so on, 
 is flimsy stuff to build upon the foundation of a crucified Saviour. 
 There is no solidity in such work. It will not stand the stress 
 of a gale of .wind while it is being built, or keep out the weather 
 for those who house in it ; and it will blaze at last like a thatched 
 roof when " that day " puts a match to it. 2 
 
 1 Robert Lee. a A. Maclaren. 
 
io6 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 III. 
 THE FIRE. 
 
 1. The flame plays round both the buildings. What fire is 
 it ? The text answers the question for us " the day shall 
 declare it." The Apostle does not think that he needs to say 
 what day. His readers know well enough what day he means. To 
 him and to them there is one day so conspicuous and so often in 
 their thoughts, that there is no need to name it more particularly. 
 The day is the day when Christ shall come. And the fire is but 
 the symbol that always attends the Divine appearance in the 
 Old and in the New Testament. 
 
 K Many of us who live in London have at some time watched 
 that awful but fascinating sight, the progress of a great fire ; we 
 have marked how the devouring element masters first one and 
 then another department of the building which is its victim ; but 
 especially we have noted what it consumes and what it is forced 
 to spare, the resistless force with which it sweeps through and 
 shrivels up all slighter materials, and pauses only before the 
 solid barriers of stone or iron, thus trying, before our eyes, the 
 builder's work of what sort it is. 1 
 
 I felt begin 
 
 The Judgment-Day: to retrocede 
 Was too late now. " In very deed," 
 (I uttered to myself) "that Day!" 
 The intuition burned away 
 All darkness from my spirit too : 
 There stood I, found and fixed, I knew, 
 Choosing the world. The choice was made; 
 And naked and disguiseless stayed, 
 And unevadable, the fact. 2 
 
 2. But He who at the end will judge us once for all, is now and 
 always judging us ; and His perpetual presence as the Judge who 
 is constantly probing and sifting us is revealed by events and 
 circumstances which have on our souls the effect of fire they 
 burn up what is frivolous and worthless, and they leave what is 
 solid unscathed. There are many events and situations which 
 act upon us as fire ; it will be enough to consider one or two of 
 them. 
 
 1 H. P. LitMon. * Browning, Easter-Day. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 11-13 107 
 
 (1) There is the searching, testing power of a responsible and 
 new position, of a situation forcing its occupant to make a critical 
 choice, or to withstand a strong pressure. Such a new position 
 discovers and burns up all that is weak in a man's faith or character. 
 In quiet times there is nothing to extort the discovery ; but when 
 a great effort of action or of resistance becomes necessary, it is 
 soon seen what will and what will not stand the test. All that 
 looks like a hold on solid principle, and is in reality only fancy, 
 or sentiment, or speculation, is then seen to be unserviceable; 
 and if a man's religious mind is composed mainly of such material, 
 a catastrophe is inevitable. 
 
 If Take the Pope in Browning's The Ring and the Book. The 
 aged man, on the verge of the grave, has the responsibility laid 
 upon him of deciding the fate of Count Guido. He holds the 
 balance between life and death. 
 
 In God's name ! Once more on this earth of God's, 
 While twilight lasts and time wherein to work, 
 I take His staff with my uncertain hand, 
 And stay my six and fourscore years, my due 
 Labour and sorrow, on His judgment-seat, 
 And forthwith think, speak, act, in place of Him 
 The Pope for Christ. Once more appeal is made 
 From man's assize to mine: I sit and see 
 Another poor weak trembling human wretch 
 Pushed by his fellows, who pretend the right, 
 Up to the gulf which, where I gaze, begins 
 From this world to the next gives way and way, 
 Just on the edge over the awful dark: 
 With nothing to arrest him but my feet. 
 i 
 
 And I am bound, the solitary judge, 
 To weigh the worth, decide upon the plea, 
 And either hold a hand out, or withdraw 
 A foot and let the wretch drift to the fall. 
 Ay, and while thus I dally, dare perchance 
 Put fancies for a comfort 'twixt this calm 
 And yonder passion that I have to bear, 
 As if reprieve were possible for both 
 Prisoner and Pope how easy were reprieve! 
 
 He weighs all the evidence, the reasons which might be urged 
 in the name of mercy for flinching from the solemn decision. 
 
io8 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 Quis pro Domino ? 
 
 " Who is upon the Lord's side ? " asked the Count. 
 I, who write 
 
 And lie signs the death-warrant. 
 
 For I may die this very night 
 And how should I dare die, this man let live? 
 
 (2) Sometimes men surprise us, when placed in a difficult 
 position, by the sudden exhibition of qualities for which no one 
 before had given them credit; the apparently thoughtless show 
 foresight, and the timid courage, and the selfish disinterestedness ; 
 and the irresolute perseverance, of which there had been no 
 evidence whatever. The quiet school-boy in an Italian village, 
 whom his playmates name the "dumb ox/' becomes, almost in 
 spite of himself, the first of the scholars, one of. the few greatest 
 thinkers in the world. The officer who has been distinguished 
 for nothing but a punctual regard to duty is suddenly placed in 
 a position to show that he has almost the genius and courage 
 sufficient to roll back the course of history, and to save a falling 
 empire from ruin. The youth whose life has been passed amidst 
 scenes of frivolity, or perhaps of licentiousness, hears one day an 
 appeal to his conscience, his sense of duty, his sense of failure, 
 and wakes from a dream of sensual lethargy to show the world 
 that he has in him the making of a man, aye, the making of a 
 saint. 
 
 ^f The sense of power which comes from self-development can 
 only be fruitful for good if it be directed by the profound sense 
 of responsibility, which the perpetual consciousness of life as lived 
 in God's sight alone can give. 1 
 
 (3) But the Greeks had a stern proverb to the effect that a 
 position of leadership shows what a man is. The real drift of the 
 saying was that in practice it too often shows what he is not. It 
 implies that too generally the discovery would be unfavourable ; 
 that the test of high office would, in a majority of cases, bring to 
 light something weak or rotten in the character, which in private 
 life might have escaped detection. History is strewn with 
 illustrations of this truth; the virtuous though weak Emperor, 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Mandell Crcighton, i. 185. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 11-13 109 
 
 who was floated to power on the surf of a revolution, is by no 
 means the only man of whom it might be written that all men 
 would have judged him capable of ruling others, had he only 
 never been a ruler. How often does manhood open with so much 
 that seems promising intelligence, courage, attention to duty, 
 good feeling, unselfishness, all that looks like high principle and 
 then a man is put into a position of authority. It is the fire 
 which tests the work he has done in his character. Suddenly he 
 betrays some one defect which ruins everything. It may be 
 vanity; it may be envy; it may be untruthf ulness ; it may be 
 some lower passion which emerges suddenly, and as if unbidden, 
 from the depths of the soul, and gains over him a fatal mastery. 
 All his good is turned to ill, all is distorted, discoloured; he 
 might have died as a young man, amid general lamentations that 
 so promising a life had been cut short. He does die, as did Nero or 
 Henry vm., amidst the loudly expressed or muttered thanksgiving 
 of his generation that he has left the world. The fact was, that 
 the position in which he found himself exposed him to a pressure 
 which his character could not bear. 
 
 U After the Council the King [George iv.] called me and 
 talked to me about racehorses, which he cares more about than 
 the welfare of Ireland or the peace of Europe. 1 
 
 ^[ You remember how the old Tay bridge, before that fatal 
 winter night, was believed to be equal to its purpose ; no one of 
 us who had travelled by it high in the air, over what was practi- 
 cally an arm of the sea, thought that it could but do its work for 
 many long years to come, in all winds and weathers. It needed, 
 no doubt, a mighty impact, a terrific rush of wind from a 
 particular quarter, to show that the genius and audacity of man 
 had presumed too largely on the forbearance of the elements ; but 
 the moment came. We, many of us, remember something of 
 the sense of horror which that tragic catastrophe left on the 
 public mind the gradual disappearance of the last train, as it 
 moved along its wonted way into the darkness, the suddenly 
 observed dislocation and flickering of the distant lights, the faint 
 sound as of a crash, rising for a moment above the din of the 
 storm, and^ then the utter darkness, as all train and bridge 
 together sank into the gulf of waters beneath, and one moment of 
 supreme agony was followed by the silence of death. 2 
 
 1 The Grtville Memoirs, i. 144. 
 8 H. P. Liddon, 59. 
 
no THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT 
 
 Not alone in pain and gloom 
 Does the abhorred tempter come; 
 Not in light alone and pleasure 
 Proffers he the poisoned measure. 
 When the soul doth rise 
 Nearest to its native skies, 
 There the exalted spirit finds, 
 Borne upon the heavenly winds, 
 Satan, in an angel's guise, 
 With voice divine and innocent eyes. 1 
 
 1 Richard Watson Gilder. 
 
YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Alexander (W. L.), Sermons, 122. 
 
 Arnold (T.), Sermons, iv. 39. 
 
 Caird (J.), Aspects of Life, 205. 
 
 Carr (A.), Horas Biblical, 193. 
 
 Clark (H. W.), Meanings and Methods of the Spiritual Life, 200. 
 
 Cox (S.), The Genesis of Evil, 91, 106. 
 
 Duncan (J.), In the Pulpit and at the Communion Table, 221. 
 
 Evans (B. W.), Parochial Sermons, 301. 
 
 Greer (D. H.), From Things to God, 1. 
 
 Herford (B.), Courage and Cheer, 235. 
 
 Hodge (C.), Princeton Sermons, 197. 
 
 Horder (W. G.), The Other- World, 3, 111. 
 
 Jeffrey (G.), The Believer's Privilege, 57. 
 
 Kennedy (J. D.), Sermons, 83. 
 
 King (D.), Memoir and Sermons, 403. 
 
 Lewis (F. W.), The Work of Christ, 33. 
 
 Lightfoot (J. B.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 1. 
 
 Lockyer (T. F.), Inspirations of the Christian Life, 189. 
 
 Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 56. 
 
 Meyer (F. B.), Present Tenses, 123. 
 
 Moule (H. C. G.), The Secret of the Presence, 33, 48. 
 
 Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 229. 
 
 Pope (W. B.), Discourses on the Lordship of the Incarnate Redeemer, 325. 
 
 Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vi. 404. 
 
 Vaughan (C. J.), Temple Sermtms, 485. 
 
 Walker (J.), Memoir and Sermons, 311. 
 
 Watkinson (W. L.), Noonday Addresses, 1 ff. 
 
 British Congregationalist, Nov. 11, 1909, p. 418 (Shepherd). 
 
 Cambridge Review, ii. Supplement No. 45 (Ince). 
 
 Christian Age, xlii. 68 (Talmage). 
 
 Christian World Pulpit, xi. 408 (Beecher) ; xiii. 65 (Duckworth) ; 
 
 xv. 312 (Pulsford) ; xviii. 145 (Duckworth) ; xxi. 337 (Edwards) ; 
 
 xxxvii. 90 (Smith), 104 (Clarke); xxxviii. 179 (Duckworth); 
 
 xl. 58 (Hobbs) ; xli. 154 (Garrett Horder) ; xlvi. 307 (Phillips) ; 
 
 xlviii. 121 (Goodspeed). 
 
YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS. 
 
 All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, 
 or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; and ye 
 are Christ's ; and Christ is God's. I Cor. iii. 21-23. 
 
 1. THE Corinthian Christians seem to have carried into the Church 
 some of the worst vices of Greek political life. They were split 
 up into wrangling factions, each swearing by the name of some 
 person. Paul was the battle-cry of one set ; Apollos of another. 
 Paul and Apollos were very good friends, their admirers bitter 
 foes according to a very common experience. The springs lie 
 close together up in the hills, the rivers may be parted by half a 
 continent. 
 
 These feuds were all the more detestable to the Apostle 
 because his name was dragged into them ; and so, in the first part 
 of this letter, he sets himself, with all his might, to shame and to 
 argue the Corinthian Christians out of their wrangling. This 
 great text is one of the considerations which he adduces with that 
 purpose. In effect he says, " To pin your faith to any one teacher 
 is a wilful narrowing of the sources of your blessing and your 
 wisdom. You say you are Paul's men. Has Apollos got nothing 
 that he could teach you ? and may you not get any good out of 
 brave brother Cephas ? Take them all ; they were all meant for 
 your good. Let no man glory in individuals." 
 
 That is all that his argument required him to say. But in his 
 impetuous way he goes on into regions far beyond. His thought, 
 like some swiftly revolving wheel, catches fire of its own rapid 
 motion ; and he blazes up into this triumphant enumeration of all 
 the things that serve the soul which serves Jesus Christ. " You 
 are lords of men, of the world, of time, of death, of eternity ; but 
 you are not lords of yourselves. You belong to Jesus, and in the 
 measure in which you belong to Him do all things belong to you." 
 x COR. 8 
 
ii4 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 2. There is a fine wholesome exultation about the words, 
 considering from whom they come and to whom they were 
 addressed. We do not like to hear a rich man boasting of his 
 wealth ; but when a poor man tells us how rich he feels, that 
 seems wholesome, and it gives us a glimpse into the deeper fact 
 of what being " well off " really is. And that is what we have in 
 this word of St. Paul's to his Corinthian converts. Poor men 
 they were, every one of them, with little enough of this world's 
 gear. What different ways of looking at things there are ! If 
 we could have gone to any one of the great merchants at Corinth, 
 and asked him about the standing of the score or two of men 
 who were beginning to be known as the followers of the new 
 religion there, his answer would probably have been something 
 like this : " Standing, my dear sir ? They have not any ! Why, 
 there is hardly a man among them worth his fifty ounces of 
 silver. You might buy up the whole lot of them for five talents 
 of gold. The only man among them who has anything is that 
 sailmaker, Agrippa, and he was almost ruined by having to break 
 up and leave Eome on that edict of the emperor, expelling the 
 Jews." That was one way of looking at them. St. Paul looks 
 at them differently. "You have everything," he says. "I am 
 yours, and Apollos is yours, and so is Cephas. And this world 
 is yours, and the next world is yours, things present and things 
 to come 'all things are yours."' It was a right royal setting 
 forth of their position, if they could only feel it so. And they 
 did feel it so in the main. Take that early Christian life as a 
 whole ; there is very little whining in it, very little about their 
 poverty, or difficulties, or hardships. They rise up before us 
 St. Paul and his fellows, and those humble, nameless folk who 
 gathered round them they rise up before us out of the shadows 
 of the past, not as weary and sorrow-laden men, treading pain- 
 fully along, but as soldiers marching with firm ringing steps, and 
 singing songs of triumph as they go. 1 
 
 3. " All things are yours," says St. Paul, and he goes on with 
 an enumeration which has been called, not without reason, " the 
 inventory of the possessions of the child of God," and in which 
 death itself figures. He sums up his enumeration by reproducing 
 
 1 B. Herford, Courage and Cheer, 236. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 "5 
 
 the bold paradox with which he had begun, " Yea, I tell you, all 
 are yours" Then he adds the ground or basis of this possession. 
 " Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." " All things are yours," 
 he says, " but ye are not your own, ye are Christ's, and it is 
 because ye belong to Christ and depend on Him that all things 
 belong to you." 
 
 I. 
 
 ALL THINGS ARE YOURS. 
 
 There are days in the year when merchants take account of 
 their stock. It is well sometimes for a Christian disciple likewise 
 to stop and take an inventory of his possessions'. The Apostle 
 Paul here gives us such an inventory. " All things are yours." 
 There cannot be anything left when you have said " All things." 
 That is an expression which sweeps round the whole universe 
 and takes in everything. " All things are yours." And now the 
 thought strikes the Apostle's mind, " They will hardly understand 
 how much that includes, unless I begin to specify," and so he 
 adds: "Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas," representing all 
 that ministered in word and doctrine; but that is only one 
 department of this great possession. " Or the world." " The 
 world " is one of the most universal terms of which we have any 
 knowledge. It includes the whole human family ; it includes the 
 whole of human history ; it includes the whole of the habitable 
 earth. Yet even that will not do. "Or life." That covers 
 the term of our existence both in this world and in the hereafter ; 
 it is all yours with all its experiences. " Or death." If there is 
 anything that seems to have both " all seasons " and all men for 
 its own, it is death. " Things present " ; these include whatsoever 
 is and whatsoever has been, because whatsoever has been belongs 
 to the present as the property of memory, just as whatsoever is 
 belongs to the present as the property of actual daily experience. 
 But all this will not suffice. " And things to come." That reaches 
 into the illimitable ages of eternity. St. Paul has been trying 
 to make specifications, to give the items in this stocktaking. 
 But, as though discouraged with the attempt to enumerate, he 
 has only succeeded in giving a very few of the things possessed 
 by the disciple, but those are the most comprehensive terms 
 possible. And like a man who has begun taking stock in a 
 
u6 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 great manufactory, and has noted five or six great articles that 
 one shelf contains, but, as he sees the vast accumulation of goods 
 before him, gives up in despair in the effort to complete his work 
 St. Paul returns to the original sentence with which he began : 
 " All things are yours." 
 
 What does this statement of the Apostle mean ? 
 
 1. It is worth our while first to recall something of what it 
 does not mean. It does not mean licence, the parody and libel 
 of liberty. It does not mean selfishness, the mind which grasps 
 or which withholds at the dictate of self-will; this is not 
 possession, but theft ; this in its effect is nothing but the hard 
 bondage and poverty of the being. It does not mean the faintest 
 shadow of a slur over moral distinctions the bad dream that 
 you can be so spiritual as to be, even for one fraction of a moment, 
 emancipated from conscience ; the lying whisper that you shall 
 not surely die of permitted sin, because Christ died for you. 
 
 2. It does not mean a relaxation of the Divine rule of self- 
 sacrifice. It is not spoken in order to throw the halo of the 
 Gospel over a life which, professing godliness, is yet secretly, 
 perhaps almost unconsciously, making itself as comfortable as 
 possible for its own sake. It is not spoken to help us to minimize 
 the call to bear the cross, and to serve the Lord in others, while 
 we multiply and magnify excuses for indulgences and enjoyments 
 which, however cultivated and refined, terminate in ourselves. 
 The words are not given us to insinuate that, if we will but say 
 " Lord, Lord," with a certain fervour, we may live as those who 
 think that a man's " life " does " consist in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth." 
 
 3. But then, most certainly, the words have a meaning, positive 
 and beautiful " All things are yours." They are spoken indeed 
 to those, and to those only, who are not their own but their 
 Lord's possession; but they do not merely restate that side of 
 truth. They give its contrast and its complement; they turn 
 the shield quite round, to show its other face and it is another. 
 " You are not your own " ; be sure of that, it is an immovable 
 fact. " All things are yours " ; be sure of that also ; it is meant 
 to carry to you a magnificent message, affirmative, distinctive, 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 21-23 117 
 
 altogether its own. Now as then, now and for ever, the man who 
 belongs to Christ in truth is " a child of God." And his Father 
 will do anything for him. Nothing of his Father's resources shall 
 be grudged to him. Wisdom and love may, and will, sort and 
 sift, and in that sense limit, the things which shall be put actually 
 into the child's hands. But the whole wealth of the great home 
 is his, in the sense that he is the child for whom anything shall 
 be done, on whom no resources are too great to spend. His 
 utmost good is watched for, always and everywhere. His Father 
 delights exceedingly to meet his wishes, and limits the meeting 
 of them only by the interests of the child ; and He has made 
 those interests identical with His own. 
 
 If Adolphe Monod, great saint, great teacher, great sufferer, 
 lying on a premature couch of anguish and death at Paris, 
 collected in his bedchamber, Sunday by Sunday, a little con- 
 gregation of friends ; Guizot was sometimes of the number. There 
 he addressed them, like Standfast in the Pilgrim's Progress, as 
 from the very waters of the last river, speaking always on his 
 life-long theme, Jesus Christ. The pathetic series of these Adieux 
 ct ses Amis et ct VEglise was gathered after his death into a volume. 
 Late in its pages comes a discourse with the title ' All in Jesus 
 Christ.' From this let me quote a few sentences: "Be it 
 wisdom, be it light, be it power, be it victory over sin, be it a 
 matter of this world, or of the world to come, all is in Christ. 
 Having Christ, we have all things; bereft of Christ, we have 
 absolutely nothing. All things are yours, and you are Christ's, 
 and Christ is God's. Well, then, what is the result for me ? I 
 am poor, it may be. Yet all the fortunes of this world are mine ; 
 for they are Christ's, who Himself is God's, and who could easily 
 give them all to me, with Himself, if they would serve my 
 interests. The whole world, with all its glories, with all its power, 
 belongs to me ; for it belongs to my Father, who will give it me 
 to-morrow, and could give it me to-day, if that were good for me. 
 I am very ill, it may be. Yet health is mine, strength is mine, 
 comfort is mine, a perfect enjoyment of all the blessings of life 
 is mine ; for all this belongs to Christ, who belongs to God, and 
 who disposes of it as He will. If He withholds these things from 
 me to-day, for a fleeting moment, swift as the shuttle in the loom, 
 it is for ^reasons wholly of His own; it is because these pains 
 and this bitterness conceal a benediction worth more to me than 
 the health so precious, than the comfort so delightful. ... I 
 challenge you to find a thing of which I cannot say : This is my 
 Father's ; therefore it is mine ; if He withholds it to-day, He will 
 
n8 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 give it me to-morrow. I trust myself to His love. All is mine, 
 if I am His." l 
 
 Tf A distinguished American politician in a heated campaign 
 is said to have telegraphed to his friends : " Claim everything." 
 That, in a much profounder sense, is precisely the summons which 
 Christianity makes on life. . . . All things are yours. The whole 
 of life is holy. Eeligion is not a province but an empire. It 
 comprehends both the church and the world, both life and death, 
 both the present and the future. The world is one, and all of it 
 is sacred, and it is all yours, if ye are Christ's, as Christ is God's. 2 
 
 T[ Amidst all my hurry, however, I had five minutes alone 
 by my little Lena's grave. The beautiful white coral was 
 blackened, but the grass and shrubs had grown, and the lemon 
 branches with their bright fruit were bending over and shading 
 it beautifully. How naturally one looks up to the blue sky above, 
 and wonders where the spirit is, or if she can see the mourning 
 hearts below. She would have been running on her own little 
 feet now, had she been on Earth ; but though my heart aches 
 for her still, I would not have it otherwise, for she was not sent 
 in vain, and oh, what a little teacher she has been ! When John 
 took Dr. Steele to see the grave, he said : " You have thus taken 
 possession " ; and I felt we had taken possession of more through 
 her than that little spot of ground on Aniwa. 3 
 
 wealth of life beyond all bound! 
 
 Eternity each moment given! 
 What plummet may the Present sound ? 
 Who promises a future heaven ? 
 
 Or glad, or grieved, 
 
 Oppressed, relieved, 
 In blackest night, or brightest day 
 
 Still pours the flood 
 
 Of golden good. 
 And more than heartfull fills me aye. 
 
 My wealth is common; I possess 
 
 No petty province, but the whole 
 What's mine alone is mine far less 
 Than treasure shared by every soul. 
 Talk not of store, 
 Millions or more 
 
 1 H. C. G. Moule, The Secret of the Presence, 56 
 
 2 Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 231. 
 8 John G. Paton, ii. 296. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 21-23 119 
 
 Of values which the purse may hold 
 
 But this divine ! 
 
 I own the mine 
 Whose grains outweigh a planet's gold. 
 
 I have a stake in every star, 
 
 In every beam that fills the day; 
 All hearts of men my coffers are, 
 My ores arterial tides convey; 
 
 The fields, the skies, 
 
 The sweet replies 
 Of thought to thought are my gold-dust ; 
 
 The oaks ; the brooks, 
 
 And speaking looks 
 Of lovers, faith and friendship's trust. 
 
 Life's youngest tides joy-brimming flow 
 
 For him who lives above all years, 
 Who all-immortal makes the Kow, 
 And is not ta'en in Time's arrears: 
 
 His life's a hymn 
 
 The seraphim 
 Might hark to hear or help to sing, 
 
 And to his soul 
 
 The boundless whole 
 Its bounty all doth daily bring. 
 
 "All Mine is thine," the Sky-Soul saith; 
 "The wealth I Am must thou become; 
 Richer and richer, breath by breath 
 Immortal gain, immortal room ! " 
 
 And since all His 
 
 Mine also is, 
 Life's gift outruns my fancies far, 
 
 And drowns the dream 
 
 In larger stream, 
 As morning drinks the morning-star. 1 
 
 i. Paul, Apollos, Cephas. 
 
 1. Each of these names stands for a distinct species of teaching 
 the argumentative, the eloquent, the hortatory. Let us not 
 pass any of them by ; from those with whom we have least 
 sympathy, we may glean something. Each disciple brings some 
 
 1 David Atwood Wasson. 
 
120 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 bits of bread and fish. Each stone flashes some colour needed by 
 the prism to effect the beam of perfect light. Each flower may 
 furnish some ingredient for the common store of honey. 
 
 2. Not in vain have martyrs suffered, and fathers taught, and 
 saints prayed, and philanthropists laboured, and reformers preached. 
 All these too are ours. It is ours to note the martyr Ignatius 
 weighed down with years but undaunted in heart, with a spirit 
 soaring higher than the courage of a hero and bowing lower than 
 the humility of a child, not daring yet to count himself a disciple, 
 but setting his face stedfastly towards the Eoman amphitheatre, 
 thirsting to become food for the wild beasts, that haply while 
 finding them he might also find Christ. It is ours to observe the 
 kingly spirit of Athanasius, who through nearly half a century, 
 resolute and unswerving, defied obloquy and persecution, maintain- 
 ing with no less clearness of vision than stedfastness of purpose 
 the faith of Christ alone against the world. It is ours also to take 
 to heart the example of Francis of Assisi, the most gentle and 
 loving of saints, who delighted to claim kindred with all the works 
 of creation and all the dispensations of providence, as the sons 
 and daughters of the one beneficent Father, greeting even fire 
 as a brother and death as a sister ; who preached to a literal age 
 in the only language which that age could understand, by a 
 literal obedience to the precept of Christ, and went out into the 
 world taking with him absolutely nothing, casting in his lot with 
 the poor whom men despised, and the leper whom they abhorred ! 
 So we may go on through all the ages, feeding the fires that are 
 within us with the fuel of these bright examples of Christian 
 faith and heroism and love. And we shall do this without fear. 
 We shall use these examples without abusing them. We shall 
 not say, I am of Martin Luther, or I am of Francis Xavier, or I am 
 of John Wesley ; for Luther and Xavier and Wesley are all ours. 
 Brilliant though their lives may have been, they are after all only 
 broken lights of Him who is the full and perfect light. 
 
 3. Not only are all Christian teachers ours to serve us after 
 their own kind, but the whole world of men is ours to do the same. 
 If there is a man anywhere with a thought in his mind worth 
 having, whether he be a historian, or a poet, or a romancer ; if 
 there is a man anywhere who has a practical idea to communicate, 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 21-23 121 
 
 whether he be a statesman, or a political economist, or a 
 sanitarian ; if there is a man anywhere who knows something 
 valuable about the earth or the heavens, we should listen to that 
 man with all gratitude. For the whole world of such men is ours 
 men of thought, men of imagination, men of inventive genius 
 men of character; all are ours, and we should not despise any 
 one of them. They have all their place in the economy of human 
 nature. We should not favour the historian and neglect the 
 poet, or welcome the scientist and spurn the romancer ; we should 
 look upon each as a valuable servant ready to render us a service 
 peculiar to himself. 
 
 T[ Literature may almost be called the last stronghold of 
 paganism for the cultivated classes all over the Empire. It is 
 hard for us to sympathize with the feelings of Christians in the 
 fifth century for whom cultivated paganism was a living reality 
 possessed of a seductive power ; who could not separate classical 
 literature from the religious atmosphere in which it had been 
 produced; and who regarded the masterpieces of the Augustan 
 age as beautiful horrors from which they might hardly escape. 
 Jerome had fears for his soul's salvation because he could not 
 conquer his admiration for Cicero's Latin prose, and Augustine 
 shrank within himself when he thought on his love for the 
 poems of Vergil. Had not his classical tastes driven him in 
 youth from the uncouth latinity of the copies of the Holy 
 Scriptures when he tried to read them ? Christianity had 
 mastered their heart, mind and conscience, but it could not 
 stifle fond recollection nor tame the imagination. 1 
 
 ii. The World. 
 
 By "the world" St. Paul here means the existing order of 
 material things, the world we live in, the physical universe. 
 " The world," he says, " is yours." The world, the cosmos, the 
 Divine order of the created universe, with all its intricate 
 harmonies and all its manifold glories, is ours. Our Lord is not 
 only the Head of the Church, the spiritual creation ; He is also 
 the Centre of the Universe, the material creation. This He is, 
 as the Eternal Word of God by whom all things came into being, 
 in whom they are sustained, through whom they are governed. 
 In our modern theology we almost wholly lose sight of this aspect 
 of Christ's Person ; and the loss to ourselves is inestimable. 
 
 1 Cambridge Medieval History, i. 115. 
 
122 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 Science and religion, in the Apostle's teaching, have their meeting- 
 point in Christ. There is no antagonism between them ; they are 
 the twofold expression of the same Divine energy. And therefore 
 science, not less than theology, is the inheritance of the Christian. 
 It is ours to roam through the boundless realms of space with 
 the astronomer, and to plunge into the countless ages of the past 
 with the geologist: ours to enter into the vast laboratory of 
 nature, and to analyse her subtle processes and record her 
 manifold results. It will be no intrusion into an alien sphere. 
 It is a right which we can claim as Christians. It is ours because 
 we are Christ's. 
 
 U This is our school, hung with maps and diagrams and simple 
 lessons. There is not a single flower, not a distant star, not a 
 murmuring brooklet, not a sound sweet or shrill ; there is not 
 a living creature, or a natural process, that may not serve us ; 
 not only by meeting some appetite of sense, but by teaching us 
 such deep lessons as those which Jesus drew from the scenes 
 around Him, saying, " the kingdom of heaven is like." 1 
 
 1. That man owns the world who remains its master. There 
 are rich men who say they possess so many thousand pounds. 
 Turn the sentence about and it would be a great deal truer the 
 thousands of pounds possess them. They are the slaves of their 
 own possessions, and every man who counts any material thing 
 as indispensable to his well-being, and regards it as the chiefest 
 good, is the slave-servant of that thing. 
 
 K My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, 
 when the head of a house died ? How he was dressed in his 
 finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his 
 friends' houses ; and each of them placed him at his table's head, 
 and all feasted in his presence ? Suppose it were offered to you 
 in plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you should 
 gain this Scythian honour, gradually, while you yet thought 
 yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this : You shall die 
 slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, 
 your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. 
 Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the 
 ice of Caina ; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more 
 gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more orders on its 
 breast crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before 
 
 1 F. B. Meyer. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 123 
 
 it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets ; 
 build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads all the 
 night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what 
 they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, 
 and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull ; no more. Would 
 you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel ? Would 
 the meanest among us take it, think you ? Yet practically and 
 verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure ; many of 
 us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it, 
 who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; 
 who means only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen. 
 and more fortune, and more public honour, and not more 
 personal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart is 
 getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
 spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have 
 this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth they, 
 and they only. 1 
 
 ^| We shall never learn from our Lord to look with an un- 
 loving and cynical eye upon the common sights and ordinary 
 ways of nature and of men. Who, if not He, has enabled us to 
 read Divine philosophy in the birds of the air and the- ilowers of 
 the field, in the transactions of the market, in the work of the 
 farm, in the casting of a net, and the sweeping of a room ? Where, 
 if not in His school, have we been taught that it was a good God 
 who made the world, and sent us into it, not to withdraw ourselves 
 from it, not to feel scorn for it, but to study it, toil in it, and help 
 one another to profit by our stay in it ? Are they not His 
 lessons which have redeemed the life of the peasant from dulness, 
 as they have deepened the insight of the artist, and strengthened 
 the heart of the philanthropist ? It is inconceivable, wholly 
 inconceivable, that He who lived and taught thus, could have 
 meant us to understand that His truest followers were to be 
 those who should pass through this earthly life unoccupied, 
 uninterested, unstirred spectators, unfriendly critics, or active foes 
 of its development and progress. 2 
 
 2. He owns the world who turns it to the highest use of 
 spiritual nourishment. All material things are given, and were 
 created, for the growth of men ; or at all events their highest 
 purpose is that men should, by them, grow. And therefore, as 
 the scaffolding is swept away when the building is finished, so 
 
 1 Buskin, Sesame and Lilies ( Works, xviii. 99). 
 
 2 A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 109. 
 
124 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 God will sweep away this material universe, with all its wonders 
 of beauty and of contrivance, when men have grown by means 
 of it. The material is less than the soul, and he is master of the 
 world, and owns it, who has got thoughts out of it, truth out of 
 it, impulses out of it, visions of God out of it, who has by it been 
 led nearer to his Divine Master. If I look out upon a fair land- 
 scape, and: the man who draws the rents of it is standing by my 
 side, and I draw more sweetness, and deeper impulses, and larger 
 and loftier thoughts out of it than he does, it belongs to me far 
 more than it does to him. 
 
 Tf Hazlitt, relating in one of his essays how he went on foot 
 from one great man's house to another's in search of works of art, 
 begins suddenly to triumph over these noble and wealthy owners, 
 because he was more capable of enjoying their costly possessions 
 than they were; because they had paid the money and he had 
 received the pleasure. And the occasion is a fair one for self- 
 complacency. While the one man was working to be able to 
 buy the picture, the other was working to be able to enjoy the 
 picture. An inherited aptitude will have been diligently im- 
 proved in either case ; only the one man has made for himself a 
 fortune, and the other has made for himself a living spirit. It is 
 a fair occasion for self-complacency, I repeat, when the event 
 shows a man to have chosen the better part, and laid out his 
 life more wisely, in the long-run, than those who have credit 
 for most wisdom. 1 
 
 *[ Kead that touching book, The Story of a Scotch Naturalist ; 
 or the life of Hugh Miller only a workman in the Cromarty 
 stone quarries, yet to whom that " Old Eed Sandstone " belonged 
 more than ever it did to the men for whom he worked. Or think 
 of Thoreau, one of that little group, with Emerson at their head, 
 who made Concord famous Thoreau, in his little shanty in the 
 Walden woods, cultivating just enough f or - life's barest needs, 
 and meanwhile making the wisdom and beauty of Nature and of 
 books and men his own ; loving everything around him and loved 
 by all the birds perching upon him as he hoed his garden, the 
 squirrels nestling up to him as he sat reading in his woodland 
 nooks ; taking all that country-side into his mind and heart, and 
 making it curiously his own. So that to-day, as people drive by 
 it, they say " that is Thoreau's wood " ! 2 
 
 3. He owns the world who uses it as the arena, or wrestling 
 
 1 R. L. Stevenson, Ordered South. a B. Herford. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 21-23 125 
 
 ground, on which, by labour, he may gain strength, and in which 
 he may do service. Antagonism helps to develop muscle, and 
 the best use of the outward frame of things is that we shall take 
 it as the field upon which we can serve God. 
 
 First, then, behold the world as thine, and well 
 
 Note that where thou dost dwell : 
 See all the beauty of the spacious case ; 
 
 Lift up thy pleased and ravisht eyes; 
 Admire the glory of this Heavenly place, 
 
 And all its blessings prize. 
 That sight well seen thy spirit shall prepare 
 
 To make all other things more rare. 
 
 Men's woes shall be but foils unto thy bliss: 
 
 Thou once enjoying this : 
 Trades shall adorn and beautify the earth ; 
 
 Their ignorance shall make thee bright : 
 Were not their griefs Democritus's mirth? 
 
 Their slips shall keep thee right; 
 All shall be thine advantage ; all conspire 
 
 To make thy bliss and virtue higher. 1 
 
 iii. Life, Death. 
 
 Of the powers acting in the world there are two, of formid- 
 able and mysterious greatness, which seem to decide the course 
 of the universe life and death. The first comprehends all 
 phenomena which are characterized by force, health, productive- 
 ness; the second, all those which betray weakness, sickness, 
 decay. From the one or the other of these two forces proceed all 
 the hostile influences of which the believer feels himself the 
 object. But he knows also that he is not their puppet ; for it is 
 Christ his Lord who guides and tempers their action. 
 
 1. " Life is yours." Life is a very inclusive term. Think of 
 the vastness of its meaning. It means here, as always, more 
 than existence. Life has its dimensions: length and breadth, 
 and depth and height. It is not enough to count the years that 
 you live if " you would measure your life. "The days of our 
 years are threescore years and ten." That is simply a line from 
 the cradle to the grave, reaching over seventy years of length. 
 
 1 Thomas Traherne. 
 
126 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 A man may broaden out his life by broadening out his sympathy, 
 his love, by taking into the embrace of his thought and his 
 affection things that are outside the narrow line of self-interest. 
 As he thinks of his neighbour ; of a dying world ; of the destitute 
 and the widowed and the orphan and the oppressed; as he 
 thinks of the Kingdom of God in all its vast out-reachings, the 
 little narrow line of self-interest is crossed, and the territory of 
 life broadens out to cover a vast continent of affection and of 
 thought. When a man begins to cultivate his own nature, when 
 he goes down into the depths of his own soul to find out what is 
 there of sin, and by the grace of God expel it ; what is there of 
 weakness, and by the grace of God strengthen it; and what is 
 there of selfishness, and by the grace of God displace it ; when 
 he learns, like a man who occupies uncultivated land on a farm, to 
 plough it up, and subsoil it, and enrich the ground, so that he 
 may yet get out of his own being the utmost possible yield for 
 himself and his family and humanity that man is discovering 
 the depth that is possible to life. And when he looks beyond 
 the present and the transient and the temporal, when he casts 
 his eyes upward to God, when he reaches up after God, His 
 likeness, His honour, His glory, then he is learning the height 
 that is possible to life. 
 
 How is this abundant life ours ? 
 
 (1) The world of human life is most his who knows it best, 
 and loves it best. How shall we appropriate this world of man 
 to ourselves and make it ours ? The common idea has been to 
 get some kind of lordship or kingship or mastership over it, or 
 over as much of it as we can. In the old feudal times, the vassal 
 used to kneel at the feet of the lord of the manor and swear to be 
 " his man." But that is a poor notion. Let us go forth into the 
 busy world and love it ; interest ourselves in its life ; mingle 
 kindly with its joys and sorrows ; try what we can do for men 
 rather than what we can make them do for us, and we shall know 
 what it is to have men ours, better than if we were their king or 
 master. If we look through history, whose, most of all, is the 
 world ? Not Alexander's or Napoleon's, but Christ's, who made 
 men His because He knew them and loved them. He whom we 
 bind to ourselves by love becomes, as far as it is possible, ours. 
 
i CORINTHIANS HI. 21-23 127 
 
 A friendship is more truly a possession than a slave. Shake- 
 speare's plays become ours not by our owning a handsome copy 
 of them, but by our knowing them and loving them. Beethoven 
 and Mendelssohn are theirs who love and understand them. So 
 true is this, that Buskin has pleaded that in works of art it is 
 wrong to claim any private property or ownership. Such things 
 belong to humanity. Would we allow that any money purchase 
 could give a man any real right to make a bonfire of Raphael's 
 pictures or to break up the Laocoon into paperweights ? So of 
 character and the deep qualities of life itself. We cannot buy 
 these things ; we cannot pay a master even to teach us goodness, 
 or uprightness, or purity. This does not mean that the teacher 
 can do nothing 'knowing here too goes for something, but it is 
 loving that does infinitely the most. The quality we love becomes 
 a part of us. Our friend's nobleness, if that is what we really 
 love in him, gives us also some touch of nobleness. We may never 
 have much opportunity for heroism ; but if, as we read of some- 
 brave, heroic deed, our heart throbs with deep loving admiration, 
 that love by subtle chemistry transmutes the deed into our 
 character; not the whole of it, but some touch of it, becomes 
 a part of what we are. 
 
 (2) Life in its pleasures is ours ; there is no bright or helpful 
 pleasure that is not ours. There is no place on earth which a 
 Christian man cannot transform and transfigure to be the very 
 gateway of heaven. All mirth is ours, all laughter is ours, all 
 amusements are ours. Amusement in our hands will turn to 
 spiritual help, and to the making of manhood and womanhood. All 
 music is ours, all poetry is ours, the drama is ours. Pleasure in 
 its noblest, best, sweetest, truest sense belongs only to the 
 Christian. It is only when we are really armed in Christ for the 
 shocks and storms of life that we are safe to remember that we 
 are made fit in Christ for a double enjoyment of its joys. 
 
 T[ Life is really so wondrous ; this fibrine, iron, sinew, bone, 
 flesh, and colouring substance is so miraculous when alive, walking 
 about and thinking, and the eye is so expressive, the tone so 
 eloquent, the brain so active, and the heart so full of love and 
 feeling, that the mere gift of life is a largess so grand and utterly 
 magnificent that the dry bones breathed on should indeed rejoice. 
 Man is king of the world, monarch of the air, which is his circum- 
 ambient servant and puts colour in his cheeks and brightness in 
 
128 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 his eye ; of the earth, which on her brown bosom bears him corn 
 and wine and oil of gladness ; of the sea, which scatters its treasures 
 at his feet and conveys him from land to land ; of the sky, which 
 is peopled with winged servants of his ; of the caverns and hollows 
 under the earth, which yield iron and copper and lead and gold to 
 serve him, and give him precious stones to glitter in his sight, and 
 the treasures of antediluvian woods, laid up as coal to warm him 
 in the winter. Of the other inferior life that shares the earth he 
 too is master. Yoked to his chariot the swift steed bears him ; 
 and all animals, from the lion to the lamb, minister to his 
 recreations, sports, desires, or wants. 1 
 
 (3) Life in its disciplines is ours. To say that life is pleasurable 
 is also to say that life is sad. To say that life is full of beauty is 
 also to say that life is full of sorrow. There are minor as well 
 as major chords in our life. There are none of us without our 
 struggles, none of us without our failures, none of us without 
 disappointments, none of us without bereavements, none without 
 our sorrows. The old theologians and prophets used to look upon 
 life as a probation. Life is not a probation; life is something 
 nobler than that, it is an education. If we struggle, if we fight, 
 if we are foiled, if we are down, let us not call it our sad destiny 
 let us call it God's educating force to make us perfect men or 
 women in Christ Jesus. 
 
 Blaspheme not thou thy sacred Life, nor turn, 
 O'er joys that God hath for a season lent 
 (Perchance to try thy spirit and its bent, 
 
 Effeminate soul and base !) weakly to mourn ! 
 
 There lies no desert in the land of Life; 
 
 For e'en that tract that barrenest doth seem, 
 Laboured of thee in faith and hope, shall teem 
 
 With heavenly harvests and rich gatherings rife. 2 
 
 (4) Life in its possibilities is ours. John Stuart Mill once 
 said that no man could think of the heights of feeling that were 
 possible to him. Do we not believe that ; do we not believe with 
 all the future before us, and with all the love of God on our side, 
 there are scarcely any stages which we cannot reach ? There are 
 heights of purity to climb, valleys of humility to go through, 
 all the magnificent possibilities of service, of self-sacrifice, and of 
 life for others, a new start, and prospects which the grace of God 
 
 1 J. H. Friswell, This Wicked World, 269. 2 Frances Kemble. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 129 
 
 alone can give. When we look back upon our life, the saddest 
 thing is not that we have been dishonest, not that we have been 
 impure, perhaps ; but the saddest thing is that our life has been 
 so meagre when it might have been so grand, that it has been so 
 petty when it might have been so sublime, so poor when it might 
 have been so rich. 
 
 "If From the first Christianity had proclaimed that the whole 
 life of man belonged to it. This meant everything that made 
 man's life wider, deeper, fuller; whatever made it more joyous 
 or contented; whatever sharpened the brain, strengthened and 
 taught the muscles, gave full play to man's energies, could be 
 taken up into and become part of the Christian life. Sin and 
 foulness were sternly excluded; but, that done, there was no 
 element of the Graeco-Boman civilization which could not be 
 appropriated by Christianity. So it assimilated Hellenism or 
 the fine flower and fruit of Greek thought and feeling; it 
 appropriated Koman law and institutions ; it made its own the 
 simple festivals of the common people. All were theirs; and 
 they were Christ's ; and Christ was God's. 1 
 
 Thank God for life: life is not sweet always, 
 Hands may be heavy-laden, hearts care full, 
 Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days, 
 And dreams divine end in awakenings dull. 
 Still it is life, and life is cause for praise, 
 This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting, 
 Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing, 
 Prove me of Him who is of life the Spring, 
 I am alive ! and that is beautiful. 2 
 
 2. " Death is yours." We had forgotten that ; or we had not 
 realized it. We had thought that we belonged to death, not 
 death to us. We knew that we had some feeble hold upon life, 
 but death was not thought to be a possession, desirable or 
 undesirable. We had not added that to the catalogue of our 
 wealth. We had never reckoned it among our treasures among 
 our resources. We had not realized that death is one of our 
 opportunities. 
 
 ^[ The Writers of the Epistles make little or nothing of 
 physical death. They bear two great points in mind, (1) our 
 present standing, and (2) our ultimate standing in the day of the 
 
 1 Cambridge Medieval History, i. 96. a usan Coolidge, 
 
 I COR. 9 
 
130 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 Lord. We persist in walking by sight and esteeming this 
 existence Life, and the end of this existence Death; whereas, 
 rightly viewed, this existence is but a stage in mortality, and 
 so-called Death a step onwards to the fulness of immortality. 
 Each one of us is, as it were, a limb of God, with the potentiality 
 of perfection, and gradually, through the experience of multiform 
 error, to be developed into the full exercise of spontaneous and 
 joyous activity. 1 
 
 TJ There are two very striking engravings by a great, though 
 somewhat unknown, artist, representing Death as the Destroyer, 
 and Death as the Friend. In the one case he comes into a 
 scene of wild revelry, and there at his feet lie stark and stiff 
 corpses in their gay clothing and with garlands on their brows, 
 and feasters and musicians are flying in terror from the cowled 
 Skeleton. In the other he comes into a quiet church belfry, 
 where an aged saint sits with folded arms and closed eyes, and an 
 open Bible by his side, and endless peace upon the wearied face. 
 The window is flung wide to the sunrise, and on its sill perches 
 a bird that gives forth its morning song. The cowled figure has 
 brought rest to the weary, and the glad dawning of a new life to 
 the aged, and is a friend. 2 
 
 Lo ! all thy glory gone ! 
 
 God's masterpiece undone! 
 
 The last created and the first to fall; 
 
 The noblest, frailest, godliest of all. 
 
 Death seems the conqueror now, 
 
 And yet his victor thou: 
 
 The fatal shaft, its venom quench'd in thee, 
 
 A mortal raised to immortality. 
 
 Child of the humble sod, 
 
 Wed with the breath of God, 
 
 Descend! for with the lowest thou must lie 
 
 Arise ! thou hast inherited the sky. 3 
 
 (1) To the believer death is not a step into the dim unknown, 
 but a step into a region lighted by Jesus. Death is not the end 
 of something ; it is not an enemy that crushes us ; it is not a 
 loss, a defeat, a calamity ; it is a possession, a weapon in our 
 
 1 R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 20. 
 
 8 A. Maclareu. 3 John Banister Tabb. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 131 
 
 armoury, an opportunity, a resource. It is not a putting off, but 
 a putting on. 
 
 At end of Love, at end of Life, 
 At end of Hope, at end of Strife, 
 At end of all we cling to so 
 The sun is setting must we go ? 
 
 At dawn of Love, at dawn of Life, 
 At dawn of Peace that follows Strife, 
 At dawn of all we long for so 
 The sun is rising let us go. 1 
 
 (2) Death is not the cessation of activity, but the introduction 
 to nobler opportunities, and the endowment with nobler capacities 
 of service. To become dead is an experience which is part of life. 
 It is an experience in life's upgrowth and development. There 
 are many whom we know, who always seem to have been 
 thwarted; who seem to be disinherited; who do not seem to 
 have come into their rightful place or possession. If we look 
 at their lives, from the cradle to the certain grave, we cannot 
 understand them. There seems no accomplishment ; there seems 
 no real purpose ; there seems no achievement worth the travail. 
 But we are not to look at any one, viewing him merely from the 
 cradle to the grave. Death is our interpreter. It alone gives the 
 true perspective; and when death comes to such as we have 
 spoken of, it is seen to be the endowment of the disinherited. 
 Life, its meaning, its purpose, its wealth, is for them beyond the 
 grave. It is beyond the grave for all of us ; but it is clearly seen 
 to be so for them. Death is the endowment of the disinherited. 
 
 TI The shutters are drawn and the people talk in whispers and 
 walk softly, an immortal soul is passing out of time into eternity. 
 His has been a commonplace life, but he has been faithful, and 
 now he has reached the end of the journey. The sunset has come 
 and the shadows of evening are thickening. Between two worlds 
 hangs the veil which separates time from eternity. On this side 
 the veil it is a house of sorrow. Loved ones are in tears and 
 speak to each other in broken sobs and cry out to God for 
 comfort. 
 
 But on the other side of that thin veil the scene is far 
 different. It is the hour of coronation. There are no tears, no 
 
 1 Louise Chandler Moulton. 
 
132 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 sobbing grief and heart-broken prayers, but the chant of victory, 
 for a faithful soul is coming to its own. All the pomp and circum- 
 stance of heaven centre there. The face of the pilgrim has lost 
 its death pallor and the eyes shine with the light of expectant 
 immortality. God is once more placing the crown of life on the 
 brow of death. 1 
 
 Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life 
 Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 
 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
 And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife 
 Invulnerable nothings. 2 
 
 (3) Death does not separate and isolate us, but unites us to 
 Jesus and all His lovers. Those we have lost we have not lost 
 them. Death is the guardian of our treasures. Here they would 
 have faded, faded, faded. Do we ever think, that if friendship 
 were to last for ever on this earth of frailty, the last horror 
 would come the hearts even of friends would get worn out? 
 This mortal must put on immortality before life can stand its own 
 strain and the glory of its meaning ; the life we learn on earth 
 is too high for earth ; death alone can release it to its fit dominion. 
 And death is the guardian of your hidden treasures and the 
 keeper of your secret wealth, of all the unknown that lies 
 beyond the veil for us not only those whom we have let go, 
 but those we have never known, whom God has made and is 
 keeping for us. Our treasures, some of them, are here ; but we 
 will not know how rich we are till we have passed beyond. 
 
 I cannot think of them as dead 
 
 Who walk with me no more; 
 Along the path of life I tread 
 
 They have but gone before. 
 
 The father's house is mansioned fair 
 
 Beyond my vision dim; 
 All souls are His, and, here or there, 
 
 Are living unto Him. 
 
 And still their silent ministry 
 
 Within my heart hath place, 
 As when on earth they walked with me, 
 
 And met me face to face. 
 
 1 J. I. Vance, Tendency, 229, 233. 2 Shelley, Adonais, xxxix. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 133 
 
 Their lives are made forever mine; 
 
 What they to me have been 
 Hath left henceforth its seal and sign 
 
 Engraven deep within. 
 
 Mine are they by an ownership 
 
 Nor time nor death can free; 
 For God hath given to Love to keep 
 
 Its own eternally. 1 
 
 U I have no fear lest my Saints should be far from me in 
 their upper heaven; God's hierarchy is the hierarchy of con- 
 joining love, and His great ones have their place in power to 
 draw near even to the very least. The heights of heaven must 
 be close to every lower place, as close as heart and heart may be. 2 
 
 iv. Things Present, Things to Come. 
 
 All things are yours, says the Apostle, in the spiritual order 
 (whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas) and in the terrestrial order 
 (the world); the great powers of the world are yours (life and 
 death); now he adds a third pair in relation to time (things 
 present, and things to come). " Things present " comprehends 
 all that can happen to us in the present state of things, and as 
 long as we form part of it ; while " things to come " denotes the 
 great expected transformation, with its eternal consequences. 
 
 "Or things present, or things to come." How quickly the 
 incidents of daily life are gliding over us ! and as they pass, to 
 our weak gaze they steal from us so much that we hold dear 
 the elastic step, the clear vision, the strong nerve, the beloved 
 friend, the hard-earned gold. Sometimes they manifestly enrich 
 us. For the young there is a constant sense of acquisition. 
 One good and perfect gift follows swiftly on the heels of another. 
 But when we have crossed the summit of life's hill there is an 
 incessant consciousness of loss. Yet in God's sight, and in the 
 spiritual realm, these distinctions vanish and pass away as mists 
 under the touch of the sun : and we find that all incidents come 
 to bless usj all winds waft us to our haven; all tribes bring 
 their tribute into the throne-roorn of our inner being. We are 
 not the creatures of circumstances, but their masters, their 
 kings, their lords. All these things are the servants and tutors 
 
 1 Frederick Lucian Hosmer. 2 A Modern Mystic's Way. 
 
1 134 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 appointed by our Father, to wait on and minister to us, His 
 heirs. 
 
 1. " Things present" Our present lot is one of the " all things " 
 which belong to us. We may not like it ; we may greatly desire 
 to be quit of it; we may be looking forward with intensest eager- 
 ness to a happier day, when our griefs or our difficulties shall no 
 longer be with us. But these, remember, are from God to us, 
 and God's love is in them. Let us not be anxious merely to 
 rid ourselves of them. Let us dig in them, and we shall find 
 treasure. 
 
 Tf We read some time ago, in an Australian paper, of a nugget 
 worth a thousand pounds. In its picture a very ungainly block 
 it looked. Most of us might have fallen in with it and heed- 
 lessly passed it by, or cast it aside as something in the way. The 
 "digger" knew better, and he and his "mate" made a little 
 fortune in a day. 1 
 
 K We can be only in the present, but not in the present 
 without a past, nor in the present without a future. We need a 
 . present stretching from an eternal past to an eternal future. In 
 Jehovah alone is such a past, present, and future found (Ps. 
 xc. 1, 2). Jehovah hath created the heavens and the earth. We 
 are here, and here as an integral part of them. " Bless the Lord, 
 all his works, in all places of his dominion : bless the Lord, my 
 soul." We are connected in that verse with all places of His 
 dominion everything, everywhere, my soul. Yet the foundations 
 of our being, of our eternity, are in God our possibility in His 
 omnipotence our futurition in the purpose of His will, as our 
 actuality in our generic creation, and our individuality from Him 
 who calls the generations from the beginning. So of men so 
 of our salvation, omnipotence, purpose, creation in Christ. 
 There's something there that I'll no' spin out ; it could be spun 
 out into a long thread. 2 
 
 2. " Things to come." The dim, vague future shall be for each 
 of us like some sunlit ocean stretching shoreless to the horizon ; 
 every little ripple flashing with its own bright sunshine, and all 
 bearing us onwards to the great Throne that stands on the sea of 
 glass mingled with fire. 
 
 (1) All the future that hope anticipates or fear apprehends 
 
 1 J. Walker of Carnwath, Essays, Sermons, and Memoir, 318. 
 8 "Rabbi " Duncan, in Memoir of John Duncan, 4Q8. 
 
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 135 
 
 is ours, and we can safely leave it with Him. We are like a 
 cathedral that has been building through ages ; the scaffolding is 
 round about it, obscuring its beauty and symmetry, but essential 
 to the erection of the towering spires. But, when the whole 
 thing is completed, the scaffolding will be torn down and burnt 
 up, and the grand building will appear in perfection. 
 
 (2) The Hebrew youth who, eager and buoyant, full of joyous 
 young life and aspiration, left his father's home to seek his 
 brethren in the distant pasture-lands, had no dream of " things to 
 come " for him no dream of his sale as a bondsman, of his exile, 
 of Potiphar's house, of the false accusation, of the fetters and the 
 dungeon, of the hope deferred and the sudden release, of the 
 unexpected exaltation, of the reunion to his family in circum- 
 stances baffling all human calculation, and fraught with a history 
 so grand, with an influence stretching down through all time and 
 abroad over all lands. Not in his wildest imaginings did that 
 future of wonders ever open up before him. But as you see the 
 roll of his destiny unwind, as event follows event in the 
 marvellous career, you recognize how truly all that came to him 
 was his, and for his sake chastening, sifting, humbling, purifying, 
 preparing him alike for an earthly or a heavenly future. So is it 
 for us all, if we are truly of the seed of Jacob. 
 
 ^J To-morrow is the Gorgon ; a man must only see it mirrored 
 in the shining shield of yesterday. If he sees it directly he is 
 turned to stone. This has been the fate of all those who have 
 really seen fate and futurity as clear and inevitable. The 
 Calvinists, with their perfect creed of predestination, were 
 turned to stone; the modern sociological scientists (with their 
 excruciating Eugenics) are turned to stone. The only difference 
 is that the Puritans make dignified, and the Eugenists somewhat 
 amusing, statues. 1 
 
 ^J The man who believes in God and in His loving providence 
 need not darken his days by fretful cares and dread of evil to 
 come. Believing in God's purpose of love with him, he knows 
 that the future cannot bring anything contrary to that. If there 
 are any trials and sorrows in that time to come, he knows that 
 the Father's grace is sufficient for him through them all. If 
 there are temptations, he knows he will not be tempted above 
 what he can bear. His times are in God's hands. If his days 
 are to be long, the more time to worship and to witness. If they 
 
 1 Chesterton, What's Wrong ivith the World. 
 
136 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 are to be few, the greater need to redeem the time now. If they 
 are to be lived through much tribulation with darkness and storm, 
 with a long stretch through the valley of the shadow, the 
 Shepherd of his soul is ever with him. He will ask to see the 
 heart of good in every evil that touches his life, the joy that 
 slumbers in every pain, and in the hour of the final passion will 
 commit his soul to God. 1 
 
 T[ " Why wilt thou be concerned beyond to-day," asks Luther, 
 <l and take upon thyself the misfortunes of two days ? " Put thus, 
 with Luther's sanctified common sense, it is foolish from any 
 point of view, but it is more than foolish from the point of view 
 of faith. 2 
 
 II. 
 
 YE ARE CHRIST'S, AND CHRIST is GOD'S. 
 
 All things are yours, says St. Paul with one exception. That 
 exception is a very startling one. All things are ours but 
 ourselves ! That is really what the Apostle means when he says, 
 " All are yours, and ye are Christ's." And in this matter we are 
 in precisely the same position as the Lord Jesus Christ. While 
 all things are His, He is not His own any more than we are. 
 " All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 
 There is no one in this universe his own but God the Father. He 
 is the only absolute Being ; all the rest of us belong to some one 
 else. Christ is God's and we are Christ's. Christ belongs to God 
 by right of generation. "Thou art my Son, this day have I 
 begotten thee." We belong to Christ by right of purchase. " Ye 
 are not your own ; for ye were bought with a price." 
 
 1. It is because we are not our own, but Christ's, that all 
 things are ours. How should we, poor creatures of yesterday, 
 have all things if it were not for our connection with Christ ? 
 Has not God given all things to Christ ? As the Word has it, 
 " The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his 
 hand." And how should we have all things, if they were not 
 given us by Christ, whose we are ? 
 
 2. We are truly our own only when we are Christ's. The 
 highest truth ever lies in the completest paradox. There are 
 many things that we never truly possess till' we give them up. 
 
 1 Hugh Black, Comfort, 179. 2 Ibid. 191. 
 
i CORINTHIANS HI. 21-23 137 
 
 It is only when we relinquish the world that we possess it. It is 
 only when we let pleasure go that we obtain it. It is only when 
 we give money away that we enjoy it. It is only when we lose 
 our life that we find it. And it is only when we become Christ's 
 that we become our own. 
 
 Lord, Thou art mine, and I am Thine, 
 If mine I am; and Thine much more 
 Than I or ought or can be mine. 
 Yet to be Thine doth me restore, 
 So that again I now am mine, 
 And with advantage mine the more, 
 Since this being mine brings with it Thine, 
 And Thou with me dost Thee restore: 
 If I without Thee would be mine, 
 I neither should be mine nor Thine. 
 
 Lord, I am Thine, and Thou art mine; 
 So mine Thou art, that something more 
 I may presume Thee mine than Thine, 
 For Thou didst suffer to restore 
 Not Thee, but me, and to be mine: 
 And with advantage mine the more, 
 Since Thou in death wast none of Thine, 
 Yet then as mine didst me restore: 
 
 0, be mine still; still make me Thine; 
 
 Or rather make no Thine and mine. 1 
 
 3. All things are ours to serve us, and we are Christ's to serve 
 Him. Service is the golden thread that runs through all creation, 
 making it one. The ancient fable told that all things were bound 
 by golden chains about the feet of God : and surely the real deep 
 connection of which the fable spoke is to be found in the service 
 which each lower order of creation renders to the one above, the 
 service becoming rarer and more refined as the pyramid of 
 existence tapers to a point. 
 
 Our Lord was also the servant of God, and we are His 
 servants. We are, of course, His, in the sense of being owned 
 by Him : IJe made us ; He bought us ; He claims us. But how 
 many of us resemble Onesimus, the runaway slave of Philemon ! 
 who probably bore the brand of his master, and had certainly 
 been purchased by his gold, but who withheld from him his 
 
 1 George Herbert. 
 
138 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS 
 
 service, following the bent of his own wayward will, and herding 
 with the most abandoned of the populace that rotted in the 
 criminal quarters of ancient Eome. We too have been bought 
 by the Lord, at priceless cost ; but we are far from serving Him 
 with the same sort of loyal and whole-hearted ministry as that 
 with which He, in His unwearied solicitude for us, serves the Father. 
 
 4. Whenever we get into this right attitude towards our 
 Lord Jesus, we shall find that all things begin to minister to us 
 in a constant round of holy service. Each event or circumstance 
 in life becomes an angel, laden with blessed helpfulness, bringing 
 to us the gifts of our beloved Master. That title, " Eabboni, 
 Master," the sweetest name by which the prostrate soul can 
 address its Saviour, does not degrade or demean it ; but enables 
 it, like the babe Christ, to be the recipient of costly presents 
 sent from afar gold, frankincense, and myrrh. If we have been 
 chafing at our lot, thinking that time and things are robbing 
 us, we may be sure that we are not as we should be towards 
 Christ ; and the true cure will be to get as a slave to His feet. 
 Then all things will be ours in this deep sense. 
 
 5. " And Christ is God's." If Christ is at the right hand of 
 God, then the world is ours. The world is transformed from a 
 prison into a home, and life from a dream into a reality. All that 
 we know and love and strive for is given permanence and worth. 
 
 To see the glorious fountain and the end, 
 
 To see all creatures tend 
 To thy advancement, and so sweetly close 
 
 In thy repose : to see them shine 
 In serviceable worth; and even foes, 
 
 Among the rest, made thine : 
 To see all these at once unite in thee 
 
 Is to behold felicity. 
 
 To see the fountain is a blessed thing, 
 
 It is to see the King 
 Of Glory face to face : but yet the end, 
 
 The deep and wondrous end, is more; 
 In that the Fount we also comprehend, 
 
 The spring we there adore: 
 For in the end the fountain is best shewn, 
 
 As by effects the cause is known. 
 
i CORINTHIANS m. 21-23 
 
 From one, to one, in one, to see all things, 
 
 Perceive the King of Kings 
 My God and portion; to see His treasures 
 
 Made all mine own, myself the end 
 Of His great labours! 'Tis the life of pleasures 
 
 To see myself His friend ! 
 Who all things finds convey'd to Him alone, 
 
 Must needs adore the Holy One. 1 
 
 1 Thomas Traherne. 
 
OUR THREE JUDGES. 
 
LITERATURE 
 
 Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 155. 
 Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 156. 
 
 Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iv. 489. 
 Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 284. 
 Hoyle (A.), The Depth and Power of the Christian Faith, 89. 
 Jackson (G.), Judgment Human and Divine, 1. 
 Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. PauVs, 195, 295. 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 74. 
 
 Triumphant Certainties, 152. 
 
 Neale (J. M.), Sermons Preached in a Religious House, 2nd Ser., i. 190. 
 Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, iv, 155. 
 Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 1. 
 Stalker (J.), The Four Men, 2. 
 Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 34. 
 Vaughan (C. J.) Family Prayer and Sermon Book, ii. 576. 
 Christian World Pulpit, xxxvii. 225 (Stalker). 
 Church of England Pulpit, Ixii. 71 (Barnes). 
 Churchman's Pulpit : Third Sunday in Advent : i. 469 (Hobhouse), 472 
 
 (Battershall), 474 (Arnold), 477 (Gurney), 479 (Temple). 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., ix. 161 (Liddon). 
 
 14= 
 
OUR THREE JUDGES. 
 
 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of 
 man's judgment : yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing 
 against myself ; yet am I not hereby justified : but he that judgeth me is the 
 Lord. i Cor. iv. 3, 4. 
 
 1. To understand this passage we must remember what the cir- 
 cumstances were which led St. Paul to write this first letter to 
 the Corinthians. He had been absent from them for three years, 
 during which time trouble and disorder of several kinds had been 
 arising and spreading in the body of the Corinthian Christians. 
 And the first of these troubles, to which he alludes in this letter, 
 was the numberless divisions and parties into which they seemed 
 to have broken. Full of intellectual restlessness, craving after 
 new varieties of doctrine, they had formed at least three eager 
 and violent parties : the party of Paul, the party of Apollos, the 
 party of Cephas. We may gather that while St. Paul's own 
 partisans had raised him to a height of authority which he would 
 not for one moment claim, his opponents had brought the charge 
 of unfaithfulness against him. 
 
 And in this letter he tells them what he would have them 
 think of his office and his relations to them. Not a leader, not 
 a favourite of a party, but a servant doing work for God, a steward 
 dispensing to them the riches of the revelation of Christ. And 
 if a servant and a steward, then the one merit that he would 
 claim, the one thing that makes his service and his stewardship 
 real is faithfulness. But who is to judge whether he has been 
 faithful or not ? Men may judge, but he does not care for their 
 verdict : " If is a very small thing that I should be judged of you 
 or of man's judgment." His own conscience may judge, but he 
 will not stand on its acquittal alone : " though I know nothing 
 against myself, yet am I not hereby justified." There is only one 
 
 143 
 
144 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 judgment to which he will submit, only one utterly true and 
 infallible approbation or condemnation, which will be awarded to 
 those who will wait for it : " He that judgeth me is the Lord." 
 
 2. So here we have three tribunals, that of men, that of our own 
 conscience, and that of Jesus Christ. An appeal lies from the 
 first to the second, and from the second to the third. It is base 
 to depend on men's judgments ; it is well to attend to the decisions 
 of conscience, but it is not well to take for granted that, if 
 conscience approve, we are absolved. The court of final appeal 
 is Jesus Christ, and what He thinks about each of us. 
 
 I. 
 
 MEN'S JUDGMENT OF Us. 
 
 Dr. Stalker says that in every man there are four men the 
 man the world sees, the man seen by the person who knows him 
 best, the man seen by himself, and the man whom God sees. We 
 can reduce the four to three by taking the first two together. 
 Under "men's" judgment we have (i) the judgment of the world, 
 and (ii) the judgment of our friends. 
 
 i. The World. 
 
 The world looks at each of us and sees a certain image of us. 
 It observes single actions of ours and watches our courses of 
 action, and gradually makes up its mind about our character and 
 conduct as a whole. It takes in a general impression of what we 
 are, and gives it expression in a brief judgment on us. 
 
 From morning till night we are all of us passing judgment : we 
 are passing judgment on the dead and the living, on those the 
 most remote and the most unknown to us, and on those who are 
 close to us, on the things we know best, and on the things of 
 which we know nothing. Men, and classes, and nations throw 
 back their judgments one at another, as if they were the most 
 real and unquestionable certainties, about which no one could 
 doubt. West judges east, and east judges west each with equal 
 confidence, each on grounds which are held to be clear and strong. 
 Kich judge poor, and poor judge rich, family judges family, and 
 neighbourhood judges neighbourhood, and party judges party. 
 The learned judge the practical and the busy, the busy and 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 145 
 
 practical the learned. Nothing escapes, nothing daunts criticism, 
 that is, the passing of judgment about which the judges do not 
 doubt. Judgment means the pronouncing on what a thing really 
 is, and the application to it of a rule, and standard, and law, which 
 we assume to be beyond dispute. To this rule and standard we 
 are for ever bringing not only actions and opinions, but whole 
 courses of conduct, with all their intricate train of accompanying 
 events, and what we call dispositions and characters, with their 
 endless lights and shades, their perplexing contradictions, their 
 terrible or pathetic mysteries. All comes naturally within our 
 range of judgment : on all, we seriously or lightly, conscientiously 
 or carelessly, wisely or stupidly, fairly or unfairly, exercise our 
 judgment. We cannot help it. It is a part of our lives. 
 
 These judgments swell into what is called public opinion 
 the great force which has to do with the changes of society and 
 institutions, which settles what shall stand and what shall fall. 
 They accumulate into the traditions, the moral standards of a 
 society or a generation, its governing beliefs, its tyrannical usages. 
 And in private life and affairs this unceasing and universal habit 
 of judging appears in all the manifold incidents of our relations 
 and intercourse, as members of a family or a body, as friends, or 
 acquaintances, as working with or working against others, as 
 indifferent lookers-on, as in accidental contact with them. From 
 morning to night we are judging what they do, and what they are ; 
 and they are judging us. Out of it grow our preferences, our 
 admirations, our likings and dislikings, our lifelong friendships; 
 it expresses itself in our strong words of approval and condemna- 
 tion, it hardens into our bitter animosities, our unconquerable 
 antipathies. A case of conduct comes before us, and whether 
 it is our duty to judge it, or only our amusement and our pastime, 
 we judge it. A person with all those things which make one man 
 different from another his special qualities, his habits and purposes 
 and ways comes before us and we judge him. And this is not 
 here and there, or now and then, but all day long and everywhere, 
 as a matter of course, with every one. It is part of the necessary 
 system of the world : we see clearly that without this exercise of 
 human judgment, in its many forms, the world could not go on. 
 
 And a great deal of it is righteous, wise, salutary judgment ; 
 judgment which supports what is good, which directs what is 
 i COR. 10 
 
146 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 just and right, which brands and confounds evil. The quality of 
 human judgment is as various as the objects on which it is 
 exercised. There is responsible judgment and irresponsible, there 
 is deliberate and well-informed judgment, and there is off-hand 
 and cruelly ignorant judgment. But besides what is reasonable 
 and deliberate in judgment, there is a vast mass of judging with 
 no purpose, with no control, of which nothing is meant to come 
 or can come, except perhaps mischief. And what judging! 
 What amazing and easy generalizations from the slenderest facts ! 
 What recklessness of evidence ! What ingenious constructions 
 put on the simplest and the most imaginary appearances ! What 
 defiant confidence and certainty, coupled with the grossest 
 indifference to the actual truth, and the grossest negligence to 
 ascertain it ! What superb facility in penetrating and divining 
 hidden corruption of motives for unavowed ends ! 
 
 ^f Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to 
 say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular 
 shade of brown, blue, or green to which it really belongs. It is 
 so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is 
 good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that 
 would oblige you to modify that opinion. 1 
 
 If Part of the fascination of Principal Eainy for those who 
 knew him was that this man, compelled to assume leadership, had 
 no ambition to do " eminent service " but only to be " eminently 
 spiritual " ; that, forced into the forefront of battle after battle, 
 he had set his hopes on the refinement and quiet of the life of 
 a scholar ; that, often appearing to be, or at least charged with 
 being, a wily ecclesiastic, he was really one with a child's heart 
 of trust and love and obedience towards God. It was this subtle 
 paradox of character and career that, in part, made him so 
 interesting alike to friend and opponent. 2 
 
 To your judgments give ye not the reins 
 With too much eagerness, like him who ere 
 The corn be ripe, is fain to count the grains: 
 
 For I have seen the briar through winter snows 
 Look sharp and stiff yet on a future day 
 High on its summit bear the tender rose: 
 
 And ship I've seen, that through the storm hath past, 
 Securely bounding o'er the watery way, 
 At entrance of the harbour wrecked at last. 8 
 
 1 George Eliot, Amos Barton. " Life of Principal JRainy, i. 147. 
 
 3 Dante, Paradiso, xiii. 130-38, tr. by Wright. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 147 
 
 1. Now, for one to say, "With me it, is a very small thing 
 that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgement," is not a 
 conclusive proof of apostolic mission or apostolic life. Defiance 
 of man's judgment, indifference to public opinion, cannot ordin- 
 arily be considered a symptom of moral health, and it may be 
 the finishing stroke in the education of a scoundrel. Indeed, a 
 man can hardly be said to have thoroughly accomplished the 
 curriculum of the school of vice, and to have fairly earned his 
 diploma in crime, till he has beaten out of his nature all respect 
 for the moral judgments of his fellows, and bred in himself a 
 scorn for the verdict of public opinion. Even the pretence of 
 goodness, with an eye to the demands of public opinion, is a 
 moral crutch to a man. When he flings it away he loses the 
 last support of decency. A regard for the favourable judgment 
 of our fellows is usually the surviving grace which attends the 
 death-bed of the virtues ; and when she, the nurse, is discharged, 
 the man surrenders himself to a moral collapse. 
 
 In a high sense, and to most men, it is a great and momentous 
 thing to be "judged of man's judgement." Very few of us are 
 aware of the reinforcements which our virtue receives from the 
 pressure of our neighbour's opinion, and the persistent impact of 
 the moral sense that is diffused in the social atmosphere in which 
 we move. A man generally lives up to what is expected of him. 
 The organized life of which he is a part presses him into place, 
 and keeps his feet in the routine of duty. The habit of the 
 community finds him, holds him, becomes to him law, breeds in 
 him a personal habit which he no more thinks of breaking than 
 a planet thinks of leaping from the clutch of the law of gravita- 
 tion. Hence the peril, when a boy goes out from the shelter of 
 his home, and the familiar faces of his native town, and plunges 
 a lone swimmer, unnoted and unrecognized, in the turbid torrent 
 of life that surges in some vast metropolis. The faiths, the 
 principles, the moral habits with which his nature is stocked, 
 these he takes with him ; and if they be of the right sort, they 
 will bear him up, and he will breast the tide with a strong, 
 manful stroke. But all the more he will need them, because he 
 leaves behind him the safeguards of loving, watchful eyes. 
 
 The more closely we study the ways of men, the more clearly 
 we recognize that the heavier weights we can pile on the cage 
 
148 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 in which we pen our hungry passions, the less danger there is 
 that those passions will upset the cage, and break loose in our 
 life. The judgments of our fellow-men the men whom we 
 meet in the streets, in business, in social contact serve as 
 weights for this purpose. If we defy those judgments, not only 
 do we suffer smart and loss in our outward life, but generally 
 which is far worse we suffer impairment of moral power in our 
 inward life. For a man to live under the perpetual challenge 
 of the violated conscience of his fellows hardens him, embitters 
 him, gives a morbid and distorted action to his own conscience. 
 He is apt to yield to the restless push of whim and passion. 
 Even if he honestly engages in the fight with sin, he is like a 
 soldier who has been driven from behind the breastworks, and is 
 compelled to face his foe alone in the open field with his naked 
 sword. 
 
 Tf The public opinion fostered by a Tiberius or a Nero was of 
 little worth to a man like St. Paul. But the public opinion of 
 to-day bears the imprint of the Divine Christ. Something from 
 that peerless, spotless Soul who brought God to this earth has 
 flowed into the great thought of the world. Men have caught, 
 in fragments at least, His interpretation of life, His ideal of life, 
 His law of life. Very imperfectly do the actual lives of men 
 reflect all these ; but His image lies in broken lines on the turbid 
 pool of our modern life, and the strange Divine light in His soul 
 has shot through the conscience of Christendom. The civilization 
 in which we live is a civilization that bears the finger-marks of 
 Christ. What we call public opinion is the invisible breath, the 
 subtle aroma, of a Christian civilization. 
 
 ^[ Habitually to ignore and set at naught what other people 
 think may be as foolish and as fatal as habitually to consult and 
 wait upon it. Athanasius contra mundum it is a magnificent 
 phrase, and it stands for a great truth; but I fear it has to 
 answer for a good deal of stupid and obstinate wrong-headedness 
 which is not always called by its proper name. 1 
 
 ^[ Christian public opinion, the expression of the Spirit of 
 Christ in the united will, emotion, and intellect of human 
 societies, has wrought, and is working miracles. It has raised 
 the standard of purity, of honesty, of loving-kindness ; and above 
 all, and including all, it has established the sense of brotherhood, 
 of mutual obligation and responsibility. But it has not had its 
 
 1 G. Jackson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 149 
 
 perfect work. It has been paralysed by timidity, the fear of 
 persecution and ridicule, the fear of plain speaking ; it has been 
 seduced by temptation, the personal desire for ease and pleasure, 
 the corporate desire for power and wealth. But more than all, 
 it has been weakened by division, and obscured by controversy and 
 by an exaggerated sense of the paramount duty of withstanding 
 erring brethren to the face because they are to be blamed. 1 
 
 2. But for most of us the peril does not lie that way, but 
 rather in a tame subservience, a too ready compliance with the 
 ways and thoughts of the world about us. Is there anything 
 that we need more in every department of life to-day than the 
 spirit of sturdy, uncompromising independence which breathes 
 through these words of the Apostle : " With me it is a very 
 small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judge- 
 ment ; he that judgeth me is the Lord " ? We want men, like 
 him, who fear God and have no other fear. 
 
 U The mischief which arises from habitual anxiety about the 
 good opinion of men is more than can be told. It is speaking 
 strongly, but truly, to say that it makes the whole of our life 
 unchristian; that it dethrones our Maker from His lawful 
 authority, and sets up an idol in His place; that it makes us 
 heathens as completely, for all purposes of our souls' danger, as 
 if we were to bow down and offer sacrifice to a graven image. 2 
 
 If Take the case of the famous Francis Bacon. Bacon's 
 greatness on its intellectual side it is almost impossible to 
 exaggerate. It was his proud, and by no means empty, boast 
 that he had taken all knowledge to be his province. Such a 
 vision of truth, such power to comprehend and to speak it, have 
 rarely been granted to any man. In sheer intellectual might he 
 stands, in our nation at least, with the one exception of 
 Shakespeare, without a peer. And yet, notwithstanding all 
 his magnificent gifts, we see him stooping to almost incredible 
 meanness and perfidy, suffering himself to become the abject tool 
 of a wretch like Buckingham, a mere " chessman," as he himself 
 put it, in the hand of a monarch so weak and contemptibles a 
 James i. What is the explanation ? Why this strange mingling 
 of mud and marble, of meanness and magnificence? Let Dean 
 Church, who of all Bacon's critics has, perhaps, understood him 
 best, answer : " There was," he says, " in Bacon's ' self ' a deep 
 and fatal flaw. He was a pleaser of men. There was in him that 
 subtle fault, noted and named, both by religion and philosophy, 
 
 1 J. H. F. Peile, The Reproach of the Gospel, 194. 8 T. Arnold. 
 
150 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 ill the apecrfcos of Aristotle, the dvQpcoTrdpeoncos of St. Paul, which is 
 more common than it is pleasant to think even in good people, 
 but which, if it becomes dominant in a character, is ruinous to 
 truth and power." In all history is there any warning so tragic 
 of the shipwreck that men suffer when they trim their sails to 
 catch the favour of the many or the great ? 1 
 
 U It is clear from Bishop Wilkinson's recorded words that no 
 man was ever more intensely sensitive to the least breath of 
 opposition or hostility; he instinctively desired and valued the 
 good opinion of the world. But he valued his conscience and his 
 message more, and never modified the truths he had to tell; 
 while his very sensitiveness kept him from ever presuming or 
 dictating, and gave him an instinct for conciliation which was 
 never blunted. 2 
 
 ^ Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men, for 
 whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account 
 other than thyself. 3 
 
 ii. Our Friends. 
 
 1. The man seen by the persons who know him best may be 
 quite a different man from the man the world sees : for every man 
 has two sides one to face the world with, and one to show to 
 the friend of his heart. 
 
 TJ I once had a friend. The popular opinion about him was 
 that he was very quiet and rather dull, without ideas, or 
 experience, or character of his own. Such was the man the 
 world saw. But the man I saw was quite a different being a 
 man of the most genial humour, who could break into conversation 
 the most lively and discursive or the most serious and profound, 
 with a mind richly stored with unusual knowledge, a fertile 
 imagination, and a moral nature which had passed through all 
 the great experiences of the human soul and all the peculiar 
 experience of our new time. 4 
 
 Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder, 
 Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you. 
 There, in turn, I stand with them and praise you, 
 But the best is when I glide from out them, 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, 
 Come out on the other side, the novel 
 Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 
 Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 
 
 1 G. Jackson. 2 A. C. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 119. 
 
 3 Thomas a Kempis. * J. Stalker. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 151 
 
 2. But if the too severe judgments of others are hard for us 
 to bear, their too favourable judgments are far more perilous to 
 us. We are so apt to assume that all the pleasant things said 
 about us are true, to be satisfied with approbation which we know 
 to be nothing but superficial. We each, no doubt, if we choose, 
 know our own weaknesses and our own sins; perhaps they are 
 unknown to every one else, perhaps they are known only to some 
 few of our friends. Yet if we seem to be accepted by those who 
 do not know them, with favourable judgment and trusting affec- 
 tion perhaps respected and loved for our external pleasantness, 
 treated as we know we should not be treated if they knew our 
 real inner selves is it not a dangerous temptation to us to accept 
 the affection and the approbation as our true merit, and to forget 
 the weakness or the sin that is not known ? 
 
 Greatly his foes he dreads, but more his friends; 
 He hurts me most who lavishly commends. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 OUR JUDGMENT OF OUESELVES. 
 
 We pass from the judgment of others to our own. " I judge 
 not mine own self." 
 
 1. The Apostle is not to be taken here as contradicting what 
 he says in other places. In one of these same letters to the 
 Corinthians he says, " If we would judge ourselves, we should not 
 be judged." So he does not mean here that he is entirely without 
 any estimate of his own character or actions. That he did in 
 some sense judge himself is evident from the next clause, because 
 he goes on to say, "I know nothing against myself." If he 
 acquitted himself, he must previously have been judging himself. 
 His acquittal of himself, however, is not to be understood as if it 
 covered the whole ground of his life and character ; it is to be 
 confined to the subject in hand his faithfulness as a steward of 
 the mysteries of God. But though there is nothing in that region 
 of his life which he can charge against himself as unfaithfulness, 
 he goes otf to say, " Yet am I not hereby justified." 
 
 All of us who have read the life of St. Paul will admit not 
 only that he was sincere after his conversion to Christ, but that 
 
 1 Churchill, The Apology. 
 
152 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 also as a Pharisee of the Pharisees he was a man of integrity even 
 when he persecuted the Church of Christ, because he did it 
 ignorantly in unbelief. St. Paul was a Pharisee, but never a 
 hypocrite ; he never desired to live under false pretences, but was 
 always faithful to his convictions, even when they were mistaken. 
 He therefore could say especially now as an Apostle, " I know 
 nothing against myself " ; in other words, " As far as I know, I 
 am not guilty of any unfaithfulness in my office ; I desire to be 
 faithful, but I do not put up my judgment against yours, or 
 against the judgment of the world. I was sadly mistaken when 
 I was a Pharisee ; and therefore I have learned not to fall back 
 upon my own opinion as a court of final appeal " I judge not 
 mine own self." The strength of my life is not in my personal 
 opinion, though I am not conscious of having been guilty of any 
 insincerity. My conscious integrity doubtless adds individuality 
 to my convictions, and strength to my life ; but that is not the 
 sustaining force of my life, it is not that from which I draw my 
 strength. Though I know nothing against myself ; yet am I not 
 hereby justified. 
 
 H Grant that you acquit yourself at the bar of conscience, that 
 the acquittal is impartial, is sincere. Are you competent as a 
 judge ? Have you before you all the data on which the verdict 
 must be founded ? How much do you know of yourself ? At 
 this very moment your friends, your neighbours, even casual 
 strangers, discern faults in you which you do not actually and 
 perhaps may not ever suspect. They see one side of you ; you your- 
 self another. Yours is the larger fraction, but it is only a fraction 
 still. There are intricate complications in the heart of every 
 man, which far transcend his powers to unravel. At times we 
 may almost realize, not indeed the knowledge of ourselves, but 
 the knowledge of our ignorance of self. A shock is given to the 
 moral system by some unwonted occurrence a disappointment, 
 a loss, a sickness, a bereavement, a desertion, a surprise of tempta- 
 tion, a victory of sin. A momentary light is flashed in upon the 
 man's heart, and reveals to him his inability, his meanness, his 
 inconsistency, his degradation. Then he begins to suspect how 
 little he has known of his true self. But the flash is gone, and 
 the old darkness gathers about him. What do you remember 
 now of the eventful history of some one sin which has long 
 become a habit the warnings, the compunctions, the counter- 
 acting influences, the growing attractions, the faint resistance, 
 becoming feebler and feebler, as the allurement became stronger 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 153 
 
 and stronger ? How little do you scrutinize, record, realize the 
 motives which urge you to the conduct of to-day or to-morrow, 
 too absorbed in the energy of the processes, and too eager about 
 the success of the results ! Yet just here, in this past history, 
 here, in these directing motives, are the main elements in which 
 your responsibility consists, the chief data on which your final 
 sentence must be based. 1 
 
 T[ It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a 
 judge in his own cause. 2 
 
 The seas that shake and thunder will close our mouths one day, 
 The storms that shriek and whistle will blow our breaths away. 
 The dust that flies and whitens will mark not where we trod. 
 What matters then our judging? we are face to face with 
 God. 3 
 
 2. The man as seen by himself is a very different one from the 
 man seen by the world or even by his closest friend. Is he better 
 or worse ? He is both. 
 
 (1) In some respects we all, perhaps, know ourselves to be 
 better than we are supposed to be. There are bright visitations 
 in the mind which we could not communicate to another if we 
 tried. Then there are some of the best things which we dare 
 not speak of; humility, for example, spoken of is humility no 
 more. What religious man can fully describe the tragic moments 
 when his soul lies prostrate and penitent before God, or the 
 golden moments when he is closest to the Saviour? Such 
 things are soiled by fingering. Besides, in all highly toned 
 minds there is a modesty about explanations; and even in the 
 frankest friendship there is many a word, many an act, which 
 we know is misinterpreted to our disadvantage, but which we 
 cannot explain. 
 
 "Where have you been, my brother? 
 
 For I missed you from the street ? " 
 "I have been away for a night and a day 
 
 At the great God's judgment-seat." 
 
 "And what did you find, my brother, 
 When your judging there was done ? " 
 
 " Weeds in my garden, dust in my doors, 
 And my roses dead in the sun : 
 
 1 J. B. Lightfoot. 2 Pascal, Thoughts. Dora Sigerson Shorter. 
 
154 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 "And the lesson I brought back with me, 
 
 Like silence, from above 
 On the Judgment-Throne there is room alone 
 For the Lord whose name is Love." 1 
 
 (2) All men know themselves to be, in some respects, better 
 than they are supposed to be. But do we not also know ourselves 
 to be worse ? What do we say not with the tongue with which 
 we would speak to another, but with that voice with which the 
 soul speaks to itself ? Have we never said to ourselves, " If people 
 only knew me as I know myself, they would scorn me; if my 
 friend knew me as I really am, he would be my friend no more " ? 
 Away back in our life, are there not hours about which we neither 
 could, would, nor should speak ? Is there ever a day that there 
 do not pass through our mind thoughts of pettiness and vanity, 
 movements of covetousness, envy and pride, perhaps dark 
 doubts and blasphemies ? Have we no secret habits and sinful 
 inclinations and desires which dare not see the light ? 
 
 If Great were the wrath and consternation of the pirates 
 when they saw their dilemma; for, having no provisions, they 
 must either starve or seek succour at the fort. They chose the 
 latter course, and bore away for the St. John's. A few casks of 
 Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternizing 
 in the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the 
 wine mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, 
 they enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another 
 the commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and 
 speeches on either side. " Say what you like," said one of them, 
 after hearing the counsel for the defence ; " but if Laudonniere 
 does not hang us all, I will never call him an honest man." 2 
 
 Tf You constantly hear a great many people saying I am very 
 bad, and perhaps you have been yourself disposed lately to think 
 me very good. I am neither the one nor the other. I am very 
 self-indulgent, very proud, very obstinate, and very resentful ; on 
 the other side, I am very upright nearly as just as I suppose 
 it is possible for man to be in this world exceedingly fond of 
 making people happy, and devotedly reverent to all true mental 
 or moral power. 1 never betrayed a trust never wilfully did an 
 unkind thing and never, in little or large matters, depreciated 
 another that I might raise myself. I believe I once had affections 
 
 1 L. Maclean Watt. 
 
 3 Park man, Pioneers of France in the New World, i. 76. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 155 
 
 as warm as most people ; but partly from evil chance, and partly 
 from foolish misplacing of them, they have got tumbled down and 
 broken to pieces. It is a very great, in the long-run the greatest, 
 misfortune of my life that, on the whole, my relations, cousins 
 and so forth, are persons with whom I can have no sympathy, and 
 that circumstances have always somehow or another kept me out 
 of the way of the people of whom I could have made friends. 
 So that I have no friendships, and no loves. 
 
 Now you know the best and worst of me; and you may 
 rely upon it it is the truth. If you hear people say I am utterly 
 hard and cold, depend upon it it is untrue. Though I have no 
 friendships and no loves, I cannot read the epitaph of the Spartans 
 at Thermopylae with a steady voice to the end ; and there is an 
 old glove in one of my drawers that has lain there these eighteen 
 years, which is worth something to me yet. If, on the other hand, 
 you ever feel disposed to think me particularly good, you will be 
 just as wrong as most people are on the other side. My pleasures 
 are in seeing, thinking, reading, and making people happy (if I 
 can, consistently with my own comfort). And I take these 
 pleasures. And I suppose, if my pleasures were in smoking, 
 betting, dicing, and giving pain, I should take those pleasures. 
 It seems to me that one man is made one way, and one another 
 the measure of effort and self-denial can never be known, except 
 by each conscience to itself. Mine is small enough. 1 
 
 More than your schoolmen teach, within 
 
 Myself, alas ! I know ; 
 Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, 
 
 Too small the merit show. 
 
 I bow my forehead to the dust, 
 
 I veil my eyes for shame, 
 And urge, in trembling self-distrust, 
 
 A prayer without a claim. 2 
 
 III. 
 
 CHRIST'S JUDGMENT OF Us. 
 
 The final judgment to which St. Paul appealed was his 
 Master's. " He that judgeth me is the Lord " ; in other words, I 
 am His steward, and to Him am I ultimately responsible. I do 
 not come to you for your approval to sustain me in my work ; 
 
 1 Ruskin, in E. T. Cook's Life of Ruskin, i. 490. 
 
 2 Whittier, "The Eternal Goodness." 
 
156 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 I do not go to men in general for their approval as the one 
 confidence upon which I shall lean ; I do not come to my own 
 soul, to my own sense of integrity and fidelity, as the one thing 
 that is to support me; I must go back to my Master: the one 
 who has sent me forth to the world in His service, and I must 
 stand or fall by what He shall say. 
 
 U He who judges us is God. From this judgment there is no 
 escape, and no hiding-place. The testimony of our fellows will 
 as little avail us in the day of judgment, as the help of our fellows 
 will avail us in the hour of death. We may as well think of 
 seeking a refuge in the applause of men from the condemnation 
 of God, as we may think of seeking a refuge in the power or the 
 skill of men from the mandate of God, that our breath shall 
 depart from us. 1 
 
 Lord and Master of us all! 
 
 Whate'er our name or sign, 
 We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 
 
 We test our lives by Thine. 
 
 Thou judgest us; Thy purity 
 
 Doth all our lusts condemn; 
 The love that draws us nearer Thee 
 
 Is hot with wrath to them. 
 
 Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight; 
 
 And, naked to thy glance, 
 Our secret sins are in the light 
 
 Of Thy pure countenance. 
 
 Thy healing pains, a keen distress 
 
 Thy tender light shines in; 
 Thy sweetness is the bitterness, 
 
 Thy grace the pang of sin. 
 
 Yet, weak and blinded though we be, 
 
 Thou dost our service own ; 
 We bring our varying gifts to thee, 
 
 And thou rejectest none. 2 
 
 1. The great truth of the judgment of God, the perfect 
 all-knowing judgment to which all other judgments are as 
 nothing, sweeps away all the sham and self-deception of double 
 
 1 Chalmers. 3 Whittier, " Our Master." 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 157 
 
 lives. " He that judgeth rne is the Lord." Can we, on our knees 
 before our heavenly Father, for one moment be satisfied with the 
 undeserved approbation of those who do not know us as we are ? 
 When we understand and remember that all things are naked 
 and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, we 
 can no longer rest satisfied with any successful concealment of 
 part of our character from human eyes. It is as though a 
 searching flood of pure light were thrown upon our inmost lives, 
 forcing us to purge them of all that is unworthy, bracing us to 
 attain to a life lived in the realization of the pure presence of 
 God. For the power of the truth of the judgment of God is 
 found in this that it is the supreme declaration that there lies 
 before us all a goal to be attained, an ideal to be realized, a high 
 standard by which to live. We need it all our lives, in youth 
 and in older life. It is so natural to acquiesce in all sorts of 
 conventional standards of goodness and duty, standards which we 
 know to be unworthy of our Christian calling, yet which satisfy 
 the demands of the conscience of our society. But to each single 
 soul face to face with the eternal Father, these lower standards 
 must fade into their true worthlessness. The Divine ideal of 
 goodness purity and truth and love does not change with the 
 shifting ideals of society, does not make exceptions to suit the 
 weaknesses of human nature. That is the ideal which we have 
 vowed to keep before us; that is the ideal by which God will 
 judge us. 
 
 U The one principle which governs the entire vision of Jesus 
 is that Love judges, and that it is by Love that men are tested. 
 The men and women of loving disposition, who have wrought 
 many little acts of kindness which were to them so natural and 
 simple that they do not so much as recollect them, find themselves 
 mysteriously selected for infinite rewards. The men and women 
 of opposite disposition, in spite of all their outward rectitude of 
 behaviour, find themselves numbered with the goats. A cup of 
 cold water given to a child, a meal bestowed upon a beggar, 
 a garment shared with the naked these things purchase heaven. 
 One who Himself had been thirsty, hungry, and naked, judges 
 their worth) and He judges by His own remembered need. It is 
 love alone that is Divine, love alone that prepares the soul for 
 Divine felicity. 1 
 
 1 W. J. Dawson, The Empire of Love, 76. 
 
158 OUR THREE JUDGES 
 
 2. " He that judgeth me is the Lord." Mark the tense of 
 the verb present, not future; "judgeth," not "shall judge." 
 Side by side, concurrently with the imperfect and fallible 
 judgment of man, there goes on unerring and unresting the perfect 
 judgment of God. There is in the Acts of the Apostles a very 
 striking picture of a little scene in a court of justice in Palestine. 
 The prisoner is St. Paul; standing round him like wild beasts 
 hungry for their prey are his accusers, "bringing against him 
 many and grievous charges." With one word he silences them 
 all "Caesarem appello!" "I appeal unto Caesar." After that 
 they have no more that they can do. And for us too our Csesar 
 sits upon the throne, and to Him may the daily appeal for 
 judgment be made : " He that judgeth us is the Lord." 
 
 ^[ I have read somewhere of a young musician listening to the 
 first rendering of his first great composition. He stood up above 
 the orchestra, and as he watched how the music which was the 
 child of his own soul stirred and swayed the hearts of the 
 listening multitude, a strange new emotion swept over his own 
 heart : and yet through all he kept his eye fixed on one who sat 
 there amidst the throng, the face of one who was a past master 
 in the art in which he himself was but a beginner; and every 
 change in the master's face meant more to him than the thunders 
 and plaudits of the crowd. 1 
 
 T| The governor of a Crown Colony may attach some importance 
 to colonial opinion, but he reports home; and it is what the 
 people in Downing Street will say that he thinks about. We 
 have to report home; and it is the King whom we serve to 
 whom we have to give an account. 2 
 
 1 G. Jackson, * A. Maclaren. 
 
JUDGING PREMATURELY. 
 
 159 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Adams (J. C.), The Leisure of God, 143. 
 
 Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, i. 8. 
 
 Colenso (J. W.), Natal Sermons, i. 72. 
 
 Dale (R. W.), Weekday Sermons, 38. 
 
 Gray (W. A.), Laws and Landmarks of the Spiritual Life, 41. 
 
 Home (W.), Religious Life and Thought, 86. 
 
 Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons in Outline, 217. 
 
 Howatt (J. R.), The Children's Angel, 67. 
 
 Johnson (H.), From Love to Praise, 165. 
 
 Knight (J. J.), Sermons in Brief, 46. 
 
 Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., ii. 19. 
 
 Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. Paul's, 551. 
 
 Lightfoot (J. B.), Sermons in St. PauPs Cathedral, 193. , 
 
 Lilley (A. L.), The Soul of St. Paul, 179. 
 
 Neale (J. M.), Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, ii. 177. 
 
 Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, i. 173. 
 
 Sauter (B.), The Sunday Epistles, 30. 
 
 Skrine (J. H.), The Heart's Counsel, 8. 
 
 Stevenson (J. F.), God and a Future Life, 55. 
 
 Whitworth (W. A.), Christian Thought on Present Day Questions, 200. 
 
 Christian World Pulpit, xliv. 257 (Harries) ; Ixxiv. 410 (Henson). 
 
 Church of England Pulpit, Ii. 93 (Udny); lix. 112 (Jackson). 
 
 Cliurchrnan's Pulpit : Third Sunday in Advent : i. 482 (Crosse), 483 
 
 (Mulchahey), 485 (Farquhar), 488 (Shipman), 490 (Johnson). 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ii. 193 (Church). 
 
 160 
 
JUDGING PREMATURELY. 
 
 Judge nothing before the time. i Cor. iv. 5. 
 
 1. THE time of which the Apostle speaks is, of course, the Advent 
 of the Lord. " Judge nothing," he says, " before the time, until 
 the Lord come." He is thinking of his own character and work, 
 which certain Corinthian teachers have been endeavouring to 
 asperse. And what he declares is that in questions pertaining 
 to his personal sincerity he admitted the authority of no earthly 
 tribunal, he did not even rely on the verdict of conscience, he 
 made his appeal to Christ. It was for Christ's approval that he 
 worked here ; it was Christ's vindication that he expected here- 
 after. When the end came, so he implies, the Corinthians would 
 know what manner of man he had been pure in motive, upright 
 in conduct, faithful in witness. Meanwhile, if anything in his 
 conduct and methods seemed perplexing, they were to avoid all 
 harsh and uncharitable opinions, possess their souls in patience, 
 and wait for the full and final explanation " when the Lord 
 comes." 
 
 2. Now, what is the exact force and import of the precept ? 
 Is it meant that we are to form and express no judgment what- 
 ever upon human conduct, upon anything that we see and hear 
 of in the world around us ? This cannot possibly be meant, and 
 for more reasons than one. 
 
 (1) The first reason is that, if we think at all, many judgments, 
 of the mind if not of the lips, are inevitable. What is the process 
 that is going on with every human being, every day from morning 
 to night? Is it not something of this kind? Obser\^,tion is 
 perpetually collecting facts and bringing them under the notice 
 of reason. Eeason sits at home, at the centre of the soul holding 
 in her hands a twofold rule of law the law of truth and the law 
 i COR. ii 
 
1 62 JUDGING PREMATURELY 
 
 of right. As observation conies in from its excursions, laden 
 with its stock of news, and penetrates thus laden into the 
 chamber of reason, reason judges each particular : by the law of 
 right, if it be a question of conduct ; by the law of truth, if it be 
 a question of faith or opinion. In a very great number of cases 
 the laws of truth and right, as held by the individual reason, are 
 very imperfect laws indeed ; still reason does the best she can 
 with them, and goes on sitting in her own court, judging and 
 revising judgments from morning until night. Probably two- 
 thirds of the sentences we utter, when closely examined, turn out 
 to be judgments of some kind ; and if our mental or moral natures 
 are healthy, judgments of some kind issue from us as naturally as 
 flour does from a working corn-mill. 
 
 How can it be otherwise ? God has given to every man a 
 law or sense of right. As a consequence, every action done by 
 others produces upon us a certain impression, which, when we 
 put it into words, is a judgment. When we hear of a monstrous 
 fraud, of a great act of profligacy, or of a great act of cruelty, we 
 are affected in one way ; when we hear of some self-sacrificing 
 or generous deed, of some conspicuous instance of devotion to 
 duty, we are affected in another t we condemn or we approve as 
 the case may be. Woe to us, if we do not thus condemn or 
 approve ; for this would mean that our moral nature was drugged 
 or dead. 
 
 Tf In our day men sometimes think it good-natured to 
 treat truth and falsehood as at bottom much the same thing; 
 but this cannot be done for long with impunity. In the first 
 age of Christianity it was not so. " Ye have an unction from 
 the Holy One," wrote St. John to the first Christians, " and ye 
 know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know 
 not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the 
 truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the 
 Christ ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." 
 This direct language of St. John would jar upon the ear of a 
 generation which thinks that something is to be said for every 
 falsehood, and something to be urged against every truth ; but 
 it is the natural language of those to whom religious truth is a 
 real thing, and not a passing sentiment or fancy. The law of 
 truth within us necessarily leads to our forming judgments no 
 less than does the law of right. 1 
 
 1 H. P. Liddon. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 163 
 
 ^[ One great evil of sin is that it takes away our right to be 
 indignant when other people sin, and so in time our standard of 
 thought is lowered to their scale. 1 
 
 (2) In the second place, Scripture stimulates and trains the 
 judicial faculty within us, making its activity keener and wider 
 than would have been possible without it. The servants of God 
 in the Bible are intended to rouse us to admire and imitate them ; 
 and what is this but a judgment of one kind ? The sinners in 
 the Bible, from Cain to Judas Iscariot, are intended to create in 
 us moral repulsion, not for their persons, but for their crimes ; 
 and what is this but an inward and emphatic judgment of another 
 kind ? 
 
 TI Then came the maxim that the indignation expressed by 
 Him against hypocrisy was no precedent for us, inasmuch as He 
 spoke as a Divine person. I contended that it was human, and 
 that if a man did not feel something of the same spirit under 
 similar circumstances, if his blood could not boil with indignation, 
 nor the syllable of withering justice rise to his lips, he could not 
 
 even conceive His spirit. Mr. E agreed to this, to my surprise, 
 
 and told an anecdote. " Could you not have felt indignation for 
 that, Robertson ? " My blood was at the moment running fire 
 not at his story, however, and I remembered that I had once in 
 my life stood before my fellow-creature with words that scathed 
 and blasted; once in my life I felt a terrible might: I knew, 
 and rejoiced to know, that I was inflicting the sentence of a 
 coward's and a liar's hell. 2 
 
 3. The words of St. Paul, then, do not forbid us to form 
 judgments and act on them, they simply convey a warning 
 against premature judgments, an admonition in regard to those 
 hasty and ill-considered verdicts we are apt to pronounce both 
 on people and on facts, while in reality the elements for a sound 
 and safe verdict are not in our hands. There are many facts, 
 enterprises, events, and problems in regard to which it is of the 
 very greatest importance to remember the rule of the text, 
 "Judge nothing before the time." They are all those matters 
 into whicli there enters the element of ignorance, uncertainty, 
 and change. They are those matters in which the fact must be 
 reckoned with that you may be changed, or that they may be 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks, Life, 79. 
 
 2 Robertson, in Life and Letters of the Heu. F. W. Hoberlsmi, 212. 
 
164 JUDGING PREMATURELY 
 
 changed, or that surroundings may be changed, or that the amount 
 of light may be changed, so that data that are hidden now may 
 be known hereafter, to the altering of human estimates, the 
 overturning of human views. 
 
 Let this be lead unto thy feet, that slow 
 Thy steps may be (as of one tired) to give, 
 
 When not convinced by sight, a yes or no. 
 
 For sunk is he 'mid fools in lowest place, 
 Who no distinction makes, and to the same 
 Conclusion doth arrive in either case. 
 
 Since popular opinion is inclined 
 
 Erroneous judgments oftentimes to frame, 
 Self-love comes in, the intellect to blind. 1 
 
 (1) Judge nothing before the time, in view of possible changes 
 in yourself. We all change. We change steadily, we change 
 necessarily, in the process of the years. We change in structure, 
 change in intellect, change in spirit. Our perceptions, our tastes, 
 our needs, all of them alter. And therefore what seems worthless 
 at one stage of our history becomes valuable at another, not 
 because the thing is different in itself, but because we are 
 different who have come to prize it. 
 
 Here is a lesson for youth. There are few things to which 
 the youthful are so prone as the practice of judging judging 
 men, judging methods, judging facts, judging books; and they 
 are continually judging before the time. Youth is often very 
 dogmatic, even when Christianized. It is apt to be contemptuous 
 towards what does not come up to its youthful standard, de- 
 preciatory towards what does not square with its youthful 
 tastes. Take the views of youth in regard to qualities of 
 character. Certain of these qualities get scant justice from the 
 young patience, for instance. How little do the young think 
 of patience in comparison with self-reliance, fortitude, boldness 
 of initiative, brilliance of attack. They are all for action, all for 
 aggressiveness, all, too, for the men in whom action, and aggres- 
 siveness are the predominant features. But in setting slight 
 store by patience, assigning it a lesser function, relegating it to a 
 lower place, they are judging before the time. 
 
 ' Or pass from qualities of character to modes of presenting 
 
 1 Dante, Paradiso, xiii., tr. by Wright. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 165 
 
 truth, and the attitude towards these. The young are often 
 enamoured of the showy the showy in religious testimony, the 
 showy in religious teaching. What draws them and holds them 
 is often the element of novelty, the ingenious in thought, the 
 rhetorical in language, the exciting in appeal. And yet, in look- 
 ing down on the quiet and homely plain, sober truth, plainly 
 and soberly preached they are judging before the time. 
 
 If When Dr. Wayland was president of Brown University, 
 and professor of moral science, his eldest son, who was a senior, 
 in reciting to him one day, drew from his father, by a question, 
 the expression of a certain opinion. " The esteemed author of this 
 book," said the young man, holding up his father's text-book on 
 moral science which the class was using, "holds a different 
 opinion." " The author of that book, my son," said Dr. Wayland 
 quietly, "knows more now than he did ten years ago." The 
 teacher of any science who does not know more now than he 
 did ten years ago, who never finds occasion to modify and 
 qualify and reshape his utterances, is probably a cheap and poor 
 sort of teacher. 1 
 
 (2) But again, judge nothing before the time, in view of 
 possible changes in the matters to be judged. These changes may 
 be real and great. There are, for instance, the changes that are 
 incident to a natural progress, from the partial to the perfect, 
 from the provisional to the final, from the rudimentary stage to 
 the developed, from the dust and confusion of the beginning to 
 the faultlessness of the ending. Hence the commonplace, so 
 often quoted and so often exemplified, that the public should 
 not see half-done work. 
 
 Tf I know a place of worship, the interior of which exhibits 
 an amount of comfort, completeness, and beauty beyond the 
 aspect of most, and certainly in advance of its own original con- 
 dition. Yet in the first confusion, when old arrangements were 
 disturbed, levels altered, and pews removed, one visitor after 
 another entered the church, and the verdict of each was unfavour- 
 able: "The work should never have been begun. The building 
 should never have been touched. The result will be failure and 
 disfigurement." So the grumblers went on, till, to avoid a 
 general panic, as well as to secure peace for the actual work, 
 those in charge had to lock the door. The fault-finding was all 
 premature, as the fault-finders themselves acknowledged. Things 
 
 1 Washington Gladden, Where does the Sky Begin, 66. 
 
1 66 JUDGING PREMATURELY 
 
 fell into place and order and harmony; panel matched with 
 panel, colour blended with colour, and the satiefactoriness of 
 the final result justified the disorder and inconvenience of the 
 temporary means. 1 
 
 Tf When an artist has projected a great picture, when he has 
 completed all his studies, conceived his plan, and decided upon 
 his methods, he proceeds to make his preliminary sketches. He 
 roughly draws his various figures, in such postures and with such 
 general expression as he means them to have in the canvas where 
 he will finally place them. They are roughly done at first, and, 
 taken by themselves, suggest no adequate notion of what the 
 general composition will be. Perhaps he even paints each sketch 
 with some elaboration. But even then it would be impossible 
 to make a fair estimate of any of these carefully studied figures, 
 or pronounce upon their colouring ; because in the mind of the 
 artist every one of these details has a definite relation to every 
 other, and neither face nor figure, outline nor colouring, can be 
 understood, except as it is thought of in connection with all the 
 rest. So the real value of all these separate particulars cannot 
 be estimated alone. But when the artist begins to draw them 
 in together, when he groups these sketches on one surface, when 
 he blends the colours, and combines them in relation to the lights 
 and shadows of the picture, then one may begin to see, and not 
 till then, all that the studies contained. They can be interpreted 
 only by their final combination, their place in the finished 
 picture. 2 
 
 (3) Judge nothing before the time, in view of possible changes 
 in surrounding circumstances. Changes may yet reveal the use 
 of the object in question evince the need of it, prove the value 
 of it, and mal^e you thankful it was ever provided. Till then, 
 however puzzling the thing may be, be patient, be watchful, and 
 do not judge unfavourably before the time. 
 
 If There are certain religious definitions, certain theological 
 formulas, the meaning and value of which are by no means very 
 clear at first. They are so dry, so abstract, so rigid, so formal in 
 character, so antiquated in phrase, that they seem at times a 
 simple clog on the memory, mere dead-weight on the mind. 
 " How useless such lore ! " you say. " Surely the time might be 
 better occupied, the faculties might be better exercised, than in 
 memorizing and storing such arid material as this ! " But in 
 speaking thus, you may be judging before the time. Truth 
 
 1 W. A. Gray. a J. C. Adams. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 167 
 
 summed up and expressed in fixed and formal dogma may lie in 
 the mind and the memory, unappealed to and unused, so long as 
 there is nothing to disturb. But let circumstances change. Let 
 the sky be dark with the clouds of religious doubt, let the air 
 be agitated with the winds of religious controversy, let the path- 
 way be blocked with the drifts of religious error, and then comes 
 the use of such statements as these, making the road plain, 
 keeping the road open, for those who can put them to use, while 
 those who have no such provision are left to wander amidst the 
 mists and the quagmires of fanaticism, fickleness, and doctrinal 
 mistake. 1 
 
 TJ To summer travellers in Norway, ignorant of the imple- 
 ments of the country, there is a frequent cause of curiosity in 
 certain cumbrous constructions of wood, disposed at intervals by 
 the side of the public roads. There they lie, baking and peeling 
 in the hot summer sunshine, never used, yet never removed. 
 What is the meaning of them ? They are lumber on the road. 
 They are eyesores to the tourists. They scare the horses. Surely 
 the best thing to do with them is to break them up into posts 
 for the fences, or faggots for the fire. That is perhaps your 
 impression, as you look at them on a bright July day. But if 
 you visited Norway amidst the snows of the winter or spring, 
 you would be thankful that these homely contrivances are in 
 readiness. They are simply wooden snow-ploughs of unusual 
 shape and size, kept on the spot for the use of the peasants who 
 maintain the road. To say on a summer day that they are useless 
 is plainly to judge before the time. 2 
 
 (4) Judge nothing before the time, in view of possible changes 
 in the amount of light, with the consequent unveiling of facts at 
 present concealed, data and evidence at present hid. 
 
 If The supreme Court of the United States, just after the 
 inauguration of President Buchanan, decided (over the case of Dred 
 Scott) that slaves were property and not persons. This decision 
 Lincoln, after succeeding Buchanan, challenged. At New York 
 on 27th February 1860, he said: "Perhaps you will say, the 
 Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional question 
 in your favour. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's dis- 
 tinction between dictum and decision, the court has decided the 
 question for you in a sort of way. The court has substantially 
 said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal 
 Territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say 
 the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean that it was made 
 
 W. A. Gray. Ibid. 
 
168 JUDGING PREMATURELY 
 
 in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they 
 not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making 
 it ; that it is so made that its avowed supporters disagree with 
 one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based 
 upon a mistaken statement of fact the statement in the opinion 
 that ' the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly 
 affirmed in the Constitution.' " 1 
 
 4. Hitherto we have spoken of matters that may often be 
 settled in time ; we revert under this head to the standpoint 
 of St. Paul, and speak of matters that for the most part must 
 be left to eternity. Here a wide field opens up, suggesting at 
 least four different cautions. 
 
 (1) Judge no one's character before the time. As a rule, you 
 have not the evidence. The outer life which man sees may be 
 different from the inner life which God sees, and may lie 
 beyond your analysis, because beyond your ken. You see your 
 neighbour's failures, but not his aspirations; his stumbles into 
 what is wrong, but not his struggles after what is right; his 
 occasional sins, but not his fierce and lifelong temptations. God 
 and God alone strikes the balance; let God and God alone be 
 the arbiter. Judge not till the last great day, when He admits 
 you to participation in His knowledge, and asks you to assent 
 to His award. 
 
 ^f Sometimes, under the most unpromising appearances, there 
 is a fund of hidden good. We all of us have known people with 
 a manner so rude as to be almost brutal, whom we have after- 
 wards discovered to have very tender hearts. And persons are 
 to be found who have a reputation for stinginess, but who really 
 save up their money that they may give it to the poor with- 
 out letting the world know what they do. In the same way we 
 have met people whose conversation strikes us as uniformly 
 frivolous, or at least as wanting in seriousness, and yet it may 
 be that this is the effect of a profoundly serious, but shy, reserved 
 nature, bent on concealing from any human eye the severe self- 
 scrutinizing, self-repressing life within. 2 
 
 ^[ While we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at 
 his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions 
 " Evangelical and narrow," or " Latitudinarian and Pantheistic," 
 or "Anglican and supercilious" that man, in his solitude, is 
 perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, 
 
 1 The History of North America, xv. 106. 2 H. P. Liddon. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 169 
 
 because strength and patience are failing him to speak the 
 difficult word, and do the difficult deed. 1 
 
 (2) Judge no one's work before the time least of all, if that 
 work be spiritual. Much of the truest and finest spiritual work 
 that goes on is of a kind that defies tabulation. It refuses to be 
 set down in statistics, or grouped in anecdotes, or presented in 
 any tangible or calculable form whatsoever. The balance of the 
 sanctuary is a rarer and more delicate instrument than the balance 
 of the shop, though the balance of the shop too often takes its place. 
 You cannot weigh the fruits of the Tree of Life as a shopman 
 weighs apples and oranges over his counter, nor can you count 
 the number of conversions as a shopman counts the coins in his 
 till. The mistake of many, both without the Church and within 
 it, lies in forgetting this, and importing the commercial principle 
 of so much visible return for so much visible outlay a principle 
 which is degrading to the work, discouraging to the worker, and 
 presumptuous and dictatorial towards God. 
 
 U The publication of the papers (afterwards published 
 under the title of Unto this Last) in the Cornhill Magazine 
 raised a storm of indignant protest; even a theological heresy- 
 hunt could not have been more fast and furious. The essays 
 were declared to be "one of the most melancholy spectacles, 
 intellectually speaking, that we have ever witnessed." "The 
 series of papers in the Cornhill Magazine" wrote another critic, 
 " throughout which Mr. Euskin laboured hard to destroy his 
 reputation, were to our mind almost painful. It is no pleasure 
 to see genius mistaking its power, and rendering itself ridiculous." 
 The papers were described by the Saturday Review as " eruptions 
 of windy hysterics," "absolute nonsense," "utter imbecility," 
 "intolerable twaddle"; the author was "a perfect paragon of 
 blubbering"; his "whines and snivels" were contemptible; the 
 world was not going to be " preached to death by a mad gover- 
 ness." The last passage of the book in particular filled the 
 Saturday reviewer with indignant disgust. Let us hear the 
 passage, for the author considered it one of the best he ever wrote, 
 and it has reached many a mind and touched many a heart. He 
 had been pleading for wiser consumption, for fairer distribution, 
 for a more thoughtful direction of labour, for a simpler mode of 
 life, and then continued thus : 
 
 "And if, on due and honest thought over these things, it 
 
 1 George Eliot, Janet's Repentance. 
 
170 JUDGING PREMATURELY 
 
 seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned 
 by every plea of pity and claim of right, may, for some time at 
 least, not be a luxurious one ; consider whether, even supposing 
 it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw 
 clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the 
 world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future innocent and 
 exquisite ; luxury for all, and by the help of all ; but luxury at 
 present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the cruelest man 
 living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold. Kaise 
 the veil boldly ; face the light ; and if, as yet, the light of the 
 eye can only be seen through tears, and the light of the body 
 through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, 
 until the time come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of 
 bread, and bequest of peace, shall be " Unto this last as unto 
 thee"; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked 
 and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of 
 the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease 
 not from trouble, but from troubling and the Weary are at rest." l 
 
 (3) Judge no one's discipline before the time. Do not judge 
 your own. Perhaps you think that discipline harsh. Perhaps 
 you think it singularly unsuitable. You are tempted to imagine 
 that your spiritual character would have been better nurtured and 
 your spiritual interests better served had God taken another 
 method with you assigning you a different burden, leading you 
 a different way. Not so. You may be sure that the burden fits 
 your shoulders, that the path fits your feet, as they fit those of no 
 one else. Wherefore be obedient, be patient, be hopeful. What 
 you know not now you shall know hereafter, if not in this life, 
 certainly in the day that makes all things clear. 
 
 ^J We judge others according to results ; how else ? not 
 knowing the process by which results are arrived at. 2 
 
 (4) Judge no one's destiny before the time ; you know not the 
 determining elements. They are often hidden from you in life, 
 and some who have passed as opponents of religion have, 
 Nicodemus-like, been its secret friends. And in death the data 
 may be hidden too. I speak with caution, even with trembling, 
 remembering the danger of abuse; but I say that while the 
 possibility of a late repentance permits no one to presume in his 
 own case, it permits no one to despair in the case of others. 
 
 1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Kmkin, ii. G. 
 - George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss. 
 
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 171 
 
 U I have not much sympathy with those who have great 
 suspiciousuess about false religion. I have not much sympathy 
 with strong, positive [condemnatory] affirmations about people's 
 religion, where there is nothing decidedly bad. I have not much 
 sympathy with those who are not disposed to admit and to hope 
 that there may be reality where there is the appearance of some 
 little good thing toward the Lord God of Israel. 1 
 
 Tf The tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from 
 within. " Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable 
 aphorisms "character is destiny." But not the whole of our 
 destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and 
 irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if 
 his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an 
 early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, 
 and got through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding 
 many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fail- 
 daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to 
 his father-in-law. 2 
 
 T[ A sailor, who had long been the object of a mother's 
 prayers, but had nevertheless lived a godless and a thoughtless 
 life, was swept overboard in a storm. While he struggled 
 in the waves a vision of his past rose before him, vivid, concen- 
 trated, intense, together with what seemed a last opportunity of 
 making his peace with God. That vision he improved. That 
 opportunity he embraced. Then and there he repented. Then 
 and there he gave himself to Christ. "When my soul fainted 
 within me, I remembered the Lord : and my prayer came in unto 
 him, into his holy temple." And his first thought after the 
 transaction was this: "I shall die a Christian, and my mother 
 will never know of the change." But she did know ; for he lived 
 to tell her, and to testify to others besides, by the consistency of 
 his Christian walk and faithfulness of his Christian service. 8 
 
 1 "Rabbi" Duncan, in Memoir of John Duncan, 425. 
 
 2 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss. 
 8 W. A. Gray. 
 
FOR THE FEAST. 
 
 73 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Aitkcn (W. H. M. H.), The Highway of Holiness, 220. 
 
 Beecliing (H. C.), The Bible Doctrine of the Sacraments, 86. 
 
 Burrell (D. J.), The Gospel of Gladness, 255. 
 
 Davies (J. LI.), The Work of Christ, 85. 
 
 Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 97, 100. 
 
 Green (T. H.), The Witness of God, and Faith, 1. 
 
 Grubb (G. C.), The Light of His Countenance, 9. 
 
 Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 57. 
 
 Heplier (C.), The Revelation of Love, 157. 
 
 Jerdan (C.), For the Lord's Table, 62. 
 
 Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Easter Ascension, 1. 
 
 Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., ii. 256. 
 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 83. 
 
 Maurice (F. D.), Lincoln's Inn Sermons, iii. 245. 
 
 Morgan (E. C.), The Cross in the Old Testament, 81. 
 
 Moule (H. C. G.), The Pledges of His Love, 97. 
 
 Pope (R. M.), The Poetry of the Upward Way, 29. 
 
 Smith (D.), The Pilgrim's Hospice, 37. 
 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. (1856) No. 54. 
 
 Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvi. (1870) No. 965. 
 
 Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xxiii. (1883) No. 1244. 
 Waterston (R.), Thoughts on the Lord's Supper, 153. 
 
 Watt (L. M.), The Communion Table, 223. 
 
 Wiseman (N.), Children's Sermons, 72. 
 
 Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 121 (Aveling). 
 
 Church of England Pulpit, Ixiii. 237 (Sandham). 
 
 Churchman's Pulpit : Easter Day and Season : vii. 195 (Keble). 
 
 Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., xv. 300 (Gurney). 
 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ix. 161 (Barry). 
 
 Homiletic Review, xliii. 333 (Dieterich). 
 
 174 
 
FOR THE FEAST. 
 
 Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye 
 are unleavened. For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ : 
 wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven 
 of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and 
 truth. x. Cor. v. 7, 8. 
 
 THERE had been hideous immorality in the Corinthian Church. 
 St. Paul had struck at it with heat and force, sternly commanding 
 the exclusion of the sinner. He did so on the ground of the 
 diabolical power of infection possessed by evil, and illustrated 
 that by the very obvious metaphor of leaven, a morsel of which, 
 as he says, " leaveneth the whole lump," or, as we say, " batch." 
 But the word " leaven " drew up from the depths of his memory 
 a host of sacred associations connected with the Jewish Passover. 
 He remembered the sedulous hunting in every Jewish house .for 
 every scrap of leavened matter ; the slaying of the paschal lamb, 
 and the following feast. Carried away by these associations, he 
 forgot the sin in the Corinthian Church for a moment, and turned 
 to set forth, in the words of the text, a very deep and penetrating 
 view of what the Christian life is, how it is sustained, and what 
 it demands. "Wherefore let us keep the feast . . . with the 
 unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 
 
 In the text three events are commemorated, (1) the search 
 which the Israelites made for leaven immediately before the 
 Passover; (2) the slaying of the Passover lamb; and (3) the 
 Passover feast. That is also the order in which the thoughts 
 occur to the Apostle. So we have 
 
 I. The Old Leaven. 
 
 "Purge out the old leaven." 
 
 175 
 
176 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 II. Our Passover. 
 
 " Our passover also hath been sacrificed, 
 even Christ." 
 
 III. The Feast. 
 
 "Wherefore let us keep the feast." 
 
 I. 
 
 THE OLD LEAVEN. 
 "Purge out the old leaven." 
 
 1. The appointed preparation for the Jews, on the point of 
 keeping their Passover, was putting away leaven out of their 
 houses. For seven whole days they were to eat only unleavened 
 bread. In the first instance this was meant to remind them of 
 the haste with which God brought them out of Egypt, when they 
 took their dough before it was leavened. But it had also this 
 other meaning, that men should labour and strive and pray to 
 cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. For 
 that is the old leaven of which the Apostle here makes mention ; 
 the corrupt nature and bad habits of men, filling them full of 
 malice and wickedness. 
 
 In consequence of the command that they should purge out 
 the leaven at the Passover, the head of the household among the 
 Jews, especially when they grew more strict in their ritual, would 
 go through the whole of the house on a certain day to search for 
 every particle of leavened bread. It was generally done in the 
 evening with a candle, and the servants and others would 
 accompany the goodman of the house to search for every crumb. 
 Clothes were shaken, cupboards were emptied, drawers were 
 opened, and if a mouse ran across the room and might be supposed 
 to carry a crumb of bread into its hole, they trembled lest a curse 
 should rest on the home. So strict did they become that our 
 Saviour might have rebuked them as straining at a gnat while 
 swallowing a camel. We, however, have no need to fear excessive 
 strictness in getting rid of sin. With as scrupulous a care as the 
 Israelite purged out the leaven from his house we are to purge 
 out all sin from ourselves, our conduct, and our conversation. 
 
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 177 
 
 U I remember hearing a friend of mine describe what he him- 
 self once saw in Palestine, and, of all places in Palestine, in 
 Nazareth, and, of all places in Nazareth, in a carpenter's shop 
 there. The carpenter would not allow him to witness the search 
 in the house lest his presence should defile the home; but he 
 allowed him to enter the shop and witness the search there. The 
 man went about the work with a will; he was evidently 
 thoroughly in earnest ; he girded up his loins as if he had a day's 
 work before him, and then proceeded to search with the utmost 
 zeal. Carefully and conscientiously he turned over every board, 
 he moved all his tools, he swept out the whole place, he opened 
 every drawer, looked into every cupboard; there was not a 
 crevice or a cranny in the wall that was not inspected lest there 
 might be a tiny crumb of leaven anywhere in the shop. As he 
 drew towards the close of his search my friend suddenly heard 
 him utter an exclamation of horror, and looking round he saw 
 him standing as though he had seen something most alarming. 
 If he had found a viper or a cockatrice he could not have been 
 more horrified than he seemed to be. What was it? In the 
 last corner that he had visited, under some shavings, he had 
 come across a little canvas bag, and in this little bag there were 
 a few crumbs of leavened bread ; one of the workmen had left it 
 on some former occasion. It was enough; it defiled the whole 
 place. With the utmost possible gravity and solemnity, and with 
 a most anxious expression of countenance as though it were a 
 most critical and important business, the man took hold of two 
 pieces of wood, and using them as a pair of tongs he raised up the 
 bag, and holding it off at arm's length, marched out of the shop 
 and dropped the leavened crumbs, bag and all, into the centre of 
 a fire that he had burning outside ready for such a contingency, 
 and so he purged out the old leaven. 1 
 
 Tf Self-scrutiny is often the most unpleasant, and always the 
 most difficult, of moral actions. But it is also the most important 
 and salutary; for, as the wisest of the Greeks said, "an un- 
 examined life is not worth living." 2 
 
 2. " Leaven " had a figurative use in Jewish speech, signifying 
 the working of evil affections in the soul. " Lord of Eternity," 
 prayed one of the Kabbis, " it is open and known in Thy sight 
 that we desire to do Thy will. Subdue that which hindereth, to 
 wit, the leaven which is in the lump." " If," it is written in the 
 paschal rubric, " a man be on the way to offer his paschal lamb, 
 
 1 Canon Hay Aitken. 2 J, Strachan, ffebreto Ideah, i. 93, 
 
 I COR, I? 
 
i;8 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 and it come into Ins mind that he has leaven in his house, if he 
 can return and remove it, and then return to his office, let him 
 return and remove it ; but, if he cannot, let him destroy it in his 
 heart." Our Lord came not to abrogate the ancient Law but to 
 fulfil it ; and, ever exalting the spirit above the letter, He took 
 this Jewish prescription and gave it a loftier interpretation. 
 " If," He said with evident reference to that article of the paschal 
 rubric, "thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there re- 
 memberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there 
 thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to 
 thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." And St. Paul 
 taught the same lesson when he wrote to the Corinthians : " Know 
 ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump ? Purge out 
 the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are 
 unleavened." 
 
 The working of leaven did not seem, at first sight, to belong 
 to the more regular process of nature. Man's imagination had 
 been struck here by the likeness to something dark, ominous, 
 evil. This strange disturbance into which the natural substances 
 were thrown by the arrival of this alien matter what did it 
 portend ? This secret insertion of so little within so much by 
 which there was set moving an inner ferment, a yeasty working, 
 a spreading excitement what was it? What did it express? 
 Was it healthy ? Was it not typical, rather, of disease, corrup- 
 tion ? It looked so uncanny, so uncomfortable. How insidiously 
 it crept ! How unaccountably it penetrated ! It seemed to eat 
 its way along; it insinuated its hidden force within the mass; 
 until what was before quiet and at peace began to stir with un- 
 accountable agitation, began to shake and heave and swell. And 
 what a portentous inflation ! What a mysterious tumult ! Surely 
 here (men said) is the very picture of what we know of the 
 nature of sin ! This is the very way of its attack. A seed, a 
 germ, hardly suspected for its smallness, plants itself deep down 
 within some secret recess of the soul, and from that moment the 
 old peace has begun to break up. At first, it is a mere spot of 
 uncomfortable disturbance ; but it is ever moving forward ; the 
 stir spreads wider ; there is gradual agitation ; there is growing 
 upheaval. We never quite- know how or when, but somehow, 
 point by point, our steadiness dissolves; our orderly restraint 
 
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 179 
 
 weakens; always the ferment is touching a fresh layer; always 
 the festering eruption breaks out in a new place. And, wherever 
 it goes, there is this same effervescence, this inflation, this over- 
 stepping of old bounds, this swelling exuberance, this irresistible 
 turmoil. Stronger and more violent grows the heat of the motion ; 
 it rushes forward over the whole material ; nothing can, at last, 
 hold out against its devouring extravagance. It eats into the 
 whole body as doth a canker. Like a poison in the blood, it 
 permeates every nook and corner. And all from so tiny a 
 beginning! Yes; like a little leaven "it leaveneth the whole 
 lump." So men thought of leaven. They might use it, indeed, 
 for the homeliest affairs ; but still it became for them a type of 
 the movement of evil. Its working seemed to embody the 
 dreadful character of the mystery of iniquity. It had, therefore, 
 proverbially a sinister significance. And in the Bible itself it is 
 generally used, as a symbol, under this comparison. 
 
 3. The leaven is called "the old leaven of malice and 
 wickedness." 
 
 (1) Malice, that is, ill-nature, envy, grudging, is a subtle thing, 
 mingling itself with many parts of men's conduct, where they 
 little suspect it themselves. For example : you hear a neighbour 
 praised for something on which you are apt to value yourself. 
 Ask your own conscience fairly : do you feel no sort of pang, no 
 jealousy or envy, at this ? Is it not too plain, that we are most 
 of us inclined to repine at our neighbour's getting things which 
 we think we might as well have had ourselves ? Now, whatever you 
 may judge of it, this is the leaven of malice, and must be purged out. 
 
 ^f It is said of the famous English clergyman, Venn, that in 
 his declining years he was removed to the obscurity of a country 
 parish, and a stirring young curate was employed to help him in 
 his work. Nobody wanted to hear the old man preach, while the 
 curate attracted surprising congregations. Naturally the rector's 
 family grew jealous. They could not bear the advancement of a 
 junior above their honoured father. But the arrows were 
 quenched in a boundless ocean of charity, for with true Christ- 
 likeness the old man said, " Carry me to hear him preach. God 
 honours him, and I will honour him. No man can receive 
 anything except it be given him from heaven." l 
 
 (2) So in respect of that ivickcdness of which the great Apostle 
 
 1 G. C. Peck, Old Sins in Few Cloth, 284, 
 
i8o FOR THE FEAST 
 
 warns us fraud, falsehood, cunning, insincerity. It is what 
 people generally can least endure to be charged with : to call a 
 man a liar is the bitterest of all affronts ; and those who would 
 confess many faults will search far and wide, and invent all sorts 
 of excuses, rather than plead guilty to this. And many seem to 
 think that if they affirm no direct falsehood, they are sufficiently 
 purged from this sin. But surely they judge too hastily. There 
 is a leaven of cunning as well as of malice, which is apt to mingle 
 with all our conduct, and poison and infect it and make it un- 
 worthy of God, to a degree far beyond what we can imagine, till 
 we have really watched and tried ourselves. We get into mean, 
 pitiful habits, of setting traps for our own praise ; of contriving 
 to take the best of everything for ourselves ; of getting off in all 
 business with less than our share of expense, or trouble, or ill- 
 will. This is the leaven of selfish cunning, so worked into the 
 daily behaviour of most men that they are not themselves at all 
 aware of it : they never, of course, dream of repenting of it. 
 
 K It is important to bear in mind that, in speaking of sin and 
 sinners, we are apt to take as our type of sin one particular class 
 of sin, the sins of the " publican and the harlot." It is natural 
 that, revolting, ruinous, flagrant as they are, they should represent 
 sin to our mind. Yet there are sins more malignant, and more 
 difficult to conceive cured. I can conceive many of these poor 
 creatures, whom the world speaks of as "lost," blindly "seeking after 
 God." It is difficult to me to conceive this of those who, with full 
 knowledge and all advantages, prey on human happiness in one way 
 or another the selfish seekers of their own interest and pleasure. 1 
 
 As are those apples, pleasant to the eye, 
 
 But full of smoke within, which use to grow 
 
 Near that strange lake, where God pour'd from the sky 
 
 Huge showers of flames, worse flames to overthrow; 
 
 Such are their works that with a glaring show 
 Of humble holiness, in virtue's dye 
 Would colour mischief, while within they glow 
 With coals of sin, though none the smoke descry. 
 
 Ill is that angel which erst fell from heaven, 
 But not more ill than he, nor in worse case, 
 Who hides a traitorous mind with smiling face, 
 And with a dove's white feather masks a raven, 
 
 1 Dean Church, Life and Letters, 265, 
 
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 181 
 
 Each sin some colour hath it to adorn; 
 Hypocrisy, almighty God doth scorn. 1 
 
 4. For power to purge out the old leaven, we must have 
 some participation in Christ, by which there is given to us that 
 new life which conquers evil. In the words immediately preceding 
 the text, the Apostle bases his injunction to purge out the old 
 leaven on the fact that " ye are unleavened." Ideally, in so far 
 as the power possessed by them was concerned, these Corinthians 
 were unleavened, even whilst they were bid to purge out the 
 leaven. That is to say, be what you are; realize your ideal, 
 utilize the power you possess, and since by your faith there has 
 been given to you a new life that can conquer all corruption and 
 sin, see that you use the life that is given. Purge out the old 
 leaven because ye are unleavened. 
 
 Tf Power, that is the great practical matter for us men, once 
 our faces are set towards the light ; and in the life in Christ the 
 way of power is marked out. Everywhere, all over the world, in 
 its darkest places, as a man follows the light he sees, the power 
 comes, and more light comes, and power grows anew, Divine 
 power flowing in upon him and through him, whether he knows 
 it or not. But in the Christian faith we are given an open vision 
 of the way of power, as well as of the light and truth of men ; 
 open-eyed we may yield to Christ being made Man in us the 
 Christ who ever comes to enlarge the realm of His Incarnation ; 
 and we may possess and wield His power as our own, reason 
 giving consent, heart warmed by the vision, and the presence of 
 Him who reigns. In this, too, Christianity stands at the centre 
 of things, and fulfils and completes them all. 2 
 
 If When God was about to call Abraham to a higher level 
 of service and a higher range of truth to require of him a 
 perfection which might seem unattainable, and to unfold to him 
 a grace which might seem incredible, He prefaced the call with 
 the revelation, "I am El Shaddai God Almighty, the Wielder 
 of power, the All-sufficient." After that nothing is impossible, 
 nothing incredible. The august title reveals the infinite resources 
 from which man can draw, the Divine energy which ensures his 
 success. Absolute reliance on God's almightiness is the condition 
 of power. _ For every duty there is an appointed dynamic : " Thy 
 God hath commanded thy strength." The Almighty will not let 
 His servants fail or be put to shame, else that is not His name. 
 
 1 William Drammond. 2 William Scott Palmer. 
 
i8 2 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 He links His power to His imperatives. What we can do in our 
 own strength is one thing ; what we are empowered to achieve by 
 omnipotent grace is far different. The possibilities of life are to 
 be measured, not by the ability of man, but by the power and will 
 of God. Instead of desiring a lower ideal, we should pray for a 
 higher energy. "Lord," said Augustine, "give what thou com- 
 mandest, and command what thou wilt." " Attempt great things 
 for God, expect great things from God," said Carey. "Who is 
 sufficient for these things ? " asked St. Paul, and presently 
 answered, " Our sufficiency is of God." 1 
 
 ^J It does not matter how intricately sin may have been woven 
 into all the tissues of life and coloured word and deed and thought ; 
 Christ by the Spirit can take it all away. He can " purely purge 
 away thy dross, and take away all thy tin." A lump of ore, when 
 mixed with clay and mire, may be washed clean, as the soul by 
 the washing of regeneration ; but fire acts upon it in a different 
 way. It liberates the metal from the stoney or clayey surround- 
 ings, and sets one free from the other. Often more than one 
 mineral is contained in the same rock. Take, for example, a 
 piece of Cornish arsenical mundic. Here is stone speckled all 
 through with minute but thoroughly distributed portions of the 
 poison known as arsenic. Here also in close neighbourhood is a 
 vein of pure copper ore. Mixed with both is the quartz and 
 earthy matter in which they are imbedded, which is the earliest 
 deposit. We will call the stony portion the simple creature life ; 
 the arsenic the evil nature, injected as a foreign substance by 
 some external power ; and the copper representing the new life, 
 also foreign to nature, and also external in its introduction into 
 the heart. Here they are together in close association, though 
 not in fellowship. Can nothing separate them ? Yes, fire can, 
 and every particle of the arsenic can, by its power, be separated 
 from its companions. 
 
 II. 
 
 OUR PASSOVER. 
 " Our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ." 
 
 It is very remarkable that this is the only place in St. Paul's 
 writings where he articulately pronounces that the paschal lamb 
 is a type of Jesus Christ. There is only one other instance in 
 the New Testament where that is stated with equal clearness and 
 emphasis, and that is in St. John's account of the Crucifixion, 
 
 1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 97. 
 
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 183 
 
 where he recognizes the fact that Christ died with limbs 
 unbroken, as being a fulfilment, in the New Testament sense of 
 that word, of what was enjoined in regard to the antitype, "a 
 bone of him shall not be broken." 
 
 1. The words carry us back in imagination to the last night 
 of Israel's bondage in the land of Egypt. That was a season of 
 horror and anguish to the Egyptians, for at midnight the first- 
 born of every household was killed by the Angel of the Lord. 
 It was a memorable night to Israel also, though they passed it 
 in perfect safety. The Hebrews had been informed by Moses 
 and Aaron of God's purpose to slay the first-born of the 
 Egyptians, and had been instructed as to the mystic ceremony 
 by the observance of which they would protect themselves from 
 being overtaken in the same terrible doom. On the night of 
 the Exodus the head of each household was to kill in sacrifice a 
 lamb, or a kid of the goats. He was to put the blood in a basin, 
 and afterwards sprinkle it with a sprig of hyssop on the upper 
 door-post and the two side-posts of his house. The lamb was 
 then to be roasted whole, and eaten with unleavened bread and 
 a salad of bitter herbs. The family were to eat it in the attitude 
 of pilgrims about to set out on a long journey with their loins 
 girded, their sandals strapped on their feet, and their staves 
 ready in their hands. All this was done in the evening; and 
 a few hours later, at midnight, the first-born of every Egyptian 
 family was smitten by the Angel of Death. But no one died 
 that night in any Israelitish house the door of which was marked 
 with the blood of the paschal lamb. In giving the command 
 about the sprinkling of the blood, the Lord had added this 
 gracious promise : " When I see the blood, I will pass over you, 
 and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I 
 smite the land of Egypt." And God announced that the Passover 
 was to be to the Jews an ordinance for ever ; it was to be an 
 annual festival commemorative of the deliverance of their fore- 
 fathers from Egypt ; the people were to observe it with solemnity 
 and gladness; and parents were to teach their children its 
 significance. 
 
 2. There are three thoughts contained in the statement that 
 Christ our passover has been sacrificed for us. 
 
1 84 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 (1) It emphasizes, with each great approach of the redeemed 
 people to God as their covenant Lord, that a "Passover" is 
 necessary. It becomes a memorial to be kept at Sinai, at Gilgal, 
 and again with special solemnity after periods of backsliding from 
 God, as in the great Passovers under Hezekiah and Josiah, and 
 at the return from the captivity under Ezra, after their separation 
 from the filthiness of the heathen. Besides this, it is the annual 
 covenant feast to be kept unto the Lord throughout all their 
 generations. Thus it bears witness through all the Old Dispensa- 
 tion to man's need of redemption and God's pledge to meet that 
 need, till that day when the disciples asked the great Antitype 
 Himself, " Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the 
 passover ? " 
 
 TJ Think of these two chains which have always fettered the 
 spirit of humanity, and say whether Christ accomplished nothing 
 for man's redemption in breaking them the sense of guilt on the 
 conscience and the fear of death. I do not mean to say that 
 men have actually been delivered from these. We are too 
 ignorant of our own franchise, like the poor Israelites who 
 despised their freedom, and perished through their unbelief in 
 the wilderness. But the chains are broken for those who will 
 enjoy their freedom ; and countless multitudes have tested to the 
 full their emancipation, and all Christendom feels some common 
 benefit from the deliverance. 1 
 
 (2) It offers, next, the Divine provision for that need. If we 
 ask, " Where is the lamb for a burnt offering ? " we receive the 
 answer : Not in that ancient service with its filaments stretching 
 back into the remote past, not even in its great Christian counter- 
 part, which unites in one link of loving rite the Lord's Supper 
 with the Jewish Passover, but in that of which both alike speak 
 so clearly, " the death of the Cross." Christ by His own blood 
 has " entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained 
 eternal redemption for us." 
 
 If Christ hath died His brethren well may die, 
 Sing in the gate of death, lay by 
 
 This life without a sigh : 
 For Christ hath died and good it is to die; 
 To sleep when so He lays us by, 
 Then wake without a sigh. 
 1 J. LI. Davies. 
 
i CORINTHIANS t. 7, 8 185 
 
 Yea, Christ hath died, yea, Christ is risen again : 
 Wherefore both life and death grow plain 
 
 To us who wax and wane; 
 For Christ who rose shall die no more again: 
 Amen: till He makes all things plain 
 Let us wax on and wane. 1 
 
 (3) It also expresses the simple appropriation of faith, whereby 
 alone the blessings of Christ's Passion can become ours. The 
 paschal lamb was offered, not as in any way worthy of God's accept- 
 ance ; but, being looked on as a substitute for the family, it saved 
 the first-born from death. God did not wish to smite Israel, but 
 to save them. But He did not simply omit the Israelite houses 
 and pick out the Egyptian ones through the land. He left it to 
 the choice of the people whether they would accept His deliver- 
 ance and belong to Him or not. The angel of judgment was to 
 recognize no distinction between Israelite and Egyptian save 
 this of the sprinkled, stained doorposts. Death was to enter 
 every house where the blood was not visible ; mercy was to rest 
 on every family that dwelt under this sign. God meant that all 
 should be rescued, but He would not force any we may say He 
 could not force any to yield themselves to Him. 
 
 And now Christ our Passover is slain and we are asked to 
 determine whether we will use His sacrifice or not. We are not 
 asked to add anything to the efficacy of that sacrifice, but only 
 to avail ourselves of it. Wherever there was faith there was a 
 man in the twilight sprinkling his lintel, and resolved that no 
 solicitation should tempt him from behind the blood till the 
 angel had passed by. He took God at His word; he believed 
 that God meant to deliver him, and he did what he was told was 
 his part. To us God opens a way out from all bondage and from 
 all that gives us the spirit of slaves. 
 
 3 Stephen Grellet was the child of French parents of the 
 ity, and was born in the city of Limoges, in the beautiful 
 district of Limousin, a few years before the great Eevolution 
 broke out in France. He was brought up as a Koman Catholic, 
 and shared in the sufferings of the Eoyalist party like other 
 members ot the nobility. In the fortunes of war he was 
 captured and ordered to be shot. But at that moment a 
 commotion arose and he escaped to America, and began soon 
 
 1 Christina G. Rosaetti, Poems, 168. 
 
i86 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 after that life of wonderful usefulness which carried him several 
 times across Europe on errands of mercy, brought him before 
 kings and popes, exposed him to perils of war and imprisonment, 
 and made him one of the first workers in the United States for 
 the abolition of slavery. Upon what did that career turn ? 
 First, upon a sense of conviction of sin so keen that an awful 
 voice seemed to call from Heaven to him as he walked in the fields 
 " Eternity ! eternity ! eternity ! " and he felt himself sinking as 
 in the lowest hell. Then, when he was like one " crushed under 
 the millstones " with the sense of his sin, there came " the fulness 
 of heavenly joy" through trust in a living Saviour. He 
 realized that "there was One, even He whom I had pierced 
 Jesus Christ the Kedeemer that was able to save me. I saw 
 Him to be the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the 
 world. ... On my earnest petition being put up to Him, the 
 language was proclaimed, ' Thy sins are forgiven, thine iniquities 
 are pardoned/ " x 
 
 ^[ Safdar Ali was the son of a Moslem judge in a native state 
 of India, and attended Agra College, studying among other things 
 very closely the Moslem faith. After leaving college he obtained 
 the post of Deputy-Inspector of Schools in the Punjab, and there 
 he came across Sufi philosophers and fakirs. From them he 
 learned to practise austerities of life in order to obtain purity of 
 heart. But he failed to find it, and when he told them of his 
 failure they answered that he must find an infallible director. 
 Among sheikhs and fakirs he sought for such a one in vain, till 
 at length he decided on the pilgrimage to Mecca. As he was 
 preparing for it he met with a copy of Pfander's Mizan-al-Haqq, 
 or " Balance of Truth," a defence of Christianity against Moslems. 
 This led him to decide to study the Christian faith, and for three 
 years, instead of going to Mecca, he pondered over the Bible and 
 Koran side by side, deserted by his wife, but helped by a 
 Christian convert Nehemiah. The result was that he found 
 Christ as a personal Saviour, and could say: 
 
 My Friend was near me, and I roamed far in search of Him ; 
 My well was full of water, while I was parched and thirsty, 
 Praise upon praise, to-day my journey is ended. 
 Now the last stage is reached my pilgrimage is o'er. 2 
 
 3. But the particular reason why the Apostle here states that 
 our Passover has been sacrificed is to offer a reason why the old 
 leaven should be purged out. His thought, accordingly, is that 
 
 1 W. Guest, Life of Stephen Grellet, 24. 2 History of the C.M.&. ii. 555. 
 
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 187 
 
 Christ is our representative ; in offering Himself He offers us to 
 God ; and we are no longer our own. 
 
 Christ is our passover, because through Him there is made 
 the acknowledgment that we belong to God. He is in very truth 
 the prime and flower, the best representative of our race, the 
 first-born of every creature. He is the One who can make for all 
 others this acknowledgment that we are God's people. And He 
 does so by perfectly giving Himself up to God. This fact that 
 we belong to God, that we men are His creatures and subjects, has 
 never been perfectly acknowledged save by Christ. 
 
 Tf Only those of us who can see that we ought to live for God 
 can claim Christ as our representative. Only those who wished 
 to go free from Egypt to serve God sacrificed the paschal lamb ; 
 the service of God, the living as His people, was the object they 
 had in view. What object have we ? If we mean to be of His 
 spirit, if we mean to count it our meat and drink to do God's 
 will, if we are really disposed to seek the advancement of God's 
 purposes, and not to seek great things for ourselves, we may speak 
 of Him as our Substitute and Sacrifice. If He is our Passover, 
 the meaning of this is that He gives us liberty to serve God, that 
 He comes to redeem us from all that hinders our serving Him. 
 The one question is, Do we at heart wish to give ourselves up to 
 God ? Do we find in His life and death, in His submission to God 
 and meek acceptance of all God appointed, the truest representation 
 of what we would fain be and do, but cannot ? l 
 
 9 
 III. 
 
 THE FEAST. 
 "Wherefore let us keep the feast." 
 
 1. "Wherefore," exclaims the Apostle (and remember that 
 " Wherefore " loses its force unless we have appropriated to our- 
 selves the benefit of the Paschal sacrifice), " let us keep the feast." 
 When we know that for us the Paschal blood has been shed, that 
 word "wherefore" indicates a logical conclusion which must 
 follow from Gospel premises ; and this inference is so patent and 
 powerful, that there is no escape from it. " Christ our passover 
 is sacrificed for us : wherefore let us keep the feast." 
 
 2. The "feast" alluded to in these words is neither the 
 
 1 Marcus Dods. 
 
i88 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 Passover of the Law nor a Communion season of the Christian 
 Church. It is the whole life of the followers of Jesus, as that 
 life is led in Him, and as, in it all, they are partakers of His joy. 
 Their Paschal Lamb is for them always slain. For them the 
 incense of Christ's offering continually ascends before the throne 
 of God. They have put the leaven of sin out of their hearts and 
 lives, not for an hour only, or a day or a week, but for ever. 
 Therefore they keep constant festival. Their whole life, with its 
 memories of deliverance from bondage, and with the first-fruits 
 of a spiritual harvest ripening around them in their free and 
 independent home, has a festival light thrown over it. They 
 always eat the flesh and drink the blood of One who never fails 
 either to support or quicken them. The Christian Passover 
 never ends. 1 
 
 3. Two things are suggested by keeping the feast. 
 
 (1) Taking food. For the point to be observed is this, that 
 just as in that ancient ritual the lamb slain became the food of 
 the Israelites, so with us the Christ who has died is to be the 
 sustenance of our souls, and of our Christian life. "Wherefore 
 let us keep the feast." 
 
 Feed upon Him; that is the essential central requirement 
 for all Christian life. And what does feeding on Him mean? 
 " How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? " said the Jews, and 
 the answer is plain now, though so obscure then. The flesh 
 which He gave for the life of the world in His death, must by us 
 be taken for the very nourishment of our souls, by the simple 
 act of faith in Him. That is the feeding which brings not only 
 sustenance but life. Christ's death for us is the basis, but it is 
 only the basis, of Christ's living in us, and His death for us is of 
 no use at all to us unless He that died for us lives in us. We 
 feed on Him by faith, which not only trusts to the Sacrifice as 
 atoning for sin, but feeds on it as communicating and sustaining 
 eternal life " Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, wherefore 
 let us keep the feast." 
 
 Again, we keep the feast when our minds feed upon Christ 
 by contemplation of what He is, what He has done, what He is 
 doing, what He will do ; when we take Him as " the Master-light 
 
 1 W. Milligan, in The Expositor, 3rd Ser., viii. 164, 
 
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 189 
 
 of all our seeing/' and in Him, His words and works, His Passion, 
 Kesurrection, Ascension, Session as Sovereign at the right hand 
 of God, find the perfect revelation of what God is, the perfect 
 discovery of what man is, the perfect disclosure of what sin is, 
 the perfect prophecy of what man may become, the Light of light, 
 the answer to every question that our spirits can put about the 
 loftiest verities of God and man, the universe and the future. 
 We feed on Christ when, with lowly submission, we habitually 
 subject thoughts, purposes, desires, to His authority, and when 
 we let His will flow into, and make plastic and supple, our wills. 
 We nourish our wills by submitting them to Jesus, and we feed 
 on Him not only when we say " Lord ! Lord ! " but when we do 
 the things that He says. We feed on Christ, when we let His 
 great, sacred, all-wise, all-giving, all-satisfying love flow into 
 our restless hearts and make them still, enter into our vagrant 
 affections and fix them on Himself. 
 
 TI To feed on Christ is to get His strength into us to be our 
 strength. You feed on the cornfield and the strength of the 
 cornfield comes into you and is your strength. You feed on the 
 cornfield and then go and build your house, and it is the corn- 
 field in your strong arm that builds the house, that cuts down 
 the trees and piles the stones and lifts the roof into its place. 
 You feed on Christ and then go and live your life, and it is 
 Christ in you that lives your life, that helps the poor, that tells 
 the truth, that fights the battle, and that wins the crown. 1 
 
 (2) Enjoyment. In the second place, the word suggests the 
 thought of enjoyment. Our life is to be a feast ; that is to say, 
 a season of continuous happy festivity. Not only when we reach 
 that better land, and sit down at the marriage supper of the 
 Lamb ; not only then are we to be privileged to feast with Him. 
 The feast of heaven begins on earth, and only those who know 
 from their own experience what it is to feast with Jesus now 
 will ever feast with Him yonder. 
 
 The Christian is not only to take the doctrines which concern 
 Christ, to build up his soul with them as the body is built up 
 with food, but he may draw from them the wine of joy and the 
 new wine of delight. It is meet that we rejoice in Christ Jesus. 
 He is the bliss of the saints. Is it not a joy unspeakable and 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks. 
 
190 FOR THE FEAST 
 
 full of glory, that my sin will never be laid to my charge if I 
 believe in Him ; that my sin has been laid at His door, and He 
 has put it all away, so that if it be searched for it shall not be 
 found ? Is it not an intense delight to believe that Christ has so 
 effectually put away sin that no destroying angel can touch one 
 of His saints? There being no condemnation, there can be no 
 punishment for us either in this world or in that which is to come. 
 We are safe as were the Israelites when the door was sprinkled 
 with the blood. And then, being justified, we rise to a higher 
 position, we are adopted into the family of God, and if children, 
 then heirs. What a vista of glory opens before our eyes at the 
 mention of that word, heirs of God ! All things are ours, because 
 Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. 
 
 As if to one who in a dungeon lay, 
 
 Laden with chains, and hidden from the sun, 
 For some dark evil deed that he had done, 
 
 For which he must his life a forfeit pay, 
 
 Should come a messenger of glad reprieve, 
 And lead him out into the sunlight gay, 
 Pardoned and free,- on some high holiday, 
 
 To joy his trembling heart can scarce conceive; 
 
 So in his veins the wine of life should run, 
 So should he still rejoicing keep the feast, 
 Who is from guilt and fear of death released, 
 
 By the sure promise of the Mighty One, 
 
 That, as in Egypt passing Death was fain 
 
 To spare the house where blood he might perceive, 
 Sprinkled by those who did the Lord believe, 
 
 So, for us too, our Passover is slain. 
 
THE BODY FOR GOD. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Alexander (S. A.), The Christianity of St. Paul, 132, 
 Arnold (T.), Sermons, v. 147. 
 Baillie (D.), The Love of God, 80. 
 Black (H.), Work, 193. 
 Calthrop (G.), The Lost Sheep Found, 25. 
 Clarke (J. E.), Common-Life Sermons, 82. 
 Cornaby (W. A.), In Touch with Reality, 97. 
 Dale (E. W.), Weekday Sermons, 154. 
 Davidson (T.), The City Youth, 37. 
 Dearmer (P.), in Practical Questions, 244. 
 Duncan (J.), In the Pulpit and at the Communion Table, 221. 
 Elmslie (W. G.), Expository Lectures and Sermons, 257. 
 Gregg (J.), Sermons and Lectures ; The Light of Faith, 81. 
 Herford (B.), Courage and Cheer, 191. 
 
 Hoyle (A.), The Depth and Power of the Christian Faith, 107. 
 Ingram (A. F. W.), The Call of the Father, 163. 
 A Mission of the Spirit, 123. 
 
 Mackennal (A.), The Life of Christian Consecration, 100. 
 Mackintosh (H. R.), Life on God's Plan, 129. 
 Moule (H. C. G.), The Secret of the Presence, 33, 48. 
 Mursell (W. A.), The Waggon and the Star, 66. 
 New (C.), Sermons Preached in Hastings, 246. 
 Paget (F.), The Spirit of Discipline, 80. 
 Robarts (F. L.), Sunday Morning Talks, 116. 
 Russell (A.), The Light that Lighteth every Man, 309. 
 Shore (J. T.), Saint George for England, 42. 
 Simpson (J. G.), The Spirit and the Bride, 59. 
 Temple (F.), Rugby Chapel Sermons, ii. 297. 
 Van Dyke (H.), Manhood, Faith, and Courage, 99 
 Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 222. 
 Wilberforce (B.), The Hope that is in Me, 222. 
 Church Times, May 19, 1911 (Simpson). 
 Preacher's Magazine, v. (1894) 130 (Hill). 
 
THE BODY FOR GOD. 
 
 Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost . . . glorify 
 God therefore in your body. I Cor. vi. 19, 20. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S words declare the basis on which all the fabric of 
 specifically Christian civilization stands the doctrine of the 
 intrinsic sanctity of the body, bought by Christ on the cross, 
 indwelt by the Spirit of God, commissioned to be the instrument 
 of God's glory. 
 
 The Apostle is denouncing sins of the flesh. In his eyes these 
 sins are something more than sins. They are flagrant anomalies ; 
 they are monstrous wrongs. There is a direct contradiction in 
 terms, a flat denial of the first principles of justice, in the com- 
 mission of them. God has set His stamp upon us. He impressed 
 us with His image in our first creation. He re-stamped the same 
 image upon us when He formed us anew in Christ. Thus we are 
 doubly His. Here is God enthroned in the sanctuary of your 
 bodies. But you you ignore the august Presence, you profane 
 the Eternal Majesty ; you pollute, you dishonour, you defy, with 
 shameless sacrilege, the ineffable glory, the Lord seated on His 
 throne, high and lifted up, His train filling the whole temple 
 of your being, as if He were some vile and worthless thing. 
 
 T[ There is a deep and luminous suggestiveness about St. Paul's 
 characteristic formula, " know ye not ? " Some have thought 
 that the Apostle is thus recalling to the memory of his converts 
 specific teachings of his own ; but this seems unlikely. Eather he 
 is addressing himself to their elementary Christian instincts, and 
 bringing these into the field against the shallow and demoralizing 
 sophistries,^ which had for them an attractiveness so strange and 
 so perilous. He would thus cut his way through the thickets of 
 futile argumentation, and bring the whole question at issue into 
 the open, where it could be clearly seen and justly appraised, 
 i COR. i^ 
 
194 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 The Christian conscience would settle with prompt and per- 
 emptory decision matters which would long perplex and mislead 
 the Christian intellect. Know ye not, he says, " that your body 
 is a temple of the Holy Ghost? . . . glorify God, therefore, in 
 your body." l 
 
 I. 
 
 THE BODY. 
 
 Of all the visible and tangible wonders of the universe, the 
 human body ranks the first. It is the centre and home of all 
 the sciences. All things, by ministering to it, unanimously 
 consent that it is " head over all." It is the throne of all laws ; 
 and comprehends every form. Only let it be added that, for the 
 exquisiteness of its lines, it excels all forms, and surpasses 
 everything that exists, whether in the vegetable or in the animal 
 world. Hence one may pass for a good artist in the representa- 
 tion of mountains, clouds, streams, trees, and cattle; and yet 
 have very little capacity to represent the subtle and delicate lines 
 of the human face. The human face is the triumph of beauty. 
 It is visible, but it expresses the wisdom, love, and grace of the 
 invisible world. It is on the sky-line between the two worlds, 
 where matter and spirit exquisitely blend. 
 
 1. Consider the honour of the human body. 
 
 (1) It is a bit of the handiwork of God. Men of science, 
 whose study is in the forms of life, tell us that in these there is 
 visible a struggle upwards through innumerable forms, but the 
 goal of the struggle is man, the human form Divine. Contrivances 
 which are only experiments lower down in the scale are complete 
 in the human body, and its hundreds of different parts are com- 
 pacted together into a machine so perfect that it may go some- 
 times for a hundred years without going wrong. But just as the 
 flowers and plants of Eden were made originally all very good, 
 but required the cultivating hand of Adam, and as plants and 
 many other works of God require human culture in order to bring 
 them to the most complete perfection, so does the body. The 
 body requires cultivation; but is it not a splendid reason for 
 giving it this, to remember that we are fellow-workers with God 
 
 1 H. Hensley Henson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 195 
 
 in so doing, that we are carrying out His ideals and bringing His 
 handiwork to perfection ? 
 
 Tf In the interests of his intelligence man's mind has been 
 sheathed in a sensitive body. Through the things that he has 
 felt and suffered in his body he has come into the mastery of the 
 things that made him feel and suffer, so that now they do him 
 service. So it is with character. In the interests of his spirit 
 man's soul has been sheathed in his body. It is given him for 
 moral discovery, for the shaping of character. All moral great- 
 ness and moral power come first in the form of control of the 
 body. To eat, to drink, to rest, are all of them good, but 
 because each of them may be abused into selfishness and sin, 
 there is moral danger in each of them. We are shaping our 
 moral character, and are determining our moral possibilities, by 
 our use of the body. It is the earliest arena and instrument of 
 the spirit's training. Through the body also men learn to suffer 
 and to be strong, and through suffering to find a farther and a 
 finer moral and spiritual beauty. It is our business to be at our 
 physical best for God's sake our religious business, for the 
 functions of life are only perfectly performed in health. But it 
 is very easy for us to overrate the physical; and, lest we be 
 betrayed into folly, we may remember that some of the greatest 
 and the noblest men and women have been physical weaklings. To 
 read their story is to understand that through their sufferings 
 and bodily disability, they came into their nobleness, learned to 
 consecrate suffering, and compel it to the holy ministries of 
 spiritual culture. Through the pain and the patience of disabled 
 years they worked out their own salvation. 1 
 
 (2) The body is the indispensable instrument of the mind. 
 The body is not a part of the mind, nor a function of the mind, as 
 some teach in our day. The mind is not inevitably bound up 
 with the body, as we can see by the fact that the most splendid 
 minds have often lodged in the plainest and even the most 
 deformed bodies. The mind is not going to go down in the 
 dissolution of the body, but to survive " the wreck of matter and 
 the crash of worlds," and yet in many respects the mind is 
 dependent on the body. It is through the body that it receives 
 all its knowledge, and it is only through the members of the 
 body that it can act on the outer world. The mind is dependent 
 on the body for its share in all that is done beneath the circuit 
 1 T. Yates, Sculptors of Life, 106, 
 
i 9 6 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 of the sun. Neglect of the body or ill-treatment of it may 
 shorten life, or it may debilitate life and make it a burden to its 
 
 K We have probably yet to learn how much we owe to those 
 humble, obscure, and too often slighted friends, the senses, 
 whether they be five or seven. Are they indeed only doors and 
 windows, gateways of knowledge, messengers conveying intelli- 
 gence to some inner, directing power, or are they in themselves 
 as noble, as important, as any other part of man, as necessary 
 to the soul as it is to them ? Of one thing I am intimately con- 
 vinced, that it is to the agency of the senses that man owes 
 many of his sweetest feelings of affection, his loftiest aspirations 
 after excellence. It cannot be doubted that the purest affections 
 of the heart are closely linked with our physical nature, and fed 
 by what ministers to its delight. Those whom we really love are 
 as dear to us in their bodies as they are in their souls ; it is to 
 sight, hearing, contact, we greatly owe that irresistible charm 
 which makes the presence of a person we love to be desired by 
 the heart, above all else that life can give it. The sovereign 
 attraction lies in what an old writer calls " the continual comfort 
 of a face," in the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand, so that we 
 may truly say that it is presence, not absence, which is the real 
 test of love, and that affection is better gauged by our feelings 
 about people when we are with them, than by our thoughts about 
 them when we are separated. 1 
 
 (3) The body is the medium of expression of the soul. There 
 are many faces about this world in which prayer and patience 
 and humility have, by God's grace, wrought a beauty which may 
 be the nearest approach that can be seen in this life to the glory 
 of the Kesurrection the glory that is to be revealed in those 
 who shall then be wholly penetrated and transfigured by the 
 Spirit of the Lord. So intimate is the bond between soul and 
 body that it has naturally come to be employed as the very type 
 of immediate union or alliance ; and the poet has illustrated that, 
 in a well-known line, when he writes that God is very near to 
 us: "Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and 
 feet." Indeed every day we see new instances in which, owing 
 to this indissociable connection, the soul has written its own 
 character on the body. We are usually right in judging a man 
 by his facial expression. His nature peeps out in the glance of 
 1 Dora Greenwell, Liber Humanitatis, 8. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 197 
 
 his eye, the touch of his hand, the tone and inflection of his voice, 
 his unstudied and unconscious gestures and attitudes, even the 
 peculiarities of his gait. 
 
 K " Olalla," I said, " the soul and the body are one, and mostly 
 so in love. What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the 
 body clings, the soul cleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they 
 come together at God's signal ; and the lower part (if we can call 
 aught low) is only the footstool and foundation of the highest." l 
 
 If There are times when, all unconsciously to itself, the soul 
 declares what it really is, what is its true nature its love or 
 hate, esteem or scorn. Perhaps it is some articulate utterance 
 that is the medium of revelation, as when Browning says : 
 
 He replied 
 
 The first word I heard ever from his lips, 
 All himself in it an eternity 
 Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth 
 0' the soul that then broke silence " I am yours." 
 
 Or, perhaps, the silence remains unbroken, but the disclosure 
 is made, nevertheless, with 
 
 Each soul a-strain 
 
 Some one way through the flesh the face, an evidence 
 0' the soul at work inside. 
 
 When a man has " base ends and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, 
 and sometimes a-squint." But when his soul is true and pure, 
 "his eye is as clear as the heavens," and his face grows "one 
 luminosity " ; though, in the former case, he may never suspect 
 that the question will be put to him, " Why is thy countenance 
 fallen ? " And in the latter also it might truthfully be said, He 
 " wist not that the skin of his face shone." * 
 
 New burnisht Joys ! 
 
 Which finest Gold and Pearl excell ! 
 Such sacred Treasures are the Limbs of Boys 
 
 In which a Soul doth dwell: 
 Their organized Joints and azure Veins 
 More Wealth include than the dead World contains. 8 
 
 (4) The body is a medium of Divine service. A large part of 
 our usefulness and influence is due to passing bodily changes, of 
 which we may be unconscious, but which others feel. Our eyes 
 
 1 R. L. Stevenson, Olalla. a J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 94. 
 
 3 Traherne, Poems of Felicity, 2. 
 
198 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 brighten with the good news we have to tell; our face beams 
 with a smile ; " there's music in our very foot " when we are on 
 an errand of love. When one "lifts" on us "the light of his 
 countenance" we learn the sacred service of the body. Love 
 and joy, hope and fear, pleading earnestness, remonstrant indigna- 
 tion all the deep emotions of spiritual life lay the body under 
 tribute. Think of the power of the orator in glance and gesture 
 as well as in word; think of the dear faces and the musical 
 voices of a happy household; think of beauty of expression, 
 lovely when it animates fair features, but infinitely more touching 
 when it glorifies a plain face. These are but casual illustrations 
 of the various ways in which the body lends itself to the divinest 
 ministries of life. 
 
 1f Charles Kingsley once said, " There has always seemed to 
 me something impious in the neglect of personal health. I could 
 not do half the good I do, if it were not for the strength and 
 activity some consider coarse and degrading." 
 
 Tf One personal characteristic of Bishop Wilkinson stands out 
 very strongly all through his life the exquisite sensitiveness 
 and delicacy of his bodily frame. He was not a man who could 
 rough it ; he was singularly dependent upon rest, upon the refined 
 appointments of life; his house, his dress, his apparatus were 
 always those of a wealthy and almost aristocratic fine gentleman. 
 I think he showed his greatness and his simplicity by not 
 troubling about this, and accepting these as the conditions under 
 which he could do his work best ; he did not plan for them or 
 set any affected value upon them he was simply unconscious of 
 them, while they somehow enhanced his mysterious grace, and 
 showed how the arts of courtly living and the pomps and 
 vanities of the world may be consecrated to the service of God. 1 
 
 (5) Kemember also the prospects of the body. The body has 
 its own real share in the hopes and promises that cluster round 
 the name of Jesus. The heathen said our modern heathen say 
 still the body will perish like the animals ; what matters it how 
 we treat it ? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Nay, 
 replies Christian faith, there is a second and nobler chapter in 
 the story even of this frail tenement we here inhabit, which sheds 
 back its light upon the chapter we are living in now. God, who 
 raised up Jesus, shall in due time also quicken your mortal bodies. 
 
 1 A. C. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 129. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 199 
 
 2. Consider the dishonour of the body. 
 
 (1) It has an inevitable tendency to usurp the place of the 
 sou l t The body is always trying to slip this domination of the 
 powers that are above it, and become uppermost, and if this is 
 allowed to take place the whole life is turned upside down, and 
 man is degraded. 
 
 (2) The body has propensities which, if unduly indulged, waste 
 and ruin life. Where lies the gravity and guilt of sins like 
 gluttony, intemperance, or lust in any form? In this, for one 
 thing, that they give the body the upper hand. The only right 
 and safe thing is that the body shall always serve. Any attempt 
 to reverse the Divine law of our nature, that that part of us 
 which is akin to God must rule, means a loss of true manhood 
 and inevitable suffering. The drunkard reeling down the street 
 is, in too many cases, a man whose body has already become the 
 grave of a lost spirit. 
 
 If The sovereignty of the conscience, and the control of 
 reason, and the force of will exist in us to control appetite. 
 The horse, when it is held in with a firm hand in a tight rein, is 
 a noble sight, but if the rider or driver lets the rein slip from his 
 fingers, the very mettle and force of the brute are what lead to 
 destruction. And so the very frailty of the body becomes the 
 means of greater destruction unless it is held in by the superior 
 faculties of our nature. 1 
 
 IL 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF THE BODY. 
 
 Under the Old Dispensation of Law, God had a temple for 
 His people, but under the New Dispensation of Grace, He has 
 His people for a temple. 
 
 1. The Temple was the one place in all the land of Israel 
 which was entirely dedicated to God's use. It existed solely for 
 His service, and from all secular purposes and work it was com- 
 pletely separated. God's ownership was recognized in every 
 detail of its construction and service it was truly the House 
 of God. So is it with all those who are called now to be His 
 temples. 
 
 If I remember once learning, as I was standing in the rnagnifi- 
 1 J. Stalker. 
 
200 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 cent Cathedral at Cologne, that Napoleon had stabled his cavalry 
 horses in its chapel, and the very thought seemed to darken and 
 profane the whole place. Your body is the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, and if any man defile the temple of God, him will God 
 destroy. 1 
 
 2. The Temple thus dedicated to God was handed over to His 
 possession in that wonderful prayer of Solomon. The body of a 
 Christian believer holds another tenant than his human spirit; 
 a Divine presence is within him, at once his glory and his power. 
 And that Divine presence confers an unutterable sacredness upon 
 his body. Just as he who commits sacrilege not only desecrates 
 the material fabric, but also dishonours the God whose shrine it 
 is; as he who performs unseemly acts in a temple not only 
 defiles the stones and buildings, and wounds the spirits of the 
 worshippers, but also profanes the worship of the Deity : so he 
 who injures his body offends the Holy Ghost ; he who sins against 
 his body, not only degrades himself, but is a transgressor against 
 the indwelling God. 
 
 T[ They who sin against the body defile their temple, and dis- 
 honour Him who dwells in them. Some do so from an excessive 
 devotion to the cares of this life, which, however necessary they 
 may be to give practical directness and homely reality to spiritual 
 character, are sure to exhaust him who lives wholly or even 
 mainly in and for them. Some do it by an undue addiction to 
 social excitements, which are to the intellect and imagination 
 what stimulants are to the appetites. How many strong men, 
 men of practical genius and large common sense ; how many genial- 
 spirited men, with rare gifts of sympathy and social qualities, are 
 lost to the labours of our churches from these causes ! 2 
 
 3. The Temple offered to God became His indeed by His 
 acceptance of the offering. This was sealed by fire from heaven 
 and by the glory of the Lord filling the house (2 Chron. vii. 1). 
 Henceforth, in a peculiar sense, that place became God's dwelling- 
 place, and a type for all time of the spiritual temples which He 
 purposes that all His people should be. No mere emotion, no 
 strength of resolution, no strenuous striving to live aright, can 
 ever take the place of God Himself in His people. This is the 
 secret which alone transforms, "We will come unto him, and 
 make our abode with him " (John xiv. 23). 
 
 1 J. Stalker. ~ A. Mackeniial. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 201 
 
 4. The Temple thus possessed and indwelt by God became 
 the sphere of His manifestation to man, and from thence they 
 learned His law and received His blessing through ordinance and 
 sacrifice. And thus it is with " the Temples of the Spirit " even 
 now. They are the media through whom He chooses to manifest 
 Himself to the world, and their lives in the power of His in- 
 dwelling are set for the life and light of men. Holiness is in 
 itself not an end, but a means to an end, the end being the 
 blessing of others through our lives and labour. Any conception 
 less than this degrades holiness to the level of refined selfishness, 
 and dishonours Him whose name we bear. The "Temples of 
 God " are not self-contained but Christ-communicating, and each 
 by virtue of its existence as such is a centre of unmeasured 
 blessing to the world. 
 
 Not in the world of light alone, 
 Where God has built His blazing throne, 
 Nor yet alone in earth below, 
 With belted seas that come and go, 
 And endless isles of sunlit green, 
 Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 
 Look in upon thy wondrous frame 
 Eternd. wisdom still the same ! 
 
 The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
 Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, 
 Whose streams of brightening purple rush, 
 Fired with a new and livelier blush, 
 While all their burden of decay 
 The ebbing current steals away, 
 And red with Nature's flame they start 
 From the warm fountains of the heart. 
 
 No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
 For ever quivering o'er his task, 
 While far and wide a crimson jet 
 Leaps forth to fill the woven net 
 Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
 The flood of burning life divides, 
 Then, kindling each decaying part, 
 Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. 
 
 But warmed with that unchanging flame 
 Behold the outward moving frame, 
 
202 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 Its living marbles jointed strong 
 With glistening band and silvery thong, 
 And linked to reason's guiding reins 
 By myriad rings in trembling chains, 
 Each graven with the threaded zone 
 Which claims it as the master's own. 
 
 See how yon beam of seeming white 
 Is braided out of seven-hued light, 
 Yet in those lucid globes no ray 
 By any chance shall break astray. 
 Hark how the rolling surge of sound, 
 Arches and spirals circling round, 
 Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear 
 With music it is heaven to hear. 
 
 Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
 All thought in its mysterious folds, 
 That feels sensation's faintest thrill, 
 And flashes forth the sovereign will; 
 Think on the stormy world that dwells 
 Locked in its dim and clustering cells ! 
 The lightning gleams of power it sheds 
 Along its hollow glassy threads ! 
 
 O Father ! grant Thy love divine 
 To make these mystic temples Thine! 
 When wasting age and wearying strife 
 Have sapped the leaning walls of life, 
 When darkness gathers over all, 
 And the last tottering pillars fall, 
 Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms, 
 And mould it into heavenly forms! 1 
 
 III. 
 
 THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE BODY. 
 
 1. " Glorify God, therefore, in your body." Do not let us mar 
 the directness of this appeal by imitating the timidity of those 
 later interpreters who read, " Glorify God in your body and in 
 your spirit." There is but one problem in human life, and that is 
 the problem of the body, the organ through which alone life 
 manifests itself, the home of our activities, the seat of our desires. 
 
 1 Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Living Temple. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 203 
 
 " Glorify God in your body " was the straight appeal of one who 
 knew what it was to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ 
 had made him free. 
 
 ^[ " Ye are not your own," that is the premise ; " therefore 
 glorify God in your body," that is the conclusion. Between 
 premise and conclusion is builded Calvary. Before God's " there- 
 fore " stands a blood-stained cross and on it hangs the Son of God. 
 If we are God's, all that we own is His. If He owns us, He owns 
 our property. He allows us to own it, that He may control it. 
 If one owns a piece of ground, he owns the grass that grows on it. 
 If God owns us, we are to glorify Him with all that we own. 
 What we are to give Him is to depend, not on our whims and 
 moods, not on what we think we can spare, but on what it takes 
 to glorify Him. He is to have not what we like, but what He 
 likes. This is the kind of ownership of property society needs to 
 have recognized; not the public, collective ownership of land 
 and capital for which socialism is shrieking; but the Divine 
 ownership of property whose right rests on the claims of creation 
 and redemption. 1 
 
 ^[ We do not want to have our life divided up into body and 
 spirit, secular and sacred, week-day and Sunday. The devil likes 
 to keep us talking about what we ought not to do on Sunday 
 morning, because none knows better than he that our destinies 
 are really determined by what we do on Saturday night. A few 
 reserves which are labelled " sacred " are the best guarantee that 
 Beelzebub can have for undisturbed possession of the character. 
 " Give me the body " is the cry of every claimant for the citadel 
 of Mansoul, " and let who will have the spirit." 2 
 
 2. " To glorify " God is to do Him honour, to exalt, to magnify, 
 to praise Him. How can we glorify God in our bodies ? 
 
 (1) We glorify God in our bodies by a clear, direct recognition 
 that the body is His shrine, His temple. " Now the body," says 
 St. Paul, " is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord 
 for the body." This implies a strenuous mental rally back to 
 elemental principles whenever the body presumes to make its 
 imperious demands. It implies certain times of soul-quietude 
 when we affirm, with strong conviction, " I am a manifestation of 
 God. My body is His shrine, His temple, the theatre of His 
 operation. If my body beguiles me into lust, anger, selfishness, 
 unkindness to others, I am not merely making myself an objec- 
 
 1 J. I. Vance, Tendency, 88. 2 Canon J. G. Simpson. 
 

 204 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 tionable nuisance, but I am guilty of sacrilege, of something akin 
 to blasphemy against the God who dwells within me." 
 
 (2) We glorify God in our bodies by disciplining the body so 
 that we gain the victory of self-possession. By far the best, the 
 surest, the happiest, verification of St. Paul's great claim must be 
 made by each man for himself in the effort of obedience ; in the 
 hidden discipline of life ; through pain and toil and fear, it may 
 be, yet, by the grace of God, not without some earnest of a victory 
 whose faintest, briefest forecast is better than all the pleasures of 
 compromise the victory of self-possession for the glory of God. 
 It is pitiful to imagine how much of strength and liberty and joy 
 is being missed or marred day after day by the mistakes men 
 make in dealing with their bodies. Quite apart from the misery 
 and havoc wrought by sheer misuse by gluttony and drunkenness 
 and lust there are misunderstandings of the body's meaning, 
 and one-sided ways of treating it, which, with little or no blame 
 perhaps, still hinder grievously the worth and happiness that life 
 might have, and that the love of God intended for it. 
 
 (a) The body is not to le neglected or despised. In former times 
 it was the belief of men that they honoured God by punishing 
 the flesh. If one man were more saintly than another he would 
 wear a hair shirt next his skin, or put round his body a belt with 
 spikes in it. Long and rigorous fasts, great and serious privations, 
 were thought to be special marks of religious sanctity. Are we 
 quite free from this error ? Have not we cared more for souls 
 than bodies ? We have sometimes been so busy " saving souls " 
 that we have cared next to nothing for bodies. 
 
 Tf It seems to me that the spurious and unspiritual feeling of 
 the day is directed to spiritual even more frequently than to 
 material objects ; and above all, that to divorce from each other 
 a care for men's bodies and for their spirits, or under any pretence 
 whatever to cast a slight upon the former, or even upon those 
 who exclusively (at least as they fancy) devote themselves to the 
 former, is to set at naught the first and last lessons of the Gospels. 
 It would be utterly shocking to me to doubt that the plainest 
 and most literal meaning of such passages as Matt. xv. 32, 
 Mark viii. 2, 3 is also the most important, whatever other 
 meanings may likewise be contained within them. 1 
 
 Tf The great German tenor, Herr Heinrich Knote, once showed 
 1 Hort, Life and Letters, i. 405. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 205 
 
 me his mirrors for examining the vocal chords. The first thing 
 he does after waking is to see whether the vocal chords have the 
 fine pink hue that indicates perfect health. And a red and 
 inflamed vein means that something is wrong. His whole art 
 is so to carry on the functions of digestion, exercise, sleep, work 
 and play as to keep his body at the point of absolute perfection. 
 The time was when men talked about despising the body. People 
 wanted the moral teacher to have the student's pallor and to 
 show those signs of exhaustion that betoken the midnight oil. 
 We have finally discovered that sickliness is not saintliness. 
 Holiness is wholeness, or healthiness to use the Hebrew ex- 
 pression. God made the body to be a fearful and wonderful 
 instrument, and a man who injures his body and by carelessness 
 and sin appears on the street with a bad cold or indigestion, or 
 shows signs of gluttony, ought to be as humiliated as if he had 
 been caught stealing chickens, forging a note, or telling lies. 
 Sickness that comes from disobedience to the laws of God 
 represents a form of personal degradation. 1 
 
 If Behold: eating, drinking, clothing, and other necessaries 
 pertaining to the support of the body are burdensome to a fervent 
 spirit. 
 
 Grant me to use such comforts with moderation, and not to be 
 entangled with an excessive longing for them. It is not allowed 
 us to cast them all away, for nature must be supported ; but Thy 
 holy law forbids to require superfluities and such things as are 
 for mere delight; for otherwise the flesh would grow insolent 
 against the spirit. 
 
 Between these, I beseech Thee, let Thy hand govern and direct 
 me, that nothing be done in excess. 2 
 
 (6) The body is not to le indulged. Modern civilization 
 addresses an ever more powerful and persuasive appeal to the 
 lower appetites of man. The cravings of the senses are stimulated 
 in many ways, and a wonderful organization of sensual service 
 has been developed to satisfy them. The body is an instrument 
 for making money, and the patient servitor of sensual pleasure, 
 and for many nothing more. 
 
 (3) We glorify God in our bodies by trusting the love and 
 
 power and resources of the Father-Soul who dwells within us. 
 
 Our want of faith limits God. They who are able to concentrate 
 
 upon the central fountain of life, and affirm that all that is God's 
 
 1 N. D. Hillia, Contagion of In/luenct, 206. a A Kempis. 
 
206 THE BODY FOR GOD 
 
 is theirs, do find the lower conditions controlled ; the moral 
 conditions of the psychical nature, and the physical conditions 
 of the animal nature, are practically dead because they are " hid 
 with Christ in God." 
 
 If One of the finest organs in Europe is in the Cathedral of 
 Fribourg, a town in Switzerland. A good many years ago a 
 young man came to that Cathedral and asked to be allowed to 
 examine the organ. The attendant, not knowing who he was, at 
 first refused to permit him to do so. After considerable per- 
 suasion he suffered him to look through it, and then in response 
 to further persistent entreaty he allowed him to sit down and 
 attempt to play. Forthwith there burst from the great in- 
 strument such strains of heavenly music that the attendant stood 
 spellbound. " Who are you ? " at last he ventured to ask. " My 
 name is Mendelssohn," was the reply. " Mendelssohn ! " cried 
 the attendant, lifting up his hands in amazement, " and to think 
 that I refused to let you play on the organ ! " There is One who 
 wishes to bring music to the glory of God out of our lives, if we 
 will only allow Him. Let Christ touch us, and we will be able 
 to glorify God. 1 
 
 (4) To glorify God in the body is manifestly self-identification 
 with the brethren of humanity. " If you would glorify God in 
 your body, know that the humility that loves to serve, the self- 
 subordination that induces you to leave your heaven of personal 
 comfort to be identified with your brethren's sorrows, will pro- 
 pitiate the only element in the nature of the Absolute that 
 requires propitiating, which is His yearning, hungering love." 
 God's human children need us all, bitterly need us. 
 
 King's children are these all; though want and sin 
 Have marred their beauty glorious within, 
 We may not pass them but with reverent eye : 
 As when we see some goodly temple graced 
 To be Thy dwelling, ruined and defaced, 
 The haunt of sad and doleful creatures, lie 
 Bare to the sky, and open to the gust, 
 
 It grieveth us to see this House laid waste, 
 It pitieth us to see it in the dust ! 2 
 
 1 J. Aitchison. 8 Dora Greenwell. 
 
SPIRIT DAL DETACHMENT. 
 
 07 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Banks (L. A.), The Sinner and His Friends, 1. 
 
 Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, i. 305. 
 
 Cox (S.), Expositions, ii. 404. 
 
 Dykes (J. 0.), Plain Words on Great Themes, 43. 
 
 Finlayson (T. C.), The Divine Gentleness, 170. 
 
 Henson (H. H.), Light and Leaven, 209. 
 
 Hodgson (A. P.), Thoughts for the King's Children, 151. 
 
 Horder (W. G.), The Other-World, 159. 
 
 Hoyle (A.), The Depth and Power of the Christian Faith, 153. 
 
 Jerdan (C.), Messages to the Children, 56. 
 
 Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Easter to Ascension, 251. 
 
 Leffingwell (C. W.), in Living Voices of Living Men, 153. 
 
 Little (W. J. Knox), Manchester Sermons, 81. 
 
 Manning (H. E.), Sermons, i. 349. 
 
 Martineau (J.), Endeavours after the Christian Life, 439. 
 
 Matheson (G.), The Spiritual Development of St. Paul, 288. 
 
 Times of Retirement, 152. 
 
 Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, v. 88. 
 Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 244. 
 Ridgeway (C. J.), Social Life, 52. 
 Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, iii. 169. 
 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, viii. (1862) No. 481. 
 Vaughan (C. J.), Lessons of Life and Godliness, 311. 
 
 (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), 1869, No. 680 ; xxv. (1884-85) 
 
 No. 1292. 
 
 Vincent (M. R.), God and Bread, 363. 
 Webb-Peploe (H. W.), He Cometh, 33. 
 Wilson (J. M.), Sermons in Clifton College Chapel, i. 79. 
 Wood (W. S.), Problems in the New Testament, 80. 
 Cambridge Review, ii. Supplement, No. 40 (Bradby). 
 Christian Age, xxxiii. 21 (Talmage). 
 Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 65 (Rogers), 344 (Short) ; xliv. 44 (Smith) j 
 
 Ixx. 273 (Home) ; Ixxii. 9 (Taylor). 
 Churchman's Pulpit : Lenten Season, v. 92 (Cooke). 
 Homiktic Review, xx. 537 (Hoyt) ; xxxi. 44 (Storrs). 
 
SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT. 
 
 But this I say, brethren, the time is shortened, that henceforth both those 
 that have wives may he as though they had none ; and those that weep, as 
 though they wept not ; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not ; 
 and those that buy, as though they possessed not ; and those that use the 
 world as not abusing it : for the fashion of this world passeth away. I Cor. 
 vii. 29-31. 
 
 THE subject of this chapter is marriage. But marriage is part 
 of a larger subject. The great question agitating the Corinthians 
 is whether a man should, on becoming a Christian, maintain the 
 occupations and relationships which he entered into previously. 
 The Apostle's answer is, Yes : " Let each man abide in that 
 calling wherein he was called." Let the slave remain a slave, 
 though he may take advantage of an honourable opportunity of 
 becoming free. Let those who are married remain married, and 
 those who are unmarried remain unmarried. " But this I say " 
 there is a change of word (from Xeyo) to <f)rjfj,t), in order probably 
 to give special emphasis to the assertion " But this I do declare : 
 though I counsel none to change their state, I counsel all to 
 change their attitude towards these and all other earthly things." 
 And what are the earthly interests towards which Christian 
 men are to change their attitude ? He names marriage, weeping, 
 rejoicing, buying, and the use of the world generally. But how 
 is this possible ? Because the time is short literally " is 
 shortened, abridged " there is no very long time now for any 
 one to feel the duty of detachment irksome. And finally there 
 is wisdom in it, for this world is neither essential nor enduring 
 " the fashion of this world passeth away." 
 
 Thus the subject is detachment from the world. There is 
 mentioned 
 i COR. 14 
 
210 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 I. An Encouragement to Detachment. 
 
 II. Three Relationships of life towards which the Detachment 
 may be practised : 
 
 1. Marriage. 
 
 2. Sorrowing and Eejoicing. 
 
 3. Business. 
 
 III. A general Direction regarding the proper Attitude to 
 
 the World. 
 
 IV. A good Reason for this Attitude. 
 
 H Christianity is a spirit, not a law : it is a set of principles, 
 not a set of rules ; it is not a saying to us, You shall do this, you 
 shall not do that you shall use this particular dress, you shall 
 not use that you shall lead, you shall not lead, a married life. 
 Christianity consists of principles, but the application of those 
 principles is left to every man's individual conscience. With 
 respect not only to this particular case, but to all the questions 
 which had been brought before him, the Apostle applies the same 
 principle; the cases upon which he decided were many and 
 various, but the large, broad principle of his decision remains 
 the same in all. You may marry, and you have not sinned: 
 you may remain unmarried, and you do not sin; if you are 
 invited to a heathen feast, you may go, or you may abstain from 
 going ; you may remain a slave, or you may become free ; not in 
 these things does Christianity consist. But what it does demand 
 is this : whether married or unmarried, whether a slave or free, 
 in sorrow or in joy, you are to live in a spirit higher and loftier 
 than that of the world. 1 
 
 I 
 
 AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO DETACHMENT. 
 " The time is shortened." 
 
 1. There is no tremor of dismay or sadness in the voice. St. 
 Paul was in the midst of work, full of the interest and joy of 
 living, holding the reins of many complicated labours in his hands, 
 and he quietly said, " This is not going to last long. Very soon 
 it will be over." It is what men often say to themselves with 
 terror, clutching all the more closely the things which they hold, 
 as if they would hold on to them for ever. There is nothing of 
 
 1 F. W. Robertson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 211 
 
 that about St. Paul. And on the other hand, there is nothing of 
 morbidness or discontent, no rejoicing that the time is short, and 
 wishing that it were still shorter. There is no hatred of life which 
 makes him want to be away. There is no mad impatience for 
 the things which lie beyond. There is simply a calm and satisfied 
 recognition of a fact. There is a reasonable sense of what is 
 good and dear in life, and yet, at the same time, of what must 
 lie beyond life, of what life cannot give us. It is as when the 
 same pen wrote those sublime and simple words, " This corruptible 
 must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on im- 
 mortality " ; the quiet statement of a great, eternal necessity, at 
 which the wise man must feel the same kind of serious joy as 
 that with which he follows the movements of the stars, and looks 
 to see day and night inevitably give place to one another. 
 
 2. It does not matter what St. Paul was thinking of when he 
 said the time was short. He may have had his mind upon the 
 death which they were all approaching. He may have thought 
 of the coming of Christ, which he seems to have expected to take 
 place while he was yet alive. We cannot be quite certain which 
 it was. And perhaps the very vagueness about this helps us to 
 his meaning. For he is not, evidently, dwelling upon the nature 
 of the event which is to limit the " time," only upon the simple 
 fact that there is a limit; that the period of earthly life and 
 work lies like an island in the midst of a greater sea of being, 
 the island of time in the ocean of a timeless eternity ; and that 
 it is pressed upon and crowded into littleness by the infinite. 
 Not the shore where the sea sets the island its limits, but only 
 the island in the sea, hearing the sea always on its shores ; not 
 the experience by which this life should pass into another, but 
 only the compression and intensifying of this life by the certainty 
 that there is another ; not death, but the shortness of life that 
 is what his thoughts are fixed upon, and it is of this that the 
 best men always think the most. 
 
 3. Time is short in reference to two things. 
 
 (1) First,4t is short in reference to the person who regards it t 
 
 That mysterious thing Time is a matter of sensation, and not 
 
 a reality; a modification merely of our own consciousness, and 
 
 not actual existence ; depending upon the flight of ideas long 
 
212 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 to one, short to another. The span granted to the butterfly, the 
 child of a single summer, may be long ; that which is given to the 
 cedar of Lebanon may be short. The shortness of time, therefore, 
 is entirely relative, belonging to us, not to God. 
 
 *[f In poetry and ordinary talk, we are obliged to look at time 
 as an agent in itself; but in reality time does nothing and is 
 nothing; we use it as an easy familiar expression for all those 
 causes which are working slowly, and which we cannot see. 
 Unless some positive cause is in action, no change takes place 
 even in a thousand years. There are probably empty regions in 
 the universe where no light comes, and nothing occurs ; in such 
 places there can be no time. It is simply that we are here, and 
 that things are happening around us. The earth has gone a 
 certain course round the sun, and brought us again to the same 
 point where we were twelve months ago. We have for 365 days 
 been careering through different parts of space. That is the 
 meaning of a year. We are only allowed to join in the career, 
 and to come back to the same point a certain number of repeti- 
 tions in our lives the same point, I mean, in reference to the 
 solar system ; but the solar system itself is moving onward through 
 space. During each period, certain causes are leading either to 
 the completion, the maintenance, or the decay of our bodies ; and 
 after we have spun round with our little globe for some 40, 50, 
 60, 70, 80, 90, or at the most 100 circuits, then comes the end. 
 We can see no further. Others take our place, and we are what 
 is called dead. 1 
 
 If There is a little insect that crawls upon the trees, and 
 creeps, in one short day of ours, through all the experiences of 
 life from birth to death. In a short twenty-four hours his life 
 begins, matures and ends birth, youth, activity, age, decrepitude, 
 all crowded and compressed into these moments that slip away 
 uncounted in one day of our human life. Is his life long or 
 short ? Is our life long or short to him ? If he could realize it 
 by any struggle of his insect brain, what an eternity our three- 
 score years and ten must seem to him ! And then lift up your 
 eyes, lift up your thoughts, and think of God. How does the 
 life that has any limits appear to Him ? Nothing short of eternity 
 can seem long to Him. He sees the infant's life flash like a ripple 
 into the sunlight of existence and vanish almost before the eye has 
 caught it. And He sees Methuselah's slow existence creep 
 through its nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and find, at last, 
 the grave which had stood waiting so long. Is there a real 
 
 1 W. M. Sinclair, A Young Man's Life, 126. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 213 
 
 difference in the length of these two lives to Him ? A little 
 longer ripple is the life of the patriarch than was the life of the 
 baby, that is all. What do we mean, then, by the shortness of 
 our human life ? To the ephemera it looks like an eternity ; to 
 God it looks like an instant. Evidently these attributes of length 
 and shortness must be relative ; they are not absolute. 1 
 
 ^[ An illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a 
 decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, 
 " God works in moments " " En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We 
 ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or grand moments that signify. 
 Let the measure of Time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is 
 unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, 
 a smile, a glance what ample borrowers of eternity they are ! 2 
 
 (2) Again, time is short with reference to its opportunities. For 
 this is the emphatic meaning in the original literally, " the 
 opportunity is compressed, or shut in." Time may be long, and 
 yet the opportunity may be very short. The sun in autumn may 
 be bright and clear, but the seed which has not been sown until 
 then will not vegetate. A man may have vigour and energy in 
 manhood and maturity, but the work which ought to have been 
 done in childhood and youth cannot be done in old age. A chance 
 once gone in this world can never be recovered. 
 
 TJ An Italian superstition of the Middle Ages engaged with 
 wonderful success the pencil of Watts while he was sojourning 
 in Florence, and in it he who had been the pupil of Phidias in 
 the study of the Elgin marbles at home, became the worshipper 
 of Tintoretto in Italy. The Fata Morgana which Boiardo in his 
 Orlando Innamorato imagined as a siren, fleeing from the pur- 
 suit of a knight, he embodies with a singular deftness. She is 
 depicted as having reached a thicket of dense foliage, and the 
 knight has almost grasped the hem of her crimson robe when 
 she flees still further from him with a mischievous glance which 
 mocks all his eager efforts. It was a superstitious notion among 
 the Italian peasants that this mystic being could only be effectu- 
 ally caught by having the lock of her forehead seized with a firm 
 grasp. What is this but virtually saying in finer form, what 
 time, and every opportunity which it brings, is preaching to us 
 in loud tones to seize it by the forelock and hold it fast, other- 
 wise it will escape and we shall lose it for ever ? 3 
 
 If Iron passes into the furnace cold and unyielding; coming 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks. 2 Emerson. 
 
 8 H. Macmillan, The Life- Work of George Frederick Watts, 171. 
 
214 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 out it quickly cools and refuses the mould; but midway is a 
 moment when fire so lends itself to iron, and iron so yields its 
 force to flame that the metal flows like water. This brief plastic 
 moment is the inventor's opportunity, when the metal will take 
 on any shape for use or beauty. Similarly the fields offer a 
 strategic time to the husbandman. In February the soil refuses 
 the plough, the sun refuses heat, the sky refuses rain, the seed 
 refuses growth. In May comes an opportune time when all 
 forces conspire towards harvests ; then the sun lends warmth, 
 the clouds lend rain, the air lends ardour, the soil lends juices. 
 Then must the sower go forth and sow, for nature whispers that 
 if he neglects June he will starve in January. The planets also 
 lend interpretation to this principle. Years ago astronomers 
 were sent to Africa to witness the transit of Venus. Preparations 
 began months beforehand. A ship was fitted up, instruments 
 were packed, the ocean was crossed, a site selected, and the 
 telescopes were mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that 
 opportune time when the sun, Venus, and the earth should all 
 be in line. That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively 
 each astronomer knew that his eye must be at the small end of 
 the glass when the planet went scudding past the large end. 
 Once the period of conjunction had passed no machinery would 
 offer itself for turning the planet back upon her axis. Not for 
 astronomers only are the opportune times brief. 1 
 
 When I have time, so many things I'll do, 
 To make life happier and more fair 
 For those whose lives are crowded now with care, 
 I'll help to lift them from their low despair 
 When I have time. 
 
 When I have time, the friend I love so well 
 Shall know no more the weary, toiling days; 
 I'll lead his feet in pleasant paths always, 
 And cheer his heart with words of sweetest praise, 
 When I have time. 
 
 When you have time ! The friend you hold so dear 
 May be beyond the reach of all your sweet intent, 
 May never know that you so kindly meant 
 To fill his life with bright content, 
 When you had time. 
 
 1 N. D. Hillis, TJie Investment of Influence, 220. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 215 
 
 Now is the time! Speed, friend, no longer wait 
 To scatter loving smiles and words of cheer 
 To those around, whose lives are now so drear; 
 They may not need you in that far-off year: 
 Now is the time. 
 
 4. What effect ought the shortness of the time to have on a 
 man ? 
 
 (1) It should make him discriminate. Out of the mass of 
 things which we have touched, we must choose those which are 
 ours the books which we shall read, the men whom we shall 
 know, the power that we shall wield, the pleasure which we shall 
 enjoy, the special point where we shall drop our bit of usefulness 
 into the world's life before we go. We come to be like a party 
 of travellers left at a great city railway station for a couple of 
 hours. All cannot see everything in town. Each has to choose 
 according to his tastes what he will see. They separate into their 
 individualities instead of going wandering about promiscuously, 
 as they would if there were no limit to their time. So conscien- 
 tiousness, self-knowledge, independence, and the toleration of 
 other men's freedom which always goes with the most serious 
 and deep assertion of our own freedom, are closely connected 
 with the sense that life is very short. 
 
 If When Dr. Chalmers was a young man, he was for a time 
 more devoted to the study of mathematics than to the subjects 
 which more properly should have concerned him as a parish 
 minister. In a pamphlet which he wrote at the time in support 
 of his application to be appointed to a mathematical chair in the 
 University of Edinburgh, he affirmed that a minister could do 
 all he needed to do in his parish, and do it well, and yet have 
 five clear days every week for literary or other pursuits. Twenty 
 years afterwards some one, who had found a copy of the old 
 forgotten pamphlet, publicly taunted him with what he had 
 said. Yes, he said, it was too true. " I was at that time unduly 
 devoted to the study of mathematics. What, sir, is the object of 
 mathematical science ? Magnitude and the proportions of magni- 
 tude. But then, strangely blinded that I was, I had forgotten 
 two magnitudes. I thought nothing of the littleness of time and 
 the greatness of eternity." 1 
 
 If In a letter to his old schoolmaster Euskin wrote as follows : 
 "Nero's choice of time and opportunity for the pursuit of his 
 
 1 The Morning Watch, Dec. 1902, p. 134. 
 
216 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 musical studies has been much execrated, but is guiltless in 
 comparison to the conduct of the man who occupies himself for 
 a single hour with any earthly pursuit of whatever importance, 
 believing, as he must, if he believe the Bible, that souls, which 
 human exertion might save, are meanwhile dropping minute by 
 minute into hell. This being fully granted, the questions come, 
 ' What means are there by which the salvation of souls can be 
 attained ? ' and ' How are we to choose among them ? ' For 
 instance, does the pursuit of any art or science, for the mere 
 sake of the resultant beauty or knowledge, tend to forward this 
 end? That such pursuits are beneficial and ennobling to our 
 nature is self-evident, but have we leisure for them in our 
 perilous circumstances? Is it a time to be spelling of letters, 
 or touching of strings, counting stars or crystallizing dewdrops, 
 while the earth is failing under our feet, and our fellows are 
 departing every instant into eternal pain ? Or, on the other 
 hand, is not the character and kind of intellect which is likely 
 to be drawn into these occupations employed in the fullest 
 measure and to the best advantage in them ? Would not great 
 part of it be useless and inactive if otherwise directed? Do 
 not the results of its labour remain, exercising an influence, if 
 not directly spiritual, yet ennobling and purifying, on all 
 humanity, to all time ? Was not the energy of Galileo, Newton, 
 Davy, Michael Angelo, Eaphael, Handel, employed more effect- 
 ively to the glory of God in the results and lessons it has left 
 than if it had been occupied all their lifetime in direct priestly 
 exertion, for which, in all probability, it was less adapted, and 
 in which it would have been comparatively less effectual? Is 
 an individual, then, who has the power of choice, in any degree 
 to yield to his predilections in so important a matter ? I myself 
 have little pleasure in the idea of entering the Church, and have 
 been attached to the pursuits of art and science, not by a flying 
 fancy, but as long as I can remember, with settled and steady 
 desire. How far am I justified in following them up ? " What 
 answer was sent by Canon Dale to assist his pupil in resolving 
 the doubt between these conflicting calls, I do not know; but 
 Buskin's own answer to it is written large in his life and work. 
 He made the critic's chair a pulpit. 1 
 
 (2) It should make him concentrate. He who knows he is in 
 the world for a very little while, who knows it and feels it, is 
 not like a man who is to live here for ever. He strikes for the 
 centre of living. He cares for the principles and not for the 
 
 1 E. T. Cook, The Life, of Rusk in, i. 122. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 217 
 
 forms of life. He does the little daily things of life, but he does 
 them for their purposes, not for themselves. He is like a climber 
 on a rocky pathway, who sets his foot upon each projecting point 
 of stone, but who treads on each, not for its own sake, but for 
 the sake of the ones above it. The man who knows he is to die 
 to-morrow does all the acts of to-day, but does them as if he did 
 not do them, does them freely, cannot be a slave to their details, 
 has entered already into something of the large liberty of death. 
 That is the way in which the sense that life is short liberates a 
 man from the slavery of details. You say, perhaps, "That is 
 not good. No man can do his work well unless his heart is in 
 it." But is it not also true that a man's heart can really be only 
 in the heart of his work, and that the most conscientious faithful- 
 ness in details will always belong, not to the man who serves the 
 details, but to the man who serves the idea of the work which 
 he has to do ? 
 
 ^J Michael Faraday, when a pcor apprentice, utilized every 
 moment, and in a letter to a boy friend he wrote : " Time is all I 
 require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our 
 modern gents' spare hours nay, days ! I think it would be a 
 good bargain both for them and for me." 1 
 
 gentlemen! the time of life is short; 
 To spend that shortness basely were too long, 
 If life did ride upon a dial's point, 
 Still ending at the arrival of an hour. 2 
 
 (3) It sJiould make him realize. Every emotion has its higher 
 and its lower forms. It means but little to me if I know only 
 that a man is happy or unhappy, if I do not know of what sort 
 his joy or sorrow is. But all the emotions are certainly tempted 
 to larger action if it is realized that the world in which they 
 take their birth is but for a little time, that its fashion passes 
 away, that the circumstances of an experience are very transitory. 
 That must drive me down into the very essence of every experi- 
 ence and make me realize it in the profoundest and largest way. 
 Take, for instance, one experience. Think of deep sorrow coming 
 to a man, something which breaks his home and heart by taking 
 suddenly, or slowly, out of them that which is the centre of 
 
 1 G. C. Lorimer, Messages of To-day, 355. 
 8 Shakespeare, Henry IV., pt. i.'v. ii. 82. 
 
2i8 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 them both, some life around which all his life has lived. There 
 are two forms in which the sorrow of that death cornes to a man. 
 One is in the change of circumstances, the breaking up of sweet 
 companionships and pleasant habits, the loneliness and weariness 
 of living ; the other is in the solemn brooding of mystery over 
 the soul and the tumult of love within the soul, the mystery of 
 death, the distress of love. Now if the man who is bereaved 
 sees nothing in the distance, as he looks forward, but one stretch 
 of living, if he realizes most how long life is, it is the first of 
 these aspects of his sorrow that is the most real to him. He 
 multiplies the circumstances of his bereavement into all these 
 coming years. Year after year, year after year, he is to live 
 alone. But if, as it so often happens when death comes very 
 near to us, life seems a very little thing; if, as we stand and 
 watch when the spirit has gone away from earth to heaven, 
 the years of earth which we have yet to live seem very few and 
 short ; if it seems but a very little time before we shall go too, 
 then our grief is exalted to its largest form. It grows unselfish. 
 It is perfectly consistent with a triumphant thankfulness for 
 the dear soul that has entered into rest and glory. It dwells 
 not on the circumstances of bereavement, but upon that mysteri- 
 ous strain in which love has been stretched from this world to 
 the other, and, amid all the pain that the tension brings, is still 
 aware of joy at the new knowledge of its own capacities which 
 has been given it. 
 
 1J A truth is not true until it is realized. I know that a 
 battle was fought and won ; the mother whose only son appears 
 in the list of the dead realizes it. A man is saved not by what 
 he holds, but by what holds him. I believe in God. So did 
 Antipas. So do you. Who would contradict this? "We are 
 all theists. We all believe in God. And yet any man who 
 realized the awfully solemn and truly blessed meaning of this 
 would live as in a temple. This world is the temple of God. 
 And though somewhere and somehow we are in the thrice holy 
 place we are never beyond its outer courts. 1 
 
 (4) It should solemnize him. It is not so much that the 
 shortness of life makes us prepare for death as that it spreads 
 the feeling of criticalness all through life, and makes each moment 
 
 1 J. H. Goodman, The Lordship of Christ, 236. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 219 
 
 prepare for the next, makes life prepare for life. This is its 
 power. Blessed is he who feels it. Blessed is he in whose 
 experience each day and each hour has all the happiness and 
 all the solemnity of a parent towards the day and the hour to 
 which it gives birth, stands sponsor for it, holds it for baptism 
 at the font of God. Such days are sacred in each other's eyes. 
 The life in which such days succeed each other is as a holy family, 
 with its moments " bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
 The bell strikes one. We take no note of Time 
 But from its loss. To give it then a tongue 
 Is wise in man ; as if an angel spoke 
 I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright 
 It is the knell of my departed hours: 
 Where are they ? With the years beyond the flood. 
 
 It is the signal that demands despatch : 
 How much is to be done ! My hopes and fears 
 Stand up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge 
 Look down on what? a fathomless abyss; 
 A dread eternity ! how surely mine ! l 
 
 (5) It should make him sympathize. Two men have lived 
 side by side for years, with business and social life between them, 
 with a multitude of suspicions and concealments; but let them 
 know that they have only an hour more to live together, and, 
 as they look into each other's eyes, do not the suspicions and 
 concealments clear away ? They know each other. They trust 
 each other. They think the best of each other. They are ready 
 to do all that they can do for each other in those few moments 
 that remain. 
 
 TI A traveller was crossing a mountain path alone. The 
 snow was falling fast and thick, and an overpowering sense of 
 sleep stole over him. Desperately he fought against it, for 
 he knew that sleep was certain death. As he struggled on, 
 dragging his tottering steps with increasing difficulty, his foot 
 struck against an obstruction which lay across his path, and 
 looking down to see what it was he found it was a man half 
 buried in the snow. In a moment he forgot his drowsiness and 
 was wide awake. He took the unconscious man in his arms 
 and chafed his frozen body, and in so doing the effort to help 
 another brought life and energy to himself. 
 
 1 Young. 
 
220 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 ^[ A missionary describes a scene which he saw in South 
 Africa. From the top of a hill he looked down upon a piece of 
 land where a few men were busy sowing peas, and he recognized 
 them to be lepers at work together. Two particularly caught 
 his attention. One had no hands, the other no feet, for their 
 limbs were wasted away by that terrible and loathsome scourge. 
 By themselves they would both alike have been unable to work, 
 but they had overcome their helplessness by mutual help and 
 association. The man who was without hands was bearing on 
 his back the other who had no feet, and he in turn carried the 
 bag of seeds, which he dropped into the ground as they moved 
 along, while his companion pressed each seed into the ground 
 with his feet. 1 
 
 The time is short; 
 Therefore with all thy might, 
 Labour for God and Eight. 
 Pause not for heats and shadows of the day, 
 Fail not for difficulties of the way: 
 Be true, be pure, be strong ! 
 Eternity is long. 
 
 The time is short; 
 Sin, misery, and despair 
 Darken the earth and air; 
 Therefore do thou with Heaven intercede, 
 And for thy brethren, ere they perish, plead: 
 Pray for the prayerless throng! 
 Eternity is long. 
 
 The time is short; 
 Therefore, my brother, love! 
 Love always ! God above 
 Is one with thee in this; O take 
 His crown of thorns, and thine own self forsake ! 
 Love, spite of pain and wrong! 
 Eternity .is long. 2 
 
 II. 
 
 IN THREE 
 
 There are many who have the impression that the tendency 
 of religion, if a man is sincere and deep in it, is to make him less 
 competent and practical in the affairs of the present. But this 
 
 1 C. J. Ridgeway, Social Life, 63. 2 Shirley Wynne. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 221 
 
 cannot be the Apostle's meaning. He was too sane, too wise a 
 man to claim no more for him to teach such a way of regarding 
 the business and necessities of the present life. And indeed this 
 was not St. Paul's idea of religion at all. St. Paul's doctrine is 
 the doctrine which is taught all through the Bible, that the 
 family, society, the state, business are of God's ordaining, and 
 that it is of supreme importance that man should fulfil his duties 
 and play his part aright in all these. "Be not slothful in 
 business." "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord." 
 " If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his 
 own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an un- 
 believer." St. Paul does not tell us to withdraw from common 
 relationships or from business. He does not blot out the words 
 " home," " politics," " business." The Christian life always means 
 for him a life of more varied and nobler interests. 
 
 What, then, does he mean by saying that they who have 
 wives should be as though they had none ; and they that weep, 
 as though they wept not ; and they that rejoice, as though they 
 rejoiced not? What St. Paul is enjoining here is the relative 
 value of the present order of things. Home, joy, sorrow, business 
 these are the most real things of the present ; but he says even 
 these, which are the most real, are not ends in themselves. They 
 have uses to serve beyond the present. Do not take them as 
 if they were final ; learn to look through them and beyond them. 
 
 Let us consider them one by one. 
 
 1. Marriage. " Those that have wives as though they 
 had none." St. Paul means by this expression domestic life 
 generally. He does not mean that marriage is not a good thing. 
 He is not doing what some Christian people have done speaking 
 slightingly of marriage, in the interests of godliness. Nor does 
 he mean that marriage is to be looked upon lightly, that men 
 and women should enter into that relationship and then take it 
 as a little thing. That on the face of it would be contrary to the 
 whole strain of the Scriptures. It would be contrary to the 
 Apostle's own teaching, " Husbands, love your wives." St. Paul 
 means by marriage domestic life, and his meaning is that a true 
 family life looks on to something beyond itself, and is meant to 
 prepare for something beyond itself. A good husband, a good 
 
222 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 wife, children growing up in the home united in family affection, 
 a happy home life, are among the best things we can have here. 
 They are present blessings, but they are prophetic of something 
 beyond the present, and they are meant to train the affections for 
 another home than the present. Home, and home relationships 
 are not simply for our ease and comfort and happiness. They 
 contribute much, where they are what they should be, to these. 
 But they have a purpose beyond them. And we find most 
 in them, and they do most for us, when we use them with a 
 recognition of this greater purpose. To let home become 
 everything to us is to make it less than if it were only a part 
 of our life. 
 
 Tf Kachel, the daughter of Lord Southampton, married in 1670 
 William Kussell, the younger son of the Earl of Bedford. It was 
 a very happy marriage. In one of her letters to him she writes, 
 "My best life, make my felicity entire by believing my heart 
 possessed with all the gratitude, honour, and passionate affection 
 to your person any creature is capable of ; and this granted, what 
 have I to ask but a continuance (if God see fit) of these present 
 enjoyments? if not, a submission without murmur to His most 
 wise dispensations and unerring providence. He knows best 
 when we have had enough here ; what I most earnestly beg 
 from His mercy is, that we both live so that, whichever goes first, 
 the other may not sorrow as for one of whom they have no hope. 
 Then let us cheerfully expect to be together to a good old age ; 
 if not, let us not doubt but He will support us under what trial 
 He will inflict upon us. ... Excuse me, if I dwell too long upon 
 this ; it is from my opinion that if we can be prepared for all 
 conditions, we can with the greater tranquillity enjoy the present, 
 which I hope will be long ; though when we change, it will be for 
 the better, I trust, through the merits of Christ." l 
 
 Tf You cannot love a man, a woman, a child, without enter- 
 ing that centre of things where love alone reaches its true 
 meaning. It is only when we have touched the timeless in 
 those we love that we enter on the true glory of loving. It is 
 only then that love becomes the ingredient and f urtherer of the 
 highest in us. It is this that gives love its permanency, when 
 all else has fallen away ; when youth has passed, when beauty 
 has faded, when trials and difficulties come. When love inhabits 
 this sphere it takes on a Divine patience, a forgiveness to the 
 uttermost, a hopefulness that no disappointments can quench 
 
 1 The Morning Watch, September, 1906, p. 100. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 223 
 
 Here the eternity in us touches the eternity in our friend, and 
 makes our love immortal. 1 
 
 2. Sorrow and Joy. " Those that weep, as though they wept 
 not ; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not." Again 
 we must bear in mind that St. Paul is speaking in a terse, 
 epigrammatic way. There is nothing more real to us than our 
 joys and sorrows, and we cannot make believe about them. And 
 there are sorrows that come, that possess us wholly for the time ; 
 we can do nothing with them, we cannot moderate them or put 
 them aside. But we are not to let ourselves be carried off our 
 feet by either the troubles of life or its joys. It is the part of 
 those who believe in another life to have balance and moderation 
 and self-control in these things. St. Paul would say, " Joy is joy 
 and sorrow is sorrow ; you will weep and you will laugh. Sorrow 
 will be bitter and joy sweet. But do not make too much of 
 either. Both will pass, and they will be only memories to you 
 some day, but they ought to leave you different yourself. Let 
 both have a place in a larger conception of life. Look beyond 
 them to some purpose which God means them to serve." 
 
 Fair vessel hast thou seen with honey filled, 
 Which is no sooner opened, than descend 
 
 Upon the clammy sweets by bees distilled 
 
 A troop of flies, quick swarming without end ? 
 
 Yet these when one doth fan away and beat, 
 Such as had lighted with a fearful care 
 
 On the jar's edge, nor cumbered wings and feet, 
 Lightly they mount into the upper air. 
 
 But all that headlong plunged those sweets among, 
 They cannot fly, in cloying sweetness bound; 
 
 The heavy toils have all around them clung, 
 In woful surfeiting their lives are drowned. 
 
 Such vessel is this world fanned evermore 
 By ^death's dark Angel with his mighty wing ; 
 
 Then all that had in pleasure's honied store 
 Their spirits sunk, they upward cannot spring. 
 
 1 J. Brierley, The Secret of Living, 35. 
 
224 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 Only they mount, who on this vessel's side 
 With heed alighting, had with extreme lip 
 
 Just ventured, there while suffered to abide, 
 Its sweets in measure and with fear to sip. 1 
 
 1J In a palace, at Florence, there are two pictures which hang 
 side by side. One represents a stormy sea with its wild waves, 
 and black clouds and iierce lightnings flashing across the sky. In 
 the waters a human face is seen, wearing an expression of the 
 utmost agony and despair. The other picture also represents the 
 sea tossed by as fierce a storm, with as dark clouds ; but out of 
 the midst of the waves a rock rises, against which the waters 
 dash in vain. In a cleft of the rock are some tufts of grass and 
 green herbage, with sweet flowers, and amid these a dove is seen 
 sitting on her nest quiet and undisturbed by the wild fury of the 
 storm. The first picture represents the sorrow of the world 
 helpless and despairing ; the second the sorrow of the Christian 
 nestling in the bosom of God's unchanging love. When striving 
 to bear on and bear up we may remember a fine passage of 
 Jeremy Taylor's: "Well, let the world have its course, I am 
 content to bear it ; God's will be done ; let the sea be troubled ; 
 let the waves thereof roar ; let the winds of affliction blow ; let 
 the waves of sorrow rush upon me ; let the darkness of grief and 
 heaviness compass me about; yet will I not be afraid. These 
 storms will blow over ; these winds will be laid ; these waves 
 will fall ; this tempest cannot last long ; and these clouds shall 
 be dispelled ; whatsoever I suffer here shall shortly have an end. 
 I shall not suffer eternally ; come the worst that can come death 
 will put an end to all my sorrow and miseries. Lord grant 
 me patience here and ease hereafter ! I will suffer patiently 
 whatever can happen, and shall endeavour to do nothing against 
 my conscience and displeasing unto Thee ; for all is safe and sure 
 with him who is certain and sure of a blessed Eternity." z 
 
 3. Business. " Those that buy, as though they possessed not." 
 St. Paul recognizes, as every man must, the important place 
 which business holds in life. Business or trade belongs just as 
 much to life as the home and family do, or as the State does. It 
 is part of the order of things, and may have just as great a 
 religious value as the home has. Do not think of St. Paul as 
 speaking slightingly of business, or as having any such idea in his 
 mind. He has not. Nor does he mean that men are to be half 
 in earnest in their work. " Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily." 
 
 1 Trench, Poems, 328. 2 J. II. Goodman, The Lordship of Christ, 6. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 225 
 
 What he means is that business is not an end in itself. It is 
 ordained in the providence of God to serve for things greater 
 than itself. Buy, but do not let business be your life. As we 
 are not to lose ourselves in joy or sorrow, so we are not to lose 
 ourselves in business. 
 
 ^[ When outward business diverted him a little from the 
 thought of God, a fresh remembrance coming from God invested 
 his soul, and so inflamed and transported him, that it was 
 difficult for him to restrain himself. 
 
 That he was more united to God in his ordinary occupations 
 than when he left them for devotion in retirement, from which 
 he knew himself to issue with much dryness of spirit. 
 
 That the most excellent method which he had found of going 
 to God, was that of doing our common business, without any view 
 of pleasing men, and (as far as we are capable) purely for the love 
 of God. 
 
 That it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer 
 ought to differ from other times ; that we were as strictly 
 obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action as by 
 prayer in its season. 1 
 
 III. 
 
 A GENERAL DIRECTION. 
 " Use the world, as not abusing it." 
 
 1. These English words " use " and rt abuse " stand to each 
 other in much the same relation as the corresponding words of 
 the Apostle. To "use" anything is to turn it to account in 
 the direction of those ends for which it is really needed. To 
 " a&use " is simply to turn a thing away from its true and proper 
 use. Often, in doing this, you spoil the thing itself ; so that the 
 idea of injury comes to be generally involved in that of abuse. 
 But, originally and literally, to " abuse " is just to employ any- 
 thing in a manner that is aside from those purposes for which it 
 is needed and designed. 
 
 2. The word " world " is an expression which is used in the 
 New Testament Scriptures with several meanings, and therefore 
 needs to be interpreted with the utmost care and discrimination. 
 Sometimes it denotes the whole material universe as created by 
 
 1 Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 18, 2J, 
 I COR. 15 
 
226 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 God, " the maker of heaven and earth." Sometimes it is this world 
 in which God has placed man for a time, the temporary scene of 
 human existence, man's abode, in which he sojourns for a limited 
 period. Sometimes it conveys the idea, not of a material creation 
 of God's fashioning, but of a spirit of worldliness in God's reasoning 
 creatures which is antagonistic to the will of God. Sometimes 
 it is the aggregate of those possessed by this spirit who, having 
 been made by God, rebel against His authority and refuse to heed 
 His commands. Sometimes it is the equivalent of what is known 
 to us by the name of Society, i.e. the environment of persons and 
 things, in the midst of which each one lives his life here, and 
 which, while not evil in itself, must be used, as St. Paul writes 
 in his letter to the Christians at Corinth, with caution, "not 
 overusing it," or " using it to the full," as his words really mean. 
 
 3. The text implies that this world has its uses. It stands 
 in direct relation to human needs. According to the original 
 purpose of God, it is our friend and not our enemy a servant to 
 minister to our wants, not a tyrant to oppress or degrade us. 
 Why has God placed us here at all, if our surroundings have not 
 their divinely appointed uses ? It is true that the world may 
 become a dangerous foe to our spiritual welfare ; but this is only 
 when we stand in false relations to it. Even God Himself cannot 
 be to the wicked all that He can be to the " pure in heart." And 
 the world, which is God's minister to us, cannot subserve the 
 purposes which it is meant to fulfil, unless we use it aright. 
 * c Worldliness " is simply living as if the visible were all, as if we 
 were merely visible creatures amongst visible things, forgetful 
 that we are spiritual beings, whose abiding home is the eternal. 
 " To use as not abusing " : this is the grand principle of the 
 unworldly life. And if we would see how we may and do abuse 
 the world, we have only to consider what are those uses which it 
 is intended to subserve. 
 
 (1) This world is designed to aid in revealing God to us. God 
 is the Eternal Spirit ; we are finite spirits. How is the Infinite to 
 manifest Himself to the finite ? Each human spirit is mysteri- 
 ously associated with a material frame ; and by this frame it is 
 connected with that great world of matter and of circumstance 
 on which God stamps the tokens of His presence, power, and 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 227 
 
 character. Whatever other or more direct methods God may 
 have of speaking to our souls, this is at least one medium of 
 communication. The material world and the human body, linked 
 together by affinity, form a bridge over which the thoughts of 
 God pass into the mind of man. And we may be sure that our 
 relations to the world outside of us have their own distinctive 
 part to play in the revelation of God within us. Humanity is 
 doubtless a better interpreter of God than nature ; but then 
 nature may help to interpret humanity. The highest manifesta- 
 tion which has been given us of God is in Jesus Christ, His 
 incarnate Son : but this Jesus becomes intelligible to us in virtue 
 of His relations to the world outside of Himself. Christ is " the 
 image of the invisible God " ; when we see Christ, we " see the 
 Father." But how do we see Christ, except through the medium 
 of His surroundings? The character of Jesus becomes visible 
 to us as we behold His attitude and conduct in circumstances 
 which are more or less familiar to ourselves, and the significance 
 of which we can therefore in some measure appreciate. It is 
 because He lived and moved in our " world " that what He did 
 and suffered becomes, through the interpreting power of our own 
 human experience, a revelation of the heart of God. 
 
 U What an " a&use " of the world it is when men employ it 
 to conceal God ! The attributes of the Most High are mirrored 
 in the world ; but men look at the mirror from such an angle of 
 vision as to see only its glittering surface, and not the reflection of 
 the Divine glory. You have heard of the astronomer who said 
 that what he found in the study of the starry sky was the glory of 
 Newton and his fellow- thinkers, and not the "glory of God." 1 
 
 ^[ That was a fine reply of the astronomer, who, when inter- 
 rogated about the science he had been idolizing, said, " I am now 
 bound for the kingdom of Heaven, and I take the stars on my 
 way." 2 
 
 (2) This world is designed to aid in the formation and develop- 
 ment of spiritual character. The material exists for the sake of 
 the spiritual. This earth has been furnished as a school for the 
 education and discipline of man. Labour is the counteractive 
 of lust; affliction, of pride. Our relationships tend to destroy 
 selfishness ; our temptations reveal to us our own weakness. The 
 
 1 T. C. Finlayson. 2 S. L. Wilson, Helpful Words for Daily Life, 240, 
 
228 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 whole world is an arena of education by probation, at once a 
 weigh-house in which character is tested, and a gymnasium in 
 which character is trained. It furnishes us with a plastic 
 material, the moulding and shaping of which reveals the native 
 royalty and develops the native capacity of our spiritual being. 
 
 ^| Man learns to swim by being tossed into life's maelstrom 
 and left to make his way ashore. No youth can learn to sail his 
 life-craft in a lake sequestered and sheltered from all storms, 
 where other vessels never come. Skill comes through sailing 
 one's craft amidst rocks and bars and opposing fleets, amidst 
 
 storms and whirls and counter currents. 1 
 
 I 
 
 Life is not as idle ore, 
 
 But iron dug from central gloom, 
 
 And heated hot with burning fears, 
 And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 
 
 And batter'd with the shocks of doom 
 
 To shape and use. 2 
 
 (3) This world is designed to be a sphere for the service of God. 
 God is a Spirit ; and we are spirits ; hence all true service of 
 God is, in its root and essence, spiritual. Yet possibly it may be 
 a necessity for the finite spirit that it shall be able to embody its 
 devotion towards God in forms external to itself. At any rate, 
 in giving to the human spirit a tabernacle of flesh, and thus 
 connecting it with the material world, God has made that world 
 an instrument for the expression of our spiritual obedience. If 
 one human soul loves another, it longs for some opportunity of 
 embodying its affection. If a servant is really devoted to his 
 master, he rejoices when his master so takes him into confidence 
 as to enable him to give some practical manifestation of his 
 loyalty. And so, God has placed us in a world which may 
 become a sphere of manifest service. He brings us into relations 
 which are constantly trying our obedience, and therefore furnish- 
 ing us with the means of expressing it. 
 
 Methought that in a solemn church I stood. 
 
 Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet, 
 
 Lay spread from door to door, from street to street. 
 
 Midway the form hung high upon the rood 
 
 1 N. D. Hillis, A Man's Value to Society, 46. 2 Tennyson, In Memoriam. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 229 
 
 Of Him who gave His life to be our good; 
 Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet, 
 Among the candles shining still and sweet. 
 Men came and went, and worshipped as they could 
 And still their dust a woman with her broom, 
 Bowed to her work, kept sweeping to the door. 
 Then saw I, slow through all the pillared gloom, 
 Across the church a silent figure come: 
 "Daughter," it said, "thou sweepest well my floor!" 
 It is the Lord! I cried, and saw no more. 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 A GOOD KEASON. 
 " For the fashion of this world passeth away." 
 
 1. The word " fashion " here is a translation of the Greek 
 word schema, from which we get our English word " scheme." The 
 text means that the present order of things, the earthly plan or 
 scheme in which we live, must come to an end. It is true, 
 indeed, of the earth itself. " This goodly frame, the earth, seems 
 to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, 
 look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof 
 fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me 
 than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." The fashion 
 of this world passeth away ; even the solid earth is moving on to 
 sure destruction. 
 
 K Above the valley of the Neckar rises the magnificent ruin 
 of Heidelberg. To the world without it still presents a front of 
 majesty and beauty. The mountain crags seem not more massive 
 and enduring than its battlements of stone, its towers and walls 
 of solid masonry. But within, what a picture of desolation meets 
 the eye ! Broken columns and shattered carvings are scattered 
 in confusion about the deserted court. Fragments of costly 
 monuments are mingled with the debris of crumbling walls, and 
 trees are growing upon ramparts where once the cannon 
 thundered to the echoes of the surrounding hills. The rent 
 tower discloses the ingenuity of man to build, and his yet greater 
 power to destroy. 
 
 TJ The word translated " fashion " literally means " stage 
 scenery." St. Paul does not mean that everything on earth 
 
 1 George MacDonald. 
 
2 3 o SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 is perishable, but that every unreal thing is perishable. Stage 
 scenery is unreal scenery. It does not represent the actual facts 
 of the greenroom. Many an actor is bringing down the house 
 with laughter when his own heart is breaking. St. Paul saw that 
 a great deal of life is simply stage acting concealment of the 
 greenroom. How many kind things are spoken, not in order to 
 reveal, but in order to cover ! How many gifts are sent, not for 
 your sake, but for the sake of the donor ! How many blandish- 
 ments are lavished for a vote ! How many visits are paid for a 
 subscription! St. Paul says all this unreality will pass away. 
 When will it pass away ? At death, you say. No ; death does 
 not reveal the reality of life. Death does not tear away the mask 
 from the face of my brother. Death is itself a mask, itself an un- 
 reality. So far from causing the stage scenery to vanish, it is 
 itself the climax of illusion. It is not to death I look ; it is to 
 love. Love is the great dispeller of unreality. Love is the great 
 emancipator from stage scenery. Love is the true rending of the 
 veil between this world and the world to come. 1 
 
 2. No doubt the world itself will pass away. For that we 
 have the warrant of Scripture, and Science has countersigned the 
 warrant. But this warrant is not to be found here. St. Paul is 
 not predicting a future catastrophe ; he is announcing a present 
 fact. He does not affirm that " the cloud-capp'd towers, the 
 gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples" of this familiar world, 
 yea, the solid globe itself, with all who inherit it, shall dissolve, 
 and like the baseless fabric of a vision, like an insubstantial 
 pageant faded, "leave not a rack behind." He affirms a fact 
 with which we are more immediately concerned, namely, that 
 the fashion, the form, the whole outward aspect, of the world in 
 which we live fades, changes, passes, while we look upon it ; that 
 it is now, and always, passing away : and from this fact he 
 infers the immense importance of fixing our affections and 
 placing our aims, not on the outward show, the frail and shifting 
 forms of things, but on the sacred and enduring realities which 
 lie beneath and behind them. There are two ways in which it is 
 true that the fashion of this world is passing away. 
 
 (1) First it is true with respect to all the things by which we 
 are surrounded. It is only in poetry the poetry of the Psalma 
 for example that the hills are called " everlasting." Go to the 
 
 1 G. Matheson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 231 
 
 side of the ocean which bounds our country, and watch the tide 
 going out, bearing with it the sand which it has worn from the 
 cliffs; the very boundaries of our land are changing; they are 
 not the same as they were when these words were written. 
 Every day new relationships are forming around us; new cir- 
 cumstances are calling upon us to act, to act manfully, firmly, 
 decisively, and up to the occasion, remembering that an oppor- 
 tunity once gone is gone for ever. Indulge not in vain regrets 
 for the past, in vainer resolves for the future; act, act in the 
 present. 
 
 U The difference between the ancient and the modern world 
 is this: in the one the great reality of being was now, in the 
 other it is yet to come. If you would witness a scene character- 
 istic of the popular life of old, you must go to the amphitheatre 
 of Eome, mingle with its 80,000 spectators, and watch the eager 
 faces of Senators and people; observe how the masters of the 
 world spend the wealth of conquest, and indulge the pride of 
 power; see every wild creature that God has made, from the 
 jungles of India to the mountains of Wales, from the forests of 
 Germany to the deserts of Nubia, brought hither to be hunted 
 down in artificial groves by thousands in an hour; behold the 
 captives of war, noble perhaps and wise in their own land, turned 
 loose, amid yells of insult more terrible for their foreign tongue, 
 to contend with brutal gladiators trained to make death the 
 favourite amusement, and present the most solemn of individual 
 realities as a wholesale public sport; mark the light look with 
 which the multitude, by uplifted finger, demands that the 
 wounded combatant be slain before their eyes ; notice the troop 
 of Christian martyrs awaiting hand in hand the leap from the 
 tiger's den ; and, when the day's spectacle is over and the blood 
 of two thousand victims stains the ring, follow the giddy crowd 
 as it streams from the vomitories into the street, trace its lazy 
 course into the forum, and hear it there scrambling for the bread 
 of private indolence doled out by the purse of public corruption ; 
 and see how it suns itself to sleep in the open ways, or crawls into 
 foul dens till morning brings the hope of games and merry blood 
 again; then you have an idea of that Imperial people, with 
 their passionate living for the moment, which the Gospel found 
 in occupation of the world. 
 
 And if, ^on the other hand, you would fix in your thought 
 an image of the popular mind of Christendom, I know not 
 that you could do better than go at sunrise with the throng 
 of toiling men to the hillside where Whitefield or Wesley is 
 
232 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 about to preach. Hear what a great heart of reality is in that 
 hymn which swells upon the morning air a prophet's strain upon 
 a people's lips ! See the rugged hands of labour, clasped and 
 trembling, wrestling with the Unseen in prayer! Observe the 
 uplifted faces, deep-lined with hardship and with guilt, streaming 
 now with honest tears, and flushed with earnest shame, as the 
 man of God awakes the life within, and tells of Him that bare 
 for us the stripes and cross, and offers the holiest spirit to the 
 humblest lot, and tears away the veil of sense from the glad and 
 awful gates of heaven and hell. Go to these people's homes, and 
 observe the decent tastes, the sense of domestic obligations, the 
 care for childhood, the desire for instruction, the neighbourly 
 kindness, the conscientious self-respect, and say whether the 
 sacred image of duty does not live within those minds ; whether 
 holiness has not taken the place of pleasure in their idea of life : 
 whether for them too the toils of nature are not lightened by 
 some external hope, and their burden carried by some angel of 
 love, and the strife of necessity turned into the service of God. 
 The present tyrannizes over their character no more, subdued by 
 a future infinitely great; and hardly though they lie upon the 
 rock of this world, they can live the life of faith ; and while the 
 hand plies the tools of earth, keep a spirit open to the skies. 1 
 
 (2) Again, this is true with respect to ourselves. " The fashion 
 of this world passeth away " in us. The feelings we have now 
 are not those which we had in childhood. There has passed 
 away a glory from the earth the stars, the sun, the moon, the 
 green fields have lost their beauty and significance nothing 
 remains as it was, except their repeated impressions on the 
 mind, the impressions of time, space, eternity, colour, form; 
 these cannot alter, but all besides has changed. Our very minds 
 alter. There is no bereavement so painful, no shock so terrible, 
 but time will remove or alleviate it. The keenest feeling in this 
 world time wears out at last, and our minds become like old 
 monumental tablets which have lost the inscription once graven 
 deeply upon them. 
 
 If Jesus (on whom be peace !) said, " The world is a bridge ; 
 pass over it, but do not build upon it." Inscription on a bridge 
 at Fatehpur SikrL 2 
 
 ^f Perhaps no one has pictured with truer hand the changing 
 fashion of the world in the passing of human life than Long- 
 
 1 James Martineau. 2 Field, A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom, 97. 
 
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 233 
 
 fellow in his poem, "The Old Clock on the Stairs," in which he tells 
 
 us that 
 
 Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 
 Through days of death and days of birth, 
 Through every swift vicissitude 
 Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
 And as if, like God, it all things saw, 
 It calmly repeats those words of awe, 
 "For ever never! 
 Never for ever!" 
 
 In that mansion used to be 
 Free-hearted Hospitality ; 
 His great fires up the chimney roared; 
 The stranger feasted at his board; 
 But, like the skeleton at the feast, 
 That warning timepiece never ceased, 
 
 "For ever never! 
 
 Never for ever ! " 
 
 There groups of merry children played, 
 
 There youths and maidens dreaming strayed ; 
 
 O precious hours! golden prime, 
 
 And affluence of love and time! 
 
 Even as a miser counts his gold, 
 
 Those hours the ancient timepiece told, 
 
 "For ever never! 
 
 Never for ever!" 
 
 From that chamber, clothed in white, 
 The bride came forth on her wedding night; 
 There, in that silent room below, 
 The dead lay in his shroud of snow; 
 And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
 Was heard the old clock on the stair, 
 
 "For ever never! 
 
 Never for ever!" 
 
 All are scattered now and fled, 
 Some are married, some are dead; 
 And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
 " Ah ! when shall they all meet again ? " 
 As. in the days long since gone by, 
 The ancient timepiece makes reply, 
 
 "For ever never! 
 
 Never for ever!" 
 
234 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT 
 
 Never here, for ever there, 
 Where all parting, pain, and care, 
 And death, and time shall disappear, 
 For ever there, but never here! 
 The horologe of Eternity 
 Sayeth this incessantly, 
 
 "For ever never! 
 
 Never for ever!" 
 
ADAPTABILITY. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Banks (L. A.), Hidden Wells of Comfort, 79. 
 Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 34. 
 Capen (E. H.), The College and the Higher Life, 195. 
 Clarke (J. E.), Common-Life Sermons, 159. 
 Darlow (T. H.) 5 The Upward Calling, 13. 
 Doney (C. G.) 5 The Throne-Room of the Soul, 89. 
 Goulburn (E. M.), Occasional Sermons, ii. 139. 
 Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 156. 
 Horwill (H. W.), The Old Gospel in the New Era, 15. 
 Irons (J. C.), Memorial of a Faithful Ministry, 208. 
 Jenkins (E. E.), Life and Christ, 167. 
 Keble (J.), Sermons for Saints' Days, 100. 
 Liddon (H. P.), Clerical Life and Work, 311. 
 
 Sermons on Special Occasions, 26. 
 
 Lightfoot (J. B.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 55. 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 142. 
 Metcalf (R), The Abiding Memory, 29. 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xx. (1874) No. 1170; 
 
 xxv. (1879) No. 1507. 
 Young (D. T.), The Enthusiasm of God, 13. 
 Christian World Pulpit, xvii. 138 (Beecher) ; xviii. 60 (Charlton) ; li. 65 
 
 (Holland), 280 (Stalker), 308 (Thomas) ; Ixxv. 353 (Carpenter). 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., i. 165 (Goulburn). 
 Homiletic Review, xlv. 323 (Gregg). 
 
 36 
 
ADAPTABILITY. 
 
 I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. - 
 i Cor. ix. 22. 
 
 No one, perhaps, of St. Paul's sayings describes the general 
 effect of his life and character with such terseness, or so vividly, 
 as this. Not that the Apostle can be thought of as deliberately 
 framing an epigram which might afterwards do duty in a 
 biography. He is on his defence, as against the charge, widely 
 circulated by his Corinthian opponents, that he was really a 
 selfish person who was making a good thing out of the Gospel ; 
 he is showing that, if he chose to stand upon the letter of his 
 rights, he might have claimed more, and done less, than he did. 
 Had silence been possible, we may be sure that he would gladly 
 have said nothing about himself ; but since there is this hostile 
 criticism in the way of his usefulness, and he is forced to speak, 
 he boldly asserts the rights which he had waived, and the lofti- 
 ness of the motives which governed him. In so varied and 
 complex a life as his, there was of course much that could not 
 be compressed into any single saying ; but nowhere else does he 
 so nearly bring himself before us as a whole, or trace with so 
 delicate yet powerful a hand the leading feature of his great 
 career, as in the words, " I am become all things to all men, that 
 I may by all means save some." 
 
 TJ " All things to all men." St. Paul is always in the face of 
 a listening crowd. Every word, therefore, hits ! He uses speech 
 like a rapier, ready and rapid, which is quivering with personal 
 characterization and the heat of the moment. He is aware of 
 every objection that friend or foe can be framing, and he fore- 
 stalls them, and he retorts. It turns this way and that. It has 
 sharp recoils, and rushes to seize an advantage, and hastens to 
 press a point that tells, and daring, venturous strokes that beat 
 
238 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 back a possible counter-stroke, and then brimming bursts of 
 sympathy that overmaster by their very suddenness. And then, 
 again, not only debate is in his power, but also the townsman's 
 delicate skill, what is called by the townsman's own name his 
 urbanity. We have only to recall the exquisite letter to Philemon 
 on his runaway slave. Here is the gentleman, in the finest sense 
 of the word, felt speaking ; here are the polished tone, the veiled 
 irony, the irresistible reserve, the quiet humour, the social grace, 
 that all tell of one who, without risking his self-respect or his 
 sincerity, yet by sheer force of trained social sympathy can 
 throw himself into another's mind, can understand and allow for 
 his prejudices, and see with his eyes, and so win him to do what 
 he desires. 1 
 
 I. 
 
 THE ADAPTABILITY OF ST. PAUL. 
 "I am become all things to all men." 
 
 1. The great gift which St. Paul had received of God next 
 in order of importance after that of God's grace and truth was 
 the power of making himself at home with all classes, races, and 
 degrees of men. A practical capacity like this cannot be learned 
 like an art or a trick ; it must be rooted in and spring from those 
 affections and sympathies which are at the base of human 
 character. Nor, although this gift was undoubtedly developed 
 and shaped by grace, can we suppose it to have had no place in 
 the character of St. Paul until he became a servant of Christ. 
 Nature must have contributed to it at least somewhat of the 
 raw material. As a Jew, we may be sure, Saul of Tarsus apart 
 from the limits which Eabbinical narrowness would have assigned 
 to his sympathies could already have said, with the heathen 
 poet, that, being a man, he deemed nothing human strange. His 
 broad and genial humanity must have belonged to the original 
 outfit of his nature : for in him, the sympathies of our race lived 
 with extraordinary freshness and power. 
 
 2. The Apostle himself has traced this versatile sympathy in 
 three of its fields of operation. 
 
 (1) "To the Jews I became as a Jew." In the Apostle's eyes 
 the Jews were the race which had come nearest to God, and 
 
 1 H. Scott Holland. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 239 
 
 had most decisively rejected Him. And yet how tender and 
 affectionate he is in his dealings with his poor countrymen, or 
 with Christians who shared, less excusably, their hereditary 
 prejudices ! It might almost seem at times as if he had turned 
 his back upon the Cross, so careful is he not to wound the 
 sensitiveness of the adherents of the old religion. Eecognizing 
 circumcision as a national mark of distinction, while utterly 
 denying its necessity to salvation, he circumcised Timothy, who 
 had a right to it by his mother's side. Owing allegiance as 
 a Jew to the Mosaic Eitual, so long as God suffered it to exist, 
 he took legal vows, and was scrupulous in paying them. In 
 arguing against Judaizers he allegorized the story of Hagar and 
 Sarai, dealing with the Old Testament precisely after the manner 
 of the Jewish Kabbis. And even when he is compelled, by virtue 
 of his Apostolic commission, and by the imperious truth which 
 fills and rules him, to utter the stern and awful sentence, 
 that by their infatuated rejection of the true Messiah, who was 
 the crown and promise of their history, they had rejected their 
 God, how does he soften his message by all the resources of 
 sympathy and affection ! 
 
 (2) "To them that are without law, as without law." St. 
 Paul, the Apostle of revealed truth, the preacher of that One 
 God who is known to and approached by man only through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, how does he make himself at home with the 
 men and thoughts of the heathen world ! Eead his Epistles, and 
 see how he can sympathize with the happy conqueror in the 
 Greek games " who receiveth the prize," or with the old Latin 
 idea of the city or state, imagined as a political transcript of the 
 human body. How does he study each detail of the dress and 
 accoutrements of the soldier who watches him as he writes to the 
 Ephesians ! How interested he is in the details of the admini- 
 stration of the empire when addressing the Eomans ! How 
 tenderly does he survey the heathen world at Athens, as " feeling 
 after God " as though on its way to " find him " ! 
 
 (3) "To the weak I became weak." There were "weak" 
 Christians, as^ the Apostle gently calls them, who clung to 
 observances, or who entertained scruples which were at variance 
 with the import, freedom, generosity of the Gospel. And of 
 that Gospel, in its unstinted liberty and grace, St. Paul was the 
 
240 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 jealous and passionate champion. He, if any man, might have been 
 expected to pour contempt upon a worthless scruple to brand, 
 with the sternest note of disapprobation, the forms, whether of 
 life or of thought, which, however unintentionally, did dishonour 
 to the work of the Kedeemer. We know how he could express 
 himself upon occasions when great principles were at stake, as 
 when he told the Galatians sharply that if they were circumcised 
 Christ would profit them nothing. But, as a rule, how tender 
 he is, how full of consideration and charity, how tolerant, how 
 hopeful ! The prejudice against the meat exposed for sale in the 
 Corinthian market was a weakly superstition; but for himself 
 he would rather eat no flesh whatever while the world lasted than 
 offend the conscience of a weak brother. The private observance 
 of days, Jewish or other, at Eome, was no part of the Church's 
 rule, and might easily engender Jewish errors ; but the Apostle 
 insists that those who kept these days did so to the Lord, and 
 should be respected in the observance. The strong, he says, 
 with a touch of quiet irony, ought to bear the infirmities of the 
 weak, and not to please themselves. And to the scandal of 
 some, no doubt, at the time, but for the instruction of the Church 
 of all ages what he preached he practised. 
 
 Tf There was another aspect of the anxiety of this matter 
 regarding the Bible to which Dr. Eainy was peculiarly sensitive. 
 He had the keenest sense of the shock which the new view 
 occasioned in many simple believing minds to whom the plenary 
 inspiration of every word of Scripture had been an unquestioned 
 assumption. And he had further an even stern feeling that those 
 were blameworthy who by any regardlessness of utterance 
 unnecessarily wounded the faith of such. It may be admitted 
 that both Professor Dods and Professor Bruce were men who 
 made what the ecclesiastical mind calls " unguarded statements." 
 Dr. Dods one of the most absolutely truthful men who ever 
 breathed, and a man incapable of choosing a word for any other 
 reason than that it seemed the true one spoke about the " errors " 
 and "immoralities" in the Scripture narrative. Dr. Bruce, who 
 had a Carlylean strain in his rugged nature, showed at times a 
 Irusqmrie in dealing even with the most sacred themes which 
 was not, but which was easily taken to be, irreverence and 
 which jarred even on those who did not misunderstand it. 
 Principal Kainy, along with all his tolerance on the general 
 question, was extraordinarily sensitive to the hurting of tender 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 241 
 
 consciences. I remember his once saying to me of some utterances 
 of one of the professors just named. " He does not realize the 
 sheer pain words like these cause to many of our most believing 
 people " ; and, as he said it, there crossed his own face a look of 
 " sheer pain " such as assuredly he would never have shown for 
 any suffering inflicted on himself. Here surely is real breadth. 
 So many men who pride themselves on their theological liberality 
 are but one-sided in their sympathy. Here was a man who, on 
 the one hand, resolutely supported the scholar's liberty to criticize 
 with the frankest freedom the structure of the sacred narrative, 
 but who, on the other, really saw and shared the pain such 
 criticism caused in the mind of some simple and perhaps ignorant 
 pious woman who, like Cowper's lace- worker, "just knows, and 
 knows no more, her Bible true." l 
 
 3. St. Paul's life has ever been an enigma to those who have 
 failed to appreciate this ruling principle of his conduct. To his 
 contemporaries he seemed altogether inconsistent and unintelligible. 
 The Jewish converts were at a loss to understand how one who 
 had conceded so much to Judaism in the case of Timothy should 
 refuse everything to Judaism in the case of the Galatians. The 
 Gentile converts could not reconcile the utterances of a teacher 
 who in the same breath declared that an idol was nothing in the 
 world, and denounced the feasters in an idol's temple as having 
 fellowship with devils. The party of tradition reviled him, 
 because he broke loose from the time-honoured usages of his 
 race and country. The friends of liberty suspected him, because 
 he denounced in no sparing terms the practical licence which 
 they grafted on his doctrine. And to modern critics also his 
 conduct has appeared not less perplexing. The Paul of the Acts, 
 they say, is a different person from the Paul of St. Paul's Epistles. 
 They cannot identify the facile pupil of James, who to win over 
 those many thousands of his fellow-countrymen lent himself to 
 a complicity in Nazirite vows, with the stern master of Peter, 
 who declared that those seeking justification through the Law had 
 fallen from grace. The one character is to them irreconcilable 
 with the other. Irreconcilable, yes, to those who do not 
 appreciate the. infinite power of love in concession, in adaptation, 
 in expedient, in varying sympathy with the wants and the 
 weaknesses and the prejudices and the ignorances of men, while 
 
 1 P. C. Simpson, The Life of Principal Rainy, ii. 117. 
 I COR. 16 
 
242 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 holding firmly and maintaining boldly the great central truths 
 of God. There is a concession which springs from cowardice, and 
 there is a facility which is born of indifference. There is an 
 adaptation which is the slave of self-interest, and there is a 
 versatility which is leagued with fraud. Not such was the 
 Apostle's principle of action. His was the elasticity of a keen, 
 absorbing, dominating love, which concentrates its entire energies 
 for the time on the one object before it, which watches every 
 moment, seizes every opportunity, fastens on every rising 
 emotion, and ingratiates itself with every transient thought, that 
 it may force an entrance for the truth which shall save a soul 
 from self and sin, and gain it for God. 
 
 ^f The root of all that was peculiar in Mr. Kobertson's 
 character and correspondence lay in the intense sensitiveness 
 which pervaded his whole nature. His senses, his passions, his 
 imagination, his conscience, his spirit, were so delicately wrought, 
 that they thrilled and vibrated to the slightest touch. His great 
 power of sympathy arose out of this sensitiveness. My mis- 
 fortune or happiness (he says) is power of sympathy. I can feel 
 with the Brahmin, the Pantheist, the Stoic, the Platonist, the 
 Transcendentalist, perhaps the Epicurean. At least, I feel the 
 side of Utilitarianism which seems like truth, though I have 
 more antipathy to it than anything else. I can suffer with the 
 Tractarian, tenderly shrinking from the gulf blackening before 
 him, as a frightened child runs back to its mother from the dark, 
 afraid to be alone in the fearful loneliness ; and I can also agonize 
 with the infidels, recoiling from the cowardice and false rest of 
 superstition. Many men can feel each of these separately, and 
 they are happy. They go on straight forward, like a one-eyed 
 horse, seeing all clear on one side. But I feel them all at once, 
 and so far I am allseitig, ein ganzer Mann. But I am not such 
 in this sense, that I can harmonize them all; I can only feel 
 them. For this greatness there must be an all-feeling heart, 
 together with an all-seeing eye. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 THE USES OF ADAPTABILITY. 
 
 The attitude of St. Paul in the first age is the precedent for 
 Christian workers in all ages. We too, like the Apostle, must 
 
 1 Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 154. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 243 
 
 in a certain sense strive to be all things to all men. Effectual 
 Christian service is a difficult and delicate art. No amount of 
 zeal will save us from blundering and failure, unless along with 
 our zeal we possess some of the insight which comes from sym- 
 pathy with the people we try to help. There are few gifts more 
 necessary, and less common, among Christian workers than 
 this gift of imaginative sympathy, which can enter by intuition 
 into other men's feelings and appreciate their condition and 
 understand instinctively how to deal with their case. Such a 
 gift is too precious to be common. It depends partly on moral 
 endowment and inheritance. But a sensitive nature may be 
 coarsened and blunted by selfishness, as it may be cultivated by 
 faithful obedience. Thoughtful love grows wise by constant 
 watching, and strong by patient self-denial. Only the heart 
 at leisure from itself has skill to sympathize. How few of us 
 attain to the height of George Fox's wonderful petition : " I have 
 prayed to be baptized into a sense of all conditions, that I might 
 be able to know the needs and feel the sorrows of all." 
 
 TJ There are seven octaves on an ordinary piano. And most 
 of us can hear every musical note which a piano sounds. But 
 there are both higher and lower octaves which certain instru- 
 ments reach, and which many human ears cannot take in. 
 Some can hear the higher notes, but not the lower, and with 
 others it is the reverse. We all differ in the same way with 
 regard to the things which impress us, catch hold of our imagina- 
 tion, appeal to the best and worst in us, and bring out our evil 
 and our good. There are sermons preached in every sanctuary 
 which move some to tears, stir them to impassioned devotion, 
 and lift them up to the very gates of heaven. Yet when those 
 very sermons have been preached others will declare that the 
 preacher has been quite out of form, and that his words were 
 wearying and unprofitable. And it by no means follows that 
 they are not good and earnest Christian men. It only means 
 that the preacher has been touching chords which are not found 
 in them. 1 
 
 1. Behind all efficient personal Christian service, there must 
 lie this principle of adaptation. St. Paul became Jew, Greek, 
 Roman, and accursed in order to save men. He put himself into 
 the place of the one he sought to help, and from that new stand- 
 
 1 J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 157. 
 
244 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 point learned the secret path of access to his soul. No one can 
 understand another who is unable to leave himself behind and 
 look upon the world as the other person does ; and this requires 
 the sympathetic nature. It is the method of the loving heart. 
 To him who really loves, the inner chambers of the other life 
 are opened that he may dwell therein a welcome guest. The 
 magic of a fellow-feeling has not been equalled as a means where- 
 by the full life of a Christian is admitted to the starving life of 
 him who knows only the flesh. 
 
 If Sanctified ingenuity is a gift to be prized highly, both for 
 its value and for its rarity. 1 
 
 ^f Mrs. Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted woman : she 
 was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted her waist and 
 patted her curls with a pre-occupied air when she inquired after 
 your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great social 
 power, but it is not the power of love. 2 
 
 Tf You mistook me in thinking I did not sympathize. A few 
 years ago, when I felt less, you would have been more satisfied, 
 when the eyes showed moisture, the voice emotion, and when I 
 had a gentler manner and a more ready show of responding to 
 what was expected. Now, a certain amount of iron has gone 
 into my blood ; and a sardonic sentence often conceals the fact that 
 I wince to the very quick from something that has gone home. 
 
 Oh, many a shaft at random sent 
 Finds mark the archer little meant ! 
 
 I no longer wear my heart upon my sleeve, "for daws to 
 peck at." But there is not a conversation, there is not a book I 
 read, there is not a visit I pay, that does not cut deep traces in 
 the " Calais" of my heart. 3 
 
 (1) At the very outset, it is essential that there should be 
 respect for other people's views. Men do not think alike in this 
 world. They cannot. Many may be inclined to regard the 
 results which we have reached through patience and toil and 
 tribulation, not only with opposition, but resentment ; while we 
 in turn may look upon them with contempt because they have 
 not yet caught up with our vision. How poor and mean and 
 petty must they be whose horizon is bounded and circumscribed ! 
 
 1 H. W. Horwill. 2 George Eliot, TJie Mill on the Floss. 
 
 8 Life and Letters of the Hev. F. W. Robertson, 455, 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 245 
 
 Of course the truth is one and clear, easily discerned and we 
 have it. Nothing but stupidity or obstinacy could prevent any- 
 body from beholding it as well as we. Thus does some heartless 
 and incompetent teacher belabour a backward boy (whose back- 
 wardness is due perhaps to defective vision or imperfect hearing 
 or defect in some of the other faculties of perception) because he 
 cannot keep pace with those to whom God has given every need- 
 ful endowment. When we give way to our natural impulses we 
 are impatient and intolerant. It is this spirit that has poured 
 the gall of bitterness without measure into social and domestic 
 life, filled neighbourhoods with discord, sown the seeds of strife 
 among the nations of mankind and not infrequently deluged the 
 earth with blood. 
 
 Tf Without sympathy in the high sense of intellectual 
 penetration, kindness may be only folly, and intended aid, 
 oppression. 1 
 
 (2) There must be respect for other men's convictions. These 
 are things to which men come, often by painful effort, and always 
 with solemnity. Few men are willing to abandon them without 
 a struggle. They may be false, but they are precious. Not 
 infrequently they are interwoven with the holiest traditions. 
 For the sake of them, their holders are frequently willing and 
 eager to wear the martyr's crown. The fact that we may know 
 or think we know other men's convictions to be false, does not 
 alter the obligation to treat them with respect. For when we 
 reflect we must perceive that there is some real reason for every 
 deep-seated conviction. And not until there is a mutual ap- 
 proach, not until there is a disposition manifest to acknowledge 
 that there is some sanity in an opponent's view, do the conditions 
 exist for a real advance. One lesson which the experience of 
 human conflict has clearly taught is that before there can be 
 liberty for new thought there must be deference and courtesy 
 paid to the older belief. 
 
 ^[ There is an incident in point in the life of the Rev. John 
 Murker of Banff. A new church had been built, but not without 
 strong opposition from some of the older members. Murker 
 himself tells what occurred : 
 
 At last the day arrived when we had to bid farewell to 
 
 1 Ruskin, A KnigM's Faith (Works, xxxi. 386). 
 
246 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 the old time-honoured building. The services were of a char- 
 acter suitable to the occasion. In the morning my text was 
 " If thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence " ; in 
 the evening "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go 
 forward," trying to blend in my discourses tender reverence for 
 the past with a consciousness of duty for the present. At the 
 close of the evening service, I felt in no mood to stand in the 
 vestry with the deacons, as was my custom, but hurried home 
 seeking retirement and privacy for my thoughts. I had not been 
 more than an hour seated in my study when an uncontrollable 
 desire seized me to go back and look at the old place once more, 
 before it was turned to secular use, as was to be the case on 
 Monday morning. It was a clear, frosty night, and I slipped 
 down to the chapel as quietly as possible, so as not to attract 
 observation. My difficulty was how to get in. I did not like 
 to go to the beadle for the key ; but, to my astonishment, as I 
 was passing, I found the key in the lock, and, without stopping 
 to inquire how this was, or thinking any more about it, stepped 
 in. I was soon disturbed in my musings by the suppressed 
 sounds of a voice familiar to my ear ; I listened attentively, and 
 turning round to one of the square seats near the pulpit, I dimly 
 saw the figure of one of my senior members whom I deeply 
 respected, but who had grieved me somewhat by his lukewarm- 
 ness with respect to the building of the new chapel. There he 
 was kneeling beside the seat on which he had sat when a laddie, 
 and he was so much absorbed in his prayer as not to hear my 
 footsteps. Afraid to move lest I should disturb him, I stood still 
 and could not but listen to the broken sentences that reached my 
 ear as his voice rose above a whisper and swelled into audible 
 tones. The following bits of his fervent supplication ejaculated 
 forth as the tears came streaming down his cheeks. I distinctly 
 heard : " For forty years this place has been a Bethel to me ; 
 here I was born again. . . . But if we maun leave this house 
 may Thy presence gang wi' us ... forgive my obstinateness, 
 mak' the cause even mair prosperous in the new chapel. . . . 
 Come doon, Lord, come doon in Thy power. . . . Bless oor 
 young pastor. . . . Lift upon him and us a' the licht o' Thy 
 coontenance, and mak' the little ane a thousand." 
 
 I could stand no longer the spectator of such a scene ; my 
 presence was, I felt, an almost sacrilegious intrusion ; as quietly 
 as possible I went away. But that prayer, or the fragments of it I 
 got, had lifted a load from my mind. Next day I met the worthy 
 old man and gave him a warmer shake of the hand than he had 
 got from me for a long time, he not knowing the secret of it, nor 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 247 
 
 ever will in this world. All coldness and alienation of feeling 
 had been melted in the fervour of that prayer which reached my 
 ear and touched my heart. His position I now understood, and 
 I did not think any the less of him for his lingering regard for 
 the old, with which he had now to part. 1 
 
 (3) Nor is this true only of beliefs. It applies in like manner 
 to prejudice. Nothing in this world is quite BO stubborn as 
 prejudice. Nothing is so hard to overcome. Nothing so persists 
 after every reason for its existence has passed away. Some 
 prejudices are the peculiarities of the race, as if they were 
 ingrained in the very nature of their possessors ; some are 
 characteristic of nations; some are local in their boundary, 
 confined to community or time ; and some are purely individual, 
 growing out of environment, or tradition, or training. But how- 
 ever encountered they are relentless. Woe to the man who 
 ruthlessly runs up against them. Prejudice is a universal trait 
 of mankind, and it behoves us, when we encounter it in others, 
 not to try to neutralize or overcome it by a counter prejudice, 
 but rather to stand in awe before it and pay obeisance to one of 
 the common weaknesses of our poor humanity. This is the one 
 and only solvent. Pride of opinion, the force of individual will, 
 the virulence of hatred are all alike powerless before it. When 
 we come to recognize that prejudice has some ground for existence 
 in the order of the world and in the nature of man we begin the 
 process by which it is ultimately to be undermined and uprooted. 
 Eespect a prejudice and you destroy its power for harm. It is 
 like extracting the fangs of a venomous serpent. No matter how 
 vindictive his feeling or his actions, his power for evil is gone. 
 So though the animosity which prejudice has aroused may long 
 remain, its poison has vanished as soon as those who might other- 
 wise be its victims meet it with serenity and patience. 
 
 ^f To minds strongly marked by the positive and negative 
 qualities that create severity strength of will, conscious recti- 
 tude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great 
 power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over 
 others prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which 
 can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt- 
 provoking knowledge which we call truth. Let a prejudice be 
 bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in 
 
 1 J. Stark, John Murker, 192, 
 
248 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 through the eye however it may come, these minds will give it 
 a habitation: it is something to assert strongly and bravely, 
 something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to 
 impose on others with the authority of conscious right : it is at 
 once a staff and a baton. Every prejudice that will answer these 
 purposes is self-evident. 1 
 
 (4) Even human conventions may be deferred to. These, to 
 be sure, lie on the surface of human life and seem not to be related 
 in any vital way either to the established social order or to the 
 progressive movements of the world. Yet they do have great 
 power. There are no inherent reasons why there should be such 
 a marked difference in the styles of dress between men and 
 women. Yet the most persistent efforts, covering years and even 
 generations, by those who bring forth the powerful argument 
 of convenience and health have made but slight difference in 
 changing the time-honoured practice. So with many of our habits 
 and customs; they are superficial but they are commanding. 
 The custom of uncovering the head in a church or other place of 
 public assembly, the habit of saying "good morning," or "good 
 evening," of wishing good health and prosperity to even the 
 most casual acquaintance, are the invariable marks of good 
 breeding, and good breeding is a fundamental requisite of 
 the gentleman or the gentlewoman. No one can make any 
 headway in an influential career who neglects this quality. 
 St. Paul was a gentleman when he said, " I think myself 
 happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this 
 day before thee," and that gentlemanliness secured for him a 
 respectful hearing. 
 
 Tf Darwin's way of looking at himself as an ignoramus in 
 matters of art, was strengthened by the absence of pretence, which 
 was part of his character. With regard to questions of taste, as 
 well as to more serious things, he always had the courage of his 
 opinions. I remember, however, an instance that sounds like 
 a contradiction to this : when he was looking at the Turners in 
 Mr. Ruskin's bedroom, he did not confess, as he did afterwards, 
 that he could make out absolutely nothing of what Mr. Kuskin 
 saw in them. But this little pretence was not for his own sake, 
 but for the sake of courtesy to his host. He was pleased and 
 amused when subsequently Mr. Kuskin brought him some 
 
 1 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 249 
 
 photographs of pictures (I think Vandyke portraits), and 
 courteously seemed to value my father's opinion about them. 1 
 
 2. At the root of all efficient evangelization there must lie this 
 same principle of adaptation. We are fishers of men, and the 
 fisherman uses the bait that is most likely to catch the fish, not 
 the bait that best suits his own palate. 
 
 TJ An illustration of this truth is afforded by the different 
 characters of Gregory the Great and the missionary St. Augustine. 
 Both were earnest, both enthusiastic, both ready to spend and 
 to be spent, if only they might preach Christ crucified to the rude 
 barbarians of Anglo-Saxon England. But St. Augustine from 
 first to last was hampered by a want of elasticity, a narrowness, 
 intellectual rather than moral, which led him to identify 
 Christianity with that form of it with which, in his convent life 
 at Eome, he had been familiar. St. Gregory, with that wisdom 
 which a knowledge of many men and many minds had given, 
 a delicate sense of the difference between essential and accidental, 
 above all with a conviction of the necessity of " adaptation " in 
 the preaching of Christianity, stands out as a model of wide and 
 liberal-minded earnestness. When the collision with the old 
 British Church came, St. Augustine with the same want of 
 flexibility, not unmixed perhaps with a sense of his own importance 
 as Metropolitan of England, was ready to contend to the last 
 about the wording of a Liturgy, or the form of a tonsure, or the 
 style of chronology. In vain St. Gregory's wise warning that he 
 should adapt himself to national customs as far as possible, and 
 " not value things because of places, but places for the good things 
 they contained." With all his earnestness and missionary zeal, 
 St. Augustine's want of versatility in the delivery of his message 
 narrowed down his success to a small portion of the east of 
 England, leaving the rest to be evangelized by the remnants of 
 that very British Church with which he would not work. 2 
 
 If Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is 
 that which enables us to feel with him, which gives us a fine 
 ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes 
 of circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest analysis of schools 
 and sects must miss the essential truth, unless it be lit up by the 
 love that sees in all forms of human thought and work the life- 
 and-death struggles of separate human beings. 8 
 
 1 The Life atid Letters of Charles Darwin, i. 125. 
 
 * A. L. Moore, The Message of the Gospel, 34. 
 
 * George Eliot, Janet's Repentance, 
 
250 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 (1) We hear much of intellectual difficulties. How many of 
 us attempt to qualify ourselves even to understand them far less 
 to answer them ? Again and again grievous harm is done to 
 those for whom, as for us, Christ died, by the way in which 
 those who have never themselves experienced difficulties of 
 belief put such things aside as the work of the devil, or as 
 a wilful carping at revealed truth. To fail to throw ourselves 
 into the different mental and moral states of our people will be 
 to fail to deliver our message aright. 
 
 I, too, have passed through that self-same place 
 Where you and the Dragon are face to face. 
 
 I neither vanquished nor slew him quite, 
 But he fled away with the morning light 
 
 Alas! so deadly the mortal fray, 
 You cannot hearken the words I say. 
 
 And I, who remember the combat sore, 
 Weep. I have passed that way before. 1 
 
 (2) We hear much of scientific progress. The true Christian 
 worker will meet the latest acquisitions of science, not with 
 opposition, not with coldness, not with misgiving, but with a 
 hearty welcome the more hearty in proportion as his faith 
 is the stronger confident that in the end Divine truth can only 
 gain by enlarging the bounds of human knowledge. 
 
 K Of all that elder race, he [Dean Church] was the one who 
 most intimately followed on with the new movements and the 
 fresh temper. He was absolutely in touch with the younger men. 
 No brick walls blocked them out, or brought them into abrupt 
 arrest. He did not encounter them with a challenge of suspicion, 
 or hold them off at arm's length. He felt what was going forward ; 
 he believed in its worth ; he took it seriously. Eight to his very 
 last years, he caught the spirit that was abroad, and was sensitive 
 to its necessary differences from earlier types. Thus the younger 
 men could come to him with their vague and crude aspirations, 
 unafraid and unchilled. They were sure of sympathetic considera- 
 tion of a judgment that viewed their case from inside. They 
 felt that he saw with their eyes ; and, with that assurance, they 
 
 1 Margaret Blaikie, Songs ly the Way, 48. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 251 
 
 could freely yield to his authority, which it was a delight to 
 recognize. 1 
 
 (3) Do we live at a time when sesthetic culture is making 
 rapid strides ? We will not let it drift into a position of antagon- 
 ism to Christian worship, but will rather enlist it in the service 
 of God, careful only not to make a mistress of a handmaid, and 
 watchful always lest artistic feeling should step into the place of 
 devotion, or music usurp the throne of prayer. 
 
 ^[ If we are to become all things to all men that we may by 
 all means save some, we are to become cultured to the cultured, 
 refined to the refined. But we often work on a principle diametric- 
 ally opposite to that of the Apostle. As a rule, much more pains 
 is taken to adapt the Gospel to the uneducated than to the 
 educated, and a severe unchristian shibboleth is set up as a test 
 which serves only as a barrier. It is difficult to see why it should 
 be right to respect the tastes of one class and wrong to respect 
 the tastes of another. 2 
 
 (4) There is urgent need for adaptation in the methods of 
 our work among children. How many people who give Sunday- 
 school addresses ever try to become children while they are 
 speaking ? How many make the least effort to drop all their 
 philosophy and look at things with the simple directness of a 
 child ? How many remember that children become bored by a 
 long and dull speech ? How many think of saying a word about 
 the peculiar difficulties of school life, the moral problems that 
 arise even in the earliest years out of every day's work and play ? 
 
 K The angel of the Lord i.e. God in self-manifestation said 
 to Abraham, " Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast 
 not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me " (Gen. xxii. 12). 
 This is one of the many instances in which God is represented 
 as speaking in a human fashion, as if He were not omniscient. 
 When the cry of Sodom came up to heaven, the Lord said, " I 
 will go down and see ... and / will know." To Abraham He 
 said, " If I find in Sodom fifty righteous men, I will spare it." 
 The Infinite voluntarily approximates the ways and thoughts of 
 finite beings. He is above all limitations, and to Him nothing 
 is ever unknown. " I am God," He said, " and there is none like 
 me, declaring the end from the beginning." But if He were to 
 speak to men in terms of His foreknowledge absolute, they 
 1 Life and Letters of Dean Church^ 227. * H. W. Horwill. 
 
252 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 would " find no end, in wandering mazes lost." The All-wise in 
 His intercourse with men is represented as like a human father 
 conversing with his children. He speaks very simply, that He 
 may be understood. Every teacher knows that he must sym- 
 pathize with his pupils' ignorance, else they will never under- 
 stand his knowledge. He must condescend to their condition, 
 place himself alongside of them, study their limitations, take 
 into account their inexperience. He has to bridge over the gulf 
 that separates his mind from theirs. Unless he can express his 
 ideas, not in his own language, but in theirs, their ears might as 
 well be closed, and all his wisdom will be lost upon them. That 
 is the principle on which the Divine Teacher of the human race 
 acted in His revelation. He made His meaning intelligible by 
 translating His great thoughts into simple forms of speech. He 
 spake to men in the language of earth, that they might learn 
 the laws of Heaven. 1 
 
 (5) This principle must guide us in our attempts to reach those 
 among the working classes who at present are never seen inside 
 a place of worship. If elaborate sermons repel them, elaborate 
 sermons must go. If pew-rents keep them away, pew-rents must 
 go. We must learn their habits of thought, their opinions, even 
 their prejudices, and use this knowledge for the extension of 
 Christ's Kingdom. 
 
 TJ A certain shoemaker, radical and infidel, was among the 
 number of those under Irving's special care ; a home- workman of 
 course, always present, silent, with his back turned upon the 
 visitors, and refusing any communication except a sullen humph 
 of implied criticism, while his trembling wife made her depre- 
 cating curtsy in the foreground. The way in which this intract- 
 able individual was finally won over is attributed by some tellers 
 of the story to a sudden happy inspiration on Irving's part ; but, 
 by others, to plot and intention. Approaching the bench one 
 day, the visitor took up a piece of patent leather, then a recent 
 invention, and remarked upon it in somewhat skilled terms. The 
 shoemaker went on with redoubled industry at his work ; but at 
 last, roused and exasperated by the speech and pretence of know- 
 ledge, demanded, in great contempt, but without raising his eyes, 
 " What do ye ken about leather ? " This was just the opportunity 
 his assailant wanted ; for Irving, though a minister and a scholar, 
 was a tanner's son, and could discourse learnedly upon that 
 material. Gradually interested and mollified, the cobbler 
 
 1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 171. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 253 
 
 slackened work, and listened while his visitor described some 
 process of making shoes by machinery, which he had carefully 
 got up for the purpose. At last the shoemaker so far forgot his 
 caution as to suspend his work altogether, and lift his eyes to the 
 great figure stooping over his bench. The conversation went on 
 with increased vigour after this, till finally the recusant threw 
 down his arms : " Od, you're a decent kind o' fellow ! do you 
 preach ? " said the vanquished, curious to know more of his victor. 
 The advantage was discreetly, but not too hotly pursued ; and on 
 the following Sunday the rebel made a defiant, shy appearance 
 at church. Next day Irving encountered him in the savoury 
 Gallowgate, and hailed him as a friend. Walking beside him in 
 natural talk, the tall probationer laid his hand upon the shirt- 
 sleeve of the shrunken sedentary workman, and marched by his 
 side along the well-frequented street. By the time they had 
 reached the end of their mutual way not a spark of resistance 
 was left in the shoemaker. His children henceforward went to 
 school; his deprecating wife went to the kirk in peace. He 
 himself acquired that suit of Sunday "blacks" so dear to the 
 heart of the poor Scotchman, and became a churchgoer and 
 respectable member of society ; while his acknowledgment of 
 his conqueror was conveyed with characteristic reticence, and 
 concealment of all deeper feeling, in the self-excusing pretence 
 " He's a sensible man, yon ; he kens about leather ! " l 
 
 3. This principle of adaptation is the basis of all effective 
 missionary work. It is not so long ago that the idea which 
 people attached to missionary work was that Christian people 
 went out to speak to heathen people ; and they grouped under 
 the phrase " heathen " all sorts of races, nationalities and religions. 
 In point of fact we coloured the world, or the map of the world, 
 in various colours, and the great bulk of it was coloured black. 
 But the black covered various races, various nationalities, various 
 creeds and differences, and it is one of the mistakes of those 
 indefatigable and earnest men, that they did not learn to dis- 
 criminate between the religious differences and the racial 
 differences, between one nationality, race and creed, and 
 another. 
 
 (1) It is at this point that we shall find the clue to the slow 
 progress which the Christian religion has too often made among 
 alien races in spite of the sturdiest missionary effort. The 
 
 1 Mrs. Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving, i. 110. 
 
254 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 advocates of Christianity have not always possessed the tolerance 
 of their great Master. They have said, " This is the only way. 
 Walk in this way or go to destruction." They have declared, 
 " Here is the supreme and absolute truth. Believe it or perish 
 in the darkness and misery of unbelief." The pagan peoples to 
 whom they have gone with their patent panacea for the ills of 
 life have made reply, " Our own sages have shown us another 
 way, and we have found that a safer way to walk in. They have 
 given us a different doctrine. They were good men and true, and 
 we have not found their teachings repugnant to reason." 
 
 ^| Do not think you will ever get harm by striving to enter 
 into the faith of others, and to sympathize, in imagination, with 
 the guiding principles of their lives. So only can you justly love 
 them, or pity them, or praise. 1 
 
 If On the Day of Pentecost part of the charm was that every 
 man heard the Gospel in his own language, and that is why our 
 missionaries have to learn foreign languages, that they may 
 preach the Gospel to men in the tongue to which they were born. 
 But if they are to be of much use they must learn far more than 
 the language of the people ; they must learn their manners and 
 customs, their history, their beliefs, their ideals, even their 
 prejudices. Let no young missionary going forth doubt that 
 there are elements of Divine truth in the faith and the practice 
 of the heathen. And these are not to be despised or neglected, 
 but are to be used as stepping-stones by which to lead them to 
 something higher and better. I have always been profoundly 
 moved by what an Indian woman said when she first heard the 
 Gospel of Grace proclaimed " That is what I have been expect- 
 ing to hear all my life." 2 
 
 ^f I once heard a distinguished missionary, who had spent his 
 whole life among Indians upon the frontier, tell the story of a 
 chieftain, who, just as he was about to go upon the war-path 
 against the whites, lost a little child to whom he was devotedly 
 attached. He sat down in his tepee a day and a night beside 
 the body of the babe, gloomy and terrible. Then the white man 
 came with a little coffin and placed it on the ground before him. 
 The Indian sat an hour or more in silence. Then he rose and, 
 after placing the babe in the coffin, washed away the paint and 
 laid aside the feathers, which were the symbols of war, and dis- 
 missed his followers in peace. 3 
 
 1 Ruskin, The Ethics of the Dust ( Works, xviii. 356). 
 a Professor J. Stalker. 8 E. H. Capen. 
 
I CORINTHIANS ix. 22 255 
 
 ^[ Those who heard Dollinger speak from the pulpit or in the 
 lecture-room, from his seat in the chamber or in the Council, of 
 course carried away with them the impression of a man of letters 
 and distinction ; but to see him out of doors, in the freedom of 
 God's beautiful creations, was to learn his disposition and feel 
 his geniality. There he was gladdened by tree and meadow, air 
 and water, sunshine and the songs of birds. The air might be 
 both raw and damp, but he always found something to praise in 
 it, so that I was involuntarily reminded of a legend told me by 
 Dollinger himself. " In one of the streets of Galilee there lay 
 rotting the body of a dead dog. All who saw it exclaimed, ' How 
 unsightly ! How horrible ! What a stench ! ' But Christ, who 
 passed that way, said gently, ' Yet he has beautiful teeth.' " 1 
 
 (2) It is said that those who try to plant Western corn in 
 India have found that it was absolutely necessary before that 
 Western corn could yield an adequate harvest that it should be 
 naturalized by some years of sowing in Indian soil. Is not that 
 a parable that the want of the East is the rising up of the Eastern 
 to speak Christianity to the Eastern people, and that it is needful 
 that our religious teaching should, as it were, be naturalized in 
 the soil as it was naturalized in every soil in the history of the 
 past, in order that it might gain power of full expression to the 
 hearts of those who need it ? 
 
 ^ Mozoomdar and his fellow-disciples of the Brahmo-Samaj 
 claim that they can understand and interpret the teachings of 
 Jesus far more accurately than is possible with the occidental 
 mind. Jesus was an Oriental and they are Orientals. They, 
 therefore, can see the truth which He taught as it stood in His 
 own mind. They have comprehended as we do not the problems 
 which confronted Him. To them the doctrines which He 
 proclaimed in gorgeous imagery and poetic parables are not dis- 
 torted by our western literalism. To them the work of our 
 Lord and Master is revealed. Surely there is some force in this 
 claim. But whether it is just or not, it must be clear that the 
 point of view is of the utmost importance. If we are going to 
 China, or Japan, or India, or the islands of the sea for the 
 purpose of inducing them to take on our civilization and adopt 
 our cult, we must first of all be able to see our own message as 
 they see it, and we must moreover have a sympathetic knowledge 
 of the doctrines and beliefs which we are seeking to overthrow 
 and supplant. 2 
 
 1 L. von Kobell, Conversations of Dr. Dollinger, 18. 
 * E. H. Capen, The College and The Higher Life, 206. 
 
256 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 (3) Nor should we stop here. We should enter into the new life 
 ourselves. If we are among Orientals, we must become Orientals. 
 If we are with people who speak a different language, we must 
 learn their language. If their dress is different from ours, we 
 must conform to their style. This is the way to reach the heart 
 of things. 
 
 If I know that some will condemn me as holding a doctrine 
 of expediency ; but I have no fear of condemnation from men of 
 liberal minds and large hearts, whose condemnation I should be 
 sorry to have, while the others would, more than likely, condemn 
 me for any possible view that ventured to differ a hair's-breadth 
 from their own. You know the old saw, " My doxy is orthodoxy, 
 any other doxy is heterodoxy." Many a life has been lost in 
 this country for learning no more than our alphabet: should 
 more lives go merely for declining to learn the Arabic alphabet ? 
 Few, very few, will go further ; few went further before, when 
 it was strongly in vogue, and no Christianity to counteract it. 
 Do we not ever see that, in the case of the real Mussulmans who 
 come here, the most unpromising feature about them is their 
 obstinacy and bigotry, which will not allow them even to look 
 at our Gospel! I believe we shall gain a great point when 
 Christianity ceases to be called the white man's religion. The 
 foolish phrase, "Kusoma Kizungu," creates needless suspicion. 
 I am ever battling with it among our own people, and trying to 
 get them to use "Soma Luganda" instead. When will they 
 learn that Christianity is cosmopolitan and not Anglican ? But 
 there is so much in our ways and methods that strengthens the 
 idea of foreign rule English men, English church, English 
 formularies, English Bishop \ Nor can the evil be readily 
 rectified, until we are become more prepared to look on Africa 
 as our home, or, if you like, till we become more truly identified 
 with Africa than heretofore. Here, too, I fear, I shall be con- 
 strued wrongly. But I allude only to mental affinity. 1 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE LIMITS OF ADAPTABILITY. 
 
 In our times these words, " Becoming all things to all men," 
 have acquired an unmusical sound. Those who have professedly 
 acted on this principle have sometimes been viewed askance, 
 partly with suspicion, and not always without reason. There 
 
 1 Mackay of Uganda, 361. 
 
r CORINTHIANS ix. 22 257 
 
 has been the absence, apparently, of fixed principles; an in- 
 difference not only to dogmas, but also to truth; a liberality 
 running to seed in mere licence; and a charity so broad as to 
 border on defection and impurity. They have protested too 
 much. Under the pretence of putting on the mantle of the 
 Apostle, they have but used his robe as a convenient cloak to 
 hide a self-seeking which he would have been the first in fiery 
 words to condemn. For there is a cant of philosophy as well as 
 of orthodoxy, and a kind of freedom which is spurious as well 
 as one which is heaven-born and Divine. 
 
 1. Let us be sure that we have the right aim. St. Paul had 
 only one aim "that I may by all means save some." Some 
 become all things to all men that they may by all means destroy 
 some. Satan himself can become an angel of light if it suits 
 his purpose. There are others who become all things to all 
 men to avoid trouble and persecution. They can be very religious 
 in a prayer-meeting where none but Christians are present, but 
 when they get out into worldly society they so adapt themselves 
 to the fancies of their associates that there is no mark by which 
 they can be recognized as Christians. That is as far removed as 
 possible from the spirit of St. Paul. Dare we, without hypocrisy, 
 quote this declaration of his as the watchword of our own lives ? 
 Are we jealous about tradition and usage rather than about 
 saving men? Are we tenacious of our comforts and luxuries 
 when by sacrificing them we might rescue our brother for whom 
 Christ died? Are we standing upon our dignity, unwilling to 
 adopt some method that we think to be beneath us, while we 
 are surrounded by multitudes who perish ? Do we think indeed 
 that it is possible for us to save our own souls while we are 
 indifferent to the salvation of others ? 
 
 ^ While St. Paul's heart is on fire his reason is cool ; after all 
 this expenditure of feeling and effort he looks for very partial 
 results. " That I may save some" Not " all " that were too 
 much to hope. But whether in the Jewish synagogue or on 
 Mars' Hill in Athens ; whether among scholars or the unlettered ; 
 whether amidst friends or foes ; whether he stands face to face 
 with multitudes or is pleading with a single soul ; he keeps one 
 purpose steadily before him ; he is what he is, he does what he 
 does, that some at least may know the power of that faithful 
 i COR. 17 
 
258 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 saying which is ever worthy of all acceptation, that "Christ 
 Jesus came into the world to save sinners." 1 
 
 U Some people are quite intolerable to one by the way in 
 which they insist that sympathy means looking at things as 
 they do, without any feeling of real conviction. Now, to me, 
 sympathy means understanding other people, and acting in 
 accordance with one's perception, though neither one's feelings 
 nor one's reason may approve of their condition. An abandon- 
 ment of one's personality to another makes sympathy a quite 
 useless gift. Yet that is the sort of sympathy which people most 
 demand. They come in a defiant way and say, " You shall feel 
 with me: you shall tell me that my feelings are the best, the 
 noblest, the richest." I am afraid that I never look for more 
 than a modified approval of my own doings. In proportion as 
 a man is really worth consulting, he will show his appreciation 
 of my difficulties, but will suggest, without expressing, a more 
 excellent way in the future. 2 
 
 2. Let us be sure that we have the right motive. Mere 
 human sympathy, however strong, wears itself out; it is at 
 least half physical in its nature, and its energy shares the 
 vicissitudes and decay of our bodily frame. One motive only- 
 the love of God really lasts ; and of the love of God, the love 
 of man, whom God has loved so well as to create and to redeem 
 him, is in reality the consequence and the attestation. 
 
 TJ What we have to be on our guard against is not the versa- 
 tility itself, but a wrong motive, or the absence of a good one to 
 direct it. This is well illustrated by the different forms which 
 versatility took in the history of the Greeks. In the age of Pericles 
 it was the great Hellenic virtue, on the excellence of which the 
 Greek prided himself. " It was a happy and graceful flexibility." 
 Freedom from prejudice, freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, 
 amiability of manners, clearness and propriety of language all 
 these seem to have had their part in that which enabled the 
 Athenian, without loss of earnestness or "relaxation of moral 
 force," to become all things to all men. In the age of Aristotle 
 this versatility is still a grace, but a subordinate grace, of 
 character. It is now little more than an elegant accomplish- 
 ment, which the Athenian gentleman, enveloped in a sense of 
 dignity and self-importance, cultivates only that he may avoid 
 the unpleasant extremes of buffoonery and boorishness. Four 
 
 1 H. P. Liddon, Clerical Life and Work, 318. 
 8 Life and Letters of Mandell Creight&n, i. 271. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 259 
 
 hundred years later the same word appears in the Epistle of St. 
 Paul to the Ephesians, and lo, it is coupled with filthiness and 
 foolish talking; it is the "jesting" which is not convenient. 
 Wherein then does the flexibility of St. Paul differ from the 
 frivolity and fickleness of the lonians of Asia Minor ? Simply 
 and solely in the motive which actuated him. It was when 
 Greece lost its reality, its earnestness, when its moral fibre 
 became relaxed, that this grace of character became hateful and 
 contemptible. 1 
 
 3. The principle of adaptation when applied to Christian work 
 gives no sanction to the satanic doctrine that the end justifies the 
 means. St. Paul wore different characters only so long as he 
 could wear them consistently with his Christianity. There must 
 be no infidelity to conscience, no compromise with wrong, no 
 overcoming evil with evil, though we might think that we could 
 save souls thereby. The motives of the Jesuits and Inquisitors 
 were often of the purest, but they defiled themselves by the use 
 of means that were nothing short of diabolical. The conversion 
 of a sinner from the error of his ways will not hide any sins that 
 may be committed in the process. Nothing is justifiable in 
 Christian work which is not justifiable elsewhere. There must be 
 no sharp practice. Christ drives the traffickers out of the Temple, 
 though the Temple may make a profit from their gains. 
 
 T| Some days before, the missionary had used the same device 
 (Industrie) for baptizing a little boy six or seven years old. His 
 father, who was very sick, had several times refused to receive 
 baptism ; and when asked if he would not be glad to have his son 
 baptized, he had answered, No. " At least," said Father Pijart, 
 " you will not object to my giving him a little sugar." " No ; but 
 you must not baptize him." The missionary gave it to him once ; 
 then again; and at the third spoonful, before he had put the 
 sugar into the water, he let a drop of it fall on the child, at the 
 same time pronouncing the sacramental words. A little girl, who 
 was looking at him, cried out, " Father, he is baptizing him ! " 
 The child's father was much disturbed ; but the missionary said 
 to him, " Did you not see that I was giving him sugar ? " The 
 child died soon after ; but God showed His grace to the father, 
 who is now kf perfect health. 2 
 
 1 A. L. Moore, The Message of the Gospel, 31. 
 
 2 Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons (quoted in Parkman, The Jesuits in North 
 America, i. 186), 
 
260 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 4. In work among the lowest classes, while we may conform to 
 their wishes, we must be sure that we ourselves fall into no sin, 
 such as the sin of irreverence, which is sometimes committed by 
 those who try to attract them. In work among people of higher 
 social position, while we may be anxious that our mode of worship 
 and our style of preaching shall in no way shock a refined taste, 
 we must beware lest we gloss over or tone down any truths that 
 are likely to be unwelcome. It may sometimes be our duty to 
 declare truths that are utterly opposed to the most inveterate 
 convictions of those to whom we speak. We must not be un- 
 faithful to our own consciences for fear of offending the sensi- 
 bilities of anybody. Even St. Paul, the model of tact and 
 adaptation, did not hesitate to reason before the licentious 
 governor Felix of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
 come. 
 
 K On one occasion (writes a gentleman who knew Robertson 
 well at Cheltenham) he had been asked to preach at a church 
 where the congregation was chiefly composed of those whom Pope 
 describes as passing from " a youth of frolics " to " an old age of 
 cards." I accompanied him, and listened curiously for his text. 
 It was this, " Love not the world, nor the things of the world. If 
 any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." 
 The sermon was most impressive and eloquent, and bold in its 
 denunciation. Returning home, he asked me if I thought he was 
 right in preaching it. I answered that it was very truthful; 
 but, considering the character of the clergyman whose pulpit he 
 occupied by courtesy, and the character of the congregation, not 
 a discreet sermon. It might have been as truthful without ap- 
 parently setting both minister and people at defiance. "You 
 are quite right, quite right," he answered ; " but the truth was 
 this : I took two sermons with me into the pulpit, uncertain which 
 to preach; but, just as I had fixed upon the other, something 
 seemed to say to me, ' Robertson, you are a craven, you dare not 
 speak here what you believe ' ; and I immediately pulled out the 
 sermon that you heard, and preached it as you heard it." l 
 
 5. We must never sacrifice convictions to expediency. St. 
 Paul's sympathy even with his opponents, and his great tender- 
 ness for the bigoted, the scrupulous, the superstitious, are the 
 more remarkable in a man of such deep, strong, definite convic- 
 tions. Assuredly he never accepted the hateful maxim that to 
 
 1 S. A. Brooke, Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 71. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 22 261 
 
 understand everything is to condone everything. No one held 
 more tenaciously to the sacredness of principle and the certainty 
 of truth. Yet he would go almost any length, short of com- 
 promising principle, if by any means he might win over his 
 antagonists. In particular he was ready to waive his own 
 personal rights and to sacrifice his individual liberties in all 
 matters that did not involve evil, on the chance that by so doing 
 he might influence some soul for good. General Gordon wrote : 
 "Daily I am more convinced that the non-assertion of one's 
 rights is a great gain, though only to be acquired by a closer 
 union with Christ." 
 
 Tf Of Bishop Moberly, Keble says, " There is nobody, I feel 
 sure, nobody on earth, who can exactly take the part which he 
 did, with his sweet and noble and, as I always thought, royal 
 ways : not giving up an inch of principle, yet known to be the 
 friend of every one and making all friends to one another." x 
 
 TJ Ideal tolerance necessarily is of extreme rarity because it 
 virtually implies an amicable meeting of apparent contradictories 
 Belief, and sympathy with Unbelief. Superstition and infalli- 
 bility may tolerate "just endure" Jews, Turks, and Infidels. 
 Indifferentism suffers with good-humoured contemptuousness a 
 babel of Creeds. The genuinely tolerant, whatever the origin of 
 his faith, has made it his personal possession, has converted 
 himself to it. 2 
 
 6. But we may sacrifice almost everything else. Yield in a 
 thousand little things that the great things may be urged. 
 Nothing on earth is so winning, so subduing, as the spectacle of a 
 man who forgets all his self-importance for the sake of doing good 
 to others. The real triumphs of the Gospel involve the humility 
 and self-suppression and self-effacement of its preachers. And 
 the Gospel of Love can prevail only as it is preached lovingly, 
 with endless tenderness and tolerance and patience and long- 
 suffering. In one of Cowper's letters to John Newton we read : 
 "No man was ever scolded out of his sins," or, let us add, 
 persecuted out of his prejudices and errors and superstitions. 
 
 lj A sermon was preached before the Irish House of Commons 
 in 1725 by Edward Synge on the anniversary of the rebellion. 
 The preacher was prebendary of St. Patrick and son of that 
 Archbishop Synge who for many years exercised a great influence 
 
 1 C. A. E. Moberly, Duke Domum, 165. 2 W. Stebbing, Three Essays, 10. 
 
262 ADAPTABILITY 
 
 over all Irish policy, and it was published by order of the House. 
 Taking for his text the words " Compel them to enter in," which 
 had been so often employed in justification of persecution, and 
 adopting substantially the reasoning of Locke and of Hoadly, 
 Synge proceeded to examine with considerable ability the duty 
 of a Protestant Legislature in dealing with a Roman Catholic 
 population. Coercion, he maintained, which is directed simply 
 against religious teaching as such, is always illegitimate and 
 useless. Its only good end could be to release men from error, 
 but this involves a change of judgment, which cannot be effected 
 by external force. "All persons, therefore, in a society, whose 
 principles in religion have no tendency to hurt the public, have a 
 right to toleration." l 
 
 1 W. E. H. Lecky, A History of Ireland, i. 304, 
 
FOR THE CROWN. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Alford (H.), Quebec Cliapel Sermons, v. 199. 
 
 Beaumont (J. A.), Walking Circumspectly r , 144. 
 
 Edwards (F.), These Twelve, 338. 
 
 Fraser (J.), University Sermons, 204. 
 
 Hall (C. R.), Advent to Whitsun-Day, 83. 
 
 Hickey (F. P.), Short Sermons, ii. 50. 
 
 Hort (F. J. A.), Cambridge Sermons, 109. 
 
 Hutchings ("W. H.), in Sermons for the People, New Ser., ii. 170. 
 
 Little (H. W.), Arrows for the King's Archers, No. 14. 
 
 Maclaren (A.), Christ in the Heart, 205. 
 
 Christ's Musts, 75. 
 
 Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 153. 
 
 Paget (E. C.), Silence, 53. 
 Westcott (B. F.), Lessons from Work, 269. 
 Williams (T. M.), Sermons of the Age, 173. 
 Winterbotliain (R.), Sermons, 93. 
 
 Cambridge Review, i. Supplements Nos. 12, 13 (Mayor). 
 Christian Age, xl. 66 (Wolf). 
 Christian World Pulpit, viii. 395 (Landels); xvii. 232 (McCree) ; Ixi. 
 
 231 (Stalker) ; Ixxv. 97 (Henson). 
 Church of England Magazine, xiv. 96 (Home). 
 Church of England Pulpit, Ixi. 78, 142 (Mackarness). 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., vii. 85 (Agar Beet), 114 (Alford). 
 Examiner, Aug. 6, 1903, p. 132 (Jowett). 
 
FOR THE CROWN. 
 
 And every man that striveth in the games is temperate in all things. Now 
 they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I Cor. 
 ix. 25. 
 
 So, says St. Paul, praising the effort and contemning the prize, 
 " they do it to receive a corruptible erown." And yet there was 
 a soul of goodness in this evil thing. Though these festivals 
 were indissolubly intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with 
 much sensuous evil, yet he deals with them as he does with war 
 and with slavery he points to the disguised nobility that lay 
 beneath the hideousness, and holds up even these low things as a 
 pattern for Christian men. 
 
 1. One of the most famous of the Greek athletic festivals 
 was held close by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath from the 
 neighbouring sacred grove. The painful abstinence and training 
 of ten months, and the fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for 
 their result a twist of green leaves that withered in a week, and 
 a little fading fame that was worth scarcely more, and lasted 
 scarcely longer. The struggle and the discipline were noble ; 
 the end was contemptible. And so it is with all lives whose aims 
 are lower than the highest. They are greater in the powers they 
 put forth than in the objects they compass, and the question, 
 " What is it for ? " is like a douche of cold water from the cart 
 that lays the clouds of dust in the ways. 
 
 2. There is both comparison and contrast here. Comparison, 
 because there is between the athlete and the Christian a likeness 
 upon which the Apostle is very fond of dwelling. Both have 
 entered the lists ; both have engaged in a contest wherein a vast 
 amount of resolution and endurance is needed; both have set 
 
 their hearts upon a certain prize. Contrast, because there is 
 
 263 
 
266 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 between the athlete and the Christian this great difference, among 
 others, that the prize is of little worth in the one case, of unspeak- 
 able value in the other. " They do it to receive a corruptible 
 crown, but we an incorruptible." 
 
 I. 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE. 
 
 1. Strenuous effort. If people would work half as hard to gain 
 the highest object that a man can set before him as hundreds of 
 people are ready to do in order to gain trivial and paltry objects, 
 there would be fewer stunted and half-dead Christians among us. 
 " That is the way to run," says St. Paul, " if you want to obtain." 
 
 Look at the contrast that he hints at, between the prize that 
 stirs these racers' energies into such tremendous operation and 
 the prize which Christians profess to be pursuing. " They do it 
 to receive a corruptible crown " a twist of pine branch out of 
 the neighbouring grove, worth half-a-farthing, and a little 
 passing glory not worth much more. They do it to obtain a cor- 
 ruptible crown ; we do not do it, though we professedly have an 
 incorruptible one as our aim and object. If we contrast the 
 relative values of the objects that men pursue so eagerly with 
 the objects of the Christian course, surely we ought to be smitten 
 down with penitent consciousness of our own unworthiness, if not 
 of our own hypocrisy. 
 
 TJ Everybody knows about the athlete, and knows that what- 
 ever he goes in for, there is no mistake about it. You cannot 
 play cricket, or football, or anything else to any purpose with 
 half your strength, or with half your heart. To do anything, to 
 distinguish yourself in the least, you have to give yourself up to 
 it. Everything else must give way ; and everything that hinders, 
 or enfeebles, or injuriously affects the play, must be given up. 
 Everybody knows that. "They do it," says the Apostle; they 
 really do it ; there is no humbug or pretence* about it. If they 
 play, they do not play at playing ; they do it, and no mistake. 
 It is possible to say that a man is a fool to make such efforts, 
 and incur such sacrifices, in order to wear a cap of a certain 
 colour, or be known as the champion in a certain game. But, at 
 any rate, he has achieved something with much toil, and effort, 
 and loss of rest, and after tremendous exertions ; " they do it." 1 
 
 1 E, Winterbotham. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 267 
 
 ^[ Here is a little kingdom, which we shall characterize as the 
 kingdom of merely muscular competition. Men are going to try 
 muscular force with their fellow-men, they are going to have a 
 boat race. You and I cannot walk along the river-side and 
 instantly take into our heads the notion that we will have a spin 
 with these men and beat them all. That can't be done. Strait 
 is the gate and narrow is the way that leads even to athletic 
 supremacy. The men are going into training ; they are going to 
 put themselves under tutors and governors ; they are going to 
 submit to a bill of fare and a course of discipline which you and I 
 would take to very unkindly. But why are they going to do so ? 
 Because they have determined to take a higher seat in the 
 kingdom of mere athletic exercise and enjoyment. Now it is a 
 very strange thing that you, a man fourteen stones weight, cannot 
 just get into the very first boat that comes in your way and 
 outstrip the men who have been in drill and training and exercise 
 for the last three months. But you cannot do so. As a mere 
 matter of fact, a man who has been drilled, disciplined, exercised, 
 will beat you, except a miracle be wrought for your advantage. 1 
 
 2. Rigid self-control. Every man that is striving for the 
 mastery is " temperate in all things." The discipline for runners 
 and athletes was rigid. They had ten months of spare diet no 
 wine hard gymnastic exercises every day, until not an ounce of 
 superfluous flesh was upon their muscles, before they were 
 allowed to run in the arena. And, says St. Paul, that is the 
 example for us. They practised this rigid discipline and abstin- 
 ence by way of preparation for the race, and after it was run 
 they might dispense with the training. You and I have to 
 practise rigid abstinence as part of the race, as a continuous 
 necessity. They did not only abstain from bad things, they did 
 not only avoid criminal acts of sensuous indulgence ; they 
 abstained from many perfectly legitimate things. So for us it is 
 not enough to say, " I draw the line there, at this or that vice, 
 and I will have nothing to do with these." You will never make 
 a growing Christian if abstinence from palpable sins only is your 
 standard. You must lay aside every sin, of course, but also 
 every weight. Many things are weights that are not sins ; and if 
 we are to run- fast we must run light ; and if we are to do any 
 good in this world we have to live by rigid control and abstain 
 from much that is perfectly legitimate, because, if we do not, we 
 
 1 Joseph Parker. 
 
268 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 shall fail in accomplishing the highest purposes for which we are 
 here. 
 
 U Only on one occasion have I seen him angry, and I mention 
 the circumstance now because I feel convinced that his lack of 
 disciplinary power, which has been noted in the matter of his 
 Harrow work, was due to excess rather than to defect of moral 
 force. Conscious of his power, he was, I believe, afraid to let 
 himself go, and so habitually exercised a severe self-restraint. It 
 was in the early Peterborough days, as he and I were starting out 
 for a walk, that, in passing through the passage, which was then 
 being tiled, he remarked to the man at work that he was not 
 laying the tiles straight. The man contradicted him, and then 
 my father said something which seemed to annihilate the culprit. 
 I was astonished at my father losing his temper, but more 
 astonished still at the effect of his wrath : the man trembled and 
 turned pale, and I thought he would be falling down dead. 1 
 
 The perfect poise that comes of self-control, 
 
 The poetry of action, rhythmic, sweet, 
 That unvexed music of the body and soul 
 
 That the Greeks dreamed of, made at last complete. 
 Our stumbling lives attain not such a bliss ; 
 
 Too often, while the air we vainly beat, 
 Love's perfect law of liberty we miss. 2 
 
 3. Concentration of aim. There are few things more lacking 
 in the average Christian life of to-day than resolute, conscious 
 concentration upon an aim which is clearly and always before us. 
 Do you know what you are aiming at ? This is the first question. 
 Have you a distinct theory of life's purpose that you can put 
 into half a dozen words, or have you not ? In the one case, there 
 is some chance of attaining your object ; in the other, none. 
 Alas ! we find many Christian people who do not set before 
 themselves, with emphasis and constancy, as their aim the doing 
 of God's will, and so sometimes they do it, when it happens to 
 be easy, and sometimes, when temptations are strong, they do 
 not. It needs a strong hand on the tiller to keep it steady when 
 the wind is blowing in puffs and gusts, and sometimes the sail 
 bellies full and sometimes it is almost empty. The various 
 strengths of the temptations that blow us out of our course are 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, i. 351. 8 Annie Matheson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 269 
 
 such that we shall never keep a straight line of direction which 
 is the shortest line, and the only one on which we shall " obtain " 
 unless we know very distinctly where we want to go, and have 
 a good strong will that has learned to say "No!" when the 
 temptations come. 
 
 If It is not enough to have earned our livelihood. Either the 
 earning itself should have been serviceable to mankind, or some- 
 thing else must follow. To live is sometimes very difficult, but 
 it is never meritorious in itself ; and we must have a reason to 
 allege to our own conscience why we should continue to exist 
 upon this crowded earth. If Thoreau had simply dwelt in his 
 house at Walden, a lover of trees, birds, and fishes, and the open 
 air and virtue, a reader of wise books, an idle, selfish self- improver, 
 he would have managed to cheat Admetus, but, to cling to 
 metaphor, the devil would have had him in the end. Those who 
 can avoid toil altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of private 
 means, and even those who can, by abstinence, reduce the 
 necessary amount of it to some six weeks a year, having the 
 more liberty, have only the higher moral obligation to be up and 
 doing in the interest of man. 1 
 
 Doth life resemble clouds that come and go ? 
 Or fitful sparks that but a moment glow? 
 
 Not so ! 
 
 Man's life is vast and deeper than the sea, 
 His purpose giveth birth to destiny, 
 He moulds and carves his own futurity. 
 
 Is life a senseless weary wail of woe ? 
 
 A glittering bubble such as babes might blow? 
 
 Not so ! 
 
 Life's meaning is as lofty as the sky, 
 It stirs the heart to action pure and high, 
 It thrills the human breast with ecstasy. 
 
 Is life a noxious weed which whirlwinds sow ? 
 A useless flint o'er which the waters flow? 
 
 Not so ! 
 
 A life well spent has not its weight in gold, 
 It is jthe clearest crystal earth doth hold, 
 A gem beside which suns seem dull and cold. 2 
 
 1 R. L. Stevenson, Familiar Stttdies of Men and Books. 
 8 Gustav Spiller. 
 
270 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 II. 
 
 THE KEWARD. 
 
 Christianity is sometimes charged with being a long-sighted 
 worldliness. We are told that the enjoyment many Christians 
 expect is just as worldly as the enjoyments which they now reject. 
 The only difference between such Christians and worldly folk is 
 not in the character of the crowns they seek but in the season 
 when they wear them. The crowns are the same ; but the 
 worldly man wears his now, the Christian hopes to wear it here- 
 after. Now is that accusation entirely ill-founded? Are our 
 conceptions of the future weighted and coloured by the worldli- 
 ness which we have professed to reject ? How are our thoughts 
 of the future shaped? How do we talk about it? We some- 
 times speak of the unfairness with which things are distributed 
 in this life. Wealth seems to be showered upon the undeserving. 
 The deserving seem often to be kept in straits. From this we 
 argue that there must be a future life to make this fair. If there 
 be no future life, then the constitution of the world is mon- 
 strously unjust. Let us look at that. Let us assume that in 
 this world the good always became the rich, and the wicked 
 always became the poor; would the arrangement be perfectly 
 fitting and just? If goodness were always paid for by money 
 would you consider the traffic conducive to moral and spiritual 
 health? This worldly and materialistic conception of crowns 
 and rewards eats away the very strength and sweetness of our 
 religion. We are wanting material crowns as a reward for 
 saintliness, and they will not be given in this world or in the 
 world to come. God has other crowns more precious and incor- 
 ruptible, and He is lavish in the bestowal of them. 
 
 ^f The prize system has frequently been denounced as unworthy 
 and degrading, and there is a grain of truth in the charge. The 
 danger is that the child may work solely for the prize, and not 
 for the sake of knowledge. We have the same danger in the 
 religious sphere when rewards of any kind are promised. Certain 
 it is that rewards for well-doing are wrong and hurtful when 
 they are of such a nature as to evoke a greedy or mercenary 
 spirit, and it is equally certain that no man or woman should do 
 right simply for the sake of reward. The higher we go in the 
 sphere of rewards, the more spiritual they become, until they 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 271 
 
 cease altogether to be mercenary. The soldier values the Victoria 
 Cross far more than any pecuniary reward. The artist values 
 your, admiration more than the price you give for his pictures. 
 No amount of money, however great, can ever be an equivalent 
 of a brave deed or a great work of art. 1 
 
 ^[ If a religion were revealed to us to-morrow, proving, 
 scientifically and with absolute certainty, that every act of 
 goodness, of self-sacrifice, of heroism, of inward nobility would 
 bring us, immediately after our death, an indubitable and unim- 
 aginable reward, I doubt whether the proportion of good and evil, 
 of virtues and vices amid which we live would undergo an 
 appreciable change. Would you have a convincing example ? 
 In the middle ages there were moments when faith was absolute 
 and obtruded itself with a certainty that corresponds exactly 
 with our scientific certainties. The rewards promised for well- 
 doing, the punishments threatening evil were, in the thoughts of 
 the men of that time, as tangible, so to speak, as would be those 
 of the revelation of which I spoke above. Nevertheless, we do 
 not see that the average of goodness was raised. A few saints 
 sacrificed themselves for their brothers, carried certain virtues, 
 selected from among the more contestable, to the pitch of 
 heroism ; but the bulk of men continued to deceive one another, 
 to lie, to fornicate, to steal, to be guilty of envy, to commit 
 murder. The mean of the vices was no lower than that of to-day. 
 On the contrary, life was incomparably harsher, more cruel and 
 more unjust, because the low- water mark of the general intelligence 
 was less high. 2 
 
 TJ The feeble soul that may be lured to love and service by 
 the promise of reward is unworthy to be enrolled in the regiment 
 of Heaven. We needs must follow with assent the words in 
 which the Saint disclaims with poignant ardour all thought 
 of personal advantage, the desire of Heaven and the fear of Hell 
 being alike blotted out in the burning radiance of devotion: 
 " Thou drawest me, my God. . . . Thy death agony draws me ; 
 Thy love draws me, so that, should there be no Heaven, I would 
 love Thee. Were there no Hell, I would fear thee." 3 
 
 U The symbol of the Gospel is a cross ; but not a cross by 
 itself ; not a lone, bare, gaunt, naked cross. The symbol of the 
 Gospel is a crown ; but not a crown by itself ; not a proud, cold, 
 despotic, selfish, pitiless crown. The symbol of the Gospel is 
 
 1 David "Watson, In Life's School, 160. 
 
 2 Maurice Maeterlinck, Life and Flowers, 100. 
 
 8 Lady Dilke, The Book of the Spiritual Life, 167, 
 
2 7 2 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 a cross and a crown ; a cross lying in a crown ; a crown growing 
 around a cross; a cross haloed by a crown; a crown won by 
 a cross. 1 
 
 I sorrowed that the golden day was dead, 
 
 Its light no more the countryside adorning; 
 But whilst I grieved, behold! the East grew red 
 With morning. 
 
 I sighed that merry Spring was forced to go, 
 
 And doff the wreaths that did so well become her; 
 But whilst I murmured at her absence, lo ! 
 'Twas Summer. 
 
 I mourned because the daffodils were killed 
 
 By burning skies that scorched my early posies; 
 But whilst for these I pined, my hands were filled 
 With roses. 
 
 Half broken-hearted I bewailed the end 
 
 Of friendships than which none had once seemed nearer; 
 But whilst I wept I found a newer friend, 
 And dearer. 
 
 And thus I learned old pleasures are estranged 
 
 Only that something better may be given; 
 Until at last we find this earth exchanged 
 For Heaven. 2 
 
 1. The corruptible crown. Think of the corruptible crowns 
 which are to so many the objects of a fond ambition. How 
 many are seeking the tinselled crowns of gaiety, their daily 
 luxury being found in the thin enjoyment of the world ! How 
 corruptible is the crown! The first cold shower that falls 
 occasions its destruction. One of the most pitiful sights to be 
 seen is that of a gay and shallow woman plunged into some 
 sudden sorrow. She is like a butterfly in the rain. How many 
 others are seeking the crown of fame ! How many are possessed 
 with the burning desire to be recognized, to be esteemed, to be 
 influential, to be remembered. Yet how corruptible is the crown ! 
 Of how very few can it be said that their fame lasts as long as 
 their gravestones. When the clock strikes the last stroke of the 
 
 1 James I. Vance, Tendency, 207. 2 Ellen Thorney croft Fowler, 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 273 
 
 hour, there is a lingering and decreasing reverberation before 
 the sound quite dies out. That reverberation represents a man's 
 posthumous fame, the short lingering remembrance that follows 
 the final stroke of his life. If a man wins fame, he wins a 
 corruptible crown. Others seek the crown of wealth. All they 
 want is money. They measure their success by money. It is their 
 standard and their crown. Yet how corruptible ! " The wind 
 passeth over it, and it is gone." It is the prey of many foes. 
 The moth can destroy it. The rust can corrupt it. The thief 
 can steal it. These are types of the crowns admired by the 
 world, coveted by the world, sought by the world, and they are 
 all corruptible. If a man gains one he is regarded as having had 
 a successful career. 
 
 TJ The King [William IV.] ought not properly to have worn 
 the crown, never having been crowned ; but when he was in the 
 robing-room he said to Lord Hastings, "Lord Hastings, I wear 
 the crown; where is it?" It was brought to him, and when 
 Lord Hastings was going to put it on his head he said, " Nobody 
 shall put the crown on my head but myself." He put it on, and 
 then turned to Lord Grey and said, " Now, my Lord, the coronation 
 is over." George Villiers said that in his life he never saw such 
 a scene, and as he looked at the King upon the throne with the 
 crown loose upon his head, and the tall, grim figure of Lord Grey 
 close beside him, with the sword of state in his hand, it was as 
 if the King had got his executioner by his side, and the whole 
 picture looked strikingly typical of his and our future 
 destinies. 1 
 
 I saw a truant schoolboy chalk his name 
 Upon the Temple door; then with a shout 
 
 Eun off; that night a weary beggar came, 
 
 Leant there his ragged back and rubbed it out. 2 
 
 2. The incorruptible crown. The Christian's crown is else- 
 where spoken of as a crown of life, a crown of glory, and a crown 
 of righteousness. 
 
 (1) The incorruptible crown is a crown of life. If you want 
 a summary of Biblical teaching respecting virtue and its 
 crowns, you may find it in the Book of Kevelation "Be thou 
 faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." A 
 
 1 The Greville Memoirs, ii. 140. 2 Charles Murray, Hameivitli, 54. 
 
 I COR. 18 
 
274 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 crown of life ! Your physician examines your body, the healthy 
 workings of which have somehow or other become clogged with 
 disease. He finds out the obstruction, ascertains its character, 
 discovers its root. Then practically he says to the patient, 
 " Attend to my instructions, loyally follow my prescriptions, be 
 faithful to my word, and I will drive the disease out of your body 
 and give your body a crown of life." The reward of obedience 
 is health, fresh, vigorous health, a crown of life ! That is precisely 
 what the Lord says to us about our souls. He says to me, Be 
 thou faithful. Be loyal in My service. Be scrupulously obedient 
 to My will, and I will heal thee of all thy diseases. I will remove 
 all thy moral sicknesses and spiritual infirmities. I will give thee 
 moral and spiritual health, make thee every whit alive thou 
 shalt have a crown of life ! That is the reward of obedience and 
 faithfulness the incorruptible crown of life. The reward for 
 doing a good deed is that you have more life to do another. 
 That is the meaning of Christ's benediction upon the faithful 
 servant "Thou hast been faithful over a few things." His 
 faithfulness had crowned him with life. He had greater life for 
 doing greater service. At first he had only life enough for " few 
 things," but faithfulness had given him life enough for more. 
 "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee 
 ruler over many things." 
 
 Have you ever noticed closely that gracious list of beatitudes 
 which Jesus tells us are the special possession and reward of 
 the Christian life ? How august are the payments ! How incor- 
 ruptible the crowns ! Look at one or two. " Blessed are the 
 merciful." Why are they blessed ? What is their reward, their 
 crown? "They shall obtain mercy." Beautifully suited is the 
 crown to the virtue. God will give their hearts the same sweet 
 feast as they have given to the heart of their fellows. " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart." In what consists their blessedness? 
 What is their reward ? " They shall see God." How incor- 
 ruptible the crown! And how appropriate that purity should 
 be rewarded by visions, that they who have washed their eyes 
 clean and clear should be able to feast them upon the beauty and 
 glory of God! "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness." Whence comes their blessedness ? What is 
 their reward? "They shall be filled." Their spiritual hunger 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 275 
 
 shall meet with spiritual satisfaction. The hunger for life shall 
 receive the bread of life. The thirst for life shall receive the 
 water of life. 
 
 If I think I know many people who are already wearing the 
 crowns in their hearts. It seems to me that there are many people 
 from whom God has only to strip away their robes of flesh, and 
 they will stand before Him crowned ! I think you must know 
 such men and women, who have reached the west, and the 
 brightness of whose crowns shines through their attenuated flesh. 
 They wear the crown of humility, the crown of patience, the 
 crown of brotherly kindness, the crown of hope, the crown of 
 love. Do you think any one will be able to wear brighter crowns 
 than these in the Kingdom of God ? Do you think that in all 
 heaven there is a brighter crown than the crown of love ? It 
 is the crown worn by the great God Himself ! These are the 
 crowns we must seek, the incorruptible crowns. Let us seek 
 for such character as will be to us a worthy crown. Let us 
 become more spiritual. Let us inspect our purposes and 
 ambitions, and make it our one aim to be found at last in 
 Christ, in possession of the righteousness which is of God by 
 faith. Let us consecrate ourselves to one holy and supreme 
 ambition, to wake at last in the likeness of our God. 1 
 
 How many a Grecian }-outh of old, 
 
 Preparing for the Isthmian plain, 
 And driven by thirst of fame, was bold 
 
 For discipline that he might gain 
 An athlete's vigour well-controlled, 
 
 And win the olive crown through pain ! 
 
 But, when in time of wrinkled age 
 
 His earlier force had ebbed away, 
 And, closing now his pilgrimage, 
 
 He viewed the wreath's forlorn decay, 
 Then he at last grew wise to gauge 
 
 The fleeting worth of glory's day. 
 
 Therefore shall we give precious years 
 
 And sacred energies of soul 
 To win the world's resounding cheers 
 
 j\.nd triumph at its vaunted goal ? 
 Nay, such a guerdon calms no fears 
 
 When Doomsday's awful thunders roll ! 
 
 1 J. H. Jowett. 
 
276 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 But rather may the second sight 
 Of Faith disclose the prize unseen, 
 
 And urge us, led by its delight 
 To tame the sins, that intervene, 
 
 And fight with joy a nobler fight 
 For crowns of never-fading green ! l 
 
 (2) A crown of glory. It is a crown of glory, and that means 
 a lustrousness of character imparted by radiation and reflection 
 from the central light of the glory of God. "Then shall the 
 righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." 
 Our eyes are dim, but we can at least divine the far-off flashing 
 of that great light, and may ponder upon what hidden depths 
 and miracles of transformed perfectness and unimagined lustre 
 wait for us, dark and limited as we are here, in the assurance 
 that we all shall be changed into the " likeness of the body of 
 his glory." 
 
 The promise of an incorruptible crown is not only for this 
 life but also for the life to come. Here we have the promise of 
 life, that fuller life which men want, " the life of which our veins 
 are scant," even in the fullest tide and heyday of earthly existence. 
 But the promise sets that future over against the present, as if 
 then first should men know what it means to live : so buoyant, 
 elastic, unwearied shall be their energies, so manifold the new 
 outlets for activity, and the new inlets for the surrounding glory 
 and beauty ; so incorruptible and glorious shall be their new being. 
 Here we live a living death ; there we shall live indeed ; and that 
 will be the crown, not only in regard to physical, but also in regard 
 to spiritual, powers and consciousness. 
 
 But remember that all this full tide of life is Christ's gift. 
 There is no such thing as natural immortality ; there is no such 
 thing as independent life. All Being, from the lowest creature 
 up to the loftiest created spirit, exists by one law, the continual 
 impartation to it of life from the fountain of life, according to 
 its capacities. And unless Jesus Christ, all through the eternal 
 ages of the future, imparted to the happy souls that sit garlanded 
 at His board the life by which they live, the wreaths would 
 wither on their brows, and the brows would melt away, and dis- 
 solve from beneath the wreaths. " I will give him a crown of life." 
 
 1 G. T. S. Farquhar. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 277 
 
 If There is a pathetic and beautiful story related of Jenny 
 Lind Madame Goldschmidt. Her innate religious feeling caused 
 her to leave the stage at the height of her extraordinary triumph. 
 Some time after, an English friend found her at a seaside retreat. 
 The famous artiste was "sitting on the steps of a bathing- 
 machine, on the sands, with a Lutheran Bible open on her knee, 
 and looking out into the glory of a sunset that was shining over 
 the waters." The friends talked " and the talk drew near to the 
 inevitable question, { Oh, Madame Goldschmidt, how was it that 
 you ever came to abandon the stage at the very height of $our 
 success ? ' ' When, every day,' was the quiet answer, ' it made 
 me think less of this (laying a finger on the Bible), and nothing 
 at all of that (pointing out to the sunset), what could I do ? ' " l 
 
 (3) A crown of righteousness. It is a crown of righteousness. 
 Though that phrase may mean the wreath that rewards righteous- 
 ness, it seems more in accordance with the other similar expres- 
 sions to regard it, too, as the material of which the crown is 
 composed. It is not enough that there should be festal gladness, 
 not enough that there should be calm repose, not enough that 
 there should be flashing glory, not enough that there should be 
 fulness of life. To accord with the intense moral earnestness of 
 the Christian system there must be, emphatically, in the Christian 
 hope, cessation of all sin and investiture with all purity. The 
 word means the same thing as the ancient promise, " Thy people 
 shall be all righteous." It means the same thing as the latest 
 promise of the ascended Christ, "They shall walk with me in 
 white." And it sets the very climax and culmination on the 
 other hopes, declaring that absolute, stainless, infallible righteous- 
 ness which one day shall belong to our weak and sinful spirits. 
 
 ^[ I love Dinah next to my own children. An' she makes 
 one feel safer when she's i' the house ; for she's like the driven 
 snow : anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow. 2 
 
 ^[ Since the beginning of history thoughtful men have been 
 asking what is man's summum bonum, his highest good, his 
 heart's true ideal. " Power," " wealth," " pleasure," " wisdom," 
 " culture," are some of the answers. The true answer is " God." 
 "I have no good beyond Thee," said one who had learned the 
 secret. " Lord, give me Thyself," was Augustine's constant 
 prayer ; and he adds the exquisite reason, " Habet omnia qui kabet 
 hdbentem omnia" "he has all who has Him that has all." 
 
 1 W. J. Lacey, Masters of To-morrow, 210. 2 Mrs. Poyser, in Adam Bede. 
 
278 FOR THE CROWN 
 
 Slowly or suddenly we rise from delight in God's gifts to delight 
 in Himself. " Unless," says Hooker, " the last good, which is 
 desired for itself, be infinite, we do evil making it our end. No 
 good is infinite but God ; therefore He is our felicity and bliss." 
 Every soul has capacities greater than the infinite sea, and only 
 He who filleth heaven and earth, whom the heaven of heavens 
 cannot contain, can satisfy one little human heart. 1 
 
 ^Mysterious Death ! who in a single hour 
 Life's gold can so refine; 
 And by thy art divine 
 Change mortal weakness to immortal power ! 
 
 Bending beneath the weight of eighty years, 
 
 Spent with the noble strife 
 
 Of a victorious life, 
 We watched her fading heavenward, through our tears. 
 
 But, ere the sense of loss our hearts had wrung, 
 
 A miracle was wrought, 
 
 And swift as happy thought 
 She lived again, brave, beautiful, and young. 
 
 Age, Pain, and Sorrow dropped the veils they wore, 
 
 And showed the tender eyes 
 
 Of angels in disguise, 
 Whose discipline so patiently she bore. 
 
 The past years brought their harvest rich and fair, 
 
 While Memory and Love 
 
 Together fondly wove 
 A golden garland for the silver hair. 
 
 How could we mourn like those who are bereft, 
 
 When every pang of grief 
 
 Found balm for its relief 
 In counting up the treasure she had left ? 
 
 Faith that withstood the shocks of toil and time, 
 
 Hope that defied despair, 
 
 Patience that conquered care, 
 And loyalty whose courage was sublime; 
 
 1 J. Strachan. Hebrew Ideals, i. 75. 
 
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 279 
 
 The great deep heart that was a home for all, 
 
 Just, eloquent and strong, 
 
 In protest against wrong; 
 Wide charity that knew no sin, no fall; 
 
 The Spartan spirit that made life so grand, 
 
 Mating poor daily needs 
 
 With high, heroic deeds, 
 That wrested happiness from Fate's hard hand. 
 
 We thought to weep, but sing for joy instead, 
 
 Full of the grateful peace 
 
 That followed her release; 
 For nothing but the weary dust lies dead. 
 
 Oh, noble woman ! never more a queen 
 
 Than in the laying down 
 
 Of sceptre and of crown, 
 To win a greater kingdom yet unseen, 
 
 Teaching us how to seek the highest goal, 
 
 To earn the true success; 
 
 To live, to love, to bless, 
 And make death proud to take a royal soul. 1 
 
 1 Louisa May Alcott. 
 
TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Temptation and Toil, 91. 
 
 Banks (L. A.), The Great Promises of the Bible, 112. 
 
 Boyd (A. K. H.), Counsel and Comfort from, a City Pulpit, 251. 
 
 Brooke (S. A.), Short Sermons, 269. 
 
 Gaulfield (S. F. A.), The Prisoners of Hope, i. 76. 
 
 Guckson (J.), Faith and Fellowship, 283. 
 
 Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 41. 
 
 Faithful (R. C.), My Place in the World, 157. 
 
 Farrar (F. W.), Tlie Silence and the Voices of God, 101. 
 
 Fraser (J.), Parochial Sermons, 167. 
 
 Button (J. A.), The Fear of Things, 81. 
 
 Jones (J. D.) } Eliim of Life, 92. 
 
 Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., iii. 93, v. 234. 
 
 Lushington (F. de W.), Sermons to Young Boys, 22. 
 
 Mantle (J. G.), God's To-morrow, 67. 
 
 Moinet (C.) 5 The Great Alternative, 105. 
 
 Mursell (W. A.), The Waggon and the Star, 49. 
 
 Robinson (W. V.), Sunbeams for Sundays, 49. 
 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1. (1904) No. 2912. 
 
 Stalker (J.), in The World's Great Sermons, ix. 167. 
 
 Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit) ix. (1872) No. 749. 
 
 Christian World Pulpit, xlviii. 142 (Wickham) ; Ixix. 298 (Dale) ; 
 
 li. 217 (Gore). 
 Churchman's Pulpit : Ninth Sunday after Trinity : xi. 129 (Field), 134 
 
 (Boyd), 137 (Rice), 140 (Cotton). 
 Clergyman's Magazine, vii. 25 (Griffith); XT. 18 (Rogers); New Ser., 
 
 vi. 95 (Proctor). 
 Methodist Times, June 2, 1910, p. 6 (Hutton). 
 
 282 
 
TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT, 
 
 God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are 
 able ; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye 
 may be able to endure it. I Cor. x. 13. 
 
 1. THE reason for our confidence that every temptation can be 
 overcome is that God is faithful. " God is faithful," says the 
 Apostle, " who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye 
 are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of 
 escape, that ye may be able to endure it." Notice, the Apostle 
 does not give as his reason for confidence that man is strong, but 
 that God is faithful. Men who have faced temptation confiding 
 only in their own strength have come to grief. It is the men 
 who, distrustful of self, have leaned upon God who have come 
 off more than conquerors. 
 
 2. Should we be disposed at any time to doubt this, we may 
 reassure ourselves by remembering how God's faithfulness is 
 guaranteed. 
 
 (1) God cannot be true to His purpose of grace and yet 
 allow us to be overcome by the sheer weight and pressure of evil 
 without a possibility of escape. For what is the purpose which 
 we see revealed in the gift of Christ? It is that we may be 
 saved from sin ; and salvation from sin implies that we shall be 
 strengthened against the temptations by which it seeks to pre- 
 vail. God is faithful to His purpose, and His purpose is to save 
 and keep all those who put their trust in Him. He never 
 departs from this. He has it always before Him. It is the end 
 to which He makes everything subordinate. He is never off 
 His guard, never asleep, never too busily engaged to attend to 
 the wants of the very least of His children. Sin can lurk no- 
 where without being detected by His all-seeing eye. It can 
 
 283 
 
284 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 devise no stratagem without being clearly visible to Him. Still 
 less can it strike down or fatally wound any who look to Him 
 for help. 
 
 (2) But not only would it be inconsistent with His purpose 
 of grace were God to suffer overwhelming evil to assail us, 
 it would also place Him in contradiction to Himself. His 
 nature is to love goodness supremely, and He has pledged Him- 
 self by the gift of His Son to leave nothing undone to give it the 
 victory. But if He were to stand aside, and see us beaten down 
 by sin without interposing ; if He were to allow temptations to 
 muster in irresistible force; this would not only defeat His 
 manifested purpose, but destroy His character for holiness. The 
 very fact that God is good, that He loves and cherishes with a 
 compassionate eye every movement of a human soul to purity 
 and truth, involves His doing everything that wisdom, and 
 power, and pity can do to make us triumphant over sin. 
 
 ^ When man thus considers the wealth and the marvellous 
 sublimity of the Divine nature, and all the manifold gifts which 
 He grants and offers to His creatures, amazement is stirred up 
 in his spirit at the sight of so manifold a wealth and majesty ; 
 at the sight of the immense faithfulness of God to all His creatures. 
 This causes a strange joy of spirit, and a boundless trust in God, 
 and this inward joy surrounds and penetrates all the forces of the 
 souls in the secret places of the spirit. 1 
 
 ^[ A beautiful instance is recorded in the life of Catherine of 
 Siena. The plague was abroad, and Father Matthew, the Director 
 of the Hospital, caught the infection while ministering to a dying 
 person. The next day he was carried like a corpse, livid and 
 strengthless, from the chapel to his room. The physician said 
 that every symptom announced the approach of death. But 
 Catherine loved him sincerely, and when she heard of his illness 
 she went to his room and cried with a cheerful voice, " Get up, 
 Father Matthew ! Get up ! " As she left the house, another friend 
 Eaymond of Capua was entering, and said to her, " Will you 
 allow a person so dear to us, and so useful to others, to die ? I 
 know your secrets, and I know that you obtain from God whatsoever 
 you ask in faith" She bowed her head, and, after a few moments, 
 looked him in the face with her countenance radiant with joy, 
 and said, " Well, let us take courage ; he will not die this time." 
 The good Father immediately recovered, and sat down to a light 
 meal with his friends, chatting and laughing gaily with them. 
 1 M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, HO. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 285 
 
 Catherine believed in the promise, " The prayer of faith shall save 
 the sick." She was bold in appealing to the truthfulness of the 
 Divine Healer, and she was not disappointed. " Know therefore 
 that the Lord thy God, he is God ; the faithful God, which keepeth 
 covenant and mercy with them that love him" (Deut. vii. 9). 
 We very seldom put the veracity of God to the test. But the 
 more we venture on Him and on His gracious words, the stronger 
 and clearer is our faith bound to become. 1 
 
 If 1 sometimes think that in the case of those who are not 
 tried by sharp outward temptations to break God's commandments, 
 the trial may come in inward temptations to distrust His grace. 
 It would be a bad business for us if we were not tried in some 
 way. 2 
 
 Tf There are two possible ways of looking upon trial. The 
 first is that God is angry with the sufferer and is taking His 
 revenge. It is a view old as the fears and the morbidness of man. 
 The friends of Job are its champions in every generation. It 
 seems so obvious to those who hold it that few of them give any 
 pains to think it out to its issues, or realize how small a God 
 this of theirs must be. Those who seriously believe in God at 
 all will have little difficulty in passing to the second way of 
 looking upon trial, and if their faith is worthy of the name, it 
 will be quite as obvious as the former. Once seen it can never 
 again be doubted, though it may sometimes require a strong 
 effort to realize and hold by it. When we hear that certain troops 
 have been sent into the most dangerous and trying post on the 
 battlefield, how do we judge of them ? Is it that their general 
 has wished to punish them, or is it not rather that he believed 
 in them best of all? And is not such confidence an honour 
 greater than all other praise ? To look at life under that light 
 is to be done with fears and doubts. And along with that we 
 take the further assurance that God sends no man into any battle 
 that he may fall. None of all His troops are ever sacrificed to 
 the exigencies of the field. 3 
 
 And this shalt thou know most surely, God breaketh His faith 
 
 with none. 
 Teach thy thoughts ne'er from Him to wander, since Himself 
 
 and His ways are One." 
 
 3. " God. is faithful," says St. Paul, and proceeds to point 
 
 1 J. A. Clapperton, Culture of the Christian Heart, 52. 
 8 The Life of E. W. Dale of Birmingham, 544. 
 * J. Kelman, Honour towards God, 52. 
 
286 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 out to the Corinthians the ways in which God's faithfulness is 
 shown towards them in the matter of their temptations. He tells 
 them (1) that God permits the temptation, suffers them to be 
 tempted ; (2) that He proportions the temptation to their strength 
 of resistance, not suffering them to be tempted above that they 
 are able; (3) that He provides the way of escape from every 
 temptation. So we have 
 
 I. The Control of Temptation. 
 II. The Adjustment of Temptation. 
 III. The Escape from Temptation. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE CONTROL OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 The term " proof," " temptation," comprehends all that puts 
 moral fidelity to the proof, whether this proof has for its end to 
 manifest and strengthen the fidelity it is in this sense that God 
 can tempt, or whether it seeks to make man fall into sin it 
 is in this sense that God cannot tempt, and that the devil always 
 tempts. It may also happen that the same fact falls at once into 
 these two categories, as, for example, the temptation of Job, which 
 on the part of Satan had for its end to make him fall, and which 
 God, on the contrary, permitted with the view of bringing out 
 into clear manifestation the fidelity of His servant, and of raising 
 him to a higher degree of holiness and of knowledge. There are 
 even cases in which God permits Satan to tempt, not without 
 consenting to his attaining his end of bringing into sin. So in 
 the case of David. This is when the pride of man has reached 
 a point such that it is a greater obstacle to salvation than the 
 commission of a sin ; God then makes use of a fall to break this 
 proud heart by the humbling experience of its weakness. 1 
 
 TJ When Jehovah asked the question : " Hast thou considered 
 my servant Job, that there is none like him in all the earth ? " 
 Satan said, " Hast thou not put a hedge about him, and about his 
 house, and about all that he hath on every side ? " I am very 
 thankful for Satan's own confession of the security of this servant 
 of God. " The hedge was so high," says one of the old Puritans, 
 " that the big demons could not get over it, and so thick that the 
 little demons could not get through it." 2 
 
 1 F. Godet, Commentary on Corinthians, ii. 70. 2 J. G. Mantle. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 287 
 
 1. Since God controls the temptation, and is testing us by it, 
 we ought to bear it faithfully, believing in His faithfulness. We 
 know God's faithfulness to us only when we are honestly faithful 
 to ourselves. He is no paternal despot who will make us good 
 by force ; and no more shameful cry than that petulant demand 
 exists. He preserves our independence ; it is dear to Him ; He 
 will compel us to work out our own salvation with resolute 
 labour, and in this more than in all else His faithfulness to us is 
 shown. That fidelity is often stern enough, it inflicts our due 
 penalties, it proves to us the weaknesses of our nature by the 
 trials in which they break down, it reveals what is strong in us 
 by testing it sometimes to the last strand of the rope, and we 
 quiver under the severity of the test ; but what is the worth of 
 our manliness, and what the use of a long experience, unless we 
 are sufficiently strong of heart to realize that faithfulness is often 
 sternness, and love sometimes apparently cruel ? 
 
 ^f We shall all be tempted, but the effects of the temptation 
 depend upon ourselves. Fling into the same flame a lump of 
 clay and a piece of gold, the clay will be hardened, the gold will 
 melt; the heart of Pharaoh hardened into perfidious insolence, 
 the soul of David melted into pathetic song. Bear temptation 
 faithfully, and it will leave you not only unscathed, but nobler. 1 
 
 Beauteous things of earth ! 
 
 1 cannot feel your worth 
 
 To-day. 
 
 kind and constant friend ! 
 Our spirits cannot blend 
 To-day. 
 
 Lord of truth and grace 1 
 
 1 cannot see Thy face 
 
 To-day. 
 
 A shadow on my heart 
 Keeps me from all apart 
 To-day. 
 
 Yet something in me knows 
 How fair creation glows 
 To-day. 
 
 1 F. W. Farrar, The Silence and the Voices of God, 112. 
 
288 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 And something makes me sure 
 That love is not less pure 
 To-day. 
 
 And that th' Eternal Good 
 Minds nothing of my mood 
 To-day. 
 
 For when the sun grows dark 
 A sacred, secret spark 
 Shoots rays. 
 
 Fed from a hidden bowl 
 A Lamp burns in my soul 
 All days. 1 
 
 2. We must trust Him in the darkness of our temptation. 
 He is faithful ; but to us in our blindness, ignorance, waywardness, 
 He does not always seem so. To the strong man when he sits, 
 despairing and stricken, amid the ruins of his life, to the father 
 whose erring son causes him agony and shame to these the sun 
 shines not, and the stars give no light, the heavens above their 
 heads are iron, and the earth beneath their feet is brass. Yet, 
 how gently He heals even for these the wounds which His own 
 loving hand has made ; how do the clouds break over them and 
 the pale silver gleam of resignation brighten into the burning 
 ray of faith and love. For our path in life is like that of the 
 traveller who lands at the famous port of the Holy Land. He 
 rides at first under the shade of palms, under the golden orange- 
 groves, beside the crowded fountains with almonds and pome- 
 granates breaking around him into blossom. Soon he leaves 
 behind him these lovely groves ; he enters on the bare and open 
 plain; the sun burns over him, the dust-clouds whirl around 
 him ; but even there the path is broidered by the quiet wayside 
 flowers, and when at last the bleak bare hills succeed, his heart 
 bounds within him, for he knows that he shall catch his first 
 glimpse of the Holy City, as he stands weary on their brow. 
 
 There came a cloud; it fell in shining showers. 
 
 Lo ! from the earth sprang troops of radiant flowers. 
 
 1 Charles G. Ames. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 289 
 
 Grief o'er a joyous heart its shadow threw. 
 Lo I in the darkness love's sweet graces grew. 
 
 The golden sun dropped sudden out of sight. 
 Lo ! silver stars made glorious the night. 
 
 Death came. The soul, affrighted at its guise, 
 Was led protesting into Paradise. 
 
 3. Because God is faithful, He sends temptation to drive us to 
 Himself. There is no escape from His love ; no escape from the 
 restlessness He will excite in our hearts till we find rest in Him. 
 A thought will rise in our minds, we know not whence, a dim 
 emotion kindle there which will seem to have no cause ; they are 
 the inspirations of God. In early times we have heard, as 
 Samuel heard, His voice, and, unlike Samuel, we have forgotten. 
 In after years, in issuing into life, we have met Him, in our first 
 loneliness, as the infinite Inspirer. He has kindled in our hearts 
 a fire of duty and hope and aspiration ; but we have lost the 
 music of that vision in the din of business and the clangour of 
 the world. But He will not lose us ; we forget, but not He. 
 Again He comes to make our life shake in the tempest. If 
 tenderness will not touch us, perhaps this stern education will. 
 Therefore, there comes keen testing "thrilling anguish," the 
 death of earthly hopes, the hours in which life seems a dreadful 
 dream out of which we cannot wake. For only so can some be 
 awakened to feel that they are not their own, but God's ; that the 
 invisible is the real, and the visible unreal ; that this world is, to 
 us, children of immortality, no more than one flash of the shuttle 
 through the loom, in comparison with the eternal world in which 
 we are at one with Him. 
 
 ^[ Many men are distressing themselves, when they think of 
 their trials, by imagining that they must have done something 
 wrong, or God never could have sent such afflictions to them 
 personally or to their household. That is a mistake. There are 
 trials that are simply tests, not punishments ; trials of faith and 
 patience, not rods sent to scourge men because they have been 
 doing some particular evil thing. God's people are tried. " Whom 
 the Lord loveth he chasteneth." The honour is not in the trial, 
 it is in the spirit in which the trial is borne. 1 
 
 1 J, Parker, 
 I COR. 19 
 
2 9 o TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 4. It is an awful thought, this unremitting faithfulness of 
 God, for it means, if we resist Him, stern, unrelenting work upon 
 us. It is in vain that we say to Him, " Let us alone, torment us 
 not." He never takes offence; He has none of the jealousy of 
 vanity ; He is never unkind, though His strokes are hard ; never 
 wanting in swift reciprocation of the faintest utterance of love, 
 the faintest cry for forgiveness; always ready to listen with 
 tenderness, though wise enough not always to grant our prayer ; 
 always reasonable, always just, so that He can make excuse, can 
 weigh the force of trial on our character, can understand the 
 force of the circumstances which betrayed us into guilt. He 
 knows all, and there is infinite comfort in that. 
 
 Tf You may assure your soul, when you are marching forward 
 into the darkness of some valley of the shadow of death, that 
 God would never have sent you to face that trial unless He had 
 known that you could master it. Life is often difficult: it is 
 never impossible for the man that has to live it. If the trial be 
 very sore, if it shake your strength and strain your patience 
 almost to the breaking-point, if the agony of conflict surprise you, 
 then that only shows that you are stronger than you took your- 
 self to be. Had you been unfit for it, this post of danger would 
 never have been assigned to you. Your God has gauged your 
 powers of resistance with exact knowledge, and the duty He 
 shall set you will always be well within the limits of these 
 powers. 1 
 
 5. In the face of such faithfulness, we dare not do less than our 
 best. It is a shame to sink wilfully below that which we know we 
 ought to be. There are those who talk of their weakness, their 
 yielding nature, as if it were something beautiful to be feeble ; as 
 if there were some poetical quality in giving way to that which 
 they choose to call Fate ; as if ideals were given them in order 
 that they might sigh sentimentally over their unattainability, and 
 not in order that they may pursue them with a resolute will. 
 This is the infidelity of life far worse than all else, when it is 
 worst turned into the ghost of an artistic dream and made the 
 ground of vanity. Feebleness is never beautiful, and to choose 
 feebleness as the rule of life is disgraceful in man or woman, 
 however we may deck it with fine fancies. The real beauty of 
 life is in health of mind, strength of will, vigour of purpose. 
 
 1 J. Kelraan, Honour tmvards God, 53. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 291 
 
 The real poetry of life is in the noble effort which does not rest 
 till it has accomplished its end ; in the undying pursuit of that 
 which we know to be best; in the battle for right; in the 
 resolution and the power to live above the standard of the world ; 
 in the ravishment which is born of seeing truth, love, justice, 
 purity, as they are seen by God ; and in unresting, yet unhasting 
 endeavour to become at one with them. 
 
 ^f Led by God's Spirit to the battle-ground, there is no assault 
 in which any man is doomed to be defeated, and there is no 
 temptation which it is impossible for a man to overcome. The 
 conditions of life that tempt us are but the challenges that incite 
 a man to assert his mastery. The lusts of the body, the pride of 
 life, the meaner parts of human nature that offer a morbid 
 pleasantness, all that they can do at their worst is to give him 
 the choice whether he shall respect himself or bow his neck. 
 Let him remember that God has trusted him for this conflict 
 also, trusted him to assert his best manhood, and to show its 
 mastery. Let him remember that he is upon his honour, and that 
 God counts on him to keep his honour bright as his sword. 1 
 
 Was the trial sore ? 
 
 Temptation sharp ? Thank God a second time ! 
 Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
 And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
 And so be pedestaled in triumph ? Pray 
 "Lead us into no such temptations, Lord!" 
 Yea, but, Thou whose servants are the bold, 
 Lead such temptations by the head and hair, 
 Eeluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 
 That so he may do battle and have praise. 2 
 
 II. 
 
 THE ADJUSTMENT OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 We are to believe that whatever our trial or temptation may 
 be, however heavy, however formidable, it will, at least, never 
 come in a light, random way to us. It is all measured before, 
 and it is in strict order and proportion to something. He who 
 made our body and our mind, and who knows exactly our 
 every sensitive fibre, and the capacity of each what each can 
 and cannot endure has fitted everything accurately to our 
 
 1 J. Kelman, Honour tmvards God, 57. * Browning, 
 
292 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 constitution, to our circumstances, to our body, to our mind ; and 
 this sense of adaptation or proportion will of itself be an immense 
 strength to us. It gives such dignity to affliction, and establishes 
 at once a limit beyond which it can no more go than the sea can 
 pass high - water mark. The mere knowing that there is a 
 boundary line perfectly defined, though we do not see it, will give 
 us courage to bear all that falls within that line. It will come to 
 pass thus. It will sometimes happen to us to feel in our suffering 
 " If this trial were to go one inch further, I could not bear it ; 
 it would crush me." But it will never go that inch. We shall 
 not be crushed. 
 
 U The words "beyond what ye are able come as a surprise. Has 
 man then some power ? And, if the matter in question is what 
 man can do with the Divine help, is not the power of this help 
 without limit ? But it must not be forgotten that, if the power of 
 God is infinite, the receptivity of the believer is limited : limited 
 by the measure of spiritual development which he has reached, by 
 the degree of his love for holiness and of his zeal in prayer, etc. 
 God knows this measure, St. Paul means to say, and He proportions 
 the intensity of the temptation to the degree of power which the 
 believer is capable of receiving from Him, as the mechanician, if 
 we may be allowed such a comparison, proportions the heat of the 
 furnace to the resisting power of the boiler. 1 
 
 1. There are two factors in every temptation, the sinful heart 
 within, the evil world without, and they stand to one another 
 much in the relation of the powder-magazine and the lighted 
 match. Temptation originates in the heart, says St. James, and 
 that is absolutely true. The heart is the powder-magazine. But 
 for the lusts raging there, the allurements of the world would be 
 absolutely powerless for harm. Temptation comes from the sin- 
 ful world, says St. Paul; that is also true. The world is the 
 lighted match; but for the allurements and incitements of the 
 world, the sinful desires of the heart would never be called into 
 play. It is when the match is applied to the powder-magazine 
 that danger arises. So the power of the temptation may vary 
 and the power of resistance may vary. 
 
 2. There is no greater mystery of providence than the 
 unequal proportions in which temptation is distributed. Some 
 
 1 F. Godet, 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 293 
 
 are tempted comparatively little; others are thrown into a 
 fiery furnace of it seven times heated. There are in the world 
 sheltered situations in which a man may be compared to a ship in 
 the harbour, where the waves may sometimes heave a little, but 
 a real storm never com.es ; there are other men like the vessel 
 which has to sail the high seas and face the full force of the 
 tempest. 
 
 (1) That whicli is a temptation at one period of life may be 
 no temptation at all at another. To a child there may be an 
 irresistible temptation in a sweetmeat which a man would never 
 think of touching; and some of the temptations which are now 
 the most painful to us will in time be as completely outlived. 
 
 (2) One of the chief powers of temptation is the power of 
 surprise. It comes when we are not looking for it ; it comes from 
 the person and from the quarter we least suspect. The day dawns 
 which is to be the decisive one in our life ; but it looks like any 
 other day. No bell rings in the sky to give warning that the 
 hour of destiny has come. But the good angel that watches over 
 us is waiting and trembling. The fiery moment arrives ; do we 
 stand ; do we fall ? 
 
 (3) Every man has his own trials ; and every condition and 
 circumstance of life its own peculiar temptations. Solitude has 
 its temptations as well as society. St. Anthony, before his 
 conversion, was a gay and fast young man of Alexandria ; and, 
 when he was converted, he found the temptations of the city so 
 intolerable that he fled into the Egyptian desert and became a 
 hermit; but he afterwards confessed that the temptations of a 
 cell in the wilderness were worse than those of the city. It 
 would not be safe to exchange our temptations for those of 
 another man ; every one has his own. 
 
 If In speaking of Knox's Rambles, and the effects of association 
 with men in sharpening the intellect, you remark that this seems 
 inconsistent with the fact that great spirits have been nursed in 
 solitude. Yes, but not the ploughman's solitude. Moses was 
 forty years in Midian, but he had the education of Egypt before, 
 and habits of thought and observation begun, as shown in his 
 spirit of inquiry with regard to the burning forest. Usually, I 
 suppose, the spark has been struck by some superior mind, either 
 in conversation or through reading. Ferguson was, perhaps, an 
 exception. Then, again, stirring times set such master-rninds to 
 
294 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 work even in this solitude, as in Cromwell's case. I remember, 
 too, a line of Goethe's, in which he says : 
 
 Talent forms itself in solitude, 
 Character in the storms of life. 
 
 Bat I believe both your positions are true. The soul collects 
 its mightiest forces by being thrown in upon itself, and coerced 
 solitude often matures the mental and moral character marvel- 
 lously, as in Luther's confinement in the Wartburg. Or, to take a 
 loftier example, Paul during his three years in Arabia ; or, grander 
 still, His solitude in the desert : the Baptist's too. But, on the 
 other hand, solitude unbroken from earliest infancy, or with 
 nothing to sharpen the mind, either by collison with other minds, 
 or the expectation of some new sphere of action shortly, would, I 
 suppose, rust the mental energies. Still there is the spirit to be 
 disciplined, humbled, and strengthened, and it may gain in pro- 
 portion as the mind is losing its sharpening education. 1 
 
 TJ Trench, in his poem " The Monk and Bird," shows that the 
 very blessedness of the consecrated life may become a temptation. 
 
 Even thus he lived, with little joy or pain 
 
 Drawn through the channels by which men receive 
 
 Most men receive the things which for the main 
 Make them rejoice or grieve. 
 
 But for delight, on spiritual gladness fed, 
 And obvious to temptations of like kind; 
 
 One such, from out his very gladness bred, 
 It was his lot to find. 
 
 When first it came, he lightly put it by, 
 
 But it returned again to him ere long, 
 And ever having got some new ally, 
 
 And every time more strong 
 
 A little worm that gnawed the life away 
 
 Of a tall plant, the canker of its root, 
 Or like as when from some small speck decay 
 
 Spreads o'er a beauteous fruit. 
 
 For still the doubt came back, Can God provide 
 For the large heart of man what shall not pall, 
 
 Nor through eternal ages' endless tide 
 On tired spirits fall ? 
 
 1 F. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 222. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 295 
 
 Here but one look tow'rd heaven will oft repress 
 The crushing weight of undelightful care; 
 
 But what were there beyond, if weariness 
 Should ever enter there? 
 
 Yet do not sweetest things here soonest cloy? 
 
 Satiety the life of joy would kill, 
 If sweet with bitter, pleasure with annoy 
 
 Were not attempered still. 
 
 This mood endured, till every act of love, 
 
 Vigils of praise and prayer, and midnight choir, 
 
 All shadows of the service done above, 
 And which, while his desire, 
 
 And while his hope was heavenward, he had loved, 
 As helps to disengage him from the chain 
 
 That fastens unto earth all these now proved 
 Most burdensome and vain. 1 
 
 3. The severity and the variety of man's temptations, together 
 with the persistently lofty and urgent appeals addressed to him, 
 are a supreme tribute to the grandeur of his moral nature. In 
 a race the severity of the handicap is an indication of the capacity 
 of the runner. A great deal is expected from a man who can 
 give another a hundred yards' start. The runners are not all of 
 equal calibre, and they are not handicapped above that they are 
 able. Can we not see here what God is doing ? Can we not see 
 how He is dealing with us, according to this Pauline statement ? 
 So far from making things too difficult, He is trying to make 
 them easier ; He is tempering the strife to each man's strength ; 
 He does not want us to lose, but to win ; not to fail, but to over- 
 come. That is not harshness, it is kindness ; that is not undue 
 severity, it is magnanimity, it is compassion, it is fair-play. Let 
 us not allow ourselves to curse our circumstances, or to arraign 
 God and His plans and His world, as if they were all in special 
 conspiracy against us. The fact is that most of us are in con- 
 spiracy against ourselves perhaps without knowing it. We 
 have groaned about our difficulties, instead of accepting them 
 and using them as stepping-stones to success. We have kicked 
 against our limitations, instead of allowing them to develop our 
 resources. We have resented our hardships and our handicaps, 
 
 1 Trench, Poems, 13. 
 
296 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 instead of making them contribute to our manhood. We have 
 sat and gloomed at our temptations and roundly cursed our fate, 
 but we have never considered the ways of escape. Thus we 
 have been at once unfair to God and have courted failure for 
 ourselves. 
 
 If You all know the story about the Black Prince at the battle 
 of Crecy, how his father refused to send help to him when he 
 was hard pressed. It would have been easy for the king to keep 
 the prince out of reach of danger; but no, the father said to 
 those who came appealing for help, " Let the boy win his spurs, 
 and let the day be his." 1 
 
 III. 
 
 THE ESCAPE FROM TEMPTATION. 
 
 1. God will "with the temptation make also the way of 
 escape." Sometimes we want to see the way of escape before 
 the temptation, but the way of escape comes with the temptation, 
 not before it. 
 
 It may have happened to us, in some of our visits to the 
 grandest scenes of nature, to be wending our way along a lake 
 or river where mountains are before us, so close and so encom- 
 passing that they appear not only to bar our own progress, but 
 to leave not the smallest outlet for our little boat. But, as 
 we neared these vast barriers which edged us in, we gradually 
 descried an opening between the hills which, as we went on, 
 grew clearer and clearer, and wider and wider, till, safely and 
 smoothly, our little bark floated on by a channel just made for 
 us from within apparently impenetrable masses, to other regions 
 which now range before us in their loveliness. So when the 
 hindrances are the thickest, and the difficulties the most insur- 
 mountable, we feel that our faithful God, who made these fast- 
 nesses for this very end, will Himself provide the issue, and 
 with the temptation make also the way of escape, that we may 
 be able to endure it. 
 
 2. God is said here to make the temptation as well as the 
 way of escape. Nor is this without a purpose. He knows 
 precisely the strength we need, because He has prepared the 
 
 1 F. de W. Lusliington, Sermons to Young Boys, 24. 
 

 i CORINTHIANS x. 13 297 
 
 occasion on which we shall be called to use it. It will never 
 fail through any miscalculation or ignorance on His part. It 
 will never be too feeble or too long upon the way. We may 
 always be sure His succour will be at hand, a very present help 
 in every time of trouble. Even in those moments in which our 
 temptation comes upon us most suddenly, so that it may seem 
 to have taken even God Himself by surprise, His way of escape 
 will be close beside us. For the swiftest and most unforeseen 
 of temptations are all equally under His control. 
 
 ^[ I leave you to call this deceiving spirit what you like or 
 to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to recog- 
 nize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being 
 fought with. If you take the Bible's account of it, or Dante's, 
 or Milton's, you will receive the image of it as a mighty spiritual 
 creature, commanding others, and resisted by others : if you take 
 ^Eschylus's or Hesiod's account of it, you will hold it for a 
 partly elementary and unconscious adversity of fate, and partly 
 for a gijpup of monstrous spiritual agencies connected with 
 death, and begotten out of the dust; if you take a modern 
 rationalist's, you will accept it for a mere treachery and want 
 of vitality in our own moral nature exposing it to loathsomeness 
 or moral disease, as the body is capable of mortification or leprosy. 
 I do not care what you call it, whose history you believe of it, 
 nor what you yourself can imagine about it; the origin, or 
 nature, or name may be as you will, but the deadly reality of the 
 thing is with us, and warring against us ; and on our true war 
 with it depends whatever life we can win. Deadly reality, I 
 say. The puff-adder or horned asp is not more real. Unbeliev- 
 able, those, unless you had seen them; no fable could have 
 been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within its own 
 poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent working its 
 way sidelong in the sand. As real, but with sting of eternal 
 death this worm that dies not, and fire that is not quenched, 
 within our souls or around them. Eternal death, I say sure, 
 that, whatever creed you hold ; if the old Scriptural one, Death 
 of perpetual banishment from before God's face ; if the modern 
 rationalist one, Death Eternal for us, instant and unredeemable 
 ending of lives wasted in misery. 
 
 This is what this unquestionably present this, according to 
 his power, oram-present fiend, brings us towards, daily. He is 
 the person to be " voted " against, my working friend ; it is worth 
 something, having a vote against him, if you can get it ! Which 
 you can, indeed; but not by gift from Cabinet Ministers; you 
 
298 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 must work warily with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's 
 blood, before you can record that vote effectually. 1 
 
 3. The way of escape must be sought for, or it may not be 
 found. It is not always forcibly obtruded. It reveals itself to 
 the humble and watchful eye the eye that has become single, 
 and waits only upon God. And if we are tempted, and can see 
 no mode of relief, then we must search for it. Gradually it will 
 open and widen before us. 
 
 4. How is it that God makes the way of escape ? Notice that 
 it is not a way, but the way of escape ; the one separate escape 
 for each separate temptation. 
 
 (1) Sometimes the only victory over a temptation is not to 
 argue with it, not even to wrestle with it, but simply to get away 
 from it. " Brethren, let us not be righteous over-much ! " St. 
 Paul, indeed, uses no grandiloquent speech as to what a man 
 should do when he finds himself beset by temptations. # He does 
 not in this place recommend a man to draw his sword, and plant 
 his right foot forward, and clench his teeth, and do many another 
 strenuous and showy thing which looks so well in a picture and 
 sounds so well when addressed to a great audience, but which is 
 all, as a matter of fact, futile in those hot, and terrible, and lonely 
 hours when we are sorely tempted to do wrong. No ; St. Paul 
 tells us here that when we are tempted, the first and only thing 
 to do is to get away from the spot, to run in fact for our life. 
 This is one of those simple and obvious things which never occur 
 to any of us until a genius arises to say them when you are hard 
 pressed by evil, move on, get away, escape. That may sound 
 tame. It may sound less than the highest; but it is the very 
 highest. Nay, it is the only truth and fact of the matter. There 
 are situations in life, dark turnings in the moral world, sheer 
 precipices where we must not trust ourselves, where the only 
 sensible and religious course is to get away. 
 
 If In passing through the " Inferno," Dante's spiritual guide 
 would not allow him to stand still for a moment. 
 
 J" What ! " a wayward youth might perhaps answer, incredu- 
 y ; "no one ever gets wiser by doing wrong ? Shall I not 
 know the world best by trying the wrong of it, and repenting ? 
 
 1 Ruskin, Time and Tide ( Works, xvii. 365). 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 299 
 
 Have I not, even as it is, learned much by many of my errors ? " 
 Indeed, the effort by which partially you recovered yourself was 
 precious ; that part of your thought by which you discerned the 
 error was precious. What wisdom and strength you kept, and 
 rightly used, are rewarded ; and in the pain and the repentance, 
 and in the acquaintance with the aspects of folly and sin, you 
 have learned something] how much less than you would have 
 learned in right paths can never be told, but that it is less is 
 certain. Your liberty of choice has simply destroyed for you so 
 much life and strength, never regainable. It is true you now 
 know the habits of swine, and the taste of husks : do you think 
 your father could not have taught you to know better habits and 
 pleasanter tastes, if you had stayed in his house ; and that the 
 knowledge you have lost would not have been more, as well as 
 sweeter, than that you have gained ? l 
 
 (2) The way of escape may be very near the entrance gate. 
 It often is. And the victory may be won by watchfulness over the 
 thoughts. As is the fountain, so will be the stream. Quench the 
 spark, and you are safe from the conflagration. Crush the 
 serpent's egg, and you need not dread the cockatrice. Conquer 
 evil thoughts, and you will have little danger of evil words and 
 evil ways. The victory over every temptation is easiest, is safest, 
 is most blessed there. 
 
 If Wasps' nests are destroyed when the wasps are only grubs 
 like caterpillars, and before they have learned to fly. You get 
 a squib, like those they fire off on the fifth of November, and light 
 the end and put it into the hole in the ground where the nest is, 
 and cover it over with a turf. And then all the grubs in the 
 nest are suffocated by the smoke. If you wait till the grubs have 
 wings and have learned to fly, then a ton of dynamite will be of 
 little use; for the wasps will be buzzing all round your ears, 
 and stinging you, and then flying away. 2 
 
 (3) Sometimes prayer is the only way of escape. Sometimes 
 the doors are all shut upon human sympathy and understanding, 
 but there is always a way of escape towards God. " I have been 
 driven many times to my knees," said Abraham Lincoln, " by the 
 overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." 
 
 Tf Thera is a picture by one of our great artists of a young 
 knight on the verge of a dark wood through which he has to pass. 
 That wood contains all manner of lurking perils and stealthy 
 
 1 Ruskin, Queen of the Air ( Wvrks, xix. 409). a W. V. Robinson. 
 
300 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 enemies, and before entering it the young knight has taken off 
 his helmet, and is pouring out his soul in prayer. And the 
 legend at the foot of the picture is this: "Into thy hands, O. 
 Lord." We too stand, like that young knight, face to face with 
 all manner of dangers and perils ; fierce and deadly temptations 
 of many a kind will assail us as we make our way through the 
 mystic wood. What better can we do than commit ourselves 
 into the keeping of the same gracious and mighty God ? " Into 
 thy hands we commit ourselves." l 
 
 ^| I was in the Puzzle Garden one day at Hampton Court 
 (there they call it a maze), and after getting to the centre, I had 
 the greatest difficulty in getting out. But in the centre of that 
 garden there is, not a summer house, but a raised platform. 
 And a man stands on it, and he can see every one in the maze. 
 Soon I heard him calling to me : " Turn to the left, sir," " To 
 the left again," " Now to the right," until I got out. Life is like 
 a puzzle garden sometimes. We do not know which way to 
 turn, whether to go forward, or to turn to this side or to that ; 
 but if we look up to God in prayer, He will show us the way, 
 and bring our souls out of trouble. We shall hear a voice behind 
 us saying, " This is the way, walk ye in it." 2 
 
 Tf A young lieutenant who had seen one campaign alone, and 
 without any of the means and appliances of such war as I had 
 been apprenticed to I was about to take command, in the midst 
 of a battle, not only of one force whose courage I had never tried, 
 but of another which I had never seen ; and to engage a third, 
 of which the numbers were uncertain, with the knowledge that 
 defeat would immeasurably extend the rebellion which I had 
 undertaken to suppress, and embarrass the Government which I 
 had volunteered to serve. Yet, in that great extreme, I doubted 
 only for a moment one of those long moments to which some 
 angel seems to hold a microscope and show millions of things 
 within it. It came and went between the stirrup and the saddle. 
 It brought with it difficulties, dangers, responsibilities, and 
 possible consequences terrible to face; but it left none behind. 
 I knew that I was fighting for the right. I asked God to help 
 me to do my duty, and I rode on, certain that He would do it. 3 
 
 (4) There is the way of submission and resistance. It is all 
 summed up in that word of St. James : " Submit yourselves 
 therefore unto God, but resist the devil." That is the way of 
 submission and resistance, and it is the secret of victory in the 
 
 1 J. D. Jones. 2 W. V. Robinson. 
 
 * Edwardes, A Year on the Punjab Frontier, ii. 318 (Ruskin's Works, xxxi. 495). 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 13 301 
 
 hour of fierce temptation. "Submit yourselves to God." Let 
 us yield our nature absolutely and unreservedly to Him. Make 
 an unconditional surrender. Then trust Him to come in the 
 Person of His Spirit, and garrison every part of that yielded 
 being, and undertake the battle for us. Then, when the enemy 
 comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a 
 standard against him. As the flood rushes onwards carrying 
 everything before it, so the tempter comes upon men, if per- 
 chance he may find them unprepared and sweep them off their 
 feet. What happens to the man who is submitted to God? 
 The Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against the enemy. 
 An ungrieved Spirit will always mean victory in the hour of 
 temptation. First submit, and then resist. Trust Him to under- 
 take the conflict and then resist. 
 
 Tf In an old Continental town they will show you a prison 
 in a tower, and on all the stones of that prison within reach, 
 one word is carved it is "Resist." Your guide will tell you 
 that years ago a godly woman was for forty years immured in 
 that dungeon, and she spent her time in cutting with a piece of 
 iron on every stone that one word, for the strengthening of her 
 own heart and for the benefit of all who might come after her, 
 " Eesist ! " " Resist ! " " Resist ! " l 
 
 I hoped that with the brave and strong, 
 
 My portioned task might lie; 
 To toil amid the busy throng, 
 
 With purpose pure and high; 
 
 But God has fixed another part, 
 
 And He has fixed it well ; 
 I said so with my bleeding heart, 
 
 When first the anguish fell. 
 
 Thou, God, hast taken our delight, 
 
 Our treasured hope away; 
 Thou bidst us now weep through the night 
 
 And sorrow through the day. 
 
 These weary hours will not be lost, 
 
 These days of misery, 
 These nights of darkness, anguish-tossed,- 
 
 Can I but turn to Thee: 
 
 i J. G. Mantle, 
 
302 TRUST IN GOD AND DO THE RIGHT 
 
 With secret labour to sustain 
 
 In humble patience every blow, 
 
 To gather fortitude from pain, 
 
 And hope and holiness from woe. 
 
 Thus let me serve Thee from my heart, 
 Whate'er may be my written fate: 
 
 Whether thus early to depart, 
 Or yet a while to wait. 
 
 If Thou shouldst bring me back to life, 
 
 More humbled I should be, 
 More wise, more strengthened for the strife, 
 
 More apt to lean on Thee: 
 
 Should death be standing at the gate, 
 
 Thus should I keep my vow: 
 But, Lord! whatever be my fate, 
 
 let me serve Thee now 
 
 1 Anne Bronte. 
 
MAN'S CHIEF END. 
 
 303 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 38. 
 
 Barry (A.), Westminster Abbey Sermons, 91. 
 
 Brooks (P.), The More Abundant Life, 68. 
 
 Byles (J.), The Boy and the Angel, 123. 
 
 Clayton (C.), Stanhope Sermons, 382. 
 
 Dale (R. W.), Weekday Sermons, 218, 260. 
 
 Ewing (J. F.), The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 359. 
 
 Girdlestone (A. G.), The Way, the Truth, the Life, No. 10. 
 
 Goulburn (E. M.), Personal Religion, 116, 254. 
 
 Greenhough (J. G.), in Eden and Gethsemane, 115. 
 
 Hall (C. C.), The Gospel of Divine Sacrifice, 293. 
 
 Hocking (W. J.), in Religion in Common Life, 150. 
 
 Jowett (B.), College Sermons, 225. 
 
 Kingsley (C.), Village, Town and Country Sermons, 155. 
 
 Little (W. J. Knox), Characteristics and Motives, 197. 
 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 164. 
 
 Macniillan (H.), The Gate Beautiful, 246. 
 
 Meyer (F. B.), The Soul's Pure Intention, 155. 
 
 Miller (J. E,.), A Help for the Common Days, 50. 
 
 Morgan (G. H.), Modern Knights-Errant, 114. 
 
 Murray (W. H. H.), in American Pulpit of the Day, ii. 613. 
 
 Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, viii. 154. 
 
 Reid (H. M. B.), Books that Help the Religious Life, 41. 
 
 Sandford (C. W.), Counsel to English Churchmen Abroad, 260. 
 
 Souper (W.), Concerning Character and Conduct, 9. 
 
 Vaughan (C. J.), Family Prayer and Sermon Book, ii. 277. 
 
 Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character^ i. 99. 
 
 Webb-Peploe (H. W.), Calls to Holiness, 115. 
 
 Westcott (B. F.), Christian Aspects of Life, 224. 
 
 The Incarnation and Common Life, 125. 
 
 Whittuck (C.), Learning and Working, 88. 
 Wilson (J. M.), Truths New and Old, 306, 316, 325. 
 Cambridge Review, viii. Supplement No. 196 (Worlledge). 
 Christian World Pulpit, ii. 218 (Abercrombie) ; xii. 161 (Jones); xx. 11 
 
 (Beecher), 257 (Barry) ; xli. 185 (Pearson) ; xliv. 124 (Morgan) ; 
 
 1. 353 (Horton) ; Ixxiii. 171 (Burton) ; Ixxix. 236 (Farr). 
 
 304 
 
MAN'S CHIEF END. 
 
 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 
 glory of God. i Cor. x. 31. 
 
 THIS verse, with the passage immediately preceding, illustrates 
 St. Paul's constant habit of solving questions as to conduct by 
 the largest principles. He did not keep his theology and his 
 ethics in separate watertight compartments, having no com- 
 munication with each other. The greatest truths were used to 
 regulate the smallest duties. Like the star that guided the Magi, 
 they burned high in the heavens, but yet directed to the house 
 in Bethlehem. 
 
 The Corinthians were in a practical difficulty. Social life 
 had been upheaved by the action of Christianity. Like the 
 shuddering of the sunny, peaceful plains of Campania from the 
 fierce shock of the insurgent fires of Vesuvius, the whole social 
 fabric, wherever Christ's hand had touched it, was in a state of 
 convulsive trembling ; and the convulsion was felt in the agonies 
 of its rebound alike in the deepest and in the most trivial things 
 of life. The ordinary gentleman of the day, in Corinth, was no 
 longer able to associate himself with his everyday acquaintances 
 in the pleasures or the business of social life, without the rebuk- 
 ing face of the new religion gazing at him in serious warning. 
 He could not, as we should say, " dine out " with his friend with- 
 out being at once confronted by a practical difficulty. The old 
 idol-worship had interpenetrated the social life of Corinth ; and 
 when Christians came to accept the invitation of their friends 
 
 to an ordinary social entertainment, they were placed in a serious 
 dilemma, as they would either appear to sanction by their presence 
 a service of idols and an insult to God, or else would be forced 
 to cut themselves off from the commonest demands of the society 
 of the time. Now, certainly St. Paul in his usual manner touches 
 
 I COR. 2O 
 
306 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 specific dangers with specific remedies ; but at the same time he 
 never limits himself to such a method. Invariably, whatever be 
 the difficulty he has to deal with, he goes beyond the exact line 
 of the particular question and its corresponding remedy, and 
 sketches out a serviceable and yet a comprehensive canon of 
 conduct. Thus, feeling that what is a desirable principle for 
 all converts, when they have seceded from heathenism to the 
 Christian Church, is some guidance for those at Corinth how to 
 comport themselves properly in their social entertainments, 
 instead of going into all the wearisome intricacies of the difficulty 
 although he does touch them also when necessary he lays 
 down the comprehensive rule of the text. 
 
 The principle of this text is "Do all to the glory of God." 
 Following out (i) this great principle of conduct, we get (ii) a 
 test of action ; (iii) a Christian ideal in everyday life ; (iv) a 
 transfiguration of drudgery and common toil. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE. 
 " Do all to the glory of God." 
 
 1. St. Paul's words are an expression of a fundamental truth 
 of religion, the truth, namely, that while the living God is the 
 source and efficient cause of all things, so also He is their final 
 end. It follows that God (though He gives lavishly to man gifts 
 of help, and comfort, and blessing) is Himself, and not anything 
 He gives, man's final and only satisfaction; and therefore, that 
 the end He had in view in His creation, and has in view in His 
 government, of the world, is not at all that He Himself may 
 receive from any external being or thing a support which is never 
 needed by that majestic self-sufficing life, but that He may have 
 about Him numberless sons, like Himself in goodness and beauty, 
 and finally fitted to be partakers of His own glory. Now if this 
 truth, as to the final object of life, and therefore the final cause 
 o God's action in Christ Jesus, and government of the world, 
 underlay the Apostle's thought, what must be the result? 
 Surely nothing else but the statement of the text. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 307 
 
 ^[ " Do all to the glory of God," that is, in a higher manner, 
 in a nobler spirit. Instead of the busy, ever-recurring image of 
 self, which is always like " a forward child " chattering within us, 
 let the thought of God be present with us, like the sea, silent and 
 unfathomable, like the light and air, living and infinite, yet also 
 communicated by Him to us. Let us do all to the glory of 
 God not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but, as the servants 
 of God, from the heart. When we bring ourselves into that 
 Presence, the temptations of sense flee away ; when we lay our 
 doubts and difficulties before Him, in the brightness of that light 
 they are dispersed. It is by communion with Him, who is the 
 essence of Righteousness and Truth and Love, that we are 
 enabled to rise above ourselves. This is what the Scripture calls 
 "living to His glory." The vision of God in His glory (not 
 merely as in a picture, surrounded by angels, but in the higher 
 form of mind or thought) is sometimes seen at a distance from 
 the heights of philosophy, and sometimes has a dwelling-place 
 in the humble soul. If we attempted to describe it, we should fall 
 into unreality, for we see " through a glass " only. Let us 
 think sometimes of the best moments of our lives, when we have 
 been most resigned to the will of God, when we have risen most 
 above the opinions of men, when we have been most free from 
 the temptations of sense, when we have desired to look into the 
 truth, and seen it so far as our earthly state allowed. In this 
 way we may form an idea of what the Apostle meant by living 
 to God's glory, of what Christ meant when He said, The kingdom 
 of God is within you. 1 
 
 2. Now Christianity is not a sum of isolated observances. It 
 is the hallowing of all human interests and occupations alike. 
 Worship is a very small fragment of devotion. The Christian 
 does not offer to God part of his life or of his endowments in 
 order that he may be at liberty to use the rest according to his 
 own caprice. All life, all endowments, are equally owed to our 
 Lord, and equally claimed by Him. Every human office in every 
 part is holy. Our conduct our whole conduct is a continuous 
 revelation of what we are. At each moment we are springs of 
 influence. Virtue goes out of us also or weakness. Our silence 
 speaks. We who profess to be Christians must from day to day 
 either confirm or disparage our Creed. Our faith our want of 
 faith must "show itself. It is finally the soul that acts. The 
 body is but its instrument. 
 
 1 B. Jowett. 
 
3 o8 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 If The sense of being God's minister gives to any life that 
 noble pride which is our birthright, and which we ought carefully 
 to cherish. Do we not see on a lower level how fond people are 
 of linking their name and calling with royalty ? " Purveyor to 
 His Majesty." We sometimes wonder how these petty hucksters 
 came to possess this sounding title. No doubt the distinction 
 often rests on a slender charter; a mere gossamer thread binds 
 the obscure counter to the throne ; yet the privilege is sedulously 
 guarded, and throws a coveted lustre upon the village shop. But 
 how truly grand to relate all life to God, even in its lowliest 
 phases ! Nothing is then common or unclean. Everything is 
 on the altar ; all is sacramental. Every service is as royal as 
 the golden crowns cast on the jasper pavement. This gives to the 
 ordinary life infinite honour and content. 1 
 
 Teach me, my God and King, 
 In all things Thee to see; 
 And what I do in any thing, 
 To do it as for Thee. 
 
 Not rudely, as a beast, 
 To runne into an action; 
 But still to make Thee prepossest, 
 And give it his perfection. 
 
 A man that looks on glasse, 
 On it may stay his eye; 
 Or if he pleaseth, through it passe, 
 And then the heav'n espie. 
 
 All may of Thee partake; 
 Nothing can be so mean, 
 Which with his tincture "for Thy sake" 
 Will not grow bright and clean. 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 Makes drudgery divine: 
 Who sweeps the room as for Thy laws 
 Makes that and th' action fine. 
 
 This is the famous stone 
 That turneth all to gold, 
 For that which God doth touch and own 
 Cannot for lesse be told. 2 
 
 1 W. L. Watkinson. 2 George Herbert. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 309 
 
 II. 
 
 A TEST OF ACTION. 
 
 It is surprising how difficult the duties of men sometimes 
 become, when opposite rules are set against one another, or 
 when they have to be reconciled with differences of character. 
 It is surprising how simple they grow when they are considered 
 by the light of great principles ; when, dismissing tradition and 
 custom and the opinions of men, we are able simply to ask: 
 " What is the will of God ? " If you can say that there is no 
 will of God about this trifling ceremony, about this small dispute 
 (for God does not interfere in such matters, but only in the 
 greater things of righteousness and temperance and truth), the 
 question is already answered : " An highway shall be there, 
 and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the 
 unclean shall not pass over it ; the wayfaring man shall not err 
 therein." 
 
 If People are perpetually squabbling about what will be best 
 to do, or easiest to do, or advisablest to do, or profitablest to 
 do ; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask what it 
 is just to do. And it is the law of heaven that you shall not be 
 able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved 
 to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing con- 
 stantly reiterated by our Master the order of all others that is 
 given oftenest " Do justice and judgment." That's your Bible 
 order ; that's the Service of God, not praying nor psalm- 
 singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are 
 merry, and to pray when you need anything; and, by the per- 
 verseness of the evil Spirit in us, we get to think that praying 
 and psalm-singing are " service." If a child finds itself in want 
 of anything, it runs in and asks its father for it does it call 
 that doing its father a service ? If it begs for a toy or a piece 
 of cake does it call that serving its father? That, with God, 
 is prayer, and He likes to hear it ; He likes you to ask Him for 
 cake when you want it ; but He doesn't call that " serving Him." 
 Begging is not serving : God likes mere beggars as little as you 
 do He likes honest servants, not beggars. So when a child 
 loves its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little 
 songs about him; but it doesn't call that serving its father; 
 neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is enjoying 
 ourselves, if it's anything, most probably it is nothing; 'but if 
 
310 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 it's anything it is serving ourselves, not God. And yet we are 
 impudent enough to call our beggings and chauntings "Divine 
 service " : we say, " Divine service will be ' performed ' " (that's 
 our word the form of it gone through) "at so-and-so o'clock." 
 Alas ! unless we perform Divine service in every willing act oi 
 life, we never perform it at all. The one Divine work the one 
 ordered sacrifice is to do justice ; and it is the last we are ever 
 inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As much charity 
 as you choose, but no justice. " Nay," you will say, " charity is 
 greater than justice." Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of 
 justice it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But 
 you can't have the top without the bottom; you cannot build 
 upon charity. You must build upon justice, for this main reason, 
 that you have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the last 
 reward of good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do 
 that whether you love him or not), and you will come to love 
 him. But do injustice to him, because you don't love him ; and 
 you will come to hate him. 1 
 
 ^[ There is a little organism called volvox, which, in its con- 
 struction, habits of life, and mode of reproduction, stands on 
 the border-line between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. I 
 suppose ever since it has been known, this little creature so 
 small that it can scarcely be seen with the unaided eye has 
 been bandied about between the two kingdoms. Why ? Because 
 scientists have applied different tests. One has noted its posses- 
 sion of green colouring matter, and has therefore claimed it for 
 the vegetable kingdom, while another, noting its mode of repro- 
 duction to be similar to that of some lower forms of animal life, 
 has therefore claimed it for the animal kingdom. Like the 
 volvox, many actions have been bandied about. Some claim 
 that they belong to the kingdom of darkness, others that they 
 belong to the Kingdom of God. Ought I to smoke, ought I to 
 go to the theatre, ought I to drink intoxicating liquors, ought I 
 to read my newspaper on Sunday? Ought I to cycle, tram or 
 train on Sunday? Ought I to make my man or maid servant 
 work on Sunday? Ought I to enter the public ballroom, or 
 ought I to dance at all ? Ought I to accept bribes in business ? 
 Bring the action to this test. Let this bright light shine upon 
 it. Can I do this to the glory of God ? In other words, I am 
 a follower of Christ, who summed up His lifework in the sentence, 
 " I have glorified thee on the earth." 2 
 
 Tf Charles Marriott's unfailing good nature but in fact it 
 
 1 Ruskin, The Grown of Wild Olive ( Works, xviii. 419). 
 
 2 G. Hay Morgan. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 311 
 
 was his inveterate Christian consideration really knew no 
 bounds. Overwhelmed (as he always was) with alt manner of 
 work, he never denied himself to any one who saw fit to call on 
 him, or wanted anything of him. "I see you are too busy. I 
 will not disturb you," once exclaimed Edward King, (afterwards 
 Bishop of Lincoln, who was at that time an undergraduate of 
 Oriel "a royal fellow," as C. M. used to call him) and was 
 proceeding to leave the room. " That depends " (quietly rejoined 
 Marriott) " on the relative importance of what I am doing and 
 what you have come to me about." The reply aptly expresses what 
 the speaker seems always to have felt namely, that the twelve 
 hours of every day had to be spent in God's service, and that he 
 was not a competent judge beforehand of how God might be most 
 acceptably served. He therefore always held himself in readi- 
 ness to meet any demand which might by any one be made upon 
 him for a measure of his time, or for a share of his attention. 1 
 
 III. 
 
 A CHRISTIAN IDEAL IN EVERYDAY LIFE. 
 
 Eeligion recognizes no bisecting into sacred and secular. 
 " Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all 
 to the glory of God." It is just as much a part of Christian duty 
 to do one's weekday work well as it is to pray well. " I must be 
 about my Father's business," said Jesus in the dawn of youth; 
 and what do we find Him doing after this recognition of His duty ? 
 Not preaching or teaching, but taking up the common duties of 
 common life and putting all His soul into them. He found the 
 Father's business in His earthly home, in being a dutiful child, 
 subject to His parents, in being a diligent pupil in the village 
 school, and later in being a conscientious carpenter. He did not 
 find religion too spiritual, too transcendental, for weekdays. His 
 devotion to God did not take Him out of His natural human 
 relationships into any realm of mere sentiment : it only made 
 Him all the more loyal to the duties of His place in life. We 
 ought to learn the lesson. Keligion is intensely practical. Only 
 so far as it dominates one's life is it real. We must get the 
 commandments down from the Sinaitic glory amid which they 
 were first graven on stone by the finger of God and give them a 
 
 1 J. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, i. 339. 
 
3 i2 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 place in the hard, dusty paths of earthly toil and struggle. We 
 must get them off the tables of stone and have them written on 
 the walls of our own hearts. We must bring the Golden Rule 
 down from its bright setting in the teaching of our Lord and get 
 it wrought into our daily, actual life. 
 
 If The Law of God concerning man is, that if he acts as God's 
 servant he shall be rewarded with such pleasure as no heart can 
 conceive nor tongue tell. 1 
 
 If Jenny Lind once said to John Addington Symonds, " I sing 
 to God." Coming as it did from the heart, it was a fine 
 expression. The famous cantatrice was deeply devout, and these 
 words expressed the secret of her soul. She had a vivid sense of 
 God, a boundless joy in Him, and her music was the spontaneous 
 acknowledgment of His presence and beauty. Why should we 
 not do all the work of life in the same spirit ? " I sing for God " ; 
 " I plough for God " ; "I write for God " ; " I build for God " ; " I 
 weave for God " ; "I buy and sell for God." All that Jenny Lind 
 sang was not strictly sacred, it was often, no doubt, secular and 
 trivial; but she had ever a commanding sense of the heavenly 
 presence, and sang to the God whose gladness filled her heart. 
 So whatever our task may be we may serve Him day and night 
 in His presence. 2 
 
 Dismiss me not Thy service, Lord, 
 
 But train me for Thy will; 
 For even I in fields so broad 
 
 Some duties may fulfil; 
 And I will ask for no reward, 
 
 Except to serve Thee still. 
 
 How many serve, how many more 
 
 May to the service come ; 
 To tend the vines, the grapes to store, 
 
 Thou dost appoint for some: 
 Thou hast Thy young men at the war, 
 
 Thy little ones at home. 
 
 All works are good, and each is best 
 
 As most it pleases Thee; 
 Each worker pleases when the rest 
 
 He serves in charity: 
 And neither man nor work unblest 
 
 Wilt Thou permit to be. 
 
 1 Ruskin, in Cook's Life of Ruskin, ii. 329. 2 W. L. Watldnson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 313 
 
 ye who serve, remember One 
 
 The worker's way who trod; 
 He served as man, but now His throne, 
 
 It is the throne of God ; 
 The sceptre He hath to us shown 
 
 Is like a blossoming rod. 
 
 Firm fibres of the tree of life 
 
 Hath each command of His, 
 And each with clustering blossoms rife 
 
 At every season is; 
 Bare only, like a sword of strife, 
 
 Against love's enemies. 
 
 Our Master all the work hath done 
 
 He asks of us to-day; 
 Sharing His service, every one 
 
 Share too His sonship may. 
 Lord, I would serve and be a son; 
 
 Dismiss me not, I pray. 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 A TRANSFIGUKATION OF DRUDGERY AND COMMON TOIL. 
 
 1. The life of nearly every man has great spaces that are 
 flat and uninteresting. The predominant colour is grey. Incident 
 is rare, monotony is continuous. The same things have been 
 done day by day, and a child's entry in a diary would report the 
 life of many of our days, " Nothing special to-day." But, really, 
 life is not monotonous. It is we who are monotonous. Life is 
 full of a hidden beauty, a hidden glory indeed, of a hidden 
 God. We may look through its tiniest part, if it is well done 
 and done in sincerity, and see the vision of the golden heavens, 
 and catch suggestions of the face of Jesus. Even the most limited 
 sphere will give us room for the discipline of our character into 
 the beauty of heaven. And the least conspicuous life may 
 perform ministries which are near relatives to the service of the 
 very angels. It is the dropping of God out of life that makes 
 life uninteresting ; it is the neglect of His presence that shadows 
 our days. Let Him be there, let His face shine upon us, and 
 
 1 T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet. 
 
314 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 the most trivial act is invested with an awful glory, and every 
 bit of life is enhanced and transfigured with its power. The way 
 to find blessedness is to find God ; and He is to be found in every 
 ordinary thing in our daily round. We always find Him when 
 we try to do everything for His glory. " For Thy sake ! " This 
 is life's deepest inspiration, and this its highest power. This 
 touches us when all other motives are weak. This changes 
 drudgery into Divinity. But to be fruitful it must be always held 
 before the mind, and always kept in the heart. Day by day our 
 lowliest duty must be lifted to this great height; so will the 
 great God stoop to our lowliness, and our dustiest and most 
 commonplace way be radiant with His infinite glory. 
 
 Tf It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's 
 endeavour springs in some degree from dulness. We require 
 higher tasks because we do not recognise the height of those we 
 have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple 
 and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we 
 had rather set ourselves something bold, arduous, and conclusive ; 
 we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a 
 hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to 
 co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, 
 and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting 
 of the Gordian knots of life ; each must be smilingly unravelled. 1 
 
 Tf Brownlow North has told us that it was about eleven months 
 after his awakening at Dallas, when he strongly felt it to be his 
 duty to do some service for the Lord. For two months before 
 this he had shut himself up in his own room, reading the Bible 
 and praying. He then said to himself that he must do something 
 for God, but felt that he could not. The thought suggested itself 
 to his mind that he might at least distribute tracts, but he felt 
 that to do so would make himself ridiculous, and that people 
 would laugh at him and call him mad. At last he resolved to 
 try, and putting a number of tracts into his pocket, he went into 
 the most secluded part of Elgin, in which he was living. The 
 first person he met with was an old woman, who amazed him by 
 accepting his tract without laughing at him. To another old 
 woman whom he saw coming down the road he presented another 
 tract, and she received it with thanks. The third he gave to a 
 policeman, who said, " Thank you, Mr. North." He recorded 
 it as his experience after fourteen years' trial, that only on one 
 occasion was a tract refused, and that was by a professed infidel, 
 
 1 B. L. Stevenson, A Christmas Sermon, 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 315 
 
 and yet he had systematically given away tracts to persons of 
 all ranks, in all sorts of places. Very few Christians can be 
 preachers like Brownlow North, but there are none who cannot 
 be tract distributors. 1 
 
 TJ This is what Brother Lawrence once told me, writes his 
 friend and biographer : " For me, the time of action does not 
 differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of 
 my kitchen, while several persons are together calling for as 
 many different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as 
 when upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament. 
 
 " Nor is it needful," says Brother Lawrence himself in his 
 Conversations, " that we should have great things to do." I am 
 giving you the picture of a lay-brother serving in a kitchen ; let 
 me then use his own words : " We can do little things for God ; 
 I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him, and 
 that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself 
 in worship before Him, who has given me grace to work ; after- 
 wards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick 
 up but a straw from the ground for the love of God. 
 
 " We search for stated ways and methods of learning how to 
 love God, and, to come at that love, we disquiet our minds by 
 I know not how many devices ; we give ourselves a world of 
 trouble and pursue a multitude of practices to attain to a sense of 
 the Presence of God. And yet it is so simple. How very much 
 shorter it is, and easier to do our common business purely for the 
 love of God, to set His consecrating mark on all we lay our hands 
 to, and thereby to foster the sense of His abiding Presence by 
 communion of our heart with His ! There is no need either of 
 art or science; just as we are, we can go to Him, simply and 
 with single heart." 
 
 Only a little shrivelled seed, 
 It might be flower, or grass, or weed; 
 Only a box of earth on the edge 
 Of a narrow, dusty, window-ledge; 
 Only a few scant summer showers; 
 Only a few clear shining hours; 
 That was all. Yet God could make 
 Out of these, for a sick child's sake, 
 A blossom-wonder, as fair and sweet 
 As ever broke at an angel's feet. 
 
 Only a life of barren pain, 
 
 Wet with sorrowful tears for rain, 
 
 1 K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 50. 
 
316 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam 
 Of joy, that seemed but a happy dream; 
 A life as common and brown and bare 
 As the box of earth in the window there ; 
 Yet it bore, at last, the precious bloom 
 Of a perfect soul in that narrow room; 
 Pure as the snowy leaves that fold 
 Over the flower's heart of gold. 1 
 
 2. All that God wants of any one is faithfulness. Not 
 brilliance, not success, not notoriety which attracts newspaper 
 notice, but the quiet, regular, and careful performance of trivial 
 and common duties, as beneath " the great Taskmaster's eye." 
 To be faithful in that which is least will win as rich a reward 
 as faithfulness in the greatest. Indeed, it is harder to be faithful 
 over a very little than over much. The opportunity, therefore, 
 of winning the highest reward in the future world is given not 
 only to those who are called to occupy the high places of the 
 field, where every brilliant act is chronicled by admiring pens, 
 but to those who dig out the foundations, who do duty in the 
 trenches, and who are buried in common graves, without magni- 
 ficent obsequies or glowing epitaphs. Of many it will be said 
 at last : "They had their reward" in the blowing of the trumpet of 
 earthly fame and the murmured applause of many voices ; the turn 
 of those to whom no one said "Thank you" will then have arrived. 
 
 TJ Have you not seen the way in which men construct arches ? 
 A number of beams, wooden uprights, and cross-pieces are con- 
 structed into the form of the arch which is to be. The structure 
 looks very confused and flimsy, it is difficult to trace the design, 
 and one spark of flame would consume the whole ; but upon its 
 span the bricks and stones are deposited which will last for genera- 
 tions. So upon the mean structure of daily drudgery, which excites 
 no enthusiasm, which strains the muscles and wearies the nerves, is 
 being built up a character which will be " a thing of beauty and a 
 joy for ever " when the heavens have passed away " as a scroll." 2 
 
 We cannot kindle when we will 
 The fire which in the heart resides; 
 
 The spirit bloweth and is still 
 In mystery our soul abides. 
 
 But tasks in hours of insight will'd 
 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd. 
 
 1 Henry van Dyke. a F. B. Meyer. 
 
 
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 317 
 
 With aching hands and bleeding feet 
 We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; 
 
 We bear the burden and the heat 
 
 Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. 
 . Not till the hours of light return, 
 All we have built do we discern. 1 
 
 If Do not ask for great opportunities of service, or be dis- 
 appointed if you feel no glow of devotion to other people or even 
 to God. We are all too anxious to be conscious of beautiful 
 feelings ; they comfort us and lead us to think that we are in 
 the right way; but the real test is obedience doing the right 
 things as far as we know them. Feelings are very misleading : 
 let them come when they come ; do not be disheartened if they 
 do not come, or if when they come they soon vanish. This I 
 think is the path to higher perfection ; at any rate no other path 
 is certain. Hold fast to the assurance that God wants you to 
 have the mind of Christ; pray for it; but meanwhile, whether 
 your heart goes with it or not, try in humble, unostentatious ways 
 to serve Christ by serving others. 2 
 
 If Only one letter received by this momentous mail brought the 
 least encouragement to Coillard it was one addressed by the 
 Kev. W. G. Lawes, of the L.M.S., New Guinea, to Mme. Coillard, 
 who had gone out with him and his wife in the John Williams 
 (1860). 
 
 " PORT MORESBY, September 18, 1877. 
 
 " I remember you perfectly as you were then, and have 
 sometimes been helped and strengthened by the remembrance 
 of your strong faith. . . . Our work on Savage Island was very 
 delightful. 'All work for Christ is that/ you will say, and so 
 indeed it is, but it had in it that which human nature rejoices in 
 a large measure of success and prosperity. It was my happiness 
 to baptize upwards of one thousand converts, to train a band of 
 young men who are now at work as pastors on their own island, 
 and as pioneers on this and other heathen [islands], and, above 
 all, to translate into their language the whole of the New 
 Testament and part of the Old. . . . I felt sorry to leave the 
 work on Savage Island, but the call to harder work, more self-denying 
 work, is an honour from the Master's hands. Does He not in this 
 way deal with His servants? Is not the reward of service in 
 His Kingdom more service, harder service, and (measured ly human 
 standards) less successful service ? We deal just so with our children, 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 3 The Life <tf R. W. Dale of Birmingham, 664. 
 
3i8 MAN'S CHIEF END 
 
 and we ought not to repine when our Father calls us from some 
 loved, congenial work to something more arduous and difficult." 
 
 These words at such a time came to them to M. Coillard 
 especially as a message straight from God. It was not the 
 only time that a letter, apparently quite accidental, opportunely 
 shed light upon his path, and showed him, as he himself would 
 say, how real is the Communion of Saints, and what a myth is 
 the supposed rivalry of sects and societies, when each other's 
 experiences, successes, and even apparent failures teach such 
 lessons of faith and obedience in God's service. 1 
 
 Love and pity are pleading with me this hour. 
 
 What is this voice that stays me forbidding to yield, 
 Offering beauty, love, and immortal power, 
 
 Mons away in some far-off heavenly field ? 
 
 Though I obey thee, Immortal, my heart is sore. 
 
 Though love be withdrawn for love it bitterly grieves: 
 Pity withheld in the breast makes sorrow more. 
 
 Oh, that the heart could feel what the mind believes! 
 
 Cease, love, thy fiery and gentle pleading. 
 
 Soft is thy grief, but in tempest through me it rolls. 
 Dreamst thou not whither the path is leading 
 
 Where the Dark Immortal would shepherd our weeping 
 souls ? 2 
 
 1 C. W. Mackintosh, Coillard of the Zambesi, 288. 
 8 A. E., The Divine Vision, 78. 
 
PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Arnold (T.), Sermons, iv. 228. 
 
 Bonner (H.), Sermons and Lectures, 193. 
 
 Book (W. H.), Columbus Tabernacle Sermons, 183. 
 
 Brown (J. B.), The Sunday Afternoon, 219. 
 
 Calthrop (G.), Pulpit Recollections, 207. 
 
 Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, iii. 101. 
 
 Clementson (C.), These Holy Mysteries, 107. 
 
 Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 335. 
 
 Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, ii. 52. 
 
 (T.), Philippians, 350. 
 Jerdan (C.), For the Lord's Table, 306, 379. 
 
 Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas, 469. 
 Lawlor (H. J.), Thoughts on Belief and Life, 71. 
 Lewis (F. W.), The Work of Christ, 181. 
 Maclaren (A.), Christ's Musts, 87. 
 
 Matheson (G.), The Spiritual Development of St. Paul, 269. 
 Maurice (F. D.), Lincoln's Inn Sermons, iv. 97. 
 Moule (H. C. G.), The Pledges of His Love, 14. 
 
 Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year, 170. 
 
 Pope (W. B.), Discourses on the Lordship of the Incarnate Redeemer, 311. 
 Punshon (W. M.), Lectures and Sermons, 345. 
 Randolph (B. W.), The Threshold of the Sanctuary, 129. 
 Smith (D.), CJiristian Counsel, 37. 
 Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1. (1904) No. 2872 ; 
 
 li. (1905) No. 2942 ; Iv. (1909) No. 3151. 
 
 Walpole (G. H. S.), in Sermons for the People, New Ser., iii. 222. 
 Watson (F.), The Christian Life : Here and Hereafter, 90. 
 Watt (L. M.), The Communion Table, 23. 
 Webster (F. S.), In Remembrance of Me, 69. 
 Whiton (J. M.), Reconsiderations and Reinforcements, 113. 
 Christian World Pulpit, ii. 42 (Minton) ; xlii. 333 (Body). 
 Church of England Pulpit, xxxv. 25 (Hobson), 76 (Reid). 
 Churchman's Pulpit : General Advent Season : i. 179 (Keble), 183 
 
 (Wood ford). 
 Holy Week : vi. 497 (Furse), 500 (West), 503 
 
 (Owen). 
 Clergyman's Magazine, i. 283 (Richardson) ; New Ser., viii. 367 (Vouard). 
 
PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH. 
 
 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the 
 Lord's death till he come. i Cor. xi. 26. 
 
 1. THE Apostle Paul sustained to the Corinthian Church the 
 relation of a father to his child. By him the Gospel had been 
 first preached in the rich and sensual city ; by his instrumentality 
 the first converts had been won to Christ ; and with all a father's 
 yearning did he watch over their welfare, counsel them in their 
 ever-recurring perplexities, and guide the heedless footsteps which 
 were too prone to go astray. To his fatherly care for their 
 interests we owe the circumstantial account which he has given 
 us in this chapter of the institution of the Lord's Supper, in the 
 celebration of which, among the Corinthians, certain abuses had 
 crept in. His account of it, here recorded, is a valuable and 
 welcome revelation. He was not present in the Upper Boom. 
 He was not among the awe-stricken company who were thrilled 
 with horror by the announcement that amongst them was a foul 
 betrayer, and who, scarce recovered from the shock of such sad 
 tidings, were invited to join in the tender and prophetic feast ; 
 and yet he had not been left to the hazard of a traditional 
 knowledge, nor had he received his impression of the scene from 
 the glowing descriptions of another. He distinctly repudiates the 
 thought that he had either received it or been taught it of 
 man, and expressly states that " he had received it directly of 
 the Lord." So distinguishing was the honour put upon the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles, and so important the institution itself, 
 that there was given to him a new revelation that its Divine 
 paternity might be placed beyond all cavil, and that it might be 
 authenticated by yet weightier evidence, and more firmly homed 
 in the hearts of believers, in the perpetuity of its obligation to 
 the end of time, 
 i COR. 21 
 
322 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 2. The words of the text are, " As often as ye eat this bread, 
 and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come." 
 The eating and drinking are a proclamation. It is surprising 
 that, notwithstanding these words, this aspect of the Sacrament 
 of the Lord's Supper receives so little emphasis. We give the 
 Sacrament names. We call it " the Eucharist," drawing attention 
 to the element of thanksgiving ; or " the Communion," in order to 
 recognize in it that fellowship which it offers with Christ Himself 
 and with one another ; or simply " the Lord's Supper." But here, 
 after repeating the words of the institution, St. Paul does not 
 speak of the giving of thanks or the fellowship as the great 
 purpose of the institution, but says that that purpose is fulfilled 
 when we proclaim the Lord's death till He come. 
 
 ^J " As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do 
 shew" I cannot tell why our translators preferred this verb to 
 " proclaim " or " announce," which would have seemed the more 
 obvious one. But should we have expected either word ? Are 
 we not speaking of a Communion, of a participation in something ? 
 Can an ordinance which possesses that character be described as 
 showing, announcing, declaring? It is safer to let the Apostle 
 explain himself than to insist that he shall follow a course which 
 we have prescribed for him. I believe he will tell us hereafter 
 more about communion and participation than we should ever 
 find out for ourselves ; but I doubt whether we shall profit by his 
 teaching, if we stumble at this phrase and wish to get rid of it. 
 Do you think that any ordinance of Christ can have reference 
 merely to the advantage or enjoyment of those who submit to it ? 
 Did He come from heaven to enjoy or to suffer ; to be ministered 
 unto or to minister ? If the eating of the bread and the drinking 
 of the wine imports any communion with Him, any sympathy with 
 Him, can this point of communion and sympathy be wanting? 
 Did He not come to show forth or declare a truth to men into 
 which only some would enter ? If we are not willing in all our 
 acts and services to make this a primary object; if we are 
 thinking of some selfish end as above this ; can we be like Him ? 
 Let us grasp this thought steadfastly. If this feast does not show 
 forth or declare something to the world ; if we seek in it only for 
 some benefit to ourselves ; it cannot be a communion in the body 
 or in the mind of Jesus Christ. 1 
 
 Let us see, then, what this proclamation consists of, and (in 
 
 1 F. D. Maurice, Lincoln's Inn Sermons, iv. 99. 
 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 323 
 
 conclusion) how it may be made. It will be found on considera- 
 tion to consist of three things : 
 
 I. A Remembrance of the Past. 
 II. A Eecognition of the Present. 
 III. A Eegard to the Future. 
 
 I. 
 
 A KEMEMBEANCE OF THE PAST. 
 11 Ye proclaim the Lord's death." 
 
 1. St. Paul's words give prominence to the truth that the 
 Sacrament was intended primarily as a memorial or remembrance 
 of the Saviour. Nothing could be simpler or more human than 
 our Lord's appointment of this Sacrament. Lifting the material 
 of the Supper before Him, He bids His disciples make the simple 
 act of eating and drinking the occasion of remembering Him. As 
 the friend who is setting out on a long absence or is passing for 
 ever from earth puts into our hands his portrait or something he 
 has used or worn or prized, and is pleased to think that we shall 
 treasure it for his sake, so did Christ on the eve of His death 
 secure this one thing, that His disciples should have a memento 
 by which to remember Him. And as the dying gift of a friend 
 becomes sacred to us as his own person, and we cannot bear to 
 see it handed about by unsympathetic hands and remarked upon 
 by those who have not the same loving reverence as ourselves, 
 and as when we gaze at his portrait, or when we use the very pen 
 or pencil worn smooth by his fingers, we recall the many happy 
 times we spent together and the bright and inspiring words that 
 fell from his lips, so does this Sacrament seem sacred to us as 
 Christ's own Person, and by means of it grateful memories of all 
 He was and did throng into the mind. 
 
 ^J It is no uncommon thing in the history of nations 
 to commemorate events of national importance by expressive 
 symbolism. Medals are struck to celebrate a victory or to 
 perpetuate the prowess of a hero. The statues of the wise and 
 of the valiant^are niched in their country's temples columns rear 
 their tall heads on the mounds of world-famed battlefields, or on 
 some holy place of liberty processions and pageants of high and 
 solemn festivity transmit from generation to generation the 
 
3 2 4 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 memory of notable days and deeds. And it is right that it 
 should be so. These things are expressions of something great 
 and true, and by how much they are invested with imposing 
 grandeur, by so much is the likelihood that they will be fastened 
 upon the memory and the heart. There is hope of a nation when 
 its gratitude lives, though the exhibitions of that gratitude may 
 be extravagant and unseemly. 
 
 If we come from the national to the individual, how memory 
 clings round some relic of sanctity bestowed on us by some far- 
 off friend, some dear gage of affection; the gift, perhaps in the 
 latest hour, of the precious and sainted dead. As we gaze upon 
 them mute but eloquent reminders of a past that has fled for 
 ever how closely they seem linked with our every conception of 
 the giver, and in what an uncounted value we hold them for the 
 giver's sake. 1 
 
 Tf In the Highlands of Scotland, in a wild region, there is a 
 spring at which Prince Albert once stopped to quench his thirst. 
 The owner of the spring fenced it in and built a tasteful 
 monument, making the waters flow into a basin of hewn stone, 
 on which he placed an inscription. Every passing stranger 
 stopping to drink at this fountain reads the inscription and 
 recalls the memory of the noble prince whom it honours. Thus 
 the spring is both a memorial .and a blessing ; it keeps in mind 
 the great man, and it gives drink to the weary and the thirsty. 
 The Lord's Supper is a memorial to Christ, but it is food and 
 drink to every one who rightly receives it. 2 
 
 If Jesus Christ could not bear the thought of being forgotten 
 by His people. God and man long to be remembered. This is 
 one point of fellow-feeling at which the Divine heart touches the 
 human. One of the greatest calamities in the sight of God 
 which can befall the wicked is that " his memory shall be cut 
 off." I know of nothing within the covers of this Book more 
 touching than the way in which the prophets represent God and 
 His people the One truthfully, and the other untruthfully as 
 bringing the charge of forgetf illness against each other. "Zion 
 said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten 
 me" (Isa. xlix. 14). In these words we find the awful charge 
 of unfaithfulness and forgetfulness brought against God Himself 
 by the people of His choice. This suspicion must vanish, or the 
 relationship must cease. On the other hand, there comes from 
 the fatherly and infinitely tender heart of God a broken sigh 
 which has the undertone of desolation in it, "My people have 
 forgotten me days without number " (Jer. ii. 32) ; and the answer 
 
 1 W. II. Punshon. 2 S. Marriott, On Playing the Game, 190. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 325 
 
 which He gives to their accusation is, " Can a woman forget her 
 sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of 
 her womb ? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." 
 Thus, in God's relationship with His people, all is made to hinge 
 upon this one word " forget." " Blot me not out of the book of 
 thy remembrance," exclaims man to God ; " Blot me not out of 
 the book of thy remembrance " is the mysterious and pathetic 
 appeal of God to man ! Now this longing to be remembered, so 
 Divine and so human, is found with cumulative force and intensity 
 in " the man Christ Jesus," and is inseparably associated with the 
 institution of the Lord's Supper. He instituted it so as to make 
 it supremely difficult for His followers to forget Him. 1 
 
 2. What is it that we are to remember ? It is " the Lord's 
 death " His death, not His life, though that was lustrous with a 
 holiness without the shadow of a stain; His death, not His 
 teaching, though that embodied the fulness of a wisdom that was 
 Divine; His death, not His miracles, though His course was a 
 march of mercy, and in His track of blessing the world rejoiced 
 and was glad. His death ! His body, not glorious but broken ; 
 His blood, not coursing through the veins of a conqueror, but 
 shed, poured out for man. On the summit of the Mount of 
 Transfiguration, when the hidden Divinity broke for a while 
 through its disguise of flesh, and Moses and Elias, those federal 
 elders of the former time, came down in conference, and the awe- 
 stricken disciples feared the baptism of the cloud, they " spake 
 of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." His 
 death ! Still His death ! Grandest and most consecrating memory 
 for both earth and Heaven. 
 
 See Him set forth before your eyes, 
 That precious bleeding Sacrifice! 
 His offer'd benefits embrace, 
 And freely now be saved by grace. 
 
 Tf " Ye do proclaim the Lord's death." That is the central 
 message. The mortal is the vital here. It is not, He was born, 
 was made Man, lived, wrought, taught, blessed the poor sinful 
 world by the touch of His feet, and the look of His fair 
 countenance, and the words such as man never spoke before. 
 It is that Pie died. It is that Gethsemane and Golgotha were 
 that for which, above all things, He came. " He gave his life 
 
 1 D. Davies. 
 
326 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 a ransom for many." "He poured out his soul unto death." 
 He was "lifted up from the earth." He "endured the cross." 
 " That he might sanctify his people with his own blood, he 
 suffered, without the gate." " Without shedding of blood was no 
 remission " ; " He loosed us from our sins in his own blood." He 
 came "again from the dead, in the blood of the everlasting 
 covenant." " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain ! " 1 
 
 3. " To proclaim the Lord's death " is not merely to announce 
 our belief that Jesus Christ died upon the Cross some eighteen 
 hundred years ago. That, an infidel might do; or, at least, a 
 man who denies the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture, 
 and puts the sacred narrative on a level with other books, might 
 do. That, certainly, a sinful man might do ; or a mere worldling, 
 a man totally careless about living a life of faith in the Son of 
 God. All these persons might accept and credit the fact of the 
 Saviour's dying, and might be willing to proclaim their accept- 
 ance ; and some of them would probably avow their persuasion 
 that the Being who hung upon the Cross was no ordinary person, 
 but the Prince of glory, the Lord of life, the incarnate Son of 
 God Himself. And yet such confession as this would not be 
 Christian confession. It would not be what the Apostle here 
 means by showing the Lord's death. No ! The Apostle means 
 by this expression the proclaiming of that death as an event, as a 
 fact, upon which all our hopes of access to God and all our hopes of 
 life, of salvation, and of blessedness depend ; and the proclaiming of 
 it, too, as a thing that was done for ourselves. Then do we fully 
 show the Lord's death, when by word, and by significant action, 
 and by the whole course and tenor of our life, we announce our 
 confident persuasion, that that dying upon the Cross was a dying 
 for us. 
 
 4. We are not to understand the Apostle as limiting the 
 remembrance rigidly to the actual Passion. The form of the 
 memorial is fitted to recall the life of our Lord as well as His 
 death. It is His body and blood we are invited by the symbols 
 to remember. By them we are brought into the presence 
 of an actual living Person. Our religion is not a theory; 
 it is not a speculation, a system of philosophy putting us in 
 possession of a true scheme of the universe and guiding us 
 
 1 H. C. G. Moule, Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year, 172. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 327 
 
 to a sound code of morals; it is, above all, a personal matter. 
 We are saved by being brought into right personal relations. 
 And in this Sacrament we are reminded of this and are helped 
 to recognize Christ as an actual living Person, who by His body 
 and blood, by His actual humanity, saved us. The body and 
 blood of Christ remind us that His humanity was as substantial 
 as our own, and His life as real. He redeemed us by the actual 
 human life He led and by the death He died, by His use of the 
 body and soul we make other uses of. And we are saved by 
 remembering Him and by assimilating the spirit of His life and 
 death. 
 
 U St. Paul says, " the Lord's death." If he had not said so, 
 if this expression, "the Lord," did not stand written in his 
 Epistle, there are many who would have called it hard and cold. 
 " The Saviour," they would have said ; " the Divine Bridegroom, 
 the ineffable Sacrifice that is offered to us in this feast. How 
 can you speak of ' the Lord ' like some writer of the Old Testa- 
 ment ? " I fancy that the Hebrew of the Hebrews used that 
 Hebrew phrase because he deemed it not to be obsolete for any, 
 because he knew that it was not obsolete for him. He 
 wanted sympathy and fellowship. He wanted also to be 
 guided and governed. The Incarnation had not lessened but 
 deepened his reverence for the unseen Guide of his heart and 
 reins. His belief in a brother of Man did not make him 
 remember less or rejoice less that He is the Lord of men. 
 There were times when he delighted to call Him our Lord. 
 There were occasions when the Lord expressed more fully the 
 universality of His dominion. This was one of them. He is 
 speaking of the bread and wine as testifying, not to him or to 
 his brethren, but to all men, of One whose Kingdom was in the 
 midst of them, of One who had proved Himself to be the King 
 and Shepherd, by dying for them. 1 
 
 5. When Christ said, " Do this in remembrance of me," He 
 meant that His people to all time should remember that He had 
 given Himself wholly to them and for them. The symbols of 
 His body and blood were intended to keep us in mind that all 
 that gave Him a place among men He devoted to us. By giving 
 His flesh andj)lood He means that He gives us His all, Himself 
 wholly ; and by inviting us to partake of His flesh and blood He 
 means that we must receive Him into the most real connection 
 
 * y. D. Maurice, 
 
328 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 possible, must admit His self-sacrificing love into our heart as 
 our most cherished possession. He bade His disciples remember 
 Him, knowing that the death He was about to die would " draw 
 all men unto Him," would fill the despairing with hopes of 
 purity and happiness, would cause countless sinners to say to 
 themselves with soul-subduing rapture, " He loved me, and gave 
 himself for me." He knew that the love shown in His death 
 and the hopes it creates would be prized as the world's redemp- 
 tion, and that to all time men would be found turning to Him 
 and saying, "If I forget thee, let my right hand forget her 
 cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to 
 the roof of my mouth ; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief 
 joy." And therefore He presents Himself to us as He died : as 
 One whose love for us actually brought Him to the deepest 
 abasement and sorest suffering, and whose death opens for us a 
 way to the Father. 
 
 TJ For the first time the Dorcas Street Sabbath School 
 Teachers' gift from South Melbourne Presbyterian Church was 
 put to use a new Communion Service of silver. They gave it 
 in faith that we should require it, and in such we received it. 
 And now the day had come and gone ! For three years we had 
 toiled and prayed and taught for this. At the moment when I 
 put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with 
 the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake 
 the emblems and seals of the Eedeemer's love, I had a foretaste 
 of the joy of Glory that well-nigh broke my heart to pieces. I 
 shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face 
 of Jesus Himself. 1 
 
 If In 1861 a brave volunteer turned his back upon loved ones 
 in his little home, nestling among the hills of the Blue Eidge 
 and the spurs of the Alleghanies, in Craig County, Va., and 
 went to the battlefield to fight for what he believed to be right. 
 On the 3rd of July 1863, in that fatal charge made by Picket t, 
 he was shot down, and there gave his life for his country. On 
 the following day (4th July) a son was born. As this son grew 
 in stature and in knowledge, his mother would point to a photo- 
 graph, and tell him that that was his father. He grew to be a 
 man, and at last had the privilege of walking over the ground 
 that had been made sacred with the blood of a father. He can- 
 not express to you his feelings as he stood upon that holy 
 ground ; the acute conception of fancy with the vivid flights of 
 
 1 John Q. Paton, ii. 222. 
 
i CORINTHIANS XL 26 329 
 
 imagination would be inadequate to the task. When he returned 
 to his home, and looked again upon the picture as it hung upon 
 the wall, he remembered that his mother had told him that it 
 was his father. He has never seen him; but some time he 
 hopes to see him face to face, and then he will no longer need 
 the picture, for he shall see him as he is. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 A RECOGNITION OF THE PRESENT. 
 "As often as." 
 
 1. It is manifest from the solemnity of its inauguration, and 
 from the singular reverence with which it was regarded by the 
 early Christians, that the Lord's Supper was not intended to be 
 a thing of one generation, but to be a precious and hallowed 
 memorial to the end of time. So broad and deep was the im- 
 pression of its perpetual obligation that in every age of the 
 Church, alike when it was crushed by persecution, and when it 
 had degenerated into worldly alliance and conformity, the con- 
 tinuity of this great festival sustained no interruption ; it remained 
 in general acknowledgment through all external changes. This 
 perpetuity of the Sacrament seems to stamp it as a confirming 
 ordinance confirming man's faith in God, confirming God's 
 fidelity to man. 
 
 2. These symbols were appointed to be for a remembrance 
 of Christ in order that, remembering Him, we might renew our 
 fellowship with Him. In the Holy Sacrament there is not a 
 mere representation of Christ or a bare commemoration of 
 events in which we are interested; there is also an actual, 
 present communion between Christ and the soul. 
 
 We may not climb the heavenly steeps 
 
 To bring the Lord Christ down : 
 In vain we search the lowest deeps, 
 
 For Him no depths can drown. 
 
 Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape, 
 
 -The lineaments restore 
 Of Him we know in outward shape 
 
 And in the flesh no more. 
 1 W. H. Book. 
 
330 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 He conieth not a king to reign; 
 
 The world's long hope is dim; 
 The weary centuries watch in vain 
 
 The clouds of heaven for Him. 
 
 Death comes, life goes; the asking eye 
 
 And ear are answerless; 
 The grave is dumb, the hollow sky 
 
 Is sad with silentness. 
 
 The letter fails, and systems fall, 
 
 And every symbol wanes ; 
 The Spirit over-brooding all 
 
 Eternal Love remains. 
 
 And not for signs in heaven above 
 
 Or earth below they look, 
 Who know with John His smile of love, 
 
 With Peter His rebuke. 
 
 In joy of inward peace, or sense 
 
 Of sorrow over sin, 
 He is His own best evidence, 
 
 His witness is within. 
 
 No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
 
 Nor dream of bards and seers, 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 
 Of the oblivious years; 
 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 
 A present help is He; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 
 And love its Galilee. 1 
 
 3. There are three distinct things that stare us in the face 
 here : first, the advent of our Lord in the days of His humiliation ; 
 secondly, the coming advent of our Lord in His glory; and 
 between the two, a distinctive sacramental rite " As often as ye 
 eat this bread, and drink the cup " (that is, in this present), " ye 
 proclaim the Lord's death " (that is, in that past) " till he come " 
 (that is, in the anticipation of that future). Now, we may be certain 
 of this, that this is not a mere artificial arrangement ; there must 
 
 1 Whittier. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 331 
 
 be something in the Sacrament which makes it fit to stand 
 between the advent consummated in Christ's redemptive death 
 and the advent of His coming glory. What is that connecting 
 thing? The one thing that marks out the Sacrament as being 
 what it is amidst Christian rites, is that, in a special sense, it is 
 the sphere of our Lord's presence. Our Lord's presence and His 
 humanity are revealed to us under three distinct conditions. 
 First, He has been present in the days of His historical life 
 under conditions of bodily humiliation. Secondly, He will be 
 present after His second coming under conditions of glorification. 
 But between these two conditions He is present with His people 
 in a spiritual manner. 
 
 If How deep is our obligation to our own Liturgy for bringing 
 out so distinctly, through the means of Holy Communion, the 
 reality of Christ's spiritual presence, and the verity of our 
 communion with Him in this Holy Sacrament. It has preserved 
 for us the true doctrine in this particular as perfectly as it has 
 done justice to the truth first considered, namely, the memorial 
 of the death of Christ. For instance, " He hath given His Son 
 our Saviour Jesus Christ not only to die for us, but also to be our 
 spiritual food and sustenance in that Holy Sacrament"; "For as 
 the benefit is great, if with a true penitent heart and lively faith 
 we receive that Holy Sacrament (for then we spiritually eat the 
 flesh of Christ, and drink His blood ; then we dwell in Christ, 
 and Christ in us ; we are one with Christ, and Christ with us), 
 so is the danger great, if we receive the same unworthily. Grant 
 us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son 
 Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood, that our sinful bodies may 
 be made clean by His body, and our souls washed through His 
 most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in Him, 
 and He in us " " Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily 
 thank Thee, for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have 
 duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the 
 most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ ; and dost assure us thereby of Thy favour and goodness 
 towards us ; and that we are very members incorporate in the 
 mystical body of Thy Son, which is the blessed company of all 
 faithful people." 1 
 
 4. The past, however sweet and precious, is not enough for 
 any soul to live upon. And so this memorial rite, just because 
 
 1 Canon Furse. 
 
332 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 it is memorial, is a symbol for the present. That is taught us in 
 that great chapter the sixth of St. John's Gospel which was 
 spoken long before the institution of the Lord's Supper, but 
 expresses in words the same ideas as it expresses by material 
 forms. The Christ who died is the Christ who lives, and must 
 be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation to Jesus Christ 
 were only that " Once in the end of the world hath he appeared 
 to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself " ; and if we had to 
 look back through lengthening vistas of distance and thickening 
 folds of oblivion, simply to a historical past, in which He was 
 once offered, the retrospect would not have the sweetness in it 
 which it now has. But when we come to this thought, that the 
 Christ who was for us is also the Christ in us, and that He is 
 not the Christ for us unless He is the Christ in us ; and His 
 death will never wash away our sins unless we feed upon Him, 
 here and now, by faith and meditation, then the retrospect 
 becomes blessedness. The Christian life is not merely the 
 remembrance of a historical Christ in the past, it is also the 
 present participation in a living Christ with us now. 
 
 He is near each of us that we may make Him the very food 
 of our spirits. We are to live upon Him. He is to be incor- 
 porated within us by our own act. This is no mysticism, it is a 
 piece of simple reality. There is no Christian life without it. 
 The true life of the believer is just the feeding of our souls upon 
 Him our minds accepting, meditating upon, digesting the 
 truths which are incarnated in Jesus; our hearts feeding upon 
 the love which is so tender, warm, stooping, and close ; our wills 
 feeding upon and nourished by the utterance of His will in 
 commandments which to know is joy and to keep is liberty ; our 
 hopes feeding upon Him who is our Hope, and in whom they 
 find no chaff and husks of peradventures, but the pure wheat of 
 " Verily ! verily I say unto you " ; the whole nature thus finding 
 its nourishment in Jesus Christ. 
 
 ^| " We proclaim the Lord's death." By the very fact of so 
 doing we proclaim also His glorious present life, His victory 
 over the grave, His spiritual presence with His people, His gift 
 of Himself to be their life indeed. Never, let us be quite sure 
 of this, would the first believers have kept festival over their 
 Master's death, had not that death been followed by a triumph 
 over the grave which at once and for ever showed His dying 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 333 
 
 work to be the supreme achievement which it was. Only the 
 risen Christ can explain the joy of the Lord's Supper. Without 
 Him it would have been a funeral meal, kept for a while by 
 love in its despair, and then dropped for ever. From the very 
 first till now it has been a feast of life and of thanksgiving. It 
 is a contemporary and immortal witness to the risen One. And 
 the risen One is alive for ever more. And in His eternal life 
 He is our life, here and now. Feed on Him as such, feed every- 
 where and always upon Him. Eat Him and drink Him, that 
 you may live because of Him. Such is the message of the festal 
 Meal of the Church, spoken straight from her Lord to the heart 
 of every member of His Body. 1 
 
 TJ What would be the value of the Holy Supper if it were 
 simply a memorial of a Divine visitation long ago, and not a 
 pledge and a discovery of the Lord's abiding presence ? John 
 Knox called it " a singular medicine for all poor sick creatures, a 
 comfortable help to weak souls"; and he "utterly condemned 
 the vanity of those that affirmed sacraments to be nothing else 
 but bare and naked signs." I fear there are few among us in 
 these days who thus esteem them. The truth is that the 
 Sacraments are the very heart of Christian worship, and their 
 neglect, their perfunctory and slovenly administration, is a sore 
 impoverishment of the Church, and proves how very low the 
 tide of our spiritual life has ebbed. True worship is essentially 
 sacramental, and I warmly sympathize with old Gilbert of 
 Sempringham, the friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, when he 
 says : " All doctrine is suspect with me, and surely despised, 
 which introduces no mention of Christ, which neither renews me 
 with His Sacraments, nor informs me with His precepts, nor 
 inflames me with His promises." 2 
 
 U A communion was held at Pesth, in Hungary, on the 1st 
 of January 1843, being the Lord's Day. We met in an upper 
 room, at night and in secret " for fear of the Jews," and to 
 escape the eye of an intolerant Government. From the moment 
 that the service began, the place where we were assembled seemed 
 to be filled with a mysterious presence. Indeed, the risen Lord 
 had entered by the closed door, and stood, as at Jerusalem, in 
 the midst of His disciples. Deep silence fell on the little 
 company as they realized His nearness, a silence interrupted 
 only at intervals by the deep-drawn sigh of some bursting heart. 
 The dividing wall which separated heaven and earth seemed for 
 the time removed, and that fellowship between both was ex- 
 
 1 H. C. G. Moule, Thoughts fen- the Sundays of the Year, 173. 
 
 8 D. Smith, Christian Counsel, 39. 
 
334 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 perienced which is the fullest blessedness of earth, and anticipates 
 the glory of heaven. 1 
 
 III. 
 
 A KEGARD TO THE FUTURE. 
 "Till he come." 
 
 1. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper not only proclaims 
 to us the Gospel of the Passion, it also proclaims to us that great 
 Gospel which is the centre and basis of all Christian hope : the 
 Gospel of the second coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. And 
 since this holy rite is in creed and in action, they who preach 
 it look back upon the first Advent and recognize and confess its 
 redemptive aspect, and they look forward to the second Advent 
 and recognize it and confess it as being the one great act in 
 which that redemptive work on Calvary will reach to its full 
 and to its glorious climax. And in this present, the gaze of our 
 faith is fixed upon the redemption consecrated in Christ's first 
 coming ; the eyes of our hope are fixed on the glorious consum- 
 mation of His work in His second coming, and in the meantime 
 we wait with the repose of love, giving ourselves up to His 
 sweet ministries, in the conviction that as often as we eat this 
 bread, and drink the cup, we " proclaim the Lord's death till 
 he come." 
 
 In the original words of the institution our Lord Himself 
 makes reference to the future ; till I " drink it new in the 
 kingdom of God." And in the text here, the Apostle provides 
 for the perpetual continuance, and emphasizes the prophetic 
 aspect, of the rite, by that word, "till he come." His death 
 necessarily implies His coming again. The Cross and the Throne 
 are linked together by an indissoluble bond. Being what it is, 
 the death cannot be the end. Being what He is, if He has once 
 been offered to bear the sins of many, so He must come the 
 second time without sin unto salvation. The rite, just because 
 it is a rite, is the prophecy of a time when the need for it, 
 arising from weak flesh and an intrusive world, shall cease. 
 "They shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the 
 Lord ; at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the 
 
 1 Memoir of John Duncan, 334. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 335 
 
 Lord." There shall be no temple in that great city, because the 
 Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple thereof. So 
 all external worship is a prophecy of the coming of the perfect 
 time when, that which is perfect being come, the external helps 
 and ladders to climb to the loftiest shall be done away. 
 
 TJ Of all earthly signs and tokens, there is none which seems 
 so wonderfully ordained to prepare us for the last Day, and 
 keep us in mind of it, as the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
 the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Holy 
 Scripture expressly connects the one with the other ; the Com- 
 munion with the Day of Judgment. For after St. Paul had put 
 the Corinthians in mind of what he had always taught them 
 concerning that Sacrament, how that our Lord ordained it, the 
 same night in which He was betrayed, to be done, or sacrificed, 
 in remembrance of Him after He was gone, lest they should 
 imagine that it was only the Apostles who had to perform this 
 service, seeing that they alone were present with our Lord when 
 He commanded it, the Apostle goes on and declares, "For as 
 often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the 
 Lord's death till he come " as much as to say that this mode 
 of remembering our Lord's Death, and setting it forth before 
 God and man, should never cease, while the world should stand. 
 One generation after another will perish from the face of the 
 earth; cities and empires will fade away; the wisdom of the 
 wise, and the understanding of the prudent will be forgotten ; 
 customs, manners, languages may change, and the outward face 
 of things be ever so different : but still this holy memorial of 
 God made Man and crucified for us will go on being offered, and 
 the holy Feast will go on to be received, from time to time, in 
 all Churches of all lands, until that last morning break upon 
 the earth, and the very meaning and substance of that Sacra- 
 ment, the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall appear openly 
 in the eyes of men. 1 
 
 TI When you go to put flowers upon a grave, what is the motive 
 that prompts you ? to keep memory green ? Doubtless ; but 
 is that all ? "Why do you wish to keep memory green ? It is 
 because you are looking forward as well as backward. You are 
 convinced the old days will come again. If it were not for that 
 hope, you could not plant your flower; you would rather let 
 memory wither. Some have written of the pleasures of memory, 
 and some of the pleasures of hope. But has it occurred to either 
 that the pleasures of memory are the pleasures of hope ? Has 
 
 1 J. Keble. 
 
336 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 it occurred to either that these are twin sisters, who cannot live 
 apart? When hope dies, memory cries out to be killed; she 
 cannot abide alone. When memory goes with her flowers to 
 the grave, hope calls from the shadowy land, " Occupy till I 
 come." If she did not hear that call, she could not plant her 
 flower. My Lord tells me that when I build to His past I am 
 prompted by His future. It is the light of Easter morn that 
 leads me to the sepulchre ; it is the gleam of resurrection that 
 conducts me to the broken body, " As often as ye eat this bread, 
 ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come." 1 
 
 (1) The sacrament confirms our faith in the certainty of His 
 coming. He shall come ; the Church is not for ever orphaned of 
 His presence ; the disciples need not mourn over a dead Christ ; 
 the weeping Virgin may dry her tears, for her Son liveth, glorified, 
 exalted, King of kings and Lord of lords. 
 
 The first thing that we need in the anticipation of our Lord's 
 second coming is to have the knowledge within us that were He 
 to come to us now we should be found of Him in peace. " Be 
 diligent," says St. Peter, " that ye may be found of him in peace." 
 And the only peace in which we can be found, we who have our 
 sins in the past, and our failures and imperfections in the present, 
 is in the peace of the Divine reconciliation. And in this Sacra- 
 ment, first of all, the consummated passion is preached to us 
 through powerful sacramental action. Christ is evidently set 
 forth as crucified among us. Through the union of the earthly 
 action with our Lord's continued intercession in heaven, we learn 
 that that death thus died is at the present moment being pleaded 
 for us in all its reconciling efficacy before the Father, and then, 
 when we draw nigh to Him in this Sacrament, He comes and 
 gives Himself to us. Doing what ? Assuring us, thereby, of 
 God's goodness towards us, and that we are all members of the 
 mystical Body of His Son, which is the blessed company of all 
 faithful people. The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament of Christian 
 assurance, and they who are hushed into the peace of God by the 
 sacramental kiss of Christ of the Eucharist can anticipate without 
 fear His coming, for they will " be found of him in peace." 2 
 
 ^[ The Feast has gone on ; for it has been God's, and not man's. 
 It has had a power over Christendom which we cannot measure, 
 but which we shall know one day. For it contains a promise 
 
 1 G. Matlieson, Searching in the Silence, 223. " Canon Body. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 337 
 
 which may sustain us when its influence appears to be weakest, 
 when the Church appears to be most rent by the factions against 
 which it is bearing its silent, awful protest. It is written, that 
 as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we show 
 forth the Lord's death till He come. The Incarnation and Death 
 and Kesurrection of the Son of God were the fulfilments of all 
 that men in the Old Dispensation were able to. long for. The 
 manifestation of Christ in the glory of His Father and of the 
 Holy Angels is the highest object which we in this Dispensation 
 are able to long for. It includes every craving for righteous 
 government, for a perfect Society, for the adoption of our spirits, 
 for the perfection of the faculties of our souls, for the full 
 redemption of our bodies. It includes the fulfilment of every 
 relationship, of all loving intercourse, which has been most 
 imperfectly realized here, but which has been raised and sancti- 
 fied by a diviner Communion. It includes the accomplishment 
 of all earthly discipline and sorrow, fellowship with those whose 
 faces we miss, but whose love must be far warmer than ever it 
 was, because it is in more immediate contact with the perfect 
 Love. It includes the apprehension of the order and beauty of 
 God's creatures, when the veil of death which covers them has 
 been taken away. It includes the ever-deepening sense of the 
 meaning and force of that death which revealed the whole mind 
 of God, which was the perfect Atonement for Man. 1 
 
 (2) The second thing that is needed is this. If we are to be 
 ready for Christ's coming, we must be numbered with those who, 
 in the language of the Book of Kevelation, are "sealed." And 
 what is this sealing ? A seal is that whereby an impress is made 
 upon molten wax. And so it is here. There is a seal in which 
 there is the image of Christ, and this image of Christ is to be 
 imprinted on hearts that are melted in the furnace of contrition 
 until they are all molten wax. There is a seal that bears the 
 image of the King, and by the impress of that seal that image is 
 stamped on those who are sealed. What is that seal if it be 
 not that sacred rite in Christendom in which Christ Himself is 
 present, in which Christ Himself impresses His own image upon 
 the image of His elect? "As often as ye eat this bread, and 
 drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come " ; for 
 the Sacramento is not only the sacrament of assurance ; it is the 
 sacrament of increasing conformity. 
 
 1 F. D. Maurice, 
 I COR. 22 
 
338 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 The definition of a Sacrament seems to lack completeness, 
 unless it be regarded not only as a sign but as a seal a solemn 
 federal act which involves mutual pledges, of fidelity on the one 
 hand and of blessing on the other. The expression of the inner 
 dispositions by appropriate symbol is by no means of uncommon 
 occurrence in the sacred writings. When the Psalmist speaks of 
 his own deliverances, and, in astonishment at their extent and 
 magnitude, asks, " What shall I render ? " he replies, as the most 
 public and graceful utterance of his gratitude, " I will take the 
 cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord," and the 
 next verse may be regarded as the translation of the symbol into 
 language, "I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the 
 presence of all his people." And our participation of the Holy 
 Communion must be thus regarded as the fresh act of our 
 espousals, as the solemn renewal of our covenant; as our 
 surrender, entire and unhesitating, to the service of the Lord. 
 It is thus that we confess Christ and witness of Him to the 
 world. If we eat and drink without discerning this great pur- 
 pose, we eat and drink unworthily ; if we repudiate such purpose, 
 either in thought or in act, we crucify in our measure " the Son of 
 God afresh, and put him to an open shame." 
 
 (3) And last of all, what do we need as we are living now 
 between this first and second Advent looking for the coming 
 of the Lord ? Is it not the grace of perseverance, the power to 
 hold on our way, and day by day to act more and more firmly ? 
 And does not He who came to save us, and is coming to raise us 
 up to be partakers in His glory does not He Himself come to 
 us in this Sacrament to give to us this grace of perseverance? 
 Is it not true of us what is said of Elijah in the mystical language 
 of old? God said to him, Arise and eat; and he arose and 
 did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty 
 days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God. And so 
 it is still. God says to us: "Wearied in life's journeying, 
 burdened with life's burdens and anxieties and woes, eat, 
 friends; drink; yea, drink abundantly, beloved"; and we 
 draw nigh and eat of Him whose flesh is meat indeed, and drink 
 of Him whose blood is drink indeed ; and through His love we 
 find strength in weakness and refreshment in weariness. And 
 through the sacrament of perseverance, receiving into ourselves 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi, 26 339 
 
 the blessing of the first Advent, we wait in confident hope for 
 the second coming of the Lord. 
 
 TI I will give a brief parable to those who live in continual 
 ebullitions of love, in order that they may endure this disposition 
 nobly and becomingly, and may attain to a higher virtue. 
 
 There is a little insect which is called an ant; it is strong 
 and wise, and very tenacious of life, and it lives with its fellows 
 in warm and dry soils. The ant works during summer and 
 collects food and grain for the winter, and it splits the grain so 
 that it may not become rotten or spoiled, and may be eaten 
 when there is nothing more to be found. And it does not make 
 strange paths, but all follow the same path, and after waiting 
 till the proper time they become able to fly. 
 
 So should these men do ; they will be strong by waiting for 
 the coming of Christ, wise against the appearance and the in- 
 spiration of the enemy. They will not choose death, but they 
 will prefer God's glory alone and the winning of fresh virtues. 
 They will dwell in the community of their heart and of their 
 powers, and will follow the invitation and the constraint of 
 Divine unity. They will live in rich and warm soils, or, in other 
 words, in the passionate heat of love, and in great impatience. 
 And they will work during the summer of this life, and will 
 gather in for eternity the fruits of virtue. These they will 
 divide in two one part means that they will always desire the 
 supreme joy of eternity; the other, that by their reason they 
 will always restrain themselves as much as possible, and wait the 
 time that God has appointed for them, and so the fruit of virtue 
 shall be preserved into eternity. They will not follow strange 
 paths or curious methods, but through all storms they will follow 
 the path of love, towards the place whither love shall guide them. 
 And when the set time has come, and they have persevered in 
 all the virtues, they shall be fit to behold God, and their wings 
 shall bear them towards His mystery. 1 
 
 Not so in haste, rny heart! 
 
 Have faith in God and wait; 
 Although He linger long, 
 
 He never comes too late. 
 
 He never comes too late, 
 
 He knoweth what is best; 
 Vex not thyself in vain: 
 
 Until He cometh, rest. 
 
 *M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, 132* 
 
340 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 Until He cometh, rest, 
 
 Nor grudge the hours that roll; 
 
 The feet that wait for God 
 Are soonest at the goal; 
 
 Are soonest at the goal 
 
 That is not gained by speed; 
 Then hold thee still, my heart, 
 
 For I shall wait His lead. 1 
 
 ^[ And the coming of the Bridegroom is so swift that He is 
 always coming, and that He dwells within us with His unfathom- 
 able riches, and that He returns ever anew in person, with such 
 new brightness that it seems as if He had never come before. 
 For His coming is comprised beyond all limit of time, in an 
 eternal Now; and He is ever received with new desires and a 
 new delight. Behold, the joys and the pleasures which this 
 Bridegroom brings with Him at His coming are boundless and 
 without limit, for they are Himself. And this is why the eyes 
 of the spirit, by which the loving soul beholds its Bridegroom, 
 are opened so wide that they will never shut again. For the 
 contemplation and the fixed gaze of the spirit are eternal in the 
 secret manifestation of God. And the comprehension of the 
 spirit is so widely opened, as it waits for the appearance of the 
 Bridegroom, that the spirit itself becomes vast as that which it 
 comprehends. And so is God beheld and understood by God, in 
 whom all our blessedness is found. 2 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 In conclusion, let us see to whom the proclamation is to be 
 made. 
 
 1. It is to be made to ourselves. The Lord's Supper is a pre- 
 sentation to our own minds of the great work of redemption. If 
 it was said to the Galatians that before their eyes Christ, whom 
 they had not seen in the flesh, had been evidently set forth cruci- 
 fied among them (Gal. iii. 1), so may it be said to us that, not 
 only by the preaching of His Word, but by visible signs before 
 our eyes, and spiritual realities to our hearts, Christ is set forth 
 in the Holy Communion, in all His love and grace and mercy. 
 
 ^J The Lord's Supper may be celebrated without any spec- 
 tators. It should be in public where it can be ; but if there are 
 
 1 Bayard Taylor. 2 M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeclc and the Mystics, 152. 
 
i CORINTHIANS XL 26 341 
 
 i 
 
 none to look on, it may be otherwise. In Venice, in Milan, in 
 Paris, and in other cities where Eomanism prevails, five or six 
 of us have met together in our room at our hotel, and we have 
 had the true Lord's supper there, though there were none to look 
 on ; and probably if there had been, in some cities where we have 
 partaken of it, we might have been amenable to the law. 'Tis 
 a showing forth of Christ's death to ourselves. We see the bread 
 broken, and see the wine poured out, and we ourselves see here, 
 in symbol, Christ crucified ; and we see as before our eyes, when 
 we eat and drink, our interest in the sacrifice offered upon 
 Calvary. 1 
 
 2. It is to be made to one another, as members of the Body of 
 Christ. As instituted, the holy Service is nothing if not social, 
 mutual. Scripture knows nothing of a solitary Eucharist. There- 
 fore the rite has a mutual significance ; it has some sacred 
 thing to say, all round the circle, Christian to Christian. By his 
 presence, by his partaking, " each is then a herald to the rest," 
 telling it out that Jesus did indeed die, to rise again. 
 
 When at the Table of our Lord 
 
 In silence all we kneel 
 With broken bread and wine outpour'd 
 
 To share the heavenly Meal; 
 
 Few though we be, and though the few 
 
 Are feeble at the best, 
 Yet each is here, if God is true, 
 
 A prophet to the rest. 
 
 We to each other show the Death 
 
 Of that slain Lamb we love, 
 Until He come (the Scripture saith) 
 
 In glory from above. 
 
 Yes, gathering here, each other all 
 
 With solemn cheer we warn 
 Of the Archangel's thunder-call 
 
 And resurrection-morn. 
 
 Blest Sign of Christ's own victory won, 
 
 Thy prophecies we prize ; 
 Oh, with what joy the eternal Sun, 
 
 Thus heralded, shall rise. 2 
 
 1 C. H. Spurgcon. * H. C. G. Moule, In the House of the Pilgrimage, 56. 
 
342 PROCLAIMING THE LORD'S DEATH 
 
 3. It is to be made to the world. The Lord's Supper is a 
 confession before men of our faith ; a testimony as to whose we 
 are and whom we serve. So long as this ordinance exists in the 
 Church of God, the world will not be left without a testimony 
 for Christ. It is a sermon always in course of being preached. 
 Its text is Christ, its argument is love; its appeal is, "Come 
 unto me, all ye," etc. It preaches not only to those who draw 
 near to it, "Eat, friends, yea, drink/' etc. (Cant. v. 1), but 
 also to those who turn their back upon it, "Will ye also go 
 away ? " 
 
 TJ All the provinces of China in the month of May are astir 
 with pilgrim crowds, moving up and down the rivers, and along 
 the intersecting ways. It is the red-letter day of the ancestral 
 cult, and is called " the Feast of Manifestation." Hundreds and 
 thousands of miles are traversed to show filial regard for the last 
 resting-place of the departed forefathers. After the viands have 
 been presented, all weeds hoed up from the grave, and the ground 
 trimmed, three or four sheets of white paper, kept in position by 
 a stone, are placed on the apex of the mound, to show that the 
 grave has a living guardian, and no one must dare to turn the 
 soil to common uses. The symbolic act is recognized in all the 
 courts of law. In the absence of that simple but effectual sign 
 the peasant might drive his plough across the grave-plot and 
 enlarge the border of his rice field, and no one would resist him. 
 The little sign asserts an inviolable heritage. 1 
 
 We gather to the sacred board 
 
 Perchance a scanty band; 
 But with us in sublime accord 
 
 What mighty armies stand ! 
 
 \ 
 In creed and rite howe'er apart, 
 
 One Saviour still we own, 
 And pour the worship of the heart 
 
 Before the Father's throne. 
 
 A thousand spires o'er hill and vale 
 
 Point to the same blue heaven; 
 A thousand voices tell the tale 
 
 Of grace through Jesus given. 
 
 1 T. G. Selby. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xi. 26 343 
 
 High choirs, in Europe's ancient fanes, 
 
 Praise Him for man who died; 
 And o'er our boundless Western plains 
 
 His name is glorified. 
 
 Around His tomb, on Salem 's height, ? 
 
 Greek and Armenian bend ; 
 And through all Lapland's months of night 
 
 The peasants' hymns ascend. 
 
 Are we not brethren? Saviour dear! 
 
 Then may we walk in love, 
 Joint subjects of Thy kingdom here, 
 
 Joint heirs of bliss above ! l 
 
 1 Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch. 
 
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 3*5 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Ainger (A.), The Gospel and Human Life, 30. 
 
 in Anglican Pulpit of To-day, 344. 
 
 Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, vii. 104, 120, 133. 
 Bonar (H.), God's Way of Holiness, 153. 
 Bradby (E. H.), Sermons at Haileybury, 324. 
 Brooke (S. A.), The Fight of Faith, 51. 
 Brookfield (W. H.), Sermons, 96. 
 Cross (J.), Pauline Charity, 22, 36, 50. 
 Daplyn (E.), One with the Eternal, 9. 
 
 Duncan (J.), In the Pulpit and at the Communion Table, 183. 
 Grant (C.), A School's Life, 80. 
 Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 47. 
 Jones (H.), in A Lent in London, 134. 
 Kingsley (G.), Sermons for the Times, 256. 
 Kuegele (R), Country Sermons, New Ser., ii. 167. 
 Matheson (G.), Times of Retirement, 222. 
 Moberly (R. C.), Christ our Life, 45. 
 Moody (D. L.), Faithful Sayings, 41. 
 
 Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv. 307, v. 327. 
 Nicoll (W. R.), Ten-Minute Sermons, 173. 
 Robarts (F. L.), Sunday Morning Talks, 125. 
 Salmon (G.), Sermons in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, 55. 
 Sauter (B.), The Sunday Epistles, 134. 
 Scott (M.), Harmony of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, 66. 
 Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xiii. (1876) No. 992. 
 Wilson (J. M.), Sermons in Clifton College Chapel, i. 205. 
 Cambridge Review, ii. Supplement No. 39 (Bradby); vi. Supplement 
 
 No. 142 (Ainger). 
 Christian World Pulpit, iii. 296 (Gasquoine), 406 (Bull); xvi. 20 
 
 (Statham); xxvii. 376 (Rogers); xxxv. 168 (Halsey) ; Ixv. 97 
 
 (Henson) ; Ixxix. 342 (Gordon). 
 Church of England Magazine, xiii. 281 (Hodgson) ; xix. 273 (Horsford) ; 
 
 xxxix. 200 (Hoare). 
 
 Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., vii. 92 (Proctor). 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., i. 155 (Newman) ; ii. 142 (Drumrnond) ; 
 
 v. 115 (Newman) ; vii. 120 (Alford). 
 Preacher's Magazine, ix. (1898) 251 (Slater). 
 
 346 
 
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, 
 I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. i Cor, xiii. i. 
 
 1. THIS chapter, although a digression, is yet a step in the 
 treatment of the subject of spiritual gifts (xii. 1, xiv. 40), and 
 forms in itself a complete and beautiful whole. After the 
 promise that he will point out a still more surpassing way, there 
 is, as it were, a moment of suspense ; and then jam ardet Paulus 
 ct fertur in amorem (Bengel). Stanley imagines "how the 
 Apostle's amanuensis must have paused to look up in his master's 
 face at the sudden change in the style of his dictation, and seen 
 his countenance lit up as it had been the face of an angel, as this 
 vision of Divine perfection passed before him." Writer after 
 writer has expatiated upon its literary and rhythmical beauty, 
 which places it among the finest passages in the sacred, or, indeed, 
 in any writings. We may compare ch. xv., Kom. viii. 31-39, and 
 on a much lower plane the torrent of invective in 2 Cor. xi. 
 19-29. This chapter is a Divine "prophecy," which might have 
 for its title that which distinguishes Ps. xlv. " A Song of Love " 
 or " of Loves." And it is noteworthy that these praises of love 
 come, not from the Apostle of love, but from the Apostle of 
 faith. It is not a fact that the Apostles are one-sided and 
 prejudiced, each seeing only the gift which he specially esteems. 
 Just as it is St. John who says, " This is the victory which over- 
 cometh the world, even our faith," so it is St. Paul who declares 
 that greater than all gifts is love. 1 
 
 Tf " The greatest, strongest, deepest thing Paul ever wrote." 2 
 U I never read 1 Cor. xiii. without thinking of the description 
 of the virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics. St. Paul's ethical 
 teaching has quite an Hellenic ring. It is philosophical, as resting 
 
 1 Robertson and Plummer, 1st Corinthians, 285. 2 Harnack. 
 
 347 
 
348 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 on a definite principle, namely, our new life in Christ ; and it 
 is logical, as classifying virtues and duties according to some 
 intelligible principle. 1 
 
 U For moral elevation, there is nothing in literature equal to 
 this chapter. No Plato or Seneca ever uttered a sentiment of 
 such transcendent beauty. Even in the Word of God I know of 
 no parallel to the passage, even in the Epistles of St. John, 
 who wrote so much upon the subject, and learned his lesson on 
 the Saviour's heart. It is the highest encomium of the Queen 
 of Graces that genius ever indited ; and what more could man, 
 however inspired of God, say in her praise ? Yet here is no 
 exaggeration, no distortion of the virtue commended, no deprecia- 
 tion of any other Christian quality or duty. All is just, exact, 
 proportionate, because all is Divine. Love, in whatever aspect 
 regarded whether in its abstract principle, or in its relative 
 importance, or in its enumerated attributes, or in its immeasurable 
 duration, or in its asserted superiority to faith and hope is 
 manifestly worthy of its apostolic designation "the more 
 excellent way." 2 
 
 2. Let us examine the important word by which he designates 
 this more excellent way. There is hardly a more difficult one to 
 render exactly, in the whole compass of the New Testament. 
 Our language has not a term which will exactly convey to an 
 English reader the full idea. It is the word, indeed, by which at 
 the same time God's love to man, and that feeble return of ours 
 which is called love to Him, are both expressed. Still, our word 
 " love " would not by any means do its full work in this chapter. 
 We have that word in so many restricted senses the love of 
 friendship, the love of wedded life, even the love of lower and 
 less worthy objects that there would perhaps be danger of our 
 escaping from the largeness of regard here insisted on into some 
 of those smaller channels and abiding places, and satisfying our- 
 selves that we had attained that which is required of us. For 
 instance, when it is said, " Love suffereth long, and is kind," 
 instead of forming in our minds the idea of some unusual indwell- 
 ing grace which always and to all men suffereth long and is kind, 
 we should be saying in our hearts, " yes we know that there 
 is nothing one will not endure from an object deeply loved " ; and 
 
 1 E. L. Hicks, Studio, Biblica, iv. 9. 
 3 J. Cross, Pauline Charity, 6. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 349 
 
 so of similar expressions, thereby missing the whole force and 
 blessedness of the description. 
 
 The A.V. has unfortunately departed here from the earlier 
 rendering " love " of Tindale and Cranmer (which the Eevised 
 Version has restored) and has followed the Vulgate caritas. Thus 
 the force of this eloquent panegyric on love is impaired, and the 
 agreement between the various writers of the New Testament 
 much obscured. The aim, no doubt, of the Vulgate translators 
 was to avoid the sensuous associations which the Latin word amor 
 suggested. But the English word charity has never risen to the 
 height of the Apostle's argument. At best it signifies only a 
 kindly interest in and forbearance towards others. It is far 
 from suggesting the ardent, active, energetic principle which the 
 Apostle had in view. And though the English word "love" 
 includes the affection which springs up between persons of 
 different sexes, it is generally understood to denote only the 
 higher and nobler forms of that affection, the lower being stig- 
 matized under the name of "passion." Thus it is a suitable 
 equivalent for the Greek word here used. 
 
 The word " charity " is open to grave objections. For, in the 
 mind of the common English reader, it absolutely identifies the 
 quality here spoken of with that very practice of almsgiving with 
 which it is in one verse of the chapter so forcibly contrasted. 
 And it is partly owing to the fact of the word " charity " having 
 been used here by our translators that the chapter itself falls so 
 dead on the ear of the English public. The word, as already said, 
 was adopted from the writers of the Latin Vulgate. Of our own 
 English versions, it is found in Wyclif, and in the Rheims Eomau 
 Catholic translation, both of which were made from the Latin. 
 All the versions of the Eeformation Tindale, Cranmer, and the 
 Geneva Bible had "love" throughout; but King James's trans- 
 lators, to whom we owe our Authorized Version, unhappily 
 returned to " charity," so much more easily mistaken, and so 
 characteristically doing the work of Rome, in being capable of 
 representing a mere external act, instead of the largeness of 
 Christian spirit here described. "This," says Dean Alford, "is 
 one out of not a few instances in which we owe our translators 
 no thanks for having taken from us the life and spirit of our 
 
350 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 genuine Eeformation Bibles, and having gone back to the 
 ambiguous and less expressive language of the version by which 
 Home supports so many of her errors." 
 
 The difference between the two terms is well exhibited in 
 1 John iv. 8, where the Vulgate reads : " God is charity." Even 
 the A.V. would not accept this. In Luke xi. 42, the Latin has : 
 " Ye pass over judgement and the charity of God," but in John v. 
 42 : " Ye have not the love of God in yourselves." These passages 
 suggest that it was the intention of the Latin editors to dis- 
 tinguish between love as a principle and its manifestation. Yet 
 in Kom. v. 5, we have " the charity of God is diffused in our 
 hearts." Again, Eom. viii. 35, " What shall separate us from 
 the charity of Christ ? " It has also to be observed that the 
 Latin caritas had not precisely the same meaning as has attached 
 itself to our " charity." With us it means beneficence, practical 
 kindness, but in Latin it represents more the inward feeling. 
 Hence Cicero speaks of "the charity which exists between 
 children and parents." The whole case shows how wisely the 
 Eevisers have applied their principle not always observed 
 which required the same English word to represent one in the 
 original. 
 
 U Watts about the same time completed the group of the 
 graces by adding his picture of " Charity." This picture is in 
 the manner of the old Italian masters, and might well have been 
 painted by Correggio or Andrea del Sarto. Charity is a calm, 
 modern Madonna, the homely, motherly love which is a constant 
 revelation of His heart who comforts us as one whom his mother 
 comforteth, robed in richly coloured vesture, and tenderly en- 
 circling three bright, chubby-faced children with her arms an 
 attempt to picture the " motherliness of God." It is evident that 
 the painter has a different and higher idea of charity than merely 
 that of one who ministers to the poor, for in that case he would 
 have represented the mother with a look of profound pity on her 
 face, and the children with attenuated frames and gaunt, hungry 
 countenances. The conception which he has of this virtue is 
 that of St. Paul. Charity is more than the love that exists 
 between man and woman. It has none of its excitement and 
 passion. There is no selfishness or exclusiveness such as tinges 
 even the most disinterested love between the sexes. It is more 
 than benevolence, for it makes the rich as well as the poor the 
 objects of its regard. It is not pity and a desire to help that it 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 351 
 
 feels, but a longing for their true happiness, for their attainment 
 of that which is highest and best and most lasting, for those who 
 are well-off as well as for those who are unfortunate, irrespective 
 of condition. It is this realized identity of interests resting on 
 the invisible union of souls. You see on the countenance which 
 the artist places before you the patience of love, never in a hurry, 
 but always waiting to begin. A meek and quiet spirit of love 
 looks out of those thoughtful, kindly eyes, suffering long, bearing 
 all things, believing all things, hoping all things. She who seems 
 so serene has learnt much of her wisdom by self-sacrifice, and 
 much of her happy thoughts for the future from the trials and 
 disappointments of the past. Humility reigns upon the brow, 
 sealing her lips, so that she speaks not of, and tries to forget, the 
 good she has done, and goes back from the world from her lovely 
 act to the shade again, hiding even her love from itself. 1 
 
 Tf " I do not know when I first heard the thirteenth chapter 
 of 1st Corinthians ; but it was no abstract idea of charity, it was 
 the living image of my mother that informed every verse of it. 
 Even the clause * charity never faileth ' (though I knew what the 
 Apostle meant by it) suggested to me rather that, in the worst 
 extremity, she would never fail to afford comfort and help." 2 
 
 3. What is love ? St. Paul answers, by giving a great 
 number of properties of it, all distinct and special. It is patient, 
 it is kind, it has no envy, no self-importance, no ostentation, no 
 indecorum, no selfishness, no irritability, no malevolence. Which 
 of all these is it ? For if it is all at once, surely it is a name for 
 all virtues at once. And what makes this conclusion still more 
 plausible is that St. Paul elsewhere actually calls love "the 
 fulfilling of the law " : and our Saviour, in like manner, makes 
 our whole duty consist in loving God and loving our neighbour. 
 And St. James calls it " the royal law " : and St. John says, " We 
 know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love 
 the brethren." Thus the chapter from which the text is taken 
 seems but an exemplification in detail of what is declared in 
 general terms by the inspired writers. 
 
 In one sense it is all virtues at once, and therefore St. Paul 
 cannot describe it more definitely, more restrictedly than he does. 
 In other words, it is the root of all holy dispositions, and grows 
 and blossomslnto them : they are its parts ; and when it is de- 
 
 1 H. Macmillan, G. F. Watts, 207. 
 
 2 Rainy'a daughter in The Life of Principal Rainy, i. 24. 
 
352 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 scribed, they of necessity are mentioned. Love is the material 
 (so to speak) out of which all graces are made, the quality of mind 
 which is the fruit of regeneration, and in which the Spirit dwells ; 
 according to St. John's words, " Every one that loveth is born of 
 God; ... he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God 
 in him." 
 
 Tf The chief point to remember is that here love is not 
 regarded as a " gift " to be compared with other gifts, it is rather 
 a spirit, or temper, in which all gifts are to be used or exercised. 
 St. Paul constantly speaks of the Christian as a man or woman 
 "in Christ," or as one in whom Christ dwells. If love is a 
 synonym for the spirit and motive of Christ, when we say that 
 all these gifts have to be exercised and used with, or in, love, we 
 mean that they have to be exercised " in Christ." Just as to be 
 "in Christ" infinitely moralizes the whole life, so to exercise a 
 gift " in love " infinitely moralizes its use and exercise. 1 
 
 4. No distinction is drawn between love to God and love to 
 man. Throughout the chapter it is the root-principle that is 
 meant; love in its most perfect and complete sense. But it is 
 specially in reference to its manifestations to men that it is 
 praised, and most of the features selected as characteristic of it 
 are just those in which the Corinthians had proved defective. 
 And this deficiency is fatal. Christian love is that something 
 without which everything else is nothing, and which would be 
 all-sufficient, even were it alone. It is not merely an attribute 
 of God, it is His very nature, and no other moral term is thus 
 used of Him. 
 
 TI What is meant by love is not a preference for a certain 
 number of special people, but a generic disposition. If you are 
 going to test yourself by the words of Christ and His Apostles, 
 you must ask yourself, not whether you love some person or 
 persons who love you in return, but whether you so live amongst 
 your fellowmen that those around you can see in you something 
 of the comprehensive and inclusive love of God. " No man can 
 love God except he evidence it in love to man." 2 
 
 T[ One of the last, slowly murmured sayings of Whittier, the 
 poet, as he lay dying, was this: "Give my love to the 
 world." And this is the world's supreme need to-day; more 
 than our eloquence, or our knowledge, or our wealth, or all 
 
 : W. E. Chadwick, The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul, 247. 
 2 Quintin Hogg, 303. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 353 
 
 else besides, it needs our love. True, even love may sometimes 
 err; but the cure for love's mistakes is just more love. We 
 never blunder because we love ; we often blunder because we do 
 not love enough. God help us all, that like Whittier, we may 
 live and die, giving our love to the world ! l 
 
 5. St. Paul's first application of his great principle refers to 
 the use of "tongues" a gift of ecstatic, and probably highly 
 emotional utterance, and evidently very highly prized by the 
 Corinthians. St. Paul at once refuses to consider the gift apart 
 from the personality through which it is exercised. If that 
 personality is not motived by love the speaker has become a 
 mere instrument of sound without moral (or spiritual) character. 
 
 ^[ Two applications at once suggest themselves : first, to what 
 is termed popular preaching, however eloquent and clever, which 
 does not proceed from a Christianized heart, which is not inspired 
 by the love of souls, and whose object is not the salvation or 
 edification of men; secondly, to the emotional singing of hymns 
 whose words, if studied carefully apart from the music, are seen 
 to be either heresy or nonsense, if they do not come perilously 
 near to blasphemy. 2 
 
 I. 
 
 INTELLECT OR CHARACTER? 
 
 1. St. Paul has been alluding in the preceding chapter to 
 sundry and various endowments, abilities, and qualifications by 
 which certain individuals in the early Christian community were 
 gifted and distinguished by Divine providence, for the purpose of 
 the more speedy propagation of the Gospel, and of attracting, 
 retaining, and edifying new candidates for that community. And 
 one purpose of the Apostle in referring to these extraordinary 
 gifts and faculties is to put the favoured possessors of them upon 
 their guard, lest they should become puffed up and self-complacent 
 in the consciousness of their distinctions, and employ them for 
 their own exaltation, instead of for the furtherance of God's honour 
 in the welfare and progress of humanity. 
 
 Of the precise nature of these mysterious gifts, we know little 
 more than that, having answered their temporary purpose, they 
 
 1 G. Jackson, Memoranda Paulina, 51. 
 
 2 W. E. Ohadwick, The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul, 248. 
 I COR. 23 
 
354 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 exist no longer. But whatever they were, it is obvious that the 
 best way of applying for our own edification the Apostle's 
 admonitions with respect to them will be to translate, as it were, 
 those extraordinary gifts into their modern equivalents, which are 
 variously distributed amongst us under the common name of 
 " talents." We have no miraculous gift of Tongues ; but we have 
 scholars whose laborious industry has mastered languages to such 
 a degree as almost to repair the inconvenience of Babel and to 
 reduce its confusion to order. We have no miraculous gift of 
 Prophecy but we have men of far-sighted sagacity to discern the 
 signs of the times, of profound wisdom to prepare for the recep- 
 tion and interpretation of those phenomena, and possessed of an 
 eloquence little short of miraculous in propounding their projects 
 and recommending them for acceptance by a free people. And 
 whatever might be the precise nature of what St. Paul terms 
 " gifts of healing, gifts of help, gifts of government," we can have 
 no doubt that they each have their corresponding though ordinary 
 and unmiraculous endowments in the present day, exhibited in 
 the various evolutions of art, science, philosophy, political and 
 religious administration ; each of them, like the Pentecostal gifts, 
 and like "every good and perfect gift," proceeding from the 
 Father of Lights ; each of them liable to misuse by the vanity 
 of man ; each of them therefore necessitating a word of caution 
 in the spirit of the Apostle. Such gifts there are corresponding 
 to those of tongues, of knowledge, of prophecy, of discovery, of 
 contrivance or administration; gifts working through all the 
 range of commerce, politics, the camp, the court, the Church, or 
 in the fields of literature and science. These are the gifts which, 
 under the names of talent, force, and genius, men (and no wonder) 
 are ready to bow down before and worship ; these are the gifts 
 before which we are least reluctant and ashamed to offer homage, 
 sometimes approaching to extravagance gifts that are dazzling 
 to the beholder, and cannot therefore but be more or less danger- 
 ous to the possessor ; gifts that must be used with watchfulness 
 lest they should bear that possessor up into the region of super- 
 ciliousness ; lest they should set him above the plain tasks, the 
 common duties, the homely sympathies, the social kindnesses, 
 the meekness, the modesty, the concession, the considerateness, 
 and the fair construction which we owe to one another. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 355 
 
 Tf In earlier days his standard had been almost purely 
 intellectual, but in later life simplicity and charm and genuine 
 goodness seemed to appeal to him most. He said, " The power 
 of simple goodness is the greatest in the world." l 
 
 ^ The idea was early and unmistakably impressed on our 
 minds, that to be good was the main thing in life ; that there was 
 nothing else that could come into any comparison or competition 
 with this ; that in fact nothing else mattered greatly. We knew 
 that this was what our parents desired for us above all else, 
 though I do not think there was much direct speaking about it, 
 beyond a little explanation of our Sunday lessons, or an occasional 
 word when we were saying our prayers. 2 
 
 If Occasionally I preached a sermon at home over the red 
 sofa cushions ; this performance being always called for by my 
 mother's dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of my 
 childhood. The sermon was, I believe, some eleven words long ; 
 very exemplary, it seems to me, in that respect and I still think 
 must have been the purest gospel, for I know it began with, 
 "People, be good." 8 
 
 2. Since it is plainly because of its fruits that St. Paul 
 magnifies the grace of love, we shall hardly be doing injustice to 
 his argument by saying that, after all, the distinction he draws 
 is between intellect and character, as things to be sought after 
 for ourselves and reverenced in others. The text condenses it 
 into an epigram, " Though I speak with the tongues of men and 
 of angels, and have not love, I am become as the blare of the 
 trumpet or the clang of the cymbal." 
 
 U St. Paul knew nothing of the modern orchestra. He meant 
 by his simile, presumably, only showy noise and display, loud 
 enough to attract any attention however little cultivated. We 
 may read into it yet other lessons, not less important; for the 
 trumpet and the cymbal have their right and due place in the 
 orchestra, and contribute their necessary share to the "concord 
 of sweet sounds," and to the intention of the great Master whose 
 meaning they help to interpret. But by themselves what are 
 they but " sound and fury, signifying nothing " ? They are 
 useless, and without beauty, unless they take a subordinate place, 
 and unless they co-operate for something greater than themselves. 4 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 484. 
 
 2 Early Letters of Marcus Dods, 18. 
 
 3 Ruskin, Prceterita, i. 25. 
 
 4 A. Awger, The Gospel and Human Life t 33, 
 
356 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 3. It was within a comparatively small ring-fence of a 
 struggling church, separated by hard and fast lines from the 
 heathen and corrupt populace outside, that the problem had 
 risen for solution, which St. Paul sets himself to solve. It was 
 on purely religious questions the diffusion of the knowledge 
 of Christ by the ability and fervour of those already possessing 
 it that this question of Intellect versus Character had arisen. 
 But as it is a question going down to the deeps of human 
 personality, it never disappears, but is ever present, and ever 
 pressing for our decision. It is a perennial danger, because 
 a perennial temptation that steady, never-changing temptation 
 to value ability, talent, learning, accomplishment, even "clever- 
 ness," the cheapest and most worthless of them all to value 
 these above goodness, and to ignore the certain truth that, where 
 these things are not given by nature (as must be the case with 
 the majority), they are not to be acquired by aping those who 
 have them, by the mere mimicry of "gifts," which everywhere 
 abounds, the tinsel which obtains acceptance as the glorious gem 
 of the mountain or the sea, the surface cleverness which we daily 
 meet, the borrowed tricks of style and manner and talk, the 
 assimilative skill, wherein is no reality, no root, because no heart. 
 
 ^f An over-'cute woman's no better nor a long-tailed sheep 
 she'll fetch none the bigger price for that. 1 
 
 If One to whom he often spoke of the deepest things of life 
 and of death will never forget his saying one day just after the 
 attack of illness in December : " I have come to see that cleverness, 
 success, attainment, count for little; that goodness, or, as F. 
 (naming a dear friend) would say, ' character' is the important 
 factor in life." 2 
 
 4. St. Paul did not malign or disparage gifts. Himself a man 
 of rarest genius, is it likely he would stultify his own mission 
 and function by disparaging the great gifts which, inspired and 
 guided by love, were helping to mould the whole future of the 
 world ? " Covet earnestly the best gifts," he said ; every talent 
 and faculty that God has bestowed on your mysterious individ- 
 uality welcome and turn to the Master's use. 
 
 True it is, and within the range both of illustrious historical 
 
 1 Mr. Tulliver, in The Mill on the Floss. 
 
 8 Life and Letters of George John Romanes t 323. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 357 
 
 precedent and of frequent personal observation and experience, 
 that the best and most brilliant and distinguished gifts may be 
 directed, harmonized, moderated, and controlled by the most 
 frank and unaffected humility, and by the most tender and 
 generous sentiments of humanity. But it will hardly be denied 
 that while the highly gifted in literature and science are very 
 frequently, and perhaps even in exact proportion to their 
 eminence, men of modest stillness and humility, there is a very 
 great temptation to the contrary. There is an instinct of self- 
 glorification through these gifts which requires close looking 
 after. There is a temptation to forget that the only legitimate 
 dedication of such faculties, and the implied condition on which 
 they are bestowed, must be such as shall promote the ulterior 
 advantage of the whole community (as St. Paul shows in the 
 preceding chapter representing us as all members of one body). 
 
 If I remember one thing he said which made a great im- 
 pression. Something led us to talk about genius and character. 
 I was praising genius, and taking no notice of character as its 
 great buttress. He turned and said quietly, and with some 
 sadness, " I have seen more young men fail in early life from the 
 absence of character than from the absence of genius." * 
 
 Tf In 1876 Leslie Stephen and his sister-in-law, Lady Eitchie 
 (Miss Thackeray), were staying at a neighbouring farmhouse, and 
 Kuskin saw a good deal of them. He liked Stephen, in spite of 
 differences of opinion and temperament, and mentions talk with 
 him as one of the agreeable things at Brant wood ; but Stephen on 
 his side "could not be at ease with Kuskin." Between Lady 
 Kitchie and Kuskin there was fuller sympathy, as is seen in her 
 description of their meeting : 
 
 " Mrs. Severn sat in her place behind a silver urn, while the 
 master of the house, with his back to the window, was dispensing 
 such cheer, spiritual and temporal, as those who have been his 
 guests will best realize, fine wheaten bread and Scotch cakes in 
 many a crisp circlet and crescent, and trout from the lake, and 
 strawberries such as grow only on the Brantwood slopes. Were 
 these cups of tea only, or cups of fancy, feeling, inspiration? 
 And as we crunched and quaffed we listened to a certain strain 
 not easily to be described, changing from its graver first notes to 
 the sweetest and most charming of vibrations. . . . The text was 
 that strawberries should be ripe and sweet, and we munched and 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Brooke toss Wcstcolt, ii. 33. 
 
358 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 marked it then and there; that there should be a standard of 
 fitness applied to every detail of life, and this standard, with a 
 certain gracious malice, wit, hospitality, and remorselessness, he 
 began to apply to one thing and another, to one person and 
 another, to dress, to food, to books. . . . Listening back to the 
 echoes of a lifetime we can most of us still hear some strains very 
 clear, very real and distinct, out of all the confusion of past noise 
 and chatter ; and the writer (nor is she alone in this) must ever 
 count the music of Brantwood oratory among such strains. 
 Music, oratory I know not what to call that wondrous gift 
 which subjugates all who come within its reach." 
 
 God uses us to help each other so, 
 Lending our minds out. 1 
 
 5. That there may be gifts without love to use them aright 
 this is St. Paul's warning, and this warning must be declared 
 afresh in every age. If love is the one source of all that is best 
 in human character, we need not wonder any more why St. Paul 
 should be careful to compare or contrast it with faith and hope, 
 and declare that it is the greatest. For indeed love is the 
 atmosphere in which alone the light of faith and hope can burn. 
 Love creates character, and character, in return, makes lovely and 
 makes lovable. There is a witchery and a glamour which attend 
 intellectual gifts in life, winning admiration and popularity, and 
 even the semblance of affection. But when Death has come in to 
 place the object of these at a distance from earth and time, it is 
 to something far other than "cleverness" that Memory turns 
 instinctively to brood over and cherish. Not the gifts, but the 
 graces, then; not the cleverness, not the accomplishments or 
 learning, not the wit and humour, but the touches of human 
 sympathy and tenderness: the self-denial, the patience and 
 forbearance, the nobility of aim, the steadfastness of purpose, the 
 fact that the atmosphere of life and society was higher, nobler, 
 purer, where such an one moved and spoke just all those things 
 which St. Paul found to have their source and spring in love. 
 
 If My opinion of Lord Althorp is extremely high. In fact, 
 his character is the only stay of the Ministry. I doubt whether 
 any person has ever lived in England who, with no eloquence, no 
 brilliant talents, no profound information, with nothing in short 
 but plain good sense and an excellent heart, possessed so much 
 
 1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, ii. 291. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 359 
 
 influence both in and out of Parliament. His temper is an 
 absolute miracle. He has been worse used than any Minister 
 ever was in debate ; and he has never said one thing inconsistent, 
 I do not say with gentlemanlike courtesy, but with real 
 benevolence. Lord North, perhaps, was his equal in suavity 
 and good-nature; but Lord North was not a man of strict 
 principles. His administration was not only an administration 
 hostile to liberty, but it was supported by vile and corrupt means, 
 by direct bribery, I fear, in many cases. Lord Althorp has the 
 temper of Lord North with the principles of Eomilly. If he had 
 the oratorical powers of either of those men, he might do any- 
 thing. But his understanding, though just, is slow, and his 
 elocution painfully defective. It is, however, only justice to him 
 to say that he has done more service to the Eeform Bill even as a 
 debater than all the other Ministers together, Stanley excepted. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF LOVE. 
 
 1. What is the origin of love ? Turn to the Ke vised Version 
 of the Epistles of John and you will find there these words : " We 
 love because he first loved us." "We love" not, "We love 
 him." This is the way the old version has it, and it is wrong. 
 "We love because he first loved us." Look at that word 
 " because." There is the cause. " Because he first loved us/' 
 The effect follows that we love Him we love all men. Our 
 heart is slowly changed. Because He loved us, we love. Con- 
 template the love of Christ, and you will love Him. Stand before 
 that, and you will be changed into the same image, from tender- 
 ness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to 
 order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love 
 with it ; you cannot command yourself to do it. And so look at 
 the great sacrifice of Christ, as He laid down His life all through 
 life, and at His death upon the Cross of Calvary ; and you must 
 love Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. You 
 put a piece of iron in the mere presence of an electrified body, 
 and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It becomes 
 a temporary- magnet in the presence of a permanent magnet, and 
 as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets. 
 
 1 Macaulay, Life, and Letters, 175. 
 
360 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and gave Himself 
 for us, and you too will become a permanent magnet, a permanent 
 attractive force ; and like Him you will draw all men be they 
 white men or black men unto you. That is the inevitable effect 
 of love. 
 
 With all thy heart, with all thy soul and mind, 
 Thou must Him love and His behests embrace; 
 All other loves, with which the world doth blind 
 Weak fancies, and stir up affections base, 
 Thou must renounce and utterly displace, 
 And give thyself unto Him full and free, 
 That full and freely gave Himself to thee. 
 
 Then shalt thou feel thy spirit so possest, 
 And ravisht with devouring great desire 
 Of His dear Self, that shall thy feeble breast 
 Inflame with love, and set thee all on fire 
 With burning zeal, through every part entire, 
 That in no earthly thing thou shalt delight, 
 But in His sweet and amiable sight. 
 
 Thenceforth all world's desire will in thee die, 
 And all earth's glory, on which men do gaze, 
 Seem dirt and dross in thy pure-sighted eye, 
 Compar'd to that Celestial Beauty's blaze, 
 Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense doth daze 
 With admiration of their passing light, 
 Blinding the eyes, and lumining the spright. 
 
 Then shall thy ravisht soul inspired be 
 With heavenly thoughts far above human skill, 
 And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly see 
 Th' Idea of His pure glory present still 
 Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill 
 With sweet enragement of celestial love, 
 Kindled through sight of those fair things above. 1 
 
 U With Professor Blackie the course of true love did not at 
 first run smooth. But the Professor refused to believe that Mr. 
 Wyld (her father) would persist in his displeasure. " You shall 
 soon (he wrote to her) see your father, dearest, sitting as 
 comfortably at my lireside as he does at his own. I believe 
 
 1 Spenser. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 361 
 
 that the only invincible power in the world is love ; I shall ply 
 your father with that and that only, and if I do not conquer 
 Christianity never conquered." l 
 
 ^f Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he 
 entered the room, he just put his hand on the sufferer's head, 
 and said, " My boy, God loves you," and went away. And the 
 boy started from his bed, and he called out to the people in the 
 house, " God loves me ! God loves me ! " One word ; one word ! 
 It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him had over- 
 powered him, melted him down, and had begun the making of a 
 new heart. 
 
 ^[ " Please, ' ma,' " began Atim, " please no whip Mees Kittee. 
 She say true word. Me black, me nigger. Me no white, me no 
 prettee, but Jesus He no think about black face, and He lofe me 
 all the same. He lofe me, me too glad. Mees Kittee speak true 
 word, but me not sorree any more." 
 
 The girl's black eyes glistened with feeling, but she looked 
 very happy, and she showed her ivory teeth. 
 
 " Atim, my dear Atim ! " said Mrs. Temple. " I'm glad along 
 with you ! What do other things matter after all if one is sure 
 of that?" 
 
 "Jesus, He make me white as snow me never see in me 
 country. Me lofe Him ! Me lofe Him ! " She laughed aloud 
 in her perfect pleasure. Truly she could afford to forgive and 
 forget. 
 
 Kitty, stony-faced, had been a study during Atim's plea for 
 her. She had refused utterly to beg pardon, and stood as perverse 
 a little mortal as one could see anywhere. Gradually, as Atim 
 spoke, her expression became softer. Her warm heart was 
 touched. The moment Atim stopped, she flung herself into the 
 black girl's arms. 
 
 " I love you, Atim ! " she cried. " I love your black face. 
 I'm the wickedest sinner alive! If I loved Jesus the least 
 little bit, I wouldn't behave so." She kissed the girl many 
 times, and fondled her. Then Kitty turned to her mother. 
 " Mother, mother, punish rne ! Make me do something I don't 
 like at all. I'll do it just to show how sorry I am. I don't 
 want to be naughty, but it's my nature ! I feel awful bad, 
 awful!" 2 
 
 2. As if on purpose to obviate all mysticism, St. Paul is 
 careful to describe love by its practical results. A tree is known 
 by its fruit ; and as you might describe an oak tree to a child 
 
 1 John Stuart Blaclcie, i. 207. 2 J. F. Hogg, The Angel Opportunity, 131. 
 
362 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 as the tree that is covered with acorns ; or a vine as the tree 
 from which the purple clusters are hanging, so St. Paul delineates 
 love by the fruit it bears. By love, he seems to say, I mean that 
 quality which " suffereth long and is kind," puts up with a great 
 deal, and, trying to find excuses for the misdemeanour of an 
 adversary, is kind and gentle and forbearing. Love envieth not 
 the good fortune, the reputation, the precedence of another, 
 vaunteth not herself, is not puffed up; gives herself no airs of 
 consequence, nor plumes herself upon even real superiorities, 
 inasmuch as it is contrary to the very essence of love to be 
 making those comparisons which alone could supply materials 
 for self-conceit; doth not behave herself unseemly, nor in any 
 manner incongruous with the correlative circumstances in which 
 she is placed; or inconsistent with the rights, the feelings, or 
 even, if it can be helped, the honest prejudices of those with 
 whom she is placed. And she is the less likely to fall into this 
 unseemliness because she seeketh not her own ; is not incessantly 
 on the watch to assert her own presence and to claim attention 
 to her own prerogative ; is not easily (or perhaps it may here 
 mean " vehemently ") provoked ; imputeth no evil where it can 
 be avoided ; rejoiceth not in iniquity as so many do, who cannot 
 hear a piece of discreditable news but they sit on thorns until 
 they can find an opportunity to repeat it but rejoiceth in every- 
 thing that is consistent with truth, justice, and integrity. Beareth 
 all things, or more probably here, concealdh all things concerning 
 another person which, without injury to the claims of social laws, 
 it would be kind and considerate to conceal ; believeth all things 
 favourable to such a person which there is any colourable reason 
 to believe; even hopeth those which she finds it difficult to 
 believe ; and endureth all things which it may be an advantage 
 to others that she should endure. 
 
 TJ Henry Drunimoud has told us how in the heart of Africa, 
 among the great lakes, he came across black men and women who 
 remembered the only white man they ever saw before David 
 Livingstone ; " and as you cross his footsteps in that dark con- 
 tinent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind doctor who 
 passed there years ago. They could not understand him ; but 
 they felt the love that beat in his heart." 
 
 U In London, in 1872, one Sunday morning a minister said 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 363 
 
 to me, " I want you to notice that family there in one of the 
 front seats ; and when we go home I want to tell you their story." 
 When we arrived home I asked him for the story, and he said, 
 " All that family were won by a smile." " Why," said I, " how 
 was that ? " " Well," said he, " as I was walking down a street 
 one day I saw a child at a window ; it smiled, and I smiled, and 
 we nodded. So it was the second time ; I nodded, she nodded. 
 It was not long before there was another child, and I had got 
 into a habit of looking and nodding ; and pretty soon the group 
 grew, and at last, as I went by, a lady was with them. I did 
 not know what to do. I did not want to nod to her, but I knew 
 the children expected it, and so I nodded to them all. And the 
 mother saw I was a minister, because I carried a Bible every 
 Sunday morning. So the children followed me the next Sunday 
 and found I was a minister. And they thought I was the 
 greatest preacher they knew, and their parents must hear me." l 
 
 Tf How is it that the poets have said so many fine things 
 about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their 
 first poems their best? or are not those the best which come 
 from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper- 
 rooted affections ? The boy's flute-like voice has its own spring 
 charm ; but the man should yield a richer, deeper music. 2 
 
 Youth immortal undying love ! 
 
 With these by winter fireside we'll sit down, 
 Wearing our snows of honour like a crown; 
 
 And sing as in a grove, 
 
 Where the full nests ring out with happy cheer, 
 "Summer is here." 
 
 Koll round, strange years; swift seasons, come and go; 
 
 Ye leave upon us only an outward sign; 
 
 Ye cannot touch the inward and divine, 
 While God alone does know ; 
 There seal'd till summers, winters, all shall cease 
 In His deep peace. 
 
 Therefore uprouse ye winds and howl your will; 
 
 Beat, beat, ye sobbing rains on pane and door; 
 
 Enter, slow-footed age, and thou, obscure 
 Grand Angel not of ill: 
 Healer of every wound, whene'er thou come, 
 Glad, we'll go home. 3 
 
 1 D. L. Moody, The Faithful Saying, 44. 
 
 2 George Eliot, Adam Bede. 3 Dinah M. Mulock. 
 

THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT. 
 
 1*5 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Aked (C. F.), The Courage of the Coward, 225. 
 
 Albertson (C. C.), The Gospel according to Christ, 259. 
 
 Brooke (S. A.), The Govpel of Joy, 297. 
 
 Brooks (P.), Twenty Sermons, 280. 
 
 Clow (W. M.), The Secret of the Lord, 337. 
 
 Cooper (T. J.), Love's Unveiling, 111. 
 
 Cross (J.), Pauline Charity, 207, 223. 
 
 Daplyn (E.), One with the Eternal, 51. 
 
 Davies (J. LI.), The Purpose of God, 80. 
 
 Dix (M.), Sermons Doctrinal and Practical, 190. 
 
 Edger (S.), Sermons at Auckland, N.Z., ii. 105. 
 
 Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 182. 
 
 Griffith-Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 62. 
 
 Henson (H. H.), Christ and the Nation, 296. 
 
 Hicks (E.), The Life Hereafter, 1. 
 
 Howatt (J. R.), The Children's Pew, 81. 
 
 Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 164. 
 
 (W. W.), in Oxford University Sermons, 144. 
 Jones (J. S.), Seeing Darldy, 3. 
 
 Leach (C.), Shall We know our Friends in Heaven? 81. 
 Lewis (E. W.), Some Views of Modern Theology, 50. 
 
 (H. E.), in The Old Faith and the New Theology, 241. 
 Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. Paul's, 367. 
 Miller (J.), Sermons Literary and Scientific, i. 110. 
 Morrison (G. H.), Sunrise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, 12. 
 Paget (F.), The Spirit of Discipline, 111. 
 Pope (R. M.), The Poetry of tlie Upward Way, 137. 
 Randall (R. W.), Life in the Catholic Church, 155. 
 Roberts (R.), The Meaning of Christ, 39. 
 Sampson (E. F.), Christ Church Sermons, 11. 
 Sanday (W.), Oracles, 34. 
 Smith (D.), Man's Need of God, 199. 
 Vaughan (C. J.), Epiphany, Lent and Easter, 87. 
 
 (J.), Sermons in Christ Church, Brighton, i. 204. 
 Watson (F.), The Christian Life Here and Hereafter, 233. 
 Cambridge Review, viii. Supplement No. 204 (Randall) ; xv. Supplement 
 
 No. 366 (Kirkpatrick). 
 Christian World Pulpit, xv. 221 (Craig) ; xvii. 238 (Wonnacott) ; xxii. 
 
 184 (Johnson) ; xxxv. 232 (Westcott) ; xxxvii. 369 (Rogers) ; liv. 
 
 10 (Stalker) ; Ixv. 104 (Winnington Ingram) ; Ixvii. 69 (Watt) ; 
 
 Ixx. 8 (Watson). 
 
THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT. 
 
 For now we see in a mirror, darkly ; but then face to face ; now I know 
 in part ; but then shall I know even as also I have been known. i Cor. 
 xiii. 12. 
 
 1. ST. PAUL has been speaking of gifts or endowments on 
 which members of the Corinthian Church were priding them- 
 selves. There was a great deal of emotion in the new Christian 
 societies of that day. Emotional impulses broke out in irregular 
 exhortations, in utterances of praise, in expressions of conviction, 
 in acts of healing ; and these impulses, which sometimes led to 
 disorderly competition, needed to be controlled. The first 
 principle that St. Paul lays down with regard to them is that 
 their proper object is to be of some use to the Christian society. 
 They were given not for the profit or distinction of the individual, 
 but for the benefit of the Church. Then he bids his readers see 
 that all gifts, even those from which the Church might derive 
 most advantage, were essentially inferior to love. 
 
 He goes on to describe, in words worthy of what he praises, 
 the beauty and blessedness of love. The ultimate distinction 
 that he ascribes to it is that it lasts ; it does not fail, or undergo 
 changes, it abides. Herein especially was it contrasted with 
 prophesying and tongues and knowledge. Prophecies will be 
 done away, tongues will cease, knowledge will be done away. 
 St. Paul was no doubt referring here to the emotional gifts which 
 were used and valued in the Churches of that age. But he lets 
 us see that he regards these as representing all intellectual 
 conceptions and utterances concerning spiritual things. " For we 
 know in part, and we prophesy (or preach) in part: but when 
 that which is-perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done 
 away." St. Paul would hardly have spoken thus if he had not 
 himself been perplexed by the incompleteness and unsatisfying 
 
 3*7 
 
3 68 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 character of the accounts which we can give to ourselves and 
 others of the ways of God. He was accustomed to take refuge 
 in the thought that our conceptions and language are the 
 expressions of partial knowledge, such as will be superseded in 
 time by maturer and completer knowledge. And he had 
 evidently found support in the two analogies which he proceeds 
 to give. 
 
 (1) " When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, 
 I thought as a child : now that I am become a man, I have put 
 away childish things." Every grown-up person is familiar with 
 this experience. We can remember fanciful conceptions of our 
 childhood which now make us smile; things appeared to us in 
 very different proportions from those in which we see them now. 
 Our knowledge has grown, and the growth of it inevitably alters 
 our apprehensions and judgments. It is not unreasonable to 
 expect that what has already happened to us will happen to us 
 again. May we not hope that in the future world, which we 
 cannot now understand, but which will seem so different to us 
 from the present, the contradictions and perplexities which baffle 
 us now will in some way be made to disappear ? There is a pre- 
 sumption that, even on this side of the grave, as the generations 
 of Christians grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, they may outgrow doctrines and rules which were 
 natural to earlier stages. 
 
 (2) The other analogy is that which forms our text. We 
 are reminded of the difference between a person seen as reflected 
 by an imperfect and confusing mirror and the same person seen 
 face to face. Let us hold the Apostle taught that God is now 
 seeing and knowing us ; but let it not be assumed that we as yet 
 see and know God except most imperfectly. 
 
 2. The expression which St. Paul here uses is a very suggestive 
 one. He has been speaking of the contrast in value between 
 knowledge and love, showing that all our knowledge, of whatever 
 sort it may be, is of little worth compared with love. Love is 
 that which alone is truly precious in human life, and love 
 endures; while all our ideas are destined to dissolve and pass 
 away, like the changing shapes of the clouds from the heaven's 
 azure. Love is that constant blue above, and love above is 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. \i 369 
 
 eternal. Knowledge is partial, and therefore the utterance of 
 the truth in prophecy or preaching must be partial. And just 
 as the man puts off the thoughts of the child, so the man is ever 
 putting off and changing even his manhood's thoughts that have 
 been as those of a spiritual childhood, for those that are to him 
 new and better, even as he changes his raiment. This process 
 must go on to the last hour of mental life and activity; and 
 what we think the best thought must in time give place to a 
 better; and the best that can be dreamed is still a dream and 
 a shadow compared with the substance and the reality itself. 
 "For," says the Apostle (to render his words quite literally), 
 " we are looking now through a mirror in (or upon) an enigma." 
 
 3. Human knowledge is imperfect, fragmentary, partial. We 
 can scarcely be said to " know " ; we are only " learning to know " 
 by slow and painful effort; our best attainment is one-sided, 
 relative, incomplete. Our expression even of what we think we 
 know is partial and imperfect. Not only do we " know in part," 
 but we " prophesy in part." Even those whom God has called 
 to be His spokesmen can but communicate their message in 
 language which is inadequate to express the truth fully. And 
 why ? Because here and now, in this present life and with our 
 limited faculties, we can only see " by means of a mirror." All 
 that we can discern is as it were but a reflection of the absolute 
 archetypal realities, a blurred, confused, imperfect image of 
 glory upon which as yet we cannot gaze. And even that reflec- 
 tion which we seem to see can only be described in language 
 which is like a riddle, challenging us to guess its meaning and 
 unravel its secret, but hinting, not defining, hard to interpret, 
 liable to be misunderstood. In the face of eternal truths we 
 are but children; thinking, feeling, speaking, with the limited 
 capacities, the baffled eagerness, the constant and inevitable 
 misunderstandings of children: yes, but like children too, with 
 the hope and promise of growth, development, attainment here- 
 after. 
 
 For St. Paul's now is balanced by a then. " When that which 
 
 is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." 
 
 Beyond this life of mediate and imperfect knowledge expressed 
 
 in the language of riddles lies the promise of a life where know- 
 
 i COR. 24 
 
370 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 ledge will be immediate, distinct, consummated in the vision of 
 God " face to face " ; when partial knowledge will be exchanged 
 for knowledge so full, so complete, so personal, that St. Paul 
 dares to compare it with God's present perfect insight into each 
 human soul ; " then shall I know fully even as also I have been 
 fully known." 
 
 Meanwhile, in this our present state of limited and imperfect 
 knowledge, amid all the uncertainties and perplexities of life, 
 there is one sure clue, one indispensable guide to direct us 
 " love never faileth." 
 
 The idea is one, but the Apostle gives it in two parallel 
 statements, after the manner of Hebrew poetry. And each 
 statement has its two sides " now " and " then." Thus 
 I. SEEING. 
 
 1. Now we see in a mirror, darkly. 
 
 2. Then face to face. 
 II. KNOWING. 
 
 1. Now 1 know in part. 
 
 2. Then shall I know even as also I have been known. 
 
 I. 
 
 SEEING. 
 
 It is often hard to get people to see. Their gaze is on the 
 outward the shows of sense and of time on the seen; and 
 therefore to the New Testament writers it is but blindness. To 
 them he who does not see the unseen does not see at all. But, 
 given the vision of faith, it will develop from faltering dim 
 beginnings, and its horizon will become richer and more heavenly. 
 It will rejoice in the mirror. It will not even resent the riddle. 
 And why ? Because it is conscious of moving onwards to the 
 Face. 
 
 ^ One summer evening sitting by my window I watched for 
 the first star to appear, knowing the position of the brightest in 
 the southern sky. The dusk came on, grew deeper, but the star 
 did not shine. By-and-by, other stars less bright appeared, so 
 that it could not be the sunset which obscured the expected one. 
 Finally, I considered that I must have mistaken its position, 
 when suddenly a puff of air blew through the branch of a pear- 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 371 
 
 tree which overhung the window, a leaf moved, and there was 
 the star behind the leaf. 
 
 At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gazing 
 at the sky up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful 
 star shines clearly : here a constellation is hidden by a branch : 
 a universe by a leaf. Some mental instrument or organism is 
 required to enable us to distinguish between the leaf which may 
 be removed, and a real void : when to cease to look in one direc- 
 tion, and to work in another. Many men of broad brow and 
 great intellect lived in the days of ancient Greece, but for lack 
 of the accident of a lens, and of knowing the way to use a prism, 
 they could but conjecture imperfectly. I am in exactly the 
 position they were when I look beyond light. Outside my 
 present knowledge I am exactly in their condition, I feel that 
 there are infinities to be known, but they are hidden by a 
 leaf. 1 
 
 If The late Professor T. C. Edwards says that St. Paul got his 
 metaphor of the mirror from Philo, who got it from Plato, and 
 he mentions the striking passage in Plato's Republic, where 
 Socrates is illustrating the slow development of our faculties 
 by the case of men who have been immured in a cavern and 
 are suddenly dragged into the sunlight. Not a man at first 
 can make out, in the unaccustomed glare, a single object as it 
 is. " Hence, I suppose, habit will be necessary to enable him to 
 perceive objects in that upper world. At first he will be most 
 successful in distinguishing shadows; then he will discern the 
 reflections of men and other things in water, and afterwards the 
 realities ; and after this he will raise his eyes to encounter the 
 light of the moon and the stars, finding it less difficult to study 
 the heavenly bodies and the heaven itself by night than the sun 
 and the sun's light by day." Finally, he will see the sun as it 
 is, not as it appears in water or on alien ground, and then he 
 will conclude that the sun is the author of the seasons, the 
 guardian of the visible world, and the cause of all he and his 
 friends used to see. On some such lines the idealism of St. Paul 
 runs respecting the soul and its spiritual vision as it ascends 
 from the partial to the perfect, from the fleeting to the real. 
 One may note, in passing, the joy of discovering a kinship 
 between such minds as Plato, St. Paul, and Wordsworth, children 
 of ages far distant, but each illumined by the immanent Reason, 
 by the " Light which lighteth every man." 2 
 
 1 Richard Jeiferies, The Story of My Heart, 188. 
 
 2 K. M. Pope, The Poetry oftfw Upward Way, 152. 
 
372 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 i. Now. 
 
 " Now we see in (by means of) a mirror, darkly." 
 
 St. Paul's meaning is explained in an illustration. "When 
 I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
 thought as a child ; but when I became a man I put away childish 
 things." With the humility of true wisdom and the sweetness 
 of a large understanding, he reckons the attainments of this life 
 as no more than childish acquisitions, when compared with that 
 which we shall reach when we are home. Our powers are 
 undeveloped, immature, juvenile, in this life; our spiritual in- 
 sight is therefore defective, and our knowledge only preparatory 
 or initial. 
 
 1. In (or ly) a mirror. When St. Paul lived and wrote, 
 mirrors were not made of glass, as the Authorized Version of 
 this passage erroneously suggests, but of some metal. The best, 
 being made of silver, were costly, and it took a good deal of 
 skill and labour to make the surface of the metal quite even. 
 And however well made a mirror might be, it was always in 
 danger of losing its clearness by exposure. St. Paul and his 
 readers were not of the class that could indulge themselves in 
 costly articles of luxury. A cheap and inferior mirror was 
 better than nothing ; but we can picture to ourselves what the 
 mirrors used by the humbler classes were like, if we recall the 
 reflections of ourselves which we have casually seen in tarnished 
 and uneven surfaces of metal. 
 
 Let any one imagine himself to be before such a mirror, with 
 a friend standing by him. He can see the friend's face reflected 
 as if he were looking through the mirror. But the face, so seen, 
 will be distorted and dim, and if he desires to examine any 
 feature accurately he will be baffled, so that the face will be in 
 some respects an enigma or puzzle to him. What a contrast he 
 will perceive, if he turns his head, and looks at the actual face 
 of the friend at his side ! Then he will see and know his friend, 
 as his friend who was not using the mirror was seeing and 
 knowing him. 
 
 Thus St. Paul's similitude is to be explained. His words, 
 literally rendered, are " For we see now through a mirror in 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 373 
 
 an enigma (or puzzle), but then face to face; now I know in 
 part, but then I shall know as fully as I was known." He is 
 comparing the blurred and confusing reflection of an object with 
 the object as seen directly. And he uses this image to illustrate 
 what he assumes to be puzzling in the ways of God as we can 
 now apprehend them. 
 
 What we see at present is a sort of reflection of truth, not 
 the very truth itself. A mirror may be very useful ; but it can 
 never give the accurate idea of the very figure, the very person, 
 presented in it. If its copy of the person be ever so accurate, still 
 it is not defective only, it is also misleading : the right side has 
 become the left, and the left hand in the picture is awkwardly 
 performing the functions of the right hand in the original : thus 
 the effect produced is different, however carefully represented 
 the details and the particulars. A mirror, too, can hold but one 
 image at a time : if it be preoccupied by one figure, it is unavail- 
 able for another. And if, in addition to these essential defects 
 of accuracy and limitations of capacity, there be also the slightest 
 flaw in the glass or cloud upon the surface, there is an end at 
 once of all beauty and of all truth in the representation, and 
 what was before only defective becomes now a distortion and a 
 caricature. And how much more expressive would be the figure 
 in the Apostle's days, when not glass but stone or metal was 
 commonly used for the purpose spoken of; when the colouring 
 therefore of every object must have been lost in the reflection, 
 and nothing would remain but a meagre and blurred outline to 
 carry to the eye the impression of face or figure or landscape ! 
 
 2. Darkly. That is, as the margin tells us, "in a riddle." 
 The original is identical with our English word " enigma." What 
 a mirror is to the eye a riddle is to the ear, only that the latter 
 expresses more clearly the incompleteness of our knowledge, and 
 the necessity that it should be thus partial. But just as a re- 
 flection implies a reality, so a riddle involves an answer. What 
 we know of God comes to us wrapped in mystery ; it comes as 
 an answer to our needs, but in giving this answer it raises new 
 questions for our solution questions which St. Paul tells us by 
 this very phrase we cannot hope now altogether to solve. We 
 see God and Divine things amid the perplexities and contra- 
 
374 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 dictions of this imperfect . state, part, surely, of the clouds and 
 darkness which are round about Him ; we behold Him through 
 life's great riddle, and though the dimness which it brings rises 
 ever before us from this lower earth like a mist, those who look 
 for Him see the far-off shining of His face, and know the maze 
 is not without its clue, that His Hand, strong and tender, holds 
 the thread of the Divine love, from which, while we hold it fast, 
 neither life nor death, neither things present nor things to come, 
 shall be able to separate us. 
 
 It is in relation to the highest truths that it is most important 
 constantly to recognize the limitation of our knowledge and the 
 imperfection of our expression of it. It is these truths of which 
 it is most necessary to remember that we apprehend them only 
 as " through a mirror," express them only as " in a riddle " ; learn 
 only by slow degrees to recognize a little better what the image 
 means, to understand a little more fully the depths of mystery 
 wrapped in the words of the riddle. How many an error has sprung 
 from the assumption that human language could be a full and 
 adequate expression of Divine realities, in forgetfulness of St. 
 Augustine's warning, Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, et 
 verius est quam cogitatur; for "when we have said all that we 
 can say concerning Him, we have said nothing worthily." How 
 many an assault upon the Christian faith has been based upon 
 the assumption that infinite truths could be compressed into the 
 moulds of human words ! Yes, and how often the defenders of 
 the Faith have exposed themselves to attack by letting it be 
 thought that this was their belief, this the position which they 
 were bound to maintain at all hazards. 
 
 U Take for an example the nature of God. The very attributes 
 of God are an enigma to us. What is infinity ? What is omni- 
 science? What is omnipresence? What is eternity? Each is 
 a riddle. Take the character of God. Is it not all shadowed 
 forth to us in the Scriptures, in the Old Testament at all events, 
 in dark sayings ? " It repented the Lord that he had made man 
 on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart " (Gen. vi. 6). Take 
 the mode of our redemption. We firmly believe in the truth of 
 an atonement made for sin by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. But is not every word in that statement an enigma? 
 Who can explain, unless he would "darken counsel by words 
 without knowledge" (Job xxxviii. 2), the precise mode and 
 
i CORINTHIANS xni. 12 375 
 
 principle of that work of Christ, which is yet a sinner's one hope ? 
 Take the operation of the Holy Spirit. Who can tell us how the 
 Holy Spirit works in the hearts of men ? " Thou hearest the sound 
 thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it 
 goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit " (John iii. 8). 
 Take the process of the future judgment. Who will say that a 
 thousand objections which he cannot answer might not be urged 
 by human ingenuity against each part of that doctrine? We 
 know it ; but it is " in a riddle " ; it is as a dark saying. Or take, 
 once more, for an example, the whole conception of heaven, of the 
 future life of the saved; and 0, ten thousand times more, of 
 the future life of the lost. The revelation is made to us, made 
 on the authority of God, but made to us also in human words, arid 
 therefore also made " in an enigma." 1 
 
 U Evermore it remains true that we see darkly. It is 
 necessary ; it is part of our education ; we do not require to know 
 much just yet a little here goes a long way. I do not need to 
 know the metaphysical nature of God, or the state and occupa- 
 tions of the dead, or the destiny of the heathen, or how many 
 shall be saved, or how long the world is to last under present 
 arrangements, and when the great historic drama of our planet 
 will enter upon another act, or what rising hierarchies of angels 
 there are, and what they look like, and what they do, and how 
 they subsist: all this is irrelevant to my condition. We see 
 darkly, but we see enough. We feel that there must be reality 
 behind these appearances, that behind the universe must be a 
 Mind that made it; behind time must be eternity; behind the 
 carnal kingdoms of this world, the kingdom of eternal love that 
 shall one day replace them ; behind man's soul, with its hankerings 
 and hungers and thirsts and clamours, a God who can satisfy 
 them ; behind all the sin of the world, a salvation from it.* 
 
 ii. Then. 
 "Then face to face." 
 
 No doubt there is a verbal reference here to the words spoken 
 of Moses : " If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will 
 make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto 
 him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in 
 all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even 
 apparently, and not in dark speeches ; and the similitude of the 
 Lord shall he behold " (Num. xii. 6-8). We have the same contrast 
 
 1 C. J. Vaughan. 2 J. S. Jones, Seeing Darkly, 22. 
 
376 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 here : " Now we see through a glass, in a dark speech . . . but 
 then face to face." We shall all have that sort of communication 
 with God Himself, which, alone of all men, the mediator of the 
 first dispensation was privileged to enjoy in his day. 
 
 Higher, higher, 
 
 Purified by suffering's fire, 
 
 Eise, my soul, until thy flight 
 
 Pierce its way to heaven's light. 
 
 Clearer, clearer, 
 
 Until, ever drawing nearer, 
 
 There shall burst upon thy sight, 
 
 Through the darkness of earth's night, 
 
 All the eye of faith may see, 
 
 Set in God's eternity. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 KNOWING. 
 
 In the language of St. Paul " knowledge " denotes the advanced 
 or perfect knowledge, which is the ideal state of the true Christian. 
 It appears only in his Latin Epistles (from Komans onwards), 
 where the more contemplative aspects of the Gospel are brought 
 into view, and its comprehensive and eternal relations more 
 fully set forth. But the power of the preposition appears in 
 the verb, no less than in the substantive. In this passage it is 
 forced upon our notice. The partial knowledge is contrasted 
 with the full knowledge which shall be attained hereafter. This 
 distinction is missed in the Authorized Version here, though it is 
 observed in 2 Cor. vi. 9, " as unknown, and. yet well known" 2 
 
 i. Now. 
 "Now I know in part." 
 
 How much in the history of knowledge, as we read it with 
 the comment of that most stern of critics, Time, seems to be but 
 a record of misapplied ingenuity and dreary waste of energy. 
 We mark one generation contemptuously discarding the studies 
 and the methods of its predecessors and substituting its own, 
 doomed in their turn to become antiquated and obsolete. Pro- 
 
 1 William H. Birckhead. a Lightfoot, A Fresh Revision, 69. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 377 
 
 cesses of thought which claimed to be capable of solving every 
 contradiction are found wanting, and are abandoned for ever. 
 Enthusiasms which boasted of their power to regenerate a dead 
 age prove their insufficiency, and even turn themselves to worse 
 corruption. Controversies which were treated as questions of 
 life and death are pronounced to be barren logomachies or, at 
 the best, of comparative insignificance, when, viewed from a 
 distance, they assume their proper proportions. 
 
 Tf In each successive age we see the tyranny of some dominant 
 form of thought, or subject of study, or scheme of learning, claiming 
 to be supreme and final, to have the right to suppress its rivals, 
 and destined to last for ever. Wherein lay the error ? Was it 
 not that one age after another failed to take to itself St. Paul's 
 warning that all human knowledge is partial, relative, progressive ? 
 Each form of thought, each branch of study, served some useful 
 end, but the mistake lay in the tendency to regard passing forms 
 of thought as final, partial methods of study as universal ; and its 
 consequence was a timid and anxious clinging to the past when 
 the inevitable hour of change arrived. The dialectic of the 
 Schoolmen served to sharpen the reasoning faculties, but long 
 ere it was displaced it had degenerated into the merest quibbling, 
 and stunted rather than developed the growth of the intellectual 
 powers. Yet its adherents were slow to confess that the " science 
 of sciences" was no infallible instrument for the attainment of 
 knowledge, and that the exercises of the schools were perilously 
 liable to beget a habit of mind which valued victory in argument 
 more highly than the elucidation of truth. 1 
 
 K Most of the hot debates which burn in the history of 
 theology have been about things which were looked at in a 
 mirror; and the fact that no one could see these things just as 
 they were, was precisely what made them such excellent matter 
 for debate. 2 
 
 1. There are secrets hidden in every tiny flower and grain 
 of sand, in every throbbing nerve and aching heart, which our 
 keenest wisdom cannot discover. Every tear is a profound 
 mystery, every sigh is a world of unimaginable things. No one 
 can tell us why we laugh or why we cry. No one can read his 
 brother's mind or understand his own. He who has studied 
 human nature most closely has but touched the surface of it. 
 
 1 A. F. Kirk pa trick, Cambridge Review, xv. 85. 
 
 - F. Gr. Peabody, Afternoons in the College Chapel, 9. 
 
378 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 Those who can tell us most about man can only prove that he 
 is fearfully and wonderfully made. Men who have been investi- 
 gating for a lifetime the sins, sorrows, and diseases of the world 
 find that these are still the everlasting riddle; and he whose 
 faith has given him the clearest vision of God, knows that these 
 are but " a portion of His ways, and the thunders of His power 
 none can understand." The highest philosophy still prattles and 
 stammers and guesses like a child, and we all have to kneel 
 down humbly declaring that our wisdom is but dim-eyed folly, 
 and repeating these words of St. Paul : " Now we see in a mirror, 
 darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; but then 
 shall I know even as also I have been known." 
 
 If The science of all sciences is the knowledge of God. To 
 know Him, what He has done for man, what He is to man, what 
 man is to Him, nay, what He is in Himself, to know at once 
 the tenderness of His love and the mystery of His Being this 
 is the highest exercise of man's mind ; this is the purest joy of 
 man's heart ; this is the only one true aim of life ; this alone can 
 be called life ; this is the life the pulses of which begin to beat 
 within us in this world ; this is the life which swells out into its 
 full perfection in the world to come ; for " this is life eternal, 
 that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, 
 whom thou hast sent." 1 
 
 TJ Speaking of God as being infinite in His nature and attributes, 
 he said: "I cannot grasp this infinity: I am not able to com- 
 prehend God ; I know but in part. If I knew Him I would cease 
 to worship Him." 2 
 
 If If I knew that I had fathomed all the love or all the 
 wisdom of God, how faith and reverence and trust would fall 
 away from a being that such powers as mine could grasp. 3 
 
 2. If we can know in part what the holiest Mind has thought, 
 how the purest Heart has loved, what the most gracious Wisdom 
 has provided, "let us follow on to know." If we must confess 
 ourselves, at best, agnostics, let it be progressive agnosticism 
 " If we do not know to-day, we shall hope to know to-morrow." 
 
 Tf Is not all positiveness of necessity partiality ? To say, 
 " This is true, I know it," and to leave no room for the limitations 
 and qualifications that we cannot know, for all those outside 
 
 1 R. W. Randall, Life in the Catholic Church, 159. 
 
 2 D. Brown, Memoir of John Duncan, 248. 3 Phillips P.rooks, Life, 80. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 379 
 
 influences of unseen truth which we must be working on and 
 drawing from this fact that we have found, is there riot some 
 folly here ? Is not the true wisdom something like this ? I 
 know so far as it goes this truth is sacredly and wholly true, but 
 that very truth forbids me to believe that it has not developments 
 and ramifications reaching far out into the universe of associated 
 truth with which it is connected. Now I know, and I prize my 
 knowledge as the gift of God and hold it sacred ; but " I know 
 in part," I wait till that which is in part shall be done away. 1 
 
 (1) Let it be recognized that the highest knowledge we may 
 here attain will not be clear of an agnostic haze. To comprehend 
 infinitude and eternity our mind would have to be infinite and 
 eternal; but we may apprehend where we cannot comprehend. 
 We may voyage on a sea which we cannot compass. Whenever 
 we follow on to know perfect Love, eternal Eighteousness, 
 absolute Will, we are compelled to take up Wesley's strain 
 
 God only knows the love of God. 
 
 But this is relatively true of all knowledge. Even the flower 
 in the crannied wall has a last citadel of mystery which no effort 
 of the human mind can capture. 
 
 ^[ We see " in part," but we do see Him, though it be only 
 in part ; the more lovely the prospect, the nearer it must be to 
 the truth. Again, we cannot fancy truth ; we may fancy about 
 truth when we are in the carnal mind, being led by the outward 
 word, whether it be of a teacher whom we call the Church, or of 
 an individual whom we call a theologian. In either case, what 
 we see is what we fancy they see. We only see Truth when we 
 are taught immediately by the Spirit of Truth. Let us take 
 our revelation simply, as it is given us, and let us believe that the 
 Lord spoke truly and is come to be the Guide and Teacher of the 
 hearts of His children. His desire is that we should look up into 
 His face and know Him as " Our Father." 2 
 
 (2) That we only know now in part persuades us, constrains 
 us to give all diligence towards fuller knowledge. In natural 
 scenery, mountains appeal to us most and touch the strangest 
 deeps of our nature, not when they stand out clear in sharp 
 outline, but when their strength and curve are softened by a 
 tender, almost- transparent, haze. It is then that the call of the 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks, Life, 111. 
 
 2 R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 40. 
 
380 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 mountains is most eloquent, most effective. And to the earnest 
 soul in quest of God, the richest moments are those when some 
 increased knowledge has been gained, some fresh experience of 
 truth has been treasured, with a feeling that more, far more, 
 remains yet to be won. " We all, with unveiled face reflecting 
 as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
 image from glory to glory." 
 
 TJ It is inscribed on the grave of T. H. Green, "He died learning." 
 Tf Isaac Newton had one theory of the universe, and John 
 Hutchinson had another, but they both accepted the fact of the 
 universe, about the detailed constructions and processes of which 
 they differed so vigorously. One may believe that the earth 
 stands still, another may believe that it performs certain 
 revolutions ; but they both believe in the earth itself, they both 
 have confidence in its foundations, and they both draw their 
 sustenance from the same generous bosom. So it must be to 
 a very great extent with the first idea of God. We must receive 
 the idea without discussion, without critical or metaphysical inquiry. 
 We must begin with the idea that God is, and day by day grow in 
 our knowledge concerning Him, and in our love towards Him. 1 
 
 (3) Our knowledge here as elsewhere must begin as a " venture 
 of faith." Faith is the pioneer of all knowledge. The first harvest 
 of the field, the first voyage on the sea, was due to heroism of 
 faith. Belief had to precede experience. Why then should 
 any one demand faith's dismissal when we come to the choicest 
 knowledge of all ? The great word of the Gospel " Whosoever 
 believeth " is not a casual or official demand : it is rooted in the 
 eternal order revealed to us. Columbus was not more learned than 
 all his contemporaries: they stopped where experience stopped; 
 he made the venture of faith. The whole story of human piety, 
 of man's apprehension of God, is a story of faith's heroism. When 
 we read that Enoch walked with God, it means that he ventured 
 on a road that had to be travelled in order to be known. The 
 rnoan of the agnostic in earnest was wrung from the heart of Job, 
 when he cried 
 
 "Oh that I knew where I might find him, 
 That I might come even to his seat! 
 
 Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; 
 
 i J. Parker. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 381 
 
 And backward, but I cannot perceive him; 
 
 On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold 
 
 him: 
 He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him." 
 
 What then ? Experience refuses to go further, turns back, 
 and would have him give up the quest. But faith stands beside 
 him in the cloud and driving tempest, faces the blast with lighted 
 face, cheers him to make the grand venture 
 
 "When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." 
 
 I think if thou couldst know, 
 
 soul that will complain, 
 What lies concealed below 
 
 Our burden and our pain ; 
 How just our anguish brings 
 Nearer those longed-for things 
 
 We seek for now in vain, 
 I think thou wouldst rejoice, and not complain. 
 
 I think if thou couldst see, 
 
 With thy dim mortal sight, 
 How meanings, dark to thee, 
 
 Are shadows hiding light; 
 Truth's efforts crossed and vexed 
 Life's purpose all perplexed, 
 
 If thou couldst see them right, 
 I think that they would seem all clear, and wise, and bright. 
 
 And yet thou canst not know, 
 
 And yet thou canst not see; 
 Wisdom and sight are slow 
 
 In poor humanity. 
 If thou couldst trust, poor soul, 
 In Him who rules the whole, 
 
 Thou wouldst find peace and rest: 
 Wisdom and right are well, but Trust is best. 1 
 
 ii. Then. 
 "Even as also I have been known." 
 
 If the Bible speaks of a disadvantageous " Now " it is always 
 able to put over against it a bright and glorious " Then." And 
 these two must always be taken together. Look only at the 
 
 1 Adelaide Arine Procter. 
 
382 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 "Now," with its limitations and imperfections, forgetful of the 
 " Then," and your philosophy will be a chain of despair ; but 
 view earth revolving, as it surely does, in the light of a not far- 
 distant heaven, and your thoughts will be gathered up into a 
 song of hope. It was this that enabled St. Paul to write these 
 words expressive of our present disadvantage without dissatisfac- 
 tion or regret. "We see through a glass darkly, we know in 
 part!" Those words tell all the intellectual struggle and pain 
 through which a great mind passes before it accepts its defeat. 
 They are the words of intellectual resignation in presence of 
 those inscrutable problems before which lesser minds beat them- 
 selves in fruitless pain ; grand words of one who has assayed the 
 heights and depths of knowledge to prove them past finding out, 
 and yet is calm. Not the words of an impatient thinker, or the 
 petulance of a little mind not strong enough to wait, but the 
 language of a great faith resting hopefully in God. 
 
 ^1 Porphyry, in his Principles of the Theory of Intelligibles, 
 seems to me to have written a warning which might fitly stand 
 at the beginning of this book " By our intelligence we say many 
 things of the principle which is higher than the intelligence. 
 But these things are divined much better by an absence of 
 thought than by thought. It is the same with this idea as with 
 that of sleep, of which we speak up to a certain point in our 
 waking state, but the knowledge and perception of which we can 
 gain only by sleeping. Like is known only by like, and the 
 condition of all knowledge is that the subject should become like 
 to the object." l 
 
 I know the night is heavy with her stars, 
 
 So much I know, 
 I know the sun will lead the night away, 
 
 And lay his golden bars 
 
 Over the fields and mountains and great seas, 
 I know that he will usher in the day 
 
 With litanies 
 Of birds and young dawn-winds. So much I know, 
 
 So little though. 
 
 I know that I am lost in a great waste, 
 
 A trackless world 
 Of stars and golden days, where shadows go 
 
 In mute and secret haste, 
 
 1 M. Maeterlinck, JKuyxbroeck and the Mystict, 6. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 383 
 
 Paying no -heed to supplicating cries 
 
 Of spirits lost and troubled, this I know. 
 
 The regal skies 
 Utter no word, nor wind, nor changing sea, 
 
 It frightens me. 
 
 Yet I believe that somewhere, soon or late, 
 
 A peace will fall 
 Upon the angry reaches of my mind; 
 
 A peace initiate 
 
 In some heroic hour when I behold 
 A friend's long-quested triumph, or unbind 
 
 The tressed gold 
 From a child's laughing face. I still believe, 
 
 So much believe. 
 
 Or, when the reapers leave the swathed grain, 
 
 I'll look beyond 
 The yellowing hazels in the twilight-tide, 
 
 Beyond the flowing plain, 
 And see blue mountains piled against a sky 
 Flung out in coloured ceremonial pride ; 
 
 Then haply I 
 Shall be no longer troubled, but shall know, 
 
 It may be so. 1 
 
 1. Then shall we see face to face ; then shall I know even as 
 I am known. Even as I am known. That is a good thing to 
 rest upon, even in this stage that, however little I know about 
 you and about myself and about God, I am known to Him, every 
 bit of me, and the way that I take, and the thoughts I think, 
 and the fears which disturb me, and the doubts which worry and 
 the sins which oppress. All is spread before Him in the search- 
 
 ting light which scans and tries the uttermost secrets, and from 
 which nothing can be hid. He knows me as well as He knows 
 Himself. He knows every heart-beat, and every struggle, and 
 every penitential sigh, and every passing shame and regret, and 
 every striving after better things. He knows all the possibilities 
 that are in me, the worst and the best, and all the helps, in- 
 centives, and pardons that they call for. And He never mis- 
 reads, misunderstands, or misjudges. He is always fair, just, 
 true, and pitiful. " And I shall know even as I am known." 
 
 1 J. Drinkwater, Poems of Men and Hours, 5. 
 
384 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 A myriad worlds encompass ours; 
 
 A myriad souls our souls enclose; 
 And each, its sins and woes and powers, 
 
 The Lord He sees, the Lord He knows, 
 And from the Infinite Knowledge flowers 
 
 The Infinite Pity's fadeless rose. 
 
 Lighten our darkness, Lord, most wise; 
 
 All-seeing One, give us to see; 
 Our judgments are profanities, 
 
 Our ignorance is cruelty; 
 While Thou, knowing all, dost not despise 
 
 To pardon even such things as we. 1 
 
 2. There are two things that may be said about this 
 knowledge. 
 
 (1) It will be thorough. It will be a knowledge through and 
 through (for that is the meaning of the word). God is a heart- 
 searching God. There is no secret so deeply buried in us but 
 God sees it as in the light of day. Even such is the insight into 
 His truth and character, into His word and works, into His ways 
 and will, which is promised to those of us who shall be faithful 
 unto death, in a world beyond the grave. It will be indeed a 
 thorough knowledge. 
 
 (2) It will be comprehensive. God has not only a minute 
 insight ; He has also a large insight. He not only sees particulars ; 
 He sees each one of us as a whole. You know how impossible 
 that is for any one of us with regard to another. We see 
 particular faults and particular virtues, but we are not able, in 
 very many instances, nor ought we, to speak decisively of the 
 character as a whole, whether for good or evil. But God sees 
 this also. God could judge each one of us at this moment. He 
 could say, Notwithstanding this fault, that man is my servant ; 
 notwithstanding that good quality, this man I never knew. And 
 it shall be thus with our knowledge hereafter. Not only shall 
 we believe and understand this item and that item, separately, 
 of God's truth, but we shall see it all in its connection, in its 
 combination, in its reconciling harmony, in its perfect unity. 
 There will no longer be any spaces and gaps in our knowledge. 
 There will be no longer crevasses and chasms, to be vaulted over 
 
 1 Susan 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 385 
 
 on a staff of faith. " The crooked " will then have been " made 
 straight," and " the rough places plain " (Isa. xl. 4) ; and " all flesh 
 will see," as in one view, " the salvation of God " (Luke iii. 6). 
 Then will not only wisdom be, as she ever has been, "justified of 
 her children" (Matt. xi. 19), but also the ways of God will be 
 universally and finally justified to men. 
 
 Knowledge who hath it? Nay, not thou, 
 
 Pale student, pondering thy futile lore ! 
 
 A little space it shall be thine, as now 
 
 'Tis his whose funeral passes at thy door: 
 
 Last night a clown that scarcely knew to spell 
 
 Now he knows all. wondrous miracle ! x 
 
 III, 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE SEE AND KNOW? 
 
 1. God. Human knowledge, then, imperfect as it must 
 necessarily be, is consecrated by the thought that it has for its 
 goal the vision of God, of whose Being and Doing all that we 
 can see and learn here is the reflection, " broken lights " piercing 
 earth's mists from the central sun upon which no mortal man 
 could gaze unveiled and live. 
 
 (1) The entrance on the next world must bring with it a 
 knowledge of God such as is impossible in this life. In this life 
 many men talk of God, and some men think much and deeply 
 about Him. But here men do not attain to that sort of direct 
 knowledge of God which the Bible calls "sight." We do not 
 see a human soul. The soul makes itself felt in conduct, in con- 
 versation, in the lines of the countenance ; although these often 
 enough mislead us. The soul speaks through the eye, which 
 misleads us less often. That is to say, we know that the soul 
 is there, and we detect something of its character and power and 
 drift. We do not see it. In the same way we feel God present 
 in nature, whether in its awe or in its beauty; and in human 
 history, whether in its justice or in its weird mysteriousness ; and 
 in the life of a good man, or the circumstances of a generous or 
 noble act. Most of all we feel Him near when conscience, His 
 inward messenger, speaks plainly and decisively to us. Con- 
 
 1 Thomas B. Aldrich, 
 I COR. 25 
 
386 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 science, that invisible prophet, surely appeals to and implies a 
 law, and a law implies a legislator. But we do not see Him. 
 " No man hath seen God at any time " ; even " the only begotten 
 Son, which is in the bosom of the Father," is only said to have 
 " declared him," since in Him the Godhead was veiled from earthly 
 sight by that mantle of Flesh and Blood which, together with a 
 human soul, He assumed in time. 
 
 But after death there will be a change. It is said of our 
 Lord's glorified Manhood, united as it is for ever to the Person 
 of the Eternal Son, that " every eye shall see him, and they also 
 which pierced him." Even the lost will then understand much 
 more of what God is to the universe and to themselves, although 
 they are excluded from the direct vision of God. 
 
 (2) What will that first apprehension of God, under the new 
 conditions of the other life, be ? There are trustworthy accounts 
 of men who have been utterly overcome at the first sight of a 
 fellow-creature with whose name and work they had for long 
 years associated great wisdom, or goodness, or ability; the first 
 sight of the earthly Jerusalem has endowed more than one 
 traveller with a perfectly new experience in the life of thought 
 and feeling. What must not the first direct sight of God be, 
 the Source of all beauty, of all wisdom, of all power, when the 
 eye opens upon Him after death ! " Thine eyes shall see the 
 King in his beauty " were words of warning as well as words of 
 promise. What will it not be to see Him in those first few 
 moments God, the Eternal Love, God, the consuming Fire as 
 we shall see Him in the first five minutes after death ! 
 
 ^[ An Indian officer, who in his time had seen a great deal of 
 service, and had taken part in more than one of those decisive 
 struggles by which the British authority was finally established 
 in the East Indies, had returned to end his days in this country, 
 and was talking with his friends about the most striking experi- 
 ences of his professional career. They led him, by their sympathy 
 and their questions, to travel in memory through a long series of 
 years; and as he described skirmishes, battles, sieges, personal 
 encounters, hair-breadth escapes, the outbreak of the mutiny and 
 its suppression, reverses, victories all the swift alternations of 
 anxiety and hope which a man must know who is entrusted with 
 command, and is before the enemy their interest in his story, 
 as was natural, became keener and more exacting. At last he 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 387 
 
 paused with the observation, " I expect to see something much 
 more remarkable than anything I have been describing." As he 
 was some seventy years of age, and was understood to have 
 retired from active service, his listeners failed to catch his mean- 
 ing. There was a pause ; and then he said in an undertone, " I 
 mean in the first five minutes after death." x 
 
 (3) Distinguish between those who say, " We know nothing," 
 and those who say with the Apostle, " We know in part." When 
 we are only speculating, God will seem to us very incomprehensible, 
 very unknowable; His nature and mode of working do always 
 baffle our understandings : " how unsearchable are his judgements, 
 and his ways past tracing out!" But then we turn to the 
 revelation of God which has been given us in our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. As we study that, we shall hardly be inclined to 
 complain of necessary ignorance; rather shall we be moved to 
 exclaim with St. Paul that in Christ " are hid all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge." The impressions concerning God 
 and the Father which we received from the Lord Jesus grow 
 into secure knowledge as they are verified by life and experience, 
 and as we learn what the conditions of human progress and well- 
 being are. How, we ask, can men live without faith and hope 
 and love, and how can faith and hope and love be awakened 
 and preserved without Divine righteousness and encouragement 
 and goodness to which they may respond ? 
 
 2. Our fellows. This chapter is the glorious hymn of love. 
 The religious fervour, the intellectual conquests, the accumulated 
 philosophy of succeeding centuries, have produced nothing nobler 
 than this. You cannot "praise" this perfect utterance. You 
 might as well " approve " the perpetual rainbow over the Fluela 
 Fall or the after-glow in an Alpine sky. The Apostle exhausts 
 the resources of inspired eloquence in exposition of love. And 
 he looks for the maturing, the completion, the perfection of this 
 Christian grace. When such full-blossomed love has come, we 
 shall see with perfect clearness. In proportion as it comes, we 
 shall see better. When love has her perfect work, we shall see 
 so distinctly that the vision may be said to be " face to face." 
 Yes ; that we have always understood. But what is it that we 
 shall see? What but the object of our love our fellow-man? 
 
 1 H. P. Liddon, 
 
388 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 Towards whom have you exercised love ? Your brother-man, 
 your neighbour, your friend, your rival, your foe. Then, as your 
 love deepens, your vision of him will clear. As you think more 
 charitably of him you will understand him better. When love 
 towards him is perfected, you will see him face to face. 
 
 ^f Doubtless the words " face to face " apply primarily to the 
 vision of God in the perfected manhood. But, as the greater 
 includes the lesser, this recognition of God involves the recogni- 
 tion of loved ones. 
 
 U Pilgrims no longer, nor longer disguised from one another 
 by the suspicions and concealments of this life, nor hidden from 
 each other, as here the most closely linked hearts must be, by 
 the necessary solitude and loneliness of every individual life, in 
 which we must live so largely and, in all our tenderest sensi- 
 bilities, so entirely alone. There hearts shall open to hearts 
 spontaneously as the flowers to the sun, and there soul shall 
 communicate itself to the soul it loves as naturally as the dews 
 nourish the white lilies of the wood. The armour of light, so 
 often blood-stained and torn, is unlaced; the shield and sword 
 laid down at the King's feet, and the soft clothing of peace put on. 
 
 Tf " It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking 
 together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are 
 so many of them." 
 
 This was a remark made by the Autocrat of the Breakfast- 
 Table to the assembled guests. And the company looked as if 
 they wanted an explanation. So the Autocrat went on. 
 
 " When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, 
 it is natural that among the six there should be more or less 
 confusion and misapprehension." 
 
 The people thought that the Autocrat had suddenly gone 
 mad. The landlady turned pale. The old gentleman opposite 
 thought the Autocrat might seize the carving-knife. But he 
 proceeded to explain that at the fewest six personalities are 
 distinctly to be recognized as taking part in the dialogue between 
 John and Thomas. There is (1) the real John, known only to 
 his Maker ; (2) John's ideal John, never the real one, and often 
 very unlike him ; (3) Thomas's ideal John, never the real John, 
 nor John's John ; but often very unlike either. In precisely 
 the same way there are three Thomases. There is Thomas as he 
 really is, as God sees him ; Thomas as he thinks he is ; and 
 Thomas as John thinks he is. In all, there are six people. No 
 wonder two disputants often get angry when there are six of 
 them talking and listening at the same time ! 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 389 
 
 TJ There is a truth in the word that marriages are made in 
 heaven. You may remember that Charles Kingsley had put on 
 his grave, which was to be his wife's, " We have loved, we love, 
 we shall love." Death does not, as most of us know, put an end 
 to love. We love the dead because they are the living. Death 
 separates, it is all that it can do ; it cannot annihilate. Surely 
 then, when death is destroyed the law of separation will be 
 disannulled, and those who loved and love will meet again and 
 enjoy one another's love again. I say then, because we shall 
 have full knowledge of our past life, because we preserve our 
 individuality in the resurrection change, because in the other 
 world we know and are known, because we are perfectly mani- 
 fested by our spiritual bodies, and because by means of their 
 powers we shall perfectly discern, because of the mutual attraction 
 of love love which was stronger than death, we shall, I feel 
 confident, recognize one another in the life of the world to come. 
 And it will be a full recognition ; our hearts in perfect sympathy 
 will beat one with another, answering love for love. 1 
 
 3. Ourselves. At our entrance on another world we shall 
 know our old selves as never before. The past will lie spread out 
 before us, and we shall take a comprehensive survey of it. Each 
 man's life will be displayed to him as a river, which he traces 
 from its source in a distant mountain till it mingles with the 
 distant ocean. The course of that river lies sometimes through 
 dark forests which hide it from view, sometimes through sands or 
 marshes in which it seems to lose itself. Here it forces a passage 
 
 -t O 
 
 angrily between precipitous rocks, there it glides gently through 
 meadows which it makes green and fertile. At one time it might 
 seem to be turning backwards out of pure caprice ; at another to 
 be parting, like a gay spendthrift, with half its volume of waters ; 
 while later on it receives contributory streams that restore its 
 strength ; and so it passes on, till the ebb and flow of the tides 
 upon its bank tells that the end is near. What will not the 
 retrospect be when, after death, we survey, for the first time, as 
 with a bird's-eye view the whole long range the strange vicissi- 
 tudes, the loss and the gain, as we deem it, the failures and the 
 triumphs of our earthly existence ; when we measure it, as never 
 before, in its completeness, now that it is at last over ! 
 
 This, indeed, is the characteristic of the survey after death, 
 that it will be complete. 
 
 1 F. Watson, The Christian Life Here and Hereafter, 240. 
 
390 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT 
 
 There no shade can last, 
 In that deep dawn behind the tomb, 
 But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 
 The eternal landscape of the past. 
 
 In entering another world we shall know as never before what 
 we have been in the past ; but we shall know also what we are. 
 Our present thoughts, feelings, mental habits, good and bad, are 
 the effects of what we have done or left undone, of cherished 
 impressions, of passions indulged or repressed, of pursuits 
 vigorously embraced or willingly abandoned. And as our past 
 mental and spiritual history has made us what we are, so we are 
 at this very moment making ourselves what we shall be. 
 
 ^[ Eichard le Gallienne delighted us some years ago by a 
 brilliant essay on " Life in Inverted Commas." He represented 
 himself as watching from the top of an omnibus in Fleet Street 
 the capture of a notorious plagiarist by detectives in the employ of 
 the Incorporated Society of Authors, who led him away secured 
 between strong inverted commas. This set him thinking. And 
 he looked round at his companions in the 'bus. " There was the 
 young dandy just let loose from his band-box, wearing exactly 
 the same face, the same smile, the same neck-tie, holding his 
 stick in exactly the same fashion, talking exactly the same words, 
 with precisely the same accent, as his neighbour, another dandy, 
 and as all the other dandies between the Bank and Hyde Park 
 Corner. Looking at these examples of Nature's love of repeating 
 herself," he goes on, " I said to myself : Somewhere in heaven 
 stands a great stencil, and at each sweep of the cosmic brush a 
 million dandies are born, each one alike as a box of collars. 
 Indeed, I felt that this stencil process had been employed in the 
 manufacture of every single person in the omnibus : two middle- 
 aged matrons, each of whom seemed to think that having given 
 birth to six children was an indisputable claim to originality; 
 two elderly business men to correspond ; a young miss, carrying 
 music and wearing eyeglasses ; and a clergyman discussing stocks 
 with one of the business men; I alone in my corner being, of 
 course, the one occupant for whom Nature had been at the 
 expense of casting a special mould, and at the extravagance of 
 breaking it ! " To be sure " /, myself" am the original one. And 
 each one of us is an " /, myself ! " x 
 
 1 C. F. Aked. 
 
THESE THREE. 
 
 391 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Abbott (E. A.), Oxford Sermons, 86. 
 
 Alexander (S. A.), The Christianity of St. Paul, 50. 
 
 Bevan (LI. D.), in Welshmen in English Pulpits, 266. 
 
 Bigg (C.), The Spirit of Christ in Common Life, 260. 
 
 Bryant (S.), The Teaching of Christ, 98. 
 
 Campbell (L.), The Christian Ideal, 175. 
 
 Church (R. W.), Advent Sermons, 89 ; Village Sermons, iii. 74. 
 
 Clifford (J.), Typical Christian Leaders, 153. 
 
 Collyer (R.), Nature and Life, 62, 72. 
 
 Cross (J.), Pauline Charity, 239, 254. 
 
 Daplyn (E.), One with the Eternal, 62. 
 
 Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 103. 
 
 (J. LI.), Spiritual Apprehension, 26. 
 Drumrnond (H.), The Greatest Thing in the World, 1. 
 
 (R. J.), Faith's Certainties, 235. 
 Gairdner (W. T.), The Three Things that Abide, 72. 
 Gibson (J. M.), A Strong City, 53. 
 Grimley (H. N.), Tremadoc Sermons, 261. 
 Gwatkin (H. M.), The Eye for Spiritual Things, 81. 
 Henson (H. H.), Christ and the Nation, 296. 
 Hughes (H. P.), The Philanthropy of God, 29. 
 Inge (W. R.), All Saints' Sermons, 20. 
 Ingram (A. F. W.), Banners of the Christian Faith, 32. 
 Jerdan (C.), For the Lambs of the Flock, 221. 
 Lockyer (T. F.), Inspirations of the Christian Life, 35. 
 Lorimer (G. C.), The Modern Crisis in Religion, 230. 
 Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 26. 
 Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Life's Journey, 19. 
 Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 146. 
 
 The Sunny Side of Christianity, 1. 
 
 Pearse (M. G.), Parables and Pictures, 243. 
 Reynolds (H. R.), Light and Peace, 116. 
 Robinson (J. A.), Unity in Christ, 181. 
 Rowland (A.), The Exchanged Crowns, 29. 
 Salmon (G.), Gnosticism and Agnosticism, 205. 
 Sanderson (T.), Unfulfilled Designs, 100. 
 Simpson (A. R.), These Three, 39, 53. 
 Skrine (J. H.), The Heart's Counsel, 115. 
 Smith (D.), Man's Need of God, 13. 
 Thorn (J. H.) 5 A Spiritual Faith, 124. 
 Wilson (J. M.), Clifton College Sermons, ii. 111. 
 
THESE THREE. 
 
 But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest of these 
 is love. i Cor. xiii. 13. 
 
 1. IF St. Paul had left us nothing but this exquisite hymn in 
 praise of heavenly love, he would have established his claim to be 
 a great religious genius. Happily it loses nothing in the English 
 Version. The scholars who translated the Bible for James i.'s 
 government seldom failed to rise to a great occasion; and this 
 chapter in the Authorized Version is one of the finest bits of 
 prose poetry that have been written in our language. But the 
 lyric rapture is St. Paul's own. He was not, perhaps, a poet by 
 nature; and a Eabbinical education was enough to dry up any 
 but a very copious spring of poetic talent. But every now and 
 then he is carried quite out of himself, and his words glow with 
 a white heat of fervour and emotion. To read the thirteenth 
 chapter after the twelfth, in which he discusses the relative 
 merits of speaking with tongues and prophesying, is almost 
 startling. " The more excellent way " once mentioned, the tide of 
 pure inspiration flows swift and strong. 
 
 2. But even more remarkable than the sublime poetry of 
 this chapter is the concluding verse : " Now abideth faith, hope, 
 love, these three ; but the greatest of these is love." In this verse 
 St. Paul has found an absolutely complete and satisfactory 
 formula for the Christian character. Faith, hope, and love, with 
 love in the place of honour is not this Christianity in a nutshell ? 
 Within a few years after the Ascension, St. Paul has not only 
 penetrated to the very heart of Christ's teaching, but has given 
 us the kernel of the whole Gospel in one of those illuminating 
 phrases which' are a necessity for every great movement. So at 
 least the Church has always felt. The three emblematic figures 
 
 393 
 
394 THESE THREE 
 
 of the "theological virtues," as they were called, have been 
 favourite themes of Christian art and Christian eloquence all 
 over the world. What the cardinal virtues, Justice, Fortitude, 
 Prudence, and Temperance were to pagan antiquity ; what Liberty, 
 Equality, and Fraternity were to the French Eevolution; what 
 the Eights of Man were to the founders of the American Eepublic ; 
 what the three stages in the spiritual ascent Purification, 
 Illumination, Union with God have been to mystics of all ages 
 and countries, that Faith, Hope, and Love have been and are to 
 the Christian. The imitation of Christ means the life of Faith, 
 the life of Hope, the life of Love. 
 
 ^[ Greek philosophy had proclaimed four cardinal virtues 
 justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude. Christian philosophy, 
 following St. Paul, has taught during nineteen centuries that 
 there are three specifically Christian graces they are more than 
 virtues three primary and fundamental spiritual dispositions, 
 which must dominate and permeate all true Christian character 
 Faith and Hope and Love. 
 
 This is one of the greatest of the great texts of the Bible. 
 Let us take it in six parts 
 
 Faith. 
 
 Hope. 
 
 Love. 
 
 These Three. 
 
 These Three Abide. 
 
 The Greatest of these Three. 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 1. St. Paul has written as vigorously of faith, if not with as 
 much seraphic eloquence, as he here writes of love. He penned 
 the most intellectual and profound of all his Epistles that to 
 the Eomans to indicate the essential excellence, the justifying 
 and soul-saving power of faith. We who have come to receive the 
 truth which filled and fired the soul of the Apostle Paul have 
 learned that by faith the just live. It is a rational and necessary 
 spiritual ingredient of the truest manhood. We regard it as the 
 channel through which God's righteousness pours into the soul ; 
 as our gate of access into the kingdom of grace, standing like the 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 395 
 
 Propylaea at Athens before the Acropolis, and giving entrance 
 to the temple not only of love, but also of wisdom. St. Paul 
 went so far as to say that any moral activity into which this 
 quality did not enter was vitiated and unworthy. In one of his 
 letters he describes faith as the light by which the soul walks : 
 " A light that never was on sea or land," but which glows in the 
 mind of man. To his thinking this virtue was so needful and 
 important that the whole doctrine which he proclaimed he called 
 by this name. He speaks of "preaching the faith" which he 
 once persecuted, meaning by it both the Christian doctrine and 
 the Christian Church. Our warfare he calls " the fight of faith " ; 
 so that in his thirteen letters, from the First Epistle to the 
 Thessalonians to the letters addressed to Philemon, St. Paul 
 sounds forth a thousand notes from this golden string. 
 
 2. What is the antithesis of faith? Is it Eeason? Do I 
 believe some things because I am convinced by evidence that they 
 are true, and other things because the Church tells me to believe 
 them, or because it is a meritorious act to force myself to believe 
 them ? Is faith an act of submission to authority ? Is there any 
 truth in the answer of the child, who, according to the story, said, 
 "Faith means believing what you know to be untrue"? Look 
 out some of the places where faith is mentioned in the New 
 Testament, and see whether it is ever opposed to Eeason. You 
 will find that it never is : it is opposed to sight. Faith is not 
 the acceptance of certain historical propositions on insufficient 
 evidence. It is trust in God and goodness. 
 
 It is the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest and 
 highest hypothesis that we can conceive. It is the spirit of 
 Athanasius when he stood " against the world " ; of Luther when 
 he said, " God help me, I can do no otherwise " ; of Job when he 
 said, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him " ; of the three 
 children in the furnace when they said, " He will deliver us out 
 of thy hand, King. But if not, we will not serve thy gods." 
 It is the spirit which has given courage to all the martyrs to 
 face death. Faith is the confidence that somehow or other the 
 right must triumph, that God is stronger than Satan. 
 
 TJ I resolved that at any rate I would act as if the Bible were 
 true ; that if it were not, at all events I should be no worse off 
 
396 THESE THREE 
 
 than I was before ; that I would believe in Christ, and take Him 
 for my Master in whatever I did; that assuredly to disbelieve 
 the Bible was quite as difficult as to believe it ; that there were 
 mysteries either way ; and that the best mystery was that which 
 gave me Christ for a Master. And when I had done this I fell 
 asleep directly. When I rose in the morning the cold and cough 
 were gone; and though I was still unwell, I felt a peace and 
 spirit in me I had never known before, at least to the same 
 extent; and the next day I was quite well, and everything has 
 seemed to go right with me ever since, all discouragement and 
 difficulties vanishing even in the smallest things. 1 
 
 (1) Faith is trust in the saving power of Christ. " Believe on 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved " would seem to 
 be the simplest of all directions. Many, in Apostolic times, 
 hesitated to believe, but none hesitated as to what belief was. 
 A heathen or pagan never asks a missionary what is meant by 
 faith. The very simplicity of the act prevents its definition. 
 Like time and space, the more we think about faith, the less 
 we understand it. It must be felt, not analysed. It cannot be 
 analysed. Many a Christian life has been mournfully chequered 
 by dark and cheerless seasons, from the habit of thinking about 
 faith instead of the object of faith, about the acts of the mind 
 instead of the truths of God, the manner of believing instead of 
 the testimony to be believed. Faith leads the soul bo act on 
 what it credits. It includes not only the belief of what is true, 
 and the desire of what is good, but the choice of what is right. 
 We may believe many things which have no possible connection 
 with our conduct. Many of the propositions of Scripture are not 
 the proper objects of trust, though they are of belief. We believe 
 on the ground of evidence, we trust on the ground of character. 
 We believe a truth, we trust a person. I might believe and not 
 trust, but I cannot trust and not believe. So the specific act of 
 faith which unites to Christ terminates upon His person, an 
 existing, living, loving personality. It is not a doctrine concern- 
 ing Christ that saves me, but trust in the saving power of Christ. 
 It is not a specific theory of faith, but the practical grasp of faith, 
 that saves. Salvation is not the formation of a right creed in 
 my understanding ; it is the quickening of a spiritual life in my 
 soul. 
 
 1 Letter from Ruskin to his father in E. T. Cook's Life of Buskin, i. 271. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 397 
 
 TJ Faith is that strong buoyant confidence in God and in His 
 love which gives energy and spirit to do right without doubt or 
 despondency. Where God sees that, He sees the spring and 
 fountain out of which all good springs : He sees, in short, the 
 very life of Christ begun, and He reckons that to be righteous- 
 ness ; just as a small perennial fountain in Gloucestershire is the 
 Thames, though it is as yet scarcely large enough to float a 
 schoolboy's boat ; and just as you call a small seedling not bigger 
 than a little almond peeping above the ground, an oak ; for the 
 word "justify" means not to be made righteous, but to reckon or 
 account righteous. 1 
 
 ^[ I am not sure that we are much the better for our attempted 
 definitions of Faith. Baxter connects it with the doctrine of the 
 mystical union ; Lampe defines it as a willingness to be saved by 
 Christ ; Halyburton and Owen as a cordial acceptance of the 
 offer; Sandernan as simple belief in simple testimony. Well, a 
 man is sometimes very little the better for a definition, and all 
 these perplex as well as enlighten. But " none perish that Him 
 trust " none perish that Him trust. 2 
 
 (2) Faith is also trust in God as a Father. If there is a word 
 more expressive of Christian character than any other, it is this 
 one: trust trust in God. It is the secret source of all peace 
 and serenity. It will comfort and sustain when nothing else can. 
 It gives the child of God the delightful assurance that all his 
 trials are disguised blessings, the appointment of a Father's 
 wisdom, and the infliction of a Father's love. And death itself 
 becomes the security and enlargement of life, a training for that 
 holy intimacy with Himself which is to constitute the blessedness 
 of the heavenly world. " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
 him." The bringing of good out of evil is His grand prerogative. 
 He permits the evil in order to produce the good. The Christian's 
 character is formed more from his trials than from his enjoyments. 
 The picture would have no beauty or effect without shade. 
 
 TI Christ's faith in His Father was as conspicuous as His 
 faith in the mission He had to accomplish, of which He said on 
 the cross, " It is finished ! " His vindication He left entirely in 
 His Father's hands, when He yielded up His spirit, in a complete 
 surrender of self, saying, "Father, into thy hands I commend 
 my spirit!". I am not forgetting that He was the everlasting 
 
 1 F. "W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 335. 
 
 8 "Rabbi" Duncan, in Memoir of John Duncan, 414, 
 
398 THESE THREE 
 
 Word, the only begotten of the Father, when I speak thus, but 
 I wish to remind you that He really became man having limited 
 Himself, having " emptied " Himself, as St. Paul said, that He 
 might become the true Brother of humanity, the Son of Man, 
 sharing with us, in everything save sin, the necessity and the 
 blessedness of faith. 1 
 
 ^[ The faith of our time has had to pass through fiery furnaces 
 of tribulation. It has survived the shock of losing its Infallible 
 Church. It has survived the shock of losing its Infallible Book. 
 It has surrendered, at the bidding of science, that latest voice of 
 God the Garden of Eden, and the world made in six days, and 
 the dream of man's primal innocence. It presumes no longer to 
 penetrate dark mysteries. It cannot reconcile Foreknowledge 
 and Free Will. It cannot reconcile the apparent cruelty of 
 nature with the lovingness of God. It understands neither 
 heaven nor hell. It has learnt to trust, humbly and without 
 reserve, in Christ. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and 
 yet have believed." That surely is the truest faith of all the 
 ages, to have lived in an atmosphere of unbelief, to have faced 
 and endured all the assaults of modern doubt, and still to trust 
 "in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, by honour and dis- 
 honour, by evil report and good report, as dying, and behold we 
 live, as chastened and not killed " still, with deeper intensity 
 than ever, to believe in God and Christ and Eternal Life. 
 
 I little see, I little know, 
 
 Yet can I fear no ill; 
 He who hath guided me till now 
 
 Will be my leader still. 
 
 No burden yet was on me laid 
 
 Of trouble or of care, 
 But He my trembling step hath stayed, 
 
 And given me strength to bear. 
 
 I came not hither of my will 
 
 Or wisdom of mine own : 
 That Higher Power upholds me still, 
 
 And still must bear me on. 
 
 I knew not of this wondrous earth, 
 
 Nor dreamed what blessings lay 
 Beyond the gates of human birth 
 
 To glad my future way. 
 
 1 A. Rowland, The Exchanged Croivns, 33. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 399 
 
 And what beyond this life may be 
 
 As little I divine 
 What love may wait to welcome me, 
 
 What fellowships be mine. 
 
 I know not what beyond may lie, 
 
 But look, in humble faith, 
 Into a larger life to die, 
 
 And find new birth in death. 
 
 He will not leave my soul forlorn ; 
 
 I still must find Him true, 
 Whose mercies have been new each morn 
 
 And every evening new. 
 
 Upon His providence I lean, 
 
 As lean in faith I must: 
 The lesson of my life hath been 
 
 A heart of grateful trust. 
 
 And so my onward way I fare 
 
 With happy heart and calm, 
 And mingle with my daily care 
 
 The music of my psalm. 1 
 
 (3) It is enough to name one further aspect of faith : Faith is 
 spiritual insight. This is the way in which the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews regards faith. He says it is " the sub- 
 stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 
 These words impress upon our minds the thought that, correspond- 
 ing to all the longings which possess the Christian soul, to all the 
 desires and yearnings which spring up within the soul that is 
 earnestly striving to attain to the Christlike and Divine 
 corresponding to all these are glorious realities; that the up- 
 springing desires shall not be in vain; that the soul which 
 remains steadfast in hope, which clings with brave perseverance 
 to the hopeful yearnings which from time to time unfold them- 
 selves to consciousness within its inward recesses, begins by-and- 
 by to feel by anticipation the very substance of what it has 
 hoped for within its grasp, by-and-by attains to the power of 
 seeing before it in mystic vision the glorious spiritual realities, 
 the thoughts of which presented themselves at first only as dimly 
 discerned but irrepressible desires. Faith then is spiritual in- 
 
 1 Frederick Lucian Hosmer, 
 
400 THESE THREE 
 
 sight. It has been called the eye of the soul. It is more than 
 this ; it is the soul seeing, the soul beholding, the things of 
 heaven ; the soul looking upon the things not seen by the 
 bodily eye looking upon the glories of the spiritual world, upon 
 the wonders of that invisible world which is ever around us, 
 ever underlying the natural world. 
 
 Tf By the aid of that mental insight, which, because it is 
 directed towards matters of a scientific import, has been called 
 scientific imagination, men have been able to have within their 
 minds a vivid representation of the marvellous vibratory move- 
 ments of the mysterious ether, and their rapid transmission in 
 one vast tide of light through the infinite space around us. By 
 the aid of the same power of imagination, that other swiftly- 
 acting vibratory motion which has only in recent times become 
 obedient to man's control, that vibratory motion which enables 
 us with magic speed to send tidings even to countries separated 
 from us by ocean abysses and by wide-spreading continents, by 
 the aid of the same imaginative power, the mind is able to discern 
 the vibrations of the all-pervading ether with which we associate 
 the term electricity. God who thus endows that part of our 
 inner being which we call the mind with marvellous powers, also 
 endows that which we speak of as the soul of which the mind 
 is indeed but a faculty with corresponding powers. Within all 
 souls longing after a fuller knowledge of Divine things God is 
 ever breathing the breath . of a diviner life ; and as this sacred 
 breath this Holy Spirit abides with us to animate us, our 
 enkindled spiritual imaginations discern more and more of the 
 mystic glories of heaven towards which the longings of our souls 
 have been directed. This spiritual imagination which enables us 
 to see as in a vision the substantial realities which the soul has 
 been possessed with longings for ; which enables the soul to have 
 a vivid conviction that it has entered upon the life of reconcilia- 
 tion with God, which enables it to discern the transcendent 
 glory of the future life of ever-advancing union with the Divine, 
 which enables it to discern the underlying import of such words 
 as Atonement and Sacrament, to recognize the oneness of the 
 life of the redeemed on earth and in heaven with the great life 
 of God, to behold the unity which binds things seen with things 
 unseen, the correspondence which exists between things natural 
 and things spiritual, this spiritual imagination which has such 
 potency within us, is the Divine gift of faith which is defined for 
 us in the Epistle to the Hebrews in such suggestive words. 1 
 
 1 H. N. Grimley. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 401 
 
 Canst thou discern beneath all outward seeming, 
 The hidden meaning, oft concealed from sight? 
 
 The secrets wherewith nature's heart is teeming, 
 The deep soul-vision of a clearer light ? 
 
 Say, dost thou understand the whisper'd token, 
 The promise breath'd from every leaf and flower? 
 
 And dost thou hear the word ere it be spoken, 
 And apprehend love's presence by its power ? 
 
 Canst thou discover in the lives around thee, 
 How small events to mighty issues lead ? 
 
 And does the storm's voice nevermore astound thee, 
 Since every God-sent message thou canst read ? 
 
 Then, Heaven-gifted thou, to whom is broken 
 Th' eternal revelation, calm and clear 
 
 As they to whom, long since the words were spoken, 
 "He that hath ears to hear" yea, let him hear. 1 
 
 HOPE. 
 
 1. The question occurs to us sometimes, more or less con- 
 sciously, why hope should be ranked so high, placed on a level 
 with faith and love. We can understand why faith should be so 
 singled out; it is the foundation of the whole structure of 
 religion; it is the bond between the creature and his invisible 
 Maker and God; it is the special title of his acceptance; it is 
 the ground of his self-devotion and obedience, of his highest and 
 noblest ventures. Still more can we understand it of love ; for 
 love brings us near, hi the essential qualities of character, to Him 
 whom we believe in and worship ; love is the faint and distant 
 likeness of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only- 
 begotten Son to save it ; love must last and live and increase, 
 under whatever conditions the regenerate nature exists, the same 
 in substance, however differing in degree, in the humblest 
 penitent on earth and in adoring saint or seraph in the eternal 
 world. But hope is thought of, at first sight, as a self-regarding 
 quality; something which throws forward its desires into the 
 future, and dwells on what it imagines of happiness for itself. 
 And hope, of all things, is delusive and treacherous ; it tempts to 
 
 1 Una, In Life's Garden, 93. 
 I COR, 26 
 
402 THESE THREE 
 
 security and self-deceit ; it tempts us to dreams which cannot be 
 realized, which divert us from the necessary and wholesome 
 realities which do concern us : it is the mother of half the mis- 
 takes, half the fruitless wanderings, half the unhappiness of the 
 world. How comes it that such a quality is placed on a level with 
 faith and love ? What need of encouragement to what men are 
 only too ready to do of themselves ? 
 
 K So far from being always considered a virtue, Hope has 
 been stigmatized as a dangerous deceiver or as a luxury not to be 
 indulged in by the weak. " Hope," says the Athenian in Thucy- 
 dides, " the procuress of peril, cannot indeed destroy, though she 
 may harm, those of her employers who have a reserve to fall 
 back upon : but to those who risk their all upon the issue of her 
 services and a costly servant she assuredly is she unmasks 
 herself only in the moment of their ruin, when her victims have 
 no resource left to defend themselves against her recognized 
 treachery." Poets in the same strain cry shame upon this 
 delusive phantom, and protest that they are 
 
 tired of waiting for this ehymick gold, 
 Which fools us young, and beggars us when old. 
 
 ^[ " Hope," says Owen Feltham, " is the bladder a man will 
 take wherewith to learn to swim ; then he goes beyond return, 
 and is lost." And Lee, 
 
 Hope is the fawning traitor of the mind, 
 
 Which, while it cozens with a coloured friendship, 
 
 Kobs us of our best virtue, resolution. 
 
 1J The twentieth century is as sad as Marcus Aurelius. Our 
 music is sad. Our poetry when we get any is sad. Our 
 drama, when it is serious, is half-morbid. Our greatest 
 writers of fiction are pessimists, and deem a good ending, not 
 only bad art, but false to fact. Our preachers Heaven pardon 
 them! seem somehow to have lost fire and hope, and preach 
 as though Christ were indeed in the ship, but asleep. Our 
 philosophy has culminated in the insane ravings against God and 
 man of Nietzsche, or, for the more reverent, in the pathetic 
 Epicureanism of Omar 
 
 One moment in Annihilation's Waste, 
 
 One moment, of the Well of Life to taste, 
 
 The Stars are setting and the Caravan 
 
 Starts for the Dawn of Nothing oh, make haste. 1 
 1 W. Hudson Shaw. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 403 
 
 2. But it is not really strange that St. Paul should raise hope 
 to a Christian temper of the first order. St. Paul was a student 
 of Scripture and of the history of his people and of religion in the 
 world. And what is on the surface of the Bible is the way in 
 which from first to last it is one unbroken, persistent call to hope 
 to look from the past and the present to the future. Its contents, 
 we know, are manifold and various ; the subjects which it treats 
 are widely different, and it is different in different parts of it in 
 its way of treating them ; it is the record of enormous changes, of 
 a great progressive advance in God's dispensations and of man's 
 light and character, of the long and wonderful education of the 
 Law and the Prophets; its story of uninterrupted tendency is 
 strangely chequered in fact ; bright and dark succeed one another 
 with the most unexpected turns lofty faith and the meanest 
 disloyalty, great achievement and unexpected failure, lessons of 
 the purest goodness and most heartfelt devotion with the falls 
 and sins of saints, blessing and chastisement, the patience of God, 
 and the incorrigible provocations of His people. In spite of all 
 that is wonderful and glorious in it, it sounds like the most 
 disastrous and unpromising of stories; and yet that is not its 
 result. For amid the worst and most miserable conditions there 
 is one element which is never allowed to disappear the strength 
 of a tenacious and unconquerable hope. Hope, never destroyed, 
 however overthrown, never obscured even amid the storm and 
 dust of ruin, is the prominent characteristic of the Old Testament. 
 All leads back to hope, hope of the loftiest and most assured kind, 
 even after the most fatal defeats, of changes which seem beyond 
 remedy. The last word is always hope. 
 
 The whole Bible, from first to last, is one unbroken, persistent 
 call to hope. Some of the most wonderful and soul-stirring words 
 of revelation are those in which hope is spoken of. " The God of 
 hope" "We are saved by hope" "Jesus Christ who is our 
 hope" "Christ in you, the hope of glory" "Begotten again 
 into a living hope " these are expressions which only familiarity 
 could deprive of their commanding power. 
 
 K We call St. Paul the Apostle of Faith, and rightly. 
 Equally the^ great teacher who, in a sudden moment of unique 
 inspiration, recalling what Jesus was when He lived on earth, 
 gave us the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 
404 THESE THREE 
 
 was the Apostle of Love. But just as truly, perhaps even 
 more emphatically, was St. Paul, above all things else, an Apostle 
 of Hope. It is impossible to mistake it ; he was himself the very 
 embodiment of the Christian grace he taught. He never defined 
 it, but his whole life illustrated what he meant. Save in his 
 argumentative passages, it is his characteristic word always when 
 exhorting, trying his hardest to help. "Now the God of hope 
 fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound 
 in hope." " Sorrow not, even as the rest, which have no hope." 
 "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, 
 always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye 
 know that your labour is not vain in the Lord." That is the 
 note which peals like a trumpet through all the Pauline 
 Epistles. 1 
 
 3. Even the common sense of mankind tells us that life 
 would be but a poor shrunken thing without hope; and even 
 the poet who reviles its " chymick gold," marvels at the fascina- 
 tion which it still imparts to the future in spite of our 
 monotonous and oft-repeated experience of the flat unprofitable 
 past 
 
 Strange cozenage ! Who would live past days again ? 
 Yet all hope pleasure from what still remain. 
 
 Surely the common sense of the world is right. While recog- 
 nizing that hope may be an evil if it makes us careless or 
 indolent, trustful to chance or to luck or to interpositions of 
 Providence rather than to our own energies and skill, we cannot 
 fail to see that hopelessness is a still greater evil, paralysing 
 energy and neutralizing skill. No business in life, however 
 purely intellectual, can dispense with hope as a stimulus to 
 activity. That impulse which the immediate pressure of pleasure 
 or pain gives to irrational animals, hope gives to human beings, 
 who are endowed with the faculty or necessity of looking forward. 
 Who could toil on through threescore years or more in hopeless- 
 ness ? " Work without hope," says Coleridge, " draws nectar in 
 a sieve " ; and, indeed, what possibility is there that any human 
 being, however richly endowed with genius, should ever produce 
 the durable results that come from harmonious and continuous 
 effort, or give birth to anything but the perishable expressions 
 
 1 W. Hudson Shaw. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 405 
 
 of a mere spasmodic outburst, if he had no durable hope of any- 
 thing in heaven or earth ? 
 
 U Hope is the minister of strength. When I think of the 
 virtue called Hope two pictures come to my mind. One is the 
 work of a great living painter : it is a piece of symbolism, a 
 gracious, frail, pathetic figure, the eyes blinded with a veil, the 
 head bent and turned on one side with the intentness of a listener 
 to catch the music sounded on the one unbroken chord of her 
 lyre, on which all strings but this are gone. A touchingly beauti- 
 ful conception ; but this is human hope, not Divine. The other 
 picture is the very familiar one which may have met your eye 
 on many a church window a figure not pathetic, weak, forlorn, 
 but strong and brave as Fortitude ; and in her hand not the lyre 
 of broken strings, but the stout shaft and the iron grappling 
 hooks of her mighty anchor; the anchor which entereth into 
 that within the veil, the deeps of the world unseen, and from 
 thence, whatever storm may swing their surface, holds the soul 
 fast. 1 
 
 If To the quenchless hope in their souls all the strong heroes 
 of the past, from Leonidas to King Alfred, from Alfred to Hilde- 
 brand, from Hildebrand to Cromwell and Lord Chatham and 
 Washington and Mazzini, have owed their power. Without it, 
 Eeligion, facing the stubborn mass of humanity's sin, is paralysed. 
 To the Christian the shield of faith is no whit more essential 
 than the helmet of hope. Only to men of undying hope, able 
 contagiously to kindle courageousness in their fellows, will the 
 dead weight of the insensate evil of this universe ever yield. 
 There will be no great Day of the Lord until such leaders arise. 
 
 Then sound again the golden horn with promise ever new, 
 The princely doe will ne'er be caught by those that slack 
 
 pursue, 
 
 Yes! sound again the horn of Hope, the golden horn! 
 Answer it, flutes and pipes, from valleys still and lorn; 
 Warders from your high towers, with trumps of silver 
 
 scorn, 
 And harps in maidens' bowers, with strings from deep 
 
 hearts torn, 
 All answer to the horn of Hope, the golden horn ! 
 
 4. Hope elevates and strengthens" and inspires. This is why it 
 is one of the great elements of the religious temper ; this is why 
 it ranks with faith and love. It is one of the great and necessary 
 
 1 J. H. Skrine, The Heart's Counsel, 118. 
 
406 THESE THREE 
 
 springs of full religious action. There may be a faith almost 
 without hope; a faith which still believes, though it can see 
 nothing ; a faith which refuses to be comforted, which will not 
 let the distant picture of better things rise before it, but yet 
 trusts, even in the darkness, to God's truth and goodness. It is 
 the deep and awful faith of him who said, " Though he slay me 
 yet will I trust in him " ; of the cry, " My God, my God, why 
 hast thou forsaken me ? " It is the touching and childlike 
 confidence of the prophet "Although the fig-tree shall not 
 blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the 
 olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock 
 shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the 
 stalls ; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my 
 salvation." But the human spirit can hardly stand long the 
 strain of a hopeless faith; one or other of the elements will 
 assert its supremacy. And hope is the energy and effort of 
 faith; the strong self-awakening from the spells of discourage- 
 ment and listlessness and despair. 
 
 What gives its moral value to hope, what makes it a virtue 
 and a duty, is that in its higher forms it is a real act and striving 
 of the will and the moral nature; and if any one thinks that 
 this is an easy process he has yet much to learn of the secrets 
 of his own heart. It is an act, often a difficult act, of choice and 
 will, like the highest forms of courage. It is a refusal to be 
 borne down and cowed and depressed by evil ; a refusal, because 
 it is not right, to indulge in the melancholy pleasure, no unreal 
 one, of looking on the dark side of things. It is so that hope 
 plays so great a part in the spiritual life ; that it fights with such 
 power on the side of God. 
 
 If Millions of men are digging and toiling twelve hours each 
 day; and God hath sent forth hope to emancipate them from 
 drudgery. The man digging with his pick hath a far-away look 
 as he toils. Hope is drawing pictures of a cottage with vines 
 over the doorway, with some one standing at the gate, a sweet 
 voice singing over the cradle. Hope makes this home his; it 
 rests the labourer and saves him from despair. Multitudes 
 working the stithy and deep mines sweeten their labour and 
 exalt their toil by aspiring thoughts. Thinking of his little ones 
 at home, the miner says: "My children shall not be as their 
 father was; my drudgery is not for self, but for love's sake; 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 407 
 
 the sweat of my brow is oil in the lamp of love ; I will light it 
 to-night on the sacred altar of home." Here is the secret of the 
 rise and reign of the people. This explains all man's progress 
 in knowledge and culture. As the fruits and flowers rise rank 
 upon rank in response to the advancing summer, so all that is 
 most refined and exalted in man's mind or heart bursts forth in 
 new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the revelation of 
 that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration incess- 
 antly proceed. 1 
 
 5. What is the use, it is asked, of bidding us hope without 
 giving us first some certain or probable reality to hope about? 
 The faculty of hope is like the faculty of reason so far as this, 
 that both must have some foundation of facts whereon to work. 
 Give us a permanent and reasonable object of hope and we shall 
 be only too glad to hope ; but without such an object we must 
 be content to be hopeless. We cannot allow ourselves to be 
 fooled, even though the fooling may lead us along a path of 
 happiness. Better the hopeless path of truth than the fool's 
 paradise of comfortable delusions. 
 
 (1) The whole universe, when illuminated by the light that 
 streams upon it from the Cross of Christ, furnishes us with a 
 durable object of hope in the Fatherhood of the Maker of the 
 world, who, in the course of many ages, is conforming man to 
 the Divine image. The hope of the ultimate perfection of all 
 things, based upon the sense of the Divine Fatherhood, is the 
 source of all healthy activity in men. In the strength of this 
 hope we can look all evil in the face without blenching, and 
 beneath the abyss of sin discern the vaster abyss of the Divine 
 love. 
 
 (2) But what shall we say to those who tell us that about 
 the future we may reason but have no right to hope ? Our reply 
 will be that we cannot reason about the future without taking 
 into account the evidence that the world was made by a good and 
 wise Being who has given us many faculties tending to happiness 
 and righteousness, which faculties He cannot have intended to 
 fust in us unused; and among the highest of these faculties 
 stands hope. Furthermore we may point out that healthy 
 natural hope, though it may work through illusions, does not 
 
 1 N. D. Hillis, TJie Investment of Influence, 285. 
 
408 THESE THREE 
 
 delude. There is no deception in the Divine Providence which 
 leads the human soul from the cradle to the grave under the 
 guidance of unfulfilled hopes. Hope, like faith, may be literally, 
 but it is not spiritually, deceptive : the spirits of heaven are not 
 like the fiends 
 
 That palter with us in a double sense, 
 That keep the word of promise to our ear 
 And break it to our hope. 
 
 Of the word of God's promises we may assert the direct opposite. 
 That word is never " kept to our ear " and never " broken to our 
 hope." Just as the faith or trust of the child in the father (who 
 to him is as a God) is not a delusion but a truth enwrapped in 
 illusion, so it is with the natural hopes of childhood and of every 
 age ; with the aspirations of a generous youth and the ambitions 
 of a virtuous man. These neither "fool us when young" nor 
 " beggar us when old " ; but, on the contrary, each bright cloud 
 of hope, breaking as the traveller is allured onward by it from 
 one stage to another in his lifelong upward journey, reveals a 
 brighter cloud within, to break in its turn and to disclose a still 
 brighter interior splendour, till at last those heights are reached 
 where all clouds shall vanish away, and the mind shall be pre- 
 pared to receive the direct rays of the Sun of righteousness. 
 
 If The characteristic of waning life is said to be disenchantment. 
 Old men in general are inclined to check the zeal and damp the 
 ardour of their younger followers. A shrewd observer of life has 
 said that youth is an illusion, manhood a struggle, old age a regret. 
 " How many young men," says a great idealist, " have I not hailed 
 at the commencement of their career, glowing with enthusiasm, 
 and full of the poetry of great enterprises, whom I see to-day 
 precocious old men, with the wrinkles of cold calculation on their 
 brow ; calling themselves free from illusion when they are only 
 disheartened; and practical when they are only commonplace." 
 But believing men experience no disillusionment. The leaves of 
 hope never wither on souls that are rooted in God. Joseph when 
 dying looks forward with calm and perfect confidence, knowing 
 that glorious things, and ever more glorious, must be, because 
 God is. " What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual 
 promise of the Creator ? " God lives though a hundred Josephs 
 die. The two characteristics of the Hebrew mind were the up- 
 ward and the forward look, the one directed to God in the present, 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 409 
 
 the other to His coming in increasing power and grace in the 
 future. Optimism was the distinction of the Hebrews. " In the 
 absence of Hope and of an ideal of progress, we strike upon one 
 great difference between the classical Greeks and the Hebrews." 
 Among the ancient races the Hebrew was like a watcher standing 
 on a high mountain top, scanning the horizon and catching the 
 first beams of coming day, while others were still hidden in dark- 
 ness. The very heart-cry of the Hebrew race is heard in such 
 words as these 
 
 My soul looketh for the Lord 
 
 More than watchmen look for the morning; 
 
 Yea, more than watchmen for the morning. 1 
 
 6. Our hope is for others and for ourselves. 
 
 (1) It is for ourselves here and now. There must often be 
 much to distress and alarm us in the course of things which 
 interest us now evils which seem without remedy, defeats which 
 seem final, perplexities through which we cannot see our way, 
 dark and gloomy clouds rising in menace over our familiar 
 world. To hope seems to us then like deluding ourselves; we 
 call it optimism, and instinctive dislike to pain, a determination 
 not to see the cruel truth. And yet how often has it appeared 
 in the upshot of things that if in the darkest times any had been 
 bold enough to hope he would have been amply justified ? 
 
 What must have been the feelings of Christians in the fourth 
 and fifth centuries, when, just as Christianity seemed to have won 
 its way into the Koman Empire, they saw the fierce northern 
 barbarians break into it, and the heathen triumph over religion 
 and civil order ? Which would then have seemed the judgment 
 of sober good sense the despondency which saw only the fright- 
 ful mischief, or the bold hope which saw in the barbarians the 
 seed of a great Christendom ? Yet, who would have been right 
 and who wrong ? 
 
 "It has come," wrote the soberest and also the loftiest of 
 Christian thinkers in the last century, " I know not how, to be 
 taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so 
 much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length 
 discovered to be fictitious." The ominous symptom has certainly 
 not grown less ominous ; but could even the calm and large mind 
 
 1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 165. 
 
4 io THESE THREE 
 
 of Bishop Butler have embraced the thought that with this, not 
 diminished, perhaps aggravated, there might also come a steady 
 growth of energy and fervour and deepening practical purpose 
 in the Church and religious men, such as he had certainly not 
 seen, and could not look for ? 
 
 If Hope about ourselves should be encouraged. It is no proof 
 of devoutness to be always shedding penitential tears, or to be 
 so sensible of our own weaknesses as to be despondent about our 
 future. Victory is generally the guerdon of those who expect it, 
 confident in the Tightness of their cause, and the help of omnipo- 
 tence on the side of right. When King Kamirez, in the year 909, 
 vowed to deliver Castile from the shameful tribute imposed by 
 the Moors of one hundred virgins delivered annually, he collected 
 his troops and openly defied their King Abdelraman. 
 
 The king called God to witness, that come there weal or woe, 
 Thenceforth no maiden tribute from out Castile should go, 
 "At least I will do battle on God our Saviour's foe, 
 And die beneath my banner before I see it so." 
 
 He fought with courage but without hope of victory, and after 
 a furious conflict was defeated on the plain of Clavijo. But that 
 night (the legend says), while he was sleeping, St. Jago appeared 
 to him in vision, and promised him the victory. Next morning 
 he called his officers about him, and told them his dream ; inspired 
 them also with hope of heavenly aid; and that day the enemy 
 was overwhelmed by the Christian warriors, and ever since the 
 war-cry of Spain has been " Santiago." 1 
 
 ^f The worst of all the woes that trouble faithful hearts is 
 despair of ever conquering our sins, of ever becoming what the 
 Lord Christ would have us be. The modern man, Sir Oliver 
 Lodge tells us, is not troubling much about his sins. I do not 
 know about that. This I am sure of, that earnest Christians 
 trouble about nothing so much. While we are young, while we 
 are yet in the glad spring-time, the hope of victory is ever present. 
 When we have entered upon the dull, dusty paths of middle age, 
 there comes a horrible weariness of the conflict. Disappointment, 
 disillusionment of ourselves, drag us down. Like the Celtic race, 
 we are always setting forth to the war, always to return vanquished. 
 Year by year our hearts grow harder and seem to ossify. The 
 old sins we loathe are with us still; new sins that we never 
 dreamt of assault us. Character seems not to advance, but to 
 retrograde, and the enthusiastic impulses of youth have fled. 
 
 1 A. Rowland. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 411 
 
 What shall save us now, in the second critical period of life, but 
 the grace of Christian hope, which is not temperament, is not 
 human quality at all, but a blessed boon from God? By that 
 gladdening spirit alone shall despair be quelled, demons exorcized, 
 the old energy of youth recovered, the battle renewed. 1 
 
 ^[ Nowhere, perhaps, is Hope in relation to one's own future 
 more beautifully illustrated than in the noontide scene in Pippa 
 Passes. Phene, a Greek girl, has become the wife of Jules, a 
 French sculptor. The union is the result of a cruel joke practised 
 upon him by some students who owed him a grudge; and the 
 sculptor finds, when it is too late, that the refined woman by 
 whom he fancied himself loved is but an ignorant girl of the 
 lowest class, of whom also his enemies have made a tool. Her 
 remorse at seeing what man she had deceived disarms his anger, 
 and marks the dawning of a moral sense in her. And this is 
 what she says 
 
 You creature with the eyes ! 
 If I could look for ever up to them, 
 As now you let me, I believe, all sin, 
 All memory of wrong done, suffering borne, 
 Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth 
 Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay 
 Never to overtake the rest of me. 
 All that, unspotted, reaches up to you, 
 Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself, 
 Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink, 
 Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so, 
 Above the world! 
 
 Both he and she are saved. 2 
 
 (2) It is for ourselves in the hereafter. For it is simply the 
 most literal fact that God has set before us, in another state of 
 being, the most wonderful future, which is within the certain 
 reach of every single one of us : as much, as certainly, within our 
 reach, as anything that we know of, which we could obtain to- 
 morrow. This is the plain, clear, certain promise, without which 
 Christianity is a dream and a delusion. The life and destiny of 
 each individual man runs up to this ; this is what he was made 
 for; for this, he has been taught, and has received God's grace, 
 and has been tried, and has played his part in the years of time. 
 
 1 W. Hudson Shaw. a J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 119. 
 
412 THESE THREE 
 
 It is the barest of commonplaces ; and yet to any one who has 
 tried to open his mind to its reality and certainty, it must have 
 come with a strange and overpowering force new on every fresh 
 occasion, like nothing else in the world. For it is one thing to 
 look forward to some great general event, the triumph of the 
 saints of God, the final glory of the great company of the 
 redeemed; one thing to look at all this from the outside, as a 
 spectator by the power of imagination and thought. It is quite 
 another, when it comes into your mind that you yourself in the 
 far-off ages, you yourself, the very person now on earth, are 
 intended to have your place your certain and definite place 
 in all that triumph, in all that blessedness, in all that glory ; and 
 yet surely, to any one that will, this is the prospect ; this, and 
 nothing less. 
 
 Just come from heaven, how bright and fair 
 The soft locks of the baby's hair, 
 As if the unshut gates still shed 
 The shining halo round his head! 
 
 Just entering heaven, what sacred snows 
 Upon the old man's brow repose! 
 For there the opening gates have strown 
 The glory from the great white throne. 1 
 
 (3) It is for others. That ye may abound in hope, says St. 
 Paul, hope for ourselves, hope for our neighbour, hope for the 
 world. Be the sin of our heart what it may, and seventy times 
 seven the falls of the past, in Christ we know th&t sin shall have 
 no more dominion over us. Be the sin of our neighbour what it 
 may, love hopeth all things, and without love we are nothing. 
 Be the sin of the world what it may, we know who came to take 
 it away. His arm is not shortened, that it cannot save ; neither 
 is His ear heavy, that it cannot hear the great and bitter cry 
 that cometh up from earth to heaven. We may give up hope 
 when the Saviour of the world confesses Himself defeated, and 
 all-ruling Love retires for ever baffled from the battlefield of 
 human wickedness : but until then Christ calls us to set our 
 hope on Him, and to bear witness of it to the world. 
 
 1 Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 413 
 
 ^ In the England of John Wesley, numbers of men were his 
 peers in faith. Butler, Toplady, Bomaine, John Newton, had as 
 firm a grip on what faith can reach as he, and said words as noble 
 for it. But Wesley had more hopefulness in his little finger 
 than any other man of them had in his whole body. And so it 
 was, that, wherever Wesley went, men caught the contagion of 
 his great hope, and then ran tirelessly as long as they lived, 
 kindling over all the world. Macaulay does well to say that no 
 man can write a history of England in the last century, who shall 
 fail to take into account Wesley's vast influence in the common 
 English life. 1 
 
 Tf It is to be regretted that Edna Lyall's religious stories are 
 being neglected. They are full, not only of artistic power, but 
 likewise of rich Christian instruction. In one she describes one 
 of her characters in this significant fashion : " Carlo had the rare 
 and enviable gift of seeing people as they might have been under 
 happier circumstances, and the still rarer gift of treating them as 
 such." The life of Christ was full of this enviable hopefulness. 
 Read how He dealt with sinners, and you will rejoice to find that 
 His compassion dwelt upon them in their sin. 2 
 
 If Dr. Westcott has told us what those who are acquainted 
 with the poet's works will recognize as a statement of fact that 
 Browning " has dared to look on the darkest and meanest forms 
 of action and passion, from which we commonly and rightly turn 
 our eyes, and he has brought back for us, from this universal 
 survey, a conviction of hope." As a single specimen of this, we 
 may refer to the scene described in the brief poem bearing the 
 title, " Apparent Failure." It is a picture of the Morgue in Paris, 
 into which the poet entered to gaze upon the ghastly spectacles that 
 there presented themselves the bodies of men who hated life, or 
 whose ideals were shattered, or whose hearts were broken. And, 
 after plucking up courage to look fearlessly upon them all, trying 
 to conceive what such a sight represented, how each victim came 
 to meet with his terrible fate, he sums up his reflections thus 
 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 
 That, after Last, returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
 
 That what began best, can't end worst, 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. 3 
 
 1 K. Collyer, The Life That Now Is, 68. 
 
 2 J. A. Clapperton, Culture of the Christian Heart, 117. 
 8 J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 121. 
 
414 THESE THREE 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 1. Now consider the greatest of the three charity or Christiaa, 
 love. It is no use studying Greek or Latin to find out what 
 Christian love is. The dictionaries to consult here are our own 
 hearts in relation to our nearest and dearest, the thirteenth 
 chapter of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and St. John's 
 pregnant phrase, "God is love." Christian love is the feeling 
 begotten in our hearts towards God and towards our fellow-men 
 by the penetration into our hearts of the sense of the love of God 
 to us when He gave His Son to die for us. " Herein is love, not 
 that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be 
 the propitiation for our sins ... we love, because he first loved 
 us." That is at once the natural and the supernatural history of 
 Christian love. 
 
 T[ Nothing suggests better what Christian love is than Giotto's 
 drawing of "Charity" in Padua. It is a corrective to all that 
 misconception of love which left room for such a phrase as 
 "cold as charity." This is how Buskin describes the drawing: 
 "Usually Charity is nursing children or giving money. Giotto 
 thinks there is little charity in nursing children; bears and 
 wolves do that for their little ones ; and less still in giving money. 
 His Charity stands trampling upon bags of gold has no use for 
 them. She gives only corn and flowers (with her right hand); 
 and God's angel (to whom she looks) gives her, not even these 
 but a Heart." 1 
 
 *J The great religions of the world are distinguishable from 
 each other by some supreme characteristic. Thus, the genius of 
 Hinduism is mysticism, that of Buddhism is asceticism, that of 
 Parseeism is dualism, that of Mohammedanism is fanaticism, that 
 of Confucianism is secularism, and that of our own faith is 
 altruism, or love. No other inference than this is possible from 
 the teachings of the New Testament. There God is represented 
 as sending His Son to the earth because He loved, and He in this 
 way " commends " His love ; and then St. John, seeking to sum up 
 His nature in a single word, exclaims : " God is love ! " 2 
 
 2. Note three things in the very conception of love. 
 
 (1) It is a personal relation. The word may, indeed, be used 
 loosely of our mere liking for inanimate or impersonal objects; 
 
 1 R. J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, 240. 
 
 9 G. C. Lorimer, Tfic Modern Crisis in Religion, 233. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 415 
 
 it may be degraded to express an animal passion. But all such 
 uses of the word are either abuses of its meaning or are figurative. 
 As the modern poet of chivalry has exquisitely expressed it: 
 " True love's the gift which God has given to man alone beneath 
 the heaven ; " it is " the tie, which heart to heart, and mind to 
 mind, in body and in soul can bind." The discriminating genius 
 of the Greek language has marked the absolute difference of this 
 love from the lower forms of passion by assigning special words 
 to each ; and there are some who have regretted that no similar 
 distinction has been maintained in our own language. But, we 
 may perhaps be permitted to think, there is another point of view 
 from which the absence of any such verbal distinction may 
 appear prompted by a true instinct in a Christian nation. It was 
 necessary for a Greek to recognize sensual passion as one form of 
 human relationship. But the Christian best expresses the lofty 
 ideal which is ever before his eyes, and best exemplifies that 
 charity which thinketh no evil and which believeth all things, by 
 refusing to contemplate men and women as united by any lower 
 tie than that of love, or by refusing to contemplate our lower 
 nature except in the light shed upon it by the higher. 
 
 (2) Love is the highest relation which one personal being can 
 assume towards another. It seems necessary to insist iipon this 
 characteristic in it, because its true nature is often obscured by 
 its association with mere abstractions. It is not with humanity 
 but with human beings that love is concerned; and such mere 
 intellectual abstractions are useful only so far as they assist us in 
 placing ourselves in that individual relation to individuals in 
 which love finds its existence and its sphere of action. That 
 which the Apostle has in view in his glowing description of this 
 virtue is not a vague emotion of the heart, but the self-sacrifice, 
 the devotion, the patience which are evoked in one soul by the 
 presence of another. 
 
 T[ The degree in which this gracious virtue of love can be 
 evoked in our nature must depend upon the personal relations 
 in which we are placed. The relation, perhaps, may be some- 
 times and in some measure an ideal one; but the vision of a 
 person must be brought before the soul, if its highest faculties 
 are to be aroused and its noblest emotions drawn forth. We all 
 know, and it is the privilege of a generous youth to feel with 
 peculiar vividness, what an ennobling effect is produced upon our 
 
416 THESE THREE 
 
 nature by love, in the true sense of the word, thus aroused 
 towards a kindred soul; while we also know and feel how 
 intimately and essentially this influence is dependent on the 
 personal character of the relation. It was the favourite theme of 
 our greatest poets in the most splendid period of our literature, 
 and perhaps of our national life ; and in Spenser's lofty verse the 
 vision of love and beauty, and the vision of heavenly love and 
 beauty, are so closely associated that they seem to merge into one 
 another. But poets of less spiritual flight, and more concerned 
 with the ordinary passions of human nature, have similarly 
 depicted their heroes as rising to their noblest heights under the 
 inspiration of this generous passion. When St. Paul discerns 
 in the true relation of husband and wife a picture of the relation 
 of Christ to His Church, he justifies and sanctifies these tran- 
 scripts from nature, and welds together in essential union the 
 most human and the most Divine aspect of love. Where, indeed, 
 even in the light of the Gospel, shall be found more touching 
 illustrations of some of the excellencies which the Apostle ascribes 
 to charity, than in the personal affections of a gracious family 
 life ? The love which suffers long and is kind, which envies not, 
 which seeks not her own, which is not easily provoked, which 
 thinks no evil, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes 
 all things, and endures all things, is not this the love of mothers 
 and of wives, the devotion of true sons and husbands ? What 
 an astonishing power there is in such love and such devotion to 
 suppress the selfishness in a man or a woman, and to arouse all 
 the faculties of our nature in the service of the person to whom 
 we are devoted ! l 
 
 (3) It needs a perfect Person to satisfy its desires. For the 
 question arises, whether all these stirrings of heart towards men 
 like ourselves, all these quickenings of the moral and spiritual 
 pulse can be more than the first awakenings of the human soul 
 towards its true destiny that of communion and union with a 
 perfect Person. With respect to all these emotions, even the 
 truest and most beautiful, when viewed independently of higher 
 relations, in how lamentable a degree is illusion blended with 
 them! Those illusions are often the mockery, the cruel and 
 unworthy mockery, of maturer years ; and they are not less often 
 the bitter disappointments of tender and faithful hearts. But 
 suppose a love open to human nature which should be subject to 
 no such illusion ; imagine a Person revealed to men and women 
 
 1 Dean Wace. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 417 
 
 on whom they could lavish the inexhaustible stores of their 
 affection, their admiration, their devotion, and be sure that all, 
 and more than all, would fall short of what was due, and be a 
 feeble response to the infinite reality : and what might not then 
 be expected to be the influence produced upon our nature ? We 
 have the answer in this chapter, which was, in fact, the response 
 elicited from the soul of St. Paul by the vision of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, by the love of the Saviour for him and his responsive .love 
 for the Saviour. 
 
 If Perfection, or at least blessedness, in some form or other, 
 has been proved by experience to be the ineradicable desire of the 
 soul of man. That desire may, indeed, be dulled for a time, or 
 chilled by despair. But such an acquiescence in imperfection 
 brings with it, like the [disappointed philosophy of the ancient 
 world, a decay of energy, an abandonment of hope, in every 
 sphere of life, and relaxes the spring of all noble thoughts and 
 emotions. " Be ye perfect " is a command which is implied in all 
 others, and is one of their main animating motives; and, in 
 offering the means for this perfection, the Gospel possesses one of 
 its deepest claims upon our spirits. 1 
 
 Gather us in, Thou Love that fillest all, 
 Gather our rival faiths within Thy fold, 
 Eend each man's temple veil and bid it fall, 
 That we may know that Thou hast been of old; 
 
 Gather us in. 
 
 Gather us in : we worship only Thee ; 
 In varied names we stretch a common hand 
 In diverse forms a common soul we see; 
 In many ships we seek one spirit-land; 
 
 Gather us in. 
 
 Each sees one colour of Thy rainbow light; 
 Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven 
 Thou art the fulness of our partial sight, 
 We are not perfect till we find the seven; 
 
 Gather us in. 
 
 3. To whom, then, is our love directed ? 
 
 (1) It is love to God in Christ. The immediate and supreme 
 object of love-is the ever-blessed God. " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
 
 1 Dean Wace. 
 I COR. 27 
 
4 i8 THESE THREE 
 
 thy strength, and with all thy mind." This is the first command- 
 ment. And with God as the centre of the heart, all the faculties 
 and all the powers have unbounded scope for their operation. 
 
 T[ I spoke to H about the worship of the Virgin, and he 
 
 thought one reason for its prevalence is, that it puts before men 
 the more affectionate side of truth ; and he deplored the want of 
 a more large appeal to the affections in Protestantism, saying that 
 we worship Christ, but none of us love Him. I was silent, but 
 the result of a scrutiny into my own mind was that, with an 
 exception, I scarcely love any one, or anything else, and that not 
 because of any reference to His love for me, which somehow or 
 other never enters into my mind, but solely in consequence of 
 what He is and was, according, at least, to my conception of Him 
 and His mind and heart. I do not know that this consciousness 
 pleased me, because it presented itself rather as a deficiency than 
 as a power a lack of human sympathy, the existence of a con- 
 tinually increasing number of repellent poles in my constitution, 
 which isolate me from my species, and make my antipathies more 
 marked than my sympathies. Whereas St. John's conception of 
 genuine love for Him was that of an affection trained in love for 
 beings who exhibit the same Humanity which was in Him, in 
 weaker images, in the various relationships of life. "If a man 
 love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God 
 whom he hath not seen ? " Through the visible as a school we 
 rise up to the appreciation of the invisible. Now my nature 
 forces me to reverse the order, or rather to skip the first steps, 
 for I certainly have some sympathy dreamy, perhaps useless 
 with the invisible invisible personality, justice, right ; but there 
 they end, and almost never go on, or go back, to the visible and 
 human. Those lines you have often quoted, of Burns 
 
 I saw thee eye the general weal 
 With boundless love 
 
 express a feeling which I can only imagine, not realize, except 
 by a sort of analogy which is dreamy. 1 
 
 Tf The very blessed in Paradise, beholding the infinite Beauty 
 of God, would faint and fail from longing to love Him more if 
 His most Holy Will did not fill them with His own sweet Kest. 
 But they love His sovereign Will so entirely that theirs is wholly 
 merged in it, and they rest content in His Content, willing to 
 submit to the limit Love puts to love. Were it not so, their love 
 would be alike delicious and poignant delicious in the possession 
 
 1 F. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 841. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 419 
 
 of so great a gift, poignant in the intensity of desire for more. 
 Thus God in His Wisdom sends perpetual shafts into the hearts 
 of those who love Him, to teach them that they do not love Him 
 nearly so much as He deserves to be loved. And be sure that 
 the man who does not crave to love God more does not as yet 
 love Him well enough. There is no " enough " ; and he who 
 would stop short in what he has attained, has attained but little, 
 be sure. 1 
 
 (2) It is love to man. We cannot love God without loving 
 man. The love of God is the love of man expanded and purified. 
 To love man is to love God. The testimony of St. John, the 
 disciple of love, is decisive on this point. His love to God was 
 unearthly, pure, spiritual; his religion had melted into love, 
 and here is his account : " He that loveth not his brother whom 
 he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? " 
 According to him, it is through the visible that we appreciate the 
 invisible, through the love of our brother that we grow into the 
 love of God. At the same time, true love for man must flow 
 primarily from love to God. The love of God is the root, the love 
 of man the fruit ; the love of God is the fountain, the love of man 
 is the stream in which it flows. Both are parts of one whole, 
 links of one chain, threads of one cord which binds us to God, 
 descending from Him to us, and lifting us up to His very being, 
 which is love. 2 
 
 T| I read the other day of a girl, a convert from heathenism 
 in the Sandwich Islands, where Father Damien lived. She had 
 a class of little children, and she wished to know which of them 
 continued heathen and which had accepted Christianity. In her 
 simplicity, uncontaminated by conventionalities and traditions 
 which mislead us, she said to each child in her class, " Do you 
 love your enemies?" If the child answered, "Yes," the un- 
 sophisticated teacher said, "Then you are a Christian; stand 
 here." If the child answered, " No," she said, with equal decision, 
 " Then you are a heathen ; stand on the other side." Thus did 
 the girl in the Sandwich Islands divide the sheep from the goats ; 
 and thus will her Saviour divide them on the last day. 3 
 
 ^[ The Teacher earnestly desired to return to his post. I pled 
 with him to remain at the Mission House till we felt more assured, 
 but he replied; " Missi, when I see them thirsting for my blood, 
 
 1 St. Francis de Sales. 2 J. Davies. 
 
 8 H. P. Hughes, The Philanthropy of God, 40. 
 
420 THESE THREE 
 
 I just see myself when the Missionary first came to my island. 
 I desired to murder him, as they now desire to kill me. Had he 
 stayed away for such danger, I would have remained Heathen ; 
 but he came, and continued coming to teach us, till, by the grace 
 of God, I was changed to what I am. Now the same God that 
 changed me to this can change these poor Tannese to love and 
 serve Him. I cannot stay away from them ; but I will sleep at 
 the Mission House, and do all I can by day to bring them to 
 Jesus." 1 
 
 If Have we got this love ? Have we got it as a city, as a 
 Church, and as individuals ? Have we got it as a city ? I 
 suppose that many would answer that by an eulogium upon the 
 charity of London. We should have flowing articles upon the 
 generosity with which we support our hospitals and our asylums 
 and our refuges. But I have during this last week come across 
 certain facts which I feel it my duty to place before you this 
 afternoon. As the Bishop of East London, it is, I think, natural 
 that, considering for a thousand years the head of every hospital 
 in Europe was Bishop of the place, the Bishop of East London 
 should take a great interest in East London hospitals. I took 
 first the London Hospital, that lifeboat, as it were, which goes up 
 and down the sea of suffering humanity in East London, to cure 
 it and to save it. I thought that the charity of London would, 
 at any rate, be sufficient to support a great institution like the 
 London Hospital. What do I find? I find that the love of 
 London has allowed a deficit of 30,000 in the last two years ; 
 that so cramped are they that they have to build, and yet have 
 no money to build with ; and that to carry on their work efficiently 
 at all they want 10,000 a year more. I pass to the Victoria 
 Park Consumptive Hospital, and I pass with the memory of 
 having seen at least fifty of my East-end friends die of consump- 
 tion before my eyes in the last nine years. I go to the Con- 
 sumptive Hospital, and what do I find ? Out of 162 beds only 
 60 can be used for lack of funds. One hundred and two patients 
 are passed as suitable, and yet of those 102 none can be taken in. 
 Four women, passed a few weeks ago, have all died before their 
 time to go in came. Those 102 beds are left vacant because the 
 love of London is not sufficient for the purpose. I go to the 
 Children's Hospital. One would have thought that the charity 
 of a great city would look after its children. But what do I find 
 at the North-Eastern Hospital for children ? I find the Hospital 
 crammed with children, and another wing an urgent necessity, 
 and yet the only 2000 which has been given was not given by 
 1 John G. Paton, i. 195. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 421 
 
 some one who hates creeds and who goes in for the service of 
 man without creeds, but was obtained from a distinctly Church 
 charity as the first contribution to the new wing. I say, then, 
 that as a city we have not risen yet to the true standard of love. 
 Have we as a Church ? 1 
 
 " happy souls, radiant souls, what songs are ye out- 
 pouring ? 
 
 What passionate, pure prayers are these from earth to 
 heaven soaring? 
 
 What mystic gifts of love and grace are these your words 
 imploring 
 
 From God, for your neighbour and your enemy?" 
 
 Our souls are all afire with love with love our hearts are 
 glowing, 
 
 The mystic peace that Jesus gives our joyous strains are 
 showing ; 
 
 For lo! our love can not be hid our brimming love out- 
 flowing 
 
 To God, and our neighbour and our enemy. 
 
 " But what of those who sought your harm who joyed at 
 
 your mistaking, 
 What place have they in this your chant in these your 
 
 prayers, partaking? 
 Are your pure souls your tender hearts with love and 
 
 longing breaking 
 For God, and your neighbour and your enemy?" 
 
 Our souls are filled with heavenly peace our hearts with love 
 
 untiring, 
 
 And Jesus with His radiant love our feeble love is firing, 
 Till nought we crave but love for all, in this our joyous 
 
 choiring 
 From God, for our neighbour and our enemy. 2 
 
 (3) It is love to the brethren. The love of the brethren is 
 often referred to as distinguished from love; the one having 
 reference to moral character, the other to the race in general. 
 " Be kindly affectioned one to another." " Be ye all of one mind, 
 . . . love as brethren." 
 
 1 Bishop Winnington Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, 43, 
 
 2 Margaret Blaikie, Songs by the Way, 54. 
 
422 THESE THREE 
 
 U Gibbon has discussed the reason of the wonderful expansion 
 of Christianity at the outset of its career, and he has alleged 
 five causes: the zeal of the primitive Christians, their doctrine 
 of immortality, the miraculous powers of the Apostolic Church, 
 her pure morality, and the union and discipline of the Christian 
 republic. And these, no doubt, were efficient causes, but Gibbon 
 has overlooked the strongest of all. The reason why Christianity 
 spread over the world and won the nations, was that the Chris- 
 tians understood the blessed secret of love as the Lord had taught 
 it. It is said by Tertullian that in those early days the heathen 
 would often exclaim : " See how they love one another ! " All 
 this changed, and during the days of bitter controversy over 
 the doctrine of the Person of Christ, when the Christians were 
 wrangling and excommunicating and persecuting one another, 
 it was said by a Latin historian that their hatred of each other 
 exceeded the fury of savage beasts against mankind. It was 
 then that Christianity lost its power, and if we would recover 
 the ancient power, we must rediscover and practise the ancient 
 secret. 1 
 
 H In Samoa, Stevenson had left his small hut and removed 
 into a large house. There had not yet been time for Love to 
 line it. Stevenson felt sad and weary, and had forgotten to 
 bespeak his nightly coffee and cigars. Whilst he was thinking, 
 the door quietly opened and the native boy entered carrying the 
 tray with that on it for which he longed. Stevenson said in the 
 native tongue, " Great is your forethought." The boy corrected 
 him and said, " Great is the love." z 
 
 TJ The writer remembers a curious expression used by a 
 Mohammedan who had become a Christian and then relapsed, 
 " Un ki muhabbat dekhke, bhul gaya ; un ki dushmani dekhke, 
 yad aya," " Their (the Christians') love made me forget my re- 
 ligion ; their hostility made me remember it." 3 
 
 4. But God in Christ is the source as well as the object of love. 
 Where are we to look for the inspiration that breathed into the 
 idea of " love " that intense spirituality that perfect purity and 
 almost infinite longing and desire, which demanded almost a new 
 word to meet a new conception, as much in advance of all that 
 the heathen world knew as the Gospel of St. John transcends all 
 the Greek philosophies? The answer to this question is to be 
 found, at least in the first instance, in the words of our Lord 
 
 1 D. Smith. 2 A. R. Simpson, These Three, 47. 
 
 3 C. Field, The Charm of India, xi. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 423 
 
 Jesus Christ Himself, as reported to us in that very Gospel the 
 spiritual Gospel, as it has been well called of the beloved 
 Apostle ; to the effect that " God so loved the world, that he 
 gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
 should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not 
 his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the 
 world through him might be saved." 
 
 So kindly was His love to us, 
 
 (We had not heard of love before), 
 
 That all our life grew glorious 
 When He had halted at our door. 
 
 So meekly did He love us men, 
 
 Though blind we were with shameful sin, 
 
 He touched our eyes with tears, and then 
 Led God's tall angels naming in. 
 
 He dwelt with us a little space, 
 As mothers do in childhood's years, 
 
 And still we can discern His face 
 Wherever Joy or Love appears. 
 
 He made our virtues all His own, 
 
 And lent them grace we could not give, 
 
 And now our world seems His alone, 
 And while we live He seems to live. 
 
 He took our sorrows and our pain, 
 And hid their torture in His breast, 
 
 Till we received them back again, 
 To find on each His grief impressed. 
 
 He clasped our children in His arms, 
 
 And showed us where their beauty shone, 
 
 He took from us our grey alarms, 
 And put Death's icy armour on. 
 
 So gentle were His ways with us, 
 
 That crippled souls had ceased to sigh, 
 
 On them He laid His hands, and thus 
 They gloried at His passing by. 
 
 Without reproof or word of blame, 
 - As mothers do in childhood's years, 
 He kissed our lips in spite of shame, 
 And stayed the passage of our tears. 
 
424 THESE THREE 
 
 So tender was His love to us, 
 
 (We had not learned to love before), 
 
 That we grew like to Him, and thus 
 Men sought His grace in us once more. 1 
 
 If When the Jubilee Singers first visited our shores in 1873, 
 an old believer used to repeat constantly the refrain of one of 
 their songs, " Free grace and dying love." The love of Christ 
 constrained her. " Kabbi " Duncan rose up from the Professor's 
 chair, and walked up and down the platform as he discoursed on 
 the Crucifixion with his students. " Ay, ay, d'ye know what it 
 was dying on the cross, forsaken by His Father d'ye know 
 what it was ? What ? What ? It was damnation and 
 damnation taken lovingly." The love of Christ constrained him. 2 
 
 It was for me that Jesus died, for me and a world of men 
 Just as sinful, and just as slow to give back His love again; 
 And He didn't wait till I came to Him, but He loved me at 
 
 my worst; 
 He needn't ever have died for me if I could have loved Him 
 
 first. 3 
 
 THESE THREE. 
 
 We have looked at Faith, Hope, and Love separately. Now 
 let us see them acting and re-acting the one on the other. 
 
 "Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three." In thus 
 speaking of these cardinal virtues of the Christian character, 
 it is evident that St. Paul means to distinguish them from one 
 another. He speaks of them as "these three," and thereby 
 represents them to us as three several virtues, each holding its 
 own place, and serving its own purpose, to which it is peculiarly 
 adapted, and in which the others are incapable of superseding it. 
 Each one of that blessed triad of Christian graces has its own 
 proper province in the spiritual life allotted to it. And each has 
 important functions to discharge, which none but itself is capable 
 of executing. Faith can be no substitute for love in the way 
 of fulfilling the great duties of practical religion. And as little 
 can love be any substitute for faith in the way of appropriating 
 the merits of the Saviour, and thereby securing our justification 
 in the sight of God. What St. Paul has elsewhere said of the 
 
 1 Coningsby William Dawson. 
 
 2 A. R. Simpson, These Three, 45. 8 Dora Greenwell. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 425 
 
 several offices in the Christian Church is equally applicable to 
 the leading graces of the Christian character that all of them 
 are useful and needful in their respective spheres, like the various 
 organs and members of the human body ; and that no one among 
 them can set aside another any more than the hand can dispense 
 with the services of the foot, or the eye undertake to perform the 
 functions of the ear. 
 
 But while in this statement faith, hope, and love are thus 
 represented as numerically distinct, they are notwithstanding 
 very intimately associated, as having the closest mutual affinity 
 and dependence. All three must abide together, in order to the 
 perfection of each other, as well as of the whole character into 
 which they enter. God has joined them; and man must not 
 attempt to sever them. Faith must animate the mind with 
 hope, and " work by love," in order to show its genuineness as 
 that living and operative faith of which alone the Scriptures 
 have approved. Hope, if it do not rest on the good foundation 
 which faith has laid for it, is altogether visionary and unwar- 
 ranted ; and if it do not elevate the soul unto the unfeigned love 
 of God and man, it is spurious or hypocritical. And love, if it 
 be not originated by faith and sustained by hope, is merely an 
 instinctive impulse of nature, accidental in its attachments, and 
 limited to the sphere of visible things, and thus differing most 
 essentially from that evangelical love of which it is written, that 
 "the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, 
 and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." 
 
 1. Faith and Hope. Faith and hope are twin sisters, and 
 hardly to be known apart ; both as beautiful as they can be, and 
 alike beautiful, and very often indeed mistaken each for the 
 other. Yet this need never be; because between them there 
 is this clear difference, that while hope expects, faith inspects; 
 while hope is like Mary, looking -wp-ward, faith is like Martha, 
 looking a^-ward ; while the light in the eyes of hope is high, the 
 light in the eyes of faith is strong; while hope trembles in 
 expectation, faith is quiet in possession. Hope leaps out toward 
 what will be: faith holds on to what is; hope idealizes, faith 
 realizes ; faitbT sees, hope foresees. 
 
 TJ The trouble with some men is, that, while they hold on to 
 
426 THESE THREE 
 
 the faith, they have lost hold of the hope of their religion. And 
 so they inspect but they do not expect ; they believe in what has 
 come, but not in what is coming. So they expire after they have 
 ceased to inspire; they die, but they do not make many live. 
 You get a grand lesson on this matter, as you go from the mouth 
 to the springs of the Ehine. Passing through the fog and mist 
 of Holland, as through a stagnant, grassy sea, you stretch upward, 
 league after league ; and, as you go, the country gradually changes. 
 The air grows clearer, the prospect finer ; everything that can 
 stir the soul begins to reach down toward you, and touch you 
 with its glory. But the higher you go, the harder is your 
 going; only the deepening beauty never fails you. So at last 
 you come into Switzerland, where the blue heavens bend over you 
 with their infinite, tender light ; and the mountains stand about 
 you, in their white robes, glorious as the gates of heaven, with 
 green valleys nestling between, which, but for sorrow and sin, 
 are beautiful as Paradise. And all about you is a vaster vision, 
 and within you an intenser inspiration than can ever be felt on 
 the foggy flats below. It is the difference between faith alone, 
 and faith and hope together. 1 
 
 If By faith Jacob, when a-dying, leaves his children a legacy 
 of hope in God. He looks upward in faith and forward in 
 expectancy. His religion makes him sanguine and prophetic. 
 " Behold," he said, " I die : but God shall be with you " (Gen. 
 xlviii. 21). The words are suggestive of infinite possibilities. The 
 One remains while the many change and pass. When man dies, 
 God lives on, and faith in the real presence of a living God is the 
 spring of eternal hope. Faith is the power by which men grasp 
 the future, the unseen, the Divine, by which they maintain their 
 expectant look, by which they remain optimists in spite of all the 
 evil of the world. Dying saints are enabled to bequeath messages 
 of comfort to after ages, because they are sure that the God who 
 has so greatly blessed themselves has greater blessings in store 
 for their posterity. True religion bids them expect a brighter 
 day to dawn and a happier society to come into being. Jacob, 
 dying in Goshen, the proverbial land of plenty, sees something 
 still better than Goshen. His conviction of the goodness of God 
 kindles an ardent and unquenchable hope of the amelioration of 
 the state of his people. The vision of God is always accompanied 
 by the vision of a better and happier world. 2 
 
 T| In the career of Columbus faith and hope supported each 
 other. So sings the American poet, Maurice Francis Egan 
 
 1 R. Collyer, The Life that Now Is, 64. 
 * J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 150. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 427 
 
 Who doubts has met defeat ere blows can fall ; 
 Who doubts must die with no palm in his hand ; 
 Who doubts shall never be of that high band 
 Which clearly answer Present ! to Death's call : 
 For Faith is life, and, though a funeral pall 
 Veil our fair Hope, and on our promised land 
 A mist malignant hang, if Faith but stand 
 Among our ruins, we shall conquer all. 
 faithful soul, that knew no doubting low ; 
 Faith incarnate, lit by Hope's strong flame, 
 And led by Faith's own cross to dare all ill 
 And find our world ! but more than this we owe 
 To thy true heart; thy pure and glorious name 
 Is one clear trumpet call to Faith and Will. 
 
 2. Faith and Love. Faith is energetic love. Divinely implanted 
 love, spiritually inspired self-surrender increases every faculty of 
 knowledge, deepens every impression made by truth, opens the 
 eye which indifference or passion had blinded, purifies the gaze 
 which prejudice or evil bias had corrupted and obscured, and so 
 makes the trembling faith which can only cry, " I believe ; help 
 thou mine unbelief," grow, burn, gleam with holy enthusiasm, until 
 it cries, " I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded." 
 
 If I have been writing lately on the subject of Keble's lines 
 (Hymn for Sunday next before Advent). I have little doubt that 
 the Church of Kome has paid far more attention than we have to 
 that which forms the subject of this hymn the treatment of 
 penitence. She has more power to soothe, because she dwells 
 chiefly on that which is the most glorious element in the nature 
 of God Love. Whereas Protestantism fixes attention more on 
 that which is the strongest principle in the bosom of man 
 Faith. 1 
 
 I ask not for Thy love, Lord : the days 
 
 Can never come when anguish shall atone. 
 
 Enough for me were but Thy pity shown, 
 To me as to the stricken sheep that strays, 
 With ceaseless cry for unforgotten ways 
 
 lead me back to pastures I have known, 
 
 Or find me in the wilderness alone, 
 And slay me, as the hand of mercy slays. 
 I- ask not for Thy love ; nor e'en so much, 
 
 As for a hope on Thy dear breast to lie; 
 1 F. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 244. 
 
428 THESE THREE 
 
 But be Thou still my shepherd still with such 
 Compassion as may melt to such a cry ; 
 
 That so I hear Thy feet, and feel Thy touch, 
 And dimly see Thy face ere yet I die. 1 
 
 1f In 1836 James Field, of Cork, called for the third time on 
 an unsaved woman to whom he had been introduced. She cried 
 out to him, "Oh, sir, I do not love God!" He replied, "What 
 have you to do with loving God ? How can you love until you 
 apprehend His love to you ? and this you cannot do until you 
 believe. It is folly to think of loving God before you obtain 
 pardon" Tears gushed from her eyes, and she said she had 
 never understood it before. As the two prayed, God set her soul 
 at liberty, and then she found she could love God, because He 
 first loved her. It was the gift of pardon that filled her heart with 
 the love of gratitude. 2 
 
 3. Hope and Love. Who has not experienced what he and 
 others call Christian hope, but which on close analysis is found 
 to be little better than a faint and feeble desire after better things, 
 and a desponding cry of the soul for what is just a grade better 
 than blank despair ? This is not the hope that saves. Contrast 
 it with the full evidence of things hoped for, which is imparted by 
 living faith. Let desire be large, and expectation strong; let 
 hope embrace all Divine promises, and it becomes a vast capacity 
 for blessedness, and often bursts out in solitary places and on 
 dark nights into songs of rejoicing. Then is revealed what the 
 Apostles call "patience," born of quiet waiting, with a smile 
 upon its face, reflecting all the lustre of the Divine manifestation. 
 Tribulation and sorrow are but the crucible in which this precious 
 quality and energy of soul is refined. "This hope maketh not 
 ashamed," and can never be disappointed, because it is a veritable 
 foretaste of its own object it is the earnest and foretaste of the 
 purchased possession. What leads the soul from hope to hope, 
 from the faint uplifting of the wearied weeping eye to the " hope 
 full of immortality " ? St. Paul gives us the answer : " Because 
 the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit 
 given to us." 
 
 1J Do you not think that the ordinary standpoint of so-called 
 Christian teaching is undergoing a destruction, and that the 
 
 1 George John Romanes, Life and Letters, 267. 
 
 8 J. A. Clapperton, Culture of the Christian Heart, 68. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 429 
 
 devil's travesty is waning? Terrorism is no real factor iu 
 Christianity. Surely Christianity is the response which follows 
 the recognition of Love and its beneficent purpose of Universal 
 beatitude. In that atmosphere the heart beats freely and fully, 
 for it breathes the Hope which Love begets. We ought to 
 breathe the Hope before we attempt to deal with the distresses 
 of life; then should we be armed with the Sympathy that is 
 powerful, and not merely with the sympathy that is the recog- 
 nition of a common woe. 1 
 
 If Yesterday, after reading Romance of Rose, thought much of 
 the destruction of all my higher power of sentiment by late 
 sorrow; and considered how far it might be possible to make 
 love, though hopeless, still a guide and strength. 2 
 
 Is any grieved or tired? Yea, by God's will: 
 Surely God's Will alone is good and best: 
 weary man, in weariness take rest, 
 
 hungry man, by hunger feast thy fill. 
 
 Discern thy good beneath a mask of ill, 
 Or build of loneliness thy secret nest: 
 At noon take heart, being mindful of the west; 
 
 At night wake hope, for dawn advances still. 
 
 At night wake hope. Poor soul, in such sore need 
 Of wakening and of girding up anew, 
 Hast thou that hope which fainting doth pursue? 
 No saint but hath pursued and hath been faint; 
 
 Bid love wake hope, for both thy steps shall speed, 
 Still faint yet still pursuing, thou saint. 8 
 
 4. Faith, Hope, Love. When St. Paul takes three words, and 
 couples them with a verb in the singular, he is not making a 
 slip of the pen, or committing a grammatical blunder which a 
 child could correct. But there is a great truth in that piece of 
 apparent grammatical irregularity; for the faith, the hope, and 
 the love, for which he can afford only a singular verb, are thereby 
 declared to be in their depth and essence one thing, and it, the 
 triple star, abides, and continues to shine; the three primitive 
 colours are unified in the white beam of light. Do not correct 
 the grammar, and spoil the sense, but discern what he means 
 when he says, " Now abided faith, hope, love." For this is what 
 
 1 R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 150. 
 
 2 Ruskin in E. T. Cook's Life of EusJcin, ii. 267. 
 8 Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 164. 
 
430 THESE THREE 
 
 he means, that the two latter come out of the former, and that 
 without it they are naught, and that it without them is dead. 
 
 (1) Faith is the rightful attitude of self and our neighbour 
 to God : Hope is the recognition and welcome of God's purpose 
 for self, and our neighbour: Love binds God, self, and our 
 neighbour in the perfect bond of the Divinely purposed harmony. 
 
 Tf You have seen that famous picture of the French artist 
 Millet, "The Angelus." You remember the scene which it 
 depicts a very homely and, at the first glance, prosaic scene : a 
 potato-field and two figures, a man and a woman, surrounded by 
 the implements of their toil. It is a dull, bleak landscape, and 
 away across the level tract you see a village with the church- 
 spire rising above the lowly roofs. It is evening, and the bell 
 has rung out its call to prayer. Its silvery chime has reached 
 the ears of the two labourers, and after the devout manner of 
 their country they have hearkened to its call. They have 
 dropped their tools, and they are standing erect, with bowed 
 heads and folded hands, in the attitude of prayer. I once heard 
 an interpretation of this picture from my old teacher, the late 
 Professor Henry Drummond. There, he said, are the three 
 elements of a complete life Work, God, and Love. The field, 
 the spade, the basket, and the barrow there is Work ; the bowed 
 heads and the folded hands there is Eeligion ; the two, a man 
 and a woman, whatever be their relationship there is Love. 
 And this is precisely the idea of the saying of St. Paul in our 
 text. 1 
 
 So Faith shall build the boundary wall, 
 And Hope shall plant the secret bower, 
 
 That both may show magnifical 
 With gem and flower. 
 
 While over all a dome must spread, 
 And Love shall be that dome above; 
 
 And deep foundations must be laid, 
 And these are Love. 
 
 (2) Though separated in the representation, faith, hope, and 
 love are really inseparable companions, closely united, not only 
 to every Christian, but also to each other. What, indeed, is 
 faith without hope and love ? A cold conviction of the intellect, 
 but without life-awakening power in the heart, or mature fruit 
 in the life. Without hope, faith would never behold heaven; 
 
 1 D. Smith, Man's Need of God, 16. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 431 
 
 but even if it could enter therein, heaven would lack its highest 
 bliss. What is hope without faith and love ? At most, an idle 
 dream from which we soon shall sadly wake ; a fragrant 
 blossom in the garden, fading before it has brought forth fruit. 
 And, lastly, what is love without hope or faith ? The welling 
 forth, perhaps, of natural feeling, but in no degree a spiritual 
 principle of life. If love believes not, it must die; and if it 
 hopes not in the same measure as it loves, it is then the source 
 of unparalleled suffering. Thus, whichever of these three sisters 
 we would separate from the others, in so doing we have 
 subscribed her death-warrant ; nay, even if two of them remain 
 together, the brightness of their beauty is dimmed whenever the 
 third has disappeared. 
 
 Tf That the whole substance of religion was faith, hope, and 
 love ; by the practice of which we became united to the will of 
 God; that all beside is indifferent, and to be used only as a 
 means, that we may arrive at our end, and be swallowed up 
 therein, by faith and love. 
 
 That all things are possible to him who believes, that they are 
 less difficult to him who hopes, that they are easier to him who 
 loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice 
 of these three virtues. 1 
 
 U I remember reading about an English barrister, of refined 
 mind but speculative tendencies, who had reached such a depth 
 of Pyrrhonism, alike in philosophy and religion, that he had lost 
 all faith in positive truth. His Christian wife grieved over him 
 all the more that she perceived about him symptoms of incipient 
 consumption. One day, however, as he lay on the sofa, she saw 
 him gazing upwards, as if on some object, with an expression of 
 soft delight and almost rapture. " What's the matter ? " she 
 asked. " Do you know, I have begun to conceive hope." " Hope 
 of what ? " "I don't know, but somehow I have hope." Ah ! 
 the haze was dissolving, phantoms were crystallizing into concrete 
 realities and the transporting " hope " of finding solid footing on 
 the rock of positive truth. Eight speedily came that faith which 
 overcometh the world a childlike reception of the Gospel of 
 Christ terminating, and at no distant period, in a tranquil 
 departure to the region of unclouded light. 2 
 
 ^[ John Knox, in his History of the Reformation, has preserved 
 a beautiful comparison of faith, hope, and charity by Patrick 
 
 1 Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 23. 
 
 2 D. Brown, Memoir of John Duncan, 78. 
 
432 THESE THREE 
 
 Hamilton, the Scottish martyr. Says Hamilton : " Faith cometh 
 of the Word of God, Hope cometh of Faith, and Charity springeth 
 of them both. Faith believes the Word, Hope trusteth after 
 that which is promised by the Word, and Charity doeth good 
 unto her neighbour, through the love which she hath to God, 
 and gladness that is within herself. Faith looketh to God and 
 His word ; Hope looketh unto His gift and reward ; Charity 
 looketh unto her neighbour's profit. Faith receiveth God ; Hope 
 receiveth His reward ; Charity looketh to her neighbour with a 
 glad heart, and that without any respect of reward. Faith 
 pertaineth to God only, Hope to His reward, and Charity to 
 her neighbour." 
 
 Let love weep 
 
 It cometh, that day of the Lord divine; 
 
 And the morning star will surely shine 
 On the long death-night of sleep. 
 
 Let faith fear, 
 
 The unending light comes on apace; 
 The path leads homeward from this place; 
 Through the twilight home must appear. 
 
 Let hope despair, 
 
 Let death and the grave shout victory, 
 That flush of the morning yet shall be, 
 Which shall wake the slumberers there ! 
 
 THESE THREE ABIDE. 
 
 1. Amidst all that changes and is destined to pass away, 
 three things there are, St. Paul tells us, that abide. Just as in 
 a world of shadows and uncertainties we have learned to postulate 
 as fundamental certainties three incontestable realities, God, self, 
 and our neighbour ; so amid the variety of external and transient 
 manifestations of the religious life there remain unchangeably 
 three activities or functions of the soul, which are perpetually 
 concerned with these fundamental certainties. Much of the 
 detail of religion is an accommodation to present necessities and 
 will pass away when it has served its temporary purpose; but 
 behind and beneath lie three essential and eternal principles of 
 spiritual life Faith, Hope, and Love. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 433 
 
 2. The popular interpretation reads "now" as temporal 
 instead of logical identifying it with the "now" of verse 12, 
 though the Greek words differ as though the Apostle meant 
 that for the present faith and hope " abide " with love, but love 
 alone "abides" for ever. But St. Paul puts the three on the 
 same footing in respect of enduringness " these three " in com- 
 parison with the other three of verse 8 pointedly adding faith 
 and hope to share and support the "abiding" of love; love is 
 greater among these, not more lasting. 
 
 It is curious that this meaning has been so generally missed 
 by readers of the passage. Learned readers, as well as unlearned, 
 have failed to observe it. You may frequently see it assumed, 
 in hymns and other religious literature, that faith and hope, 
 instead of being associated with love in this quality of per- 
 manence, as St. Paul declares them to be, are contrasted with it, 
 in that they are transitory, whilst love is eternal. " Faith will 
 vanish into sight ; Hope be emptied in delight ; Love in heaven 
 will shine more bright." Such language is plausible enough to 
 be generally accepted. But it is at variance with St. Paul's view. 
 The passage we are considering is not one of doubtful meaning ; 
 no competent interpreter could question that St. Paul's purpose 
 is to say that faith, hope, love, all three abide; and that by 
 " abide " he means that they have not the changing and trans- 
 itory character which belongs to other things of which he has 
 been speaking. It is true that he is asserting the supreme glory 
 of love ; it is greater, he says, than faith and hope. But these 
 two sister graces share with it the significant distinction that 
 they all abide. 
 
 3. The chief point, then, to be noticed in this statement, is 
 the permanence it ascribes to those graces of which it speaks. It 
 represents " faith, hope, and love, these three," as all alike abiding. 
 Formerly the Apostle had said this of love in particular, declaring 
 in the 8th verse that " love never faileth." But now, in repeating 
 the statement, he extends it to the other two, ascribing to them 
 also the same durability that he had previously noticed as an 
 attribute of Jove. No doubt it was the design of the Apostle to 
 point out in this respect the very striking contrast between these 
 three essential graces, by which at all times the Christian 
 
 i COR. 28 
 
434 THESE THREE 
 
 character must be distinguished, and those extraordinary gifts 
 bestowed on the early Christian Church, which, however remark- 
 able and useful while they endured, were only intended to 
 continue for a season. 
 
 If If, loving well the creatures that are like yourself, you feel 
 that you would love still more dearly creatures better than 
 yourself were they revealed to you ; if striving with all your 
 might to mend what is evil, near you and around, you would 
 fain look for a day when some Judge of all the Earth shall 
 wholly do right, and the little hills rejoice on every side; if, 
 parting with the companions that have given you all the best 
 joy you had on Earth, you desire ever to meet their eyes again 
 and clasp their hands, where eyes shall no more be dim, nor 
 hands fail ; if, preparing yourselves to lie down beneath the 
 grass in silence and loneliness, seeing no more beauty, and feeling 
 no more gladness you would care for the promise to you of a 
 time when you should see God's light again, and know the things 
 you have longed to know, and walk in the peace of everlasting 
 Love then, the Hope of these things to you is religion, the 
 Substance of them in your life is Faith. And in the power of 
 them, it is promised us, that the kingdoms of this world shall 
 yet become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. 1 
 
 4. When we have looked backward and seen these three graces 
 to be thus identical and unchanging in stages of human growth 
 which are in mental conditions so far separated from each other, 
 we shall have confidence in them as we look forward even beyond 
 the grave. Are we to part with faith hereafter? Only if we 
 give to the name Faith some narrow interpretation. Not, surely, 
 if it is filial trust in the Father. It cannot be part of the reward 
 of the future state that the children of God should cease to be 
 filial, or to cherish that confiding trust in the Fatherly wisdom 
 and goodness which was perfectly exhibited in the perfect Son 
 of God. No; if childlike faith has continued from yesterday 
 until to-day, we may know it to be of a nature to continue and 
 abide for ever. But must not hope, as they say, be swallowed 
 up in fruition? Not, it would seem, until the whole work of 
 the Divine creation and government be brought to a standstill. 
 Such an end is beyond the reach of our faculties to imagine. 
 But the death of a Christian will not leave him without objects 
 
 1 Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens (Works, xxxiii. 174). 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 435 
 
 of hope. After each of us dies there will be plenty of evil still 
 to be purged out of God's world ; there will be endless evolutions 
 of the Divine purpose for the revealing of the Divine glory. 
 Those that have gone before us, we may well believe, instead of 
 having ceased to hope, are now hoping more earnestly, more 
 continuously, more joyfully, more calmly, than we are. Of the 
 continuance of love in the life to come one need say nothing, as 
 it has not been possible to fall into the mistake of supposing 
 that love could be stopped by death unless all conscious exist- 
 ence be believed to be stopped by it also. 
 
 If We are very much accustomed to speak of faith as destined 
 in the future world to give place to vision, and of hope as des- 
 tined, in like manner, to end in full fruition. This view is taken 
 in the last verses of our 49th Paraphrase, of which the chapter 
 before us is the groundwork. And by frequently using that 
 beautiful Paraphrase, we have probably been led, without 
 much consideration, to assume that love alone shall exist in 
 heaven, while faith and hope shall be altogether superseded. But 
 is there any solid Scriptural ground for such an assumption ? 
 There is nothing in the text itself to warrant it. Nor am I 
 aware of any other passage that has ever been formally brought 
 forward to confirm it. No faith in heaven ! What, then, are we 
 to make of those texts which speak of the glorified saints as 
 " eating of the hidden manna," partaking of " the fruit of the tree 
 of life," following the Lamb of God whithersoever He may lead 
 them and as guided by Him to "living fountains of waters." 
 Surely these expressions are as significant as words can be of a 
 life of unceasing faith in the Kedeemer. It is quite true that 
 many of those things which are now objects of faith, shall here- 
 after be objects of sight. But it would be a very rash and 
 sweeping conclusion thence to infer that in a future world there 
 shall be no room and no occasion for faith at all. Unless, indeed, 
 we are to be made absolutely omniscient at the very first moment 
 of our entrance into the heavenly mansions, there must still 
 remain a field, though not indeed the same field as that which 
 we now have, for the exercise of faith. And then, in so far as 
 faith can be held to consist in confidence towards God or depend- 
 ence on the Saviour, we may surely venture to say that instead 
 of ceasing in the world to come, it will be more fully developed 
 and more perfectly maintained. With respect to hope, again, it 
 is not to be questioned that many of those things to which it is 
 for the present directed shall in our future state be actually 
 possessed, so that they cannot then be hoped for any longer. But 
 
436 THESE THREE 
 
 does it follow that, after this life is ended, the Christian will 
 have absolutely nothing whatever to hope for ? Will it be 
 nothing for the departed spirits of the faithful to anticipate the 
 resurrection of their bodies, and to look forward to the triumphant 
 issues of the coming judgment ? And even when these glorious 
 events have been consummated, will there not still remain the 
 animating prospect of continually augmenting knowledge, un- 
 ceasingly advancing happiness, and progressively increasing 
 spiritual excellence to all eternity? We must either suppose 
 that all that heaven has to give is to be enjoyed at once by the 
 spirits of the redeemed when first they are translated thither, and 
 that there is no progress of any kind to be afterwards made by 
 them from glory to glory; or else we must allow that there is 
 still something in reserve for them, besides what they at first 
 attain, as a fit and proper object of Hope. 1 
 
 5. Faith, hope, and love, these three represent the spiritual Or 
 Christian life, called also the eternal life, in the soul of man. It 
 is this that has in its history and essential nature the witness 
 of permanence. St. Paul found comfort in the evident progress 
 from the more imperfect to the less imperfect which is to be 
 traced in a part of our human nature. But he also derived 
 comfort, and the more indispensable comfort, from contemplating 
 the signs and working in man of the perfect and eternal Divine 
 nature. And in order to realize that this which seemed to him 
 best in man was really unchanging, he must have looked at it as 
 he did at the changing forms of mental conception, in the stage 
 of human childhood. In the child he implies, if he does not 
 fully affirm he found the spiritual affections at least as admirable 
 as in the man. These things, faith and hope and love, he per- 
 ceived, manifest themselves with heavenly beauty in the young ; 
 they are also the signs of God's truest presence in the instructed 
 and experienced man, and they will stand the shock of death, 
 and remain with us, in virtue of their imperishable and eternal 
 nature, in the dimly imagined world that lies on the other side 
 of the grave. 
 
 TI So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin 
 verses, and called them educated; now we teach them to leap 
 and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and call them educated. 
 Can they plough, can they sow, can they plant at the right time, 
 
 1 T. J. Crawford, The Preaching of the Cross, 349. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 437 
 
 or build with a steady hand ? Is it the effort of their lives to be 
 chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word and 
 deed ? Indeed it is, with some, nay, with many, and the strength 
 of England is in them, and the hope ; but we have to turn their 
 courage from the toil of war to the toil of mercy ; and their 
 intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things; and 
 their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state 
 and fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, 
 for them and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible 
 religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by 
 temptation, no more to be defended by wrath and by fear ; 
 shall abide with us Hope, no more to be quenched by the years 
 that overwhelm, or made ashamed by the shadows that betray : 
 shall abide for us, and with us, the greatest of these ; the abiding 
 will, the abiding name of our Father. For the greatest of these 
 is Charity. 1 
 
 i. Faith Abides. 
 
 1. There is a common saying, which ninety out of a hundred 
 people think comes out of the Bible, that " faith is lost in sight." 
 There is no such teaching in Scripture. True, in one aspect, 
 faith is the antithesis of sight. St. Paul does say, " We walk by 
 faith, not by sight." But that antithesis refers only to part of 
 faith's significance. In so far as it is the opposite of sight, of 
 course it will cease to be in operation when we shall know even 
 as we are known, and see Him as He is. But the essence of 
 faith is not the absence of the person trusted, but the emotion 
 of trust which goes out to the person, present or absent. And in 
 its deepest meaning of absolute dependence and happy confidence, 
 faith abides through all the glories and the lustres of the heavens, 
 as it burns amidst the dimnesses and the darknesses of earth. 
 For ever and ever will dependence on God in Christ be the life 
 of the glorified, as it was the life of the militant, Church. No 
 millenniums of possession, and no imaginable increases in beauty 
 and perfectness and enrichment with the wealth of God, will 
 bring us one inch nearer to casting off the state of filial depend- 
 ence which is, and ever will be, the condition of our receiving 
 them all. Faith " abides." 
 
 2. But -how can faith, which is the evidence of things not 
 seen, remain in the very presence of the realities themselves ? 
 
 1 Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies ( Works, xviii, 186). 
 
438 THESE THREE 
 
 There we shall see face to face. So it is clear that faith cannot 
 be altogether the same as here. But in every essential point, it 
 will be the same. For what is the ground of faith ? What leads 
 me to act on God's word, though I have never seen God, have 
 never heard His voice ? Is it not that I trust God, that I am 
 content to leave myself in His hands, that I have confidence in 
 His doing all things well ? Is not this the essence of faith in 
 ordinary life ? Is it not that we trust one another, and have 
 confidence in men doing their duty, and so we leave important 
 matters to be transacted for us by others, having faith in them, 
 as we express it ? And in this its ordinary sense, will not faith 
 remain in our new and higher state of being ? Will not entire 
 and unwavering trust in God form a component of the character 
 of the saints in glory a confidence compared to which the most 
 perfect assurance ever attained here below is but doubt, an entire 
 resting for the present and for the future on His wisdom and His 
 love, of the perfect value of which we know nothing here ? 
 
 TJ Caesar Malan's death-bed seemed to those who witnessed it 
 the most surprising of all his achievements. Said the doctor to 
 me one day on leaving him, " I have just beheld what I have 
 often heard of, but what I never saw before. Now I have seen 
 it, as I see this stick I carry in my hand." " And what have you 
 seen ? " I asked. " Faith, faith" he answered ; " not the faith of 
 a theologian, but of a Christian ! I have seen it with my eyes." l 
 
 3. It would be a most serious mistake to think that there ever 
 was a time in the history of our creation in the past, that there is 
 any part of the infinite creation now, that there ever will be a 
 time in the history of any conceivable creation of the future, in 
 regard to which it has been, is, or shall be true that the spiritual 
 life of creatures made in the image of God is not lived by faith in 
 God. For what is the life of faith but the living, not inde- 
 pendently and with self-reliance, but by the receiving of the life 
 of God ? And how can it accord with the relation between the 
 Creator and the creature, that there should ever be any other 
 spiritual life than this ? 
 
 I singularly moved 
 
 To love the lovely that are not beloved, 
 
 Of all the Seasons, most 
 
 1 The Life, Labour, and Writings of Caesar Malan, 459. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 439 
 
 Love Winter, and to trace 
 
 The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face. 
 
 It is not death, but plenitude of peace; 
 
 And the dim cloud that does the world enfold 
 
 Hath less the characters of dark and cold 
 
 Than warmth and light asleep; 
 
 And correspondent breathing seems to keep 
 
 With the infant harvest, breathing soft below 
 
 Its eider coverlet of snow. 
 
 Nor is in field or garden anything 
 
 But, duly looked into, contains serene 
 
 The substance of things hoped for, in the Spring, 
 
 And evidence of Summer not yet seen. 1 
 
 ii. Hope Abides. 
 
 1. Hope shares the prerogative and dignity of love, to stand 
 on the wreck of worlds and gaze on the eternal Face which 
 sinners may not see and live. The works of God shall pass away. 
 The law of decay is not more plainly written on our mortal 
 bodies than on the mightiest star that walks the frozen verge of 
 heaven. Even spiritual gifts shall perish, unless faith and hope 
 and love throw over them the asbestos robe of immortality. If 
 prophecies there be, they shall be needed no more; if tongues 
 there be, they shall cease; if knowledge there be, it shall be 
 needed no more: but hope along with faith and love abideth 
 evermore. There is room and work for hope even in the world 
 where we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. If 
 heaven is not poorer than earth, there must be unmeasured room 
 for hope in revelations far beyond all that sinners can ask or 
 think revelations rising through the years of eternity, but 
 always revelations of our Heavenly Father's love in Christ. 
 
 2. It is no more a Scriptural idea that hope is " lost in 
 fruition " than it is that faith is lost in sight. Eather that future 
 presents itself to us as the continual communication of an in- 
 exhaustible God to our progressively capacious and capable 
 spirits. In that continual communication there is continual 
 progress. Wherever there is progress there must be hope. And 
 thus the fair form which has so often danced before us elusive, 
 and has led us into bogs and miry places and then faded away, 
 
 1 Coventry Patmore. 
 
440 THESE THREE 
 
 will move before us through all the long avenues of an endless 
 progress, and will ever and anon come back to tell us of the 
 unseen glories that lie beyond the next turn, and to woo us 
 farther into the depths of heaven and the fulness of God. Hope 
 "abides." 
 
 3. What is hope ? The expectation of things to come good 
 things ; brighter, better, fuller life. And the surer the expecta- 
 tion, the truer the hope. In the first dawn of the world's history, 
 was not this hope an inspiration ? Indeed it is the very per- 
 version of hope that we see exemplified so strikingly in the desire 
 to be wise, to be as gods (Gen. iii. 5, 6). And in our world 
 to-day, is it not the glorious heritage of the sons of God, antici- 
 pated by hope, that makes the present not only bearable but 
 instinct with strength, and fraught with victory ? And can 
 we conceive of any other world, or of any other state of life, 
 where hope is not ? where the goal is already reached, and only 
 the dull monotony of existence is left ? Nay, hope shines on the 
 forehead of every happy world, as of our poor, sinful, struggling 
 world. And in the immortal future shall hope cease ? Nay, for 
 that would be our doom. But rather, " for ever and ever " or 
 " unto the ages of the ages," as implying the opening up of an 
 ever-growing history there shall be the joyous expectation of 
 fuller, richer, and more glorious life. 
 
 K We can imagine only one condition from which hope is for 
 ever shut out ; but one place over the portal of which is inscribed, 
 " All hope abandon, ye who enter here." But in heaven, where 
 the spirit shall be refined and quickened and exalted to the 
 utmost, shall the keenest of all its pleasures, the life of all its 
 delights, the spur of all its exertions, be absent ? Hope dis- 
 appointed indeed there shall be none, for hope shall be based on 
 certainty ; the eye of the soul shall rest, not on the flitting visions 
 of earthly bliss, but on the calm realities of perfect knowledge. 
 Hope deferred there shall be none ; no more sickness of heart at 
 long waiting ; for the state of trial will be over, the perfect work 
 of patience will be accomplished, and the hand which here is often 
 stretched out till it wearies and stiffens and cannot grasp the 
 object which it has reached, will there have but to open and 
 be filled. But hope in all its blessedness, in all its fulness of joy, 
 shall abide for ever. 1 
 
 1 H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, i. 130. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 441 
 
 Bury Hope out of sight, 
 
 No book for it and no bell; 
 It never could bear the light 
 
 Even while growing and well: 
 Think if now it could bear 
 The light on its face of care 
 And grey scattered hair. 
 
 No grave for Hope in the earth, 
 
 But deep in that silent soul 
 Which rang no bell for its birth 
 
 And rings no funeral toll. 
 Cover its once bright head; 
 Nor odours nor tears be shed: 
 It lived once, it is dead. 
 
 Brief was the day of its power, 
 The day of its grace how brief 
 
 As the fading of a flower, 
 As the falling of a leaf, 
 
 So brief its day and its hour; 
 
 No bud more and no bower 
 
 Or hint of a flower. 
 
 Shall many wail it? not so: 
 Shall one bewail it ? not one : 
 
 Thus it hath been from long ago, 
 Thus it shall be beneath the sun. 
 
 fleet sun, make haste to flee; 
 
 rivers, fill up the sea; 
 
 Death, set the dying free. 
 
 The sun nor loiters nor speeds, 
 
 The rivers run as they ran, 
 Thro' clouds or thro' windy reeds 
 
 All run as when all began. 
 Only Death turns at our cries: 
 Lo the Hope we buried with sighs 
 Alive in Death's eyes ! ! 
 
 Hi. Love Abides. 
 
 1. Love is the eternal form of the human relation to God. 
 It, too, like- the mercy which it clasps, " endureth for ever." It 
 is greater than its linked sisters, because, whilst faith and hope 
 
 1 Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 137. 
 
442 THESE THREE 
 
 belong only to a creature, and are dependent and expectant of 
 some good to come to themselves, and correspond to something 
 which is in God in Christ, the love which springs from faith and 
 hope not only corresponds to, but resembles, that from which it 
 comes and by which it lives. The fire kindled is cognate with 
 the fire that kindles ; and the love that is in man is like the love 
 that is in God. It is the climax of his nature ; it is the fulfilling 
 of all duty ; it is the crown and jewelled clasp of all perfection. 
 And so " abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest 
 of these is love." 
 
 Bound among the quiet graves, 
 
 When the sun was low, 
 Love went grieving, Love who saves; 
 
 Did the sleepers know? 
 
 At his touch the flowers awoke, 
 
 At his tender call 
 Birds into sweet singing broke, 
 
 And it did befall 
 
 From the blooming, bursting sod 
 
 All Love's dead arose, 
 And went flying up to God 
 
 By a way Love knows. 1 
 
 2. The first thing about love is that it is Godlike, the second 
 follows from the first, and that is, it is indestructible 
 
 They sin who tell us love can die. 
 
 With life all other passions fly, 
 
 All others are but vanity. 
 
 In Heaven ambition cannot dwell, 
 
 Nor avarice in the vaults of Hell. 
 
 Of earth, these passions of the earth, 
 
 They perish where they have their birth, 
 
 But love is indestructible: 
 
 Its holy flame for ever burneth. 
 
 From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth, 
 
 Full oft on earth, a troubled guest, 
 
 At times deceived, at times oppressed, 
 
 In Heaven it finds its perfect rest. 
 
 It soweth here in toil and care, 
 
 But the harvest-time of love is there. 
 
 1 Louise Chandler Moulton. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 443 
 
 When the last day is ended, 
 
 And the nights are through 
 When the last sun is buried 
 
 In its grave of blue; 
 
 When the stars are snuffed like candles, 
 
 And the seas no longer fret; 
 When the winds unlearn their cunning, 
 
 And the storms forget; 
 
 When the last lip is palsied 
 
 And the last prayer said 
 Love shall reign immortal 
 
 While the worlds lie dead! 
 
 THE GREATEST OF THESE THREE. 
 
 St. Paul, when he assigns the pre-eminence to love, has no 
 intention of depreciating the value, still less of dispensing with 
 the necessity, of those other graces to which he prefers it. For 
 it is remarkable that he who in this passage extols love in a strain 
 which none of the other writers of the New Testament has ever 
 reached is the same who has also dwelt more largely and more 
 forcibly than all the others on the inestimable preciousness of 
 faith and hope, attaching, indeed, to these two principles, and 
 more particularly to faith, a measure of importance which men 
 have objected to as, in their judgment, altogether inordinate and 
 unwarranted. 
 
 Yet the first thing that strikes us is, that the whole civilized 
 world has come round at any rate, in theory to the teaching of 
 St. Paul. To an educated Eoman of the time of St. Paul it would 
 have seemed the most ridiculous assertion possible that the 
 greatest of all virtues was love. To die with a smile on his 
 face, to wrap himself up in the toga of his reserve, to be self- 
 contained and absolutely self-controlled, that was his ideal, and a 
 grand one, too, up to a certain point ; but the attitude of Marcus 
 Aurelius, for instance, towards Christianity, shows us that the 
 educated Kojnan of the day would have heard with something like 
 contempt that "the greatest of these is love." And yet to-day 
 take up any magazine the most anti-Church magazine that you 
 
444 THESE THREE 
 
 can find and look to see what is its teaching about social matters. 
 What is it that the popular magazine puts before us as the 
 greatest thing of all ? Away with creeds ! Away with dogmas ! 
 But what is important ? The service of man ; doing good to one's 
 fellows ! The verdict of the popular magazine of to-day is, that 
 cleverness may be a great thing, and learning a great thing, but 
 a greater than these is love. Or pick up a philosophical treatise 
 on ethics, and, in a more cumbrous style, you will find the same 
 thing said. What comes out as the ultimate basis of conduct in 
 such books ? Is it not Altruism ? But Altruism after all is 
 but a cumbrous name for love, and was taught to the world by 
 Jesus Christ ; and therefore the verdict of the ethical treatise is 
 the verdict of St. Paul, that " the greatest of these is love." Or, 
 again, take practical life. Who is the villain that is hissed off the 
 stage not only of the theatre but of real life ? Is it the dishonest 
 man ? Is it the drunkard ? No ! It is the hard-hearted man ; 
 it is the man with no sympathy ; it is the man with no kindness. 
 Let a man be kind-hearted and generous, and there is nothing 
 that he is not forgiven to-day. You will find his victims waiting 
 round the corner to give him another chance. He may break 
 every statute in the Statute Book, but if he is kind and affectionate 
 everything is forgiven him. The popular verdict of the day is 
 that sobriety is a great thing and honesty is a great thing, but 
 a greater than these is love. 
 
 TJ There are people who believe they could have improved this 
 thirteenth verse of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. 
 I have found one man who, if he had been acting as amanuensis, 
 and St. Paul had said, " And now abideth faith, hope, love, these 
 three, and the greatest of these is love " he would have held up 
 his hands and said, " No, Paul, that is a mistake ; put compact 
 organization of the visible church for the word love, and you will 
 have it right." There are multitudes of people in the churches 
 who believe that the outer form of the organization of the church 
 has more to do with religion conquering the world than love. I 
 have known a man who, if he had been there, would have insisted 
 that the word beauty should be substituted for the word love. 
 There are other men who would have substituted the word music, 
 so that it would read: "And now abideth faith, hope, music, 
 these three ; but the greatest of these is music." There is another 
 class of men who would have said, " Paul, you should substitute 
 conscience for the word charity, so that it shall read : And now 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 445 
 
 abideth faith, hope, conscience, these three; and the greatest of 
 these is conscience." I suppose there are not fewer than twenty- 
 five people here this morning who would have seconded the 
 suggestion. There are others who would have substituted for 
 this word love the word zeal : " And now abideth faith, hope, zeal, 
 these three ; but the greatest of these is zeal." There are many 
 who, if they had been there, would have substituted for the word 
 love the phrase sound doctrine : " Now abideth faith, hope, sound 
 doctrine, these three; but the greatest of these is sound 
 doctrine." l 
 
 Why is Love the greatest ? There are many reasons. 
 
 1. Love is likest God. Faith and hope, from their nature, are 
 recipients, while it is of the nature of love to be communicative, 
 and thus to be possessed of that higher blessedness which the 
 Lord Jesus ascribes to giving before receiving. Faith and hope, 
 too, are necessarily expressive, in all who exercise them, of 
 imperfection and dependence, and as such can be attributed 
 only to subordinate creatures. We cannot ascribe to God any- 
 thing that resembles them. He who knows all things, and 
 can do all things of Himself, has no room for relying on the 
 testimony or aid of others. And He who is infinitely blessed 
 in the possession of a Divine fulness cannot be said to hope, 
 or to lack anything that could be hoped for. But love, on the 
 contrary, is the attribute of superior natures. It is held by the 
 highest creatures in common with their Creator. It belongs to 
 the character of Him in whom all fulness dwells. Indeed it is 
 His pre-eminent and crowning attribute ; and the more we attain 
 of it, so much the more do we approach Him in His Divine 
 excellence, so much the more are we fitted to share in His 
 unutterable blessedness. "Beloved," saith an Apostle, "let us 
 love one another ; for love is of God ; and every one that loveth 
 is born of God, and knoweth God; God is love; and he that 
 dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." 
 
 Faith and hope belong to finite beings only, while love is not 
 thus limited. It is an attribute of the Divine: nay, it is the 
 very name of God. "God is not faith," says the commentator 
 Bengel in his epigrammatic way, " and God is not hope, but God 
 is love." 
 
 1 J. R. Thompson, Burden Bearing, 152. 
 
446 THESE THREE 
 
 (1) It follows that love interprets God. The quickest, the 
 truest, the fullest interpretation of God comes through love. 
 How do you know a man? Do you know a man when you 
 describe him by saying he is so many feet high, weighs so many 
 pounds, his hair is of such a colour, his eyes are of such a hue, he 
 is engaged in such a business, he lives in such a house ? Is that 
 a description of the man? Is that the way you interpret and 
 analyse a man? We begin to know a man when we find out 
 the master passion of his nature, and we never know anything 
 about him until we understand that. You may know ever so 
 much about a man externally, you may know ever so much about 
 him intellectually, but until you know what quickens it all, and 
 colours it all, and directs it all, until you have followed the subtle 
 windings of his soul, and know in what dispositions and purposes 
 the man has his hidden life, you will never know him. 
 
 (2) And it makes us like God. For to all the extent we 
 possess and cherish it, we are like God, and partakers of a Divine 
 nature. The possessor of it is not merely a passive recipient of 
 good, a shrivelled, sordid abject, turning all his thoughts and 
 desires inward on his own littleness ; he becomes, like his Maker, 
 a pattern, a source of good; a centre of diffusive benevolence; 
 a fountain whose streams irrigate the earth; a sun whose light 
 and heat dissipate the rigours of night and winter, and dispense 
 the blessings of day and summer. 
 
 2. Love is greatest because it is the end of redemption. Love, 
 we are told, is the end of the commandment. It is so, whether 
 by " the commandment " we understand the Law or the Gospel. 
 As for the Moral Law, what is its sum or substance but love to 
 God and love to man ? And as for the Gospel, what is its grand 
 design but to rescue men from a state of enmity against God 
 and against one another, to restore them, not only to the Divine 
 favour, but to the Divine image, of which Love is certainly the 
 characteristic and prevailing feature ; and by writing upon their 
 hearts that great law of Love, in which all the Divine statutes 
 are summarily comprehended, to bring them into cordial sub- 
 mission to the will of God, and to win from them a cheerful and 
 thorough obedience to His commandments ? This is unquestion- 
 ably the ultimate design of the Gospel. Finding men "without 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 447 
 
 hope " and " without God in the world," living in enmity, distrac- 
 tion, and alienation, it aims at raising them from their sin and 
 selfishness to the love of God and of the brethren. As necessary 
 means for the accomplishment of this purpose, faith and hope 
 are of inestimable importance, bringing as they do the Gospel 
 to bear upon us, with all its sanctifying and love-inspiring 
 influences. But still, as being mainly means, they are sub- 
 ordinate to the end or final result to which they are conducive ; 
 just as the scaffolding, though necessary, is less valuable than 
 the finished building that is erected by the use of it, or as the 
 sowing of the seed, however indispensable, is of less consideration 
 in itself than the reaping of the precious and abundant grain. 
 Faith is the leaf, hope is the blossom, but love is the fruit of 
 the tree of righteousness ; and here, too, the leaf and the blossom 
 are for the sake of the fruit. Only we must think of these, not 
 as giving place to each other in time, but as flourishing together 
 on the same eternal stem. Faith may rely on the mercies and 
 promises of God, and hope may anticipate their full and final 
 enjoyment ; but love is that actual consummation of blessedness, 
 begun on earth and to be perfected in heaven, to which these 
 other excellent graces are subsidiary, and from their subservience 
 to which they derive their chief importance. 
 
 U True religion is a radical thing, that is, it goes to the root 
 of matters. Paul tells us that great and needful for a complete 
 life as faith and hope may be, it is Love supreme, absolute Love, 
 which is the one essential. Love is the only religion ; there is no 
 true religion which is loveless. You may have everything else 
 orthodoxy, intelligence, faith, whatever you like, but if you have 
 not got love you are as a lantern without light, and as a man 
 without a soul. 1 
 
 (1) It is therefore most beautiful. God has revealed His 
 benevolence in the beautiful, and the beautiful is the image of 
 His benevolence. Keal affection always tries to express itself 
 similarly. In Divine Worship we bring the tribute of our music, 
 or our flowers, even one poor flower may mean much and 
 seek to make everything attractive in the sanctuary. So in our 
 human relations, love tries to make everything beautiful. It 
 adorns the home, adds a touch of colour here and there, the 
 
 1 Quintin Hogg, 302. 
 
448 THESE THREE 
 
 presence of some garden trophies. When a wife professes it for 
 a husband, or a mother for her child, and is willing to leave every- 
 thing untidy, gloomy, neglected, or when a father is harsh and 
 glum and never thinks of helping, something is radically wrong. 
 In impoverished homes we see the difference in one the 
 pathetic endeavour to make all charming, in the other, the 
 disposition to leave everything unclean and hideous. 
 
 H I once read of a school where there was a very plain girl. 
 Somewhat cruelly her companions would remind her of her lack 
 of attractions. The school-teacher saw the depressing effect on 
 her of this treatment. One day she handed her a coarse lump 
 covered with black earth, and said : " This is like yourself ; only 
 plant it." The schoolgirl took it home and obeyed, not under- 
 standing. Out of it grew a Japanese lily. Then she perceived. 
 And in the progress of time love in her soul imparted a heavenly 
 charm to her character and to her face as well. 1 
 
 T| "As to other points," said John Milton, "what God may 
 have determined for me I know not, but this I know that if He 
 ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of 
 any man, He has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, 
 pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than 
 I, day and night, the idea of perfection. 2 
 
 (2) It is most peaceful. There is a majesty of Divine serenity 
 in love. We always associate a holy calm with God. When it 
 is said that a thousand years with Him are as one day, we 
 immediately think of Him as moving reposefully. Our Saviour 
 in all the strain of His tempted and tempestuous life invited 
 the world to come to Him for rest. Wherever there is hate 
 there must be agitation, uncertainty, and possible anarchy. Peace 
 comes when we are at peace with the God of peace, and with our 
 fellow-beings. 
 
 U Columba renounced the warlike frenzy of his youth and 
 became a leader in the creative arts of peace and the preacher 
 of supernatural hopes. He made lona a centre of light and 
 loveliness. And when he came to die his end was full of holy 
 quietness. He sent this message to his spiritual children : " Let 
 peace and charity, a charity mutual and sincere, reign always 
 among you." St. Cuthbert also was gentle and composed. 
 During his wanderings when his followers were sad, he would 
 
 1 G. C. Lorimer, The Modern Crisis in Religion, 249. 
 
 2 N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Influence, 261. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 449 
 
 say : " Never did man hunger who served God faithfully ; " and 
 beholding the eagle above, he would add : " by it even food can 
 come." When a snow-storm in Fife hedged him in, one said to 
 him : " The snow closes the road along the shore to us ; " another 
 added: "The storm bars our way over the sea." St. Cuthbert 
 answered : " There is still the way of heaven that lies open." 1 
 
 3. Love is greatest in influence. Love is described in the 
 context as " seeking not her own." Equally boundless with 
 the others in its views, it looks constantly abroad, without any 
 regard to self, opens the heart and hand to all whom it can 
 benefit, and makes it its sole aim and never-ceasing vocation to 
 promote the glory of God and the welfare of all mankind. Unlike 
 the two kindred graces here compared with it, it leads the 
 Christian to regard himself not as an isolated being, whose chief 
 concern is to secure his own spiritual interests, but as a member 
 of that great family of which God is the Father and all men 
 are brethren, and in which the members ought ever to be linked 
 together by the sacred bonds of amity and peace. 
 
 Love is more than pity. Pity stands in the porch, its eyes 
 watching the poor wayfarer who comes wearied and footsore, 
 ragged and perishing. And pity bids the servant search if there 
 is any scrap of meat and any cast-off clothing that can be spared. 
 But look again, pity stands and watches more intently ; the face 
 is changed; the tears gather; the man is stirred; he runs. In 
 spite of rags and wretchedness, he falls upon the wanderer's neck. 
 He kisses him and presses him to his heart. The wondering 
 servant comes forth with a crust or two of bread, and an old 
 coat. No indeed, that might do for pity, but this is love. " Bring 
 forth the best robe and put it on him ; and put a ring on his 
 hand, and shoes on his feet ; and bring hither the fatted calf and 
 kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry : for this my son was dead, 
 and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." That is love. 
 Pity saw the wants, and would give what it could spare ; but love 
 saw the son, and could not give enough. 
 
 Love found upon the battle's edge 
 
 A coward fleeing from the strife; 
 And sent him forth his heart in pledge, 
 Valiant thro' life. 
 
 1 G. C. Loriiner. 
 I COR. 29 
 
450 THESE THREE 
 
 Love touched dumb lips that could not pray, 
 
 And lo, they uttered prayer and song; 
 Love hath so subtle sweet a way, 
 Love is so strong. 
 
 It is because love is the first fact of all facts in the Gospel 
 of Christ that the Gospel is fitted to be a universal Gospel. All 
 men have hearts, and love is the same thing to every heart. An 
 idea is not the same thing to every mind, but love is the same 
 thing to every heart. A loving smile on the face of a Christian 
 woman in China does not require to be translated into Chinese 
 in order to be understood by a Chinaman. A child can perfectly 
 interpret the sweetness in its mother's face long before it can 
 translate into thoughts of its own the words she utters. If 
 thought is the soul's prose, love is its music, and we know that 
 music will steal easily into many a spot to which words stiffly 
 articulated would be coldly refused admittance. 
 
 (1) It secures obedience. " If ye love me, keep my command- 
 ments." In this exhortation, love to Christ is the mighty energy 
 that produces holy obedience. The loving eye is quick to discern 
 the will, the wish of the beloved. The heart which truly loves 
 cannot break one of the least of these commandments. Even if 
 the commandment seem arbitrary, it is enough that He who is 
 supremely loved has said, " This do in remembrance of me." 
 That is enough. Such motive is sufficient. It is simple, clear, 
 and explicit. The obedience which is the witness, the pledge, the 
 consequence of love, and is neither formal nor perfunctory, but 
 the outcome of a self-sacrificing affection, is alone well-pleasing. 
 
 (2) It is the source of knowledge. "He that loveth not, 
 knoweth not God." This is true of other objects of both love and 
 knowledge, as certainly as it is true of the love and knowledge 
 of the Lord God. We do not know any thing, any person, any 
 science, until we love it. The " dry light " needed for scientific 
 pursuit is the eye unbleared by prejudice, unfilled with tears 
 of foolish and inappropriate emotion, not an eye which does not 
 flash with love. It is sometimes said that " love is blind." Cupid 
 has been imaged with shaded eyes. No greater mistake can be 
 made. Love has microscopic eyes to see both the faults and 
 excellences of the beloved objects. What a world this would be 
 if mothers could see in all children the Divine attractions and 
 
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 451 
 
 worth which they do see in their first-born ; and if lovers could see 
 in all persons the wonderful lovableness they easily discern in one 
 another ! It is only the lover of truths, of persons, of countries, 
 of great causes and principles, who really and veritably knows 
 them. 
 
 H " Love seeks not to limit its devotion but to find opportunities 
 of expressing it. Would you know God ? I say to you, discover 
 what true love means. Get your heart so full of it that it will 
 send you forth in God's Spirit seeking to save the lost, yearning 
 to redeem the erring and sinful, binding up the broken-hearted, 
 drying streaming eyes, and comforting them that mourn; get 
 such a love as that into your soul, and you need look no further 
 for an image of God. Moreover, not only is it true that every 
 one that loveth knoweth God, but it is equally true that you will 
 know God just to the extent that you really love and no more." l 
 
 4. Love is the greatest because it embraces and harmonizes the 
 res t % it is love that gives faith and hope their very life. How 
 can we truly trust where we love not ? In that case faith is but 
 a selfish grasping after one's own good. But, inspired by love, 
 it is the grateful acceptance of the love of God, as in itself the 
 best gift, and the pledge of all good gifts besides. Hope likewise, 
 without love, is but the selfish anticipation of one's own joy. 
 But, as inspired by love, it is the glad expectancy that God will 
 work all things according to His good pleasure. 
 
 But Love an everlasting crown receiveth; 
 
 For She is Hope, and Fortitude, and Faith, 
 Who all things hopeth, beareth, and believeth. 2 
 
 1 Quintin Hogg, 304. 8 Buskin. 
 
THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 453 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Aglionby (F. K.), The Better Choice, 157. 
 
 Alford (H.), Sermons on Christian Doctrine, 251. 
 
 Brown (J. B.), The Higher Life, 338. 
 
 Buckland (A. K.), Text-Studies for a Year, 115. 
 
 Butler (W. J.), Sermons for Working Men, 211. 
 
 Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 57. 
 
 Horder (W. G.), The Other-World, 123. 
 
 Howatt (J. K.), The Children's Pew, 71. 
 
 Jerdan (C.), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 272. 
 
 Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year; Easter to Ascension, 147. 
 
 Newbolt (W. C. E.), Words of Exhortation, 147. 
 
 Pentecost (G. F.), Bible Studies : Mark and Jewish History, 193. 
 
 Pierson (A. T.), The Making of a Sermon, 96. 
 
 Russell (A.), The Light that Lighteth Every Man, 107. 
 
 Shore (T. T.), Saint George for England, 104. 
 
 Simpson (W.), in The World's Great Sermons, v. 121. 
 
 Smyth (N.), The Reality of Faith, 244. 
 
 Steel (T. H.), Sermons in Harrow Chapel, 171. 
 
 Thorne (II.), Foreshadowings of the Gospel, 205. 
 
 Varley (H.), Some Main Questions of the Christian Faith, 78. 
 
 Wheeler (W. C.), Sermons and Addresses, 162. 
 
 Whiton (J. M.), Beyond the Shadow, 68, 224. 
 
 Wilson (S.), Lenten Shadows and Easter Lights, 125. 
 
 Christian World Pulpit, v. 369 (Kennedy) ; viii. 347 (Brown) ; xvi. 197 
 
 (Craig) ; xxiii. 276 (Alexander) ; xli. 355 (Yarley) ; xlvii. 257 
 
 (Newbolt). 
 Churchman's Pulpit : Easter Day and Season : vii. 200 (Keble), 203 
 
 (Vaughan). 
 
 First Sunday after Easter ; vii. 463 (Cobb). 
 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., i. 245 (Alexander) ; v. 235 (Brown). 
 Treasury (New York), xix. 848 (Broadbent). 
 Twentieth Century Pastor, xxii. 241. 
 
 454 
 
THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them 
 that are asleep. I Cor. xv. 20. 
 
 1. Do we recognize the immense debt which we owe to the great 
 Apostle of the Gentiles ? We base our hopes for time and 
 eternity on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well, 
 it was St. Paul who was the first to pierce beneath their surface 
 and seize their hidden meaning and power. The Twelve, in their 
 early preaching days, were staggered by the death, and only half 
 understood the resurrection. They had to sit at St. Paul's feet 
 before their Messianic hopes broadened out into the eternal 
 Gospel. 
 
 2. The Apostle has been contemplating the long train of 
 dismal consequences which he sees would arise if we had only 
 a dead Christ. He thinks that he, the Apostle, would have 
 nothing to preach, and we nothing to believe. He thinks that 
 all hope of deliverance from sin would fade away. He thinks 
 that, the one fact which gives assurance of immortality having 
 vanished, the dead who had nurtured the assurance have perished. 
 And he thinks that if things were so, then Christian men, who 
 had believed a false gospel, and nourished an empty faith, and 
 died clinging to a baseless hope, were far more to be pitied than 
 men who had had less splendid dreams and less utter illusions. 
 
 Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he turns away from 
 that dreary picture, and with a change of key, which the dullest 
 ear can appreciate, from the wailing minors of the preceding 
 verses, he breaks into this burst of triumph. "Now" things 
 being as they are, for it is the logical " now," and not the temporal 
 one Christ is risen from the dead, and that as the first-fruits 
 of them that slept. 
 
 455 
 
456 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 3. What a shout of joy there is in that word " now " with which 
 the Apostle opens out into his glorious theme of the Kesurrection. 
 It has been struggling to get out, through discords and obscuring 
 passages of controversial doubt. This great theme of the 
 Apostolic Gospel had been dragged down by the cries of those 
 who say there is no resurrection of the dead ; down deeper into 
 the sombre depths of a false witness to God, of a tragic mistake 
 in estimating evidence ; down into a gloom, where the holy dead 
 lie only as so many perished lives, crushed by sin, and a challenge 
 to despair. We hardly trace a note of the first inspiration in the 
 dismal discord of broken hopes and fooled expectations: "If in 
 this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most 
 miserable." But it is at this point that the resurrection theme 
 bursts out, rising above and upon the shifting discords, and 
 opening up out of the passages which ended only in woe. " Now 
 hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them 
 that are asleep." Christian preaching was not a proclamation of 
 meaningless and empty platitudes, not a principle incapable of 
 producing any good results ; God's messengers were not false 
 witnesses ; the Christian dead were not perished ; Christian life 
 was not a hollow sham, a cunningly devised fable. All was safe 
 all was bright ; the brighter because the very discordance of the 
 doubt could only open out into this : Christ was risen, His people 
 should also rise. 
 
 The subject is the Eesurrection of Christ as the pledge of our 
 Kesurrection. Take it in three parts 
 
 I. The Possibility of the Eesurrection. 
 II. The Power of the Eesurrection. 
 III. The Promise of the Eesurrection. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE POSSIBILITY OF THE EESURRECTION. 
 
 1. The Christian doctrine of the Eesurrection is a stumbling- 
 block to faith because we have allowed ourselves to exalt and to 
 exaggerate death to a degree altogether beyond reason and 
 Scripture. We speak, that is to say, and mourn, as though death 
 were the last law of life, as though death were the ultimate fact 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 457 
 
 of our experience, and then we have to smuggle in our hope 
 of the resurrection as a miraculous exception to this universal 
 power of death. Exactly the opposite is true. Life is the law 
 of nature, and death a natural means to more life and better. 
 Death is the lower fact, and life the higher. Or more specifically, 
 the resurrection of Jesus is not the great exception to natural 
 law; it is an exemplification of the higher, universal law of 
 life. 
 
 The earth was dead, so they tell us, ages ago. But now how 
 this earth lives ! There is hardly a cliff too barren for nature not 
 to hang some blooming thing upon it ; and the old earth teems 
 with life. Furthermore, even here, where death reigns, life has 
 been growing higher, more complex, more capable of larger 
 correspondences with things. Between the lowest living thing 
 and the brain of man there is a difference of life wide as the 
 distance between the earth and the heavens. That first infini- 
 tesimal point of life has no world with which to establish 
 relations larger than the microscopic field in which we have 
 looked and discovered it, but we have already established 
 relations of thought and knowledge with the farthest stars. 
 Plainly then, without any doubt, life is something stronger thus 
 far upon this earth than death. Notwithstanding death, life 
 grows to be more and richer. 
 
 What is death, so far as we can see what it is ? Here is a 
 minute living thing in a glass of water. You turn the water out. 
 That living particle is now mere dust upon the glass. Dead, 
 that is, it is no longer moving in an element corresponding to its 
 capacity of vital movements. What is death then? A living 
 thing is no longer in harmony with its surroundings. It is 
 thrown out of its own proper correspondence with things ; it is 
 dead. So death is a relative thing. It is simply some wrong 
 or imperfect adjustment of life to external conditions. But death 
 may be partial, then, not entire. A part of the body may be dead. 
 A man may be dead in some relations, and still live in others. 
 There is a sense in which we die daily. Parts of us are thrown 
 out of vital relations. The body may begin to die long before it 
 is dead. Death is but a relative, negative thing. Life is the 
 principle, the force, the law ; death the limitation, the accident, 
 the partial negation of God's great affirmation of life in things. 
 
458 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 If The weakest point in the historical acceptation of the Fall 
 certainly is its theory of death ; for if death in the case of man be 
 a penal punishment for breaking the Divine law, how happens it 
 that this penalty should lay low not only the guilty party, which 
 is the proper nature of all penalties, but should travel with an 
 indiscriminate sweep over the whole length and breadth of the 
 creation ? Death is not a horror but a universal phenomenon ; all 
 things die just as certainly as they are born. Flowers die; 
 quadrupeds die; birds die; fishes die fishes! there they lie 
 enswathed by millions in some mud-beds of the primeval slime, 
 thousands of thousands of years possibly before the appearance of 
 the unfeathered biped on this terrestrial stage, scarcely with any 
 presentiment of Adam's first sin. The ecclesiastical theory of 
 death, therefore, plainly breaks down, by the logical defect of 
 explaining only a small number of the facts. Had it been 
 otherwise, had man been the only creature that knew death, 
 the theory might have some plausible ground on which to stand. 
 But a more fundamental objection remains. Death is an evil, 
 but to whom ? to the creature who dies, and to all who have 
 special cause to lament its loss ; but is it an evil to the universe ? 
 to this earth ? manifestly not ; for if all the people that have 
 been born on the earth from Adam until now had lived and not 
 known death, where would the room have been for them ? Ee- 
 juvenescence is one of the grandest and most sublime facts in the 
 divine constitution of things: so that young persons may con- 
 stantly appear on what to them is a new and therefore a 
 stimulating scene, old persons must depart and make room. 1 
 
 If As to death, any one who understands Nature at all thinks 
 nothing of it. Her whole concern is perpetually to produce 
 nourishment for all her offspring. We go that others may come 
 and better, if we rear them in the right way. In talking of 
 these deep things, men too often make the error of imagining that 
 the world was made for themselves. 2 
 
 2. Physical death is not made the important thing in our Bibles. 
 Physical death does not hold the first place in the economy of 
 redemption. The Bible assigns a subordinate place to our King 
 of Terrors. The Book of Genesis, it is true, invests natural death 
 with certain punitive fears ; but it does not elevate death to the 
 rank of the supreme and final transaction between man and his 
 Maker. Adam was not commanded by the Lord to live every 
 day as though it were his last, himself a slave bound under the 
 
 1 Jolm Stuart Blackie, Notes of a Life, 270. - George Meredith. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 459 
 
 fear of death ; he was commanded to go and work in the sweat 
 of his brow, but with a promise of God in his heart. Man is to 
 work out his time here, and to pass through death, as a being 
 born under the higher law of the spirit, and with the possibility 
 of eternal life always before him. 
 
 And in the New Testament the chief use made of the fact of 
 death is as a metaphor. Jesus makes a metaphor of what we call 
 death. To Him sin is death ; the maid whom the people thought 
 dead, He said, was asleep. The crisis of a soul's history is not, 
 in the Bible, the death of the body. The fact of physical death 
 and resurrection is used as the symbol of the greater change of a 
 soul from sin to life. 
 
 If It is comparatively easy to set our teeth and face the 
 inevitable with " a grin " ; but the " highest bravery " is to hide 
 our anguish with a smile. I do think I make a decently good 
 Stoic, but confess that in times like this Christians have the pull. 
 Nevertheless, I have often thought of the words, " I am not in 
 the least afraid to die," and wondered if, when my time should 
 come, I would be able to say them. But now I know that I can, 
 and this even in the bitterness of feeling that one's work is 
 prematurely cut short. 1 
 
 If If we Christians believe the smallest fraction of what we 
 pretend to believe, there is but little to mourn over in death. I 
 know not when or how that veiled messenger may come to me, 
 but this I do know, that it can come only at the bidding of my 
 Father. I know its mission can be nothing more than the un- 
 clothing of this poor weak body of my humiliation to clothe me 
 with the body of His glory. . . . Death is not only an exodus, it 
 is also an entrance ; while we stand by the bedside and say, " He is 
 gone," they on the other side are welcoming him with unspeakable 
 
 joy. 2 
 
 3. The only thing to be feared is spiritual death. That is 
 non-adjustment of our hearts to God. The soul out of harmony 
 with love and truth may become as dead as the animalcule left 
 dry upon the edge of the empty glass. To attempt to live as an 
 immortal soul without love, and not as in God's presence, is to 
 dream of living in a vacuum. The true life is to know God. 
 Even now they are most alive who have in pure and loving 
 thoughts the largest relationship to all good. The wages of sin 
 
 1 George John Romanes, Life, and Letters, 317. a Quintin Hogg, 308. 
 
460 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 is death death creeping into the heart ; death clouding the eye 
 of the intellect ; death, as Jesus said, destroying the soul in 
 Gehenna. 
 
 If Dante saw some souls in hell whose bodies were still alive 
 on earth, their friends in Florence and Lucca had not the 
 faintest idea that these men, seemingly a part of everyday life, 
 were, all the time, " dead souls." There is hardly a more terrible 
 idea in all that terrible book, and yet it is a possibility in our own 
 daily life this atrophy of the spiritual nature, corresponding to 
 the atrophy of the poetical nature which Darwin noted in himself 
 as due to his own neglect. Clifford, in A Likely Story, forcibly 
 depicts a soul awaking in the next world to find that through 
 this unconscious starvation, there was no longer anything in him 
 to correspond with God. 1 
 
 They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, 
 Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro, 
 Hugging their bodies round them like thin shrouds 
 Wherein their souls were buried long ago : 
 They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love, 
 They cast their hope of human-kind away. 
 With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove, 
 And conquered, and their spirits turned to clay: 
 Lo ! how they wander round the world, their grave, 
 Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, 
 Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, 
 "We, only, truly live, but ye are dead." 
 Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace 
 A dead soul's epitaph in every face! 2 
 
 4. The resurrection of Jesus was in accordance with the 
 higher, universal law of life. Death is for life, not life for death, 
 in the ultimate constitution of this universe. The resurrection 
 of Jesus is an instance of the general law that life is lord of death, 
 His resurrection, as our text puts it, is the first-fruits of them that 
 sleep. In the opinion of the Apostle the resurrection of Jesus 
 was no more out of the Divine order of things, no more contrary 
 to the ultimate law of nature, than the first-fruits of the summer 
 are exceptions to the general law of life which in the autumn 
 shall show its universal power in every harvest field. 
 
 5. This was Jesus' teaching concerning the resurrection. He 
 
 1 L. H. M. Soulsby, Stray Thoughts for Girls, 160. 2 Lowell, " The Street." 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 461 
 
 answered the Sadducees of His generation not merely by asserting 
 His knowledge that the dead shall be raised ; He placed the 
 fact of the resurrection upon the fundamental principle that life, 
 not death, is God's first law. " But that the dead are raised, even 
 Moses shewed, in the place concerning the Bush, when he calleth 
 the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God 
 of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living : 
 for all live unto him." 
 
 6. This, then, is clearly and unmistakably the Biblical teaching 
 of the resurrection. It is in accordance with law. It is in the 
 Divine order of the creation. Why should it seem otherwise to 
 us? Why should we regard it as a thing incredible that God 
 should raise the dead ? Partly because in our pagan philosophies 
 we have exaggerated the place and importance of death in the 
 world ; partly, also, because we have fallen into gross and carnal 
 imaginations of the resurrection and eternal life, which would be 
 violations of natural law most difficult to conceive. But, planting 
 the standard of our faith firmly upon this high Biblical doctrine 
 of the resurrection as the final fulfilment of the law of life, let us 
 survey the field of nature and see whether we have learned 
 anything to make it a thing incredible that God should raise 
 the dead. 
 
 7. Our Lord's own resurrection is set forth as an event which 
 could not possibly have failed to occur. We say Jesus' resurrection 
 was a miracle, that is, contrary to what might have been expected 
 a great exception to the law of death. But that is not the way 
 the Scriptures put it. They say, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
 approved of God . . . whom God raised up, having loosed the 
 pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be 
 holden of it." "Moreover my flesh also shall dwell in hope: 
 because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou 
 give thy Holy One to see corruption." It would be impossible 
 for death to hold a principle of life like the Spirit of that Man 
 of Nazareth. It would be a violation of all law should the Holy 
 One be given over to corruption. There is something inherently 
 inconceivable and impossible in such a thought. How can Holiness 
 see corruption ? how can life itself be given over to death ? 
 Impossible ! It would have been a miracle, had Jesus not risen 
 
462 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 from the dead. It would have been a violation of the inmost 
 principle of the creation, had the mere dust of this earth held 
 Him as its own for ever. It would have been a miracle without 
 reason, a miracle not against the ordinary course of nature merely, 
 but against God, the living God, had He not risen from the 
 dead, the first-fruits of this power and order of Divine life in 
 the creation. 
 
 T[ Dean Bradley, in his Easter Day sermon at Westminster 
 Abbey, put his finger on the very centre of the contrast between 
 ancient and modern feeling concerning Easter, when he said that 
 while it was the crucifixion of Christ that was to "the Jews 
 a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness" in the great 
 day when Christianity first came into the world, it is no longer 
 the Crucifixion but the Kesurrection which to both Jews and 
 Greeks, though a great marvel, was a marvel which attracted 
 rather than repelled them that seems to modern pride and 
 scepticism a stumbling-block and foolishness. We feel no diffi- 
 culty where the early believers felt most difficulty, in accepting 
 the tremendous humiliation and sorrow and shame of the cross. 
 On the contrary, as Dean Bradley told his hearers, the story of 
 the Man of Sorrows is wholly credited by the sceptical world of 
 to-day, and is accepted even with eager reverence and gratitude. 
 It is the suffering, the forgiveness, the resignation, the peace, the 
 calm, the fortitude, the sympathy, the " Daughters of Jerusalem, 
 weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children," 
 the " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do," the 
 " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you ; not as the 
 world giveth, give I unto you let not your heart be troubled, 
 neither let it be afraid," in which we all believe even sceptics 
 and those who are more than sceptics, who assert positively that 
 "miracles do not happen." The shame does not humiliate us; 
 we can see through it to the infinitely greater glory behind; 
 whereas the Jews found it a sore stumbling-block to their pride 
 of race, and the Greeks looked down upon it as radically incon- 
 sistent with that intellectual caste to which they ascribed the 
 sole possession of " the good and beautiful " in all its perfection. 
 To them the asserted resurrection seemed that which alone gave 
 a glimmer of probability to the bold assertion that God had 
 manifested Himself in human nature only to die upon the cross, 
 and submit to the jeers and scoffs of Jewish and Eoman ridicule. 
 To us there seems something intrinsically convincing in the 
 assertion that this great death was died, that that majestic calm 
 and that magnanimous sympathy prevailed even over the torture 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 463 
 
 of the cross ; we come to our difficulties only when we come to 
 the assertion that He who died that supernatural death really 
 lived again to be recognized by those who saw Him die and heard 
 Him foretell their own discomfiture and dispersion. The early 
 disciples found it all but impossible to believe that a Divine 
 nature could go through physical and moral humiliation. Our 
 difficulty is not in the least in believing in that which is Divine 
 enough to overcome any combination, however overwhelming, of 
 physical and moral humiliation. What we find difficulty in 
 believing is, that that which is morally and spiritually super- 
 natural involves even any power at all of controlling or over- 
 ruling what we suppose to be the fixed necessities of physical 
 law. Our minds are jaded and hag-ridden, as it were, by the 
 physical fatalities of modern science; and yet modern science 
 itself might, if we only used our eyes, warn us of the extra- 
 ordinary blunder we are making in thus depreciating the true 
 power of mind over matter. 1 
 
 Tf For the Apostles, the resurrection of Jesus meant that He 
 who had claimed to be the destined Son of Man had been ap- 
 proved, justified, and glorified by the Father, according to the 
 rule by which resurrection is the established and almost natural 
 consequence and proof of justice. What they had doubted was 
 His claim to be the Christ ; not the possibility of His resurrection. 
 When He rose, their trust in Him, in their own redemption with 
 and through Him, in His whole Gospel of the coming Kingdom 
 and His own place in it, was confirmed and verified, not by an 
 exceptional but by a regular occurrence. Kesurrection is the 
 fruit of righteousness, and a tree is known by its fruit. 2 
 
 8. What was miraculous about Jesus' resurrection was not 
 that God raised Him from the dead, but that He was raised 
 before the last great day, and that He should be seen by men, 
 and recognized in His transitional or intermediate state between 
 earth and heaven. The visibility on earth of the risen Lord, 
 before He ascended to His Father and ours, was exceptional, out 
 of the common course, or miraculous. 
 
 T| If you should see a tree break into blossom in the month 
 of June, and the next morning find the fruit already ripe upon 
 the bough, you would say, That is extraordinary ! It is not 
 indeed contrary to the nature of the tree that fruit should ripen 
 on the bough, yet contrary to all our experience of growth that 
 
 1 R. H. Hutton, Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, 159. 
 
 2 G. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-Roads, 140. 
 
464 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 the fruit should ripen in a summer's day. That fruit would be 
 a miracle upon that tree ; yet not in itself contrary to the nature 
 of the tree, but only to its ordinary conditions of fructification. 
 The fruit itself would be perfectly natural, only the method of 
 its growth would be extraordinary. And it would not be 
 impossible to conceive an enhancement, or quickening, of nature's 
 forces which might cause a plant to break into fruitfulness 
 contrary to our experience of its usual times and seasons. Some- 
 what so, in the view we are now trying to win, is Jesus' resurrection 
 a first-fruit of the tree of life ; not in itself contrary to the law of 
 life, but in its manner and time out of the common order. In 
 the miracle of His resurrection we have only to think of God's 
 quickening, or anticipating, by His power the course of nature, 
 not as violating any real principle of it. 1 
 
 The yearly miracle of spring, 
 
 Of budding tree and blooming flower, 
 
 Which Nature's feathered laureates sing 
 In my cold ear from hour to hour, 
 
 Spreads all its wonders round my feet; 
 
 And every wakeful sense is fed 
 On thoughts that o'er and o'er repeat, 
 
 " The Resurrection of the Dead ! " 
 
 If these half vital things have force 
 
 To break the spell which winter weaves, 
 
 To wake, and clothe the wrinkled corse 
 In the full life of shining leaves; 
 
 Shall I sit down in vague despair, 
 
 And marvel if the nobler soul 
 We laid in earth shall ever dare 
 
 To wake to life, and backward roll 
 
 The sealing stone, and striding out, 
 
 Claim its eternity, and head 
 Creation once again, and shout, 
 
 "The Resurrection of the Dead'"!* 
 
 II. 
 
 THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 1. Have we yet entered into the grandeur and depth of St. 
 Paul's teaching about the Resurrection ? What is his teaching ? 
 1 Newman Smyth. 8 George Henry Boker. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 465 
 
 (1) St. Paul insists that Jesus Christ did actually rise from 
 the dead and appeared to him, to Cephas, to the Twelve, to five 
 hundred brethren, to all the Apostles, to James ; and he infers that 
 the appearance was of one and the same character throughout. It 
 was no vision in the popular sense of that word still less an 
 hallucination that they experienced, but a direct impression 
 made by a living and active Person. 
 
 (2) He asserts consistently that no substantial difference 
 exists between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that of His 
 followers. His was the pattern of theirs, and they can but look 
 for a risen life such as His was. He was the first-fruits, the 
 first-born among many brethren. Where He is, there shall also 
 His servant be. 
 
 (3) Hence St. Paul had but a single answer to the double 
 question: "With what body did Christ rise? "and "With what 
 body do Christians come from death ? " He tells a parable, the 
 meaning of which cannot be evaded. We sow seed in the ground. 
 It contains in itself the principle of life ; it casts off its first body 
 and takes another. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The 
 earthly body is laid in the grave of life. It, too, contains an 
 unseen principle of life. That life, too, casts off the old and 
 natural body, and takes another, a glorified and spiritual body. 
 The body which is spiritual is that which is suited to the spirit 
 world, as the natural body was fitted for a material world. The 
 spiritual is not the natural sublimated, however, but a new creation. 
 Flesh and blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The 
 natural body, with all the atoms composing it, belongs to the 
 present natural order. A spiritual environment demands a 
 spiritual body. And spirit is not atomic or at any rate, St. 
 Paul assumes that it is not. 
 
 (4) The power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead was 
 the Holy Spirit of God. One writer declares that it was through 
 the Eternal Spirit that Jesus offered His life while on earth 
 without spot to God, and, in saying this, he only follows St. 
 Paul in his declaration that He was marked out as the Son 
 of God with power by the resurrection according to a Spirit 
 of Holiness. The Holy Spirit given to Jesus Christ without 
 measure was the efficient cause of His resurrection from the 
 dead. Therefore it follows from the close similarity between 
 
 i COR. 30 
 
466 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 the Head and the members that their resurrection is brought 
 about by the same Holy Spirit. "If the spirit of him that 
 raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up 
 Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by 
 his spirit that dwelleth in you." 
 
 (5) The next step in St. Paul's teaching is that in which his 
 religious originality and depth of thought are seen most clearly, 
 and, indeed, stand out before us with startling freshness. That 
 is perhaps the reason why this doctrine of his has fallen into 
 the background and been overlooked. Materially minded people 
 want materialistic images which they can grasp readily, and 
 about which they may give a logical account. But religious 
 truths by their very nature are too august and too evasive for 
 logic. They are of Heaven, and logic is of earth only. Now the 
 doctrine that the resurrection means the resumption of the old 
 body which death had corrupted is a materialistic conception. 
 That is why it is so popular. But it is not the doctrine of St. Paul. 
 He was far more concerned with religion than with metaphysic 
 or theories of being. That is why all he says about the resurrec- 
 tion moves strictly within the atmosphere of religion. 
 
 He says and let this be weighed, marked, and learned that 
 he has little interest in death and resurrection from the mere 
 standpoint of physical existence. It was not the physical death 
 and resurrection of Christ on which he based the Christians' 
 faith and hope, but His spiritual death and resurrection. But 
 then you cannot limit these latter to the tragedy of Mount 
 Calvary and that which immediately followed. Christ's death 
 was a death to sin, and that was in process from the first. 
 Christ's resurrection was a rising superior to sin, and that, too, 
 took place from the first. Christ died unto sin throughout His 
 early life, and He died finally, once and for all, when on the 
 Cross He rose superior to the last and most bitter temptation 
 of all. Every time that temptation came to Him and tempta- 
 tion came to Him continuously He mastered it by the power 
 of the Spirit of God, of that risen life which was hid in God His 
 Father. Calvary and the great forty days were no new elements 
 in His life, but its crown and its reward. 
 
 (G) From this follows the practical bearing for us of Christ's 
 death and resurrection. When we look on Him and are touched 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 467 
 
 by our sinfulness, and come to God, and determine to live the 
 life of faith, we die to sin as Christ died to it ; we rise to newness 
 of life as Christ rose to it ; we are buried with Him, and, like 
 Him, become alive unto God. The sole difference and it is 
 immense is that we have a past to undo, and He had none. 
 
 (7) Now we can see what St. Paul taught about our resurrec- 
 tion body. It is fashioned for us by holy living. It is already 
 in course of formation within. He that is leading the spiritual 
 life is having prepared for him gradually a spiritual body. Then, 
 when the "natural body" is finally cast aside, the glorious 
 "spiritual body" will leap out, as the fitting organ of a soul 
 which has become predominantly spiritual, and death will be 
 swallowed up in life. 
 
 U The unique part of the Christian revelation is the indwelling 
 of the Holy Spirit who forms the Spiritual body, so that when 
 the believer dies, or, more truly, awakes, he awakes after the 
 likeness of the Lord, to co-operate with Him freely in redemptive 
 love. I quite understand the quickening of our mortal bodies (Eom. 
 viii. 2) to refer to this, the getting rid of that death or mortality 
 which limits or imprisons us in this order of existence, by de- 
 veloping and perfecting the power of the incorruptible Seed of 
 Life which brings us into living contact and consciousness with 
 the Life of the Universe. Then the grub body is no longer 
 wanted ; like the husk in the seed, it has done its work in the 
 early stages of growth, and now is put off as the butterfly puts 
 off the chrysalis-shell, and as the materials of that body go to 
 the churchyard to return into that which may through various 
 modifications become part of another human earthly body. 1 
 
 (I Human nature, as its Creator made it, and maintains it 
 wherever His laws are observed, is entirely harmonious. No 
 physical error can be more profound, no moral error more danger- 
 ous, than that involved in the monkish doctrine of the opposition 
 of body to soul. No soul can be perfect in an imperfect body ; 
 no body perfect without perfect soul. Every right action and 
 true thought sets the seal of its beauty on person and face ; every 
 wrong action and foul thought its seal of distortion; and the 
 various aspects of humanity might be read as plainly as a printed 
 history, were it not that the impressions are so complex that it 
 must always in some cases (and, in the present state of our 
 knowledge, in all cases) be impossible to decipher them com- 
 pletely. Nevertheless, the face of a consistently just and of a 
 
 1 R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 183. 
 
468 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 consistently unjust person, may always be rightly distinguished 
 at a glance ; and if the qualities are continued by descent through 
 a generation or two, there arises a complete distinction of race. 
 Both moral and physical qualities are communicated by descent, 
 far more than they can be developed by education (though both 
 may be destroyed by want of education) ; and there is as yet no 
 ascertained limit to the nobleness of person and mind which the 
 human creature may attain, by persevering observance of the 
 laws of God respecting its birth and training. 1 
 
 IF In 1865 Lord Francis Douglas, while climbing Mont Blanc, 
 slipped and fell to his death. His body could not be found, and it 
 was supposed that it had fallen into the bed of the glacier. Accord- 
 ing to computations based on careful estimates from experience, 
 the glacier should have discharged the body at the foot of the 
 mountain in the summer of 1905. All that summer, the aged 
 mother of Lord Francis was there watching and waiting for the 
 body of her boy, but the body, to her bitter disappointment, did 
 not appear. Broken-hearted, she had been waiting for years just 
 to get a glimpse of the scarred face and mangled body she loved, 
 and to lay its dust to rest. She would have been comforted if 
 only that had been allowed her. But there is an infinitely better 
 thing which Christ has prepared ; not the dull dust and broken 
 body released from the icy embrace of the cruel glacier, but the 
 living, glorified personality in the bosom of the Father's love; 
 not for one hurried, agonizing glimpse as the heart sobs over the 
 memory of what it has lost ; out for ever and ever in the fellow- 
 ship of heaven. 2 
 
 2. What are the consequences of Christ's Kesurrection ? 
 
 (1) It gives us a complete Gospel. A dead Christ annihilates 
 the Gospel. "If Christ be not risen," says the Apostle, "our 
 preaching," by which he means not the act but the substance of 
 his preaching, "is vain"; or, as the word might be more ac- 
 curately rendered, " empty." There is nothing in it ; no contents. 
 It is a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind. What was St. 
 Paul's " preaching " ? It all turned upon these points that 
 Jesus Christ was the Son of God ; that He was Incarnate in the 
 flesh of us men ; that He died on the Cross for our offences ; that 
 He was raised again, and had ascended into Heaven, ruling the 
 world and breathing His presence into believing hearts ; and that 
 He would come again to be our Judge. These were the elements 
 
 1 Ruskin, Munera Pulveris ( Works, xvii. 149). 
 
 2 J. I. Vance, Tendency, 245. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 469 
 
 of what St. Paul called " his gospel." He faces the supposition 
 of a dead Christ, and he says, " It is all gone ! It is all vanished 
 into thin air. I have nothing to preach if I have not a Cross to 
 preach which is man's deliverance from sin, because on it the 
 Son of God hath died, and I know that Jesus Christ's sacrifice is 
 accepted and sufficient, only because I have it attested to me in 
 His rising again from the dead." 
 
 (2) A living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. The 
 Apostle here in the context twice says, according to the 
 Authorized Version, that a dead Christ makes our faith " vain." 
 But he really used two different words, the former of which is 
 applied to " preaching," and means literally " empty," while the 
 latter means " of none effect " or " powerless." So there are two 
 ideas suggested here. The risen Christ puts some contents, so to 
 speak, into our faith. Who can trust a dead Christ, or who can 
 trust a human Christ ? That would be as much a blasphemy as 
 trusting any other man. It is only when we recognize Him as 
 declared to be the Son of God, and that by the resurrection from 
 the dead, that our faith has anything round which it can twine, 
 and to which it can cleave. That living Saviour will stretch out 
 His hand to us if we look to Him, and if I put my poor, trembling 
 little hand up towards Him, He will bend to me and clasp it. 
 You cannot exercise faith unless you have a risen Saviour, and 
 unless you exercise faith in Him your lives ara marred and 
 sad. 
 
 (3) Again, a living Christ destroys the dominion of sin. The 
 first blessing which the believing soul receives through and from 
 a risen Christ is deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed 
 to be our sacrifice by His death and our sanctification by His 
 life has not risen, then all which makes His death other than a 
 martyr's vanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. 
 Only when we recognize that in His Cross, explained by His 
 resurrection, we have redemption through His blood, even the 
 forgiveness of sins, and by the communication of the risen life 
 from the risen Lord possess that new nature which sets us free 
 from the dominion of our evil only then is faith operative in 
 setting us free from our sins. 
 
 (4) The resurrection was the convincing proof that Christ's 
 words were true, and that He was ivhat He had claimed to le. He 
 
470 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 Himself had on more occasions than one hinted that such proof 
 was to be given. " Destroy this temple," He said, " and in three 
 days I will raise it up." The sign which was to be given, not- 
 withstanding His habitual refusal to yield to the Jewish craving 
 for miracle, was the sign of the prophet Jonah. As he had been 
 thrown out and lost for three days and nights, but had thereby 
 only been forwarded in his mission, so our Lord was to be thrown 
 out as endangering the ship, but was to rise again to fuller and 
 more perfect efficiency. In order that His claim to be the 
 Messiah might be understood, it was necessary that He should 
 die ; but in order that it might be believed, it was needful that 
 He should rise. 
 
 (5) The resurrection of Christ holds a fundamental place in 
 the Christian creed, because ly it there is disclosed a real and close 
 connection between this world and the unseen, eternal world. There 
 is no need now of argument to prove a life beyond ; here is one 
 who is in it. For the resurrection of Christ was not a return to 
 this life, to its wants, to its limitations, to its inevitable close ; 
 it was a resurrection to a life for ever beyond death. Neither 
 was it a discarding of humanity on Christ's part, a cessation of 
 His acceptance of human conditions, a rising to some kind of 
 existence to which man has no access. On the contrary, it was 
 because He continued truly human that in human body and with 
 human soul He rose to veritable human life beyond the grave. 
 If Jesus rose from the dead, then the world into which He is 
 gone is a real world, in which men can live more fully than they 
 live here. If He rose from the dead, then there is an unseen 
 Spirit mightier than the strongest material powers, a God who 
 is seeking to bring us out of all evil into an eternally happy 
 condition. Quite reasonably is death invested with a certain 
 majesty, if not terror, as the mightiest of physical things. There 
 may be greater evils ; but they do not affect all men but only 
 some, or they debar men from certain enjoyments and a certain 
 kind of life but not from all. But death shuts men out from 
 everything with which they have here to do, and launches them 
 into a condition of which they know absolutely nothing. Any 
 one who conquers death and scatters its mystery, who shows in 
 his own person that it is innocuous, and that it actually betters 
 our condition, brings us light that reaches us from no other 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 471 
 
 quarter. And He who shows this superiority over death in 
 virtue of a moral superiority, and uses it for the furtherance of 
 the highest spiritual ends, shows a command over the whole 
 affairs of men which makes it easy to believe He can guide us 
 into a condition like His own. As St. Peter affirms, it is by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead we are begotten again 
 unto a lively hope. 
 
 ^| There is a beautiful sonnet of Petrarch, who sees Laura in 
 heaven amongst the angels ; she walks amongst them, but from 
 time to time turns her head and looks behind and seems to be 
 waiting for him : 
 
 Wherefore I raise to heaven my heart and mind 
 Because I hear her bid me only haste. 1 
 
 fl The history of the three anthems which are chosen in place 
 of the Venite for matins on Easter morning (1. Cor. v. 7, 8 ; Eom. 
 vi. 9-11 ; 1. Cor. xv. 20-22) well illustrates the care taken by 
 the compilers of the Prayer-book to make it reflect the great 
 doctrinal lessons of the sacred year. They do not stand to-day 
 in their original form, but there can be no question of the greater 
 fitness and beauty of the present arrangement. The first anthem 
 was inserted last, and did not appear till 1662, at the last revision 
 of the Prayer-book at the Savoy Conference. But, as an Easter 
 anthem, it was already very old, for part of it had appeared as 
 such in the Antiphonary of Gregory the Great. It had also been 
 read in the Epistle for the second communion on Easter Day in 
 1549, in the first Prayer-book of Edward VL, when provision was 
 made for a Collect, Epistle, and Gospel at two communions. These 
 were ordered to be used as the special features for Easter Tuesday 
 and for the first Sunday after Easter, though this arrangement 
 was abolished in the second Prayer-book of Edward vi. in 1552. 
 
 The second anthem is much older. It formed a part of a 
 short service which was prefixed in the Sarum Breviary to the 
 ordinary matins as a special feature for Easter Day. The exact 
 words used were as follows : " Christ rising again from the dead 
 dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For in 
 that He liveth He liveth unto God." And this had been followed 
 by the refrain, " Alleluia, Alleluia." In the Sarum Breviary the 
 versicles and response followed : " The Lord rose from the 
 sepulchre : yfho for us hung upon the tree. Alleluia." To these 
 succeeded the following beautiful collect : " God, who for us 
 didst suffer Thy Son to endure the yoke of the Cross, that Thou 
 
 1 Mandell Creighton, Life and Letters, ii. 168 r 
 
472 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 mightest drive away from us the power of the enemy ; grant to 
 us, Thy servants, that we may always live in the joys of His 
 Kesurrection." In the Prayer-book of 1549 the same anthem was 
 placed at the head of the short introductory service therein framed 
 before matins for Easter Day. Next to it was added the present 
 third anthem, each being followed by the word " Alleluia " twice 
 after the first, once after the second anthem. Two versicles then 
 followed thus : " Show forth to all nations the glory of God . . . 
 and among all people His wonderful works." Then the follow- 
 ing exquisite collect was added, instead of the collect given above : 
 " God, who for our redemption didst give Thine only Begotten 
 Son to the death of the Cross, and by His glorious Resurrection 
 hast delivered us from the power of our enemy ; Grant us so to 
 die daily from sin that we may evermore live with Him in the 
 joy of His resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord." 
 
 A further change took place in 1552 in the second Prayer-book 
 of Edward vi. The two anthems were shifted from the head of 
 the service for matins to their present place before the Venite. 
 The Alleluias were omitted, and also the special versicles and the 
 collect just quoted. And thus it continued till 1662, when, as we 
 have seen, the first anthem was added. These changes will serve 
 to bring home to our minds the special importance which attaches 
 to these three anthems in their present position in the service. 
 From the date of the Sarum Breviary in 1085 down to the present 
 time, that is, over a period of eight hundred years, one or other 
 or all of them have stood at the head of the Easter service, where, 
 in the old days, until their change of position in 1552, they were 
 originally a sort of Introit, a " processional hymn," which ushered 
 in the worship of the Queen of Festivals. Indeed, the one 
 alteration which we might well wish had not been made is the 
 shifting of that position (so as to make them the mere alternative 
 of the Invitatory Psalm) to a place in the service where their 
 significance is almost lost in the glad festival psalms which 
 immediately follow. Clearly they were intended all along, and 
 are intended still, to strike the keynote of praise for the whole 
 festival, and to sound forth its doctrinal and practical 
 characteristics. 
 
 When we study them carefully this impression of their 
 importance and significance is deepened. For all the great 
 essential thoughts of Eastertide are in germ here, and three chief 
 aspects stand prominently forward. They offer us on the 
 morning of the Resurrection a full and complete Christ, the 
 perfect answer to the needs and desires of fallen man. Our souls 
 require above all things mercy to cover the past only too stained 
 with sin. We find that offered us here through the Cross in 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 473 
 
 Christ our Passover. They yearn for the secret of spiritual 
 power in the present, that sin already forgiven may have now 
 no dominion over us. It is laid bare to us in Christ our life, in 
 and through whom we too, reckoning ourselves "dead indeed 
 unto sin," are " alive unto God " with the power of an endless 
 life within. But our souls have also " keen desire," which finds 
 expression in " earnest prayer and strong " for fellowship in a life 
 beyond the grave, which shall restore to us the losses which the 
 havoc of death has made in this. It is offered us in Christ our 
 first-fruits, our promise, and the first-fruits of them that sleep, 
 the key to an everlasting destiny. Thus, as the first anthem 
 proclaimed the Crucified Christ as the ground of our justification, 
 so the second anthem extols the Eisen Christ as the secret of our 
 sanctification, whilst the third anthem adores the triumphant 
 Christ as the pledge of our glorification. What a magnificent 
 revelation of the Alpha and Omega of Grace, who once, as in 
 the first anthem, " was dead," now " lives for aye," and, better 
 still, " hath the keys of hell and of death " ! A risen Christ in 
 strong and glorious relation to the past, the present, and the future 
 of His redeemed ones, whom He hath " ransomed from the power 
 of the enemy." The Lord for me : the secret of my pardon and 
 my peace. The Lord in me: the secret of my holiness and 
 victory. The Lord with me : the sure pledge of immortality, the 
 " first-fruits " of them that sleep, the sheaf of early ripe corn 
 waved at the Passover Feast in the temple of God as the promise 
 of the 
 
 holy harvest-field, 
 
 Which will all its full abundance 
 
 At His second coming yield. 
 
 A Christ who is the object of adoring faith, " declared to be the 
 Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the 
 resurrection from the dead." A Christ who is the motive power 
 of love, who died and rose that " they which live should not hence- 
 forth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, 
 and rose again." A Christ who is the inspiration of heavenly 
 hope, " who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should 
 live together with him." Thus, if in the first anthem we specially 
 dwell upon the victorious work of Jesus whereby the curse is 
 removed, in the second anthem we are contemplating the ever 
 living person^of Christ in whom the blessing is restored, and in 
 the third anthem we are echoing the rapturous music of Heaven, 
 the song of the redeemed before the throne, which tells of the 
 consummated Kingdom of Christ in whom Heaven itself is given 
 
474 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 to the sons of men. Or, in other words, if in the first anthem we 
 realize the guilt of sin atoned for by the Paschal Lamb, in the 
 second we joyfully celebrate the power of sin crushed through 
 the overcoming life within, and in the third we foretell the result 
 of sin cancelled through the second Adam, who is " the Lord from 
 heaven." All the three groups of thought find special allusion in 
 the collect already quoted, which, from 1549 to 1552, followed 
 two of these anthems at the head of the Easter morning service. 1 
 
 III. 
 
 THE PROMISE OF THE KESURRECTION. 
 " The first-fruits of them that are asleep." 
 
 The word " first-fruits " has a very definite signification in 
 the Scriptures. There was a commandment given to the people 
 of Israel that when they entered into the possession of the Land 
 of Promise, they were not to begin harvest till they had first cut 
 down a sheaf and presented or waved it before the Lord, in 
 thanksgiving as well as in token that they and their harvests 
 belonged to the Lord. The circumstances connected with the 
 offering of the first-fruits are singularly suggestive of a higher 
 symbolism. The sheaf was offered on the third day after the 
 Passover. In this we see Christ, the sheaf of first-fruits, rising 
 from the dead on the third day after His Passion, the first begotten 
 from the dead the precursor of the harvest yet to come, the proof, 
 pledge, and pattern of the resurrection of the just. 
 
 1. The resurrection of Christ is the proof of the resurrection of 
 them that are asleep. When a farmer holds in his hand the first 
 ripe sheaf of corn he has in possession an unassailable proof that 
 he will have a harvest. More decisive and satisfactory evidence 
 to that effect could not be desired by any reasonable man. Long 
 before this time the precious seed had been cast into the dark 
 bosom of the earth, when no tokens were visible that nature 
 possessed any power of life. But in due season the sun began to 
 warm the sleeping world, the gentle rain from heaven fell upon 
 the place beneath, and the winds of the south whispered of a 
 
 1 T. A. Gurney. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 475 
 
 coming revival. Soon there was first the blade, then the ear, 
 after that the full corn in the ear, and then the first ripe sheaf 
 telling of a harvest at hand. Christ is the first-fruits of them that 
 sleep, the infallible proof that we shall have a resurrection from 
 the gloomy winter of death. 
 
 Think of one who never in his life saw a harvest or spoke with 
 any one to whom it was a familiar thing, who was well acquainted 
 with sowing, but an utter stranger to reaping. Suppose, further, 
 that not one harvest had ever gladdened the earth in any corner 
 of it, and you have some idea of the state of knowledge necessarily 
 possessed by men of old, concerning the rising again from the 
 dead. Men had been but too familiar with sowing ; from age to 
 age they had committed to the earth all that remained of the 
 fondest, the fairest, the best that they had. " Earth had been sown 
 thick with graves," but there had been no harvest; none had 
 ever been seen to return from the " dark portal, the goal of all 
 mortal." Earth had swallowed up an immeasurable quantity of 
 seed without showing any symptom of spring-time or harvest. 
 We need not wonder that the Old Testament gives little light on 
 the great rising again of the people of God. The Psalms and 
 the Prophets occasionally show that there was light, and they 
 may have had more than we can see in their records of the old 
 days ; but their light must have been dim and uncertain, seeing 
 that none had ever risen from the dead to die no more. Enoch 
 and Elijah were removed from the world in a mysterious way ; 
 they never looked upon the pale messenger, and their feet never 
 touched the cold waters of the border land ; but none of the sons 
 of mortal men had ever risen from the grave to immortality. 
 
 Before the resurrection of Christ there had been instances of 
 what is popularly termed " resurrection," as in the case of Lazarus 
 and others whom Christ raised from the dead. In the Old 
 Testament period, also, there had been similar cases, as in the 
 history of Elijah and Elisha. Had the resurrection of Christ 
 been like these earlier "resurrections," as we call them, simply 
 the return of the spirit to the waiting body, and a mere reviving 
 and continuance of the interrupted life, it is hard to see truth in 
 the terms frequently applied to Christ as " the firstborn from the 
 dead" (Col. i. 18), " the firstborn of the dead" (Ptev. i. 5), "the 
 firstfruits" (I Cor. xv. 20, 23). We recognize the appropriate- 
 
476 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 ness of such terms to Christ only when we perceive that His 
 reappearance within the circle of the friends who had buried Him 
 was not on a level with that of Lazarus, but in a higher mode of 
 life than that which He had quitted. In Lazarus we behold 
 simply the reanimation of the natural body, and the resumption 
 of the fleshly life. In Christ we behold resurrection in the 
 spiritual body, and assumption of the life of the world to come. 
 This is fully demonstrated by the facts given in the Gospel 
 record, and this is required by the exceptional pre-eminence 
 which the New Testament accords to Christ's rising from the dead. 
 But one instance of that which is indeed the resurrection has 
 been vouchsafed to our knowledge, as a sure pledge of that which 
 is to come. This is manifest in the risen Christ, who thereby 
 " was declared to be the Son of God with power " (Eom. i. 4). 
 All the partial resemblances to this which are found on record 
 are cases of mere resuscitation or reanimation. 
 
 Not as a fallen stone, 
 Abiding where it hath been flung, 
 Did Christ remain the dead among, 
 But sprang from Hades' deep invisible zone, 
 As the corn springs from where it has been thrown! 
 
 Not, as at Nain of yore 
 The young man rose to die again, 
 Did He resume the haunts of men, 
 But closed behind Him Death's reluctant door 
 And triumphed on to live for evermore ! 
 
 Not, as we spend our days, 
 Subject to sorrows, pains, and fears, 
 Does He persist a Man of tears; 
 
 Henceforth He feels no touch of our decays, 
 
 But inexpressive joy in all His ways ! 
 
 Not for Himself alone 
 He fought, and won that glorious life: 
 For us He conquered in the strife, 
 That we might make His victory our own, 
 And rise with Him before the Father's Throne! 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 477 
 
 Thus hath the Saviour brought 
 
 Our immortality to light ! 
 
 may He tarry in our sight, 
 That, clinging fast to Him with every thought, 
 We may partake the triumph He has wrought ! l 
 
 Tf In a sheltered corner of my Manse garden stands a common 
 red flowering-currant bush. I suppose it has no value at all for 
 anybody but me. But I would not exchange it for all the roses 
 in the Major's fine domain across the road. For year after year it 
 gives me the first news of Spring. Just after the New Year has 
 come in, I begin to watch it, long before anything else in the 
 garden has stirred. And some still, quiet morning it has its 
 message for me. There is quite a distinct new shade of green on 
 the buds. The wind is bitterly cold, and snow showers are about. 
 Everything else in the garden is cold and dead. But it has risen. 
 And the rest will follow in God's good time. 2 
 
 2. The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of our resurrection. 
 We need more than simple proof, however clear, that a resurrec- 
 tion of man is possible. We require a pledge of its certainty 
 before we can taste strong consolation. How can one man's 
 rising give assurance that we shall rise ? Did He not rise from 
 the dead purely in virtue of His power and Godhead ? What 
 more does that prove than that He was able to rise because He 
 was the strong Son of God ? How shall we, who are certainly not 
 strong, be able to follow His example ? Is not the proverb, that 
 what man has done man may do, false on the very face of it ? 
 Who shall say that the doings of the man Christ Jesus are the just 
 criterion of what may be expected from man ? If the Lord had 
 been related to us in the same way as we are related to our 
 fellows, and in no other way, His rising would have proved the 
 possibility of a resurrection, but nothing more. If He had been 
 only our Brother, He could not have been the first-fruits of them 
 that slept, or the pledge of their rising again. But while He was 
 truly our Brother, He was also the Everlasting Father, the 
 representative Head of the race of men. 
 
 Luther says : " Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be 
 overwhelmed and oppressed by the curse of the law, and so to 
 be holden under the same that we could never be delivered from 
 it by our own power, sent His holy Son into the world, and laid 
 
 1 G. T. S. Farquhar. 2 Archibald Alexander. 
 
478 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 upon Him the sins of all men, saying, 'Be Thou Peter that 
 denier ; Paul that blasphemer and cruel persecutor ; David that 
 adulterer ; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise ; that 
 thief which hanged upon the cross; and, briefly, be Thou the 
 person which hath committed the sins of all men. See, then, that 
 Thou pay and satisfy for them.' . . . Now cometh the law, and 
 saith, ' I find Him a sinner, and I see no sins else but on Him ; 
 therefore let Him die upon the cross/ and so he setteth upon 
 Him and killeth Him." The old order changeth, ever giving 
 place to the latest born, and Luther's form of sound words is now 
 obsolete, just as our little systems will have their day and cease 
 to be ; but the immortal soul of vicarious sacrifice is unchanged. 
 It is unalterably and eternally true that Christ, as the Head of 
 His people, and made one with them, was made a curse, was made 
 sin, took upon Himself all their responsibilities, and fully dis- 
 charged them in dying. When He was raised from the dead by 
 the glory of the Father His reappearance on earth, or reconstitu- 
 tion as a man, was nothing less than God's pledge that every 
 liability had been settled, and that a similar resurrection belonged 
 to them who should be found united to the Head that had 
 suffered in their room and stead. The solidarity of our race in 
 ruin is the groundwork of its solidarity in redemption ; in a true 
 sense, all Christ's people rose up with Him on the third day, 
 according to the Scriptures. 
 
 Little one, you must not fret 
 That I take your clothes away; 
 
 Better sleep you so will get, 
 
 And at morning wake more gay 
 Saith the children's mother. 
 
 You I must unclothe again, 
 
 For you need a better dress; 
 Too much worn are body and brain; 
 
 You need everlastingness 
 Saith the heavenly father. 
 
 I went down death's lonely stair; 
 
 Laid my garments in the tomb ; 
 Dressed again one morning fair; 
 
 Hastened up, and hied me home 
 Saith the elder brother. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 479 
 
 Then I will not be afraid 
 
 Any ill can come to me; 
 When 'tis time to go to bed, 
 
 I will rise and go with thee 
 Saith the little brother. 1 
 
 3. The resurrection of Christ is the pattern of our resurrection. 
 The first sheaf is a specimen, type, example, or pattern of the 
 harvest at hand. If the first fruits be poor and withered, the 
 after fruits will be similar ; if rich, full, and perfect, the harvest 
 expected will be excellent. When we read that the Lord shall 
 raise our vile bodies at the last, so that they may be fashioned 
 like His own body of glory, we have at once a type of the glorified 
 humanity that shall stand on the earth at the last day. He 
 remained with us for forty days after He had risen, in order to 
 give us light concerning the wonderful transformation. 
 
 (1) The condition of the spirit after death and resurrection is 
 clearly seen in that light. Full and perfect peace was the 
 atmosphere in which the spirit of the great Eedeemer lived and 
 moved after He had conquered death and the grave. The 
 memory that He had of the past was clear and distinct, but not 
 painful in the smallest degree ; He contemplated the whole of His 
 life in the past as a finished work, an arduous task accomplished, 
 a hard-won battle ended the whole to look back upon as a joy 
 for evermore. His heart was the same, as kind and thoughtful as 
 ever, and He resumed companionship with His friends very much 
 as if there had been no cross and no grave. We hope to be like 
 Him in all that pertained to His holy and happy humanity ; our 
 spirits hushed to rest, and blest in the possession of His peace ; 
 our minds unvexed and untortured by the element of pain that 
 troubles our memories here, and poisons our joy when we recall 
 the past. We look to have, like Him, the same sweet intercourse 
 with former friends of mortal years, and to retain our old familiar, 
 and well-known personality, set free from sin. 
 
 (2) The condition of the glorified body is unveiled in the light 
 of His forty days' sojourn after the resurrection. His was most 
 distinctly a real body, and not a phantom without substance, to 
 mock the gazer's sight. So real was He to the disciples that, 
 after the first natural start of terror, they fell easily into their 
 
 1 George MacDonald, Poetical Works, i. 348. 
 
480 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 
 
 old ways with Him, and did not seem to feel it a strange thing 
 to walk and talk with One in a glorified state. He was easily 
 recognized by them, for His body had the well-known marks 
 and signs by which they were able to identify Him at once. He 
 showed them His hands and His feet 
 
 The arm which held the children, the pale hand 
 That gently touched the eyelids of the blind 
 And opened passive to the cruel nail. 
 
 They could not fail to remember every line of His blessed face ; 
 He had been away only for a little while, and it was easy to 
 know Him after the short grief and pain. The body of the Lord 
 was essentially a spiritual one withal; not any longer confined 
 to the conditions of time, space, and matter, but supreme in 
 power over the world of sense ; able to enter a fast-closed room, 
 and to leave it at will; to become visible or invisible as He 
 wished, known or unknown His was a body that obeyed every 
 wish of the Spirit. 
 
 T[ I sent the Queen (January 1885) a little book which con- 
 tained some verses due to a great sorrow of my own. In her 
 reply she said, " You surely do not think, as it would a little seem 
 from the beautiful poem, My Yew Tree, that our dear ones sleep 
 awhile, and that their bodies are to rise again ? I thought you 
 wrote to me once you thought, as I always think one feels one 
 must, that the spirit is at once free in death, and that you were 
 inclined to believe in a spiritual body within our present one ? " 
 
 To this I replied that the Queen was quite right in supposing 
 that I was in sympathy with the view that the " spiritual body " 
 (as St. Paul calls it) is set free at death. I have never been able 
 to feel that the supposed long sleep and time ojf unconscious- 
 ness is taught us in the New Testament. The phrases I had used 
 in my verses were used in the sense that to us our dear ones 
 seemed to sleep ; and that what I had tried tc sing was a kind of 
 triumph song, telling the cold earth that her seeming victory was 
 no victory at all. 1 
 
 Death and darkness, get you packing, 
 Nothing now to man is lacking ; 
 All your triumphs now are ended, 
 And what Adam marr'd is mended; 
 
 1 Bishop Boyd Carpenter, Some Pages of My Life, 287. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 481 
 
 Graves are beds now for the weary, 
 
 Death a nap, to wake more merry; 
 
 Youth now, full of pious duty, 
 
 Seeks in thee for perfect beauty; 
 
 The weak and aged, tired with length 
 
 Of days, from Thee look for new strength; 
 
 And infants with Thy pangs contest 
 
 As pleasant as if with the breast. 
 
 Then unto Him, who thus hath thrown 
 
 Even to contempt Thy kingdom down, 
 
 And by His blood did us advance 
 
 Unto His own inheritance; 
 
 To Him be glory, power, praise, 
 
 From this unto the last of days. 1 
 
 1 Henry Vaughan. 
 
 J COR. 31 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT. 
 
 483 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Mission Sermons, iii. 97. 
 Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, v. 215. 
 Arinitage (W. J.), The Fruit of the Spirit, 76. 
 BeU (G. D.), The Name above Every Name, 111. 
 Brown (H. S.), Manliness and Other Sermons, 9. 
 Burrell (D. J.), The Religion of the Future, 154. 
 Butler (H. M.), Public School Sermons, 173. 
 Campbell (L.), The Christian Ideal, 148. 
 Clarke (G.), True Manhood, Womanhood, 1. 
 
 (J. E.), Common-Life Sermons, 61. 
 Creighton (M.), Claims of the Common Life, 64, 71, 78. 
 Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 139. 
 
 (K. B.), College Sermons, 60. 
 Farrar (F. W.), Bells and Pomegranates, 255. 
 Green (W. H.), in Princeton Sermons, 235. 
 Greenhough (J. G.), in The Ladder of Life, 123. 
 Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 161. 
 Jenkins (E. E.), Addresses and Sermons, 149. 
 Jerdan (C.), Messages to the Children, 131, 177. 
 Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Miscellaneous, 487. 
 Little (W. J. Knox), The Perfect Life, 48. 
 Lyttelton (A.), College and University Sermons, 179. 
 Maclaren (A.), Expositions : I and 2 Corinthians, 252. 
 Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 31. 
 Moore (A. L.), Some Aspects of Sin, 3, 15, 28, 39. 
 Ryle (H. E.), On the Church of England, 92, 243. 
 Shore (T. T.), Some Difficulties of Belief , 271. 
 Thorn (J. H.), Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ, i. 345. 
 Vaughan (C. J.), Christ and Human Instincts, 89. 
 
 (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xi. (1875) No. 949; xvii. 
 
 (1879) No. 1091 ; xxiv. (1884) No. 1265. 
 Christian Age, liii. 66 (Green). 
 Christian World Pulpit, v. 23 (Barfield) ; xxviii. 395 (Tyler) ; xliv. 157 
 
 (Neil), 353 (Farrar) ; xlvi. 65 (Farrar), 78 (Macleod) ; Ixxiv. 79 
 
 (Hardy) ; Ixxix. 124 (Hedley). 
 Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., vi. 316 (Burn). 
 Homiletic Review, xx. 49 (Green) ; xxi. 433 (Ludlow). 
 
 4*4 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT. 
 
 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all 
 that ye do be done in love. i Cor. xvi. 13, 14. 
 
 1. THIS passage occurs at the end of St. Paul's first letter to the 
 Corinthian Church, in which he has been reproving them for their 
 divisions, and for the irregularities that have grown up among 
 them. At the end of the Epistle, the Apostle has finished his 
 hortatory remarks, and is adding a few personal messages, and 
 giving directions about some practical points of Church administra- 
 tion, when, having occasion to mention the name of Apollos, he 
 seems to have been reminded afresh of the irregularities he has 
 been writing to censure. He thinks of the Corinthians and their 
 errors; he thinks of their unstable minds, of their wandering 
 imaginations; he thinks sadly how little impression his advice 
 will produce ; he doubts if he has spoken clearly enough, forcibly 
 enough, if he has said all that can be said ; then, as if to make 
 sure, as if to clench his other precepts, as if to sum up in a few 
 words all he has to say, as if to give the Corinthians some plain 
 advice that they may easily keep in their memory, he chooses 
 these few incisive words to serve as mottoes to recur to his hearers' 
 minds in vacant hours : " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit 
 you like men, be strong. Let all that ye do be done in love." 
 
 2. The language is military. St. Paul had never seen an 
 engagement, but he was familiar with barrack life, and one can 
 imagine that there were aspects of that life that charmed him ; its 
 simple and absolute devotion, its discipline, its esprit de corps, the 
 two elements of its might, unity and obedience, and the heroic 
 qualities which were begotten of its dangers and its laurels. When 
 he borrows a figure from the guardroom or the battlefield, the 
 
 fidelity and spirit with which he uses it show that the allusion 
 
 485 
 
486 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 is not a mere grace of style; it is a vital constituent of the 
 thought. To him Christian life was a contest, and he transfers 
 to Christian action the nomenclature of camps. 
 
 There are five precepts. And the fifth, though it is found in 
 a separate verse, should on no account be left out. First there 
 is the introductory call, Be awake! Then there are two pairs: 
 Be godly, and be manly ; be strong, and be tender. 
 
 I. Be awake" Watch ye." 
 f Be godly" Stand fast in the faith." 
 '\Be manly " Quit you like men." 
 f Be strong " Be strong." 
 \Be tender " Let all that ye do be done in love." 
 
 BE AWAKE. 
 "Watch ye." 
 
 Be awake, lie not in slumber, that is the first requisite for all 
 action; break the bands of sleep and indolence, or you can do 
 nothing. 
 
 The word means one of two things certainly, probably both 
 Keep awake, and keep your eyes open. Our Lord used the same 
 metaphor very frequently, but with a special significance. On 
 His lips ifc generally referred to the attitude of expectation of 
 His coming in judgment. St. Paul sometimes uses the figure 
 with the same application; but here, distinctly, it has another. 
 There is the military idea underlying it. What will become of 
 an army if the sentries go to sleep? And what chance will a 
 Christian man have of doing his devoir against his enemy, unless 
 he keeps himself awake, and keeps himself alert ? Watchfulness, 
 in the sense of always having eyes open for the possible rush 
 down upon us of temptation and evil, is no small part of the 
 discipline and the duty of the Christian life. 
 
 i. Wakefulness. 
 
 1. Many men have never awakened at all ; they know not 
 what life is ; they know not what the world in which they seem 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 487 
 
 to move may be ; they have never raised their sleepy eyes from 
 the dreary round of selfish enjoyment, as they call it, in which 
 their time is spent. To lead an aimless, useless life, with mind 
 enfeebled and faculties undeveloped, the whole nature enervated 
 through want of exercise, this is the most awful prospect any man 
 can be called upon to face. 
 
 2. There are two main causes at the bottom of this terrible 
 vice. 
 
 (1) In the first place there is the cold, deliberate selfishness 
 that refuses to move beyond itself, will not be troubled, has no 
 sympathies, with any duty outside itself, is determined to consult 
 always its own comfort in the way which comes most easy and 
 lies nearest at hand. A man who is indolent from this reason 
 is the most perfectly unlovely character that can be found, and 
 the number of such tends to increase with our national wealth 
 and prosperity. Such a man knows that life is likely to be 
 tolerably comfortable for himself, he knows that he is free from 
 the stern hand of daily necessity, and so he deliberately purposes 
 to get the utmost out of what he has, he shuts the door against 
 all high aims, for they might give him trouble; knowledge he 
 despises and takes in its place a low selfish cunning ; his fellow- 
 men he estimates solely as they contribute to his own enjoyment ; 
 he will do nothing he can help ; why should he ? He will go on 
 peaceably through life ; for what can come to disturb him if he is 
 only reasonably prudent ? 
 
 (2) But indolence comes from another cause from thought- 
 less feebleness rather than low selfishness. A feebly indolent 
 man knows dimly that life has a meaning, has duties. He 
 believes somehow that there is a God who judges the world, 
 that he himself has an immortal soul, and an account to give one 
 day believes it somehow, but believes it sleepily believes it so 
 that if he were awakened and formally asked these questions, he 
 would give formally proper answers, but does not believe it in 
 such a way that the truths to which he confesses take any real 
 hold upon his life. He believes that life has a purpose, but that 
 it need not be realized just yet. He grants that man is re- 
 sponsible for his own character, but then the fact that he wastes 
 in idleness the precious years of opening manhood need not 
 
4 88 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 particularly influence him. He grants that bad habits are easily 
 acquired, but there is no fear of his own actions going so far as 
 to form habits. He admits that it is better to be wise than to be 
 ignorant, but thinks that knowledge will come to him through 
 society, through free intercourse with others, rather than by the 
 old-fashioned method of intellectual labour and honest thought. 
 
 If He wakes in the night, and hears one of his Lovedale boys 
 on watch, " pacing his round with his rifle on his shoulder, 
 singing low and sweetly, and apparently much to his heart's 
 content, one of Sankey's hymns, * Jesus loves me, even me.' He 
 did not know that I was stirring." This singing watchman was 
 Shadrack Ngunane, one of the Lovedale volunteers, whom Stewart, 
 by an act of grace, had allowed to remain in Lovedale after a 
 grave offence. " He has been as busy and useful," Stewart adds, 
 " as a white man could have been, always well, always cheerful, 
 always ready for everything." The picture of this once wild 
 Kafir, formerly rather troublesome, now cheerfully keeping his 
 midnight watch in this fashion and on such a venturesome 
 journey, is one I shall not forget. It made me hope for the day 
 when out of the regions we are now in there will be many who 
 will prove themselves as worthy of the labour bestowed on them 
 as this lad has done, and help to convey the Gospel still farther 
 on. Day or night I never found my Kafir friend sleeping 
 when he ought to be waking, or elsewhere than at the post of 
 duty. 1 
 
 ii. Watchfulness. 
 
 1. Watchfulness means more than being awake. It is con- 
 centrated attention in wakefulness. It springs from the conviction 
 of danger, it is sustained by the responsibility of duty. It is one 
 of those positions which are restricted to the individual himself. 
 Watchfulness cannot be transferred : it cannot even be distributed. 
 You cannot say with perfect accuracy we watch ; it must always 
 be, / watch. If there be many watchmen, the security of the 
 guard is not in the unity of the number, as it would be in repelling 
 an assault, but in covering every position of possible surprise by 
 individual and responsible vigilance. The watchman for the time 
 being personifies the army to which he belongs. He commands 
 because he protects every man and every weapon and arm of the 
 service. His first and main qualification is a knowledge and 
 persuasion of the danger which has made him a watchman. 
 1 J. Wells, Stewart of Lovedale, 135. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 489 
 
 If " I recently visited the Heights of Abraham," said a friend, 
 " and looking down those precipitous cliffs which make that the 
 strongest natural citadel in America, I was amazed that Wolfe 
 and his English forces were able to capture it. Speaking to a 
 guardsman, I said, ' It would seem as if a band of schoolboys 
 might have held this fort against an army; how did it happen 
 that the French were defeated?' The guard replied, 'Oh, the 
 soldiers got careless, overconfident and pleasure-loving, and one 
 dark night while they were off guard, the citadel was taken.' " l 
 
 2. One part of that watchfulness consists in exercising a very 
 rigid and a very constant and comprehensive scrutiny of our 
 motives. For there is no way by which evil creeps upon us so 
 unobserved as when it slips in at the back door of a specious 
 motive. Many a man contents himself with the avoidance of 
 actual evil actions, and lets any kind of motives come in and out 
 of his mind unexamined. It is all right to look after our doings, 
 but as a man " thinketh in his heart, so is he." The good or the 
 evil of anything that I do is determined wholly by the motive 
 with which I do it. And we are a great deal too apt to palm off 
 deceptions on ourselves to be certain that our motives are right, 
 unless we give them a very careful and minute scrutiny. 
 
 Tf We should establish a rigid examination for applicants for 
 entrance, and make quite sure that each that presents itself is 
 not a wolf in sheep's clothing. Make them all bring out their 
 passports. Let every vessel that comes into your harbour remain 
 isolated from all communication with the shore until the health 
 officer has been on board and given a clean bill. " Watch ye " ; 
 for yonder, away in the dark, in the shadow of the trees, the 
 black masses of the enemy are gathered, and a midnight attack 
 is but too likely to bring a bloody awakening to a camp full of 
 sleepers. 2 
 
 3. We have three things to guard God's honour, God's 
 property, and God's truth. 
 
 (1) First, we are on guard for God's honour. How often men 
 fail in this. How constantly we hear God's Name, as it were, 
 dragged in the dust. Swearing is so common that people often use 
 such language without realizing that they are sinning against God. 
 The words come to their lips so naturally that they do not even 
 think about their meaning ; and the man who does not use them 
 1 E. J. Hardy. 8 A. Maclaren. 
 
490 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 becomes sometimes an object of surprise, if not of ridicule, amongst 
 his mates. Nevertheless, the true soldier of Christ must brave 
 this, for he is on guard for the honour of his King. If he is 
 afraid to stand alone in leaving such words out of his talk, he 
 is failing in his duty. If it is noticed, so much the better. Others 
 see that he is not ashamed to show his colours. If he stands 
 firm, they will in time grow to respect him for it ; for deep down 
 in the heart of the greatest blackguard there is generally admiration 
 for a brave man who will stick to what is right, come what may. 
 
 U A smartly dressed railway guard was bustling about his 
 work on a platform, with a pretty rose in his buttonhole. A 
 man, more than half tipsy, came lurching past, snatched the rose 
 from the guard's buttonhole, and flung it under the train, and then 
 chuckled in his drunken fashion. The guard's face flushed red, 
 but without a word he turned away. As he passed, a man compli- 
 mented him and said, " You took that splendidly." The guard said, 
 " I am on duty, sir." l 
 
 (2) Secondly, we are on guard for God's property. A soldier 
 in the King's army is not his own. He has to go where he is 
 ordered and stay where he is stationed. And more than this. 
 Not long ago one of our great generals pointed out in an address 
 to the troops in India that men who do not try to keep themselves 
 fit for service efficient soldiers, as we call it by clean, temperate 
 lives, are defrauding the Service they have enlisted in. Every 
 conscientious soldier, he said, should look at the question in that 
 light. Even so the Christian soldier, who belongs to God, must try 
 to be, in body and soul, an efficient member of the Service of the 
 King of kings. In the words of the good old Church Catechism, 
 he must " keep his body in temperance, soberness, and chastity." 
 
 U The soldiers insensibly forgot the virtues of their profession 
 and contracted only the vices of civil life. They were either 
 degraded by the industry of mechanic trades, or enervated by the 
 luxury of baths and theatres. They soon became careless of their 
 martial exercises, and curious in their diet and apparel. They 
 loved downy beds and houses of marble; and their cups were 
 heavier than their swords. 2 
 
 (3) Lastly, we are on guard for God's truth. A man can 
 hardly mix among other men without hearing God's truth 
 
 1 Joseph Traill. 2 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 177. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 491 
 
 assailed. There is a certain amount of unbelief; but perhaps 
 less unbelief than carelessness and indifference that takes the 
 form of unbelieving and even blasphemous talk. Men who like 
 to be independent of religion themselves, who do not want to 
 be bound by its laws, who find their own way more convenient 
 than God's way, sometimes profess to be unbelievers. They are 
 not honest unbelievers, but it suits them to talk unbelief; and 
 they do their best to argue or laugh other men into the same 
 way of thinking. Now against this kind of thing we must be 
 on guard. 1 
 
 See the world 
 
 Such as it is, you made it not, nor I; 
 
 I mean to take it as it is, and you, 
 
 Not so you'll take it, though you get nought else. 
 
 I know the special kind of life I like, 
 
 What suits the most my idiosyncrasy, 
 
 Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit 
 
 In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days. 
 
 I find that positive belief does this 
 
 For me, and unbelief, no whit of this. 
 
 For you, it does, however? that, we'll try! 2 
 
 II. 
 
 BE GODLY. 
 " Stand fast in the faith." 
 
 " Stand fast in the faith," stand upright in it, stand firm, stand 
 boldly, be not tossed hither and thither, halt not between two 
 opinions, be not half-hearted, know which master it is you are 
 serving, and make up your mind clearly and definitely. " Stand 
 fast in the faith." Stand up like a man, and be ready to give 
 an account of whose you are and what you believe ; know what 
 it is that you believe, whatever that may be ; face it in its simple 
 form and say if that is what you are prepared to act up to, and 
 form your life by. 
 
 ^[ One of the best known stories of the battle of Waterloo 
 is this : One regiment was hard pressed, and suffering seriously 
 from the enemy's fire. Presently Wellington rode up and called 
 out : " Stand firm, Ninety-fifth ! We must not be beaten. What 
 
 1 A. Debenham, On Guard, 9. 2 Browning, Bishop Elougram's Apology. 
 
492 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 would they say in England ? " Stand firm ! It was an appeal 
 to the manliness of his soldiers, and to their patriotism. The 
 eye of their country was upon them. Whether charged by the 
 cavalry or mowed down by the cannon, there must be no flinching. 
 Stand firm ! We must not be beaten ! 1 
 
 1. But what is this faith that we are commanded to stand 
 fast in ? It means our openness of soul to that eternal God who 
 is our Father, yet our King ; it means daily fellowship with that 
 ever-living Christ who is our Brother, yet our Priest ; it means a 
 home within the soul to that eternal Spirit who is our Comforter, 
 yet our Guide. Faith is the grasp of the spirit upon those eternal 
 verities of God, which hold the spirit in time as if it were within 
 eternity. 
 
 2. Intellectual activity is a great help to steadfastness in 
 belief, but intellectual frivolity a grave danger. We would not 
 make light of the difficulties that perplex the serious mind; 
 what troubles it touches us all. To be forced to feel that the 
 beliefs witnessed to by the Christian Church and accepted by 
 the holy and the good cannot be believed, must ever be a heavy 
 trial to the sober and grave mind. For if it doubts, it is not 
 from inclination, but against it; not by preference, but from 
 sheer conviction; and he is no friend to truth who does not 
 respect the doubt of such a mind. But the number who belong 
 to this class is never large. The longer we live, and the more 
 we know of the intellectual tendencies that create conventional 
 disbelief, the more we discover that fashion, temper, want of 
 thought, and openness to superficial influences are more potent 
 than grave and serious reason. Every age has its own peculiar 
 tendencies to negation, and in our own day we may say that 
 mental meddlesomeness, want of thought and plenitude of 
 frivolous speech about the most awful themes are more fruitful 
 causes of doubt, if doubt we may call it, than the questions of 
 the critics, or the problems of philosophy and the schools. 
 
 The Apostle's exhortation must be interpreted by the help 
 of the first verse of the preceding chapter : " Moreover, brethren, 
 I declare unto you the gospel, . . . wherein ye stand " ; and the 
 Apostle proceeds to place in their order the truths which 
 comprise the Gospel and the cardinal fact upon which they 
 
 1 H. M. Butler, Public School Sermons, 173. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 493 
 
 rest. The argument of the resurrection, which is the glory of 
 this Epistle, was addressed to the sceptical spirit of the Corinthian 
 Church. That spirit expressed itself in the question, " How are 
 the dead raised up, and with what body do they come ? " This 
 is the popular mode of exclaiming against dogma. Its tone does 
 not indicate the earnest inquiry of a child spirit, but the demand 
 of an impatient and carping unbelief. 
 
 ^[ This was the kind of battlefield to which Arnold would so 
 often refer. To him the great curse of Public Schools, to be set 
 against their noble powers for good, the great curse seemed to 
 be I quote his brilliant pupil and biographer " the spirit " 
 sometimes "there encouraged of combination, of companionship, 
 of excessive deference to the public opinion prevalent in the 
 school." Once he spoke of it in these stern words are they 
 even now obsolete ? " If the spirit of Elijah were to stand in 
 the midst of us, and we were to ask him, 'What shall we do 
 then ? ' his answer would be, * Fear not, nor heed one another's 
 voices, but fear and heed the voice of God only/" And the 
 favourite image of human goodness which always stood out before 
 Arnold was the noble portrait of Abdiel in Milton 
 
 The Seraph Abdiel, faithful found 
 Among the faithless, faithful only he; 
 Among innumerable false, unmoved, 
 Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
 His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; 
 Nor number nor example with him wrought 
 To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, 
 Though single. 1 
 
 3. This counsel to " stand fast " occurs no fewer than six 
 times in the Epistles of St. Paul. The Apostle was evidently very 
 anxious about his converts, that they should maintain Christian 
 stability. If any one is to stand fast, two things are necessary, 
 namely, a foundation to stand upon, and strength to stand. It 
 has been well said that "a man may have his feet on a rock, 
 yet if he is weak as a rag, he cannot stand ; and no matter how 
 strong he is, if his feet are on quicksand, he cannot be stable." 
 
 (1) We have a sure foundation to stand upon : " the faith," 
 that is, the truth, " as the truth is in Jesus." We are to take 
 our stand upon revealed truth, the truth of the Bible. Every 
 
 1 H. M. Butler, 
 
494 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 Christian ought firmly to hold that Christ Jesus is the Son of 
 God ; that He died upon the cross for our sins ; that He rose 
 again from the dead; that He now reigns in heaven; that He 
 has sent His Holy Spirit into the world ; and that He will Himself 
 return at the last day to take all His people to be with Him in 
 glory. While the believer is never to stand still as to growth 
 and obedience, he is always to " stand fast " as to right principles. 
 He is to continue firm with regard to everything that is true 
 and just and good. He is to stand fast in the three abiding 
 graces " faith, hope, love." 
 
 (2) But not only has the Christian a sure ground to stand 
 upon; he has also strength to stand. Some men are stronger 
 than others in body, in mind, in affections, in will; but the 
 strength that is required in order to " stand fast in the faith " 
 is not one's own. It comes from the Lord Jesus. It is His gift 
 to His people. The Apostle says, "Stand fast in the Lord," 
 because the Christian is already " in Christ," and the whole secret 
 of spiritual strength consists in union with Him. If we would 
 stand fast, we must " abide in him." 
 
 Tf In the Highlands of Scotland there are two bold projecting 
 crags or headlands, some thirty-five miles apart, both of which 
 are called Craigellachie. The one is at Aviemore on the south, 
 and the other near Aberlour on the north. The swift river Spey 
 flows at the foot of both ; and the two Craigellachies form the 
 southern and northern boundaries of Strathspey, the land of 
 the Grants. And what used to be long ago the war-cry of the 
 clan Grant, which was sent from Castle Grant at Grantown with 
 " the fiery cross " all through the strath ? It was these words : 
 " Stand fast, Craigellachie ! " A war-cry this, as John Ruskin 
 has said, full of " deep wells of feeling and thought," full of " the 
 love of the native land, and the assurance of faithfulness to it." 
 The repetition of these words out in India by Highland soldiers 
 from Strathspey has been to them in the hour of battle, when 
 they were fighting beside Indian palaces and temples, like a 
 breath of the Scottish heather or a whisper of the birches and 
 pines : " Stand fast, Craigellachie ! " But the Christian warrior 
 has a still grander and more inspiring war-cry : " Stand fast in 
 the faith ! " " Stand fast in the Lord ! " 1 
 
 4. How is it that so few Christian men seem to possess this 
 true courage, this standing fast in the faith ? Is it not because 
 
 1 C. Jerdan. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 495 
 
 they are not rooted and grounded sufficiently in Christ Himself 
 as the fulness of their redemption ? Is it not because they have 
 not embraced the faith with all their heart and mind ; because 
 they stand wavering on the threshold of the fortress, and have 
 never really entered it? Is it not because they have not 
 thoroughly apprehended God's purposes regarding them; are 
 not yet satisfied that they are His and He is theirs? because 
 they have never yet felt with deep and living conviction, that 
 He is for them and nothing can be against them, that they were 
 sent here to do His work, and till that work is done, no raging 
 of the enemy can prevail ? Is it not because they have not as 
 yet acquired a distinct view of that enemy, and know not his 
 devices; have not learned the signals of the two armies; have 
 not sharply marked, in their mind's map, the frontiers of the 
 kingdoms of darkness and of light ? Is it not from want of the 
 fulness of the faith itself, that we are so wavering and hesitating, 
 so generally doing just what the world or the Church expects of 
 us, and so rarely built up on Christ Himself, looking beyond men 
 for our motives, for our plans, for our endurance ? 
 
 T[ One of Bunyan's famous pilgrims, in the Second Part of 
 The Pilgrim's Progress, is " Mr. Stand-fast." This pilgrim is the 
 last to be brought into the story, and the last also to cross the 
 river of death. A true, strong, brave pilgrim was " Mr. Stand- 
 fast." " Great-heart " and his company came upon him when he 
 was on his knees in the Enchanted Ground, praying earnestly 
 for help against the temptations of "Madam Bubble," that is, 
 the world and its enchantments. By and by, when " Christiana " 
 was bidding her friends farewell, she had messages to leave to 
 some, and adieus to present to others ; " but she gave ' Mr. Stand- 
 fast' a ring," evidently as a token of her peculiar respect and 
 affection. And when, at the very end of the allegory, the 
 summons to cross the river came to "Mr. Stand-fast," it bore 
 these touching and tender words : " For his Master is not willing 
 that he should be so far from Him any longer." While this 
 pilgrim was crossing, " there was a great calm at that time in 
 the river " ; so much so, that he stood for a time in mid-channel, 
 and talked pleasantly to the convoy of friends who were watching 
 him from the bank. He assured them that the river had now no 
 terror for him. . It had been his habit to " stand fast " amidst the 
 dangers of the long pilgrimage ; and therefore he could say, " Now, 
 methinks, I stand easy." 
 
496 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 III. 
 
 BE MANLY. 
 " Quit you like men." 
 
 1. We have all read, in history remote and recent, of some 
 brief but spirit-stirring words of command, by which generals 
 leading their armies into action at moments of critical emergency 
 have nerved and invigorated for the conflict those who had long 
 learned to rely upon the skill and courage of their leader. Some 
 of these sayings have passed almost into proverbs ; others have 
 been treasured in family records, or enshrined in the pages of 
 military or even Christian biography. Just such in its character 
 is the admonition contained in the text. In the English version 
 it consists of four words ; in the original it is but one word. 
 
 Tf The words, " Stand fast in the faith, quit you like men," 
 in their original language, stand over the gateway of Selwyn 
 College. 
 
 TI I remember as if it were yesterday the horrid feeling when 
 I knocked at his study door, the door through which I had often 
 been taken when something naughty had been done, too bad for 
 mother to punish for, but I had never felt quite so bad before. 
 My knock was answered by a " Come in." I entered, and father 
 rose and drew me towards the window. Silently we stood there, 
 and then strangest of all strange things, I noticed tears in his eyes. 
 Then, when he put his hands on my shoulders, there was a break 
 in his voice as he uttered the words, never to be forgotten: 
 " Well, my son ! You are the first to leave the home nest, and 
 I have been praying God to give me the right words to say to 
 you, and I think He has answered my prayer. God grant that 
 you may always try to le a man." I looked him in the face, eye 
 to eye, as we had been taught to do, and thought to myself, he 
 has begun. But he said no more. 1 
 
 2. What does St. Paul mean when he exclaims to the Corin- 
 thian converts, " Quit you like men " ? He means, not the conven- 
 tional qualities on which this or that age may look with favour, 
 but the highest qualities of which human nature looked at in 
 its highest light is capable put forth the manhood that is in you. 
 How strange the contrast between the thoughts which that word 
 
 1 George Clarke., 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 49^ 
 
 must have raised in the minds of St. Paul's hearers and those 
 which it would have called up if uttered by one of their civil 
 rulers. How different a thing had manhood become to the 
 Christian from what it was before his conversion. The thought 
 that their life had been lived by the Son of God, the thought that 
 their nature had been worn by Christ, that their bodily form had 
 been sanctified by God's indwelling presence, how overpowering 
 must this have been to the first believers. They could have no 
 doubt, no difficulty in life, when once they had believed. They 
 knew in Him the greatness of their position, the source of their 
 real strength. In following His life they knew wherein true 
 manhood lay ; they knew that it was not in the practice of the 
 conventional virtues of the society around them, not in striking, 
 brilliant exhibitions of their own great powers of mind or body, 
 but in the simple daily life of industry and effort, that the per- 
 fection of human nature was to be found. This fact, this plain 
 unmistakable truth, was stamped upon man's conscience by the 
 human life and death of God's eternal Son. They need not go 
 out of the world to find in solitude, in asceticism, in contempla- 
 tion, their own " highest perfection," as the fanatics even among 
 the Jews maintained. They need not strive laboriously, as the 
 Greeks would teach them, to ascend the lofty heights of abstract 
 thought, where the mind might look calmly down on human 
 things, and rise above them into the region of the Divine. Nay, 
 in order to gain their highest greatness, they need not even 
 struggle with the keen strong weapons of the world's ambition to 
 rise above their fellows, to do great exploits, to win great glory, 
 to conquer and to rule, as they saw their Eoman masters striving 
 incessantly to do. Christ had revealed to His followers the 
 sufficiency, the grandeur of common life; within the sphere of 
 daily duty can the highest individual perfection be found. 
 
 This view of life lies at the bottom of what we call manliness 
 of character. For it implies all those qualities which we most 
 commonly attach to our idea of manliness. A man acting always 
 from such a view is frank and straightforward, for he makes no 
 false pretences and so has nothing to conceal. He is simple 
 because he is too much in earnest to be lost in complexities and 
 misunderstandings. He is fearless, for he is conscious of no aim 
 of which he need be ashamed. He is brave, for whether he gain 
 
 I COR. 32 
 
498 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 or lose in each separate undertaking, in the end he cannot but 
 win, for present failure must at least teach a broader wisdom for 
 the future, and a more perfect sympathy with actual surroundings. 
 He is sound and healthy, for he knows himself too well and deals 
 with himself too honestly to leave any room for what is morbid or 
 affected. He is strong, for he is self-controlled, at any moment 
 ready to act decisively up to what he knows, without thinking 
 that what he does is necessarily on that account the wisest and 
 best course possible. He is enduring, for he can afford to wait, 
 knowing that his aim is his own lasting development, not the 
 production of immediate results, not the glory of present praise 
 and honour. 
 
 TI All right exercise of any human gift, so descended from the 
 Giver of good, depends on the primary formation of the character 
 of true manliness in the youth that is to say, of a majestic, 
 grave, and deliberate strength. How strange the words sound ; 
 how little does it seem possible to conceive of majesty, and 
 gravity, and deliberation in the daily track of modern life. Yet, 
 gentlemen, we need not hope that our work will be majestic if 
 there is no majesty in ourselves. The word " manly " has come 
 to mean practically, among us, a schoolboy's character, not a 
 man's. We are, at our best, thoughtlessly impetuous, fond of 
 adventure and excitement ; curious in knowledge for its novelty, 
 not for its system and results ; faithful and affectionate to those 
 among whom we are by chance cast, but gently and calmly 
 insolent to strangers ; we are stupidly conscientious, and instinc- 
 tively brave, and always ready to cast away the lives we take no 
 pains to make valuable, in causes of which we have never 
 ascertained the justice. 1 
 
 U In Drummond's Life of Charles A. Berry, there is the 
 following reminiscence by Mr. Holderness Gale, an intimate 
 friend of Berry : " One day I had been spending an hour or two 
 with him, and we were leaving the Club together, he to go, I 
 think, to Woodford. Our ways parted at the Club door, and 
 when we reached it, he called to me to wait a minute while he 
 claimed his bag. In those days, a member entering the Club 
 might leave his bag with the hall porter, and this Berry had done. 
 He described his bag as a square black one, with a round handle, 
 and was handed one which was beautifully smooth and shone with 
 unsullied varnish. ' That's not mine/ said Berry ; ' mine is over 
 there/ and he pointed to another bag of the same shape, or rather 
 
 1 Kuskin, The Study of Architecture ( Wwka, xix. 32). 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 499 
 
 which had been of the same shape in its early days. When I 
 saw it, the owner's slippers, and sundry other impedimenta, had 
 destroyed its squareness, and the varnish had given way, here and 
 there, in honourable scars of roughened brown leather. 'I 
 suppose you thought that wasn't respectable enough for a parson,' 
 said Berry, as the attendant gave the bag a dusting. ' Bless you, 
 sir, we never thinks of you as a parson ; we always thinks of you 
 as a man,' was the reply. I never saw Berry more touched than 
 at this spontaneous tribute." l 
 
 f Away back in the Middle Ages was a very beautiful and 
 radiant thing named chivalry a thing partly real and partly 
 ideal, the ideal part of it being just as precious for us as the real 
 part. Now, one great purpose lying at the root of chivalry was 
 that of cultivating a fine and stately type of manhood ; in fact, of 
 breeding up the manliest race of men that had ever trod up and 
 down in the world. And what was their notion of manliness 
 theirs, in that epoch of coarseness, and of animal lusts, and of 
 violent lives? Listen. The finest dream of chivalry was 
 embodied in that superb personage, King Arthur, and in the 
 gorgeous knights who sat with him at the Sound Table. And by 
 what principles were their splendid lives controlled ? Tennyson 
 has told us, in the best English that has been written in our time 
 putting the testimony into the lips of King Arthur himself. 
 
 I was first of all the kings who drew 
 The knighthood-errant of this realm and all 
 The realms together under me, their Head, 
 In that fair Order of the Table Bound, 
 A glorious company, the flower of men, 
 To serve as model for the mighty world, 
 And be the fair beginning of a time. 
 I made them lay their hands in mine and swear 
 To reverence the King, as if he were 
 Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, 
 To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 
 To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 
 To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
 To honour his own word as if his God's, 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds, 
 Until they won her ; for indeed I knew 
 Of no more subtle master under heaven 
 
 1 Charles A. Berry, 274. 
 
500 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 Than is the maiden passion for a maid, 
 Not only to keep down the base in man, 
 But teach high thought, and amiable words, 
 And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 
 And love of truth, and all that makes a man. 
 
 3. Manliness is a great word ; it is a many-sided word ; but in 
 general, we have this feeling about it, when we use it with emphasis 
 that it is an idealizing word. It is a word that will not suffer 
 us to stay down among the small actualities of the manly 
 character as known to us ; but it continually points us up and 
 away from the small actualities towards the grand possibilities of 
 the manly character which we hope may sometime be known to 
 us. The word manliness, perhaps, is greater and richer in noble 
 attributes than was any one real specimen of manliness that we 
 have ever looked upon with these eyes of ours. Nevertheless, 
 when we think of true manliness, we are not content with the 
 discouraging real, we lift ourselves up towards the inspiring ideal ; 
 and we begin to place before our eyes, one by one, all those 
 qualities that we can think of as going to the formation of a 
 noble, strong, splendid, and complete man. The manly man, we 
 say why, that is the ideal man ; that is the man, not as he is, 
 perhaps, but as he ought to be, as he may be, as he will be. 
 
 What are the attributes of this complete man, which St. Paul 
 may be supposed to have had in mind when he exhorted us to act 
 like one? There should be no difficulty in answering this 
 question. The very word which St. Paul used is one the exact 
 meaning of which is still perfectly well known. For our phrase 
 in four words, " Quit you like men," he used a single word, a verb 
 formed from the familiar noun for man. The primary meaning 
 of that noun was simply man as distinct from woman; its 
 secondary meaning was man as a person of mature years, in 
 contrast with a child; and then, for its third and supreme 
 meaning, the word broadened and blossomed into the large 
 conception of man as a being possessed of intelligence, wisdom, 
 moral light and force, and a spiritual nature, in contrast with 
 creatures of inferior order who are devoid of these endowments. 
 So when St. Paul said to the little group of Christians at Corinth, 
 environed by the spiritual perils of that most corrupt pagan city, 
 " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men," he very 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 501 
 
 likely charged that last word with all the ennobling and stimu- 
 lating meanings which in the usage of poets and historians and 
 orators it already had. For long before St. Paul's time the word 
 had been often used, somewhat as he used it, as a word to spur and 
 inspire men to great and worthy and difficult deeds. In Homer 
 and Herodotus and in Xenophon the word comes up again and 
 again, when some great chieftain, at a moment of danger, in the 
 presence of some grand or tremendous duty, just turns round to 
 his followers and tells them to remember that they are men, and 
 to act accordingly. Of course, St. Paul must have charged the 
 word with richer meanings than they did, by as much as his 
 conception of the spiritual range and possibility of man's nature 
 was grander than theirs ; but the basis of his appeal was just the 
 same as theirs. 
 
 In the first place, then, if in any respect a man is expected 
 to have more courage and strength than a woman, let him act 
 as becomes a man. Here the protest is against effeminacy. 
 Secondly, if in any respect a grown man is expected to have 
 more intelligence, wisdom, force, self-control, or fortitude than a 
 mere child, let him act as becomes a man. Here the protest is 
 against puerility. But, unquestionably, the great meaning with 
 which the word is charged, in the Apostle's use of it, is its third 
 and consummate meaning. Men are to act as creatures having 
 reason, conscience, the power of choice, and the measureless 
 possibilities of the immortal life, and not like creatures of mere 
 instinct, impulse, and irresponsibility. Here the protest is 
 against brutishness or animalism, existence unregulated by 
 intelligent and conscientious self-direction. Therefore, taking 
 this as the Apostle's conception of manliness namely, character 
 expressing itself in a life steered by principle let us look at some 
 of those forms of principle by which the manly life will be steered. 
 
 (1) Magnanimity. Magnanimity is the principle of taking 
 the large-minded view of things rather than the small-minded 
 view. It is this principle woven into the texture of any human 
 life which gives to it, however lowly it may be, true elevation 
 and dignity ; which enables its possessor to meet whatever comes 
 with a tranquil and firm spirit ; which raises him above anything 
 so petty as revenge ; which prompts him to disdain injustice and 
 meanness, and leads him to task himself and to sacrifice himself 
 
502 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 for noble ends. Accordingly, whatever in us is small, paltry, 
 narrow, low ; whatever tends to warp and contract us ; whatever 
 is stingy, greedy, miserly, selfish, jealous, morbid, is just so far a 
 diminution of our manliness. And every vocation or method of 
 culture which tends merely to sharpen certain less noble faculties 
 of our nature, such as calculation, shrewdness, cunning, acquisitive- 
 ness, needs to be met by the deliberate cultivation of the faculties 
 which will correct this tendency and broaden our grasp and 
 handling of things. 
 
 ^j " Abraham," says Charles Kingsley, " was a prince in manners 
 and a prince in heart." The Hittites partly divined his secret. 
 His personality was grandly impressive to them. He rose in 
 uncrowned sovereignty above them all, the strongest, noblest, 
 gentlest man ; and they saw that he was a prince of God's own 
 making. He owed his power and charm, not so much to natural 
 endowments as to the transforming and ennobling influence of 
 Divine grace. Great aspirations and ideals created his great 
 character. He kept company with God till he became a partaker 
 of the Divine nature. Beginning as a man of God, he ended as 
 a prince of God. True religion develops the highest kind of 
 manhood. Under its influence a common man becomes princely 
 in soul, unconsciously regnant among his fellow-men, and does 
 the most common things in a noble, gentle, royal spirit. Being 
 to God what the wax is to the seal, he is stamped with the image 
 of God. 
 
 Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 1 
 
 TJ It is news to some people that manliness is a matter of 
 culture rather than of fate. These are the people who confuse 
 manliness with manhood. Their view is that in the great drama 
 of humanity some of us are cast for male parts and some of us 
 for feminine characters ; and since none can determine his own 
 sex, therefore manliness is a matter over which we have no 
 control. They are by no means entirely wrong; and yet they 
 are not right. It is not ours to say whether we shall or shall 
 not be men. It is ours to say whether we shall be manly. For 
 manliness is a matter of quality. There are many kinds of men, 
 and it is only worth while being the best kind. To be the best 
 of anything a man must take himself in hand. He must culture 
 and discipline himself with the help of God. In other words, he 
 must set his will towards manliness. He must know what he 
 
 1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 180. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 503 
 
 wants, he must know how to get it ; he must count as nothing 
 the pains of progress. The fact is that manhood is only potential 
 manliness. Yet where there is manhood there is always the 
 possibility of manliness. Temperament is bias, but not destiny. 
 Will and vision will always open a road from manhood to 
 manliness. 1 
 
 (2) Sincerity. Another principle by which the manly life is 
 steered is sincerity, sometimes described as ingenuousness, open- 
 ness of heart, frankness, fairness, straightforwardness, honesty of 
 nature through and through. The manly man will surely be 
 controlled by this principle. The manly man is not double- 
 tongued, or a hypocrite, or a trickster. The manly man is the 
 upright man, the straightforward man, or, to use a new but most 
 expressive phrase, he is the square man. When we hear of a 
 piece of brilliant and successful sharp practice in politics, in law, 
 in stock speculation, is it not our first tendency rather to smile 
 admiringly over the expert achievement than to brood seriously 
 over a certain ignoble something in it which taints the whole 
 glittering transaction and the person who executes it ? For there 
 is nothing manly about trick-playing. How refreshing it is to 
 see a man who never has an object of which he need be ashamed, 
 and who marches towards his object without dodging, indirection, 
 or stealth ! 
 
 ^[ No meanness, hypocrisy, or dishonesty, whether on the part 
 of rich or poor, could escape the rigorous censure of " that terrible 
 Thoreau," as his acquaintances called him ; nor would he waste 
 on thriftless applicants one cent of the money which he had 
 earned by his own conscientious labours. He maintained sincerity 
 to be the chief of all virtues. "The old mythology," 'he wrote, 
 " is incomplete without a god or a goddess of sincerity, on whose 
 altars we might offer up all the products of our farms, our work- 
 shops, and our studies. This is the only panacea." 2 
 
 Tf Trevelyan speaks of " that ingrained sincerity of character " 
 for the sake of which his party would have followed Lord Althorp 
 to the death. 3 
 
 Tf During Mr. Gladstone's last tenure of office as Prime 
 Minister a clergyman, whose only opportunity of knowing Mr. 
 Gladstone had been through the not too trustworthy descriptions 
 
 1 J. G. Stevenson, in Youth and Life, 1. 
 
 2 H. S. Salt, Henry David Thoreau, 122. 
 8 Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 260. 
 
504 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 of hostile critics, happened to say in the presence of Dean 
 Church that he believed Mr. Gladstone was a thoroughly insincere 
 man. The Dean was sitting in his chair when the remark was 
 made, but he instantly rose, his face even paler than it usually 
 was, and he said, evidently with the strongest suppression of 
 personal feeling : " Insincere ! Sir, I tell you that to my knowledge 
 Mr. Gladstone goes from communion with God to the great affairs 
 of State." It was high testimony to be given to any man, but 
 highest of all when we remember who gave it. 1 
 
 This is Love's nobility, 
 Not to scatter bread and gold, 
 Goods and raiment bought and sold; 
 But to hold fast his simple sense, 
 And speak the speech of innocence, 
 And with hand, and body, and blood, 
 To make his bosom-counsel good. 
 For he that feeds men serveth few; 
 He serves all who dares be true. 2 
 
 (3) Self-control. Manliness is self-mastery. Any fool, the 
 weakest, dullest, paltriest that ever was, can make a drunkard or 
 a debauchee. There is no human clay so vile, no sludge and 
 scum of humanity so despicable, but out of it you may make an 
 effeminate corrupter or lying schemer; but it takes God's own 
 gold to make a man. No lacquer work, no tinsel suffices for the 
 cherubim of the sanctuary. They must be hammered out of pure 
 gold, seven times purified in the fire. From whom, it has been 
 asked, does the inspiration descend on us? Is it not from the 
 central figures of the great tragedies of humanity; from the 
 creators of law, from the avengers of wrong, from the martyrs 
 of right, from the missionaries of mercy, from the Pass of 
 Thermopylae, from the self-dedication of the Decii, from the 
 fires of Smithfield, from the waters of the Solway, yea ! from the 
 cross of Calvary ? And he who will not take up that cross cannot 
 be a true man ; he cannot be Christ's disciple. 
 
 Every man finds in himself two sets of tendencies one coarse, 
 the other fine ; the one gross and animal, the other spiritual and 
 noble; one set allying him to the beasts that perish, the other 
 allying him to the angels of God and to God Himself. Now, 
 every man's life is going to be habitually controlled by one or 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Dean Church, 304. 2 Emerson. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 505 
 
 the other of these sets of tendencies, or he is going to vacillate 
 in a helpless, rudderless way between the two. But what will 
 the manly man do about it? This he will do. He will not 
 vacillate; he will not drift rudderless, water-logged, helpless. 
 No ; he will decide firmly between these two sets of tendencies ; 
 he will make his choice, and he will choose to have his life 
 habitually controlled by his finer instincts rather than by his 
 coarser ones ; he will elect as his master tendencies those which 
 are pure and ennobling rather than those which are low and 
 degrading; he will resolve that within the domain of his 
 personality the soul shall be king, not the body ; that conscience 
 and intelligence shall rule, and not the mob of his animal lusts 
 and passions. With him the decision simply comes to this : the 
 body shall obey the soul, the soul shall not be degraded to the 
 task of obeying the body. 
 
 T| If one is alive, there will be much in him which needs 
 control, and yet is not going to submit without a struggle. It 
 takes a practised hand to manage a pair of high-spirited horses 
 so that they will not run away ; and he would be a phenomenal 
 charioteer who could drive wild beasts tandem and keep them 
 under the rein together. This is the kind of task which ardent 
 natures have to face. As compared with some primitive peoples, 
 we have lost in frankness and gained in outward decorum, 
 because we hide objectionable eccentricities from public view. 
 But the human heart is still a curious menagerie. Though the 
 animals may be pretty well tamed in the cage of civilization, it 
 does not follow that their rougher instincts are destroyed. A 
 good many different selves often seem to be included in the self. 
 How shall we bind them into a real unity ? 
 
 When shall we lay 
 
 The ghost of the brute that is walking and haunting us yet 
 and be free? 
 
 This is the great problem of life. 1 
 
 (4) Courage. Another principle by which the manly life is 
 steered is courage. As to this thing called courage, people some- 
 times distinguish between physical courage and moral courage. 
 If there be such a thing as physical courage apart from moral 
 courage, we have not very frequent use for it in civilized life. 
 1 W. T. Herridge, The OrUt of Life, 65. 
 
506 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 Against physical danger, as proceeding from the violence of 
 others, society protects us ; we seldom need to be at the trouble 
 of protecting ourselves. Physical courage is the virtue of bar- 
 barism ; the virtue of civilization is moral courage. The courage 
 most needed in civilized society, at almost every hour of our lives, 
 is the courage of opinion; the courage of our faiths and our 
 convictions. 
 
 TJ Once, in some American city, there was held a densely 
 crowded mass-meeting of slave-holders. Shouts of applause and 
 enthusiasm marked the words of these champions of bondage, 
 and they thundered forth the plausible sophisms of perverted 
 Scriptures which defended their covenants with death. And one 
 of the orators exclaimed, in the face of that menacing and raging 
 meeting: "I should like to see an Abolitionist now; I should 
 like to see an Abolitionist show his face here." Then a short 
 figure was seen thrusting its way to the front, and, standing up 
 before these raging defenders of wickedness alone, Theodore 
 Parker shouted out to the raging multitude, " I am an Abolition- 
 ist!" It required nobler courage to do that than to fight a 
 battle. 1 
 
 Tf I say it deliberately, from long observation, that I regard 
 cowardice as a capital defect in a young man. I have really more 
 hopes of a fool than of a coward. I am never sure that a coward 
 will tell the truth. I tremble at every temptation that he en- 
 counters, lest he may succumb. I fear for every opposition that 
 he meets, lest he may be carried away with it. 2 
 
 TI I remember a remarkable conversion that occurred many 
 years ago, when a work of grace was beginning in the parish over 
 which my dear father was pastor. It happened that at that time 
 there was a little band of men who were " great chums," and in 
 a good position in society, as things went in the village; they 
 were, in fact, regarded as influential men in the parish. One 
 evening, they were all together at an hotel in the neighbouring 
 town of Penzance, and, as men do on such occasions, they were 
 drinking, and talking all kinds of nonsense, and not infrequently 
 all kinds of profanity ! One happened to say, " I wonder what 
 the people are doing just now over at Pendeen." Another replied, 
 "I suppose they are all getting converted as fast as possible." 
 
 " Well," said one to a third, " I say, Captain B , I will tell you 
 
 what it is. When I see you converted, I will begin to think 
 there is something in it," and there was a great roar of laughter 
 
 1 Dean Farrar. 2 R. B. Fairbairn, College Sermons, 67. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 507 
 
 from the whole of the company at the thought of Captain B 's 
 
 conversion. The man thus referred to was, I may say, a mine 
 agent, occupying a very influential position, and a large employer 
 of labour. As the laughter died away, he rose from his seat. His 
 companions did not notice how pale was his cheek. One thought 
 only had flashed across his mind, when he heard his friend's 
 remark, and the roar of laughter which it provoked. It was this 
 " Is my salvation so utterly hopeless that these worldly men can 
 afford to regard me as they do ? Do my companions think me 
 altogether lost for time and eternity ? He started up and 
 darted out of the room. The company thought they had offended 
 him. Another moment, and he was in the hotel-yard, and crying 
 to the ostler, " Saddle my horse ! " He rode to his home as fast 
 as he could ride. His wife could not understand what was wrong 
 with him: he seemed so agitated. He took no food; but im- 
 mediately set out for the place at which our meetings were being 
 held. He was the last man we expected to see there. He came 
 boldly forward and took his seat in front of the congregation, full 
 in view of many whom he was employing. He had overcome his 
 moral cowardice. My dear father gave out those lines of a well- 
 known hymn of Wesley's 
 
 Is here a soul that knows Thee not, 
 
 Nor feels his want of Thee ? 
 A stranger to the blood which bought 
 
 His pardon on the tree ? 
 Convince him now of unbelief, 
 
 His desperate state explain. 
 
 And, as my father uttered these last words " His desperate state 
 explain!" we heard a cry. This man was prostrated on his 
 knees, and was sending up the thrilling prayer, before the eyes 
 and ears of all "God be merciful to me a sinner." I need 
 hardly tell you that man went home rejoicing. But I may add 
 that his conversion moved the whole neighbourhood, and was the 
 commencement of the most remarkable work of God's grace that 
 has ever occurred in those parts. Now, I call that manly, 
 " quitting oneself like a man." I know he could not have done 
 it if the Holy Spirit had not been striving within him. But then 
 we often strive the other way ; God calls, and we won't answer. 
 God draws, and we won't yield ; and the result is our hearts 
 become like adamant, harder than flint. 1 
 
 K " I asked Kang Yu Wei, who has studied the Gospels 
 profoundly, what seemed to him the most striking quality in Jesus. 
 
 1 Canon Hay Aitken. 
 
508 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 He answered, somewhat to my surprise, that what appealed to 
 him most, in the personality of Jesus, was His courage." l 
 
 And who the bravest of the brave; 
 
 The bravest hero ever born? 
 'Twas one who dared a felon's grave, 
 
 Who dared to breathe the scorn of scorn. 
 Nay, more than this: when sword was drawn, 
 
 And vengeance waited for His word, 
 He looked with pitying eyes upon 
 
 The scene, and said, "Put up thy sword." 
 God! could man be found to-day 
 As brave to do, as brave to say? 
 
 "Put up thy sword into its sheath," 
 
 Put up thy sword, put up thy sword! 
 By Kedron's brook thus spoke beneath 
 
 The olive-trees our valiant Lord, 
 Spoke calm and kinglike. Sword and stave 
 
 And torch and stormy men of death 
 Made clamour. Yet He spake not save 
 
 With loving word and patient breath 
 The peaceful olive boughs beneath, 
 
 "Put up thy sword within its sheath." 
 
 IV. 
 
 BE STRONG. 
 
 It would seem, at least at first sight, as if only an 
 artificial distinction could be drawn between those two injunc- 
 tions, "Quit you like men," "Be strong." But, looking more 
 closely into the meaning of the words, we find that, not only 
 are they not synonymous, but they do not even overlap. The 
 Greek word translated " Quit you like men," a word which occurs 
 nowhere else in the New Testament, has an obvious and definite 
 meaning. It is an appeal to self-respect, and a call to us to show 
 forth our moral strength. The word translated " Be strong," on 
 the other hand, in the only three other passages in which it is 
 used, definitely refers to a different kind of strength. Twice it 
 is used of our Lord Himself growing strong in spirit, and once 
 it is used by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians, in the 
 
 1 Hibbert Journal, October 1908, p. 22. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 509 
 
 phrase, " Strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner 
 man." The word thus becomes almost synonymous with another 
 favourite word of St. Paul's, constantly translated by the English 
 " strengthened," or " made strong," and always with reference to 
 Divine strength. " Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his 
 might." "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." It 
 refers definitely to that strength which made St. Paul himself 
 strong for his work, even as spiritual heroes in all ages out of 
 weakness have been made strong. 
 
 1. Let us, then, live in no doubt of what is strength and what 
 is weakness. It is strength to will and to do ; it is weakness to 
 desire and not to do ; to wish and not to will ; to wish to break 
 a habit and still to live in it ; to wish to fix the thoughts and 
 let them wander ; to wish for the command of a faculty and to 
 acquire no efficient use of it. And strength is not the vehement 
 impulse of one part of us, but the final consent of all that is in 
 us. It is not in the tenderness of a yielding man; nor in the 
 resignation of a cold one ; nor in the prudence of a selfish man ; 
 nor in the open-handedness of a spendthrift. The tender must 
 be firm ; the resigned, loving ; the prudent, generous ; the charit- 
 able, self-denying. It was seen in Christ when the morning of 
 His greatest glory dawned upon Him watching in trembling and 
 in prayer in His humility testing His weakness, and collecting 
 His strength in God. Kemember what He said to the disciples, 
 who all failed Him in that great crisis, not because their hearts 
 were evil, but simply because their wills were feeble: "What, 
 could ye not watch with me one hour ? Watch and pray, that 
 ye enter not into temptation : the spirit indeed is willing, but the 
 flesh is weak." 
 
 "Quit you like men, be strong." Yes, strength will come: 
 
 Who weeps at night will fight as well to-morrow; 
 
 'Tis good to stand a-wrestling with the world; 
 
 He loses much who knows not care nor sorrow; 
 
 'Tis good all day to keep the foe abreast, 
 
 'Tis good at night to fall on dreamless rest. 
 
 2. " Be strong." The original means rather " Become strong." 
 What is the use of telling men to " le strong " ? It is a waste of 
 words, in nine eases out of ten, to say to a weak man, " Pluck 
 
5io THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 up your courage, and show strength." But is it so vain to tell 
 a poor, weak creature like me to become strong, when you can 
 point me to the source of all strength, in that spirit " of power 
 and of love and of a sound mind " ? We have only to take our 
 weakness there to have it stiffened jlnto strength ; as people put 
 bits of wood into what are called "petrifying wells," which 
 infiltrate into them mineral particles, which do not turn the wood 
 into stone, but make the wood as strong as stone. So my man- 
 hood, with all its weakness, may have filtered into it Divine 
 strength, which will brace me for all needful duty, and make me 
 more than conqueror through Him that loved me. Then, it is 
 not mockery and cruelty, vanity and surplusage, to preach, " Quit 
 you like men; be strong, and be a man"; because if we will 
 observe the plain and not hard conditions, strength will come 
 to us according to our day, in fulfilment of the great promises : 
 " My grace is sufficient for thee," and " my strength is made 
 perfect in weakness." 
 
 What is that Divine strength which is to transform our 
 natural and human strength ? In one word, it is " Christ in us," 
 the same Divine power which secretly fought in and with the 
 noblest efforts of humanity outside the Jewish and the Christian 
 Church. Only now its nature is revealed ; more than that, there 
 is revealed to us the means by which that Divine strength may 
 be gained the channels of communication have been thrown 
 open to us. The end and aim of the religious life has been made 
 clear likeness to God, Christ formed in us, ourselves trans- 
 formed, our lower self subdued, our higher self taken into God. 
 "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." "In all these 
 things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." 
 
 ^ It is sometimes said, You tell us to be manly, and yet you 
 bid us subject ourselves to a higher power working in us. 
 Keligious people are so weak. They have no self-reliance. They 
 are but feeble creatures, after all, with all their boasted strength. 
 How can you expect men to set before themselves, as an end, 
 what, disguise it as you will, is self-surrender, which means re- 
 nouncing all that we admire as manly in us ? I will answer by 
 some negative instances sufficient, at all events, to prove that 
 surrendering one's self to the will of God, resting on His strength, 
 is a source not of weakness but of power. Was St. Paul feeble 
 and nerveless because his will was surrendered to the will of 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 511 
 
 Christ ? Did he speak less powerfully, or run less certainly, or 
 fight as "one that beateth the air," because he had learned to 
 say, " Not I, but Christ in me " ? Are enthusiasts of all ages and 
 all creeds, fanatics, if you will, wanting in force and energy, be- 
 cause they believe themselves to be only passive instruments in 
 the hands of some mightier power ? x 
 
 3. Our strength must be of the whole man. Strength of 
 character is not to be obtained through the intellect or through 
 the feelings alone. Either of these exclusively followed can at 
 the best only give principles of conduct and action which satisfy 
 the individual, and the practical result of such a purely individual 
 possession can only be bigotry, prejudice, narrowness or fanati- 
 cism, not real strength. 
 
 That man is unmanly, for he falls far short of man's perfec- 
 tion, who exults only in his bodily strength, and wastes in useless, 
 idle, often in cruel and degrading pursuits, time and vigour that 
 are due to society, due to his fellow-men, due to himself. Equally, 
 nay, more, does he fall short, who as a narrow-minded pedant 
 looks out upon man's varied and ever-varying life, and measures 
 human nature by his own scanty measure, and, as it seethes and 
 tosses at his feet, applies to it his dull formula and thinks he has 
 thereby solved its meaning and hushed its voice for ever. Un- 
 manly too, deeply unmanly is he who, with a morbid sensitive- 
 ness that he cannot assuage, is always peering into himself and 
 tenderly nursing his own feelings, and greedily clamouring for 
 the gratification of his own emotions, who cannot face life on 
 equal terms with others, but is constantly brooding over his 
 shocked self-respect, or injured self-love, or ill-requited affection ; 
 who is always demanding from life as a gift that happiness which 
 is accorded only as the prize of effort, and is wringing his hands 
 in sulky despair that he is after all treated even as other men 
 are, though he thinks himself much more exquisitely sensitive 
 than they. 
 
 True strength of character is not attained by great exertions, 
 but by unity of life. Nothing is more common than great force 
 in some one direction in some one inclination, passion, or 
 faculty ; nothing is more rare than a strong man, if by the man 
 you mean the whole man, the symmetry of our entire being, 
 1 A. L. Moore, Some Aspects of Sin, 49. 
 
512 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 the frame of our life complete through that which every joint 
 supplieth. The men whom the world takes for strong are for 
 the most part only one-sided just as to most minds the half of 
 a truth is far more telling than the whole of it, and to modify 
 the impression by giving the other half will seem to round it off 
 to comparative tameness. Vehement language coming out of 
 half knowledge and a blind impulse seems fraught with more 
 vigour than full, just, discriminating speech; and a man who 
 sees every side of a subject will appear more feeble than the man 
 who, because he sees but one side of it, can speak impetuously 
 and strike with unqualified force. How easy would it be to be 
 strong in some one direction or proclivity of our nature, or in 
 the vigorous prosecution of single interests ! How easy, for 
 instance, to be strong in the conduct of worldly business, if we 
 might settle down our whole powers upon it, and had never to 
 lift our soul from its pursuit! How difficult is it to combine 
 this with every other sentiment that becomes a man to infuse 
 into this vigour of business the fervent spirit serving God, so 
 that, whilst the hand of diligence maketh rich, the heart and its 
 treasures have no earthliness in them ! How easy might it be 
 to be strong in religion, in the devotion of our souls to holiness 
 and truth, if duty centred in the private thoughts and could be 
 carried on in solitude ; if it required no struggle with conflicting 
 things, no trained wisdom to discern our way amid a thousand 
 complications ; if asceticism were strength ; if the anchorite might 
 go to his cell, and had finished his Christian work when prayers, 
 aspirations, and unearthly desires had floated in ghostly array 
 through the uninterrupted meditations of his spirit! All that 
 is easy to any one who chooses to give himself to it. But how 
 difficult is it to be strong in a real devotedness to goodness, 
 purity, and truth, amid the contradiction of circumstance, and 
 the opposing ways of men; to shape the forms of life after 
 models in the soul ; to transfer unmutilated our own sentiments 
 into our own demeanour ; to live with men as they are and part 
 with no ideal; to lose no vision, disturb no fountain of peace; 
 to be strong in Christ's interpretation of strength ; a physician 
 among the sick ; whole among the unsound ; spiritual among the 
 worldly; living with God in the midst of crowds; full of love 
 and thought for the world when alone with God 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 513 
 
 (1) Strength of body. There is not, perhaps, much tendency 
 in the present day to return to that utter despising of our body 
 which was so marked a characteristic of some schools of mediaeval 
 asceticism. It is enough therefore to observe that the only word 
 in the New Testament which could seem to give countenance to 
 such a thought is that expression, " our vile body," which is a 
 painful and unfortunate mistranslation of the Greek. The word 
 is really, " this body of our humiliation," as contrasted with that 
 glorified body in which we shall exist when the Church militant 
 is past, and we join the completed Church triumphant in heaven. 
 Purity and (where God gives health) strength of body seemed 
 ever to St. Paul one ingredient in his estimate of true manliness. 
 What can exceed the fervour of that prayer that "your whole 
 spirit and soul and lody be preserved blameless unto the coming 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ " ? 
 
 (2) Strength of mind. Be strong also in soul, or intellect; 
 for in this sense, and not in our more modern and less accurate 
 sense, does St. Paul use this word " soul," distinguishing it from 
 our "spirit." "Be not children in understanding," says the 
 Apostle, "but in understanding be men." If the religion of 
 Christ teaches us to be brave in body, so also it teaches us to 
 be brave and strong in intellect. 
 
 (3) Strength of spirit. It is through the higher spiritual life 
 that God acts upon the other parts of man's nature ; and it is by 
 that spiritual power that the whole man will be purified and 
 exalted. The influence of the spirit of the man, acted on and 
 illuminated by the Holy Spirit of God, will raise him to the true 
 dignity of manhood in all his nature. There is nothing " manly " 
 quite the contrary in being irreligious or indifferent. If 
 there be one word of truth in all the Gospel story of what 
 Christ has done for us, surely it is the meanest, most unmanly 
 thing on earth to treat that heroic self-sacrifice with active scorn, 
 or with still more wounding chilling indifference. 
 
 U Like many others, I imagined a man was some one who 
 would shine in all athletic games, and make for himself a body 
 that should be so strong that people would point to him and 
 say : " That's .a man." Therefore when a sufficient measure of 
 success came to me, in a financial way, I gave myself to athletics. 
 I longed for the day when my name should be quoted in the 
 paper as a successful athlete. How I worked at it, and how hard 
 i COR. 33 
 
5i4 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 I trained ! At last a measure of success came my way, and with 
 the glamour of the laurel wreath upon my brow, I cut the account 
 out of the paper and sent it home. I thought, now my father 
 and mother will know that their son is a man ! How hungrily 
 I waited for the answering letter of congratulation, and with 
 what eagerness I broke the seal when at last it came ! Imagine 
 my chagrin when I read: "Your mother and I are very glad 
 that you have attained to such success as an athlete. We are 
 very proud of you, but remember that if you were to become 
 the finest athlete that ever lived, you would only be a Third 
 of a Man." 
 
 There was nothing for it but for me at once to tackle my 
 brain, whilst keeping up my athletics. From that moment I 
 began to study, in fact almost to go to school again. I devoured 
 books, I studied deep subjects, I tried to become an intellectual 
 person. At last I read a paper before some society, which was 
 reported in one of the papers, with some flattering criticisms, 
 which were sent home. Another letter came in which my father 
 said : " Your mother and I are much pleased that you are letting 
 our prayers be answered, and that you are looking after your 
 mind as well as your body. Eemember, however, that supposing 
 you become physically perfect, and so educate yourself that you 
 shall have a well-stored and well-equipped brain, you will then 
 only be Two- Thirds of a Man" l 
 
 V. 
 
 BE TENDER. 
 " Let all that ye do be done in love." 
 
 1. There is a singular contrast between the first four of these 
 exhortations and the last. The former ring sharp and short like 
 pistol-shots; the last is of gentler mould. The former sound 
 like the word of command shouted by an officer along the 
 ranks; and there is a military metaphor running all through 
 them. The foe threatens to advance; let the guards keep their 
 eyes open. He comes nearer ; prepare for the charge, stand firm 
 in your ranks. The battle is joined ; " Quit you like men "- 
 strike a man's stroke " be strong." And then all the apparatus 
 of warfare is put away out of sight, and the captain's word of 
 command is softened into the Christian teacher's exhortation: 
 
 1 G. Clarke, True Manhood, Womanhood, 10. 
 
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 515 
 
 " Let all that you do be done in love." For love is better than 
 fighting, and is stronger than swords. 
 
 2. And yet, although there is a contrast here, there is also a 
 sequence and connection. No doubt these exhortations, which 
 are St. Paul's last word to that Corinthian Church on which he 
 had lavished in turn the treasures of his manifold eloquence, 
 indignation, argumentation, and tenderness, reflected the deficiencies 
 of the people to whom he was speaking. They were schismatic 
 and factious to the very core, and so they needed the exhortation 
 to be left last in their ears, as it were, that everything should be 
 done in love. They were ill-grounded in regard to the very 
 fundamental doctrines of the faith, as all St. Paul's argumentation 
 about the resurrection proves, and so they needed to be bidden 
 to "stand fast in the faith." Their slothful carelessness as to 
 the discipline of the Christian life, and their consequent feeble- 
 ness of grasp of the Christian verities, made them loose-braced 
 and weak in all respects, and incapacitated them for vigorous 
 warfare. 
 
 U An example of a splendid Christian manhood is furnished 
 by the career of Sir Titus Salt. It was my privilege recently to 
 visit Saltaire, near Bradford, the model village of which he was 
 the founder, and to see there in some measure how much a single 
 well-spent life may do in brightening the lot of others. The 
 great mill, which is built in the Italian style, the dwellings for 
 the work-people, the almshouses, the schools, the church, the 
 public park, and other facilities for the culture and the elevation 
 of the people, are proofs of a large intelligence and a loving heart. 
 He came to his grave in 1876 at the age of seventy-three; but 
 his memory lives as that of one whose motto was " Love and 
 Serve." l 
 
 ^f A story is told of Marston Moor for which there is as good 
 evidence as for many things that men believe. A Lancashire 
 squire of ancient line was killed fighting for the king. His wife 
 came upon the field the next morning to search for him. They 
 were stripping and burying the slain. A general officer asked 
 her what she was about, and she told him her melancholy tale. 
 He listened to her with great tenderness, and earnestly besought 
 her to leave the horrid scene. She complied, and calling for a 
 trooper, he set her upon the horse. On her way she inquired 
 
 1 R. S. Duff, Pleasant Places 119. 
 
516 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 
 
 the name of the officer, and learned that he was Lieutenant- 
 General Cromwell. 1 
 
 ^f I've noticed it often among my own people around Snow- 
 field, that the strong, skilful men are often the gentlest to the 
 women and children; and it's pretty to see 'em carrying the 
 little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And 
 the babies always seem to like the strong arm best. 2 
 
 TJ Burne- Jones soon caught Buskin's enthusiasm for Luini, 
 and some years later advised a friend who was travelling in Italy 
 to " hunt him out everywhere. Never were any faces so perfect ; 
 for they are perfect like Greek ones, and have fourteen hundred 
 years of tenderness and pity added." 3 
 
 1 J. Morley, Oliver Cromwell, 154. 
 
 2 Dinah Morris, in Adam Bede. 
 
 8 Memorials of Edward Burne- Jones, i. 248. 
 
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