/ 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California 
 
 Y.M.O.A.OF y. 
 
 Accession J- 01 68^ q^5 
 
 GEOR.GE :WELLS : ARMES 
 MEMORIAL LIBRARY + + + 
 STiLE5 HALL BE RKELEY 
 
THE HOME LIFE 
 
 IN THE LIGHT OF ITS DIVINE 
 IDEA. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES BALD WIN BEOWI^, B. A., 
 
 MTNISTER OF CLATLANDS CHAPEL, OLAPHAM BOAB, LONDON, 
 
 ATJTHOE OP 
 ' THE DITINE LIFE IN MAN," " THE SOUL'S EXODUS AKD PILGEIMAGE," ETC. 
 
 «^ • le 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
 186T. 
 

TO THE MEMORY 
 OF THE BELOYED AND HONOUEED TEAOHEB, 
 
 A. J. SCOTT, A. M., 
 
 •WHOSE WHOLE LIFE 
 
 WAS A WITNESS TO THE TEUTH WHICH I HAVE HEEE 
 
 ENDEAYOIJEED TO SET FOETH, 
 
 AND WHO FELL ASLEEP 
 
 WHILE THESE PAGES WEEE PASSING THEOXTGH THE PEESS, 
 
 I INSOEIBE THEM, 
 
 WITH THAT EEYEEENT LOYE 
 
 WHIOH IS ONLY MADE IMMOETAL 
 
 BY DEATH. 
 
 101682 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I sPEiw some days last autumii at a large old 
 mansion in tlie north of England, where a troop 
 of bright young girls are being trained to a wise 
 and noble womanhood. It was while watching 
 their happy and beautiful home life, and thinking 
 what might grow out of their culture in the 
 homes in which they may one day rule, that I 
 formed the plan of instruction for my own con- 
 gregation during the winter months, the result of 
 which this book contains. At first it was my 
 purpose to publish some of these discourses sep- 
 arately, and in a slighter form; but the subject 
 grew on my hands as I thought it out, to a more 
 formal completeness than I at first intended ; and 
 I have gladly yielded to many very pressing re- 
 
vi Preface, 
 
 * 
 
 quests, from those whose judgment I respect^ that 
 I would publish them in this more complete and 
 permanent form. 
 
 My aim has been, as my readers will discover, 
 to study the closest relations, and the most sacred 
 duties of life, in the light of Him whose Incarna- 
 tion reveals the principle of their closeness and 
 sacredness. In this, and in all regions of thought, 
 I desire increasingly to get as near to ^is Life as 
 possible; being convinced that the root of the 
 true "Eirenicon" in home life, church life, and 
 state life, lies here. If by these pages I can help 
 any to understand even a little more clearly, and 
 to feel even a little more deeply, how sacred these 
 relationships and duties are in the Lord, it will 
 be a source of great thankfulness to me. The re- 
 newal of homes must precede all other renewals in 
 wider spheres, for which we pray. May God 
 hasten it in our times ! 
 
 JAMES BALDWIN BKOWK 
 
 10, The Crescent, Clapham Common, 
 A^pril 17, 1866. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THEY TWO SHALL BE ONE, 1 
 
 "So God created man in Ills own image: -in the image of God 
 created he him ; male and female created ho them." — Gen. 
 i.27. 
 
 II. 
 
 THESE LITTLE ONES, 29 
 
 "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones." — 
 Matt, xviii. 10. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE JUST MASTER, 57 
 
 "Masters, give nnto your servants that which is just and equal ; 
 knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." — Gol. iv. 1. 
 
 lY. 
 
 THE FAITHFUL SERVANT, 92 
 
 " Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh ; 
 not with eye-service, as men-pleasers ; but in singleness of 
 heart, fearing God : and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as 
 to the Lord, and not unto men."— Col. lii. 22, 23. 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 EDUCATION, 119 
 
 " Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." 
 
 Eph. vt 4. 
 
 yi. 
 
 THE KURTUEB OP THE LOBD, 149 
 
 " Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."— 
 Eph. vi. 4. 
 
 VII. 
 
 EECEEATION, 179 
 
 " To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose 
 
 imder the heaven. A time to laugh and a time to 
 
 dance."— EocLES. ilL 1-1 
 
 YIII. 
 
 GETTING OUT INTO LIFE, 214 
 
 "And Isaac sent away Jacob." — Gen. xxviii. 5. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE FAMILY MINISTEY, 246 
 
 "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me ; and when the eye 
 saw me, it gave witness to me : because I delivered the poor 
 that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help 
 him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came 
 upon me : and I cansed the widow's heart to sing for joy. I 
 put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was 
 as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet 
 was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause 
 which I knew not I searched out." — Job xxix. 11-16. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE GOLDEN AUTUMN, 274 
 
 "So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his begin- 
 ning." — Job xlii. 12. 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE WHOLE FAMILY, 801 
 
 " The whole family."— Eph. iii. 15. 
 
UNP/ERvSiry 
 
 &-?F0f-i^4\^ 
 
 THEY TWO SHALL BE OITO. 
 
 " So God created man in his own image : in the image of 
 God created he him ; male and female created he themP 
 —Gen. i. 2T. 
 
 The substance of the world is formed by the 
 combination, in various modes and under various 
 forces, of very simple elements, the essential na- 
 ture of which escapes our sight. There is a cer- 
 tain rudimental cell in all organic tissues, which, 
 modiiied and multiplied, builds up the structure 
 in very fearful and wonderful ways. But this cell 
 itself is complex, it has an interior life, and 
 comprehends diverse elements within its unity. 
 These elements can in a measure be discriminated, 
 but the principle of the life remains a mystery 
 still. The keenest observation can detect no dif- 
 ference between the cell which will grow into a 
 pine, for instance, and the cell which will grow 
 into an oak. A great chemist, who died untimely 
 1 
 
2 The Home Life. 
 
 some years ago — a man wlio, like Goetlie, brouglit 
 a poet's eye to bear on the structure of things — 
 propounded the idea, which may come to be es- 
 tablished as truth some day, that the ultimate 
 atoms of all the substances with which we are fa- 
 miliar in the material creation are really minute 
 bodies, as complex and wonderful in their way as 
 the universe itself — ^being formed by the arrange- 
 ment, in various modes, of particles of the one 
 simple elemental substance, which God called into 
 existence by His fiat, and out of which He made 
 the worlds.* Perhaps the poet had a vision of 
 this when he spake to us of 
 
 " One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-off divine event. 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 Be this as it may, the rudimental element of 
 human, society is complex : the family is the cell- 
 germ out of which it grows. Human society is a 
 structm-e which is built up of homes rather than 
 of individuals ; that is, of beings in relation, with 
 sacred duties springing out of that relation, which 
 determine the form and the direction of their ac- 
 tion upon each other, both in the narrow circle of 
 
 * Lectures on the Atomic Theory, &c., by the late Dr. Sam- 
 uel Brown of Edinburgh. 
 
They Two Shall he One. 3 
 
 tlie home, and in the wider theatre of social and 
 political life. 
 
 Perhaps we nowhere get so close an observa- 
 tion of these simple elemental cells out of which 
 nations grow, as in the solemn social covenant 
 into which the band of Pilgrim Fathers entered 
 before they set their foot on the shore of the New 
 World : — " In the name of God. Amen. We, 
 whose names are underwritten, the lojal subjects 
 of our dread sovereign King James, having un- 
 dertaken, for the glory of God and advancement 
 of the Christian faith, and honour of our king 
 and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in 
 the northern parts of Yirginia, do by these pres- 
 ents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of 
 God and of one another, covenant and combine 
 om-selves together into a civil body politic, for our 
 better ordering and preservation, and furtherance 
 of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to 
 enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal 
 laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, 
 from time to time, as shall be thought most con- 
 venient for the general good of the colony. Unto 
 which we promise all due submission and obe- 
 dience." 
 
 It would be interesting to trace this exodus of 
 
4 The Home Life. 
 
 the Pilgrim Fathers to its origin, and to show 
 that concern for the purity and i)ietj of their 
 homes was the main motive which drove these 
 men forth from their resting-place in Holland, 
 and set them there, a band of homeless exiles, on 
 the shores of the ISTew "World. Forty-one men' 
 set their hands to that social contract; and the 
 Christian society thus fashioned has grown into 
 the ITew England States, and has given both force 
 and form to the development of the great repub- 
 lic of America. But those men were not mere 
 monads. They were husbands, fathers, and broth- 
 ers ; and they acted for those whom God had made 
 one with them, or would make one with them. 
 Each carried his associated human spirits with 
 him in his action and undertaking, and each con- 
 templated the establishment of a secure and hon- 
 ourable home life as the essential condition of the 
 growth of a secure and prosperous state. It is 
 just as impossible to get at the naked human unit 
 — a man disassociated from his fellows, having no 
 duties and no claims — as it is to get at the orig- 
 inal elemental substance • out of which God made 
 the worlds. " God created man in his own im- 
 age : in the image of God created he him / male 
 and female created he themP Man never was 
 
The\j Two Shall le One. 6 
 
 alone ; man was never intended to be alone ; man 
 never can be alone. The man who aims at this 
 isolation — who disclaims all the duties and respon- 
 sibilities which arise out of his natural relations, 
 who claims the right to think only of himself, 
 and to care and act only for himself — the apostle 
 strikes off from the great human trunk, with the 
 trenchant axe-stroke : " He hath denied the faith : 
 he is worse than an infidel P, 
 
 Let us start, then, with this first principle, that 
 the family is the rudimental human institution, 
 the cell from which society is to grow, and of 
 which the Hindoo had some vision, when he said, 
 " Man is nothing untU he becomes a triad — man, 
 wife, child." "We can then study profitably some 
 of the more prominent conditions of its healthy 
 order and development; for on this — ^the sound- 
 ness and vigour of the home life — the welfare of 
 societies mainly depends. 
 
 I may note in passing that we Anglo-Saxons 
 have a special interest in the ideas which cluster 
 around home. Far back as we can trace our an- 
 cestry — into the depths of the old German forest, 
 or, further still, into the twilight of the morning 
 land— always this home institution meets us, al- 
 ways the home is the rudimental unit of the state. 
 
6 The Rome Life, 
 
 The freeman dwelling as a husband, the head of a 
 household, on his own clearing, lord paramount 
 in his own home, with a help meet for him — and 
 German homes early nursed a noble t}^e of wo- 
 manhood — ^liolding his house as his sanctuary, lit- 
 erally sacred to him as a shrine to its God, is the 
 dominant figure in German society. In that won- 
 derful picture of the German nature and institu- 
 tions which Tacitus painted as a bitter rebuke to 
 the youth of degenerate Rome, this is the central 
 point oh which the whole interest turns. Doubt- 
 less the lights are touched in with startling bril- 
 liancy, and the shadows are softened by many 
 tones. It was a lay sermon to a profligate age, 
 and he used the liberty of preachers ; but we can- 
 not question that the picture in its main features 
 was a faithful one, and we may be sure that even 
 then the home was the focus of all the vitality 
 and energy of German society. Perhaps this 
 large capacity for home life was the feature of the 
 Teutonic nature, which made it the chosen thea- 
 tre of that higher civilization whose germs the 
 Founder of Christianity brought into the world. 
 It is perhaps this reverence for woman and for the 
 sanctity of homes, which characterised their life 
 even in its rudest stages, which justifies the die- 
 
Tliey Two Shall le One. 7 
 
 turn of Hegel, that "the destiny of the German 
 peoples was to be the bearers of the Christian 
 principles." 'Nor can we pass by the fact without 
 thought, that the land in which — with all her sor- 
 rows and all her sins, and God knows that their 
 name is legion — ^homes are most rich, most beau- 
 tiful, most blessed, is the chief seat of freedom, 
 industry, commerce, and those higher influences 
 which are slowly permeating , and fertilising the 
 world. 
 
 And let not any lonely and homeless one think 
 that this subject is outside his sphere. The home ■ 
 key-note runs through the whole strain of human I 
 life. All love and are loved ; and there you have \ 
 the heart of the mystery. Out of this bond of 
 spirits, from which none are free, and which, 
 blessed be God, often clasps the closest those most 
 shut out from poorer and more vulgar joys, flow 
 all the most sacred duties and experiences of life. 
 Life catches its ruddiest hue from the glow of the 
 household fire. And just in the measure in which 
 men and women, however isolated to the eye their 
 lives may seem, learn the secret of fatherly, moth- 
 erly, brotherly, or sisterly ministry to the men and 
 women and little ones around them, does their 
 
8 The Home Life. 
 
 life rise into nobleness and beauty, and become 
 harmonic with the life of heaven. 
 
 In fuller development of this thought, let us 
 consider — 
 
 I. That the first Father and Founder of house- 
 holds is God. 
 
 In all human institutions which have their 
 root in the constitution of our nature, we have to 
 consider two things in order to get a complete 
 view of them — the earthly ''patterns of things 
 in the heavens^'' and " the heavenly things them- 
 selvesP God made the first man after a divine 
 original, and after a divine original, too. He made 
 the first home. Eve, when her tears rained wildly 
 on the blood-flecked brow of Abel, knew but 
 one pang of the pain with which the deadly sin 
 of His first-born had wrung the great Father's 
 heart : " Hear^ heavens^ and give ear, earth ; 
 for the Lord hath spolcen: Lhave nourished and 
 hrought up children^ and they have rebelled against 
 meP And the cities of earth are but the stained 
 and desecrated images of the " city which hath 
 foundations eternal in the heavens, whose huilder 
 and maker is GodP God has not borrowed these 
 images — " father," " children," " home." It i? 
 
They Two Shall he One. 9 
 
 heaven tliat lends to earth, not earth to heaven. 
 The things that are npon earth, the things which 
 have root in humanity as God made it, and which 
 are not the devil's work, are first there. Heaven 
 bnt reclaims its own when it takes these images, 
 and applies them again to heavenly nse. 
 
 When we search the secret of the Divine Ex- 
 istence, and attempt to explore the mystery of 
 God, we are fain to cry, with one of old : " Such 
 knowledge is too wonderful for us : it is higher 
 than heaven, what can we hnow f it is deeper than 
 hell, what can we do f " But God comes forth 
 from the darkness and declares Himself; we begin 
 to see Him and to know Him when He reveals 
 Himself as a Father in a home. The inscrutable 
 things of God we leave until we shall " see face 
 toface^^ and '^ Ttnow even as also we are TtnownP 
 We cling to the human form which shapes itself 
 in the mist of our blindness, and which grows 
 more palpable and manlike as we gaze. He 
 speaks to us plainly and gently as to children ; 
 He promises all that the largest reading of the 
 word " Father " can suggest of benediction. He 
 bids us build our homes and bear the burden of 
 them, if we would win the joy ; and He shows to 
 us how He has built His home, has taken all the 
 1* 
 
10 The Home Life. 
 
 burden of it on His heart and spirit, and looks to 
 be repaid by its concoi-d, fruitfulness, and bliss. 
 
 There is no relationship or experience which 
 God has ordained for man of which He has not 
 set the pattern before Himself. There is nothing 
 which He will have man to do or to snfier of 
 which He has not shown the ensample. There is 
 nothing which He asks man to aim at and stead- 
 fastly pursue, which He has not made an end also 
 to His own life. The first sentence of God's mes- 
 sage reveals to us a love which takes joy in sacri- 
 fice : " God so loved the world, that he gave his 
 only-hegotten Son, that whosoever helieveth in him 
 should not perish, hut have everlasting life.'''' 
 Dreary theologians may argue and wrangle about 
 the Ruler ; the Lord, who spake not as the Scribes, 
 told us chiefly of the Father — the Father who lays 
 the foundation of His fatherly rule in a sacrifice 
 which the perfect love alone could ofier, and 
 which abides as the ensample and inspiration of 
 all perfect love- for evermore. In our humble acts 
 of self-denial, for the good of our dear ones and 
 of mankind, it should strengthen, purify, and 
 gladden us to know that we are treading in di- 
 vine footsteps, and are so far made like unto the 
 Son of God. How little we care to think of it ! 
 
They Two Shall he One. 11 
 
 "We toil, and groan, and suifer, but we forget all 
 that would glorify our work and pain. To under- 
 stand human homes, we must lift up our hearts to 
 the contemplation of the divine home. The se- 
 cret of blessed human homes — and there are 
 blessed homes on earth — is to make such love as 
 His love regnant there, and endeavour to live for 
 and bear with each other, as He has lived for and 
 borne with us all. 
 
 It is very wonderful how the heavenly expe- 
 rience has ever anticipated the earthly; for sin 
 made God's home dark and sad before the blight 
 fell upon ours. God had built, not a beautiful 
 mansion only, but a home for His children. It is 
 not enough to say that the world glows with 
 beauty, and is charged with treasures of wisdom 
 to him who has the eye to search them out. It is 
 not a great picture, painted with consummate art, 
 which God has set before us in the creation ; it is 
 a home which He has filled with the tokens -of 
 a loving presence, and lit with a living smile. 
 Through the whole scale of the creation we find 
 our thoughts and emotions repeating themselves. 
 The relations of human life and its experiences 
 have their images everywhere. Love, which is 
 life's mystery, smiles or sighs through the life of 
 
12 The HoTYie Life. 
 
 every creature. Even the dead rocks have their 
 elective affinities, and like leaps to like with pas- 
 sion as intense as that which bums in the heart 
 of the most imperious of human loves. All the 
 experiences of man in his home, his joys, sorrows, 
 fears, hopes, and the issues that spring from it, 
 find their analogues in the creation ; for all things 
 on earth and in heaven have been fashioned to 
 make this universe homelike for the sons. 
 
 The world in truth will only unveil its secrets 
 to the man who has a child's eye for its homely 
 beauty. Those grand demonstrations of the skill 
 and the power of God in the creation which de- 
 lighted our forefathers fall coldly upon our ear. 
 Creation is alive, and it is just the play of the 
 life of creation which these grand demonstrations 
 miss. A dead limb on an anatomist's table may 
 tell you something of its uses, but one glance at 
 the living limb of the athlete in the arena unfolds 
 the whole. Show me a broad landscape with the 
 sunlight gilding its crests and flooding it^ spaces, 
 while the purple shadows lie calm in the hollows, 
 and you show me more of God in the creation 
 than is disclosed, by the analyses of the whole 
 Bridgewater school. They are admirable as anat- 
 omy, and anatomy is admirable for its uses, but 
 
They Two Shall he One, 13 
 
 no dissection nnveils to us tlie great tliouglits of 
 God. " The living, the living shall praise TheeP 
 And wliy ? God is life, and the play of life alone 
 can reveal lEm. God is love, and the silver cord 
 which binds all living things, with love for its 
 electric fire, alone conducts and displays His en- 
 ergy, in whom all things have their being, from 
 whom they spring, round whom they circle, to 
 whom they tend, and in whom they rest. It is 
 not a mansion then, not a palace ; it is distinctly 
 a home which He has built and adorned for us ; 
 and He has come Himself to live in it, that every 
 nook may reveal a familiar presence, and that 
 every grand and splendid feature may w^ear some 
 touch of homely and therefore lovely grace. 
 
 The root of the home and of the home life is 
 love. It was love that made God a creator. 
 From the beginning He who " was with God^'' 
 rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth, and 
 His delights were with^ the sons of men. "When 
 the first fair beauty of His home had been stained 
 and withered by sin, it was love, springing up 
 from yet deeper fountains, which moved Him to 
 restore it on a larger plan and at a dearer cost — 
 a plan into which none but a fatherly heart can 
 enter, a cost which only the fatherly heart could 
 
14 The Home Life. 
 
 find strength to pay. And tliat home embosoms 
 our homes in its wide-reaching arms of tender- 
 ness. As we make our homes glad by love and 
 wisdom, we are helping to fill with light and joy 
 the great home of God. I don't think that this 
 thought will be any great hindrance to a man in 
 his endeavours to curb the tempers, to tame the 
 sensuality, to kill the selfishness, which make 
 homes so wretched. Perhaps it may be a great 
 help to him to know that in his efforts against 
 evil he is struggling not for himself only but for 
 God. 
 
 Love is simply the need that things have of 
 each other— and souls. You will question my 
 inclusion of things within the charmed circle. 
 But human love has its analogue in that yearning 
 of elements toward each other, which lies at tlie 
 heart of all the movement and circulation of the 
 world. The image of clay is transfigured in man. 
 God has made things for each other, and God has 
 made souls. They press toward each other. Life 
 is a fragment until they have blended. Love and 
 its reciprocations develope the full form of life. 
 A man's life is rich just in the measure in which 
 he loves and is loved. Things made for each 
 other draw toward each other. They seek com- 
 
They Two Shall he One. 15 
 
 munion, they seek to blend witli each other in 
 concert for a common end, thej seek to rest in 
 each other's love and be blessed. And the coop- 
 eration of those who love is the most perfect co- 
 operation, they draw ont the utmost from each, 
 and love swiftly repairs the wastes. ITo man 
 connts expenditm'es for ends that a beloved one 
 cherishes, and the loss which he may suffer is 
 swiftly transmuted into abounding gain. A smile, 
 a loving look, it is all forgotten. A beam from a 
 human eye has made you richer tMn Croesus; 
 you have seen that in a hmnan countenance, which 
 you literally would not have bartered for the 
 wealth of worlds. 
 
 Talk of the hardness of the age, the deaden- 
 ing influence of its commercial habits on the 
 noblest and most unselfish qualities of men ! 
 Love laughs it all to scorn, and renews in each - 
 generation the youth and freshness of the world. 
 And love will renew it. The world can never 
 brutalise itself w^hile a thing so spiritual as love 
 reigns in it. And love does reign. In one shape 
 or other, with all our grinding and driving, our 
 sharp practices and close bargains, love is the 
 mainspring of the world's movements still. A 
 stern, hard, masterly man of business, who had 
 
16 The Home Life. 
 
 realised an enormous fortune, and was supposed 
 to dream chiefly of gold, died one day. Tliey 
 had to search his strong chest to discover the di- 
 rections for the disposition of his affairs — in vain, 
 till they found a secret drawer, the innermost 
 shrine of the sanctuary. Here we shall find the 
 will at last. They forced it open, and lo ! a bunch 
 of faded flowers, and a lock of a woman's hair. 
 And love, noble, unselfish love, moves more of the 
 springs of your daily city business firn any of 
 you dream.# And love is simple — ^it is one, what- 
 ever be its sphere. Husband, brother, child, 
 friend ; there are not many loves. It is one, and 
 be the sphere closer or more distant, if it be true, 
 it is of kin with the love of Gocl. 
 
 " Husbands love your wives, even as Christ 
 also loved the Church, and gave himself for it.'''' 
 And what other love was his who moaned, over 
 his dead prodigal, " O my son Absalom, my son, 
 my son Absalom ! would God I had died for thee, 
 Absalom, my son, myson ! " And that brave 
 sister — I know such — ^left an orphan in the flower 
 of her girlhood, with a young brother of noble 
 promise in charge, cutting herself off deliberately 
 from all the pursuits and pleasures which make 
 young life so sweet, and shutting herself up to 
 
They Two Shall le One, lY 
 
 constant, it may be consuming toil. Her face 
 tlie wliile lias grown wan, her eyes have grown 
 dim, and her form has become shrunk and with- 
 ered in its prime through this high ministry. But 
 she is earning enough to send that lad to college, 
 she keeps him there among the best, and never 
 tells him what it costs — ^he will never know it till 
 they meet on high. She gives herself, her life, to 
 him ; and her one reward, the rich repayment of 
 every toil and pain, is to see him pass to the front 
 rank, and lay his hand on the chief prize. " Sis- 
 ters, love your brothers, even as Christ also loved 
 the Church." Love is one wherever you find it, 
 and herein it is heavenly, its chief joy, its dear 
 delight, is ministry to the beloved. 
 
 And this is the foundation of homes. Souls 
 needing each other, drawn to each other, enter 
 into covenant with each other, to share and 
 thereby bear lightly the burdens, pains, and cares 
 of life. 
 
 The first wonderful thing that strikes us in 
 the institution of the home, is that the man and 
 the woman who are the head of it are twain, yet 
 one. Two as the hemispheres are two, but one 
 in the great circle of the woiid. Man, here on 
 cartel at any rate, is dual. The manly and the 
 
18 The Home Life. 
 
 womanly natures compose together the perfect 
 man, and live together the perfect life. As in the 
 world, so in the home, God establishes at once 
 diversities and^ contrasts within the . bounds of a 
 unity. The twain shall be one, shall belong to 
 each other, shall be part of each other, and yet 
 they shall be twain al-so ; shall act and react upon 
 each other, and develope by their contrasts and 
 differences each other's Jife. So precious does 
 God hold this influence of human spirits upon 
 each other to be, with all the wisdom, experience, 
 j)atience, self-control, and self-denial, which spring 
 out of it, that He sets in a hopae a man and a 
 woman in perpetual presence of each other, so 
 that neither shall be without the stimulus to noble 
 and fruitful living which such a presence cannot 
 choose but give. Mutual forbearance, mutual 
 comfort, mutual strength, mutual guidance, mu- 
 tual trust; common principles, common duties, 
 common burdens, common aims, common hopes, 
 common joys — ^here are the materials of life's 
 truest, noblest discipline ; here the metal of char-J^ 
 acter is welded and moulded into forms of fin- 
 ished strength and beauty, meet for the Master's 
 work and joy in the great assembly and Church 
 of the first-born in heaven. 
 
They Two Shall he One. 19 
 
 And the twain, the dual man, the husband 
 and wife, who form the one head of the home, are 
 so constituted as to supplement each other. It is 
 easy to contrast manly strength with womanly 
 softness, gentleness, and grace. But strength and 
 softness never did miich by concert ; where this is 
 all, where the higher idea of the home relation, 
 which descends from heaven, is wanting, man 
 hardens into the tyrant, woman is crushed into 
 the slave. Strength has to learn gentleness and 
 gentleness strength in Christ, before either the 
 manly or the womanly perfects itself, and the two 
 can fully blend. Man is a being of two worlds. 
 It is a sore struggle to harmonise their relations 
 and claims, and to see that at heart the two worlds 
 are one. It takes two to do it completely; a 
 home ought to hold fully the promise of both 
 worlds. 
 
 The business of life has, without doubt, a 
 hardening influence. The selfishness, the mean- 
 ness, the wickedness, which men have to encoun- 
 ter in their daily round of duties, the pure world- 
 liness which reigns in the sx3liere where much of 
 their life-task lies, tend terribly to mould round 
 the spirit a -thick shell of indifference, through 
 which the whispers of light celestial voices and 
 
20 The Home Life, 
 
 the touches of light celestial fingers can find no 
 way. Tell me, busy men, is the ear as keen as it 
 once was to the appeals of misery \ is the touch 
 as fine to the maimed and bruised ones who press 
 by you in the throng, feeling feebly for the virtue 
 which once went forth from you, and took joy in 
 the ejffort to heal and to save % Does life grow 
 larger, freer, nobler daily, more full of promise, 
 more rich in hope? Or does the wheel drag 
 round more wearily, and the spirit cleave closer 
 to the dust ? Alas, yes I And the sin and the 
 sorrow of it, women, lie mainly at your door. 
 
 Why has the Father shut you within the 
 charmed circle into which the toils, the hard ne- 
 cessities, the fierce storm of the battle are forbid- 
 den to pass ? Your husbands keep them outside 
 the citadel with strong arm and brave heart, but 
 ofttimes sorely weary and sick of the strife. And 
 you within ? Shut up with the fairest and most 
 gracious flowers that God has planted, and the 
 angels tend — -these little ones whose angels do 
 always behold the face of their Father which is 
 in heaven ; with a state to rule which is all within 
 easy touch of your hand ; with books, and flow- 
 ers, and music, and all lovely things ; with a heart 
 which God has made intuitive of great truths, 
 
They Two Shall le One. 21 
 
 and capable of high resolves ; with a sense kept 
 fine and sensitive to all that men get hardened to, 
 by the genial influences which play around your 
 life. "Women, where is the com'age, the patience, 
 the constancy, the faith, the hope, the joy, fed 
 ever from divine springs, which God meant you 
 to store up at home % Where is that honey of 
 the higher life which the weary soldiers may taste 
 and grow strong again, when they come home 
 strained and sad from their toils? At home! 
 At home for a man, ought to mean, shut up a 
 while with truth, purity, dignity, goodness, and 
 charity, zoned with a cestus of beauty, and dressed 
 in a lustre of love. 
 
 Ah! it is fine .talking, many of you will an- 
 swer me. Brave words, and easy to speak, for 
 those vfho have never • tried the strain of a wo- 
 man's life. Tiresome children, careless servants, 
 tattling neighbours, and a thousand petty shocks 
 and frets, which try a woman's temper, and wear 
 her spirits far more than the sterner strokes and 
 strains of the great battle prey ,upon the men ! 
 Yes I but then you have laid down yom- sceptre, 
 you have descended from yom- throne, you have 
 forgotten your spells. A gracious woman has 
 no tiresome children, thriftless servants, tattling 
 
22 The Home Life, 
 
 friends. Look upon lier portraiture, painted by 
 a great master's liand : 
 
 " Who can find a mrtuous woman f for her 
 jprice is far above rubies. The heart of her hus- 
 hancl doth safely trust in her^ so that he shall have 
 no need of sj)oll. She will do him good and not 
 evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool^ 
 and flax^ and worlceth willingly with her hands. 
 She is like the merchants ships / she bring eth her 
 food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet 
 nighty and giveth meat to her household^ and a 
 portion to her maidens. She considereth a field, 
 and huyeth it : with the fruit of her hands she 
 planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins loith 
 strength., and strengtheneth her arms. She per- 
 ceiveth that her merchandise is good : her candle 
 goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to 
 the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She 
 strctcheth out Jier hand to the poor ; yea, she reacJi- 
 eth forth her hand to the needy. She is not afraid 
 of the snow for her household : for all her house- 
 hold are clothed with scarlet. She maketJi herself 
 coverings of tapesti^y j her clothing is silk and 
 purple. Her husband is known in the gates, 
 when he sitteth among the elders of the land. Sh^ 
 malceth fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth 
 
They Two Shall he One. 23 
 
 girdles unto the merchant. Strength and honour 
 are her clothing / and she shall rejoice in time to 
 come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom / and 
 in her tongioe is the law of Mndness. She loolceth 
 well to the ways of her household^ and eateth not 
 the hread of idleness. Her children arise up^ and 
 call her Messed j her husband also^ and he prais- 
 eth her. Many daughters have done virtuously^ 
 hut thou excellest them all. Favour is deceitful^ 
 and heauty is v-ain j hut « woman that feareth the 
 Lord she shall he jpraised. Give her thefricit of 
 her hands / and let her own worJcs ])raise her in 
 the gatesP (Prov. xxxi. 10-31.) 
 
 Such women have learnt the spell to which 
 the idle ront of frets and cares cringe down, as 
 the waves knew their Master's presence, and 
 smoothed their foamy crests w^hen he arose. I 
 know women whose hearts are an unfailing foun- 
 tain of courage and inspiration to the hard-pressed 
 man, who but for them must be worsted in life's 
 battle ; whose pure loftiness of spirit, caught from 
 contact with the Highest, breathes calm rebuke 
 on the beggarly aims and hopes, which seem so 
 large when we are down upon the level, so poor 
 when we are up upon the height ; whose sweet 
 serenity, like a cool hand, purges the heat of an- 
 
24 The Home Life. 
 
 ger and passion ; whose stores of tliought, feeling, 
 and observation, spread forth with happy art, 
 make home a treasury of pure and elevating 
 pleasures; whose sympathy is strength to the 
 weary, and guidance to the perplexed ; and who 
 send fbrth husband or brother each morning with 
 new strength for his conflict, armed, as the lady 
 armed her knight of old, with a shield which he 
 may not stain in any unseemly conflicts, and a 
 sword which he dares only use against the ene- 
 mies of truth, righteousness, and God. 
 
 I know such women, and, blessed be God, I 
 have not far to seek them ; but it seems sometimes 
 as if they were becoming fewer. They could not 
 have been rare in Shakespeare's day, in Spenser's 
 day, in Chaucer's day. There were many of 
 them in the company which gathered around the 
 Lord. But where are they now ? Women, gather 
 again around the springs whence the holy women 
 of old di-ew their inspirations. Live much with 
 God, that your prayers may strengthen your hus- 
 bands to bear them manlike in the battle, and 
 that you may have some bread which is nutritive 
 of manly vigour, when, weary with the struggle, 
 they come home to you to rest. You live in a 
 charmed circle guarded carefully from the shocks 
 
They Two Shall he One. 25 
 
 wliicli bruise tlie limbs and organs of the bigher 
 life in tbose wlio go down to the contentions of 
 the world. Fill that circle with something that 
 men may honour and cherish, the more dearly 
 b'ecaiise they meet it so rarely in the scenes where 
 they ply their tasks. Set fairly before their sight 
 the noblest, purest, most lovely thing that God 
 looks upon in all His worlds — a woman of gra- 
 cious, serene, liberal, and chastened spirit. Let 
 the fountain of living waters be ever gushing for 
 the refreshing of the weary pilgrims of the house- 
 hold, where God has trained them by sure instinct 
 to look for it — the mother's heart. 
 
 I say nothing here of woman's rights. I have 
 not the patience to do it. Battling for idle rights, 
 while she lets such glorious power slip all unused 
 out of her hand ! Wonderful is the power of wo- 
 man to rule the world, to do what she will with 
 it, if she but cares to wield it. But the one 
 spring of her power is the spring of the divine 
 power, and of the power that lies in all nobleness 
 and goodness, the power to love, to serve, to save. 
 Seize it once more, and the world is at your feet. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken almost exclusively of 
 the women, for the home is their realm. But 
 what of the men ? I think that the best home- 
 2 
 
26 The Home Life, 
 
 work whicli they can do is to lielp the women, by 
 patience, tenderness, and clieerfulness, to realize 
 their idea. There is a certain monotony in the 
 household cares, of which the men, whose work 
 calls them abroad, shoiild never be unmindful ; 
 the joyful break in that monotony should be their 
 entrance into the home, which needs their pres- 
 ence to crown its life. Busy, energetic men are 
 sadly tempted to think of the high-minded wo- 
 men who have a vision of what the home-life 
 might be, as dreamers ; and to treat their vivid 
 sense of the spiritual as a graceful, womanly 
 weakness, with which they have no need to con- 
 cern themselves, their life lying in a quite differ- 
 ent sphere. It is this division of the spheres 
 which is so detrimental, so fatal. Communion of 
 \ interest, belief, pursuit, is the very life-blood of 
 [the home. Unless the husband has the grace to 
 honour in his heart the ideal which his wife is 
 aiming at, to watch her endeavour with tender 
 reverence, and lend a brave hand to carry it up 
 to success, the home will lose its sunlight, the 
 children their noblest nurture, and life its most 
 golden fruits. 
 
 And say not, I pray you, that this is pure 
 idealism, and that human homes in such a world 
 
They Two Shqll he One. 27 
 
 as this must pitch, their music in a far lower and 
 more practicable key. I know such women; I 
 know such homes ; and God sees myriads of them ; 
 they are the salt of the earth, and its light. Wo- 
 men, you must multiply them, if sbciety is to be 
 saved. And if ideals are bootless, and only daunt 
 and dispirit us, why has God set before us, clear 
 within our horizon, such a life as the life of His 
 well-beloved Son? Thank God that you have 
 such ideals above you far'up in the height, which 
 are ever drawing you by their sweet magnetic 
 spells out of the slough in which the devil of 
 worldliness and selfishness is seeking to drown 
 you, burying there what dignity, purity, and 510- 
 bleness are still left us* in the world, to lift our life 
 up above the brutes. Honour these lofty forms 
 of things in your heart of hearts, aim at them in 
 your life of lives. Lend dignity thus to every 
 effort to rule passion, to curb self-will, to master 
 the body, to conquer the world, to cheer and 
 gladden the home with the light which God kin- 
 dles in the heart which can be satisfied supremely 
 only by His love. And then, as the years roll on, 
 and the family widens, and some, not the least be- 
 loved, leave it, to prepare a welcome for the tired 
 pilgrims to the eternal mansions where the 
 
28 The Home Life. 
 
 " wliole family " will be gathered at last, see to 
 it that day by day, by patient, constant, God- 
 directed efforts, your surroundings in the house 
 which God has built to shelter you, grow more 
 into the likeiiess which heaven as well as earth 
 shall recognise as " a home." 
 
n. 
 
 THESE LITTLE 0OT:S. 
 
 " Talce Jieed that ye despise not one of these little ones.'''* 
 ■^Matt. xviii. 10. 
 
 Earth lias no monopoly of the experiences of 
 " home." It is a divine image, having its arche- 
 type on high, which is reproduced in whatever is 
 purest and brightest in the home life of mankind. 
 There was the divine home before there was the 
 - human. The Father knew His child and blessed' 
 him. ; yea, He foreknew all the pain, the anguish, 
 the joy, which would spring from him, before He 
 sent him forth to found his home, and learn out 
 of his own home-experience the secret of his rela- 
 tions and duties to his God. We have seen al- 
 ready that the broad fact of the human home is 
 duality with unity. One flesh, yet twain. One 
 ^^ human being, yet two human souls, acting on 
 
30 Tlie Home Life. 
 
 ing, and educating eacli other, and yet the one 
 head of a household ; the manly and the womanly 
 natures blending in the one mind which is to rule, 
 and the one spirit which is to animate and conse- 
 crate the whole. " Therefore shall a man leave 
 his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto 
 his wife / and they two shall he one fleshy Here 
 is unity with duality ; and this in every region is 
 the condition of all the higlier developments of 
 life. I say that the idea descended from on high. 
 The last, the perfect, human estate shall likewise 
 come down from God out of heaven. " And I 
 John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coining 
 down from God out of heaven, prepared as a 
 hride adorned for her husband. And I heard a 
 great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tdb- 
 lernacle of God is with menP The first human 
 estate descended from the same height, and took 
 its place by the same right as a heaven-born thing 
 in this lower world. It was not good that man 
 should be alone, for a hundred reasons, but mainly 
 for one — God would not be alone. What is the 
 history of this earth of ours but the history of the 
 desire and effort of God to blend Himself with 
 humanity — God in Christ seeking the world as 
 His bride, and filling His home with the recov- 
 
TJiese Little Ones. 31 
 
 ered, the twice-born sons. There is that in God 
 which moves Him to seek this fellowship with 
 free beings formed in His likeness. "We recog- 
 nise reverently the Divine Sovereignty, bnt it is 
 only another name for the action whose springs 
 lie deeply enfolded within His own being. When 
 He passed by the nature of angels and took on 
 Him the seed of Abraham, that sovereign act 
 was a full manifestation of Himself. From the 
 beginning, in the elder eternity, or ever time was, 
 His Word ranged forward in thought and hope to 
 the creation, and His joys were then by foretaste 
 with His sons. In the hour of the transgression 
 He joined Himself to humanity ; and He became 
 in Eden, ere He drove forth the man, the Father 
 and the Founder of the first human home. Suf- 
 fer me again to warn you against treating these 
 images as vague poetic expressions, whose literal 
 truth is not to be pressed too rigidly home. Po- 
 etry, if it is worth anything, is the speech of that 
 real world which is behind the shadows ; and on 
 divine lips, at any rate, the words may bear their 
 uttermost meaning to our hearts. These are not 
 terms borrowed from relations and affinities with 
 w^hich man is familiar, to help him to conceive of 
 the reality of those which are beyond the range 
 
32 The Home Life. 
 
 of his sifijlit. I ao-ain insist that it is the human 
 relation and affinity which is borrowed. We do 
 not borrow the word " Father," and apply it to 
 the setting forth of something which transcends 
 description and definition in God. Were that the 
 truth of the matter, the Chinese should be our 
 chief teachers about the Divine Fatherhood ; but 
 they have never been able to take the step from 
 the idolatry of the human father to the worship 
 of the divine. E'o ; God lends to us, and but 
 takes His own again when He bids us pray, 
 " Our Father^ which art in heaven^ Hallowed he 
 thy name P 
 
 You may call this theology transcendental, or 
 what you will, but it is the simple truth of the 
 matter. There is no relation which man sustains, 
 no duty which he is called to fulfil, no burden 
 which he is made to bear, no joy, no sorrow, 
 which it is given to him to taste, the original image 
 of which is not to be found in God, and in God's 
 relations to the world. We interpret altogether 
 too feebly the sentence, " God made man in his 
 own imageP We let om* reverence become sla- 
 vish, and cramp our freedom. God has come 
 forth to unfold to us the principle of all the du- 
 ties, affinities, relations, and experiences of our 
 
» 
 
 These Little Ones. 33 
 
 race, in His own life. " Thfy maker is thine hios- 
 
 hand / the Lord of hosts is His name The 
 
 Lord hath called thee as a loo^nan forsaken and 
 grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou 
 wast refused, saith thy GodP " Ls JEjphraim my 
 dear son f is he a pleasant child f for since 1 
 sjpake against him, L do earnestly rememler him 
 still ; therefore my bowels are troubled for him : 1 
 will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LordP 
 Tliis is the key-note of God's most earnest and 
 tender appeals to His people. Husband, father, 
 child. He knows the truth of these human rela- 
 tions />'C>m within. 
 
 In the home man developes into the triad, and 
 all the higher interest of life begins. This also 
 has its original in God. A lonely eternity could 
 not satisfy Him ; He can be satisfied only in what 
 is born, not out of His hand of power, but out of 
 His heart of love. To dwell with beings after 
 His likeness, able to respond to His spirit, as man 
 moves responsive to man, able to dwell with Him 
 in His eternal home, and to make it bright with 
 the presence of His sons for ever, this is His idea 
 of life. "When the sons were born into His home, 
 the life of God was manifest. The living Being 
 came forth to walk and talk in Eden with His 
 2* 
 
34 The Home Life. 
 
 children, wliile the rosy dawn lay soft and bright 
 on the young beauty of creation, and the music 
 of tlie morning stars streamed down upon the 
 throbbing air, and fell like a dew of benediction, 
 " Behold^ it is very goodP But the fulness of 
 God, the fulness of His thought, desire, and life, 
 was yet unrevealed. There was that within the 
 bosom of the divine nature which creation could 
 neither express nor satisfy. All its floods of liv- 
 ing splendour, all its jubilant bursts of harmony, 
 had left, if creation could have rested there, some- 
 thing ever unsatisfied in the divine heart. The 
 children must win an experience, and live a life, 
 which would set them where creation could never 
 enter — in the inner sanctuary of His love. The 
 Adam of Eden did not meet that longing — the 
 Adam of heaven had to be born. And the sec- 
 ond, the heavenly man, is born, not of the will 
 of God, not of EQs power, but of a love which 
 could bear joyfully such pains of death as no crea- 
 ture knoweth, if it might but reclaim the wander- 
 ers, and restore the sons twice-born to the Father's 
 home and heart. 
 
 And the idea works itself out in the sphere 
 of the human. He who was made in the image 
 of God has the image also of this. As Adam 
 
These Little Ones. 35 
 
 was born into God's home, these little ones are 
 born into yours. The life and development of 
 the child who was born 1:0 Him became the su- 
 preme interest with God, and of all in heaven 
 that is in communion with the life of God. A 
 new and richer development of the life of the 
 great universe began from that hour, when the 
 Lord looked upon the^man whom He had made 
 in His likeness, and sent him forth to his high 
 career. And thus all the nobler interest of yonr 
 life as men begins, when God puts one of these 
 little ones into your arms. Its helpless eyes and 
 hands can reach the inner springs of your being. 
 They can compel you, strong man, all helpless as 
 they are, to gird yom'self for a toil which is your 
 sweetest rest, if these little ones are fed by it, — 
 if they grow fair and strong, and rain the sun- 
 light of their joyous tones and glances on your 
 home as your rich reward. Many a hard line 
 which the world has traced, and many a stain 
 of the dust and sweat of its battle which your 
 day's cares and toils have left upon your spirit, 
 gets wiped away ere nightfall by a tiny hand. 
 All is made soft and bright again as the little 
 ones gather around your knee by the home fire- 
 
36 The Home Life. 
 
 side. These little ones ! Take heed that ye de- 
 spise them not. 
 
 Little children ; not angels, even in the bud, 
 and never to be angels. God made the rudiment 
 of something much greater than an angel when 
 He made a child. It is idle to talk about the 
 angelic beauty, purity, and grace of childhood, 
 and to maunder about them as if it were wholly 
 due to their parents' sin if they do not remain 
 angels through life and through eternity. They 
 were born through Adam, as Adam was bom, to 
 sin, to sulier, and to be redeemed. The seeds of 
 it all lie enfolded there within that soft nest of 
 flesh, which is altogether the most rare, the most 
 wonderful, the most exquisite, of all the mere 
 handiwork of God. The parent who does not 
 understand that these little ones are born for a 
 sad and stern experience, is likely to do his best 
 to hand them over, bound and helpless, into the 
 destroyer's hand. The motions of sins will be at 
 work in them with the first motions of freedom 
 and buddings of life; and Christ, '-'the Light 
 whic\ coming into the world^ lighteth every man^'^ 
 every, child, alone can stand between them and a 
 future, at the vision of which, but for Christ and 
 His redemption of these little ones, the heart of a 
 
Tliese Little Ones. 3Y 
 
 parent miglit well shudder and fall as dead. Do 
 not mistake tliem, then, for angels*, needing but 
 freedom to soar in empyrean regions. They are 
 men and women, whose life here must be a stern 
 and long struggle with sin, and who must learn 
 to suffer and to conquer before they can soar, 
 whom God puts into your arms in the soft bud 
 of their being ; and He prays you to use wise fa- 
 therly and motherly discipline with them from 
 the first, as He uses it with you. "We talk some- 
 times yery foolishly about the perfectness of Adam 
 in Eden. It was but an infirm and partial per- 
 fectness. At the first touch of the tempter, it 
 collapsed and crumbled into dust. Of like sub- 
 stance is the perfectness of these little ones, — a 
 perfect image, a fair promise, a bright prophecy, 
 the fulfilling of which lies beyond this sin-haunted 
 wilderness and the river of death. 
 
 These little ones ! ^ot angels, then ; on the 
 other hand, not children of the devil, but nurslings 
 of Christ. " Take it, and bring it up for Me." 
 I have no call to enter here into curious doctrinal 
 discussions as to the natural estate of young chil- 
 dren. Blessed be God, their estate in Christ has 
 become a spiritual estate, and all their destiny has 
 passed under the rule of His redeeming love. We 
 
38 The Home Life, 
 
 have bui-ied for ever, let us hope, that terrible 
 sentence of a .pitiless Calvinism, " There are in- 
 fants a span long in hell." I have heard the sen- 
 tence from the lips of divines, and have shud- 
 dered as I heard. DeviKsh it seems to me, for it 
 makes God malignant as a devil. I humbly hope 
 that no threats, no tortures, could make me bow 
 my knee to such a god. I turn from him to the 
 God-man, who gathered the infants round Him, 
 and took them in Ilis arms, and blessed them, and 
 said, " Suffer the litUe children to come unto me^ 
 and forbid them not / for of such is the kingdom 
 of heaven.^^ Gladder was He, perhaps, at that 
 moment, as the little ones clustered round His 
 knee and pressed to His heart, than, through His 
 whole pilgrimage of sorrows. As the pure fresh 
 morning air, in which the rosy flush is glowing, 
 and on which the meadows have flung their dewy 
 sweets, must the balmy breath of these little ones 
 have played on the Saviour's strained and weary 
 heart. Unselfish, unworldly, uncareful, unfearful, 
 unenvious, ungrasping, unconscious, innocent! 
 What a garden of flowers is here, with the morn- 
 ing light playing upon it, and the air alive with 
 song ! Take heed that ye despise it not. It is 
 the garden where, in the early light, you may 
 
These Little Ones. 39 
 
 meet the Master : He is abroad in it betimes, and 
 here you may learn His deepest thoughts, and 
 hear His wisest and most lovely words v"-^a?c^i?^ 
 ye he converted^ and heeome as little children^ ye 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of lieavenP 
 
 Little children. The whole force of the words 
 is here. They soon learn the battle-cries of our 
 conflicts, and shape their puppets after the like- 
 ness of our follies and sins. But little children 
 are Christ's own nurslings. They love, and trust, 
 and give, after the fashion that reigns in heaven. 
 Love is their sunlight ; they ask for nothing but 
 to bask in it. There is no glow for them when 
 that sun in the home is clouded; there are no 
 clouds for them when that sun in the home is un- 
 veiled. They have no possessions which they do 
 not increase by sharing. Give a little one the 
 gift it longs for, and straightway it toddles off in 
 its glee to share it with its friend. Their only 
 idea of having is sharing, till you have taught 
 them a darker lesson. The very birds trust not 
 more joyously the bountiful hand of the Father 
 which is over them all. "]^ever mind," said a 
 little one once to a father who had his full share 
 of the burdens and struggles of life, and who was 
 lamenting to her that he was too poor to gratify 
 
40 The Home Life. 
 
 some desire whicli slie liad expressed — "never 
 mind, papa, jou have enough to go on with." 
 Yes, I thought, when I heard it, " Out of the 
 mouth of tabes and suchlings Thou hast ordained 
 strength^ and perfected •j^raiseP 
 
 A whole Sermon on the Momit is enfolded 
 there in the bud of their young natures. It 
 seems to us ideal truth. "We read these wonder- 
 ful words of Christ as though they might come 
 to be living words to us in some far-olT heavenly- 
 state. Look down at your feet ; these little ones 
 are living it. They give not their alms before 
 men to be seen of them ; and till you have taught 
 them, they use no vain repetitions in their prayers. 
 They are imskilled as yet to pray for their ene- 
 mies ; and they pray with a beautiful trust and 
 tenderness for tljeir friends. The poor, the hun- 
 gry, open wide at once their fountains of com- 
 passion. The last mite goes as frankly as the 
 first, if the Lord has need of it. They nestle 
 closer to the meek, the merciful, the poor in spirit, 
 yea, the persecuted for righteousness' sake, than 
 to priests or princes. A little one would be more 
 at home at the gate with Lazarus, than feasting 
 with Dives at his groaning board. The only 
 patent of precedence you can get them to recog- 
 
These Little Ones. 41 
 
 nise is the mark of goodness, gentleness, and no- 
 bleness, wliich God's elect ones bear, and wliicli 
 none see so swiftly as a child. They know noth- 
 ing of the lore of curses and anathemas ; coat and 
 cloak may go as they will, so that inner and di- 
 viner things are left. They know not to frame 
 hard judgments ; they aim not at a double ser- 
 vice ; they love to build on the firm rock of com- 
 mandment; the sands of interest, ambition, and 
 worldly honom^ are too treacherous for their 
 trembling steps ; they consider the birds and the 
 lilies with a joy and a wonder which no hard 
 science has robbed of its enchantment ; and they 
 take their daily bread as trustfully and thank- 
 fully from the same ever-bountiful and merciful 
 hand. Take heed that ye offend not one of these 
 little ones. Take heed. Offend them, and the 
 Master saith, " it were better that a millstone were 
 hanged about your neck^ and you were disowned 
 in the depths of the seaP 
 
 And God trusts them to us — these little ones 
 — ^flowers of such grace and beauty as grow not 
 in the plains of heaven. His nurslings they are, 
 — the dearest objects of His care and love. He 
 has nothing in the universe so precious, so rich in 
 promise, as a little child; and this is the gift 
 
42 The Home Life, 
 
 wliicli He takes, and trustfully places in our 
 liands. There is sometliing quite awful, when 
 we attempt to measure it, in the trust which God 
 has reposed, and still reposes, in a being so hard, 
 so selfish, so faithless as man. These little ones 
 are God's little ones. They are His chief treas- 
 ures.: they are to people heaven or hell. The 
 future of the universe, the fruit of Calvary, the 
 triumph of His kingdom, hang absolutely on their 
 future. They are to fill up the number of His 
 first-born, and crowd the general assembly and 
 Church on high; or the devil is to drag them 
 into his accursed dominions, to fill the home with 
 wailing, and Hades with death. The fiends are 
 watching this garden of Christ; the angels are 
 tending it. But the chief keeper and captain of 
 these little ones is man. 
 
 And where is the home where these little ones 
 are nurtured up to the idea of " the nurture of the 
 Lord " % There are a myriad human homes where 
 they are nursed on the bread of selfishness and 
 the milk of passion, where the air is laden with 
 blasphemies, obscenities, or with a worse burden, 
 the blight of an utterly worldly and selfish pa- 
 rental heart; where every fair young bud that 
 might fruit in heaven is nipped and blasted, and 
 
These Little Ones. 43 
 
 foul weeds are forced into proud luxuriance, 
 which will fruit in hell; where envy, hatred, 
 malice, and all uncharitableness, form the at- 
 mosphere which enfolds the nurslings ; Vv^here life 
 grows weary and hateful early; where innocent 
 hearts get charged with evil, and noble passions 
 get poisoned with selfishness, and comely sjioots 
 get twisted into ugliness, and God's broad seal of 
 beauty is obliterated, and the stamp of the evil 
 one is branded in its room. Yes, there are a 
 myriad such homes where man is doing the devil's 
 work for God's little ones, to one where they are 
 trained to a noble and comely manhood and wo- 
 manhood, and are sent forth to their battle, since 
 fight they must, as the knight was sent forth of 
 old when his lady had braced on his armour, with 
 a talisman which shielded him from all impurity, 
 and a strength which made him master of every 
 foe. And yet God trusts them — trust, trust, 
 always trust. Yerily, " God loveth the world." 
 He gave His Son, He is giving His infants daily 
 into its charge, in tender pity, in pure compassion. 
 He knows that if He were to withhold them, if 
 He were to gather unto Himself in anger, the 
 flowers which we are ever soiling and crushing, 
 the world, bare of its little ones — ^those rills of 
 
44: The Home Life. 
 
 liealing, purifying waters wliicli are gushing and 
 trickling everywhere about its sin-parched plains 
 — would go down full swiftly to the pit. It is an 
 awful trust, could we truly measure it, this trust 
 of God to His rebel. " Thou hast wronged and 
 wounded me, and behold I give thee these ; take 
 heed, that thou despise them not." The reason 
 of this trust we are permitted to look into. Some 
 hints of it we will endeavour to set forth. 
 
 I. These little ones are sent to us to make 
 us free of the art and mystery of love, that we 
 may learn through the love of man something 
 of the love of God. " Love is or God, for God 
 IS LOVE." And love is one. All love that is not 
 self-love has God for its fountain, and Christ for 
 its pattern. It is its essential nature to give 
 itself to and for its object. Communion is its 
 passion, sacrifice is its life. A man is rich and 
 blessed precisely in the measure in which he lives 
 in its current. Hell is, where life is stagnant and 
 love is dead. Wretched and unmanlike they, 
 who have never found that which is dearer than 
 life, and for the love of which they will gladly 
 die. IS'ay, the brutes teach them a nobler lesson, 
 as was written over Gelert's grave. This is the 
 
These Little Ones. 45 
 
 ray of the lieayenlj glory that once crowned the 
 fether of our race, wfiich hngers longest ; and it 
 shines oftentimes with softest, fairest lustre in the 
 most wretched, yea, even the most profligate and 
 abandoned hearts. Among the outcasts, the men 
 and women who are stained with every crime 
 and lust, it is the last glow of the pristine glory 
 which lingers, and sometimes it flashes with in- 
 tense brightness out of the very depths. The Sav- 
 iour found its purest fire in a poor harlot's heart. 
 Heaven does not give up its reprobates as readily 
 as earth does. It holds to them, as the Lord held 
 to that poor woman who was a sinner, while one 
 pulse can throb to the touch or thrill to the voice 
 of love. 
 
 And God has made it the bond of homes. 
 He wiU make it the bond of kingdoms and of 
 worlds. He lays these little ones in our bosom, 
 that we may learn the lore of love through ten- 
 der teachers, and be drawn out by mute but sov- 
 ereign appeals to know all its toils, its pains, and 
 its bliss. The measure in which we know them 
 is the measure of our being; a man's being is 
 just as wide as his love. And what trinity, save 
 One, knows the mystery so deeply? Husband, 
 wife, child, learning daily fresh lessons, to train 
 
46 The Home Life, 
 
 them for the love of a wider family, and the great 
 Father, God. Perhaps love is purest and freshest 
 in the heart of a parent, most strong to toil, most 
 prompt to sacrifice, most set on another's good. 
 Strong, stem men, whom the world could not 
 bend from their purpose, maj be led by the touch 
 of a tiny finger; 1:here are those at home who 
 can turn them by a silken cord whither they will. 
 Thus the home which is near to man as his own 
 flesli and blood, is full charged with the divinest 
 influences. A man must forget his home if he 
 forgets to love. Love is of God, for God is love. 
 See you not how these little ones unseal its purest 
 fountains, and keep them ever flowing, to draw 
 some tinge of living greenness over the driest and 
 barest life ? 
 
 II. These little ones are sent to us that we 
 may learn through them the lessons of sacrifice, 
 and taste its joys. 
 
 The life of a true father is a constant offering 
 of himself for his children. You would not wear 
 yourself out with your daily toils but for these 
 little ones who are fed by them, and who are 
 lifted up by your patient industry to a higher 
 level of culture than in this fife you can hope to 
 
These Little Ones. 4tl 
 
 reacli. And tliere is no pleasure whicli yon taste 
 so sweet as tliat wliich you win for yonr children. 
 To see them bright and glad is the rich repayment 
 of sore toil and pain. God will have ns live out 
 of ourselves; in other words, He will have us 
 love; for to live self-enfolded is death. Com- 
 merce, ministry, interchange of gifts and offices, 
 is the one principle of life. The home, the thing 
 on earth most near to us, is the main organ of 
 its development. There is an altar of sacrifice 
 whose fire is ever burning in every household, 
 and all the richest and purest joys of the house- 
 hold spring out of the offerings which are laid 
 upon its shrine. In a home it is your power to 
 give which makes your riches, your power to 
 gladden, which kindles your joy. Give nothing, 
 get nothing ; sow nothing, reap nothing ; bear no 
 burden of others, be crushed under your own. 
 Deny thyself, seek not thine own good, but the 
 good of these little ones, and see how they hasten 
 to shower the smiles which are bright as sun- 
 beams on thy life. 
 
 " Ye 'know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christy 
 that though He was rich^ yet for your sokes He 
 heoame jpoor, that ye through His poverty might he 
 richy The bliss of heaven grows out of that 
 
48 The Borne Life. 
 
 great sacrifice. Study it, drink deeply of its 
 spirit, it is the spring of tlie most perfect bliss of 
 life. For love transforms sacrifice and denial. 
 The freest and healthiest action of the being is 
 that which is most destructive to the selfishness 
 of self. Wonderful, most wonderful, is the pow- 
 er of these little ones to draw forth the noblest 
 energies of the spirit, and to give them such play 
 as the angels might envy in the poorest homes and 
 the saddest hearts. 
 
 There is a poor widow there (I am not draw- 
 ing from fancy) with a troop of little ones round 
 her ; the youngest, a sickly fretful infant, needing 
 constant tending, while the ceaseless toil of her 
 hands just finds them bread. Day after day, the 
 long week through, and often far into the night 
 she slaves, — ^no, no slave works like her; one 
 hand and eye upon her tasks, and one upon her 
 moaning, restless child. Have you ever seen the 
 look of a breaking heart in a care-worn, life-weary 
 mother's face, when the little ones are crying 
 J round her for bread, and she dares not for their 
 Sear sakes relax the strain, while the trembling 
 hands retain their cunning, and the will can flog 
 the limbs to their tasks ? Have you ever heard 
 her moan for rest, the only rest that can help her, 
 
These Little Ones. 49 
 
 when the heart-strings were strung to breaking- 
 strain, and the crj of the little ones grew too bit- 
 ter to be borne ? I have, and I have seen, too, 
 that somehow still the sickly one got tended, and 
 somehow still the work got itself done. I have 
 seen this, and I have been ready to bow down in 
 that poor home and worship as in the vestibule 
 of the heavenly temple ; whence clearer eyes be- 
 hold love's ministry, and a sm'er hand inscribes 
 the record which will be read ont by tender sym- 
 pathetic voices at that great day, not unnoted of 
 the King of kings.* 
 
 These little ones. Bear with them, toil for 
 them, suffer for them, live in their life, be glad in 
 their joy. Thus shall you have the blessing with 
 which God has freighted them, to fill your homes 
 with light and love. How many of the most 
 precious pearls of home, like the pearls of the 
 deep sea, grow round wounds, and are the costly 
 burials of pain ! 
 
 III. These little ones are sent to us surely tp 
 hold up the mirror to our evil habits and pas- 
 sions, that we may learn to hate them as God 
 hates them, and may join the energy of our will 
 3 
 
50 The Home Life, 
 
 to His in the effort to master them, and to put 
 them away. 
 
 Eve knew what sin meant, and what sin had 
 done in God's home, when Abel lay dead on her 
 bosom. She knew then, too, what God had 
 meant, and what God had suffered by death. It 
 is the very grandest instrument of man's moral 
 culture, this home institution — these little ones, 
 in whom, if we cherish our vices, passions, and 
 sins, they repeat themselves with startling vivid- 
 ness and ghastly ugliness. Can any horror be 
 imagined more dreadful than - that which would 
 seize the soul of a drunken father, not utterly 
 brutalised, if he saw his child mimicking his stut- 
 tering voice or staggering step, or beginning while 
 yet a child to tread in stern recklessness the same 
 swift pathway to the pit ? There is many a par- 
 ent who will read these words who would be 
 filled with shame and sadness if he were to see, 
 as the eyes above us see, his children reproduce 
 the tempers, vices, and blasphemies with which 
 he is cursing his home. 
 
 And they will repeat them. You are as gods 
 to them in their young childhood. God hath 
 made them to yield to you the reverence and 
 homage which He claims //♦^wi you. Alas for the 
 
These Little Ones. 51 
 
 hour when they find that their gods are gods of. 
 clay, and learn to slight and scorn, and it may be 
 hate, the parent, whom God made as a parent in 
 the image of Himself! It is the most bitter, the 
 most irreparable wrong that you can inflict upon 
 them, to drive them to fear, to shrink from, to 
 hate, what God made them to honour, serve, and 
 love. Well if it does not shatter the whole 
 framework of their moral being, and tempt them 
 to yield to the devil that passionate devotion 
 whose inspiration is despair. God sets your chil- 
 dren in your presence continually, as an ever- 
 present and most powerful memento of the fact 
 and the fatal fruit of transgression. You cannot 
 indulge one passion in your home, you cannot 
 give the rein to one lust, you cannot accept the 
 world or self as your ruling inspiration, but it 
 passes forth into your children and begets its like- 
 ness, and then rises up a ghastly image, to haunt 
 you at your own hearthfire. Blessings bright as 
 heaven can send you, or torments sharp as the 
 goads of hell, are these little ones. You may 
 choose to make them the brand of your dishon- 
 our, or the crown of your glory ; the long joy, 
 or the long shame and misery of your eternity. 
 
52 The Home Life. 
 
 •These little ones, take heed that ye despise them 
 not! 
 
 And what is it to despise or to offend them ? 
 More of this when I come to speak of their edu- 
 cation. Meanwhile a few earnest words. Do not 
 let them feel that there is no room for them, no 
 food for them, no love for them, in this wide, 
 bright world. It is an awful thing to let a little 
 one, one of God's little ones, grow up to feel that 
 the world is a hard prison-house, and life a long 
 pain; cuffed, kicked, tossed hither and thither, 
 till the young heart that ought to be so glad nes- 
 tles near to death, with a quiet sense that it is 
 getting near to all that it can dream of as peace. 
 I read this in the papers the other day. Such 
 things, alas ! may be read there most days. Let 
 us look at it for a moment, and try to realise 
 something of what this little one endured. 
 
 " Destitution and DEATn. — Last evening, Mr. Eichards, 
 deputy-coroner, held an inquest at the Ship and Shears 
 Tavern, Lower Shadwell, touching the death from destitu- 
 tion and exposure of Ann Andrews, aged eleven. Mary 
 Ann Andrews, of 5 Victoria Place, Shadwell, said that she 
 was the wife of a bricklayer, who abandoned her two years 
 ago, and left her with eight children to support. She 
 worked at a dust-yard for 1«. 2^. a day for some time, but 
 
These Little Ones. 53 
 
 fell into sucli a state of destitution that she was compelled 
 to apply to the parish for assistance. The parish passed 
 her and six children down to WisbeacH. "When down there 
 she asked the parish authorities at Wisbeach for assistance, 
 and they agreed to give her 9s. a week to go up to London. 
 On Monday week they gave her 95. in advance, and she set 
 out to walk up to London, a distance of a hundred miles, 
 with the children, of whom the deceased was the eldest. 
 On the way they once got a night's lodging at a union ; on 
 the other nights they slept in lodging-houses. Excepting 
 the 95., they had nothing except one loaf of bread, which a 
 lady, taking compassion on them as they walked along, gave 
 them. They arrived in London on the Saturday morning. 
 The deceased frequently complained on the road. "When 
 they arrived in Shadwell they took a room at 2s. a week. 
 The deceased died on Thursday. Dr. George Sprey said he 
 was called in to the deceased. He found her dead, lying on 
 the floor of a room in which there was no bed or other fur- 
 nitare. The ^ost-mortem examination showed the stomach 
 and intestines to be empty. Death resulted from inflamma- 
 tion of the bronchial tubes, and was accelerated by fatigue, 
 exposure, and want of the common necessaries of life. The 
 Coroner having summed up, the jury returned a verdict 
 that the deceased was found dead from bronchitis and the 
 mortal effects of fatigue, exposure, and destitution." 
 
 Think how the morning light, which summons 
 you from a hixurious bed to a well spread board, 
 broke over that shivering, starving little one. 
 
54 The Home Life. 
 
 Think how all the glad sights and sounds of the 
 bountiful creation jarred to agonj on that hungry, 
 death-weary heart. She might have envied, but 
 that her heart was too numb, the birds and the 
 lilies, and groaned over her fatal inheritance of 
 the destinies of a human child. Methinks there 
 may come to be countries of which the Lord of 
 " these little ones " may say, " It were better for 
 them that a millstone were hanged about their 
 necks, and they were drowned in the depths of 
 the sea." 
 
 Think tenderly of these myriad little ones 
 whom the morning light wakes up to hunger, 
 filth, and wretchedness ; while the evening shad- 
 ows hunt them into lairs in which you would not 
 care to couch your beasts. Think of them. You 
 cannot mend it all, but you can do something ; 
 you can bless and strengthen the hands that are 
 mending it, and which seek and claim the young 
 outcasts of life with long-suffering patience and 
 unwearying gentleness, because they are the 
 lambs of the fold of Christ. Of all the efforts 
 which the Church puts forth — and the Church is 
 coming more and more to be identified with the 
 Christian charity of the times — to heal the sick- 
 ness and cleanse the leprosy of society, there is 
 
These Little Ones. 55 
 
 none wMcli claims sucli honour as the endeavour 
 to snatch young children, by education, by indus- 
 trial training, by yigilant oyersight — true episco- 
 pal work — ^from the pits of perdition which our 
 splendid commercial activity has opened in every 
 town and village in our land. 
 
 Take heed that ye despise them not. Rever- 
 ence their purity, their simplicity, their inno- 
 cence, their unworldliness. Smile not at it from 
 your superior pedestal, but pray that you may 
 grow into its likeness. Be converted, and become 
 as a little child again, like those grand strong 
 men, the apostolic company. Paul, the aged, 
 was fresh and sirriple as a child, while his arm 
 was strong enough to shake the world. See that 
 you stain not the tissues and foul not the springs 
 of their young lives by the taint of your vices. 
 How many fretful, puny, crippled children bear 
 through life the burden of the sins of their sires ! 
 Do not warp their apprehension of righteousness 
 and goodness by admiring tales of brilliant scamps 
 and triumphant cheats. Beware how you inter- 
 pose the medium of a hard, selfish, and worldly 
 nature between their souls and the voices which 
 God has made them quick to hsten to, and which 
 preach from stars and birds and lilies of the field, 
 
66 Tlie Home Life. 
 
 and friends, and heroes of the past, gentleness, 
 courage, constancy, and love. Let no gusts of 
 passion storm tlirougli your home, and lay these 
 innocent flowers stained and broken in the dust ; 
 and tempt them not to think, as the world is 
 tempting us all to think, by what you do and de- 
 light in, that Christ was dreaming when He said, 
 " Except ye he converted^ and heoome as little chil- 
 dren, ye shall not enter into the Tcingdom of heav- 
 
III. 
 
 THE JUST MASTER 
 
 " Masters^ give unto your servants tJiat which is just and 
 equal; Icnowiiig that ye also have a Master in heaven?'' 
 —Col. iv. 1. 
 
 Society, under modem influences — of wliicli, 
 perhaps, the most powerful in our time is com- 
 merce — tends to form itself into two hostile 
 camps, each fully armed and on guard against 
 the other; as keen and suspicious as were the 
 combatants, at the most critical eras of the patri- 
 cian and plebeian warfare in republican Home. 
 There were two camps in the ancient time, there 
 are two camps in the modern ; but between these 
 eras lies the feudal age, and we are the heirs of 
 the legacy which it has bequeathed. The feudal 
 age, far from being, as is popularly conceived, a 
 system of organised tyranny, was truly a system 
 of relations and duties. The scheme was very 
 roughly framed, the duties were very ill observed, 
 3* 
 
58 The Home Life. 
 
 as .Cliristian duties are in these times-; but still, 
 througli tlie whole, the duty of man to man, with 
 the practical obligations which grew out of it, was 
 the paramount idea. This created a unity in feu- 
 dal society, within whose bounds, no doubt, 
 classes and interests were fiercely at war, the idea 
 of which was purely Christian. The ideas and 
 habits which we inherit from the feudal age, or 
 rather which we derive through it from a higher 
 source, are a protest against this dire division, and 
 a uniting influence which will in time weld even 
 our complex social system into a higher and com- 
 pleter unity than any which has been hitherto 
 realised in our world. For to this everything 
 tends — ^unity, in higher and yet higher forms, 
 through long and circuitous paths, but with this 
 end, blessed be God, ever in sight. 
 
 But, for the present, the. prospect seems a dark 
 one. The two camps are thoroughly organised 
 and sharply divided ; the " cause of war " is in- 
 dustry and its fruits. Since the great political 
 question was settled in England by the recogni- 
 tion of the principle of the Reform Bill a genera- 
 tion ago, the social question has passed steadily to 
 the front. They must be blind students of these 
 times who cannot see that this question of capital 
 
The Just Master. 59 
 
 and industry overtops all other questions, and is 
 tlie great battle-field of this generation. If any 
 are in doubt of its magnitude and pressure, I 
 would earnestly advise them to study Mr. Faw- 
 cett's " Economic Position of the British La- 
 bourer," in which the question is stated with con- 
 vincing force and clearness; though there may 
 easily be wide differences of opinion as to the 
 measures by which he believes that the speedier 
 solution of the question may be assured. Has the 
 workman the right to seek arid look for some 
 other fruit of his toil than the bare minimum at 
 which, in this sad world, where so many are al- 
 T^ays at starving point, the employer can manage 
 to get it decently done \ This is the great ques- 
 tion Ivhich the workmen in Western Europe are 
 endeavouring to have settled, though, no doubt, 
 often in blundering and short-sighted ways. 
 
 The science of worldly interests, which proba- 
 bly is a fair definition of political economy, pre- 
 cious as its teachings are, would leave us in a 
 dead-lock unless some help were to be brought to 
 us from a higher hand. If man is to rest in 
 that relation to man which worldly interest creates 
 and sustains — and I use the word worldly in no 
 scornful sense ; for, while we live on earth, we 
 
60 The Home Life. 
 
 have no riglit to speak otherwise than reverently 
 of the world and worldly things, so long as they 
 observe the limits of their sphere — society must 
 remain two hostile camps to the end of time. 
 The employer's interest leads him to endeavour 
 to obtain his labour at the lowest price at which 
 he can induce men to offer it ; the labourer's in- 
 terest leads him to watch keenly for every oppor- 
 tunity of taking his employer at a disadvantage, 
 and wi'inging out of him in his needs, when he 
 has a: contract pfl^^hand and at like seasons, the 
 price of which he feels, rightly or wrongly, that 
 he has been unjustly deprived. The two classes 
 are falling continually more completely into the 
 attitude and relation of hostile armies, each hav- 
 ing a power so immense and an organisation so 
 thorough, that their contests cannot but issue in 
 grievous harm and loss to both. I constantly hear 
 men of business speaking very gravely of the po- 
 sition of employers with regard to their workmen, 
 and complaining that after the present •fashion 
 things cannot go on long at all. I am quite sure 
 that the workmen share the feeling. There is 
 deep discontent in both camps, and a conviction 
 that the direst extremities of war would be better 
 than the long continuance of this armed peace. 
 
The Just Master. 61 
 
 And there are some wlio look into and read the 
 word of tlie Lord, wlio ask themselves sadly, why 
 there should be two camps at all. 
 
 It is complained, and justly, that none of the 
 ancient loyal personal relations between masters 
 and workmen any longer subsist. The men are 
 a great army, and are commanded and handled 
 like an army ; and as soldiers, from one end of the 
 land to the other, they obey, not their captains of 
 industry, but their self-elected chiefs. The mas- 
 ters can only deal with them in the gross, and by 
 formal stipulations which are entered into by 
 their commanders, and can hever get at them as 
 individual men, having thought, will, and love of 
 their own, at all. Itds a true complaint, and sad 
 as true. The old bonds have well-nigh disap- 
 peared, and the personal element is being elimi- 
 nated from the relations of the world of industry ; 
 as the leaders of a powerful scientific school of 
 thought are endeavouring to eliminate a higher 
 Person from a wider world. It is said that the 
 men have learnt their strength in combination. 
 Probably so ; and they are endeavouring to en- 
 large it by combination with workmen in other 
 lands. But most certainly capital too has learnt 
 its power, its enormous power, of increase. It un- 
 
62 The Home Life. 
 
 derstands perfectly the grand style in its opera- 
 tions, and it employs labour upon a scale wliicli 
 renders anything like the old personal relation 
 between the master and his work-people impossi- 
 ble, and the idea of it manifestly absurd. 
 
 The fact is that business operations are being 
 reduced to the cold certainty and seyerity of a 
 science. Men are really, and not only nominally, 
 reckoned by hands, and no longer as of old by 
 souls. And if hands are sought without much 
 thought or care of the souls that should go with 
 them, and of which economical science takes lit- 
 tle account, then you may expect hard, sharp 
 dealing on both sides ; and every advantage will 
 be keenly seized which will make the hands worth 
 so much more to the souls that own them, and to 
 the souls that are hanging on them for shelter and 
 food. It is the vast scale of business, and the 
 rigid calculations by which it is carried on, which 
 has eliminated the personal element fi^om the re- 
 lations of the classes. And this vast scale makes 
 vast profits. Tens of thousands are ^thought no 
 more of now than hundreds were in bygone gen- 
 erations. There are firms in our great commer- 
 cial centres which give away annually in promis- 
 cuous charity, to cases which they know nothing 
 
The Just Master. 63 
 
 and care nothing about, but wbidi are introduced 
 by good customers, a sum wbicb would have been 
 reckoned a handsome income from a large busi- 
 ness thirty years ago. And these vast profits are 
 no secret. " The hands " will have eyes belong- 
 ing to them which will look hungrily at your Go- 
 shens, and minds, too, which will ponder much 
 upon the question, why is it that capital, got to- 
 gether in a few years, is making thousands out of 
 this business, while for me a halfpenny an hour is 
 a grand advance, for which, too, I had to fight 
 desperately till I was well-nigh starved to death ? 
 This is the question which industry is earnestly 
 pondering, and which will have to be settled on 
 some other basis than the present, if the two 
 camps^ are ever to be one. 
 
 ITow it is very easy work indeed for us to rail 
 at political economy, and to paint pleasant fancy 
 pictures of an ideal state of industry, in which 
 the comforts and advantages of the workman shall 
 advance precisely in the same ratio as those of his 
 chief; in which wages shall be fixed by kindly 
 sentiment, and all shall be conducted according 
 to the highest moral ideas. But neither senti- 
 ment nor the invocation of the past will help us ; 
 the path lies onward through stern realities of 
 
64 The Home Life. 
 
 struggle and suffering, in which the real interest 
 of the classes must be our guide. We have to 
 thank political economy for laying bare the naked 
 facts and laws of the industrial relations and in- 
 terests of mankind. "We are thankful to be made 
 to understand upon what rigid lines of law the 
 industries arrange themselves ; and how any tam- 
 pering with the fundamental laws of the art and 
 mystery of commerce avenges itself speedily, and 
 for the most part with sharpest stroke on those in 
 whose supposed interests the tampering has been 
 tried. 
 
 It is most necessary, too, that the money worth 
 of a man's labour should be settled, by trying 
 where the master's interest in keeping it down, 
 and the man's interest in keeping it up, balance 
 each other fairly. Wages cannot be fixed by 
 fancy or by philanthropy. We must know the 
 point at which the opposing interests fix them, 
 the just measure in the economical scale, before 
 higher considerations, which also have to do with 
 the matter, come into play. The conclusions of 
 economical science are as important in this social 
 sphere, as to an artist is the knowledge of the 
 size, shape, and use of the bones and muscles 
 which he has to show to us clothed with flesh. 
 
Tlie Just Master. 65 
 
 Let us know what the science delivers to ns as its 
 dicta, and then let ns be snre that no good can 
 come to ns by dealing with them as other than 
 hard substantial facts, which ,will have recogni- 
 tion, or will exact a penalty, if not recognised, 
 which will leav^e no room for future ■ mistakes. 
 'Love is blind until instructed. Cultivated intelli- 
 gence helps it immensely in its ministry. Politi- 
 cal economy is a kind of horn-book, for the in- 
 struction of the labourers in the field of a Chris- 
 tian civilisation. The true and complete relations 
 of men, when they are discovered, or rather de- 
 veloped, will comprehend all their rights, inter- 
 ests, and lawful claims. It is well that these 
 should be subjected to the processes of a search- 
 ing scientific criticism; let us know them thor- 
 oughly, and not be afraid to go through much 
 struggle and sufiering, in order to their being es- 
 tablished ; but let us understand clearly that so- 
 ciety cannot rest on them ; the body must have a 
 living soul, and that can be quickened and nour- 
 ished only from a divine spring. 
 
 The purely economical basis on which the re- 
 lations of employers and employed are made to 
 rest, is confessed on all hands to be bringing so- 
 H ciety to a dead lock. The alienation of spirit, 
 
 I 
 
66 The Home Life. 
 
 and tlie restless struggle of interests, wliicLi are 
 engendered, have become intolerable. One hears 
 confident prophecies, on the one hand, that our 
 labourers will littla by little filter out of the land 
 to regions whose wealthy promise beckons them 
 from afar ; while, on the other hand, masters prog- 
 nosticate the speedy lapse of industries by which 
 our commonwealth has long been nobly distin- 
 guished, and the transference of our commercial 
 supremacy to foreign powers. One cannot but lis- 
 ten to such prophecies gravely — there is too much 
 basis for them. And yet there is no need to hear 
 them despondingly, for there are strong signs of 
 life about us yet, and where there is life there is 
 hope. The nation which in successive genera- 
 tions has given to the world the steam-engine, the 
 steam-boat, the railway, and the electric tele- 
 graph, is, may we not fairly hope, still far from 
 the beginning of its industrial decline ? But the- 
 gravity of the present state of afi'airs cannot be 
 exaggerated, and those who are very far from 
 being alarmists tell us that things cannot much 
 longer go on as they are. 
 
 The reason of this is simply, that human af- 
 fairs cannot long get on without humanity, and 
 that no machine works so badly as the human if 
 
i The Just Master, 67 
 
 treated simply as a machine. I am not So foolish 
 as to enter on the thorny question of the read- 
 justment of the relations of capital and labour, 
 in the introduction to a brief discourse, nor should 
 I in any case feel competent to the task. But 
 one can hardly enter upon the consideration of 
 the subject of masters and servants without look- 
 ing wider afield, and casting a glance at the larger 
 . relations which originally wore an almost domes- 
 tic form, and on which the welfare and progress 
 of society so greatly depend. And without ven- 
 turing into the domain of which ministers are 
 held to be constitutionally ignorant, I may be al- 
 lowed to express an earnest conviction, that if 
 ever the camps of industry are to become one 
 camp again, the old personal relation of loyalty 
 between captains and soldiers must in some way 
 or other be restored. And the thing can be done. 
 There are vast mercantile establishments in which 
 the thing is done — ^not by kindness, we expect too 
 much from kindness — ^but by wise, provident, and 
 righteous arrangements on the part of masters, 
 involving no small sacrifices, whereby the work- 
 men are made sharers in the prosperity which has 
 been created by their toil. 
 
 The only power which can stand up against 
 
68 The Home Life, 
 
 tlie tyranny whicli tlie workmen, driven into a 
 hostile attitude, allow tlieir own leaders to exer- 
 cise over them — the extent of which fills one with 
 amazement, and which Tnust be degrading to the 
 manly nature of the classes which submit to it 
 — will be found in the influence of a master who 
 has learnt the true secret of command in the 
 great army of industry, and knows the art of gov- 
 erning men. There are " concerns " in this coun- 
 try from which no combination could win or ter- 
 rify the workmen ; when such multiply, and be- 
 come the rule instead of the exception, the prob- 
 lem of industry in a Christian sense will be solved, 
 and commerce in a Christian sense will be saved. 
 And that I may not appear to you to be talking 
 idly in pressing these views upon you, let me shel- ' 
 ter myself under the authority of a great name. 
 Mr. Fawcett, in a book which has just appeared, 
 and to which I have already referred, deals with 
 this solution of the difficulty as a very practical 
 and promising feature of the industrial life of our 
 times. 
 
 " I am chiefly induced to anticipate the future 
 of our country with confidence and wdth hope, 
 because each year sui)plies some gratifying in- 
 dication, that our present industrial economy is 
 
The Just Master. 69 
 
 susceptible of a beneficent change. Twenty years 
 since, cooperation was looked upon as the mis- 
 chievous dream of democrats, and copartnership 
 was never mentioned without provoking the con- 
 temptuous derision of practical men. You are 
 familiar with some of the great achievements of 
 the cooperative movement, and before many years 
 have passed, there is every reason to suppose that 
 in many of our largest commercial establishments 
 a copartnership between capital and labour will 
 have been established. It is impossible to exag- 
 gerate the blessings and the material advantages 
 which may result from thus uniting capital and 
 labour, for the antagonism of these interests has 
 been fruitful of the most baneful consequences. 
 Some successful schemes of copartnership have 
 been described in a previous chapter. The Messrs. 
 Crossley of Halifax, who employ between four 
 thousand and %^q thousand hands, and whose 
 carpet manufactory is perhaps the largest in the 
 world, have established a copartnership between 
 capital and labour. They have converted their 
 business into a joint-stock company ; they have 
 retained a certain proportion of the shares them- 
 selves, and have preferentially allotted the remain- 
 der amongst their workmen. The workmen are 
 
10 The Home Life. 
 
 to be represented on the board of direction. It 
 is manifest that those who are employed in this 
 establishment are placed in an entirely different 
 position compared with the ordinary labourers. 
 The antagonism of interests between employers 
 and employed is at once destroyed, and thus har- 
 mony and sympathy will take the place of hos- 
 tility and distrust. The dull monot6ny which 
 must depress human energy if no other prospect 
 is offered except to work through life for daily 
 wag^, will rapidly vanish; for a man's career 
 will seem to be bright with hope and promise, if 
 he knows that some self-denial will enable him to 
 save sufficient to make him a partner in the par- 
 ticular business to which his labour is applied. 
 It will, of course, be said that such schemes are 
 impracticable, that trade could not be carried on 
 if masters were subject to the interference which 
 they would have to endure, supposing they per- 
 mitted their labourers to become, even in a modi- 
 fied sense, their partners. But the practical diffi- 
 culties of the scheme will soon receive a solution. 
 It need only be said that those who have suggest- 
 ed and are making the experiment are men who 
 are unrivalled for their commercial sagacity and 
 
The Just. Master. Yl 
 
 ability ; tliey speak confidently of its success." — 
 Fawcett, pp. 244-24:6. 
 
 I have heard, too, quite recently, that a very 
 large firm of high standing in the city placed in 
 the hands of each of their employes as a l^ew 
 Year's gift, an envelope, containing a per centage, 
 in proportion to the salary, of the profits of the 
 year. They are likely to be nobly served. 
 
 They say that the home-life is the rehearsal 
 of the great world-life. Certainly this relation 
 of master and workman began in old time upon 
 the domestic idea. It has fairly broken loose 
 from it now. But surely the relations of master 
 and servant ifl the home circle, ought to prepare 
 us for the wise and righteous handhng of the 
 larger questions of rule and service which vex 
 and distract our times. To the consideration of 
 them we will now proceed. 
 
 I. The relations of master and servant spring 
 inevitably out of the constitution of human so- 
 ciety, as it has been ordained by its Lord. 
 
 It is not good for man to be alone. It is not 
 good for a class to be alone. The mutual rela- 
 tions of richer and poorer, wiser and more igno- 
 rant, stronger and weaker, finer and coarser, 
 
72 Tlie Home Life, 
 
 higlier and lower, lie at the root of all the nobler 
 life and progress of society. Developement only 
 begins where differences are established within 
 the bosom of a unity. God has so constituted 
 and endowed man, that these differences are in- 
 evitable. IsTay, if men are to rule and to serve, 
 there is divine example for it. They will find the 
 image of it in the life of God. One who was 
 God, " learnt obedience by the things which He 
 suffered." The doctrine of equality has not a 
 shadow of support in any region of the universe. 
 Superior suns rule inferior planets everywhere. 
 The very dust has its master and subject elements. . 
 The struggle to adjust their relations has left its 
 record in every fragment of rock, every splinter 
 of crystal which you tread beneath your feet. 
 Your gardens have their kingly and queenly flow- 
 ers, their masses of vulgar beauty, and their troop 
 of unnoted, undistinguished helots for daily office 
 and common use. You cannot get into a region 
 where a level is suggested as God's idea of per- 
 fectness. Suppose you cut down all the poppy- 
 heads, all the flowers which flaunt themselves so 
 bravely in the sun, as they did in the first French 
 Eevolution. What would be the next sight which 
 would greet you? N'ew masters lifting thgn- 
 
The Just Master. Y3 
 
 selves above the level with more bold assertion 
 than ever, of their right to the front rank in 
 the procession, the front seats in the theatre of 
 life. 
 
 The deadliest thing to my mind about the so- 
 cialist theory of society is, not the impiety which 
 ha^ been so constantly, and I believe on the whole 
 inevitably associated with it (for whatever the 
 plan of the universe may be, the Maker of it has 
 not built it to the socialist scale) ; nor is it the 
 crude and childish principles by which it seeks to 
 reahse its idea; but it is the idea itself — the 
 ghastly thing which it would make of society if 
 it had its way. It is as if this great world were 
 just the herb garden of the palace of the Eter- 
 nal ; where men are set like rows . of cabbage 
 plants, and have to stunt their godlike nature into 
 the cabbage type, as swiftly and perfectly as they 
 may. Abolish ranks, orders, classes, in society, 
 and you begin at once to dwarf the human, and 
 in the end you destroy all that makes the interest 
 of life and the grandeur of man. 
 
 The world in its states, its homes, and its in- 
 dustries, must have both the kings and the sub- 
 jects, the masters and the servants, the brain and 
 the hands. The lords and the vassals of labour, 
 4 
 
74 The Home Life, 
 
 the masters and servants in homes, grow ont of 
 the very constitution of humanity. Men fit into 
 these relations, and are unfitted ont of them. 
 These subordinations are not the fruit of evil, 
 they are not the work of the devil in our world. 
 The fruit of evil, the work of the devil in this 
 region is, that we have got the wrong kings. 
 Here are natural authorities and subordinations, 
 the root of which lies deeply imbedded in the na- 
 ture of man and the idea of society : while the 
 fraud, the force, the natural obHquity of human- 
 ity, make unnatural ones ; they set men in high 
 places who have no power of rule in them, and 
 ask men to obey when they can see in obedience 
 no reason, and no right. And this — the wrong 
 men uppermost — ^lies at the root of a great deal 
 of the wrong and misery of the world. 
 
 But do not let us be one-sided. Society does 
 not rest quietly in this work of the devil, and 
 mistake it for a work of the Lord. It struggles 
 against it, it strives to right it ; and this efibrt of 
 society to right itself upon the pivot of a true au- 
 thority and subordination, is the spring of all its 
 revolutions and reformations, and of all the deep- 
 est and most hopeful movements of our times. 
 Fools in places of authority, knaves in places of 
 
The Just Master, T5 
 
 trust, tyrants in places of command, cowards in 
 places of peril ; here are the parents of the fail- 
 ures and the miseries of life. Obedience, service, 
 loyalty, men owe to the office partly, to the order 
 of society in whose arch this is the key-stone. 
 But how hard and sore the perplexity becomes 
 when the office is one of high use and honour, the 
 man only useless and base ! Kebellious questions 
 rise then in the hearts of the noblest to torment 
 them. They rise more easily in the hearts of the 
 self-willed and reckless, and then they torment 
 the world. How beautiful, divinely beautiful, so- 
 ciety might grow to be, were the Lord's elect its 
 captains ; were its rulers righteous and its teach- 
 ers wise, its judges just, its bishops apostolic, its 
 rich compassionate, its soldiers humane! "Were 
 none called to yield obedience but where God 
 showed the right to claim it, were the pulses of 
 the common life but harmonious with the pulses 
 of the heavenly life, did progress move to the mu- 
 sic of righteousness and charity, the Lord might 
 look on the world which He had made, and 
 breathe over it once more the benediction, " Be- 
 hold it is very good." 
 
 n. The question of good servants is funda- 
 
76 The Home L%fe, 
 
 mentally a question of good masters, good sub- 
 jects, of good kings. 
 
 I^ot wholly, but mainly. If God made tlie 
 relation, it must be so. If God made men to be 
 rulers and men to be ruled, and if He has im- 
 planted in them instincts which move them tow- 
 ards these relations, and will allow them to rest 
 in no other, the responsibility of failure, if the 
 results go wrong, must rest mainly with those who 
 occupy the higher position in the scale. It is as 
 though God said to them by the very constitution 
 of society, " Rule wisely and righteously, and I 
 charge Myself with the obedience and welfare of 
 the ruled." And on the whole, if you want to 
 be well served you must be worth serving. Men 
 will not, they cannot, spend their best service on 
 a craven or a fool. Men want inspiration from 
 their rulers, from their superiors, in every way. 
 They want an intelligence which shall bring or- 
 der into the confusion of their thoughts, an ener- 
 gy which shall stir their languor, an animation 
 which shall fire their dulness, a purpose which 
 shall gather up and concentrate all their power, a 
 magnet which shall di^awthem up to a higher lev- 
 el of life. A true ruler or master is to his depend- 
 ents as music is to an army, where every head is 
 
The Just Master. YY 
 
 thrown back, every limb is strung, and every eye 
 flashes living fire, when the tones of the inspiring 
 battle-march burst upon the ear. And this is 
 what sin has robbed us of — heaven's music. It 
 has turned us out of our parade-ground, to slink 
 through the miry byways of a beggarly world. 
 It is through rulers, men with the instinct and 
 genius of command, that the strains are to reach 
 us again ; and when men hear the true ring in the 
 captain's voice, and catch the gleam of the true 
 fire, the fire of energy and hope in his eye, a thriU 
 of joy passes through them; every power stirs 
 and stands attent, they gather around him in 
 troops with loyal devotion, and feel with a kind of 
 rapture that they belong to a living army, with 
 leaders and comrades, with an enemy, a battle, and 
 a prize. Men are born soldiers ; they rise to their 
 full manhood when they take service under a true 
 captain in the holy war of industry against loafing, 
 and truth against lies. Bless God if He has set 
 you under one whom you can look up to with 
 reverence, one in whom your aspiration seems to 
 be realised, whose life burns to an*intenser heat, 
 and can therefore kindle ^nd nourish your own. 
 These are our captains, the men and women who 
 have carried all that we dream of feebly, and 
 
Y8 The Rome Life. 
 
 more feebly aim at, into some fair sliape of achieve- 
 ment, and who are therefore magnetic to ns, and 
 draw us upward by the image of our idea. Give 
 us men and women whose life is fresher and more 
 vivid than that of the mass around them, whose 
 spirit is purer, whose thought is clearer, whose 
 charity is more large and free, and the world 
 will not be long in finding out its captainsj who 
 conduct to it through vital channels the fire and 
 life of God. 
 
 And if the mass thus watch for these leaders, 
 and greet them when they appear, if they are 
 ready, nay, if they press to' take service under 
 them, the main reason why there are so many 
 lazy, vicious, thankless, thriftless servants must 
 be, because there are so many vain, empty-headed, 
 empty-hearted, selfish, and capricious masters 
 about the world. And here I am very anxious 
 not to be misunderstood. We say that good par- 
 ents make good children, and that if children turn 
 out badly it must be mainly the parents' fault. 
 But it would be manifestly wrong to ^^ thisinto 
 an absolute rule of judgment, and to lay the sin 
 of every prodigal at the parents' door. Still less 
 can the slighter relationship of master and ser- 
 vant give reason for any such judgment, which 
 
The Just Master. * T9 
 
 would make tlie servant's *f oil j the master's sin. 
 A good master may happen to have most faulty 
 servants, and his best endeavours in individual 
 instances may lamentably fail. And yet it will 
 remain true on the whole that the servant is as 
 the master is, and that if after the course of gen- 
 eration s things have got tangled and discordant, 
 it is mainly the superior's fault. The essential 
 principle of good service is loyalty, the sense that 
 the ruler is the right man to rule, and that his 
 service can draw forth and discipline the powers. 
 There may be much good service rendered to a 
 vain and selfish master by one who has learnt the 
 habit of obedience, and is self-respectful enough' 
 to maintain it. But true service cannot live upon 
 bare duty. The dry bread of duty needs the wine 
 of loyalty and love to bring out its nom^ishment. 
 Service gets poor and cold even in the warmest 
 and bravest heart, if there be no glow of loyalty 
 to animate it ; while in all but the bravest and 
 most faithful under such conditions it expires. 
 Unless the lamp of obedience be fed by the pm^e 
 oil of a noble commandment, it burns low, motes 
 gather and oppress it, it runs swiftly to waste, and 
 then poisons the whole air with the fetid breath 
 of its decay. We want noble women to regener- 
 
80 ■ The Home Life, 
 
 ate homes, we want true masters and mistresses 
 to regenerate service. IS'otliing is of liigher 
 worth to an age or country than service whicfe is 
 loyal and energetic. ]^ot next to great rulers, but 
 side by side with them, on the same level of dig- 
 nity to the eye of Heaven, stand the great com- 
 pany of diligent and faithful servants of their fel- 
 low-men. 
 
 III. " Masters, give unto your servants, that 
 which is just and equal ; knowing that ye also 
 have a Master in heavenP 
 
 There is the description of the Christian mas- 
 ter, the man who is to restore the fallen relations 
 of rule and service after the likeness of the idea 
 of God. It had all been terribly jarred and jan- 
 gled in Paul's days. Bad masters, bad servants ; 
 no centre of rule, and therefore no circumference 
 of service. I suppose that there never was in the 
 history of the world such a relaxation, such a dis- 
 solution of the bands of society, as in the days in 
 which the apostle wrote. J^ero on the throne of 
 the Eoman world ! The old noblesse, who had at 
 any rate some traditions of liberal rule in their 
 homes and on their estates, were well-nigh extir- 
 pated ; while new men, flatterers, panderers, ad- 
 
The Just Master, 81 
 
 yenturers of all sorts, were exalted to the higli 
 places in their room. The last ounce of labour 
 was exacted from the slaves, and the last grain of 
 corn from the estate, to feed the lustful luxury of 
 the lord in the metropolis. The world has never 
 touched such a sheer depth of degradation, so- 
 ciety has never been so near to utter dissolution, 
 as in the days when Paul held forth a divine pat- 
 tern of all human relations, and preached to hus- 
 bands and wives, fathers and children, masters 
 and servants, the example of the Husband, the 
 Father, the Master in heaven. And it saved so- 
 ciety. The men who got their eye on the great 
 example, and modelled their lives as husbands, 
 fathers, and masters on the Lord's, who set the 
 Lord always before them, and found strength to 
 do justly and love mercy in Him who is just and 
 merciful to all, began to reknit the bonds of so- 
 ciety. They held together what was falling into 
 ruin; they saved the world; they are saving it 
 still. The number of men and women who are 
 ruling in their homes with the fear of God before 
 their eyes, and the love of God within their hearts, 
 is the number of elect ministers whom we have 
 for the sa\dng of our nation, and ultimately of the 
 yrorld. 
 
 4* 
 
82 The Home Life. 
 
 The true principle of the whole lies here : — 
 " Knowing that ye yourselves have a Master in 
 heaven^ Deal with your dependents as you 
 would that the Lord should deal with you. " Just 
 and equaiy Alas! it is hard to get any fair 
 meaning attached to the terms. The man who 
 has found out the lowest price at which a starving 
 man or a consumptive woman will take his work, 
 considers that he has found the fair price. The 
 mistress who has found out how much a poor do- 
 mestic drudge will do by eighteen hours of con- 
 stant disorderly toil, considers that she has discov- 
 ered the fair day's work. I should dwell more on 
 the fact that the seiwants here spoken of were 
 slaves, and therefore peculiarly cast on the mas- 
 ter's equitable and merciful rule, but that so much 
 of our labour is done under conditions hardly re- 
 moved from slavish, that the distinction would 
 lack difference if it were placed in too prominent 
 a light. The slop-workwoman, the West End 
 milliner's young lady, the journeyman baker, the 
 Dorsetshire labourer, might look longingly at the 
 slave's ease and plenty in many a great household 
 in Rome. It is a dark sad subject, the conditions 
 under which so much of our industrial toil is car- 
 ried on. The skilled artizan or spinner has a po^ 
 
The Just Master, 83 
 
 sition whose comfort many a liiglilj educated 
 drudge in superior regions might envy ; but there 
 are whole classes of our countrymen and country- 
 women whose lot shows darkly beside the slave's 
 or even the brute's. 
 
 Yes, but this master, this mistress, have them- 
 selves a Master in heaven, able to deal with them 
 as they deal with their dependents, and if needed, 
 to make them writhe as they make their slaves. 
 This is a very strong, coarse form in which to put 
 it, but it is the only form in which some tyrants 
 seem able to understand it ; and there are very 
 terrible sentences to be found in the word of God 
 as to the doom of those who persist in provoking 
 the stroke of the Divine hand. But after all, is 
 He not a name or a shadow ? Who is the Al- 
 mighty? where is He? Men may laugh — they 
 have laughed in all ages — at a penalty so vague 
 as the vengeance of the Supreme. And then 
 there is no help. Masters, lords, kings, must go 
 on tyrannising until the maddened victims rise 
 on them, and tear their hearts out as they did 
 once in Paris ; and then when they are quivering 
 in the grasp of a wild devilish mob, they may 
 have thoughts in that last moment that the ven- 
 geance of an unseen God is not a matter so far 
 
84 The Home Life. 
 
 off as they had supposed. But if a man has some 
 dread of this awful Being, and some conviction 
 that He is able to destroy both body and soul in 
 hell, then there is some hold of him. It was j)er- 
 haps the main hold of the Mediaeval Church. It 
 helps us to understand those awful pictures of the 
 torments of the damned, which preachers, paint- 
 ers, and poets brought out with such terrible dis- 
 tinctness throughout the middle ages ; and which 
 Dante has fixed in forms which will live in men's 
 imagination while the world endures. One can 
 comprehend how the dread picture of an Ezze- 
 lino or a JS'icholas in torment might help poor, 
 oppressed, down-trodden serfs of toil, or children 
 of peace, to hold fast some faith in the govern- 
 ment of a righteous God. 
 
 But we rise into a higher region when men 
 can be brought to believe that God is able to bless 
 them richly, to make their lives glad and fruitful, 
 in the measure in which they rain blessings on 
 those whom He has placed under their charge. 
 Then you have the highest assurance that the rule 
 will have a sacred sentiment of duty in the heart 
 of it, and will bless doubly, servant and master 
 alike. And it is the only security. History de- 
 livers to us no record of a successful and perma- 
 
The Just Master. 85 
 
 nent resistance to tyranny, a steady development 
 of righteous government, except nnder the influ- 
 ence of these Christian ideas. And here, too, is 
 a power, if it can be brought fully to bear, which 
 can make wise, righteous, and merciful rulers out of 
 very quiet, common, and by no means heroic men 
 and women. It is a power which can reach all, 
 and has the same influence, the same message for 
 all, for the most absolute monarch, and for the 
 poorest housekeeper who has but one drudge to 
 rule over in her own home. The beginning of 
 all good rule, of all fair and equal dealing with 
 your dependents, is the sense that you also have a 
 Master in heaven ; and that the model of your 
 method with them is the method of God with 
 yourself. Study that method, and imitate it as 
 you may. 
 
 God is merciful, but not weakly kind. Noth- 
 ing so demoralises as mere kindness, the indispo- 
 sition to compel effort, and to look on pain. 
 Love in the heart, command in the voice, strength 
 in the hand, — ^these are the endowments of the 
 merciful ruler. Know what ought to be done, 
 and have it done, witji stern imperiousness if 
 needs be, but always with the remembrance that 
 the servant is the Lord's servant as well as yours. 
 
86 The Home Life. 
 
 and that an appeal lies to His bar. Let tlie mer- 
 cy of a brother sinner temper ever your demands 
 and judgments, as you pray that God's judgment 
 may be tempered to you. But have tbe right 
 thing done, as God will have the right thing done 
 by you. 
 
 He calleth us not servants, but friends. There 
 is no Christian home where the servant is not the 
 friend as well as the servant, — where something 
 has not draAvn forth towards the master his own 
 interest, zeal, and hope. Something, I say ; but 
 there is but one thing, — God's method with us, 
 and that is intercourse, sympathy, and love. I 
 believe that your dependents watch far more 
 keenly than you imagine for little marks of confi- 
 dence and interest, and would be thankful in re- 
 turn to give you their confidence, and cast them- 
 selves on your guidance, if they recognised in you 
 a true desire and power to draw forth their trust. 
 There are a thousand ways in the close intercourse 
 of daily life of expressing kindly interest and 
 good will, and of enlisting that in your depend- 
 ents which no gold can buy, and no gold can 
 destroy. *' / call you not servants^ hut friends^ 
 But God sufiers no presumption in His friends, 
 no idle leaning on the friendship, no mere senti- 
 
The Just Master. 87 
 
 mental sjmpatliies ; service rendered faithfully to 
 the full strain is the bond of the friendship, and 
 the continual strengthening of the noblest ener- 
 gies of the nature is its fruit. God surrounds us 
 with a vigilant, but unobtrusive care; never 
 sleeping, but never fretting; never tampering 
 with freedom, but never too carelessly trusting 
 it ; guiding by the eye and the hand, rather than 
 by the goad ; winning confidence, rather than in- 
 spiring terror; bearing much and long, rather 
 than casting off, and leaving the outcast a prey to 
 ever-vigilant and malignant foes. 
 
 " Lite as a father pitieth his children, so the 
 Lord pitieth them that fear Him / for He Icnow- 
 eth our frame, He remembereth that we are dustP 
 There is a tender watchfulness lest the workers 
 grow over weary, the anxions ones over sad. He 
 does not intrude His counsels and messages on all 
 our moods ; we are left to fight with many of them 
 as we may ; but He never suffers us to forget that 
 He is not far from us in our dire extremities ; and 
 that when heart and flesh fail. He is present with 
 His aids. And I have known a wise, kind word 
 or deed, in some moment of sickness or weariness 
 which none but a watchful and loving eye would 
 have detected, break down a hard, rebellious na- 
 
88 The Home Life. 
 
 ture, and turn a careless, heartless servant into a 
 humble, submissive, devoted friend. 
 
 I know that all this may seem very dreamy 
 and Utopian to many of you. Perhaps you have 
 fairly given up trying to be kind and considerate 
 to subordinates: the more kindness you show, 
 the more licence they take, and the more trouble 
 they give you in the end. Perhaps so. Will 
 you try a new method? Begin with yourself. 
 Take yourself in hand. Bring your own vain 
 thoughts and stormy tempers into subjection; 
 work the spirit and the mind of Christ into the 
 texture . of your own, and then try once more. 
 Or, in the worst case, remember that Heaven 
 might say the same of you and me, and Heaven 
 goes on helping and blessing us still. 
 
 " Then came Peter to Him^ and said^ Lord^ 
 how oft shall my hrother sin against me^ and I 
 forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto 
 him.^ I say not unto thee^ Until seven times: hict^ 
 Until seventy times seven. Therefore is the Icing- 
 dom of heaven likened unto a certain hing, which 
 would take account of his servants. And when he 
 had hegun to reclton^ one was Irought unto him^ 
 which owed him ten thousa/nd talents. £ut foras- 
 much as he had not to pay, his lord commamded 
 
The Just Master. 89 
 
 Imn to he sold^ and his wife^ and children^ and all 
 that he had, and pa.yment to he made. The servant 
 therefore fell down, and worshvpped him, saying, 
 Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee 
 all. Then the lord of that servant was moved with 
 compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the 
 debt. But tlie same servant went out, and found 
 one of his fellow-servants, which owed him an 
 hundred pence : and he laid hands on him, and 
 toolc him hy the throat, saying. Pay me that thou 
 owest. And his fellow-servant fell down at his 
 feet, and besought him, saying. Save patience with 
 me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not : 
 but went and cast him into prison, till he shoidd 
 pay the debt. So when his fellow-servants saio 
 lohat was done, they were very sorry, and came 
 and told imto their lord all that was done. Then 
 his lord, after that he had called him, said unto 
 him, thou wiclced servant, I forgave thee all 
 that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest 
 not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow- 
 servant, even as I had pity on thee f And his 
 lord was loroth, and delivered him to the tor- 
 onentors, till he shoidd pay all that was dtie unto 
 him. So lihewise shall my heavenly Father do 
 also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not 
 
90 The Home Bfe. 
 
 every one his 'brother their tresjpasses,^'^ (Matt, 
 xviii. 21-35). 
 
 I believe tliis. I dare not give up hope and 
 effort for any man with these words before me. 
 Dare you ? You may feel sadly enough that you 
 have reached the limit of your powers ; but dare 
 you, with that sentence ringing in your ears, say 
 that you have reached the limit of your pity, your 
 mercy, your desire, could you but see the way, to 
 help and to save? Until seventy times seven! 
 until numbers end ; and then the fountain of all 
 love and pity is unexhausted still. 
 
 Here is the most effectual stimulus to unself- 
 ish, unrewarded thought and care for others that 
 earth or heaven can supply. "When Heaven found 
 it, and brought it to bear on man, then began 
 the regeneration of society. Much of the work 
 must be thankless, and mere nature finds thank- 
 less toil intolerable. Disappointed you must be, 
 disheartened you must be ; you will constantly be 
 tempted to say, " I have done my utmost for the 
 thankless fools, — I have shown them constant and 
 unselfish kindness, and now I have done. They 
 may take their own course, and go to wreck and 
 ruin as quickly as they please." Nay, until sev- 
 enty TBiES SEVEN ! And " knowing that ye your- 
 selves also have a Master in heaven," who has 
 
The Just Master. 91 
 
 spent infinitely more on yon, and is not weary 
 yet, gather np yonr strength and courage for an- 
 other effort. Granted that for their own sakes 
 they have no claim on yon, do it for God's sake ; 
 His claim on you is never exhausted, for His pa- 
 tience and goodness never tire. We shall never 
 dare to despair of our fellow-servants if we meas- 
 m-e the patience and gentleness of God. Christ 
 stands in the person of every poor suppliant, 
 every humble dependent, and says, " This is the 
 child of my pity ; deal with him as thou wouldst 
 deal with thy Lord in his room." 
 
 Rhapsody, is it? Yague, dreamy notions, 
 which can never bring any practical help to such 
 a world as this ! Yery well ; but remember that 
 the world began to be helped, began to look up 
 and live, just when these notions were brought 
 into it. And try it long enough on any other 
 plan, you will but let loose the wolves of greed 
 and revenge to torment mankind. To me, I con- 
 fess, the longer I live the more clearly is it appar- 
 ent, that the only practical, powerful antagonist 
 to the demons of selfishness and tyranny which 
 are tearing the heart out. of society, is the exlior- 
 tation with which the text is charged, borne in 
 upon us, as it is, by the life, the death, and the 
 risen life, of the incarnate Son of God. 
 
lY. 
 THE FAITHFUL SEEYANT. 
 
 " SertanU^ obey in all things your masters according to the 
 JlesJi ; not with eye-service^ as men-pleasers ; "but in sin- 
 gleness of hearty fearing God: andj whatsoe'cer ye do, do 
 it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.^^ — Col. iii. 
 22, 23. 
 
 That wliicli is mainly wanted in liiiman rela- 
 tions, is a principle wliicli shall lift our obliga- 
 tions and duties to each other, above those pertur- 
 bations which spring out of our personal infirmi- 
 ties, follies, and sins. Each man needs a rule and 
 a motive independent of that variable element, 
 the goodness or the badness of the brother to 
 whom he owes a duty. In truth, we only rise to 
 a true human dignity when our supreme motive 
 and regulative power has its organ within ; and 
 when the question, in every claim which is made 
 on our service, is, not how much has such an one 
 the power to exact of me, but, how much do I 
 
The Faithful Servant. 93 
 
 owe it to myself, as in the sight of God, to do. 
 It is as needful for masters as for servants. How 
 mncli do I owe it to God to do for my seiwants, is 
 the master's question. How much do I owe it to 
 God to do for my master, is the servant's. Till 
 this be fairly recognised and established as the 
 Christian principle of all social relations, the 
 " tearing, biting, and devouring each other," will 
 go on to the end of time. It may be a very Uto- 
 pian principle. And it is quite possible, too, that 
 it may have been much more easy to see the way 
 to the application of it in the good old times, 
 when* the relations of both home and business 
 were much more simple and limited than they 
 can be considered now. 
 
 There is a kind of feeling in the minds of 
 those who do not care to look the reality of this 
 Christian obligation very fully in the face, that 
 the two parties are now, in a large measure, inde- 
 pendent of each other, and tSat each must con- 
 tend for its interests sternly, doing for itself just 
 the best that it can. Self-interest, we are con- 
 stantly told — though there is a higher view even 
 of self-interest than the term is usually held to 
 cover — must in the business world rule supreme. 
 Yery well ; be it so. But, then, let us shut up 
 
 ■' 
 
94 The Home Life. 
 
 our New Testament, and have done with tlie be- 
 lief that it has some guidance for us as to the du- 
 ties and relations of life. Is it possible that there 
 is a great world of human thought and activity 
 with which the purest principles of the ISTew Tes- 
 tament have little or nothing to do? I find it 
 impossible to believe it. Could one be brought to 
 believe it, one might be under grievous temptation 
 to shut up the Bible, and see what Gotama or 
 Confucius could do for us in its room. I live in 
 the hope, though we shall none of us see it ful- 
 filled here, that Christ and the angels will one 
 day look down upon a world of teeming activity, 
 invention, and production, a world of commerce, 
 in which the law of Christian brotherly life shall 
 reign supreme ; when the sentence, " Look not 
 every man on his own things, but also on the 
 things of others," shall have a large and noble 
 reading in the statute-books of commerce and on 
 the exchanges of *^he world. The Lord's reign 
 surely will not dry up all the industry ani com- 
 merce of mankind. And far as we may be from 
 it in these struggling days, and hard as it may 
 seem to work toward it, in the terribly compli- 
 cated and difficult times in which we live, do not! 
 let us give up the hope and the vision of it. And 
 
The Faithful Servant. 95 
 
 if, in working toward it, however feebly, fortunes 
 lose something of their colossal proportions, we 
 shall find ourselves rich.er in honour and love, and 
 eternal gainers by the exchange. 
 
 To me there is something terrible in the vis- 
 ion of the constant strife and jealousy of the 
 classes. If the world is to be always fighting this 
 battle — the victims of which, in the sickly bodies 
 and the stunted souls which poverty is ever send- 
 ing forth into the world's highways, dot our fields 
 and throng our streets — then we may all come to 
 share the conviction of an accomplished German 
 professor, that the gospel must b^ given up as a 
 failure, inasmuch as it has utterly broken its 
 promise of peace and good- will to the world. If 
 this state of things contents you, if it appears^ 
 very natural, and on the whole inevitable, that 
 society should be drawn out into this interminable 
 array, filling the air with its battle-cries and the 
 earth with its slain, then the whole gospel must 
 seem to you a Utopian vision, and Christ the 
 great dreamer of the world. But if you watch 
 the strife sadly, and yearn to see it healed, you 
 will throw daily fresh emphasis into the prayer, 
 that men may seek both the motive and the law 
 of their duties to each other, not in the vain, in- 
 
96 The Home Life. 
 
 constant creature, but in tlie constant, eternal 
 God. This is tlie help which Heaven brings to 
 us in our business and in every sphere : " What- 
 soever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and 
 not unto vnenP Somehow — ^liow we cannot tell, 
 but somehow — this help of Heaven will be made 
 effectual, and commerce, too, wiU be saved. 
 
 Our present concern is with the servant's duty ; 
 the master's has akeady passed under review. 
 
 I. Understand that to serve w^ell is in its way 
 quite as noble and even as grand a thing as to 
 rule^perhaps ^nobler. Obedience and patience 
 are the choice virtues in the estimation of Heaven. 
 Obedience was one grand lesson of the Saviour's 
 ^ life. " / am among you as one that serveth^ 
 There have been those, and not the weakest and 
 most ignoble of our race, who have made them- 
 selves servants — not sentimental servants, but ser- 
 vants in a real, hard sense — ^that they might be 
 more like Hm. During the early and middle 
 ages, when the life of Christ had a sort of mag- 
 netic attraction, men were possessed with a per- 
 fect frenzy of obedience. They put themselves 
 under superiors, they prayed to be ruled — ay, even 
 with hard and stem command : they sought ea- 
 
 J 
 
The Faithful Sei^ant 97 
 
 gerly tlie most menial offices and tasks, that they 
 might tread more closely in the footsteps of Him, 
 who came in the form of a servant, " not that He 
 might he ministered unto^ hut that He might min- 
 ister^ and give His life a ransom for manyP 
 Voluntary humility^ Paul calls it; and men 
 sought it with passionate eagerness. But the re- 
 lations and obligations which we make for our- 
 selves have no blessing for us compared with those 
 which are made of God. The obedience which 
 was exacted and paid in monasteries, and under 
 the rule of chivalry, had one great vice — it was 
 unnatural. God did not ask it of men, God did 
 not bless it. He has made room enough for obe- 
 dience in the round of our common Hves. 
 
 " The trivial round, the common task, 
 Will furnish all we ought to ask ; 
 Eoom to deny ourselves, a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God." 
 
 But it may exalt our sense of the dignity of obe- 
 dience, to learn that some of the noblest of men 
 have voluntarily and joyfully sought it, and have 
 felt that they were liker Christ and nearer heaven 
 in obeying humbly and from the heart some 
 hard and even unjust commandment, than in 
 5 
 
98 The Borne Life. 
 
 giving rein to tlie pride of power in swaying tlie 
 movements of subject multitudes from a throne. 
 There is only one noble conquest — self-conquest. 
 Servants have a grand opportunity to win it. 
 " Cheater is he that ruleth his spirit^ than he that 
 taheth a city^'^ Some of earth's greatest, by this 
 rule, must be among them that serve. And do 
 not rebel at the meanness of your service, if mean 
 it seem. They were slaves to whom Paul wrote 
 these words: men and women, boys and girls, 
 bought and sold like cattle, and kept close to their 
 tasks by curses *knd blows. You know no tasks 
 so hard, so bitter, as those which the apostle 
 taught them thus to elevate into a noble form of 
 divine service, as comrades of apostles and proph- 
 ets, and of Gabriel, the servant who stands before 
 the throne. Refuse to think meanly of any office 
 to which the Master calls you ; despise your post, 
 and you will soon degrade your work. Magnify 
 your office by diligent, faithful, self-respectful ser- 
 vice ; you will pass up one day to stand among 
 the kings. 
 
 II. Remember that the measure and spirit of 
 your service is not a question between you and 
 your masters, but between you and your God. 
 
The Faithful Servant. 99 
 
 God meant that there should he good rule and 
 good service upon earth ; good command and good 
 ohedience. Things can only go on happily and 
 prosperously when duties to God on hoth sides are 
 fulfilled. A good master kindles a spirit of loyal 
 obedience which makes service a delight; none 
 grudge toils and sacrifices for those whom they 
 honour and love. But you are not dependent on 
 good masters. The law of your life's duty, is not 
 dependent on anything so shifting and uncertain 
 as the actions of a man. That is a poor life, a 
 base- life, which is carried on by " eye-service as 
 men-pleasers ; " a life that waits on man, sinks it- 
 self to the level of a brute's. Man is a god to the 
 dumb brutes, his satellites,; " hut one is your Mas- 
 ter, mechanics, labourers, servants, drudges, shoe- 
 blacks — " one is your Master, even Christ, and all 
 ye are brethren y " brethren in equality of service 
 to your heavenly King. These are not brave 
 words only ; they are simple, hard, literal facts. 
 The man who serves for Christ's sake in the 
 world's service, whatsoever his task may be, is the 
 equal before Christ of the world's princes and 
 kings. ISTot that he will be strong on theories of 
 equality. Christ's true servants are weak in theo- 
 ries, but strong in work; slow to assert rights, 
 
100 The Home Life. 
 
 swift to fulfil duties ; poor in pretension, rich in 
 power. They read such words as these with rev- 
 erence, and a tenderness which abases pride : — 
 " Nmjo hefore the feast of the jpassover^ when Jesus 
 Ttnew that His hour was come that He should de- 
 jpart out of this world unto the Father, having 
 loved His own which were in the world, He loved 
 them unto the end. And supper heing ended, the 
 devil having now put into the 'heart of Judas Is- 
 cariot, Simon^s son, to hetray Him ; Jesus know- 
 ing that the Father had given all things into His 
 hands, and that He was come from God and went 
 to God / He riseth from supper, and laid aside 
 His garments ; and tooh a towel, and girded 
 Himself. After that He poureth water into a 
 hasin, and began to wash the disciples'^ fo^^j ^^^ ^ 
 wipe them with the towel wherewith He was 
 girded. . ... So after He had washed their feet, 
 and had taken His garments, and was set down 
 again. He said unto them. Know ye what I have 
 done to you f Ye call me Master and Lord : and 
 ye say well / for so L am. Lf I then, your Lord 
 and Master, have washed your feet ; ye also ought 
 to wash one another'' s feet. For L have given you 
 an example, that ye should do as I have done to 
 you. Ycrily, verily, L say unto you, Tlie servant 
 
The Faithful Sermnt 101 
 
 is not greater than his lord / neither he that is 
 sent greater than he that sent him. If ye Jc7iow 
 these things, happy are ye if ye do themP 
 
 Sucli are readier to serve tlie servants, than 
 to claim equality with the lords of this world. 
 '^ Servus servorum DeV^ meant something on 
 the First Gregory's lips. Bnt this waiting on 
 Christ for the law and the life of your service 
 gives a fixed and noble principle to obedience, 
 and inspires it. Tou may reckon on faithful and 
 entire service from the man or woman whose eye 
 discerns the Master while waiting upon you. 
 Masters may be froward and fretful, unjust and 
 hard, careless of your burdens, thankless for your 
 pains. I^ever mind. ITot with them is your ac- 
 count. Their smile or good word would gladden 
 you, and make your service the sweeter ; but you 
 are not serving for it. There is a gladder smile 
 which is always raining its light upon you, a good 
 word which carries a larger benediction in its 
 train. * 
 
 Christ recognises no plea for poor and heart- 
 less service on the ground of the selfishness or 
 incompetence of, masters. '•'Thou wicked and 
 slothful servant^'' will be the greeting of all who 
 think to justify a slovenly service by such a plea 
 
102 The Borne Life. 
 
 at the last great day. "WTien He fails to gladden 
 you witli His smile or strengthen you with His 
 good word ; when you pray to Him for strength 
 to do some thankless duty, and find it harder to 
 do it through your prayer ; when something very 
 deep within you says, " ill-done," instead of " well- 
 done," after you have wrought faithfully and 
 taken little of this world's good for your pains ; 
 then work as" dully as you please, there is no 
 being in the universe who has the right to call 
 you to account. But while His eye is on you, 
 and His hand sustains, and His promise stands, 
 " of the Lord ye ^Tiall receive the reward of the 
 inheritance,^'^ — work ; ay, work to the top strain. 
 Let your soul go into it as well as your muscles — 
 indeed your muscles will never go into it thor- 
 oughly unless your soul di'ives them. Lay on to 
 your work with a will, men, for One on high is 
 watching your labours, who knows from within 
 the pressure of a workman's lot, and who will 
 lift that worlhnan whom diligence and fidelity 
 have made worthy of His fellowship, to His right 
 hand on His throne in heaven. Hear Peter's ex- 
 hortation : — " Servants, 'be subject to your masters 
 with all fear / not only to the good and gentle, but 
 also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if 
 
The Faithful Servant. 103 
 
 a moM far conscience toward God endure grief 
 suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if 
 when ye he huffeted for your faults, ye tahe it pa- 
 tiently f hut if when ye do well, and suffer for it, 
 ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. 
 For even hereunto were ye called : hecause Christ 
 also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye 
 shotdd follow His steps : who did no sin, neither 
 was guile found in His mouth j who, when He 
 was reviled, reviled not again / when He suffered. 
 He threatened not ; hut committed Himself to Him 
 that judgeth righteously : who His own self hare 
 our sins in His own hody on the i^ree, that we, heing 
 dead to sins, should live unto righteousness : hy 
 whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as 
 sheep going astray / hut a/re now returned unto 
 tlie Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.^^ (1 
 Peter ii. 18-25.) 
 
 But it must be recognised in all fairness, that 
 tlie conditions of modern service are essentially 
 different from tlie ancient; and the principle, 
 though substantially the same under all forms of 
 service, needs to be wisely and temperately ap- 
 plied. To the servants to whom Peter wrote, the 
 question, " how far am I to obey an unjust com- 
 mand?" was hardly a practical one. Slaves, 
 
104: The Borne Life, 
 
 bound hand and foot, whom their masters could 
 torment into obedience at pleasure, had no refuge, 
 no escape. Whatever the command might be, to 
 try to obey it was their only course of wisdom ; 
 and their power to obey it would be grandly reen- 
 forced by such an exhortation, above all, by such 
 an example as this. But in the case of servants 
 hired by free contract for wages, the matter is 
 widely different, and none are called to martyr 
 themselves beyond a certain point in fulfilling a 
 hard and thankless duty, if they can obtain other 
 and more congenial employment. But none can 
 shut their eyes to the fact, that this feeling of duty 
 to the Highest will help patience iand strengthen 
 endurance, and will lead an earnest and self-re- 
 spectful servant to hold on to the very utmost be- 
 fore saying, " I have come to the end of my pa- 
 tience, I must seek my fortune elsewhere." The 
 service whose inspiration is a morsel of bread or 
 a man's favour, unless God's goes with it, will jib 
 at the slightest hill of difficulty, and refuse the 
 collar at the first touch that galls. But it is a 
 base service, and can do no other than basely ; 
 while the man who feels that the supreme ques- 
 tion is, " what does my Master there expect, and 
 demand of me ? " lifts his service to the level of 
 
The Faithful Servant. 105 
 
 an apostle's ; lie will not be drawn from Ms tasks 
 by slight discomforts, nor make bis own commod- 
 ity tbe one regulating principle of bis life. Ser- 
 vants, make yourselves as independent as your 
 masters, by serving in all your service " with con- 
 science toward God^ your one true Master in 
 heaven. 
 
 III. Make it your earnest endeavour to be 
 worth a " double hired servant " to your master, 
 for this is " profitable both for him and thee." 
 
 I know that this may seem unsound doctrine 
 in the eyes of servants and work-people ; just as 
 in tracing bad service mainly to bad mastership, 
 I might easily seem to preach unsound doctrine 
 to the class which I then addressed. I have said 
 something of what I thought of the great tribe 
 of masters, who throughout England compel the 
 troops of labourers who till their fields to feed 
 like pigs, and herd like brutes. There is one 
 other thing which is as hateful in the sight of 
 God and man, and as noxious to the highest in- 
 terest of society ; and that is a sight which may 
 be seen any day where work is in hand : — a strong, 
 stout labourer dawdling over his task as a sick 
 man with a spark of spirit in him would be 
 5* 
 
106 The Horns. Life. 
 
 asliamed to dawdle ; laying a brick daintily here 
 and another daintily there, and then stopping to 
 look at it, and have a chat with his mate before 
 he lays another. And if the foreman, who has a 
 duty to his employer, ventures to remonstrate, 
 straightway he strikes work, and carries his base, 
 worthless labour to the next market, where they 
 will endure his sluggard ways. This to a thought- 
 ful eye is one of the saddest sights to be seen un- 
 der the sun. 
 
 ITot that on the ground on which masters now 
 elect to stand, the balancing-point of pure self-in- 
 terest on both sides, I can see any principle upon 
 which it can be fairly condemned, — that is, con- 
 demned in accordance with the principles of ac- 
 tion which are laid down by the other side. I 
 suppose that the squire who pays his labourers 
 eight shillings a week, has a valid plea before the 
 tribunal of political economy, in the fact that he 
 can get any amount of regular labour at that 
 price, and why should he pay more ? And if the 
 fc workman answers the employer's complaint, " My 
 strength is my bread and my children's bread ; 
 why should I not husband it to the utmost, and 
 spend as little as possible at such a price % " I 
 do not see my way, on the economical ground, to 
 
The Faithful Sermnt' 107 
 
 a thoroughly satisfactory answer. I can see, I 
 think, God's answer, as we may gather it from 
 His Word ; but I cannot see the world's, on the 
 level to which it is content to lower itself. On 
 that level, master and workman must just be left 
 to fight it out as they can, and the weakest in the 
 end must give in. Paul might have answered the 
 workman's question, why should I put more 
 strength than I can help into my work? with 
 some stirring words : — " Work, man, because 
 God made you to work; because work will be 
 a blessing to your body, mind, and spirit ; and 
 because such work well done fits you for nobler 
 work in time. Lay these bricks with a will, and 
 you will be laying nobler stones one day, even 
 the stones of the eternal palace, which God is 
 building to be the heavenly home of truth, right- 
 eousness, and love." 
 
 And there is many a workman in every gang 
 who feels this, and has as little sympathy as any 
 of us with the sluggard and knave; who likes 
 work for its own sake, enjoys it most when he 
 puts most will into it, and would gladly lay his 
 bricks at double the rate if he dared. If he dared ! 
 And who is to hinder him ? " Verily, a man's 
 foes shaU he they of his own household P It is 
 
108 • The Home Life. 
 
 the man who works next him of whom he is 
 afraid. If he shows the least diligence he will 
 report him, and he will have a black mark put 
 against his name, because he is making it harder 
 for the lazy ones to live. The sons of industry 
 afraid of industry, lest lazy worthless loons should 
 be forced to work or starve ! O men ! things 
 have come near their end when ye organise idle- 
 ness, and make it your god. The most blighting 
 of all tyrannies is that which, proscribes the in- 
 dustry and energy of man. There is no curse 
 which can be laid upon a man so deadly as that 
 which cripples his work ; and that is the curse 
 which you suffer your fellow-workmen to brand 
 on you. 
 
 The first step on, is for workmen of independ- 
 ent spirit to resolve that they wall break it. I 
 know well that the question is not so simple as 
 appears. The workmen say that they must give 
 up their liberty as the condition of their organisa- 
 tion; and that nothing but their close organisa-' 
 tion, and the pressure which by their unity they 
 can bring to bear, gives them a chance of success 
 in the great struggle of their lives. This is not 
 the place to discuss how far this close organisa- 
 tion on one side has led to as close organisation 
 
The Faithful Servant, 109 
 
 on tlie other ; nor to inquire which, in the shock 
 of the associations, that of the masters and that 
 of the workmen, is likely in the long run to win. 
 But I imagine that there is little doubt that the 
 success of general lock-outs, has led the thought- 
 ful leaders of the working men to think more 
 cautiously of the policy of turn-outs ; and has pre- 
 pared the way for the breaking up of a system 
 which has exercised a very positive and even ter- 
 rible tyranny, for the sake of a very questionable 
 good. 
 
 But after all, in this sphere, as in every other 
 sphere, what we want is men — ^men of independ- 
 ent thought and power of action, who are able to 
 lift up their heads against the despotism of the 
 mob. And whence is the help of such to come % 
 Many subordinate considerations may bring help 
 to such a man. A man's manly spirit; his sense 
 of his right to do what he will with his own, and 
 notably with his own muscle, nerve, and will; 
 his duty to his household, which is constantly 
 made to suffer bitterly through the tyranny of his 
 class, which he lacks courage to defy; — ^these 
 may all stir him to long for freedom. But there 
 is one grand conquering motive which will sus- 
 tain him in this strife against those who are 
 
110 The Home Life. 
 
 closest to him in liis daily life, as it has sustained 
 millions; and that is the supreme sense of the 
 duty which he owes to his one Master who is in 
 heaven. Set Christ before you as the Master who 
 claims yom' energetic work, who demands of 
 right that, whatever you do, you shall do it heart- 
 ily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, and it will 
 dehver you from all tyrannies, whether of masters 
 or workmen. You wdll wprk then only where you 
 can work heartily ; and it is hard to believe that 
 a workman, who only wants to do his work thor- 
 oughly, will be left to starve in such a world as 
 this. Still there are things which a man must be 
 ready to starve rather than be guilty of, and 
 amongst them we must reckon dawdling thi^ough 
 life. 
 
 The man who enters into the mind of the apos- 
 tle, and works as the Lord's servant, becomes 
 worth " a double hired servant " to his master. 
 There are some things — and wise employers 
 chiefly value these — which cannot be bought for 
 gold. No wages can buy that vigilance, that con- 
 stant, untiring devotion to the master's interests, 
 which a servant who loves the family, and the 
 family life, and is counted and treated as an inte- 
 gral part of it, will display. You get some no- 
 
The^ Faithful Servcmt 111 
 
 tion there of tlie " brother's service," which, the 
 Hebrew lawgiver estimated so highly. And every 
 servant and labourer should aim at it; for the 
 true dignity and honour of labour is the respect, 
 the consideration, the love, which loyal and faith- 
 ful service never fails to win. There is no more 
 beautiful and honourable relation upon earth than 
 that of the old, faithful, incorruptible servant, to 
 the master or the firm, in whose service he has 
 spent the strength of his days. Earth holds no 
 more honourable men and women than these, who 
 have made a master's interest their own through 
 a long life of service, have sounded the depths of 
 the virtue of obedience, and honoured the station 
 in which they were set by the Lord. These are 
 the aristocrats, the elect, of labour; and to be 
 among the elect is a pure object of ambition in 
 any school. Resolve to win a place in the illus- 
 trious band. Be worth a double hired servant to 
 your master, by a diligence that never flags, and 
 a trustiness that never falters ; it will plant your 
 foot firmly on the rungs of the ladder of divine 
 promotion. The man who can serve thus for the 
 Lord's sake will rule one day in the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 And did masters care to attach their workmen 
 
112 The Home Life. 
 
 by the cords of love and tlie bands of a man, we 
 ebould have more of such about the world. " I 
 have worked many a long year for my master," 
 said a poor workman once ; " and I have had 
 child after child born, but he has never once asked 
 after my wife or children." A city missionary 
 of large experience went into a sick workman's 
 room, and saw the master sitting by the sick 
 man's bedside. " You have done my heart good, 
 sir, at any rate," said the missionary ; " I have 
 been many years in the mission, but I never be- 
 fore saw such a sight as this." These are the 
 bands that knit brother to brother, and make a 
 brother workman, with a soul awake for your ser- 
 vice, as well as a hand, worth a double hired ser- 
 vant in your business or your home. Masters, 
 make it your ambition to win this service. Ser- 
 vants, make it your aim to live it. It will be the 
 crown of your labour, and will outshine one day 
 all conquerors' crowns. 
 
 lY. Endeavour to carry the same independ- 
 ent, self-respectful spirit through all the minor ar- 
 rangements of your life. 
 
 I want you to respect your vocation and its 
 duties too much to let them be dependent on a 
 
TU Faithful Servant 113 
 
 man's whims, frowns, or smiles. I want you to 
 respect them too much to trifle or dawdle through 
 them ; rather make them the means of drawing 
 forth and educating your manliest powers. And 
 when yom^ work is done, and the wage is in your 
 hand, I pray you to honour the fruit of your life's 
 work too much to guzzle it away at the gin-shop, 
 or to squander it on those tawdry bits of finery in 
 which silly women take the same delight that silly 
 men do in drams. Do not let the chief fruit of 
 the toil which God honours as He honours no con- 
 queror's work, run down the sink of a dram-shop. 
 Do not despise it so utterly, do not put it to such 
 shameful shame. One of the saddest things in 
 om- social condition — yes, I think, the very sad- 
 dest — is the fact, that it is constantly proved that 
 skilled labourers, who earn ample wages, are the 
 most reckless drinkers, and keep thej^' families in 
 most miserable ignorance and want. In fact, 
 they earn too much money, more than they care 
 or know how to spend intelligently. Instead of a 
 nice, tidy, cheerful little house, with its bit of gar- 
 den, its comfortable parlour, and all the means of 
 bringing up a family so as to set them on respect- 
 ably in life, and put the chance of wealth and in- 
 fluence within their reach, they are content to 
 
 h 
 
114 The Home Life. 
 
 muddle on in a wi'etclied hovel, whicli a hodman 
 might grumble at for a lodging. They let the 
 poor wife slave, and the children roll and fight in 
 the gutters, while they swill down their hardly- 
 earned wages at the beer-shop, or every few weeks 
 disappear. Heaven knows where, " on the spree." 
 As a rule, it is not the poorest that are the hard- 
 est drinkers ; it is the skilled workman, the man 
 who might make his labour the basis of as hon- 
 ourable and beautiful a home life as any that is 
 
 lived in England — that is in the world. 
 
 • 
 
 What large employer of labour, observant of 
 the habits and careful of the well-being of his 
 work-people, is not constantly filled with sadness 
 by observing that his cleverest hands are among 
 the most irregular and unreliable ; that these are 
 the men who, like Esau, systematically despise 
 their birthright, selling it, not for a mess of pot- 
 tage, but for a mess which Esau's hunting dogs 
 would have refused. Such men need no Eeform 
 Bill to give them votes ; the votes are there ready 
 to their hand. They have but to provide for their 
 households the comforts and conveniences which 
 tlieir earnings will afford, as» well, if not better 
 than, those of any other large class of the com- 
 munity, and they will be at once far above the 
 
The Faithful Servant, 115 
 
 minimum francMse in even a moderate scheme of 
 reform. 
 
 Handle your 'wages, then, as you handle your 
 work, earnestly, with a sense of how much is 
 hanging on it. That lad there, when he takes his 
 place one day among the masters, perhaps among 
 the M.P.'s, will be blessing you for every penny 
 you brought home to spend on his schooling ; and 
 you, too, may be watching it and blessing God 
 for it, here or on high. Don't rob him, and don't 
 rob that brave, patient, hard-working wife. Don't 
 be guilty before Heaven of the basest, the most 
 brutal, the most damnable of all robberies — the 
 robbery of a home. This is the worst sacrilege, 
 nay, it is the only true sacrilege ; for I don't sup- 
 pose that the bricks and mortar of our churches, 
 and our holy vestments, go for much in the esti- 
 mation of Heaven. 
 
 And you, servants, respect your work, and 
 your honourable name as servants, too much to be 
 mimicking your masters and mistresses in dress 
 and manner. You are not mistaken for fine la- 
 dies, believe me. I^or are you, shopmen, when 
 I you indulge in Sunday rings and jewellery, and 
 adopt a would-be fashionable swagger, mistaken 
 for the sons of peers. You lose the one honour, * 
 
116 The Home Life, 
 
 the real honour, which diligence and fidelity win, 
 and which set on the honest brow a broad seal 
 which has never been forged ; but yon do not win 
 the other. Men and women see through the dis- 
 guise in a moment, and laugh at it. If would-be 
 fine gentlemen did but hear the pitiless laugh 
 with which their strutting pretension is greeted 
 as they pass by, they would rush home to hide 
 themselves, nay, let us say, rather to find them- 
 selves ; and to don the modest, simple, cleanly 
 self-respectful attire and air which becomes the 
 apprentice no less than the servant, each accord- 
 ing to his class. And these, if the honesty and 
 industry of the aspect mate them, win a silent 
 tribute of respect from all beholders, and are the 
 sure passport to the higher rooms. Obedience, 
 sobriety, industry, honesty, neatness, cleanness, 
 courtesy — these are the servant's graces. And 
 again I say, they are as honourable, as precious, 
 in the eye of Heaven, as needful for the work and 
 glory of God's kingdom, as the most splendid tal- 
 ent, the most masterly genius, which have ever 
 played the chief parts on the theatre of the history 
 of the word. There is no respect of persons with 
 God. The slave with Him is as great or as little 
 as the king. 
 
 i 
 
The Faithful Servant. 117 
 
 I liave spoken of self-respect. Witli one word 
 on tills I close. The ground of nil true self-re- 
 spect is Christ. If we think within ourselves 
 what fine fellows we are, and what honour and 
 homage we have a right to demand, we may very 
 possibly be left to admire ourselves alone. But 
 if we humbly remind ourselves of the Lord's 
 thought for us and hope of us, how much He 
 wrought and how much He suffered, because He 
 would not allow that we were fit only for the dev- 
 il's work and wage, we shall feel stirring within 
 us an earnest desire to become something like 
 what the Saviour hoped — the hope for which and 
 in which He died. That is the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of self-respect. We are to respect the Lord's 
 part in us, and hope of us. Wq are never to feel 
 that it is not worth while to struggle, and never 
 may we dare to think that we are too humble to 
 make it of much account what we think, will, 
 and do. The publicans, the sinners, the beggars, 
 these were the chosen companions of His pilgrim- 
 age, and His gentleness made them great. It was 
 the pagan feeling that the gods were too busy 
 with their own pursuits and pleasures, to care 
 much how such tiny motes as men might play in 
 the sunbeams, which lay at the root of the demor- 
 
118 The Home Life. 
 
 alisation of the heatlien world, and its frightful 
 despair. Christ does care, He cares quite infi- 
 nitely,. He cares with a care of which you have 
 no measure but Calvary, how you live, how you 
 win, and how you spend your hardly-earned gains. 
 This is the beginning of the workman's gospel ; 
 and it comes out of the straits and the struggles 
 of a workman's home. Christ has joy in your 
 honour as a workman, and sorrows over your folly 
 and shame. Fellow-servant, brother-workman, 
 give Him joy of you ; let Him " see of the travail 
 of His soul- and be satisfied " in your life. The 
 hour is at hand when He shall lift up the head of 
 the faithful servant and workman With honour, in 
 the midst of the most illustrious company of the 
 universe, in the day of the manifestation of the 
 sons of God. 
 
Y. 
 
 EDUCATION". 
 
 " Bring tTiem up in the nurture and admonition of the 
 LordP — Eph. vi. 4. 
 
 The world is tlie home wliicli God has pre- 
 pared for the educatioi} of His children. The 
 world that is, is fashioned as it is that it may be 
 the theatre of their education; the world that 
 shall be, the new heaven and the new earth, which 
 will be born one day out of the bondage of corrup- 
 tion, will be the theatre of their developed and 
 perfected life. The whole system of nature seems 
 to have been wondrously wrought to be the in- 
 strument of our training ; the system of the new 
 creation will be modulated to the key of our per- 
 fect and glorious life. But man is everywhere 
 the centre. On him the son, the heir, the works 
 of God in all His worlds attend. Round man, as 
 he stood in Eden, perfect in the natural image of 
 
120 The Home Life. 
 
 God, wherein lie was formed, tlie whole creation 
 ranged itself as its natural centre ; and in man as 
 he shall " stand up " in heaven, perfect in the 
 spiritual image of Christ, whereinto he is re- 
 deemed, the new creation, and all that fills it, 
 shall find the key to their order eternally. 
 
 These may seem to be overhigh thoughts of 
 the position and relation of a being so fallen, so 
 shorn of his splendour as man. So thought not 
 He who " hi the leginning was with God^ and 
 wa^ Ood^'' " who lecame flesh and dwelt among 
 us / " and who " seeing that the children are par- 
 takers of flesh and hloo^, Himself likewise, toolz 
 part of the same ; that through death He might 
 destroy him that had the power of death, that is 
 the devil / and deliver them who through fear of 
 death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 
 For verily He took not on Him the nature of an- 
 gels / but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. 
 Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made 
 like unto His brethren, that He might be a merci- 
 ful amd faithful high priest in things pertaining 
 to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the 
 people. For in that He himself hath suffered 
 being tempted, He is able to succour tJiem that are 
 Umpted;' (Heb. ii. 14-18.) 
 
fc 
 
 Education, 121 
 
 And to him who wrote these words it was no 
 incredible thing, nay, it was the most credible of 
 all things, that the whole creation waited, and 
 would wait, groaning and travailing now, enfran- 
 chised and glorified then, on the education and 
 manifestation of the sons of God. God makes all 
 things on earth and in heaven subordinate to the 
 culture and unfolding, through grace, of our di- 
 vine though sin-perverted powers. Education, 
 the education of immortal human spirits, is with 
 Him the great work of the great universe ; for He 
 who made the worlds, and who sustains the worlds, 
 gave Himself that He might accomphsh it. And 
 this is t^e work which He asks you human par- 
 ents to share with Him, and to make your great 
 aim and object, within the little world where you 
 play the god — your home. I believe it to be 
 simply impossible to estimate fully the measure 
 of the Lord's interest in this work, and the cost 
 of effort and pain which He has spent and will 
 spend on it, to be repaid in the day when " the 
 general assembly and church of the first-horn^'' 
 shall be gathered in His home, and He shall see 
 in them " of the fruit of the travail of His soul^ 
 and shall le satisfied^^ I speak of all things as 
 made subordinate to this. In the very hour of 
 6 
 
122 The Home Life, 
 
 the transgression the world fell with man. Man 
 changed his relations to God, and the world 
 changed its relations to man. Because of him, 
 "for his sake," the earth became a wilderness. 
 Fair as it had been in its Eden beauty, the cm-se 
 fell on it ; it grew hard, and stem, and cold ; it 
 took at once a form, the reason of which was in 
 man himself. iN'or was heaven indifferent. I 
 know not what the cherubim were — indeed, I 
 cannot find that anybody knows. But one thing 
 seems clear,, they are the recognised symbols of 
 unseen spiritual powers. They represented to the 
 human eye the unseen might and majesty of the 
 world of spirit, and man's transgression drew 
 them down to blend heaven with earth in the 
 work of human discipline and culture. The tree 
 of life passed under their guard until the long pil- 
 grimage should be ended, and is destined to bloom 
 afresh in the new paradise, which these spirits 
 guard and tend for us beyond the wilderness and 
 the river of death. 
 
 In truth earth and heaven join their forces 
 that man's educatipn for eternal life may be a 
 triumph ; God's great triumph over the devil, and 
 overthrow of his work. "Well may George Her- 
 bert in prophetic mood declare — 
 
Education, 123 
 
 " My God, I heard this day, 
 That none doth build a stately habitation 
 But he that means to dwell therein. 
 What house more stately hath there been, 
 Or can be, than is man? «o whose creation 
 All things are in decay. 
 
 " For man is every thing. 
 And more : he is a tree, yet bears no fruit, 
 A beast, yet is, or should be, more : 
 Eeason and speech we onely bring. 
 Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute, 
 They go upon the score. 
 
 " Man is all symmetric. 
 Full of proportions, one limbe to another. 
 And all to all the world besides : 
 Each part may call the farthest, brother : 
 For head with foot hath private amitie, 
 And both with moons and tides. 
 
 "Nothing hath got so farre. 
 But man hath caught and kept it as his prey. 
 
 His eyes dismount the highest starre : ^ 
 
 He is in little all the sphere. 
 Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
 Find their acquaintance there.. 
 
 . "For us the winds do blow ; 
 The earth doth rest, heaven i^ove, and fountains flow. 
 
124 The Home Life. 
 
 Nothing we see, but means onr good, 
 As our delight, or as our treasure ; 
 The whole is, either our cupboard of food, 
 Or cabinet of pleasure. 
 
 " The starres have us to bed ; 
 Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws ; 
 Musick and light attend our head, 
 All things unto our flesh are kinde 
 In their descent and being : to our minde 
 In their ascent and cause. 
 
 "More servants wait on man 
 Than he '11 take notice of: in every path 
 
 He treads down that which doth befriend him 
 When sicknesse makes him pale and wan. 
 Oh, mightie love ! Man is one world, and hath 
 Another to attend him. 
 
 " Since then, my God, Thou hast 
 So brave a palace built ; oh, dwell in it, 
 That it may dwell with thee at last ! 
 Till then, afford us so much wit. 
 That, as the world serves us, we may serve Thee, " 
 And both Thy servants be." 
 
 To this end God has made all creation doc- 
 trinal, full of the truth on which He seeks to 
 mould the whole of man's inner nndying life. 
 We get terribly perplexed in these days of tri- 
 umphant science, with the distance to \yhich, so 
 
Education. 125 
 
 to speak, tlie living personal Presence in nature 
 is removed. To tlie child's eye the daily familiar 
 aspects of nature easily connect themselves with 
 a living hand. The language of the Psalms 
 about the phenomena of the universe, describes 
 perfectly the child's impressions, and the impres- 
 sions of childish hearts everywhere. We have 
 outgrown the childish wisdom; God grant that 
 we may not outgrow likewise childlikeness of 
 spirit and of heart. But simple souls, unversed 
 in the mysteries of knowledge, unpuzzled by the 
 problems which the intellect states but fails to 
 solve, and careless of the prizes which intellect 
 must agonise to win, find the old beliefs still cred- 
 ible. To them it is the Lord's eve which blazes 
 in the lightning, the Lord's terrible Voice which 
 in the thunder rolls its warnings over the world. 
 They hear the sound of the Lord's footstep as of 
 old, a^ the breeze whispers at even among the 
 trees of the garden ; and as the morning flushes 
 the dewy air, a benediction seems to fall from on 
 high over the waking world. To them the lilies 
 still wear the glorious dress in which He clothed 
 them ; and nightly they watch the unseen Shep- 
 herd lead forth on the wolds of heaven His flock 
 of stars. The earth seems thronged, as when the 
 
126 The Home Life. 
 
 veil was lifted for Jacob, -with celestial visitants ; 
 still they hear the " sound of the going " of an- 
 gelic pinions in the mulberry tops; and in the 
 silent mountain solitudes there is the murmur 
 of a life of which this earth is not the only 
 parent — and there the veil seems but a thin one, 
 which hides the unseen workman from mortal 
 sight. 
 
 But science rends the veil in sunder, and the 
 living presence seems to vanish. The child's 
 belief faints before the vision of the awful force 
 and magnitude of the powers, which maintain 
 the play of life in the creation, the ebb and the 
 flow of its tidal seas. There is such calm cer- 
 tainty and constancy, there is such orderly inevi- 
 table sequence in those phenomena of creation, 
 which seemed to us so fraught with living intel- 
 ligence, that- the thought of a living will fades 
 into the conception of a fixed, formal, unalterable 
 law. Things seemingly the most eccentric, when 
 traced back to their springs, fall calmly into this 
 order, which has suffered no breach since the be- 
 ginning of creation ; an order so close, so abso- 
 lute, that could a hair or a grain of dust move 
 out on an independent mission for one moment, 
 the keystone of the arch would be shattered, and 
 
Education. 127 
 
 "Cosmos" would settle into Chaos once more. 
 We feel om'selves pigmies in tlie presence of such 
 masses and forces as science unveils to us. It is 
 hard for us even to hold fast the consciousness of 
 an independent will, an independent originating 
 power, when all things around us, to the remotest 
 bounds of the universe, through spaces which 
 thought can but faintly measure, fulfil with such 
 calm, impassive submission the behests of prime- 
 val unalterable law. 
 
 " Is not man a part of the machine, more 
 deftly fashioned, with more subtle and complica- 
 ted keys ? " is the question which science is ever 
 pressing upon us ; a question which some of the 
 keenest intellects busy in this field are not afraid 
 to answer, in terms which seem to us to deny at 
 once the living Man of whom the Scripture speaks 
 to us, and the living God. I feel, and doubtless 
 you feel, the pei-plexity of the problems which 
 science is daily pressing upon us, and how hard it 
 is to hold fast our faith in the reality of any mir- 
 acle, of a revealed word, of the power of prayer. 
 And I often turn from the perplexed problem to 
 refresh my mind, and to renew my faith and 
 hope, by the contemplation of the palpable moral 
 meanings and bearings of the great facts of the 
 
128 The Home Life. 
 
 creation ; the visible correspondence between the 
 system of the world, and the workings, the un- 
 foldings, of that inner life with which the Scrip- 
 ture concerns itself, and which grows ont of the 
 communion of a living human will with the liv- 
 ing personal God. 
 
 And I do not mean simply, when I speak of 
 the living presence of a moral Being which re- 
 veals itself in creation, that there is a certain par- 
 allelism between the fixity of the moral and the 
 natural laws, which makes the method of God's 
 way with us as creatures, the key to the higher 
 method of His way with us as sons. This is a 
 very wonderful aspect of the world. The ab- 
 soluteness w^ith which God wdll have us obey 
 the ordinances which His wisdom has fixed for 
 us as creatures, is the sign of the absoluteness 
 which reigns also in the higher region. As well 
 may we eat poison, and expect to be nourished 
 by it in body, as drink, wanton, wrangle, and 
 hate, and expect to grow strong and comely in 
 soul. But I mean further, that there are images 
 of man's spiritual relations and duties everywhere 
 around him in the creation; as though God in 
 shaping all things had looked on to the unfoldings 
 of the higher life — the divine life of redeemed 
 
Education. 129 
 
 men, wliich springs out of His personal action on 
 human hearts. 
 
 There is not one of the great forms of human 
 duty, there is not one of the great relations of 
 Christian society, which does not find some image 
 and prophecy of itself in the creation. The com- 
 munion, the mutual ministry, of souls in Christ, 
 the Church the body of the Lord, may each find 
 a fair image of itself in the material organisation 
 of this fleshy body, the principle of which runs 
 through the universe. Things could only have 
 been made as they are with a view to the redemp- 
 tive work, the accomplishment of which calls 
 forth the highest energy of the Father of spirits, 
 and makes, so to speak, the living God an ever- 
 present actor on the theatre of human history. 
 If we see God busy with this higher work, the 
 work of calling, justifying, sanctifying, and glori- 
 fying our individual spirits, it becomes easier to 
 discern Him behind all that vast apparatus of 
 force which we name laws of natm'e ; through the 
 whole of which we trace the ideas and purposes, 
 which express themselves fully in the spiritual 
 sphere of our being, wherein we see the Father 
 in Christ, and speak with the living God, face to 
 face, as a man speaketh with his friend. While I 
 6* 
 
130 The Home Life. 
 
 see so much in nature wliich I can only under- 
 stand when I turn to the Church, and the rela- 
 tions of redeemed souls, for its interpretation, this 
 mass and force, this calm constancy of law, lose 
 their power either to oppress or to bewilder me. 
 The God whom I know in Christ, seems to pass 
 with me into the temple of creation. I have not 
 to stand in the outer court and peer through the 
 veil, to discover what the visible things can reveal 
 to me of the " invisible things of God." 
 
 The education, then, of human spirits, the un- 
 folding within them of the divine image, and 
 their purification from the blots and stains of sin, 
 is the supreme work of the universe, the supreme 
 puj'pose and hope of its King. And God has 
 myriad voices and influences under the control of 
 His hand to subserve that purpose, and to fulfil 
 that hope. The creation is full of His teachings. 
 He embosoms the infant in a world of wonder 
 and beauty, which begins at once, from the mo- 
 ment that his eyes open on the light, to educate, 
 that is to draw forth and enlarge his 4)owers. 
 Everything that meets the eye, the ear, or the 
 touch, is educating them, is leading them forth to 
 a larger apprehension, which God meets ever with 
 fresh supplies. The early education of the human 
 
Education. 131 
 
 infant is simply the drawing out its power to ap- 
 prehend, take in, and possess its world. Its first 
 discovery is that hands and feet belong to it. 
 Few things are more wonderful to look npon than 
 a baby beginning in some dim way to consider 
 the question, whether the foot which it grasps 
 with its tiny hand belongs to it, and what this 
 belonging may mean. When at length it has dis- 
 covered its body, and fairly occupied it, it begins 
 straightway to discover its world. The whole 
 system of things around it is a temptation to dis- 
 covery. There is an ever-widejiing horizon; 
 every object that it sees, every tone that it hears, 
 but introduces the eye and the ear to some braver 
 object or richer tone, which lie dimly as yet on 
 th^ bounds of its horiz(^, but which it must reach 
 and include within its field. Creation is hke a 
 great magnet, continually drawing out the pow- 
 ers. And as they go forth they grow strong, they 
 range boldly round a wider and yet wider circuit, 
 and everything which they discover is a stimulus 
 to new quest, with no limit in sight but God. 
 
 Perhaps, though, I have spoken hastily in say- 
 ing that the child's first discovery is that hands 
 and feet belong to it. The first thing w^ch an 
 infant discovers in the universe is love. God's 
 
132 The Home Life. 
 
 order of the world is in every possible form a pro- 
 test against isolation, a witness against the self as 
 the starting-point of life. The fii*st impression on 
 the young child's heart, as the mother's prond and 
 tender glances rest on it, is the sense of belong- 
 ing. There is one to whom it belongs, there is 
 one who belongs to it, on Ivhose care it reposes, in 
 whose love it nestles, before it has taken in an 
 impression about either body or world. The in- 
 ner world, after all, is the first world that it meets 
 with ; and the mother's love, from the first mo- 
 ment, begins ij;s training for the love of man and 
 the love of God. God is nearer to it in that 
 mother's glance and touch, than in anything 
 which concerns its hfe as a creature of this world. 
 And, oh, how tender shoijd be the glance, how 
 soft should be the touch, which have to speak for 
 Him ! The mother's love is just the, tuning of 
 the inward ear, to catch at length and interpret 
 the tones of the gi*eat Father's voice. Mothers ! 
 touch tenderly this delicate tympanum, which, 
 rudely struck or harshly jarred, may be deaf 
 through life to all the higher voices of man and 
 of God. 
 
 Th^e thoughts reveal to us the essential prin- 
 ciple of all education, the drawing forth the pow- 
 
Education. 133 
 
 ers to discern so mucli of fact and trutli as tliey 
 are fitted to take in. It is tlie process which the 
 Divine Teacher employs through life on our edu- 
 cation. That which a man finds, which he dis- 
 covers by the use of his powers, guided but not 
 superseded by the teacher's, that he possesses, and 
 that alone. He is not a receptacle to be filled 
 with knowledge ; he is a living organ to be drawn 
 forth to discover it. Truth meets the seeker, just 
 when his search, his desire, is strong enough to 
 take possession of the prize. The pouring in sys- 
 tem, as if yoimg souls were jars i^ which the 
 honey of knowledge could be easily stored for 
 profitable use, files in the face of the method of 
 Providence. The drawing forth the faculty is the 
 first half of knowledge, and the end of knowledge 
 when won, is the leading forth the faculties to a 
 fresh discovery of a larger store. 
 
 And why, with such a grand apparatus of ed- 
 ucation at his command, does not God keep the 
 work in His own hand, and under His own exclu- 
 sive charge ? It is the thing which He chiefiy 
 cares for, and for which He maintains the world. 
 All things that are, from hyssop on the wall to 
 the stars that cluster on the dim bounds of the 
 universe, are His instruments for the education 
 
134 The Home Life. 
 
 of His child. But the supreme power seems to 
 be lodged witli man. As far as outward beings 
 an.d things are concerned, there is nothing in the 
 world whose influence in the education of man 
 can compare with the human. Man, after all, is 
 the educator to whom God has committed His 
 child. The work of tlTe creation is vague and 
 partial, the influence of man is intimate and su- 
 preme. Man can either choke or clear the chan- 
 nels by which the objects of creation reach and 
 draw forth the powers. ISTay — and it is an awful 
 thought — ^how much may man do to choke or 
 keep open the channels for the approach of God ! 
 Man .may blind the eye and seal the ear of child- 
 hood to all that is holy and beautiful in the uni- 
 verse; man may so vitiate the sense, that the 
 world to its young denizen shall seem like a grim 
 prison,- or a loathsome charnel-house, full of clank- 
 ing chains, or " of dead men's bones and all un- 
 cleanness." And yet the Almighty Father sends 
 His young nurselings hither by millions, genera- 
 tion after generation. He puts them under the 
 absolute rule of those who can teach them to hate 
 Him, to blaspheme His name wath their infant 
 lips, and mimic with their infant powers the vices 
 
Education. 135 
 
 and tlie crimes with, which, their manhood will 
 defile and devastate His world. 
 
 It is a dread mystery — this trust of the most 
 precious thing which God holds to man, to be 
 feebly nursed to a godly maturity by the best of 
 men, to be mightily wa^'ped and debased to un- 
 godly foulness and deformity by the worst. And 
 how stand the worst to the best, in proportion, in 
 all ages of the world? And the trust goes on 
 widening ever, and with it, we are tempted to say, 
 widens still the folly, the sin, the misery of man- 
 kind. It is but a little way that we can hope to 
 see into the heart of this mystery — why God 
 trusts so freely beings such as we are, with the 
 education of spirits who are to people heaven or 
 hell ; and which they are to people, seems to de- 
 pend in fearful measure upon us. 
 
 He has parents to educate as well as children ; 
 that helps us some way to the understanding of 
 the mystery. "With many a hard sinner the only 
 hold that God has upon him is his child. The 
 institution of the home was God's great lesson to 
 man on the meaning and fruit of transgression. 
 When the first transgressors had a home to rule, 
 and children to wound and wrong them, they un-_ 
 derstood, as no teaching could have made them 
 
136 The Home Life. 
 
 understand, what had happened through them in 
 the home of the Lord. The lineaments of their 
 own evil reproduced themselves in their offspring ; 
 and in the discipline which they learnt to exer- 
 cise, in sheer necessity, they discovered the key 
 to the discipline of God. God would make man 
 His fellow-helper in the*work of education; He 
 first made man His fellow-sufferer as a father in 
 the experience of the sins and sorrows of his child. 
 
 This reflex action of education on the parent 
 is not the least momentous feature of it. God 
 seeks to educate us by trusting us — ^by calling us 
 to high duties, by laying on us grave responsibili- 
 ties. And He chooses deliberately the high re- 
 sults w^hich may flow from this lofty method, with 
 the possibility, nay, the certainty, of the dark 
 mischiefs which sin will take occasion to work by 
 it, rather than content Himself with the more 
 sure, though more moderate and common results 
 which might issue from a method in a lower key. 
 
 But there is another aspect of the matter at 
 which for the moment we must glance. It is very 
 wonderful on the part of God that He should put 
 such trust in man. Is there nothing wonderful in 
 the fact that man should accept such trust from 
 God ? I mean the man who understands all that 
 
Education. 137 
 
 it involves, and sees plainly its possible issues. 
 There is something very terrible in the mission of 
 a prophet or an apostle, who knows that his word 
 mnst be ''^ a savour of life unto life^ or of death 
 unto deatli^"^ making salvation doubly blessed, or 
 perdition doubly damned. It is a mission which 
 in a measure the parent shares. " Who is suffi- 
 cient for these things j^"^ the training of these young 
 immortals ? Who dares to put a hasty hand to 
 such a sacred ark of God as this ? ^ay, who 
 could rest in the prospect of training children af- 
 ter his »own image, to be only as wise, as true, as 
 noble, as pm-e, as good as himself? Is it that we 
 may reproduce our mental and moral image in 
 our children that God entrusts them to us, that 
 we may help to fill His universe with such frac- 
 tured and distorted images of our Maker, as, alas ! 
 we wear ? This opens to us the real question, and 
 sets us on the threshold of the trjie work of edu- 
 cation, the first work, the fundamental work. 
 This, well done, makes all other elements of a 
 complete education wholly subordinate ; and this 
 undone, makes the most splendid genius but a 
 baleful prodigy, and the widest knowledge but a 
 dreary and pestilential waste. 
 
 I have said that of all that is without a child 
 
138 The Home Life. 
 
 there is no influence comparable witli the human. 
 The parent's power, looking on it from without, 
 seems to be well-nigh absolute, either to nurture 
 and develop, or to corrupt and destroy. The issue 
 seems to be in our hands, and who dares bear the 
 burden ? Who dares undertake the main charge 
 of the nurture of children with such a nature 
 within them, with a world of such fearful tempta- 
 tion around them, and with heaven and hell as 
 their bourne in sight ? Well may a godly parent 
 tremble at the prospect; as Moses trembled, as 
 Isaiah trembled, as Paul trembled, before the 
 threshold of a mission, which bore in its bosom 
 such issues for man through time and through 
 eternity. 
 
 There is something very solemn in the concep- 
 tion of the nature and pressure of this burden, 
 to which Moses gives expression in the following 
 passage. It shows us how much he was willing to 
 bear, if he might but find strength to be a fellow- 
 worker with God. " Then Moses heard the peo- 
 jole weep throughout their families, every man in 
 the door of his tent ; and the anger of the Lord 
 was Mndled greatly : Moses also was displeased. 
 And Moses said unto the Lord, Wherefore hast 
 Thou afflicted Thy servant f am,d wherefore have 
 
Education. 139 
 
 I not found favour in Thy sight, that Thou layest 
 the 'burden of all this jpeoj^le ujpon me f Have I 
 conceived all this people? have Ihegotten them, 
 that Thou shouldst say unto me, Carry them in 
 thy hosom, as a nursing father heareth the sitching 
 child, unto the land which Thou swarest unto 
 their fathers f Whence should I have flesh to 
 give unto all this people f for they weep unto me, 
 saying. Give us flssh, that we may eat. I am not 
 able to hear all this people alone, because it is too 
 heavy for me. And if Thou deal thus with me, 
 Mil me, I pray Thee, out of hand, if I have 
 found favour in Thy sight 'j and let me not see 
 'my wretchedness " (Numb. xi. 10-15). 
 
 But here the question arises, the vital ques- 
 tion, is the main charge . after all with man ? Is 
 the nearest, the most intimate, the most powerful 
 of the influences which from the first are at work 
 upon the child, the influence of the parent % Out- 
 wardly it is palpably so. But is there no inward 
 influence which can claim the supremacy, no un- 
 seen guide and teacher who can take the crushing 
 weight of the burden out of our hands ? This is 
 the question of questions in the matter of Chris- 
 tian education, and on the answer to it the very 
 possibility of any education in a high sense de- 
 
140 The Home Life, 
 
 pends. Is there a light that, " coming into the 
 world, lighteth every man," every child? Is 
 there a light in that young infant, shining in 
 the first dawnings of consciousness, and striving 
 against the darkness ? If you answer me, " There 
 was once such a light in man, but the light was 
 lost in the hour of the transgression, and we can 
 only bring the young child to Clirist, if perchance 
 He may rekindle it," then, alas ! for you, and if 
 it all depends on your bringing, alas! for the 
 young child. This surely is a fundamental prin- 
 ciple in all Christian education — the child is 
 Christ's child. You have not to bring it into^ but 
 to bring it ujp in "the nurture and admonition of ■ 
 the Lord." You have to unfold to it the mean- 
 ing and virtue of a relation that is, not to pre- 
 pare it to enter into a relation which may be, or 
 may not. 
 
 There is no need that I should repeat what I 
 have said already of little children, whom Christ 
 gathered in His arms, and blessed, and of whom 
 He said, " Suffer tlie little children to come unto 
 3fe, andfmMd them not ; for of such is the Mng- 
 dom of fieavenP It surely is significant that as 
 the circle of the Church widened, and its mem- 
 bers began to enter into the closest relations with 
 
Education, 141 
 
 the world around them, or were perplexed as to 
 the effect of relations which they already sus- 
 tained, the apostle Panl claims the children of one 
 believing parent as holy. " If any hr other hath 
 a wife that helieveth not^ and she he pleased to 
 dwell with him^ let him not put her away. Aiid 
 the woman which hath an husband that helieveth 
 not, and if he he pleased to dwell with her, let her 
 not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is 
 sanctified by the wfe, and the unbelieving wife is 
 sanctified' by the husband : else were your children 
 unclean I but now are they holy^"^ (1 Cor. vii. 12- 
 14). And is there not a higher and more solemn 
 sense in which Christ claims every human child 
 as holy, not through the accident of a believing 
 parent, but in virtue of that essential brotherhood 
 which He has established with every infant of the 
 human race ? 
 
 To me, the word education would be mean- 
 ingless, and the thing impossible, if there were not 
 One who can come infinitely nearer to the child's 
 heart than we can come, and bring influences in- 
 finitely more powerful than any that we can com- 
 mand, to bear upon his life. The first step, the 
 vital step, in the work of education, is to bear 
 witness to the child of Him. E'ot to talk to the 
 
 I 
 
142 The Home Life, 
 
 child about Him as a Being outside and afar off, 
 wliom the child has to seek ; before whom with 
 due reverence he has to bend, and whose favour- 
 able audience he has to entreat. There is the 
 grand mistake. "We talk to children about Christ 
 at a distance, far off in presence, far off in nature, 
 far off in every way. We tr j to dilute our knowl- 
 edge of Him to suit their little understandings, 
 and to make familiar what in its own nature is 
 remote and dread. But He is the light shining 
 within them ; He is present in all the little con- 
 flicts which are fought out in their childish hearts. 
 Before they felt the touch of our magnet, the at- 
 traction of His was upon them. Before our 
 voices wakened a familiar echo. His was plead- 
 ing, wooing, winning, in the inner sanctuary of 
 their young lives. There is a light of which every 
 little child may be made conscious, shining in the 
 darkness within it, and striving to conquer it; 
 showing what is right in its little perplexities; 
 teaching it that truth is better than lies, that love 
 is better than hate, that peace is better than strife, 
 and that right is better than wrong. This light 
 gives to it the sensation of an inward glow like 
 coming out into the sunlight, when it has done 
 the right thing, or said the true word, at the cost 
 
Education. 143 
 
 of some effort, or by some little sacrifice ruled a 
 temper or conquered a fault. Teach the child 
 that that light is Christ, the Lord of the great 
 imiverse, yet present with all His glorious power 
 to guide the first thoughts, to train the first de- 
 sires, and to take part in the first battles, in a 
 young child's heart. 
 
 You have taken the first step, the divine step, 
 in the education of your little one, when you 
 have taught him to connect with Christ, and to 
 recognise as the signs of His presence, every mo- 
 tion to good and every protest against evil, which 
 rises up with a strength we little imagine in young 
 children's souls. Let the child understand that 
 the Lord of the universe is not afar off, watching 
 its struggles, but within, stirring and sustaining 
 them ; and there will be a boldness in following 
 the good and resisting the evil, which in these 
 days, when we mainly believe in a far off Christ, 
 we too constantly miss. " Say not m thine heart, 
 Who shall ascend into heaven f (that is, to "bring 
 Christ down from above :) or, Who shall descend 
 into the deej> f {that is, to bring ujg Christ again 
 from the dead.) .... llie word is nigh thee, 
 even in thy mouth, and in thy heart,^^ and in the 
 mouth and in the heart of thy little one — the 
 
144 The Home Life. 
 
 Word ^^ Emmamiel^'' "God with us;" the en- 
 grafted "Word, God within. We have not then to 
 take the child to Christ, or to bring Christ to the 
 child ; we have to bear witness of a present Christ, 
 with the child, within the child, in all the most 
 familiar phenomena of its moral life. 
 
 And here is the sheet-anchor of a parent's 
 hope. It is not that, if he strives, Christ will 
 help him, but that Christ is already before him, 
 and is the chief teacher ; calling him to help in 
 a work, which already engages the care and occu- 
 pies the thought and the hand of God. Draw 
 forth gently the latent consciousness of that as 
 the first step in the higher education. Unfold to 
 the child what these inward discords, these in- 
 ward witnessings, strivings, yearnings, and aspira- 
 tions mean. A good Lord and a destroyer strug- 
 gling for the possession of his spirit; the one 
 pleading and striving with infinite tenderness, 
 the other ensnaring and enslaving with constant 
 and malignant art. Kindle the thought of the 
 high nature of this conflict, of which the daily 
 tasks and rounds of life are to be the theatre ; re- 
 veal, or rather teach the child to recognise, the 
 presence of a form like unto the Son of man in 
 the field of his conflict, the furnace of his trial. 
 
Education, 145 
 
 Arm liim, and send him forth into the battle, with 
 the inspiring thought that he can never be alone 
 in any extremity of peril, pain, or pressm-e ; for, 
 nearer to him than a mother, nearer than a broth- 
 er, nearer than the most subtle tempter, nearer 
 than the most hellish foe, is the Lord, who was 
 within him from the beginning, and whose interest 
 cannot be measured even by his own, in a free 
 and noble unfolding of his life. 
 
 But there is a great danger here, against 
 which it becomes Christian parents to be con- 
 stantly on guard. It arises from the very earnest- 
 ness of their desire to make their children the full 
 sharers of the joy and the hope with which the 
 gospel has lit their lives. It is a grievous mistake 
 to let " the powers of the world to come " over- 
 shadow the young spirit too soon. As Moses put 
 a veil over his face in speaking to his children, so 
 God puts a veil over His face in speaking to every 
 human child. That veil is the parent, who stands 
 to the young child in " the stead of God ; " happy 
 for the parent, happy for the child, if he can fill 
 for the time the place of God. The light should 
 grow on the child's consciousness like the dawn, 
 and the twilight is the parent's rule. There are 
 parents who cannot be satisfied unless they flash 
 
 k 
 
146 The Home Life. 
 
 the liglit at once in all its brightness on the young 
 child's heart, and teach the little ones to mimic 
 the functions and to touch the burdens which will 
 one day try to the utmost their manly and wo- 
 manly strength. The result of the process is, 
 those ministering angels with the wings off, whom 
 American writers first palmed upon us as human 
 children ; the vision of whom, could we see many 
 of them about the pathways of life, would make 
 the sad world sadder than it is. Happily, out of 
 fiction, they are rare. 
 
 Those who rob us of the fun, the joyousness, 
 the dash of childhood, can give us but poor equiv- 
 alents in exchange. " Ministering children," 
 early taught the gravity of a vocation, little know 
 how they are killing manhood and womanhood, 
 by robbing childhood of its buoyant and gleeful 
 life ; while children who catch early from a par- 
 ent's contagious goodness and gentleness the love 
 of ministry, are preparing to contribute some- 
 thing better than a wingless angel to the consola- 
 tion and help of the world. It is a fatal mistake 
 to press on a child's development, in order to 
 force those early fruits, which are fair to look 
 upon, but which quickly fade. A child's piety is 
 one thing, a child's imitation of a man's or a 
 
Education, 147 
 
 woman's is anotlier. I always tremble wlien I 
 hear of those wondrously sage reflections and 
 " good " actions, which Christian parents of a cer- 
 tain class delight to narrates I fear lest the stem 
 which bears snch untimely bnds should grow thin 
 and sickly, and yield leaves only, when it should 
 be bringing forth flowers and fruit. In a true 
 Christian home, where the parents are taught of 
 God, the parents' authority would long be to the 
 child as the divine authority, and the dawn would 
 brighten very slowly into the day. The time 
 comes when the child begins to feel for some 
 greater one behind the parent, and becomes con- 
 scious of the burdens and perplexities of life. 
 Then let the parent produce his higher lessons, 
 remembering always that it is as light, as life, as 
 love, that the Lord reveals Himself to the soul 
 and to the world. "Were there more of this light 
 and joy of the Lord in our Christian teaching, we 
 might not have to mourn so constantly that the 
 children of Christian households forsake Him, as 
 though His names were darkness, terror, and 
 death. 
 
 And well is it for us, in all our intercourse 
 with and influence on our children, to remind 
 ourselves, that there is One who holds their best 
 
148 The Home Life. 
 
 interests yet dearer than we can liold tliem ; and 
 whose stake is yet more momentous than ours in 
 the future of their life. He watches their every 
 step wdth the most untiring vigilance, and shields 
 their unguarded hours with the most jealous and 
 tender care. He is nearer than their own thoughts 
 to the spring of their actions, and haunts, as no 
 man, no angel, no devil can haunt, the innermost 
 sanctuary of their life. His love for them. His 
 stake in them. His hope of them, has Calvary for 
 its only measure ; and He wields all the resources 
 of divine power and wisdom to wrest them from 
 the hand that would drag them to destruction, 
 and to present them faultless, with us, in His own 
 likeness, to His own eternal joy and triumph, 
 in " the day of the manifestation of the sons of 
 God." 
 
YI. 
 
 THE NUETUEE OF THE LOED. 
 
 ''''Bring tJiem up in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord.''"' — Eph. vi. 4. 
 
 In my last discourse I dwelt on the funda- 
 mental principle of a Christian education, the 
 drawing forth and instructing the consciousness 
 that Christ is with, is in, the child. Christ the 
 light, an element of help, of joy ; not as some 
 parents systematically present Him, an element 
 of gloom and dread. Let children know Him as 
 the inspiration of their young efforts of duty, as 
 their strength in their struggle against sin ; as their 
 sympathetic friend in all their dreary defeats and 
 failures, nearer than their own consciousness to the 
 springs of their thought and life. A Lord at 
 hand and not afar off, within and not beneath or 
 above ; taking intimate and personal part in the 
 action of their life drama, from the very dawn- 
 
150 TJie Home Life. 
 
 ings of consciousness; witnessing, pleading, and 
 striving, with boundless long-suffering within. 
 
 You have neither to take them to Christ nor 
 to bring Christ to them. It may sound like a 
 paradox, but I believe that the main reason why 
 so many children of Christian households grow 
 up inwardly ignorant of the Saviour, is that they 
 have been so sedulously taught to seek Him. 
 They should learn that He has sought them, and 
 that He is there at the door of their hearts, yea, 
 within the door, waiting only to be recognised 
 and welcomed with love. The gospel is not, " Go 
 forth to seek Christ and He will meet you." The 
 words, " Ask^ and ye shall receive / seeli,^ and ye 
 shall find I Tcnock^ and the door shall he opened 
 unto you^'' were spoken to men by One, who had 
 come all the way from a heavenly throne that He 
 might place Himself in their midst. He was seek- 
 ing them^ asking them^ and knocking at the door 
 of their hearts, that He might enter royally as 
 of right and take up His abode. Tell them of a 
 God who needs to be appeased, of a Saviour who 
 waits to be moved to intercession, to plead the 
 power of His blood on their behalf, and salvation 
 is at once made to appear to them a hard, far off, 
 and doubtful thing. We know nothing of a God 
 
The Nurture of the Lord, 151 
 
 needing to be appeased. We only hear of an 
 atonement tlirougli the Lord who has made the 
 atonement ; we only hear of the need of reconcil- 
 iation through a God who is reconciled ; we only 
 learn the value of intercession through a Saviour 
 who is interceding, and who, while we were yet 
 rebels, as careless of His love as the brutes, gave 
 His life for us, that His intercession might have 
 power to save. 
 
 If we would but begin with our children 
 where God begins with us, it might go better with 
 them. " The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth cmd 
 in thy hea/rtP Look within. In the battle which 
 is raging even in thy young heart, every high 
 thought, every holy purpose, every heavenward 
 aspiration, is the work of His love for thee ; and 
 every base thought, every impure passion, every 
 worldly purpose, is the work of His enemy in 
 thee, striving to pluck thee out of His hand. I 
 think that this education of the consciousness to 
 recognise the present Christ, the inward light 
 that lighteth every man, and which shines very 
 brightly in children's hearts, would lend dignity 
 and energy to the moral struggle which begins 
 with the first stirrings of freedom, and would 
 wrest one mighty weapon of destruction out of 
 
152 The Home Life. 
 
 the adversary's hand. There is nothing worse for 
 the child than to feel that God is far oiT, and can- 
 not care much about the battle of a young life ; 
 and that it matters little to Him or to any one 
 what a child may think or do. It matters every- 
 thing. From the first moment of consciousness 
 the Lord has been with you, young soldier ; learn 
 to parade your soul before Him, and to answer to 
 your name. 
 
 And to me this seems to be the only shield of 
 the parent from what would else be a crushing 
 burden of care. If we are to be at the main 
 charge of this ministry, and if our influence is the 
 chief educating power, then, as I have said, alas ! 
 for us, and alas ! for the child. As Jesus bore 
 witness of the Father, so we have to bear witness 
 of the Saviour. If we bear witness of ourselves, 
 of our private ideas of what a child should grow 
 to be, our own image of goodness, purity, and 
 truth, we may chance to see the little ones on 
 whom we spend our wealth of effort gi'owing into 
 an image from which we shrink back with dread. 
 I have seen it again and again. I have seen par- 
 ents who had striven earnestly and with much 
 self-denial to mould- their children to an image 
 which should satisfy their parental joy and pride. 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. ■ 153 
 
 left in their old age to moan in bitterness of soul 
 over the wreck of all their hopes. While little 
 ones, trained early to recognise joyously the dawn- 
 ings of a divine light and the stirrings of a divine 
 life within, drawn out to realise their divine rela- 
 tions, and to cry with a child's frank heart, " Fa- 
 ther, Father," in the ear of God, left free to un- 
 fold their native faculty and tendency under the 
 eye and hand of a parent whose supreme concern 
 was to know and to do His will, grow up in a fair 
 and shapely adolescence, and into a maturity rich 
 with noble and abundant fruit. 
 
 But what, upon this principle, is the true field 
 of a parent's duty ? If Christ is with the child, 
 nearer than the parent, with power to reach the 
 inner ear and to touch the inner springs, the par- 
 ent's influence seems to fade into feebleness ; it 
 may help in some small measure, but it has no 
 essential power. But it is the same with educa- 
 tion as with everything else ; man's power is that 
 of the fellow-worker, the fellow-helper with God. 
 In every field of human activity in which the 
 higher human faculties find play, indeed in every 
 region of activity, the power is of God. In every 
 work, the essential power, the masculine power, 
 is with Him. " It is the Lord thy God w^ho giv- 
 7* 
 
154: • The Home Life. 
 
 eth tliee tliis power to get wealtli." Tlie intelli- 
 gence, energy, and patience bj which men win 
 great successes, are ever fanned and kept at a 
 white heat by the breath of God. In Him we 
 live. If His breath kindles the flame of life, the 
 glow passes swiftly through every pulse and or- 
 gan, and energises them ; if He withholds His in- 
 spiration they fail and die. As we rise into the 
 higher spheres of work, the energising breath of 
 God becomes more palpably the condition of all 
 noble and fruitful activity. Moses, David, Isaiah, 
 Paul, were from one point of view the most de- 
 pendent thinkers and actors who have ever played 
 their part in the theatre of history. " And Moses 
 said unto the Lord^ my Lord^ I am not elo- 
 quent, neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast 
 sjpoTcen unto Thy servant : hut I am slow of sjpeech, 
 and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto 
 him, Who hath made man^s mouth f or who mak- 
 eth the duml), or deaf or the seeing, or the Mind f 
 have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and 1 
 loill he with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou 
 shalt say (Exod. iv. 10-12). 
 
 '^And lest L should he exalted above measure 
 through the abundance of the revelations, tJiere 
 was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messen- 
 
The Nurture of the Lord, 155 
 
 ger of Satan to huffet me, lest I should he exalted 
 above ^tneasure. For this thing Ih^sought the Lord 
 thrice, that it might dejpart from me. And He 
 said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee : for 
 My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most 
 gladly therefore will L rather glory in my infirm- 
 ities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 
 Therefore L take pleasure in infirmities, in re- 
 proaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in dis- 
 tresses, for Chrises saJce : for when L am weak, 
 then am L strong " (2 Cor. xii. Y-10). 
 
 "' L am crucified with Christ: nevertheless 1 
 live / yet not L, hut Christ liveth in me ; and the 
 life which L now live in the fiesh, L live hy the 
 faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and goA^e 
 Himself for me " (Gal. ii. 20). 
 
 ''And ye shall he hrought hefore governors and 
 kings for My sake, for a testimony against them 
 and the Gentiles. But when they deliver yoio up, 
 take no thought how nor what ye shall speak / 
 for it shall he given you in that same hour what 
 ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, hut 
 the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you " 
 (Matt. X. 18-20). 
 
 And yet these were the very highest and freest 
 expressions of human thought and will which the 
 
156 The Home Life, 
 
 world has ever witnessed. [Nfo men have ever 
 spoken so freely for God, yea, and to God, as 
 these men who were completely dependent on EQs 
 inspiration. Xone have acted so boldly, so grand- 
 ly, in their human freedom, as those who took 
 the suggestion of their every movement from the 
 touch of His hand and the glance of His eye. 
 And the reason is not diflicult to discover. Man's 
 nature moves in its fullest liberty, and touches 
 the height of its possibilities, only when it is in 
 perfect oneness with the mind and the will of God. 
 The more completely God enters into it, the more 
 nearly does it grow to the fulness of its native 
 dignity and power. Man was made to be the fel- 
 low-worker with the Lord ; the fellow-worker, as 
 the woman works with man in the conduct of the 
 home. " The hride the LarnFs wife^'' describes 
 humanity under its highest possible conditions. 
 Its freedom is the freedom which is possible in 
 such imion, the freedom of perfect sympathy and 
 perfect love. 
 
 And thus the parents are Christ's co-workers 
 in the nurture and culture of their little ones. 
 It would be but partial truth to say that the su- 
 preme relation of the child is to Christ, and that 
 the parent's influence is but a feather's weight in 
 
The Nurture of the Lord, 15Y 
 
 the scale. The parent's influence is part of Christ's 
 influence ; it is of His making and of His main- 
 taining ; and He is just robbed as it wei;e of a vi- 
 tal organ, if a parent despises or even thinks light- 
 ly of this fellow-helping with Him. Throw 
 yourself into the duty with all the zeal and ener- 
 gy which the thought of all that is hanging on 
 your efibrt, for yourself, for your child, and for 
 God, can inspire, and you will lend to the Master 
 the most precious instrument that the universe 
 could furnish for His work ; while you may keep 
 the instrument pure and keen, and meet for the 
 Master's use, by remembering that your work is 
 to bear witness for Him who is ever at work with- 
 in, and to draw forth the child's consciousness that 
 He is there. The more you believe in Christ's 
 presence with your little one, the more, did you 
 understand it rightly, would you feel your minis- 
 try to be essential to a true nurture and admoni- 
 tion in the Lord. The Lord is with you^ as well 
 as with your little one ; and it is through you 
 alone that He can complete His work. To this 
 concert of spirit He is ever moving you. His 
 zeal for your little one works through you as its 
 chief organ. In truth, the Incarnation is a fact 
 ever living, and it ever finds new manifestations. 
 
168 The Borne Life. 
 
 God in man, man in God, is tlie key to the whole 
 mystery of life. 
 
 I have said that nearer than all the tones and 
 touches of the creation, far nearer, are the YDices 
 of the home. God is educating the child by all 
 the objects with which He has surrounded it, 
 drawing forth its apprehension, and widening 
 its horizon. And He ever keeps objects on the 
 dim bounds of that horizon to stimulate its effort. 
 Whatever the child may see so as to know, God 
 always cares that there shall be that which it 
 faintly sees and hardly knows; so that a con- 
 stant strain of effort is kept up, expanding and 
 cultivating the powers. But man's influence is 
 supreme. Nature cannot close the heart to man, 
 but man may close the heart to nature. The pas- 
 sionate, spoilt child of . a corrupt society, who 
 pined " for a desert as his dwelling-place," that he 
 might " all forget the human race," must have 
 " one fair spirit for his minister." And it is ever 
 thus. Man is and must be the supreme object to 
 man. I doubt if affection so tender and so pure 
 ever dwelt in human hearts, as that which the 
 men who had cut themselves off from the world 
 and its claims and loves, cherished towards the 
 brethren of their monastery, to whom they knit 
 
 i 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 159 
 
 their souls. Let these words of tlie wise and 
 good Anselm, whicli lie addressed to a brother 
 monk, bear witness to the need which, even in 
 the cloister, man has of man ; — " Thou knewest 
 how much I love thee, but I knew it not. He 
 who has separated us has alone instructed me 
 how dear ^o me thou wert. ITo, I knew not be- 
 fore the experience of thy absence how sweet it 
 was to have thee, how bitter to have thee not. 
 Thou hast another friend whom thou hast loved 
 as much or more than me, to console thee, but I 
 have no longer thee — thee ! thee ! thou under- 
 standest ? and nothing to replace thee. Thou 
 hast thy consolers, but I have only my wound. 
 Those who rejoice in the possession of thee may 
 perhaps be offended by what I say. Ah ! let 
 them content themselves with their joy, and per- 
 mit me to weep for him whom I ever love." 
 
 Man must have man to cleave to ; and from 
 man all his highest directing and stimulating in- 
 fluences come. It is in the form of man that 
 God claims the supreme rule over the world. 
 And the home influence must inevitably be the 
 dominant in the formation of character, or, where 
 there is unusual native strength, in its direction 
 and development. And there, too, it is chiefly 
 
160 The Home Life. 
 
 settled whether it shall be a spi-ing of joy or of 
 bitterness to its possessor through life. 
 
 Many a noble gift, whose nobleness cannot be 
 quite destroyed, even by the worst home influ- 
 ences, gets set so awry, or so poisoned in the 
 springs, that it becomes mainly a sorrow to the 
 man who is endowed with it, and to the world 
 into which God sent it forth to be a benediction. 
 Everything depends on the culture of the whole 
 nature. You cannot cultivate a branch or a 
 limb fairly, except through the trunk which bears 
 it. If the whole nature is suffered to grow up 
 warped, deformed, embittered, gifts, which might 
 have traversed a wide orbit of blessing, become 
 charged with a malignant energy, and live on, 
 either as prodigies to startle, or as plagues to tor- 
 ment mankind. The home is mainly responsible 
 for the morale of the men and women who are to 
 cany on the development of society. And did 
 I need any argument to strengthen the grounds 
 of my belief in Him who has the world's desti- 
 nies in a Father's charge, I should find it in the 
 fact, that in spite of all that man does in human 
 homes, in every generation, to poison human life 
 in its very springs, there still is developement. 
 Man holds on his path of progress ; he goes from 
 
Tlie Nurture of the Lord. 161 
 
 strength to strength led by an unseen l^and, and 
 triumphs over his own folly and weakness through 
 the sustaining wisdom and energy of God. 
 
 I have dwelt at length on what seems to me 
 to be the first step in all true education, the start- 
 ing point of the higher life. The next step con- 
 cerns the conscious relationship of the young child 
 to Christ, the mystery .of its moral nature, the ex- 
 perience of transgression, and its fruits, in an al- 
 tered relation to the Father of Spirits, to man, 
 and to the world. How, in a well-ordered Chris- 
 tian home, shall the parent deal with the question 
 of sin % And here, as ever, the true course seems 
 to be between two pernicious extremes. Let it 
 alone, some say ; why trouble the child with dark 
 fancies, and teach it to see some dreadful evil in 
 its little innocent half-conscious words and works ? 
 There is a school of philosophic religionists who 
 would have us deal lightly with this whole ques- 
 tion of sin. They believe that men are made ten 
 times worse than they would othej'wise be, by 
 being tormented about their sins by the priests. 
 Let them alone to the teaching of experience, 
 they say ; the burnt child dreads the fire ; they 
 will learn in time that the pleasure is not worth 
 the pain, and live sober, peaceful, and sensible 
 
162 The Home Life. 
 
 lives. This teacliing of tlie priest, we are told, 
 wakens a spirit of defiance ; men sin tlie harder 
 for it, and a bitter malignant temper gets posses- 
 sion of them. Treat transgression as having its 
 origin mainly in ignorance, use wise discipline, 
 sharp, if need be, to correct it ; but be very care- 
 ful not to cloud the bright heaven of a young 
 child's life, by gloomy pictures of its moral con- 
 dition and relations with the Supreme. 
 
 Thus one school argues. There are those, on 
 the other hand, who think that the picture can 
 hardly be painted black enough. They would 
 have us impress upon the child a very vivid and 
 terrible conviction of its sinful state, and of its 
 peril if cut off, under the idea of driving it to 
 Christ in the extremity of its agony, that it might 
 be timely sheltered within His fold. Some of us 
 have seen much of this method, and have marked 
 its results. The child, being already within the 
 fold of the Good Shepherd (and we may presume 
 that those whom He gathered in His arms are not 
 excluded from His fold), is in grave danger of 
 being driven out of it again, by these terrible 
 pictures of its condition, danger, and possible 
 doom. "Teach them that they are sinners, — 
 teach them that they are sinners, — teach them 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 163 
 
 that they are sinners," reiterated a venerable and 
 experienced minister once, as the first, second, 
 and third head of a Christian education. And 
 he had written a book on " Persuasives to Early 
 Piety ! " 
 
 But I hold more with him than with the oppo- 
 site party after all ; if you understand, as I think 
 that he did not understand, what the teaching 
 means. You see the difference between teaching 
 a child as a first lesson that he is a sinner, and 
 watching earnestly for the fit occasion to unfold 
 to him the nature and tendencies of that evil, the 
 consciousness of which has become already devel- 
 oped within. "We would keep the cloud out of 
 the clear heaven of their young lives gladly 
 enough, but, alas ! the devil is too busy. The 
 cloud will gather, and will burst in a tempest, 
 if we have not found the conductors which will 
 carry it^ malign fire harmlessly away. "We can- 
 not afford to make light of transgression. There 
 is that within the child which cannot make light 
 of it. We may as well watch quietly a tumour 
 gathering on his body, which will cripple him for 
 life. Grapple with the thing we must, and with 
 the reality of the thing. The fang is venomous, 
 
164 The Home Life. 
 
 and unless we can neutralise tlie poison, the wound 
 is death. 
 
 I think that I would not yield to the sternest 
 theologian of the sternest school, in the firmness 
 with which I hold two articles of his creed, that 
 all that is good is of God, on the one hand, and 
 that sin is the universal, deadly, damning mis- 
 chief in man, on the other. Deal with it you 
 must, and early ; but again I plead, deal with it 
 as the fellow-helper with God, watching His 
 workings and interpreting them to the child. 
 You have not to teach the child that he is a sin- 
 ner; God has to teach it, and you have to watch 
 His method and come in to His aid. If a young 
 child, whose consciousness is but feebly cognizant 
 of the mingled elements of which it is composed, 
 be diligently taught to repeat that he is a sinner, 
 and that God hates sin and must punish sin, then, 
 as the intelligence developes, there can be but 
 one result, — the child will grow up inevitably into 
 distrust, and even dread of God. You may talk 
 as jou will of God's love, and of the gift of that 
 love on Calvary, but the shock has been given, 
 and the quiet trust and love, the bloom of a child's 
 piety, has been destroyed. 
 
 Everything depends on the first image which 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 165 
 
 gets possession of tlie spirit, tlie first thought that 
 lodges there. Is it to be Christ or sin ? Let us 
 watch God's method. If a child has been taught 
 to recognise a light within, and has learnt that 
 that light is Christ, and that Christ is love, the 
 time will come, and come soon, when it will be- 
 come conscious of a darkness — of something which 
 does not love the light, and will not face the light 
 — which stirs up a conflict and makes a confu- 
 sion within — which fills the soul with pain, and 
 sets it out of tune with life and with the world. 
 Those are the seasons which a wise parent will 
 watch for, to educate the consciousness of sin. 
 There is an experience within, a work of God, 
 which needs interpreting — a mystery, which the 
 young soul is incompetent to solve. Words then 
 have meanings. Sin, transgression, rebellion — 
 yes, the soul knows full well what they mean. It 
 longs to have them explained. It is ready to hear 
 whence they spring, whom they wrong, and how 
 they may be mastered and destroyed. Knowing 
 Christ as the inner light, the first and chief 
 Friend, the child is ready to harbour the thought 
 of the grief with which sin afilicts Him, and to 
 clasp the helping hand which He holds forth, that 
 it may be saved. Let the field of the child's con- 
 
166 The Home Life, 
 
 Bciousness be bright witb tlie liglit of the living 
 Word, and every outburst of selfisli greed or pas- 
 sion will sLow itself against that background black 
 as night. 
 
 Ah! would we but study and follow the 
 methods of God ! Would we but wait until 
 we see that He is teaching, and then help, as 
 far as we may, these little ones to understand 
 the lessons which He is impressing on their 
 hearts ! 
 
 The next step concerns the child and the 
 written word. Alas ! what a weary task-book 
 the Bible is made in many an otherwise genial 
 Christian home ! When I see how all its diviner 
 meanings are murdered, as children are taught to 
 spell out of it, or trained to stand an examination 
 in its facts and doctrines, in furtherance of what 
 is understood to be " the religious element in edu- 
 cation" — and if the angels are ever present as 
 *' the religious element " is being infused in schools, 
 one would like to know what they think of it — I 
 am again filled with amazement at the cordial 
 faith in the Bible which survives the process. 
 Though, if any are curious to discover the hot- 
 bed which forces, if not the root which generates, 
 the most malignant unbeHef, he may find it in 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 167 
 
 what passes among us as the recognised process 
 of religious education. 
 
 And the Bible suffers under this process in 
 two ways. Its history is dealt with as if it were 
 not history ; and its truth as if it were dead and 
 not vital truth. Its history gets studied mainly 
 for its moral lessons, and the historic interest 
 fades out of it. Surely it is more full of moral 
 lessons than any history in the world ; but this 
 depends on the moral fulness of the life which 
 it pourtrays. The moral lessons of any book 
 may be measured by the largeness and vigour of 
 the life which it sets forth ; which if our writers 
 of " tales with moral lessons," for children, would 
 but remember, they would spare the poor young 
 things which have to browse in their pastures 
 much flatulent vacuity of mind and spirit, end- 
 ing too often in entire incapacity. for the higher 
 business of life. 
 
 The Old Testament as history, and great part 
 of it is history, is the most valuable ancient docu- 
 ment in the world. The history of the free Jew- 
 ish people — their struggle with the great oriental 
 despotisms, and the power which, in virtue of a 
 superior political and moral life, they were able 
 to exert upon them even in captivity — is as rich 
 
168 The Home Life, 
 
 in interest as the history of tlie free Grecian peo- 
 ples, and tlieir victorious struggle against the 
 same despotisms at a later period of their devel- 
 opment, or rather of their decay. And what is 
 there in ancient literature comparable with the 
 history of David ? Where is the tale so rich in 
 human interest, pathos, tenderness, courage, ad- 
 venture, and brilliant achievement in policy and 
 war ? Children would read it gladly, and suck 
 in its lessons as the glow of a summer noon, if we 
 would leave them alone to pore over it as a his- 
 tory ; and not cut it up into portions, and label 
 them with morals, and do all that we can to per- 
 suade them that they are not to take the same 
 enjoyment in it, that they take in any other an- 
 cient tale of brilliant and romantic life. It is 
 grand and noble history, the whole historic Old 
 Testament; and if we would but let our little 
 ones bring their fresh young appetites to bear 
 upon it, they would have that lodged within 
 them which would unlock for them the inner 
 meaning of all the histories which they may be 
 called upon to study — the key, in a word, to the 
 universal history of man. 
 
 The division into chapters and verses is ad- 
 mirably convenient for lessons, but is fatal to vi- 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 169 
 
 tal interest in the narratives. ITor do paragraph 
 Bibles much mend the matter. The mischief is 
 moral, and not mechanical-; and this method of 
 reading the Bible is so thoroughly wrought into 
 us by long habit, that young minds are rather 
 confused than helped by mere mechanical redis- 
 tributions of the text. For I am not speaking 
 altogether of the chapters and verses which the 
 printer makes for us, but rather of the habit of 
 piecing the work out into bits, each with a moral 
 lesson to it, which good people carry about with 
 them as prepared spiritual food ; the teaching of 
 which to their children, with the proper moral 
 stimulus or sting appended, they regard as an es- 
 sential element of the nurture and admonition of 
 the Lord. 
 
 And when we come to the higher function of 
 the Bible, the case is sadder still. Just as we 
 will not wait for God to begin the teaching of 
 young hearts about sin, so we will not wait for 
 God to show to them tlje worth and the power 
 of His word. We start at once by insisting on 
 claims for it which it never urges for itself. Its 
 absolute authority, its plenary inspiration, it nev- 
 er asserts ; it leaves us to discover them as we dis- 
 cover the sun, and turn to it for light and fire. 
 
170 The Home Life, 
 
 The Bible, like the Master, speaks with authority, 
 because so unlike the scribes ; because the word 
 spoken is so full of heavenly light and love, that 
 men can see the Divine mark on it and rejoice. 
 We do our very best to make the Bible speak aa 
 the scribes, who began by claiming authority, 
 and demanded on that ground the acceptance of 
 their truth. God asks no acceptance of His gifts 
 but such as their worth may win for them. Oh ! 
 we of little faith, why cannot we trust His book 
 to His own method, and let the light and the life 
 with which He has freely charged it, glow and 
 quicken through the world ? What the Bible su- 
 premely wants is freedom. " You must think 
 thus and thus about it, and about its every word," 
 say the divines. " Leave it free to win its rever- 
 ence," we answer; "there is light there bright 
 enough to be seen without your glasses, and pow- 
 er enough to be only hampered with your offi- 
 cious hand." 
 
 And be sure that no amount of demonstration 
 of its divine origin and authority, no reiteration 
 of its claims, will win for it yom' child's homage. 
 Formal reverence, such as men pay to scribes? 
 you can compel, but true homage, mere author- 
 ity never wins. The Bible is God's book to the 
 
The Nurture of the Lord, lYl 
 
 child, precisely in the measure in which his sym- 
 pathy is drawn forth to it, as presenting some 
 outward image of his inner life. If he finds the 
 key there which unlocks the wards of his experi- 
 ence ; if he finds the truth there which casts a 
 flood of light on the dark, and a dew of comfort 
 on the sad passages of his life, — the Bible has 
 found the child, not the child the Bible, and that 
 finding never fails. If you can connect the outer 
 word in the Book with the inner word in the life, 
 and teach your child to seek it, not for formal les- 
 sons, not for knowledge of sacred things only, not 
 for Sunday reading, but for real light in real 
 darkness, real comfort in real sorrow, real help 
 in real need, — you have made the Bible the ma» 
 of his counsel until death. You have rendered 
 his belief of the Bible absolutely proof against 
 every effort of the adversary to undermine it. 
 A thousand critics may assail its most sacred pas- 
 sages, it troubles him not ; for him its light shines 
 on, because it is God's light, unshorn of a single 
 beam. 
 
 The last point on which I dwell is the educa- 
 tion of the eye, and the whole seeing faculty of 
 the child, to behold the wonderful works of God. 
 
 A great part, and a much neglected part of 
 
172 The Home Life. • 
 
 the home education, concerns the faculties of ob- 
 servation, the drawing them out to aj)prehend the 
 rich world of wonder and splendour which God 
 has spread around even the basest beggar's child. 
 A noted evangelical divine has recently been 
 agitating the question, doubtfully and with the 
 amount of wisdom to which popular preachers 
 have accustomed us, whether it is worth while to 
 study anything closely but the word of God, or 
 what throws light on the word of God. Again I 
 should be disposed to sympathise with his doubts, 
 upon a true understanding of what the study of 
 the divine word implies. The best way to blind 
 ourselves to the sunlight is to stare at it ; and the 
 •best way to miss the light which is in the divine 
 word is to look at nothing else. To read nothing 
 but the Bible and books about the Bible, is the 
 surest way to stint its blessing. The Bible is 
 larger than our faculties at their fullest expansion. 
 The higher their culture, the wider their range 
 of vision, the more of its truth they will be able 
 to take in. In my small sphere, I am in the 
 habit, as my congregation know very well, of 
 studying each year some secular theme, some as- 
 pect of the creation, or some era of history, and 
 bringing the results before them in a course of 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 1T3 
 
 lectures on tlie subject. I call it secular, but to 
 me it is most sacred. I do it distinctly tliat I 
 may understand tlie Bible better, and be more 
 fitted for my spiritual work ; that I may know 
 God's word and God himself more fully, by tak- 
 ing a wider view of what God has done in the 
 material and human worlds. J^ever fear that the 
 widest culture which you can give your children 
 will imperil the supremacy of the word of God. 
 If you have taught them the true secret of its 
 value, and shown to them the true spring of its 
 power, whatever stars of truth they may discover, 
 their sun will never be eclipsed. 
 
 But teach them from the first to use their eyes 
 and hands upon the world around them, for there- 
 fore was it sent. It exists for the education of 
 these little ones, these nurselings of God, these 
 infants of heaven. And our method is too often 
 a shameful neglect of the riches and splendours 
 of the universe, which God has fiung round our 
 daily paths with such royal and lavish hand. 
 What are those glittering heavens telling nightly 
 to the eager young eyes that search their star- 
 sown depths, ignorant of their forms and motions, 
 ignorant of those awful paths where the great 
 Captain leads forth His flaming hosts by number. 
 
 L 
 
174 The Home Life. 
 
 " and telleth them all by their names by the great- 
 ness of His might ; and for that He is strong in 
 power not one faileth % " Nor is the dust under 
 our feet less rich in teaching, less full of the 
 thoughts of God. The crystals of the dust are 
 as wonderful as the constellations. Yet but one 
 in a myriad has ever learn!; their lore, pored over 
 them till they revealed their secrets, and told as 
 they can teU the struggles of their life. Teach 
 your little ones to sing with the birds, and at mat- 
 ins; few know the glory of the dawn. Teach 
 them to consider the lilies, how they gi*ow, the 
 mountains, how they uprear their thrones. Draw 
 out the desire to observe and the power to observe 
 the various phenomena of creation. It is like 
 peopling the dull earth with living land unselfish 
 friends. 
 
 I would have every child trained to take de- 
 light in some physical science of which observa- 
 tion is a leading function. I would have him 
 taught to search out the thoughts of God in the 
 creation, that "the trivial round, the common 
 task," may unveil to him scenes of beauty and 
 wonder, than which, may be, the angels see 
 nought more wonderful and beautiful w^ there 
 beyond the stars. I think that there must be 
 
The Nurture of the Lord, 175 
 
 scenes on earth of winch, those shining ones are 
 joyful visitants ; it was not of hasty and imper- 
 fect work, that God said " hehold it is very goodP 
 Every day the world seems to me more marvel- 
 lously beautiful and more exquisitely wrought; 
 and every day increases my sorrow that I learnt 
 so little when I was young, and when the mem- 
 ory easily freights itself with treasures with which 
 it never parts, about the stars, the clouds, the 
 magnetic streams, the rocks, the mountains, the 
 birds, the flowers, the music that floods the air, 
 and the dust that I tread beneath my feet. Open 
 the child's eye, as far as lies in your power, to 
 take in the vision. The value of life is measured 
 by the richness and variety of .its experiences. 
 Life ought to be worth double to your child what 
 It has been worth to you. Your life ought to be 
 bis vantage ground, from which through the cul- 
 ture which God has strengthened you to give him, 
 he may gather in the impressions of a far wider 
 world. 
 
 Into the departments of education which fall 
 under the char^ of professional teachers, I do 
 not feel competent to enter. One word only I 
 will say. I should find it difficult to express the 
 strength of my conviction of the value of a lib- 
 
176 The Home Life. 
 
 eral education to a youth destined, like the major- 
 ity of those whom I am addressing, to occupy his 
 manhood with commercial pursuits. The study 
 of the classical languages of antiquity, and the 
 literature to which the mastery of the language 
 opens the way, is incomparably the finest instru- 
 ment of intellectual cultm-e which is within our 
 reach. Earnestly would I urge on every parent 
 the duty of much effort and much self-denial to 
 give his boy, yes and his girl too, some vision of 
 that world. It is, like the history of Thucydides, 
 as he himself describes it, " a possession for ever ; " 
 it adds something to the culture, which lifts the 
 life into a higher sphere. 
 
 But prudent, practical parents are prone to 
 question the use of this " dead " literature, and to 
 insist on modern, and more immediately profita- 
 ble themes. Perhaps its main value lies in the 
 fact that it has no immediate and available use, 
 and is, therefore, the finest instrument of a liberal 
 education. A liberal education is that which 
 considers the education, the drawing forth of the 
 faculties, to be the main end (^f the discij)line; 
 while an illiberal education is that which asks for 
 results capable of being put to immediate and 
 profitable use. Most earnestly would I plead for 
 
The Nurture of the Lord. 177 
 
 a longer and larger measure of truly liberal cul- 
 ture, for tlie children who are to play their part 
 on the busy stage of commercial life. It will give 
 them a higher chance than you can easily imag- 
 ine of lifting their life to a superior level, and 
 making it worth tenfold to themselves and to the 
 world. Believe that it will repay a hundredfold, 
 whatever effort and denial it may cost. 
 
 Eesolve that, God helping you, you will, at 
 whatever sacrifice, bestow upon your children the 
 gift of thoroughly disciplined and developed pow- 
 ers. Give them that, and take slight thought for 
 the rest. Educate them, draw them out to their 
 full stature physically, mentally, and spiritually ; 
 and then every farthing that you hoard for them 
 is so much taken from the value of the priceless 
 gift which you have bestowed. Lay up in them 
 at any cost. It is the parents' honour and di- 
 vine privilege to toil and suffer for the education 
 of his child. Grudge nothing which that may 
 cost you. Eternity only can reveal to you what 
 it has been worth ; and eternity only will reveal 
 the curse of the hoards which the "rich in this 
 world " lay up for their children, and the loss of 
 noble effort and disciplined energy which this 
 worse than idle provision has entailed. And 
 
178 The Home Life. 
 
 eternity only will unfold to you how much of it 
 has been laid up for the devil's storehouses ; for 
 thither, I am tempted to think, nine-tenths of the 
 wealth that is hoarded for children finds its way 
 at last. 
 
YII. 
 
 « 
 
 KECEEATIOlSr. 
 
 " To every tiling tTiere is a season^ and a time to every pur- 
 pose under the heaven. A time to laugh and a 
 
 time to dance,'''' — Ecoles. iii. 1, 4. 
 
 Yaeiett is tlie key to the method of God in 
 the management of our lives. Yarious influences, 
 various objects, various experiences, various food. 
 Man is continent of varieties. He can hold them 
 clasped within his unity, and live by them. Rob 
 him of variety, condemn him to monotony, in any 
 department of his life, and you either madden or 
 brutalise him. A rich variety of relations, scenes, 
 and influences, is essential to the complete and 
 healthy unfolding of his powers. 
 
 I suppose that there is no form of death more 
 
 terrible than that which a man would suffer if he 
 
 were fed to death on solid food. Fed to death 1 
 
 Yes ; nothing is more easy. Let a man be shut 
 
 9* 
 
180 The Home Life. 
 
 np, and supplied with nothing but water and 
 strong animal food ; and, if he is kept to it long 
 enough, he will die in horrible agonies, a loath- 
 some, ghastly wreck. For a time, and for a spe- 
 cial purpose — as when a man is in training for a 
 contest — a regimen of strong animal food, with a 
 •minimum of those lighter elements which 'are re- 
 garded as the ornaments, but which in reality are 
 very important features of a repast, may developer 
 a remarkable amount of muscular fibre, and fit 
 him to do the very utmost that under any condi- 
 tions could be exacted of his frame. But if he 
 were to keep up the regimen, month after month, 
 and abstain from bread, vegetables, and fruit, the 
 strong frame would wither, as if a hot blast had 
 swept through it and dried up its vital juices. 
 The joints and bands of the system would become 
 relaxed, the limbs would move wearily ; a dull, 
 wearing, and ultimately agonising pain would 
 seize them ; the teeth would fall out of the gums, 
 the eyes would strain out of the sockets, the feat- 
 ures would wear an expression of intense and 
 hopeless distress ; and the man would either sink 
 into a moping idiot, or die in insane despair. 
 
 It is now fully understood on all hands, that 
 the lighter and more casual elements of our food 
 
Recreation. 181 
 
 are in their way quite as essential as the solid 
 staple of it. If the one makes the fibre of the 
 frame, the other makes the flesh — in which the 
 fibre imbeds itself, and by which it carries on the 
 play of life — fair, firm, and elastic. All force 
 mnst be clothed to be fruitful; and the body, 
 the flesh in which the muscular and nervous skel- 
 eton, so to speak, embosoms itself, is supplied 
 mainly by the secondary elements of this food. 
 They yield its juices, and give to it that mobility 
 and play of power which make it a meet organ 
 for a spirit's use. Let the body be robbed of 
 these, and it becomes a mummy; for all the 
 higher uses of a body — dead. 
 
 Transpose this into the moral key, and you 
 have the history of what goes by the name of 
 Puritanism. It is an effort, a very noble effort if 
 you will, to live on too solid and stimulating food. 
 For the moment, like a severe discipline when a 
 man is in training, it nerved great men for great 
 achievements. They cut themselves off from 
 most of , the invigorating and recreative juices 
 which flow into a man from the glad, beautiful 
 world around him, and up from the lily and the 
 daisy beneath his feet. " One thing I do^'^ was 
 their motto. Stars, lilies, the music of creation — 
 
182 The Home Life, 
 
 these are all distractions. " I liaye to wield ^ the 
 sword of the Lord and of Gideon,' in a battle of 
 life or death against the devil and his works ; and 
 what time, what thought, have I to spare for dal- 
 liance with the lighter graces and ornaments of 
 life ? " There are some graceful words of Keble's, 
 to which the ascetic spirit gives a certain tinge, 
 which might present very fairly the image of 
 their thought : — 
 
 " Sweet is the smile of home ; the mutual look 
 "When hearts are of each other sure ; 
 Sweet all the jojs that crowd the household nook, 
 The haunt of aU affections pure. 
 
 " Yet in the world even these abide, and we, 
 Above the world our calling boast : 
 Once gain the- mountain top, and thou art free ; 
 Till then, who rest, presume ; who turn to look, are 
 lost." 
 
 One can fancy the spirit of these words nerving 
 the hand of a stern Parliamentarian trooper, as 
 he took a fresh grip of his sword-handle, and 
 turned himself once more to the field where he 
 meant to conquer or die. " Cest magnifique^ mais 
 ce n^ est pas la guerre ^^"^ said the Frenchmen, when 
 they saw the terrible cavalry charge at Balaclava. 
 And we may say reverently of the Puritan, " It 
 
Recreation. 183 
 
 is magnificent, but it is not life." Thej lived 
 only upon the strong meat of the word in its 
 most concentrated form. It made them splendid 
 men for the crisis — spare, stern, resolute, with 
 moral muscles tough as wire ; but in the long run 
 Puritanism grew disjointed and dissolute; men 
 maddened under its limitations and denials, and 
 at length broke out into wild excesses. England 
 had to pay the penalty of many a wanton and 
 godless generation, for this effort to live only upon 
 the solids of spiritual life.* 
 
 * I am conscious that I am using the word " Puritan " in a 
 vague and popular way. It describes something to the popular 
 apprehension which is very real, and which was characteristic of a 
 great party which has left its mark very visibly on our national 
 character and history. But strictly speaking, narrowness and want 
 of geniality can by no means be fairly charged against the great 
 Puritan leaders ; nor, until it had become fanatical during its long 
 and tremendous struggle, against the party which they led. I 
 doubt if the world has ever seen such a rich and beautiful home 
 life, as might be found in many a Puritan household in England 
 during the early part of the seventeenth century. The most com- 
 plete, cultivated, and courteous gentlemen, and the most sweet, 
 lofty, and gracious women, that England has ever nurtured, were 
 of that school. Able writers of our day, who by no means sym- 
 pathise with our Nonconformist ideas, have been at pains to prove 
 that we owe very much of that habit of thought and life which dis- 
 tinguishes the " English gentleman " (a species which is by itself 
 in the world) to Puritan influence. And, certainly, a party which 
 had Essex for its soldier, Selden for its lawyer, Yane for its states- 
 man, and Milton for its poet, might lift up its head among the most 
 cultivated and accomplished of the time. Nor was even Cromwell 
 
184 The Home Life. 
 
 The world, too, is as ricli in varieties as tlie 
 provision which God has made for the physical 
 nourishment of man. There are nooks every- 
 where around us where nature is sporting, and 
 simply enjoying herself. After large broad tracts, 
 on which she has been working on a grand scale, 
 and for high ends, you constantly discover a nook 
 where she has manifestly had no end but beauty, 
 and no care beyond the present joy. Every des- 
 ert has its Ehms, where the springs gurgle liquid 
 music, and the palms fling cool shadow over the 
 glowing sand. The tired pilgrim cannot choose 
 but ungird himself, and fling himself lazily on the 
 grass by the murmuring stream. Nature in such 
 
 without a rich vein of geniality, courtesy, and hearty appreciation 
 of the graces and beauties of life. The evidence on this point is 
 abundant. Take this little conversation with Whitlocke about the 
 Swedish embassy, in proof: — "How could you pass over their long 
 winter nights ? " the Protector asked Whitlocke at the audience 
 of return from his embassy. " I kept my people together," was 
 the reply, " and in action and recreation, by having music in my 
 house, and encouraging that and the exercise of dancing, which 
 held them by the eyes and ears, and gave them diversion without 
 any offence. And I caused the gentlemen to have disputations in 
 Latin, and declamations upon words which I gave them." And 
 the dialogue proceeded. Cromwell — " Those were very good diver- 
 sions, and made your house a little academy." Wliitlockc — "I 
 thought these recreations better than gaming for money, or going 
 forth to places of debauchery." Cromwell — *' It was much bet- 
 ter." 
 
Recreation. 185 
 
 nooks is lavish of beauties ; slie makes a festa for 
 lier cliildren, and will have them dance and sing. 
 Dreary monotonies, weary marches along life's 
 dusty levels, never fail to be broken at blessed 
 intervals by stations where the very genius of the 
 spot cries, " Eest a while and play." There are 
 no long stretches of duty without green pastures 
 here and there by the way, in which the jaded 
 intellect and will may wander, unbound from the 
 yoke a while, and recreate themselves for fresh 
 toils. 
 
 Yet nature is not all dimpled with smiles. 
 Stern motherly commandment is the broad ex- 
 pression of her countenance. " In the sweat of 
 thy trow shalt thou eat hread^'' is the sentence. 
 God meant it, and nature means it, and is minded 
 that you and I shall never forget it. But ever 
 and anon, lest men faint by reason of the way, she 
 bm'sts forth into such joyous merriment, that none 
 but churls can escape the infection, and refuse to 
 dance a measure with her before they pass on. 
 But the heir of the old ascetic discipline may an- 
 swer, " Yes, this is just the wantonness of nature. 
 She is a Circe, and in these Elims and Hesperian 
 gardens she ensnares and befools mankind. The 
 Lord of nature has warned us against her seduc- 
 
186 The Rome Life. 
 
 tions. Of all that comes to us so pleasantly and 
 naturally we must beware. Our life is to be one 
 long, stem struggle against tbe wooings and pres- 
 sures of nature. We are to live here after a high- 
 er course than* the course of this sin-tainted world 
 which is around us, a course of which yon star is 
 the symbol ; and 
 
 " Like as a star 
 That makcth not haste, 
 That taketh not rest, 
 
 Be each one fulfilling 
 His God-given 'hest." 
 
 Thus the plea is set forth. I know not wheth- 
 er it was to rebuke this craven dread of nature, 
 and of natural festivity, that Christ did His first 
 great " sign " at a marriage festival, and on an 
 element specially ministrant to the joy and exhil- 
 aration of the guests. It is as though He were 
 resolved that their festivity should be hearty 
 while they were about it; the best wine He 
 brought forth to crown the feast. Was it to 
 purge them of the fear of any of God's creat- 
 ures, or of God's occasions of recreation ; and to 
 fill them with the fear lest evil passion and lust- 
 ful licence should make unseemly the presence of 
 the Lord ? 
 
Recreation, 187 
 
 But there are Christians living now, you may 
 count them by myriads, who, were the Lord to 
 reappear and to repeat this miracle, would shout 
 at Him as they did of old, " Behold a gluttonous 
 man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and 
 sinners ! " ITot that there is not very much in 
 the facts of life to suggest the fear of which I 
 have been speaking, if fear were the right enter- 
 tainment of facts. But my belief is, that the 
 fear to a great extent makes the facts, and is the 
 real parent of the danger. How would the fear 
 pass out of all gay hours and festive occasions, if 
 we were conscious of the presence of Emmanuel 
 in our midst ! The danger is a real one, but we 
 learn no immoderate pleasures from Nature. 
 Would we but study and observe her order, in- 
 stead of transgressing it, we should learn wisdom 
 and temperance in her school. The danger is not 
 to be mastered by the fear of ^Nature, but by the 
 only fear which elevates and purifies — the fear of 
 God. 
 
 The subject to which I am about to call your 
 attention is recreation. By recreation I mean 
 the play of the faculties, without any object be- 
 yond the immediate pleasure which the exercise 
 
188 The Home Life, 
 
 of them yields. And let me insist on a first 
 principle. 
 
 I. Play cannot in any wise, or by any one, be 
 made tbe main business of life. 
 
 It is an element, an ingredient only, and it 
 needs wise mixing. It is essentially a question 
 of proportion, as it is with food, and this question 
 of proportion is almost the main question of life. 
 If a man attempts to live wholly upon the solids, 
 his frame, as we have seen, becomes strained to 
 the pitch of agony, and breaks in madness or 
 death. K a man lives upon the slops, his frame 
 passes quickly into pulp and flabbiness ; the face 
 becomes bleared, the expression vacant, the form 
 gross, and the whole man vague, listless, and con- 
 temptible. And it is thus also with the moral 
 man. The main food of man's higher life is work, 
 hard, stern, uncompromising work. At least so 
 the God who made us tells us in His book, and 
 He presses home the lessons in forms from which 
 it is impossible for us to escape. To work by fits 
 and starts in the intervals of pleasure, to make 
 that the main concern, and work the interlude, is 
 to kill all pure enjoyment at the very heart. 
 Work is the mother of rest, strain of pleasure. 
 
Recreation, 189 
 
 IsTo man knows wliat rest is but the weary ; no 
 man can enjoy but be who is relaxing a strain. 
 The pleasm-es of idleness are like the smiles of an 
 idiot, tbe very dreariest and ghastliest things un- 
 der the sun. The men whose main business in 
 life is to kill time, are killing much more than 
 time, as they will discover in eternity. 
 
 Just as the lighter elements of food mingle 
 with the more substantial in minor proportion — 
 just as the nooks of violet-tinted shade spot here 
 and there the broad hot fields where sinewy hands 
 are reaping the corn — so in the same proportion 
 must recreation temper our work. The idle know 
 nothing of recreation, simply because they have 
 nothing to recreate. He who dreams by the 
 brook on a mossy bank through the hot summer's 
 day, plashing its cool waters on his languid brow, 
 and falling to dream again, may go home when 
 he has done. Like Gideon's " ten thousand " who 
 knelt by the stream, he will not be wanted. He 
 who drinks of the brook by the way as he presses 
 on, and he only, will " lift up the head." It is 
 the true idea of recreation, a sipping of the brook 
 by the way ; its fruit cannot be better described 
 than as a lifting up of the head. 
 
190 Tlie Home Life. 
 
 II. Taking up, then, tlie broad idea of recrea- 
 tion, without attempting for the present a critical 
 examination of its natm'e, my first plea on its be- 
 half is for freedom. 
 
 By freedom I mean, the absence of artificial 
 and minatural circumscribing lines. I am not 
 unmindful of the audience which I am addressing 
 — for I preserve the form of spoken discourse ad- 
 visedly in these pages — and I think it probable 
 that most of those whom these words may reach 
 will have been bred in a certain school, and with 
 certain \dews as to recreation, derived from a 
 noble spiritual ancestry, and the traditions of a 
 stormy and struggling time. We Independents, 
 who are the chief heirs of the ancient I^oncon- 
 formist traditions, which stretch back into the 
 early Puritan age and beyond, should speak and 
 think with deep reverence of that narrowness of 
 thought and sympathy, as we call it, which was 
 characteristic of the great party (when it had set- 
 tled into a party) from which we spring. "We 
 owe it mainly to that Nonconformity that we 
 have a world at all in which we can decently 
 dwell. The nature of the world against which 
 the Puritans witnessed, and from which they 
 sternly separated, is very imperfectly apprehended 
 
Becreation, 191 
 
 by most of us. It would amuse, if it did not sad 
 den us, to hear simple-hearted lads and girls grow- 
 ing up amid tlie influences of a pious home, talk- 
 ing with grave face of separating themselves from 
 the world — ^that is, a few innocent pursuits and 
 enjoyments — under the idea that they are imitat- 
 ing the stern virtues of their ancestors, who cut 
 themselves off from a world in which decent men 
 and women could hardly live at all. It would be 
 well though, if we took our traditions from the el- 
 ders instead of the dregs of the school. The dread 
 of amusement, the indifference to beauty, the de- 
 termination somehow or other to make a disriaal 
 thing of life, which characterised the lees of the 
 party embittered by a long struggle, we have 
 taken for our inheritance; and till lately we 
 thought it our duty to make the ashes conspicuous 
 upon our heads as we passed along our path. 
 There is much that is curious connected with this 
 indifference to beauty in literature, architecture, 
 and art generally, which has nothing specially to 
 do with Puritan or even Eoundhead times. St. 
 Bernard might be supposed to be at the opposite 
 pole to the Houndheads, who looked malignantly 
 at the beauty of our cathedrals ; or to our imme- 
 diate forefathers, who thought to honour with the 
 
192 The Home Life, 
 
 sternest simplicity, or the barest ugliness of form, 
 the spiritual use of their meeting-houses, which, 
 happily, the exigencies of the time compelled 
 them to keep carefully out of sight. But Bernard 
 might have been a Roundhead preacher, taking 
 up his testimony against the architectural harlotry 
 of King's College Chapel or "Wells Cathedral, or 
 even a stiff Independent, bearing witness against 
 the milder beauties of such Gothic as we allow 
 ourselves in these days, when he exclaims, 
 
 " O vanity of vanities ! but not more vain 
 than foolish. The Church's walls are resplen- 
 dent, but the poor are not there The 
 
 curious find wherewith to amuse themselves — the 
 wretched find no stay for them in their misery. 
 Why, at least, do we not reverence the images of 
 the saints, with which the very pavement we walk 
 on is covered. Often an angel's mouth we spit 
 into, and the face of some saint trodden on by the 
 
 passers-by But if we cannot do without 
 
 the images, why can we not spare the brilliant 
 colours ? What has all this to do with monks, 
 with professors of poverty, with men of spiritual 
 minds ? Again, in the cloisters, what is the mean- 
 ing of those ridiculous monsters, of that deformed 
 beauty, that beautiful deformity, before the very 
 
 I 
 
Recreation, 193 
 
 eyes of the ' brethren wlien reading? What are 
 disgusting monkeys there for, or ferocious lions, 
 or horrible centaurs, or spotted tigers, or fighting 
 soldiers, or huntsmen sounding the bugle % You 
 may see there one head with many bodies, or one 
 body with numerous heads. Here is a quadruped 
 with a serpent's tail ; there is a fish with a beast's 
 head ; there is a creature, in front of a horse, be- 
 hind a goat ; another has horns at one end, and a 
 horse's tail at the other. In factj such an endless 
 variety of forms appear everywhere, that it Js 
 more pleasant to read in the stonework than in 
 books, and to spend the day in admiring these 
 oddities, than in meditating on the law of God. 
 Good God ! if we are not ashamed of these ab- 
 surdities, why do not we grieve at the cost of 
 them ? — Moeison's St. Bernard^ p. 148. 
 
 Mr. Morison quotes in a note an amusing but 
 very suggestive passage from Mr. Carlyle's Latter- 
 day Pamphlets, which is not without its bearings 
 on the matter in hand. ^ 
 
 " ' May the devil fiy away with the fine arts,' 
 exclaimed confidentially once in my hearing, one 
 of our most distinguished public men ; a senti- 
 ment that often recurs to me. I perceive too well 
 how true it is in our case. A public man, intent 
 9 
 
194 The Home Life. 
 
 on any real business, does, I suppose, -find tlie fine 
 
 arts rather imaginary, feels them to be a 
 
 pretentious nothingness; a confused superfluity 
 and nuisance, purchased with cost ; wh^t he, in 
 brief language, denominates a bore." 
 
 But I am wandering from my theme. Art is 
 not in question here, but recreation. Art, ^s 
 recreatWe, is a matter on which I may have a 
 word to say by and by. I plead for freedom of 
 recreation — the absence of artificial and unnatural 
 limitations. And I write specially for those 
 whose lot in life subjects them to these limita- 
 tions, and for the parents who impose them, and 
 who hold to what they mistake for the old tradi- 
 tions in these matters, together with much that is 
 very noble and very beautiful in their homes. 
 And for these Christian homes, for their simpli- 
 city and health, for the manliness and the woman- 
 liness of the youths and maidens who are to go 
 forth from them, I am persuaded that a chief ne- 
 cessity is freedom. I believe that the time is 
 come when those who are looked to for teaching 
 must speak out about this, wisely and temper- 
 ately on the one hand, but clearly and firmly on 
 the other. 
 
 The fundamental idea of the discipline of 
 
Meoreation. 195 
 
 such Christian homes seems to be, that " profess- 
 ing " Christians must draw a formal line between 
 their pursuits and pleasures, and the pursuits and 
 pleasures of what is called the world, or their 
 " profession " will become " vox et prcBtera niMV 
 I hold this idea to be a radically false one. 
 Christ did nothing of the kind, and He taught 
 His disciples to do nothing of the kind. He 
 went, and His disciples went, freely about the 
 world, not drawing a Hne, but living a life which 
 condemned the evil which was in the world, and 
 justified the good. We have taken to lines and 
 forgotten lives. It is time that we began anew. 
 We are living upon the negations and abstinences 
 of our fathers. Lines drew themsel/ues in the days 
 when the host at every great dinner party who 
 did not do his best to intoxicate his guests, was 
 held, to be churlish ; when the theatre was the 
 open and shameless haunt of the most bedizened 
 prostitutes in the town, and when the man who 
 touched a card or a cue was in a fair way to be 
 tempted to gamble away his fortune. Lines drew 
 themselves in those days for every pure-hearted 
 self-respectful Christian; and it is just because 
 our fathers had the firmness to keep within the 
 lines which drew themselves so clearly, and to 
 
196 The Home Life. 
 
 protest by their lives against the doings without 
 them, that we live in days in which tlie lines have 
 happily become dim. This tradition of limits 
 survives, but we are puzzled to know where to 
 place them ; and so we defend the old ones with 
 what appearance of earnestness we may. " Men, 
 after all, are pretty much like sheep," as Eichter 
 says ; " if you meet a flock of sheep coming along 
 a lane, and put your stick against the wall, the 
 first sheep will jump over it, but if you take your 
 stick away, all the others will jump too." 
 
 I am persuaded that the mental and moral 
 health of our children is grievously impaired by 
 the miserably unreal distinctions which we draw 
 between things which may be allowed and things 
 which may not. " The line must be drawn some- 
 where," seems to be our fundamental thesis. And 
 so we occupy om'selves with barriers, instead of 
 nourishing an intelligent and manly habit of dis- 
 cernment in ourselves and in our children, and 
 leaving the lines as we go about the world to be 
 determined by the shadow which is cast by our 
 lives. Take a homely specimen. At a time 
 when French wines were not so common and 
 cheap as happily they are now, a good deacon of 
 one of our churches was sadly scandalised at see- 
 
Recreation. 197 
 
 ing some of the costly and luxurious beverage at 
 the table of a brother deacon with whom he was 
 dining. On being pressed for the reason of his 
 discomfortable aspect, he could only plead, " Well, 
 you know, you must draw the line somewhere — I 
 draw mine at port." 
 
 It sounds absurd ; but those who laugh are 
 doing precisely the same things in principle every 
 day. There are certain amusements, which those 
 whom we choose to call people of the world in- 
 dulge in — a ganie of cards, a game of billiards, a 
 play now and then, or what you will — which our 
 stricter habit, learnt, as I have said, from a good- 
 ly ancestry, places under a ban. But the wonder- 
 ful part of the matter is here. You will find in 
 Christian homes, and in the habits of Christian 
 society, not exactly the same things, but imita- 
 tions of them on a small scale, which come as 
 near to them as possible. There are very few of 
 the world's honest amusements — and by honest I 
 mean such as are not vicious in their essence or 
 in their palpable associations — which are not is- 
 sued in smaller type for the amusement of " pro- 
 fessing Christians" and their children. We get 
 as near to the line as possible, and press against 
 it — but " we must di'aw the line somewhere " still. 
 
 I 
 
198 The Borne Life, 
 
 There are entertainments in London — excel- 
 lent, I dare say — to which Christian people throng 
 with their childi-en, which lack nothing of the 
 theatre but the genius and the name. There are 
 pious little books issued by the myriad — I wish I 
 could call them excellent too, but the major part 
 of such -as I have come across seem to me the 
 sickliest trash, with as much taste as the white of 
 an ^g^ — which are meant to supply the craving 
 of hungry young souls for honest fairy tales and 
 the like, to their utter damage and loss. Fairy 
 tales are a charming condiment in the intellectual 
 food of children; they help to keep alive the 
 sense of the infinite beauty and wonderfulness of 
 the world, which " good little books," even when 
 they are didactically trying to describe it, drearily 
 deny. And, turn where you will, you find Chris- 
 tian recreation provided after the pattern of world- 
 ly recreation, with some slight moral infusions in 
 it, or some puling application, which is supposed 
 to keep it within the line. How strangely careless 
 God must have been, all these ages, of the moral 
 and intellectual culture of " these little ones," if 
 our modern method is the right one : for nothing 
 wearing its likeness is to be found in His works 
 or in His word ! There are tales enough in His 
 
Recreation. 199 
 
 book with the moral in them, not after them ; and 
 no visions of fairy-land which the most cunning 
 playwright has conjured out of his teeming brain, 
 can mate that world of wonder and splendour 
 which He has unveiled to us in His Apocalypse. 
 
 But, be that as it may, it appears to me to be 
 most detrimental to the moral nurture of your 
 children, that they should be allowed to think , 
 that you press as near to the line as you dare, 
 and that there is a hankering, though restrained 
 by principle, for that which lies beyond. They 
 are more likely to catch the infection of the 
 hankering than of the restraint. And it gener- 
 ally happens that the form of amusement which 
 is allowed in "strict families," while following 
 "the world" up to a certain point, stops short 
 where the real power of recreation — ^that is, the 
 pbwer of giving a joyful play to the faculties — 
 begins. It is recreation and water, and that so 
 weak, that all stimulating, re-invigorating power 
 is lost. In fact, looking around on those poor 
 imitations of the recreations of the world which 
 we allow ourselves and our children to enjoy, 
 I am driven to the conclusion, that we have not 
 made our proscription of the great recreative in- 
 fluences, towards which man's nature has yearned 
 
200 The Rome Life. 
 
 in all ages — the drama and the dance, for instance 
 — anything like a success. TVe simply drop down 
 into feeble and timid forms of them, and do with 
 a half heart and a restless conscience, what must 
 be done with a whole heart and a good conscience, 
 if it is to have any virtue in it at all. 
 
 The reasons of moderation, the persuasives to 
 Belf-control, are one thing ; they have to do with 
 what is noblest in us. The " touch not, taste not, 
 handle not " method is another thing, and has to 
 do with what is selfish, narrow, and base. Unless 
 there be broad reasons, such as the eye of a 
 healthy moral sense gathers at once, for the com- 
 mandment, the proscription of this or that place, 
 exercise, or pursuit, robs your children of the no- 
 blest moral discipline of their youth — the exer- 
 cise of temperance and self-control. It is an 
 easier method than the divine, this method of 
 "forbidding." It is easily taught, easily learnt, 
 and it yields for the moment a wonderful appear- 
 ance of success. But the restraint that is learnt 
 in freedom is the only restraint that has any liv- 
 ing fojrce in it. It is a longer and a harder mat- 
 ter to learn it; but it forms a fortress whose 
 strength is something nobler than the absence of 
 
Recreation. 201 
 
 an assailant ; it hoids itg^own against all comers, 
 and remains impregnable through eternity. 
 
 We are widening onr views about all other 
 matters. Ten years ago it was thought heresy to 
 utter truths, which now we hear gladly that every 
 one believes. We have larger, freer thoughts 
 about our divine relations, about the Bible, about 
 life's meaning and duties, and it is time that we 
 enlarged our thoughts about our recreations. It 
 is time that we ceased our proscriptions of what 
 nature yearns for, and the effort to hedge about 
 young steps with unnatural and artificial lines. 
 Let us throw our whole strength into the cultiva- 
 tion of that noble moderation and self-restraint 
 which was the true glory and dignity of Puritan 
 homes. That is the grand safeguard. That 
 •fortress is safe whose firm defenders are ever 
 within. It is the noblest and most precious fruit 
 of education — of difficult culture if of high vir- 
 tue ; but no Christian parent may dare to shrink 
 from the task. Men shrink from freedom as the 
 mother of licence. Christ had no dread of it 
 when He sent " the perfect law of libert^"^ into 
 the world. The real mother of licence is restric- 
 tion and exclusion. IlTone plunge so madly into 
 pleasures, as those who have been fretted through 
 9* 
 
202 Tlie Home Life. 
 
 youth by unnatural restraints. ' You do not keep 
 your children out of the natural and honest pleas- 
 ures of young life by your lines and hedges, you 
 simply send them into them with an untrained 
 will and a trembling conscience. They have no 
 belief that the Lord can be there. Of that be- 
 lief you liave robbed them ; and, robbed of that 
 belief, the devil makes sport and spoil of them at 
 his will. 
 
 III. I now pass on to consider the essential 
 idea of recreation, which I have defined already 
 as the free play and exercise of the powers, for 
 the pure sake of the pleasure which it affords. 
 
 The end is to recreate, to make anew — as nature 
 comes forth each day from her bath of dews, and 
 man from his bath of rest. Nature is recreated 
 each morning. Each sunrise, in glittering beau- 
 ty, as, on the first morning of creation, she sings, 
 with pure, fresh, virgin voice, her matin song to 
 God. There is song in the morning wind among 
 the boughs ; there is music as the mountain mists 
 draw^ff their embattled squadrons, and leave 
 the jocund day the master of the field. The floods 
 of splendour w^hich stream upon the air are vocal 
 with praises, which yon lark, bathed in the golden 
 
Recreation. 203 
 
 glorj, is rehearsing at the gate of heaven. ISTa- 
 ture " shouts for joy " at morning prime, '' she 
 also sings." And the end of recreation is to make 
 us sing instead of moaning at om- tasks. It is to 
 restore the tension of the spring of power, and to 
 make work an exhilarating exercise instead of a 
 heart-breaking toil. Life is a race, a battle, a 
 stretching on to an end. The tension is too keen 
 for pleasure — the Eden-life is over. If the strain 
 is never relaxed it becomes sharp agony, and fills 
 the air with moans. So God bids us unbind the 
 yoke aw^hile and play. 
 
 Rest is not recreation. If a man is so worn 
 out by toil that, like a tired-out horse, he just 
 drops when he is unyoked, and lies slumbering 
 until he is yoked again, he is not recreating. ^"0 
 new joy will come to such a man in his work ; 
 mere rest never made any man dance and sing. 
 The only recreation is in the free and joyous play 
 of the powers, for the sake of the pure pleasure 
 which the exercise yields. A bright walk in the 
 summer evening through the meadows in the sun- 
 set glow, a bath in the dewy evening K^ filled 
 with a golden glory, while the hum of life settles 
 down to its repose — ^here is something which be- 
 longs to us, and which God enables us by a thou- 
 
204 The Home Life. 
 
 sand senses to take in. Every sense is athrill with 
 delight as it exercises itself on the objects with 
 which God has surrounded it in creation, and has 
 drunk in a full draught of joy from an unfaihng 
 spring. The recreation has renewed us; we go 
 back w^ith new and joyful energy to our tasks. 
 And he who, when his work is done, has entered 
 into the keen rivalry of athletic games and sports, 
 and has strained his muscles for no compulsion 
 but his " own sweet will " to strain them, goes 
 home weary in limb, but refreshed and recreated 
 in spirit, and something of the joy of his game 
 abides with him and sings through his work. 
 Another turns from the weary day-book and 
 ledger to read with instructed eye a page out of 
 the great Book of the Creation ; he spends his 
 evening in his laboratory watching the play of 
 the electric fire, or the rudiments of things taking 
 their crystal forms under his hand, and pores over 
 it, all out of pure love, with an ever-fresh wonder 
 and delight. The morning will call him forth 
 with new energy to his business occupations, he 
 will gipforth from his home a new-made man to 
 his daily tasks. Another finds his delight in the 
 keen play of intellect, the quick flashing glances 
 of sympathy, in music and the music of motion, 
 
Recreation, 205 
 
 and all the relaxations and recreations of home- 
 life and society. 
 
 Happiest, perhaps, are those whose taste and 
 culture enable them to find a rich recreation in 
 the pursuits and enjoyments of art. The habit 
 of studying the Divine handiwork, to discover its 
 order and method, that we may think over again 
 the great thoughts of God, and cultivate our pow- 
 ers to express them by means which our own na- 
 tm^e supplies, affords the highest and purest rec- 
 reation which is possible for man. It unveils 
 to us the mystery of the creation, and gives to 
 us the loftiest fellowship with our friends. Those 
 able to practise little, may at any rate train them- 
 selves to judge and enjoy. The pleasure thus 
 yielded will be the more purely recreative, in that 
 it is so far removed from the scenes and influences 
 of the daily toils. Music, the fine arts, and the 
 higher forms of literature, call unused faculties 
 into play, and increase immensely both the capa- 
 city of the nature and the interest and enjoyment 
 of life. Higher uses of the powers thus cultivated 
 v/e shall discover, when the things " whifeh eye 
 hath not seen, which ear hath not heard, and 
 which it hath not entered into the heart of man 
 to conceive," shall appear. The essence of the 
 
206 The Home Life, 
 
 recreation in all cases is the joy which is found in 
 the exercise of the powers, under no constraint 
 but that of the pleasure which the exercise yields. 
 It is a draught by the way from the pure foun- 
 tain of life's pleasure, which sin sealed up in 
 Eden, and which Christ will unseal for ever in 
 Heaven. It comes, or it ought to come, if we 
 but knew what recreation meant, to throw some 
 cheer into our daily tasks, and to remind us of a 
 sphere for which those daily tasks are training us, 
 where the free play of our powers will be a peren- 
 nial bliss. It should give us a snatch of song to 
 lighten our labours ; a breath of cool fresh air to 
 play through the heated work-room of life. Noth- 
 ing is recreation which does not tend to renew the 
 spring, whatever else it may be. Recreation is 
 emphatically a taste of the lost joy which was 
 once man's heritage in Eden ; the hard stern toil 
 of life, under the sentence, " In the sweat of thy 
 brow shalt thou eat bread," is the condition of our 
 regaining it, if we are found faithful, in heaven. 
 By this, test your recreations. All else, instead 
 of recreating, dissipates the powers. 
 
 But why limit such recreation ? It is noble 
 and beautiful, and why should it not occuj)y all 
 our time and power % Surely it would roU back 
 
I 
 
 Recreation. 207 
 
 the curse from us. Why should we " fardels bear, 
 and grunt and sweat under a weary life," when 
 recreation such as would give joyful play to all 
 our faculties lies so near to our hand? Let us 
 work while we must, and recreate just as much 
 and as often as we can. Alas ! the cm-se is within, 
 as well as on our lot ; if that may be called a 
 curse which brings such boundless blessing in its 
 train. The law of labour is in us^ as well as on 
 our world. There is no escape from the necessity 
 but by missing a benediction. The daily bread 
 of our life is labour. The body can as well live 
 without bread as the mind and spirit without 
 work. The sentence of toil is not rolled back 
 from us, nor will it be rolled back until our pow- 
 ers are so developed, that their easy joyous play 
 will be more productive than now our most 
 consuming toil. The mere play of a man of 
 Turner's power is worth more, and will "produce 
 more, than the most elaborate efforts of a genius 
 of meaner strain. And his power grew by such 
 labour as few men in his generation, busy as it 
 was, could mate. 
 
 Heaven is educating us all for a great future ; 
 and the full strain of work is the condition of our 
 recreating to some high purpose in time. Cer- 
 
208 The Home Life. 
 
 tain it is that recreation degenerates swiftly into 
 dissipation, unless it comes as tlie interlude to 
 long, liard spells of work. Man cannot make 
 recreation his business,, without poisoning its very 
 springs, and becoming that saddest of all objects 
 to look upon, a man with no business in the 
 world. Our business here is to work, to work 
 with unflagging energy. Recreation is to be the 
 handmaid of toil here, and to supersede toil in 
 eternity. 
 
 I must say a word in concluding these remarks, 
 on the perils of recreation, the directions in which 
 it runs very easily into excess. 
 
 The worst — though, from another point of 
 view, we might call it the best — of Englishmen 
 is, the intense energy which they throw into all 
 their pursuits. Wherever you find them in ear- 
 nest, thay throw off all moderation, and manifest 
 a fierce energy which is wonderful and sometimes 
 terrible to behold. But my business is with rec- 
 reation now. Foreigners tliink that we do not 
 understand it, we seem so intensely in earnest 
 about it ; and some Englishmen, who have their 
 eyes open, are beginning to fear that much of the 
 geniality and joy of life is being killed by the 
 
Becreation. 209 
 
 new habits of tlie times. One does not meet with 
 so miicli of tlie racy humour which used to be so 
 characteristic of us ; and all the qualities which 
 jlourish best in quiet nooks of life are becoming 
 year by year more rare. And I sometimes fear 
 that our great national games are going the same 
 way to death. Our physical recreations, which 
 are the simplest and most invigorating, are fast 
 losing their recreative power. "We are spending 
 on our play an amount of energy and endurance 
 which we can afford only for our tasks. Athletic 
 sports have passed under the sway of competition, 
 and our most splendid young athletes will carry 
 crippled and exhausted bodies into the arena of 
 life as the result. Even cricket, our grand old 
 English game, has become a battle, and just in 
 that measure it has ceased to be a play. When 
 men have to pad themselves in the most uncouth 
 and awkward guise before they handle the bat, 
 and stand up to their wickets at the peril of a 
 blow which may easily cripple them for life, the 
 sport passes out of the game. It becomes a bat- 
 tle — a fine one, if you will — which you may watch 
 with the keenest interest ; but it is really a busi- 
 ness, and it passes into the hands of the men who 
 can make it the study of their lives. There may 
 
210 The Home Life. 
 
 be the highest sldll, but there is little fun, in play- 
 ing a ball flung with the force of a catapult, with 
 a fair prospect of a broken ankle-bone if you miss 
 it. The excitement is too high and grave for 
 pleasure, and the refreshment of a game of cricket 
 is becoming a thing of the past. 
 
 Athletic sports at our universities and in our 
 rifle regiments develc^e a marvellous pluck and 
 power in our young gymnasts, but they take alto- 
 gether too much out of them just when their 
 frames are setting ; and when we want them for 
 the nobler and more serious work of life, how 
 many of them will be mere wrecks ! One wishes 
 that a list could be drawn up of the number of 
 fine lads who are disabled for life by rowing, run- 
 ning, and jumping matches, every year, simply 
 through having been put under a too prolonged 
 and oppressive strain. I believe that the Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge middle-class examinations are 
 working much mischief in the same direction. 
 There can be no question that they have given a 
 very strong stimulus to education, mainly through 
 acting on the educators. But the young lads who 
 are subjected to all the strain and excitement of a 
 public competition, just when they want all their 
 nervous force to develope their constitution, have 
 
Reoreation. * 211 
 
 many of them ta pay a heavy compensation when 
 they go forth into life. We have just strung the 
 instrument up to its fullest tension in every string. 
 It is all eager, intense, and exhaustive toil ; and 
 we shall have the strings cracking, and the whole 
 tone of our constitution as a people lowered. 
 
 And to pass for a moment to another sphere 
 of recreation. Do you think that the Psalmists 
 eould have written about dancing as they did, if 
 they had been shut up till four o'clock in the 
 morning in the miseries of a modern ball-room, 
 choked by the gas-poisoned atmosphere, and with 
 their clothes almost torn off their backs in the 
 supper-room crush ? What we want imperatively 
 is, not new abstinences, but new moderations— 
 the resolution running through society that rec- 
 reation shall be recreative, and shall send men 
 and women back, not expended, but invigorated 
 and gladdened, to their work. We do our very 
 best to turn our recreations into dissipations, by 
 length of time and elaborate accessories. Con- 
 certs, theatres, dances, sports, all suffer miserably 
 from the same disease — excess. All true recrea- 
 tion will be brief, simple, and ready to hand. 
 
 I have spoken of dissipation; it, is the precise 
 opposite of recreation — the one gathers and stores, 
 
212 'The Home Life. 
 
 tlie other scatters and squander^ power. Mucli 
 dissipation, is simply recreation in excess — tlie rec- 
 reation of men wlio are too hard-worked, or too 
 ill-trained, to enjoy any but the most fiery stimu- 
 lant by way of change. Over-long hours, over- 
 hard strain, di'ive men to dissipation, instead of 
 recreation, for the alternative which they need. 
 Foul homes, hot work-shops, and bad food, are the 
 great nurses of dram-drinking. Our social sys- 
 tem and social state are answerable for a fearful 
 amount of that drunkenness which is our national 
 curse and shame. Dissipation in any form is the 
 great drain of life. Life is the most precious 
 thing which God has given or can give us. "What 
 shall a man give in exchange for his life ? You 
 have only a certain amount in you of life. You 
 may spend it quickly or slowly. You may ex- 
 pend or husband it ; but when it is gone, there is 
 an end. iN'o agony of effort or prayer can bring 
 you a new store. 
 
 " A short life and a merry one " is the cry of 
 dissipation. " A noble life and an eternal one " 
 is the creed of the man who has learned the secret 
 of life from God.* " A short life and a merry 
 one ! " Merry ! I wish you could come in upon 
 your merry life for a moment, fresh and. pure 
 
Recreation. 213 
 
 from some higher region, and see its ghastly guise. 
 Merry ! May I be out of the hearing of your 
 merriment, when you come forth sick, pallid, 
 blear-eyed, and, as you say, " shaky," from your 
 night's debauch; and may God keep me from 
 hearing you moan when the brief debauch of life 
 is over, and you sink down, a fetid, wailing mass 
 of corruption, into the pit which burns all the 
 waste of the universe for ever. 
 
 Recreate with Clmst in presence. He is as 
 glad with us at our marriage festivals, yea, even 
 at our sports and pastimes, as He is sad with us 
 by our dear ones' graves. Learn from BSm the 
 secret of moderation, of wise temperance, of 
 strong self-control. Seek strength from Him to 
 make covenants with yourself, and keep them ; it 
 lies at the root of all noble living, and it is learned 
 only in the free school of God. 
 
YIII. 
 GETTIISTG OUT INTO LIFE. 
 
 " And Isaac sent away Jacob.'''' — Gen. xxviii. 5. 
 
 Bitter sweet is tlie cup of life. Sweetness as 
 of paradise, bitterness as of death. Intenser joy 
 than is known to mortals no creature knoweth, 
 but alternate with intenser pain. I heard two 
 poor men the other day, in a railway carriage, 
 narrating to each other their experiences ; they 
 seemed to have had a long, stem struggle. " It 
 is a hard life," said one ; " I reckon we earn our 
 bite and sup at any rate." "Yes," I thought, 
 " we do ; and some of us, if we cannot earn, try 
 hard to win something more, the bread of the 
 love and sympathy of God." 
 
 For those who are finely strung, and whose 
 inner chords vibrate keenly to the lightest touch, 
 it is stem work to live. .IIow many men and 
 women are there living upon earth at this mo- 
 
Getting Out into Life. 216 
 
 ment wlio, were the simple question, " To be or 
 not to be ? " set before tliem with no dread shapes 
 there in the shadows, would lie down full joyfully 
 to rest in the cold bed of death ? Parents know 
 the sweetness and bitterness in the fullest measure. 
 ^No cry so glad has ever been heard on earth as 
 that first outburst of a mother's joy and triumph, 
 " / have gotten a man^ the Lo7'd I " no moan but 
 one, so bitter, so desolate, has ever wailed through 
 the night as that cry of a father's breaking heart, 
 " my son Absalom ! Tny son^ my son Absalom. 
 Would God I had died far thee, Absalom, my 
 son, my son I " There are th(*e who will read 
 these lines who have known both the bitterness 
 and sweetness in a measure, who have tasted a 
 joy such as an angel might stoop to share with 
 them, and have known an agony which they were 
 tempted to think, as they writhed under it, could 
 be mated only among the fiends. 
 
 But no ; it is not to the infernal spheres that 
 we are driven, to understand such a cry as Da- 
 vid's. Blessed be God, the joy and the sorrow, 
 the sweetness and^ the bitterness,* are seen, both 
 within the circle of His own life. He, serene in 
 His eternal blessedness, as we delight to picture 
 Him, has tasted Himself both a joy and an an* 
 
 L 
 
216 The Home Life. 
 
 guish of which ours are but the shadows. The 
 whole key to our experience, as far as it arises out 
 of what is inevitable in life, is to be found in God. 
 There is its explanation, there is its justification, 
 and there, if we rejoice •purely and suffer bravely, 
 is its essential glory. We may not shudder, we 
 may not even shrink, when the gloom gathers 
 over us; we are but rising into a divine expe- 
 rience, and becoming capable of the most intimate 
 fellowship with God. 
 
 The home-life is the sphere of the most in- 
 tense of human experiences. It is life in the 
 keenest tension l^nd to the loftiest strain. But I 
 must again recall to you a principle which I have 
 already dwelt upon, that the home-life gives the 
 key-note to all life, and that all who do not shut 
 their hearts to human sympathy and emotion, in 
 some measure share its experience and taste its 
 cup. For all love is the same love. Love of 
 wife, love of child, love of friend, love of man, to 
 the great paternal natures who can gather a wide 
 company of Christ's poor brethren to their em- 
 brace, are all the same love, one in their fountain, 
 diverse only in their currents, and not other than 
 the love of God. And he who has the heart to 
 love has the heart to live, and the heart to suffer. 
 
Getting Out into Life. 21Y 
 
 There is tliat in him, thougli to the eye he may 
 live mainly solitary^ which explains to him all a 
 parent's joys and sorrows, and gives him a knowl- 
 edge of what is very deep in the life of God." 
 E^one who have not denied the human, can turn 
 a deaf ear when the experience of loving hearts 
 is pictured ; they know both the delight and the 
 anguish in their measure, and can enter into the 
 inner sanctuary of life. 
 
 But the full experience the parent alone can 
 know, and those who have taken willingly a par- 
 ent's burden on their hearts. I have seen brave 
 and patient women crushed down into speechless 
 agony by the dying struggles, or worse, by the 
 shame of their cherished ones ; and I have seen, 
 too, a proud joy in parents' eyes, which it were 
 worth the peril of the anguish to taste. Oh, chil- 
 dren, children ! God has set you for the fall and 
 the rising again of the life-springs in those who 
 nurture you ; yea, a sword shall pierce the heart 
 of her that gave you birth. Happy the child who 
 has never cost father or mother the sharpest pang 
 that has ever pierced them. Little dream you, in 
 your young buoyant carelessness, how the hearts 
 are quivering with whose strings you wantonly 
 
 play, how the hopes throb and thrill which you 
 10 
 
218 The Home Life. 
 
 daily lift or lower. The sorrows begin early. 
 " I will greatly multi/ply thy sorrow and thy con- 
 ception,^'' In pain tlie little ones are bronglit 
 forth ; in pain and care they are nurtured. JSTotli- 
 ing is more wonderful than the measure of sorrow 
 with which all that touches our highest joys is 
 brought into the world. Nay, the little ones be- 
 gin to taste it from the first ; it is not long be- 
 fore their eyes fill with tears, and their voice 
 sobs with pain. And it is just this pain of a lit- 
 tle helpless infant which is so hard to comprehend, 
 and so bitter to bear. " In sorrow shalt thou 
 hring forth children'''^ — and in sorrow shall they 
 be reared. 
 
 But the joys and the sorrows cluster most 
 thickly around the era of the home life which 
 we have now to conteniplate, when the children, 
 full-grown, must go forth into the world. If one 
 were in any need of considerations to strengthen 
 the conviction, that the moral is the supreme ele- 
 ment in the human constitution, one might find 
 it in the fact, that all the cares, joys, and sorrows 
 of a parent deepen quite infinitely when the child 
 is growing to manhood or womanhood, and is 
 stretching out a hand to grasp at the reins of life. 
 There is nothing which the young child ca^ do 
 
Getting Out into Life. 219 
 
 or suffer wliicli touclies us to the quick. The 
 solemn endowment of man lies there enfolded, as 
 the petals within the sheath of the bud ; and as 
 it unfolds something solemn passes out of it into 
 the relations of the home. "We enter as parents 
 into a new world of experience, when the knowl- 
 edge of good and evil is fully developed in our 
 little ones; and as thej grow to maturity, and 
 pass more and more out of the charmed circle in 
 which they are sheltered by our shield, the care 
 deepens, and casts a shadow over our lives. Hon- 
 our and shame, blessing and cursing, heaven and 
 hell, then loom in sight. The young life so dear 
 to us goes forth from the land-locked harbour of 
 our love, to be tossed on a stormy ocean, with 
 dread perils all around, and wrecks not a few scat- 
 tered on the shore. 
 
 ^^And Isaac sent away JacobP The time had 
 come; why or how in that special instance we 
 need not stay to inquire. The time does come 
 in all homes when the household must bud like 
 the polyp, and develope into new households, and 
 prepare to occupy new lands of promise. Life 
 stirs in the bud joyously ; but the old stem groans 
 and shudders as the young things part. There is 
 the glowing and thrilling life of spring in the 
 
220 The Home Life, 
 
 young ones ; thei'e is power astir in tliem which, 
 can make a summer ; " they shout for joy, they 
 also singP But the old stock has the chill of the 
 coming winter in it, and when the sons and 
 daughters are sent forth, the winter comes swiftly 
 on. ^' Isaac sent away JacobP The patriarch 
 of all the families of the earth, he looms there in 
 the misty morning twilight, a grand and stately 
 form. He sends forth his son, as a thousand gen- 
 erations have sent forth theirs, with straining eyes 
 and aching hearts, as they watched them vanish. 
 Once again he saw his Jacob, when his eyes were 
 dim and his step tottering ; but the mother never 
 again folded her darling to her heart. " Now 
 therefore, my son, obey my wiee j and arise, flee 
 thou to Laban my hrotlier, to Ilaran / and tarry 
 there a few days, until thy brother^ s fury turn 
 aioay. Until thy brother* s anger turn away from 
 thee, and he forget that which thou hast done unto 
 him ; then will I send and fetch thee from thenceP 
 She paid the bitter penalty of her craft. She 
 won the birthright ; she lost the child. So Isaac 
 sent him forth. 
 
 And that little prattler, weaving her fairy 
 chain of charms around your heart-strings, will 
 one day go forth weeping, but with a bride's 
 
Getting Out into Life. 221 
 
 proud joy sliining througli her tears. That brave 
 boy, whose merry laugh has been ringing through 
 your home, whose studies you have watched, 
 whose sports you have shared, whose promise you 
 have marked with fond exultation, will go forth 
 one day like Jacob, it may be to the far East like 
 him, and leave you bare, stript like the tree of 
 autumn ; strong and stately yet, but bare, bare 
 for ever, were it not for the promise of the eternal 
 spring. But for this promise, but for the hope of 
 the world where the family will meet again, to 
 break up no more for ever, I often think that the 
 silent childless home of the old people, when the 
 young ones are gone out into life, would be one 
 of the saddest things under the sun. The echoes 
 of loved and familiar voices silent, the notes of 
 the sweetest music that a parent's ear can listen 
 to, quite still. 
 
 But the getting them out is, after all, the 
 great work, the great care of a parent's life. To 
 this end all his efforts and toils are du-ected ; and 
 when this end is gained, he is ready to say with 
 Simeon, ''' Lovd^ now lettest Thou Thy servant 
 depart in jpeace,^^ " my work here is done." But 
 new joys will spring if he is but patient. Little 
 ones will gather again around his knees, of whom 
 
222 The Some Life, 
 
 the joy is his, but not the burden. Still, some- 
 thing is lost which in this world he will never re- 
 cover. Children's childi^en can never quite sup- 
 ply the place of our own, for the very care and 
 burden of the nurture of children enriches life. 
 The joys of old age are set on the whole in a 
 lower key, as the westering sun loses something 
 of his mid-day fire. But it has no need to be 
 cheerless or joyless ; while its gathering shadows 
 are lit to the eye of faith by a solemn and holy 
 lustre, which streams from the fountain of eternal 
 sunlight, the dawn of that day which shall break 
 on the spirit as the body settles into the night of 
 death. 
 
 " Getting out into life," or " getting young 
 people out into life." They are peculiar terms, 
 though quite familiar, and their meaning reaches 
 farther than appears. ^Next to the birth of the 
 infant, the settling of the youth or maiden in life 
 is the great transaction of the home. Indeed, it 
 is a kind of second birth to them, a birth into a 
 wider world. It is a time of sore anxiety, and 
 often of dire perplexity. The whole future of a 
 human life seems to be hanging on your decision 
 — a decision which may either nurse it to a noble 
 fraitfulness, or blight it to a premature decay. It 
 
Getting Out into Life, 223 
 
 seems to be a matter of vital importance for you 
 to discover the exact work, or tlie exact sphere, 
 for wliicli your son or daughter may be most fit- 
 ted. You watch their budding gifts with anxious 
 vigilance; perhaps you rack your brain with 
 thought, and your heart with care, to find the right 
 work for them, and the means of netting them to 
 it ; and then a dread may seize you lest, after all, 
 it should prove the wrong one, and their lives 
 should go all astray. 'Eo doubt it is on the whole 
 the gravest burden which God devolves on a man 
 — the settlement of his children in life. It is sad 
 enough to see a youth of promise chained down 
 by stern necessity to dull and uncongenial tasks ; 
 and there is nothing gladder than to see a young 
 spirit stirred by a high vocation to develope all 
 its power. And when they see the wrecks with 
 which the coasts of this life-sea are strewn, well 
 may the parents tremble, and wrestle earnestly 
 and importunately for the guidance and the help 
 of God. 
 
 But parents may find some relief from the ex- 
 treme pressure of the burden in the thought that — 
 
 I. The vital question concerns their children 
 rather than their lot. 
 
224 The Home Life. 
 
 Get them out in tlie form of modest, earnest, 
 industrious, courageous, kindly, godly lads and 
 girls, and tlieir lot, though not a question without 
 care, may be trusted, in some measure, to settle 
 itself as they grow to maturity. The main ques- 
 tion concerns what they are 'j what they shall do 
 is altogether a secondary matter in the scale. It 
 is a far higher fulfilment of parental duty, and 
 far more blessed in its fruits, to parent and to 
 child, to get a sound, brave, high-minded boy or 
 girl into a position which the world might reckon 
 a humble one, but where they would have room 
 and opportunity to fight their way on, than to get 
 an idle, slovenly, luxurious cross-grained child 
 into the vestibule of Dives, or on to the steps of a 
 throne. Parents are altogether too anxious what 
 they shall do with their children, and too little 
 careful that they shall be what is true, good, and 
 noble, whatever they do. The most consummate 
 artists make by their manual cunning the com- 
 monest tools more effectual for working out their 
 highest conceptions, than the finest prove in the 
 hands of a dolt. Turner's etching needle, I have 
 heard, was the prong of an old steel fork, stuck 
 tightly into a common bit of wood. And so you 
 may put a youth of a certain strain of nature and 
 
Getting Out into Life. 225 
 
 etaracter wliere yon will, he will liandle liis life- 
 tools so as to command snccess. Therefore throw 
 yonr strength into yonr children ; send them forth 
 inwardly furnished for life's battle, out of that 
 armoury, the stores of which are dispensed by no 
 niggard hand, and work will be found for them 
 more easily than your anxious heart can believe. 
 Faculty rarely waits for opportunity. Do you 
 care for the faculty — ^physical, mental, and moral 
 — and God in good time will show you its sphere. 
 Some of you may think that I spoke too abso- 
 lutely in n former discourse, about laying up treas- 
 ure for children, that they may inherit it when 
 your work is done. But the conviction that, in 
 the main, it does the devil's work, is forced upon 
 me, I think, every year more clearly, by what I 
 see of the miseries which hoarded treasures en- 
 gender in families, and the sadly aimless, useless 
 lives which they tempt men and women, not with- 
 out native nobleness, to live." If it were possible 
 to trace the history of great fortunes as they flow 
 down from generation to generation, you would 
 be filled with amazement at the strife and wretch- 
 edness which would be laid bare. The history of 
 Spanish Philip's gold-glutted empire may point 
 the moral. Wlien the veil is lifted, and the se- 
 10=^ 
 
226 The Home Life. 
 
 crets of the monarcli's cabinet are exposed, you 
 see one of tlie saddest spectacles which the sun 
 shone upon in those days. The richest and most 
 powerful prince in Christendom bemoaning his 
 poverty and impotence, and thinking himself one 
 of the most helpless and wi'etched mortals in the 
 world. 
 
 At the same time, one sees plainly that it is 
 not a question to be settled in a word. A wise 
 provision for old age becomes an inheritance for 
 the children ; unless, indeed, the days should re- 
 turn, when men, having settled the young ones 
 safe and warm in their new nests, felt that they 
 might fairly take thought for the poor, the igno- 
 rant, the hungry, the shivering ones scattered 
 about the world — ^the days in which men, having 
 done their life-work nobly, and gathered an am- 
 ple store, founded an hospital, a refuge, a college, 
 a Magdalene's home, or a school for poor orphans, 
 and left the blessing of such a legacy to their 
 heirs. The thought may call forth a smile in 
 these days. The splendid gifts which the men of 
 old time delighted to offer to man and to God, 
 are out of tune with our habits. The worse for 
 us, I think ; though there is grave danger — alas ! 
 there is danger everywhere — that such gifts may 
 
Getting Out into Life. 227 
 
 miss their mark. But tlie world is terribly full 
 of ignorance, nakedness, deformity,^ starvation, 
 and misery ; our present metliods fail to overtake 
 the evil, and there must "be some way surely in 
 which a man, whose soul is moved of Grod to it, 
 could devote his treasure wisely to the service of 
 mankind. And if we could get children out into 
 the world with natures in such sympathy with 
 Christ's, that they would sum up a parent's good 
 deeds with a joy which uncounted treasures could 
 not kindle, and would hear the blessings of poor 
 men on his name with a pride which the inherit- 
 ance of a princedom could not stir, we should be 
 far on towards the day which is dim enough in 
 the distance still, when " the Spirit shall he poured 
 upon us from on high, and the wilderness he a 
 fruitful field, and the fruitful field he coiinted 
 for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the 
 wilderness, and righteousness remam in the fruit- 
 ful field. And the worh of righteousness shall 
 he peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness 
 and assuro/nce for ever.^^ ' I caimot see that the 
 hoarding principle, the founding great families on 
 great fortunes, is such a grand success, that it is 
 foolish to ask if there be not some more excellent 
 way. l^or can I see how on any other principle 
 
228 The Home Life, 
 
 than tliis — the abasement of gold as a mere pos- 
 session to the dirt from which it springs, and the 
 exaltation of truth, righteousness, and love — the 
 world is to grow into the likeness of a kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 I know that when all is said and done by a 
 Christian parent in earnest about his duty, grave 
 and often crushing cares will still weigh upon his 
 heart. Children will sometimes grow unkindly, 
 and talent for any sort of work may be weak and 
 poor. Words go but a little way to help any of us 
 through the burden and the heat of life. But 
 thus much I may say, with intense conviction, 
 that the more a parent cares for what he lays up 
 in the child, and the less he torments himself 
 about what he can lay up for him, the richer will 
 be the legacy which he will bequeath. Give all 
 diligence to get the children out, nobly equipped 
 for all good words and works, and then trust God 
 to guide them into the nook of the vineyard in 
 which He intends them to labour; for all such 
 He has a prepared place. It is wonderful how 
 the worst weight of the burden will be rolled 
 away as you see strength and riches gathering 
 within. Great peace will fall on your heart about 
 their future, if your children are growing into a 
 
Getting Out into Life. ^^.^ 229 
 
 likeness wliicli you can honour and delight in. 
 Only look to the young shoots that they be clean 
 and straight, with the sap pure and plentiful 
 within, and then— 
 
 II. Plant them out where they will have air 
 and light enough to grow. 
 
 Remember that you get them out distinctly 
 that they may grow. ISTot that they may grow 
 rich, famous, or powerful — that is as God wills ; 
 but that they may grow good, righteous. Christ- 
 like — that is according to the will of God. The 
 supreme question with a parent in sending a child 
 forth, is growth and development — the growth of 
 all that is worthy to grow, the destruction of all 
 that is worthy to be destroyed. The " being " of 
 the youth or maiden outweighs utterly the ques- 
 tion of their getting, or the place which they can 
 assume in society. What is mainly wanted is the 
 eye clear — as the Saviour says, "single" — ^then 
 there is sure to be light enough on the path. God 
 is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 
 'His light is abroad everywhere ; if we see it not, 
 and things by it, it is because there is darkness 
 within. If men get bewildered and worried about 
 duty, you may be sure that there is some mist of 
 
230 The Home Life. 
 
 pride, passion, or selfishness before the eye, which 
 makes the outhnes of things obscure. If a man 
 has an idea that a fine position, the certainty of a 
 rapid fortune, or a brilliant marriage, is a thing 
 to be desired for its own sake, and to be weighed 
 against the moral disadvantages which it may en- 
 tail, the film has gathered before his sight, and 
 there is no hope of his seeing the right path until 
 it be cleared away. 
 
 The great work of the Saviour is this purging 
 the inward eye from the humours of passion and 
 selfishness ; and it should be the earnest aim of all 
 ministers of the gospel, not to say, " Do this or 
 this, and it shall be well " — keeping men ever ex- 
 pectant of direction and in perpetual babyhood — 
 but to clear the eye of these mists, that they may 
 see what to do of themselves. The eye was given 
 for seeing — to discern paths; but the devil has 
 floated illusions before it, and paralysed the chief 
 nerve of its power. The Lord tells us that we 
 walk in a vain show ; we take shadows for sub- 
 stances, idle imaginations for things. He seeks 
 to restore the lost power of vision, that we may* 
 see Jesus, and follow Him in the way. 
 
 Follow Him in caring supremely for the souls' 
 health of your children, wherever you may send 
 
Getting Out into" Life. 231 
 
 them forth. E'o matter about the struggle, the 
 uphill fight, if that which is born of God in them 
 gets air and sunlight, breathes itself in healthy 
 exercise, and suns itself in the glow of the love 
 of God. Bj these things men live ; these make 
 the inner blessedness which smiles on through 
 sorrows, and the want of these makes the inner 
 cursedness which moans in purple, and gnaws the 
 heart-strings even in the courts of kings. Take 
 true measm^e of this. What is it which makes 
 the blessing in life, what makes the curse ? Look 
 the reality in the face — search your own con- 
 science^search the records of lives that are open 
 to you — search them fearlessly, and say, is there 
 one who has made position or wealth his idol, for 
 whose life — and I care not how high fortune may 
 have lifted him — you would exchange your own ? 
 Have you a shadow of doubt as to what lies at 
 the bottom of nine-tenths of the misery of the 
 world, of its loveless homes, its broken hearts, its 
 reckless lives, its dull satiety, its hateful selfish- 
 ness — what but this occursed grasping at gold? 
 Fathers and mothers, who have children to get out 
 into life, shut yourselves up to this question, an- 
 swer it to your own souls as solemnly as you 
 would answer it at the great day of judgment, and 
 
232 The Home Life. 
 
 shudder back from the thought of sacrificing that 
 dear heart, all unprophetic of its future, to the 
 demon who is preying on the immortal life of 
 mankind. 
 
 There are mothers, with a bright troop of girls 
 around them, whose crowning triumph apparently 
 is, to " get them off their hands." Perhaps they 
 may find it easier to get them off their hands 
 than off their hearts. A clever mother, who gives 
 her mind to it, can manage the first well enough ; 
 she can angle for a good jparti^ and secure him 
 with dexterous, infallible art. "What he is^ if he 
 be decently presentable, is nothing ; what he can 
 do to make a woman's life what it was meant to 
 be, is nothing. Has he a position ? Is it a good 
 match ? " Then he must be secured at any haz- 
 ard, and there will be another of my girls off my 
 hands." The basest traffic which is carried on 
 upon earth is carried on here in England. It is 
 baser here than elsewhere, for women in England 
 know better what womanhood means. But it is 
 easier, as I have said, to get a daughter off the 
 hands than off the heart. I have seen girls, whom 
 I had known in the happy springtime of their 
 lives, after a year or two of brilliant marriage, so 
 worn, so wan, so unspeakably woeful and hope- 
 
Getting Out into Life. 233 
 
 less, that their look has quite haunted me. Be- 
 ware, mothers, beware of the pallid, wrecked, 
 writhing faces which may peer through the gloom 
 when it gathers around your death-bed : happy if 
 you can leave them there ; happy if you can get 
 them oif yom* hearts through eternity. 
 
 A good position! a good business! a good 
 match ! O my friends ! we must learn from God 
 what is good ; we must take His counsel into our 
 hearts — that counsel which all the experience in 
 the universe affirms, and must affirm eternally — 
 before we can see our way. But once believe in 
 the good, "the better part," the blessed part, 
 " which shall never be taken away " — only admit 
 that into the inner sanctuary of the heart — ^it is 
 like the unfurling of a mist from a sunlit land- 
 scape — ^the ways are there clear and straight from 
 your very feet. 
 
 Do not mistake the true scope of my words. 
 In speaking of grasping, of hoarding, I am not 
 speaking of getting. If men are to enter busi- 
 ness, they must set before themselves a fair hope 
 of gain. I do not know what is to take a man 
 do^vn to the mill-wheel daily, but some clear pros- 
 pect of success in buying and selling and getting 
 gain. If a man works hard, it wiU be for " re- 
 
234 The Home Life, 
 
 tm-ns ; " and if tliere be energy and capacity, tlie 
 returns will roll freely in witli tlieir freight of 
 profit. He is bound to take it with a tliankful 
 heart, and to use it as God's gift for elevating and 
 enlarging the range of bis life. N'otbing is a 
 greater mistake than to suppose that every im- 
 plied or expressed command in tlie Bible, is ad- 
 dressed as a literal direction to every member of 
 the human race. Every man is no more bound 
 to "sell all that. he hath and give to the poor," 
 than he is bound to be an apostle. Let every 
 man be as his gift is ; according to the Scripture 
 precept, ''^ Let every man, wherein he is called^ 
 therein abide with GodP But spend the fruits 
 of your labour with a liberal hand. Spend them 
 on whatever enlarges faculty, enriches life, and 
 mitigates the sorrows of the poor. Make your 
 home larger, more cheerful, more graceful, more 
 free to a wide circle of friends, with the gold that 
 flows in upon you. Keep it flowing, and all will 
 go well ; circulation is the principle of life. But 
 don't hoard it for the children, who, when their 
 eyes are open, as they will be one day, will curse 
 it, and wdll remember with bitterness that the 
 only elevation which you cared to seek for tliem 
 was one whose base platform was gold. 
 
Getting Out into Life. 235 
 
 One main condition of success in the getting 
 children out into life — the true success, winnino: a 
 fair position for living what heaven calls life — is 
 the earnestness which you may kindle within 
 them, by making them in a measure the sharers 
 of your confidence, and opening to them the se- 
 cret chambers of your own heart. I think that 
 one chief element of the parental art is timely 
 and judicious confidence. The best preparation 
 for the burden and the struggle into which get- 
 ting out into life will usher them, is the knowledge 
 in some wise measure of what it costs the elders 
 to live — costs, I mean in the highest sense, efibrt, 
 patience, and hope. But even about the lower 
 things of life, the confidence is not wasted. Boys 
 and girls are content to know that their parents 
 manage to live somehow, that somehow money 
 seems to come when it is wanted, and that things 
 go on upon the whole in a very natural and com- 
 fortable way. And how should they think other- 
 wise, unless the veil is a little lifted % Their daily 
 bread, their daily pleasures, come to them much 
 as the sunlight comes ; they know nothing of the 
 dust and the sweat of the battle that wins them ; 
 just as we think little of the burden which presses 
 on the Hand that daily rolls round the spheres. 
 
236 The Home Life. 
 
 It is well that as the intelligence unfolds, the 
 young people should know something of what the 
 order and comfort of the home is costing — some- 
 thing of what the father and mother talk over, 
 with broken voices and clasped hands sometimes, 
 when the children have left them and the cares 
 of the day are done — that they may not think 
 that life is quite a holiday pastime, and may see 
 that the noblest thing a man has to do in this 
 world is to toil 2)atiently and suiFer bravely, that 
 others may be housed, clothed, fed, and trained 
 for God. 
 
 But much wisdom is needed here. Few thing? 
 are more purely cruel than to kill young hope and 
 joy. We may easily make children anxious, sor 
 rowful, and probably distrustful, in their spring, 
 by weighing them too early with the burden of 
 our cares. A wise parent will keep the veil of 
 the inner sanctuary drawn, lest their young, gay 
 footsteps enter, and they get a shock which may 
 cripple them for life ; but he is bound, too, to lift 
 it partially, in wise measures, that life's richer 
 meanings may lie open to them, and that they 
 may not be caught at a disadvantage, or be dis- 
 heartened when they discover for themselves how 
 much wise and righteous living may cost. Com- 
 
Getting Out into Life. 237 
 
 munion of spirit between parent and cliild is tlie 
 best training for life. Treat tliem like children 
 when they are yearning for the bread of your 
 confidence, and when they feel the stirring within 
 them of manly and womanly powers, and you 
 drive them to other and less helpful comrades. 
 Are there ?iny veils thicker than those which par- 
 ents constantly suffer to fall, between their own 
 inner nature and the inner nature of their chil- 
 dren % "Why is it that children so frequently find 
 it easier to open their hearts to strangers, than to 
 those who are set in their homes to be to them in 
 the place of God ? Make them your comrades as 
 Christ made His disciples, opening to them your 
 heart of hearts as their natm'e unfolds ; wliile at 
 the same time you share their sports and pastimes, 
 and keep yom' interest keen in all their pursuits 
 and pleasures ; taking as much of your own boy- 
 hood or girlhood as you can on with you through 
 life. 
 
 Yery precious, too, may be the ministry of a 
 sister to a brother just at the time when he is get- 
 ting out into the world ; when his knowledge of the 
 world is beginning to widen, and he first feels the 
 pressure of those temptations from which girls at 
 home are mercifully shielded, and which are mak- 
 
238 The Home Life. 
 
 ing sucli havoc of the moral and physical power 
 of our people. If the girls in onr homes would 
 betake themselves more freely to the fountain of 
 which we have sj)oken, and would breathe the at- 
 mosphere of a pure, noble, an|i gracious woman- 
 hood around them, the harlotries of the world 
 would but disgust where they now allure and 
 destroy. It seems to me sadly neglected in homes, 
 this power of brother and sister to help each 
 other, to bear each other up in their highest en- 
 deavours and aspirations, and be the complement 
 of each other's life. It ought to be the purest 
 and most beautiful of relations ; there is no bur- 
 den in it, it is aU help and joy. It is the best 
 likeness which we have on earth to the relations 
 of the heavenly world, where " they neither, ma/rry 
 nor are given in marriage, hut are as the angels 
 of God.'''' All pure love in its first virgin blush 
 takes the hue of this relationship. The young 
 lovers are sister and brother in the earliest and 
 perhaps the happiest days of their fellowship ; 
 and it would be hard to over-estimate the power 
 of a pure and high-minded sister to guard her 
 brother, by the reverence which her purity in- 
 spires, from some of his most besetting tempta- 
 tions. As far as my observation has reached, it 
 
Getting Out into Life. 239 
 
 appears to me that the purest and truest-liearted 
 men tliat I have known, have been those whose 
 sisters have set before them the highest image of 
 a woman in their own homes. And thus I come 
 back to the old principle — Women, be yourselves, 
 and rule the world ! 
 
 Young friends, boys and girls, blooming into 
 young men and women, be content " to hasten 
 slowly," as the old Greek proverb has it. One 
 of the most precious beliefs which a youth or 
 maiden can take with them into the arena, is a 
 belief in the virtue of patience, in the need of re- 
 pression, in the wisdom of deepening the hold of 
 the root fibres, before the head lifts itself bravely 
 in the sun. One of the hardest words, naturally 
 enough, for the eager young spirit to believe in is, 
 " "Wait." There is the gleaming many-tinted iris, 
 spanning the unknown faery world which the 
 child dreams of as life. A rosy light floods all 
 the air. Eden was not a fairer bower to the first 
 human children, than is the world to each of its 
 young dreamers. They look on this fair earth 
 and this wonderful life, as Israel on the land of 
 golden promise ; they have had vision of it too 
 from the Pisgah summit of a child's day dreams. 
 " The Paradise is there, let me enter it swiftly ; 
 
240 The Home Life, 
 
 father, mother, it is mine, it will not escape me if 
 I seize it now." There is a pining eagerness in 
 a youth of promise to cut a swift path to these 
 glorious gardens, whose golden apples a hmidred 
 generations have missed. "What matter millen- 
 niums of futile effort, wretched failure, broken 
 hope ? "What matter I Each young spirit starts 
 with unabated ardour and freshness on the quest. 
 He is sure that life will yield to him the secret 
 which all have missed. " The land of promise is 
 there beyond the river. Corn-age ! its cities and 
 treasm-es will soon be in our hands." 
 
 And there is no girl's paradise without an 
 Adam, nor boy's without an Eve. " Every soul," 
 says Emerson, " is a celestial Yenus to every other 
 soul." But boys and girls believe in the elective 
 affinities ; in the sister soul, the twin, whom it is 
 the aim and the bliss of life to meet. Well, I be- 
 lieve in it, too. But it is rarely that the twin 
 souls stumble on each other at once. There is a 
 halo round all things to the boy's burning vision, 
 and the first fair form or fair soul — for boys and 
 girls care more about souls than forms — ^which 
 strikes the fancy, shines with a peerless splendour. 
 " The problem of Kfe is solved I " they cry ; " with 
 
Getting Out into Life. 241 
 
 this Adam, this Eve, the wilderness will be as the 
 garden of the Lord." 
 
 And the parents' word is " Wait ; " at which 
 youth rebels. The cherubim and ^the flaming 
 sword not seldom appear through the mandate 
 of a hard necessity, or a parent's stern behests. 
 Now, I am not so foolish as to volunteer much 
 advice to hearts in such a case. Indeed, I have 
 not much faith in rides, directions, or counsels of 
 any sort, least of all about these high matters, 
 except such as tell on the being, and fit it to clear 
 its o^vn path, and to see its own way. I believe, 
 on the whole, fii-mly in early marriages and an 
 uphill fight. But I believe, above all, in waiting 
 — waiting that costs resolution and endeavour, 
 and it may be sharp pain, that souls may be sure 
 of themselves and of each other before they mate. 
 Love, like all other noble things, gains immensely 
 by endurance, by submission. Those whose wise 
 experience is holding you back, in tender care, 
 from a too eager scaling of the gate of Paradise, 
 are reAdering your love a noble service, if it be 
 rooted deeply in the soul's elections ; and are spar- 
 ing you the sorrow of sorrows, if, as may well 
 happen, and as a little patience may prove, it be 
 not. Do not be too ready to believe that life's 
 11 
 
242 The Home Life. 
 
 great problem is solved in a moment ; and do not 
 grudge effort and patience, heroic it may be — and 
 the unknown heroisms are of highest account in 
 the eye of Heaven — to be assured that the prob- 
 lem is solved rightly, and solved for ever. The 
 twin souls are one through eternity. But how 
 many of them on earth are one ? 
 
 With equal earnestness would I urge on young 
 men going forth into life the need of patience, 
 that they may lay the foundation of a manly in- 
 dependence, by toiling long and thoroughly at the 
 mere di-udgery of their calling, before they think 
 themselves fit for the higher forms. The ignis 
 fatuus of clever young men is a spurious and 
 baseless independence, tempting them to play the 
 master before they have learned the lessons of ser- 
 vice thoroughly, and to handle results before they 
 have made the secrets of the processes their own. 
 Impatience of apprenticeship, using the word in 
 a wide sense, is what distinguishes these eager and 
 insubordinate times from the great days of 6ld. 
 There are few who rule nobly, partly because 
 there are few who care to serve long. You have 
 to be builders of a temple of life. " Edify your- 
 selves," " edify one another," is a favourite exhor- 
 tation of Scripture about life. A builder grudges 
 
Getting Out into Life. 243 
 
 no toil tliat lie spends on tlie foundations. Edify 
 your temple firmly from the first. Take the wis- 
 dom of the elders as your guide, long after you 
 have felt the first strong temptation to think your- 
 self the wiser. Eefuse not the yoke, long after 
 you have thought that you could play the master 
 bravely yourself. Build for a long future. Life 
 may be short here, but it is long there. I^one lay 
 the foundations broad and deep enough ; none be- 
 lieve more than feebly and vaguely in eternity. 
 The masters there, I think, will be chosen from 
 the band who were not afraid of a life-long ser- 
 vice here. " Friend, go up higher," wiU not be 
 the greeting of the boys and girls who thought 
 themselves fit at the first start for the highest 
 rooms. 
 
 For understand, lastly and solemnly, that you 
 are getting out into a life whose range is as wide 
 as the universe and as long as eternity. Under- 
 stand farther, that until you have let the solemn 
 eternal light shine in upon it, you cannot compre- 
 hend aright the most trivial tasks and the most 
 common cares. E^othing with which man has to 
 do can take its true size and form, unless it be 
 projected upon the horizon of eternity. You step 
 oiit into the great eternal universe, when you step 
 
244: The Home Life, 
 
 out of the fold wliicli sheltered your childliood. 
 Your every thought, your every work, thenceforth 
 has issues which range on with your being while 
 that being endures. Speak merrily to your soul, 
 if you -jvill, and say, " Soul, thou hast much goods 
 laid up for many years ; take thy fill, eat, drink, 
 and be merry." But remember the morning after 
 the summons, " This night thy soul shall be re- 
 quired of thee ; " remember the inevitable morn- 
 ing, and the day or the night — the day of bliss or 
 the night of weeping — that will never end. There 
 are wonders and splendours, such as an angel may 
 hardly prevail to look upon, within the field of 
 your future, as you tramp through the round of 
 your common tasks — tempted to think, perhaps, 
 that a dog's life has more interest and variety 
 than yours. Make it a dog's life, and they vanish 
 from the field of your vision for ever. Make it a 
 man's life, and pay the cost for a little space — 
 " endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus 
 Christ " — and one day you will range with exult- 
 ing triumphant power through all the pathways 
 of the new creation, and search out the glory 
 which is wisely veiled from mortal sight, whose 
 unveiling will be the apocalj^se of eternity. Get 
 out into life with the solemn, ennoblmg sense that 
 
Getting Out into Life. 245 
 
 yon are getting out into life eternal, and weigh 
 every pleasure and pain of this world in the bal- 
 ances whose measures are square with the stand- 
 ards of God. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE FAMILY MI:N'ISTEY. 
 
 " When the ear heard me^ then it hlessed me ; and when the 
 eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered 
 the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had 
 none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready 
 to perish came upon me : and I caused the widow''s heart 
 to sin{f for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed 
 me : my judgment was as a rohe and a diadem. I was 
 eyes to the Hind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a 
 father to the poor, and the cause which I Tcnew not I 
 searched out.^^ — Job xxix. 11-16. 
 
 " Fkeely ye have received, freely give^'' is the 
 Christiaii law. Blessed with a dear home life 
 yourselves, piu'ify and gladden poor homes around. 
 The great hope for society is, that the influence 
 of a pure and noble home life may descend, and 
 flow through all the squalid, wretched households, 
 which are the fruitful mothers of crime and sor- 
 row. A Christian household ill comprehends its 
 vocation, if it is not training the boys and girls 
 
The Family. Ministry, 247 
 
 which grow up in it, to be wise as well as diligent 
 and devoted ministers to the poor. The nature 
 and method of this ministry will be the topic of 
 the present discourse. 
 
 It is nobly sketched in the words which I have 
 taken for my text. The chapter contains proba- 
 bly the finest picture of the life of an eastern pa- 
 triarch, which has ever been painted by the hand 
 of man. The whole book of Job, in fact, lets us 
 into the secret of .an age and a mode of life which 
 is about the polar opposite of our own. The pa- 
 triarchal age is but lightly touched in the histori- 
 cal books of Scripture. Or rather, 1 should say, 
 what is laid about it has a distinct reference to a 
 Divine purpose which, running through it, hast- 
 ened on to a goal beyond. The book of Genesis 
 is but the exordium of the book of the legal dis- 
 pensation, which itself is but the vestibule of the 
 dispensation of the gospel. It contains notices 
 of the life and manners of the patriarchal age 
 which are of the highest value, as it traces the 
 fortunes of the elect race, to which was confided 
 the leading part in the drama of the history of the 
 world. But in the book of Job we have notices 
 which are more valuable still. Here the author 
 dwells fondly on the patriarchal age for its own 
 
248 The Borne Life. 
 
 sake, and lingers over its manners and simple in- 
 cidents with a tender and loving hand. Job and 
 tlie race to which he belonged are out of the line 
 of the elect people. They have but a remote 
 kindred with them, and their life and that of their 
 w^hole race could be but at the best an episode in 
 history. There is no pressing forward to a pur- 
 pose here. The details are touched with the skill 
 and care of an artist who has time and room to 
 present a complete portrait ; and the result is a 
 picture of the manners, the thoughts, the life, of 
 an old patriarchal chieftain in his tribe, which is 
 unique in history. 
 
 It seems to have been painted by a man who 
 was familiar with a state of society which some- 
 what sadly contrasted with it. As Tacitus, in the 
 coiTupt society of the Empire, lingers fondly over 
 the pure and simple morals of the German tribes, 
 so the writer of this book, full of the cares and 
 burdens of a national statesman, and observant 
 of the vices and miseries of national life, dwells 
 on this image of a grand old Edomite patriarch, 
 as a witness and a warning to his times. If the 
 writer was Moses — I am not ignorant of the diffi- 
 culties attaching to the supposition, but they seem 
 to me far from decisive — we can understand it 
 
The Family Ministry. 249 
 
 perfectly. To a man steeped in all tlie learning 
 of the Egyptians, and sated with their splendid 
 and luxurious civilisation, it would be like a 
 breath of pure, fresh mountain air, to come across 
 the record of such a life. What a grand picture 
 of the Bedouin chief, the father of his tribe, is 
 presented here: ''''Moreover^ Job continued his 
 jparaMe^ and said^ Oh that I were as in months 
 ^past, as in the days when God preserved me • 
 when His candle shined uj)on tny head, and when 
 hy His light I walked through darkness ; as I was 
 in the days of my youth, when the secret of God 
 was uj)on my tabernacle / when the Almighty was 
 yet ivith me, when my children were about me / 
 when I washed my steps with butter, and the rock 
 poured me out rivers of oil j when I went out to 
 the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat 
 in the street ! The young men saw me, and hid 
 themselves ^ and the aged arose, and stood up. 
 The princes refrained talking, and laid their 
 hand on their mouth. The nobles held their peace, 
 and their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth. 
 When the ear heard me, then it blessed me / a/}id 
 when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me / be- 
 cause I delivered the poor that cried, and the 
 fatherless, and him that had none to Jielp him» 
 11* 
 
250 The Home Life, 
 
 The Messing of Mm that was ready to ^perish came 
 upon me: a7icl I caused the widow's heart to sing 
 for joy. Ijcnct on righteousness, and it clothed 
 me : my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I 
 was eyes to the Mind, and feet was I to the lame. 
 I was a father to the poor ', and t1ie cause which I 
 Jciiew not I searched out. And I hraJce the jaws 
 of the wiclced, and jplucTied the spoil out of his 
 teeth. Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I 
 shall multiply my days as the sand. My root was 
 spread out hy the waters, and the dew lay all night 
 upon my hranch. My glory was fresh in me, 
 and my how was renewed in my hands. Unto me 
 men gave ear, and waited, and Icept silence at my 
 counsel. After my words they spake not again / 
 and my speech dropped upon them. And they 
 waited for me as for the rain / and they opened 
 their mouth wide as for the latter rain. If I 
 laughed on them, they helieved it not; and the 
 light of my countenance they cast not down. I 
 chose out their way and sat chief, and dwelt as a 
 Icing in the army, as one that comforteth the 
 mourners " (Job xxix. 1-25). 
 
 This picture belongs to a time when govern- 
 ment was — as all government was once — ^paternal. 
 Much which it is hard to characterise as other 
 
The Family Ministry, ^ 251 
 
 than pure nonsense, lias been written about the 
 social contract, and probably by the sentimental 
 infidels whose works prepared the way for the 
 first French Revolution. The original social con- 
 tract, even the idea of a compact — except such as 
 grows out of pre-existing relations, as was the case 
 with the pilgrim fathers — is a mere fiction. The 
 fontal type of all government, the mould in which 
 it was originally cast, is the rule of a father in his 
 home. Men soon outgrow this. Society gets too 
 wide, and too wise. It becomes too capable of 
 self-government for one man to rule it father-like ; 
 no man can sustain this relation to a wide and 
 cultivated community of his fellow-men. The 
 effort becomes the parent of the most absolute 
 and soul-debasing tyranny, as may be seen at this 
 moment in France. Society, conscious that it has 
 outgrown the paternal rule, has all sorts of devices 
 to get itself tolerably governed ; but they all blun- 
 der utterly in the way, and miss utterly of the 
 end, if they fail to discern that the fundamental 
 idea of government is the father's rule ; and that 
 the kind of order which needs to be established 
 in human society is the loving order which a father 
 maintains in a home. 
 
 JSTow, no government, as government must be 
 
252 • The Home Life, 
 
 in a complicated and liigUy civilised community- 
 like ours, can fulfil tliis function — can take tliis 
 fatherly oversight of men. A chieftain of a tribe 
 may do it; a ruler of a great nation cannot. 
 And one would watch very sadly the growth of a 
 community to a magnitude which precludes the 
 exercise of the paternal function by the govern- 
 ment, and makes the freest independence of the 
 individual members, even the basest and most 
 foolish, the test of the development of the people, 
 but for the belief that a Wiser and Stronger than 
 any human father is ruling ; and that He is em- 
 ploying the various organs of the national life to 
 make His fatherly will the governing prmciple in 
 the conduct of its public affairs. If, as man drops 
 the sceptre and confesses that the task of rule is 
 too hard, we cannot believe that a higher Hand 
 is grasping it, dark indeed would be our vision of 
 the aspect and prospect of the world. 
 
 And that God may rule in states, that the 
 moral element of the problem may not be lost 
 sight of, that the Fatherly care and influence may 
 not quite vanish from the wider sphere of the na- 
 tional life, God has founded an institution, in 
 which spii'itual elements and interests are predom- 
 inant ; which takes His Word as its statute-book 
 
The Family Ministry. 253 
 
 of commandment, and seeks to be filled with His 
 Spirit as the principle of its life. As the secular 
 sphere developes itself according to the instincts 
 and visible interests of men, the Church is or- 
 dained to keep God's truth before it, and to bring 
 the benign influence of the Father and the Ke- 
 deemer of spirits to bear on the order and prog- 
 ress of society. The Church is not other than the 
 world in God's ultimate thought and purpose. 
 Eut so long as the world seeks worldly inspira- 
 tion in all its activities and achievements, God 
 purposes that there shall be those in it who shall 
 bear witness for higher truths, and bring higher 
 influences to bear on men. The end will be 
 reached, and the two spheres will blend in one, 
 when " None shall hurt and none shall destroy in 
 all God's holy mountain ; hut the earth shall he 
 full of the TcnowUdge of the Lord^ as the waters 
 cover the seaP 
 
 By the Church, I mean simply, the body of 
 believers who yield themselves to be the organs 
 of God's Spirit in the world, whose desu^e and 
 aim is to make His influence, as the Father and 
 Redeemer, the ruling power irf society. The 
 Chmxh can bring this Fatherly element into the 
 ordering and government of mankind, because it 
 
254 The Rome Life. 
 
 is, wliat no mere ruler or magistrate can be, God's 
 instrument. His organ, ratlier, for the spiritual 
 rule and guidance of men. The Christian ele- 
 ment in society — the fontal fire of which is kept 
 pure and bright on the hearth of the Christian 
 household — seeks to supply the want, of which, 
 as society enlarges its borders, grows wider, wiser, 
 and more complex, it becomes painfully conscious 
 — the want of a Father's rule. Job was priest 
 and king in his tribe ; Abraham was priest and 
 king in his family — ^the germ of a tribe ; but no 
 man or men can be, even in the measure which 
 was possible for them, priest and king to a nation 
 or to the world. The one Priest and King of hu- 
 manity is Christ ; and His organ, His body, is the 
 Church, which is destined one day to transform 
 the world, and then to be lost in it. The earthly 
 fountains of its vital power are Christian homes. 
 They are the eyes and the hands of the Church ; 
 they feed its strength, and they conduct it ; they 
 are the organs of its ministry, the channels of its 
 life. 
 
 Training for ministry to the world should be 
 one main featiire of the higher culture of Chris- 
 tian households. To study and fulfil this patri- 
 archal function is one great purpose of their exist- 
 
The Family Ministry. 255 
 
 euce. I confine myself in this connexioii to the 
 consideration of tlie ministry to tlie poor, which 
 is so graphically set forth in the text ; for it is in 
 connexion with the poor that the most difficult 
 problems of society arise. How thoroughly it is 
 recognised as the chief w^ork of the Divine Kuler, 
 to right the wrongs and relieve the miseries of the 
 poor, a thousand passages of the Scripture declare 
 as emphatically as this : " He shall have dominion 
 also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the 
 ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilder- 
 ness shall how before Him / and His enemies shall 
 lioh the dust. The Mngs of Tarshish and of the 
 isles shall hring presents : the tings of Shela and 
 Sela shall offer gifts. Yea, all Mngs shall fall 
 down hefore him i all nations shall serve Him. 
 For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; 
 the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He 
 shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the 
 sotds of the needy. He shall redeem their soul 
 from deceit and violence ; and precious shall their 
 blood he in His sight " (Ps. Ixxii. 8-14). 
 
 I purpose to offer some practical remarks on 
 the passage prefixed to this discourse, to stimulate 
 and guide this ministry of the Christian household 
 
256 The Home Life. 
 
 — the microcosm of which the Church is the ma- 
 crocosm- — as much as is in my power. 
 
 I. The duty of the Church, the Christian ele- 
 ment of society, to search out the cause of the 
 poor, and to be a father to them. 
 
 I dwell specially on the searching it out. The 
 energy and the self-denial, the patience and the 
 power of endurance, which the searching out the 
 cause or the case of the poor demands, can be 
 supplied ill constant measure but from one spring. 
 I imagine that if we could have set before the 
 eye of the mind at any moment, as vividly as if 
 it were before the natural eye, the miseries, the 
 torments, the agony of body, mind, and spirit, 
 which millions of our fellow-creatures are endur- 
 ing through poverty and what springs *fr"om it, we 
 should rush to the rescue with mad haste, lest God 
 should inquire for all these groans, these tears, 
 this blood, at our hands. ITo sleep for us to-night, 
 till some naked ones had been clpthed, some starv- 
 ing ones had been fed, some shivering ones had 
 been cherished before a cheery fire, and a taste at 
 least had been given to some poor outcast of all 
 that God, in His infinite goodness to us, has 
 granted us in our home. But, not seeing it, we 
 
The Family Ministry. 257 
 
 realize it but dimly. We know well enougli tliat 
 tliere is &iic1l a thing as tlie misery of the poor in the 
 background, just as we know that there is Death. 
 We never search for him, but we feel sometimes 
 his chill breath, and see his awful shadow flung 
 over the glowing landscape of our lives. And so 
 this dread shadow of poverty crosses us sometimes, 
 but we hasten out of its gloorti into the warm sun- 
 light once more. It is one of the things which 
 we are prone to put by in the dark comer, and 
 look at as little as we may. But now let us hear 
 God's word : "If thou forlear to deliver them 
 that are drawn unto death, and those that are 
 ready to he slain / if thou say est, Behold, we Tcnew 
 it not I doth not He that pondereth the heart con- 
 sider it f , and He that heejpeth thy soul, doth not 
 He Tcnow it? and shall not He render to every 
 man according to his worTcs^^ (Prov. xxiv. 11, 12) 
 It is our business, our plainest duty, to search 
 it out. The world does not know, and half of it 
 does not care. But we are bound to know. The 
 home is a field of the noblest culture, and it is the 
 organ of the divinest ministry. Let it neglect 
 the last, and by .the sternest of all laws, the first 
 is lost. The home is constantly called the nur- 
 sery of the Church. It is something more. The 
 
258 The Home Life. 
 
 old Jewish synagogue was constituted by families. 
 So in a very liigh sense were the old Puritan 
 cliurclies. The home is the church, not in minia- 
 ture but in microcosm ; that is, it is a complete 
 Church within its sphere. And through the 
 home and its Christian charities the ministry of 
 the Chm'ch must be mainly accomplished. And 
 here is its first office, to search out the cause of 
 the poor. "We are bound to know it, and to let 
 the world know it. "We are bound to bring the 
 dark facts out of their darkness, and set them be- 
 fore the world in the full light of day. One of 
 the first duties of a Christian household is to re- 
 solve to know for itself, and to make others know, 
 the state of its poor around. I say its poor. 
 ''The poor ye have always with you.^"^ They are 
 Christ's charge to those whom He has enriched 
 and blessed. Its poor are those within sound of 
 its voice, within touch of its hand. The only, the 
 all-sufficient plea is poverty and wretchedness; 
 our sect, our dependents, our neighbours ! — Christ 
 knows nothing of such limitations. He tells us 
 only of " the poor." Even the Jew, narrow and 
 exclusive as his disposition is popularly, but most 
 falsely, held to have been, did not dare to limit 
 his responsibility to the poor even of his own na- 
 
Tlie Family Ministry, 259 
 
 tion. " And when ye reap the harvest of yoii/r 
 land^ thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy 
 field^ neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy 
 harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard^ 
 neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vine- 
 yard ; thou shalt leave them for the poor o/nd 
 stranger ; I am the Lord your God, .... And 
 if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye 
 shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth 
 with you, shall he unto you as one lorn among 
 you, and thou shalt love him as thyself 'j for ye 
 were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the 
 Lord your God'' (Lev. xix. 9, 10, 33, 34). ''At 
 the end of three years thou shalt Iring forth all 
 the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt 
 lay it up within thy gates, and the Levite (because 
 he hath no part nor inheritance with thee), and 
 the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, 
 which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall 
 eat, and he satisfied y' that the Lord thy God may 
 Mess thee in all the work of thine hand which thou 
 doesV' (Deut. xiv. 28, 29). God tauglit liim the 
 secret of a large-hearted charity ; and shall we be 
 more narrow and selfish than the Jew ? God for- 
 bid. " For we Tcnow the grace of our Lord Jesus, 
 how that though He was rich, yet for our saTces He 
 
260 The Home Life, 
 
 'became poor, that we through His poverty might 
 l)e rich.^'' 
 
 But we live in a strangely complicated state 
 of society. It is said that one half of the world 
 does not know how the other half lives. It is a 
 liberal estimate. How many neither know nor 
 care ? It was otherwise of old. Job knew every 
 poor one, every vicious one, in his tribe ; he knew 
 how to deal with them, and he knew further that 
 the responsibility of their condition rested in some 
 serious measure at his door. The old patriarchal 
 feeling -survived in a Roman bishop as late as the 
 end of the sixth century. A man died, starved 
 to death, in the streets of Eome, and Gregory the 
 Great, the Roman bishop, imposed on himself the 
 heaviest penances, and interdicted himself from 
 the discharge of the sacred offices, because it had 
 been possible that such a thing should happen 
 even in the vast city in which he was Father, 
 Papa, Pope. 
 
 In the middle ages something of this close 
 oversight was possible. Rich and poor lived 
 much together in the same quarters, in the same 
 streets. In our county towns you will still see, 
 where railroad life has not effaced the last traces 
 of the past, the noble mansion, the town-house of 
 
The Family Ministry, 261 
 
 the great connty family, with a hovel leaning 
 against its side. In truth towns grew originally, 
 through the clustering of the poor for work and 
 shelter near the great man's castle gate. And 
 you will constantly see still a row of poor cot- 
 tages, then a handsome house or two, and then a 
 row of poor cottages again. The rich and the 
 poor lived near each other, and there was a fair 
 chance at any rate of a rich man's knowing the 
 poor man's needs. But our luxurious living has 
 changed all that. We have our rich quarters 
 and our poor quarters, with few ministering foot- 
 steps passing between. We have our squares of 
 splendid palaces, without the disfigurement of one 
 poor man's dwelling ; we have wide tracts of pen- 
 ury, vice, and wretchedness, without the orna- 
 ment of one rich man's home. The rich draw 
 together, and the poor are driven together ; and a 
 great gulf has been opened between them, which 
 benign ministries have begun to fill. 
 
 But our Tyburnias and Belgravias, whose 
 dreary monotony is some penalty on their splen- 
 dour, involve inevitably our Kookeries and Kag- 
 fairs. Every great " quarter " built for riches, 
 means that poverty, want, withering toil and bit- 
 ter sorrow, have extended their area too. Tlie 
 
262 The Home Life, 
 
 natural tendencies of tlie age are to the separa- 
 tion of tlie classes. The Christian office is to wed 
 them again, to reintroduce them to each other, 
 and to make them feel in more loving ways than 
 God's judgments — such as cholera, typhus, small- 
 pox, and the like — employ, that they belong to 
 each other, and that at the bottom their interests 
 are one. 
 
 And the first step to this is to seek them out ; 
 to discover poverty and misery in their lairs, and 
 bring them out before the face of the world, into 
 the light of day. Every Christian household 
 ought to have its little band of searchers, and 
 ought to make known in quiet ways, as opportu- 
 nity ofiers, the estate of the poor. The truth is, 
 it only needs to be known to be mended. The 
 searching out is the chief matter. The City 
 Missions and kindred agencies have searched 
 out the condition of the masses of our city poor 
 so effectually, and made known so widely the 
 knowledge they have gained, that there is a new 
 stir through the whole sphere of society, and a 
 thousand hands are now stretched forth in every 
 direction to seek and to save. And Christ is the 
 moving spirit of it all, though many name not the 
 name of Christ while they are busy in the work. 
 
The Family Ministry. 263 
 
 But Cliristianity has done thus mucli for Christian 
 society; the words, ''Am I my 'brother's 'keejperf'' 
 can never again be uttered as a bar to the minis- 
 try of society to its poor. The world now could 
 not live on and go about its tasks, were it set 
 sternly face to face with their actual condition. 
 The evil once known in all its dark dimensions, 
 some help must be found, some cure. 
 
 Be it yours to know, that you may tell. Don't 
 be satisfied with the vague knowledge with which 
 multitudes of professed philanthropists content 
 themselves. See it for yourselves, women of 
 Christian households, while the men are about 
 their daily tasks ; see it for yourselves and touch 
 it, and if is a bitter sight, don't turn away. Let 
 the bitterness sink into your heart. It was a 
 bitter sight to Christ, but He did not turn from 
 it ; He became its fellow ; He bore all the bitter- 
 ness of it life-long, and now He sends you. His 
 ministers, to help Him by Christian charity to 
 bear all its bitterness away. Study the problem 
 closely ; acquaint yourself as among your first and 
 most sacred Christian duties, with the cause of 
 your poor. 
 
 II. See that you bear a hand to help it. 
 
264 The Home Life. 
 
 I find the deepest suggestion on tliis point from 
 tlie narrative in Mark: ^^ And straightway the 
 father of the child cried out, and said with tears, 
 Lord, Lhelieve j help Thou mine u^ibelief When 
 Jesus saw that the people came running together, 
 He rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him. Thou 
 dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of 
 him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit 
 cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him : 
 and he was as one dead ; insomuch that many 
 said. He is dead. But Jtsus took him hy the 
 hand, and lifted him up / and he arose " (Mark ix. 
 24-27). 
 
 Hand help ! That is what the poor want ; 
 that is what the Lord calls for ; that is what the 
 Church must afford, if she is to give free play and 
 healthy exercise to her noblest powers. Under- 
 Btand what I mean. Giving is the smallest and 
 easiest part of Christian charity. Time is far 
 more precious, and effort is far more precious, 
 than money, to hard-worked men. And money 
 may be given lavishly to save time and trouble, 
 and may very easily be, nay, it too constantly is, 
 a curse instead of a blessing to the poor. The 
 Lord had no money to give, nor would He make 
 any. This last is among the most significant feat- 
 
The Family Ministryt 265 
 
 ures of His ministry. And the poorest Christian 
 ministers are probably those who, at this moment, 
 are doing the most for the help of the poor. The 
 poor are commonly their own worst enemies. 
 Their own imp roviden ce, carelessness, and vice , 
 share fully with the condition of society the re- 
 •sponsibility of their state. They are very far 
 from being their true friends who are afraid to 
 tell them so — who will throw a sop of charity to 
 meet their momentary need, and to win their 
 passing gratitude, instead of tenderly but firmly 
 pressing on them the recognition of the evil hab- 
 its and passions, out of which, after all, nine- 
 tenths of their miseries spring. To cure an evil 
 habit, to brighten a sullen temper, to conquer a 
 vicious propensity, in the poor subjects of your 
 ministry, is to give something which is infinitely 
 more precious than gold ; it is a gift which they 
 may bear on with them into eternity. 
 
 And to do this you must be, like Job, a friend 
 to them. You must hear the narrative of their 
 circumstances, you must observe carefully their 
 habits, and you must speak, as only a friend can 
 speak, home to their consciences and their hearts. 
 That is putting a hand to the work. Some put 
 only a face to it. They enter, with an expression 
 12 
 
266 The Home Life, 
 
 of lofty condescension, tlie poor man's garret, and 
 look infinite superiority while tliey lecture him on 
 his follies and sins. I am persuaded that very 
 much of the bitterness, with which intelligent and 
 independent working men speak of those whom 
 they call " the saints," is due to the quiet inso- 
 lence with which pious visitors, often with the 
 best intentions, intrude their presence and advice 
 at unseemly seasons in humble homes. Those 
 who will take poverty by the hand must take the 
 burden of it upon them, and will be made solemn 
 and sad as they feel its weight. ISTor must it be 
 made altogether the work of the women, though 
 they will be the chief almoners of the Church 
 and of heaven. Time may be scarce and costly 
 with the prosperous man of business. " I must 
 stick to my business," he will be likely to say, 
 " or my means of sending help in any form will 
 fail." By all means. This ought he to do, but 
 not to leave the other undone. The use of a lit- 
 tle portion of his time in searching out the cause 
 of the poor, will pay him infinitely better than 
 any business use which he may make of it. If 
 you want to hallow your business, don't slave at 
 it, and don't let it make a slave of you. Leave 
 it, and the gain it might bring, some hour or two. 
 
The Family Ministry, 267 
 
 at any rate, in tlie week ; and go, see for your- 
 Belves how poor men and women are living, how 
 they are compelled to live by the very conditions 
 which make it possible that colossal commercial 
 fortunes may be amassed. See for yourselves 
 how women will fight to get near a door where 
 slop-work is given out, which will yield them 
 some sixpence a-day by worse than a slave's toil. 
 Do not be content to hear ; go and see, and put 
 forth a hand to help them to a better work. At 
 any rate, if you cannot do much in the way of 
 helping, bear the pain of seeing it and touching 
 it, and let others share the pain. When society 
 fairly takes up the burden, and feels its weight, 
 something eifectual will be done. 
 
 And the real, the radical mischief, is one which 
 the childi-en of Christian homes, beyond all oth- 
 ers, may help to cure. It is the .wretched home 
 life which is the chief parent of the drunkenness, 
 the recklessness, the wastefulness, the apathy, 
 which make such havoc of the means and the 
 happiness of multitudes of our labouring poor. 
 The dirt, the closeness, the damp, and the dark- 
 ness, of the dens which hundreds of thousands in 
 our great cities are forced to couch in and to oc- 
 cupy as homes, drive the men forth to dissipation, 
 
268 The Home Life. 
 
 and break down tlie women's courage and strength. 
 Clean; sweet, airy, clieerful liabitations, must be 
 the foundation of all vital improvement. And 
 the housewifely maiden, trained in wise thrift 
 and management, who shall help a poor woman 
 to keep some cleanly order in her close lodging, 
 in spite of the well-nigh overwhelming pressure 
 of her lot — who shall teach her some thi-ifty ways, 
 give a new idea of the management of the chil- 
 dren, and see that she has a clean corner by a 
 bright hearth-fire for the husband when he comes 
 home from his tasks — is rendering society, as well 
 as her poor sister,* a noble service, and is helping 
 effectually towards the solution of the most per- 
 plexed problem of our times. I never shall for- 
 get the emphasis with which a husband whose 
 wife had been taken in hand by a wise, kind 
 woman after the fashion I have described, and 
 who had been thus weaned from the gin-shop, 
 once exclaimed to me, " I never knew what it was 
 to have a home before." 
 
 Eeform the homes, and the poor will re- 
 form themselves, and society will be renewed at 
 the spring. Every fresh hand put forth to the 
 w^ork, eveiy fresh helper who will give personal 
 ministry, brings us nearer to the time when the 
 
The Family Ministry. 269 
 
 bitterness of poverty will cease ont of tlie land ; 
 when society in the name of Christ, and by the 
 Spirit of Christ, shall rise up and put it away for 
 ever. It can be done ; it will be done one day. 
 If every master, every capitalist, every employer 
 of labour were a Christ-like man, and every work- 
 man industrious and upright, where were the mis- 
 eries of the poor ? The root of them all is not in 
 things, but in souls. 
 
 III. Believe that the blessing of the poor and 
 of him that is ready to perish, is the noblest rec- 
 ord which can appear for you on high. " Then 
 said He also to him that hade Him^ When thou 
 makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends , 
 or thy brethren, neither thy hinsmen, nor thy rich 
 neighbours j lest tJiey also hid thee again, and a 
 recompense he made thee. But when thou makest 
 a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the 
 hlind: and thou shall he hlessed j for they cannot 
 recompense thee : for thou shalt he recompensed at 
 the resurrection of the just (Luke xiv. 12-14). 
 
 We have come to believe that such words are 
 hyperbole. That they simply mean in general 
 that a blessing will attend on charity. But as for 
 any special recompense for special acts, which the 
 
270 The Home Life. 
 
 text seems to promise, it is against the genius of 
 Christianity, and attributes an unworthy minute- 
 ness of reckoning to God. One might think so, 
 if one did not see how close the cause of the poor 
 is to the heart of the Great Father. If it be to 
 Christ's brethren that you offer this ministry, if it 
 be a clearing up of much that is awfully dark and 
 doubtful about the ways of God, we can compre- 
 hend the sentence as it stands. Call these poor 
 ones together and entertain them, you are enter- 
 taining them for the Lord ; that is what He would 
 do, along with deeper things, to give them a mo- 
 ment's honest gladness. He does it through you. 
 He confesses Himself your debtor, and He is not 
 one to forget that debt in the great day of eter- 
 nity. I use very strong and absolute language 
 here. I cannot help it. It is not I, but Scrip- 
 ture : " He that hath pity on the poor lendeth to 
 tJie Lord, and that which he hath given will He 
 pay hisn again P 
 
 It is there, plain as words can make it. Man 
 may make God his debtor, and in but one way. 
 And if the case of the poor be a great sorrow to 
 the Father's heart, a great difficulty in the way 
 of His government, and a great burden to heav- 
 enly spirits, one can understand how it should be 
 
The Family Mmistry. 271 
 
 so. He who helps God with the poor helps in- 
 deed. Be not afraid to invest largely in those 
 bonds ; heaven seals them in its own chancery, and 
 principal and interest will be richly repaid. Of 
 all the words that can be spoken in the heavenly 
 assembly about a man or a community, there are 
 none that can compare with these, " He is a poor 
 man's friend." '''He hath dispersed abroad, he 
 hath given to thejpoor, his righteousness endureth 
 for every About what other works that a man's 
 hand can do, is such a sentence wiitten in the 
 word of God ? 
 
 I know that I may be thought to be speaking 
 injudiciously here, as though a foundation might 
 be laid in good works for acceptance with God. 
 But the Spirit saw what use could be made of 
 these words when He moved His servant to write 
 them, and He did not withhold his hand. Are 
 we so much wiser than He ? I am little afraid, 
 to tell the truth, of much mischief on this side. 
 If men will put their hands to the work, will take 
 the burden of it on their own hearts, it will empty 
 them of self-conceit and self-righteousness, or noth- 
 ing will. No, the danger is not in this directionl 
 The danger is, lest in these days men should de- 
 spise these Vnseen rewards, these invisible wreaths 
 
272 Tlie Rome Life, 
 
 of honour, smiling at them in their hearts as 
 dreams or superstitious fancies, things meet enpngh 
 to be pursued by saints and women, but mere fol- 
 lies to busy, acute, and practical men. Thus we 
 men are prone to think of the account which it is 
 said heaven keeps with the friends of the jpoor ! 
 
 I believe, however, in most substantial repay- 
 ments here. IS^one have ever been beggared by 
 their charities, and none have ever been left help- 
 less in their needs who were known as poor men's 
 friends. It is the very richest inheritance which 
 a man can lay up for his children, the reputation 
 of a liberal soul. " The liberal soul shall le made 
 fat^ and hy liberal tKings he shall standi I be- 
 lieve that, in its secret soul, the world holds those 
 in highest honour who have most helped its poor. 
 If ever they need, it delights to repay the debt. 
 The surest of all banks is this — ^the blessing of 
 poor men. God keeps the deposits. There is no 
 measm-e of the intei;est of that exchequer; for 
 ten talents nobly used, ten cities. And remem- 
 ber the day will come when the last cheque has 
 been signed, when the last bill has been drawn, 
 when the last coin has been fingered. Gold has 
 become but dirt to you, it wiU glitter for you no 
 more for ever. "£100,000 for another month 
 
The Family Ministinj. 273 
 
 of life, doctor," cried a poor millionnaire in his 
 agony. But no ; the chink of coin is not musical 
 in the ears of the Angel of death — the doom is 
 pronounced, the judgment must proceed. Naked 
 came you forth into life, naked mwst you return 
 to death. Let poor men's blessings cluster round 
 you, then, like a white cloud of angels ; let fair 
 robes of mercy and charity be your divine array. 
 The Lord of heaven, the poor man's defender and 
 keeper, will , crown your head with a diadem of 
 honour, and repay the deeds of Christ-like charity 
 which you have done for Him with rich interest 
 through eternity. " Come^ ye hlessed of My Fa- 
 ther^ inherit the hingdom prepared for you from 
 lefore the foundation of the worldP 
 
 12* 
 
X. 
 
 THE GOLDEN AUTUMN. 
 
 " So the Lord Messed the latter end of Job more than his 
 deginning."— Job xlii. 12. 
 
 The young find something sad in the tints and 
 skies of autumn ; but as we grow older we love it 
 better. There is that which is not out of tune 
 with the colder flow of our own life currents, in 
 the soft gray evening of the year. There is a 
 certain quiet and hush in nature, when the stir of 
 her spring and the toil of her summer are ended. 
 A sigh of peace that so much is joyfully though 
 painfully finished, seems to prolong itself through 
 autumn. The world has no business then to 
 trouble it ; its noisy concerns are ended for the 
 year. The groaning harvest has been gathered, 
 and loads the portly barns ; the fields lie bare and 
 quiet, resting under the smile of heaven, and 
 drinking in strength for new motherly cares and 
 
The Golden Autumn. 275 
 
 toils. I suppose it is tMs calm undertone of prep- 
 aration and hope wMch. makes autumn far from 
 sad, to those who observe the reverse as well as 
 the obverse of all the medals of nature and of 
 life. The grp.y sides, the falling leaves, the whirl- 
 ing storms, the damps and mists of autumn, offer 
 themselves to every eye, and to those whose eye 
 is still the main inlet of impression they make the 
 " fall " the dull, sad season of the year. But na- 
 ture, at any rate, is not in despair about it ; and 
 those who have an eye for the quiet touches in 
 nature's countenance, and an ear for the under- 
 tones of her song, catch somewhat of the inspira- 
 tion of the hope which gladdens her while all is 
 dying, and enter into her peace. 
 
 In truth she passes with something like tri- 
 umphal pomp into her wintry tomb. She gathers 
 her bravest mantle grandly around her as she 
 falls. Just as the pomp of the sunset clouds robs 
 nightfall of its terror, and prophesies over the 
 death of day the glorious glow that will soon be 
 tiuting the- eastern chambers, whence it will burst 
 forth as a bridegroom, with a flush of triumph ; 
 so the year gathers a dress of living splendour 
 around her, as her step grows tremulous, and the 
 snows build the tomb which is to receive her to 
 
276 The Home Life. 
 
 her winter sleep. There is a quiet, a grand, even 
 a solemn tone about the hues and the- expression 
 of autumn, which have no depression in them, 
 because no death. " I shall not die, tut live, and 
 declare Thy wondrous worlcs,^^ nature is ever cry- 
 ing. " The king is dead ; long live the king ! " 
 is the proclamation which thej make on high over 
 the graves of the years. 
 
 Life has its hum evefl in the dead hush of a 
 midsumm«er noon. When the air seems so still 
 that silence grows oppressive, lay your ear to the 
 ground, and listen to the stir of the myriad in- 
 sects that are keeping their summer festival. 
 You will not marvel that simple hearts, in the 
 good old times, believed that the grasses and t£e 
 flower-cups were haunted, and that all the earth 
 and air was thronged with troops of joyous invisi- 
 ble sprites, dancing in the sunbeams, swinging in 
 the gossamer chains, hiding in the flower bells, 
 and making the summe;^ air musical with the 
 breath of their merriment and song. It needs a 
 more trained and observant ear to catch the same 
 undertone through the sighing winds and swirling 
 leaves of autumn, but it is there; life has but 
 drawn back to its source awhile, and there it is 
 gathering up its forces,. renewing its youth, and 
 
The Golden Autumn. 2Y7 
 
 preparing for the outburst of the spring. It is 
 the sense that there is no death in nature, that 
 she but weaves the dress of Him who ever liveth, 
 and has commission to weave on while He liveth, 
 which robs the autumn and the deepening winter 
 of all but a passing breath of sadness, and makes 
 their twilight hour the season of our most peace- 
 ful and happy musings. We too, if we have 
 caught the divine key-note, ar6 content to rest 
 with them when the main toil of our life-work is 
 over ; to rest and ripen, and lay up in the inner 
 cells the sap which shall make the flowers of our 
 eternal spmng. Sometimes, as in the Indian sum- 
 mer of Canada, and the St. Martin's summer of 
 Switzerland, autumn has a glory of its own which 
 contends with midsummer for the crown. ISTature 
 is never more splendid than in the calm golden 
 sunset of such seasons as these ; and then, too, the 
 vine, noblest of all fruits, and needing noblest cul- 
 ture, yields her blushing juices, and prolongs far 
 on towards the winter the living verdure and 
 beauty of the year. And men celebrate " Ad- 
 vent" in midwinter. As the shadows lengthen 
 and the world settles to its winter's sleep, homes 
 grow glad ; the long winter evenings are the sea- 
 sons of family intercourse and the higher human 
 
278 The Rome, Life, 
 
 jojs. IS'ot without significance is it that the 
 great Advent festival is celebrated when nature 
 lies bare and cold. There is in man's life a per- 
 petual effort to realise that the spring of his hopes 
 and joys lies where nature cannot touch it ; that 
 it is fed from a deeper fountain, which flows not 
 with her floods, and ebbs not with her decline. 
 The advent of Him who is our life, the world's 
 life, we chiefly hail when all lies dead and cold 
 around us ; sign to us of a life which shall outlast 
 the wreck of nature, and flourish in immortal 
 youth when the earth has settled into the silence 
 of its last winter ; though earth, too, comes forth, 
 quickened by the breath which quickens man, 
 into the brightness of an eternal spring. When 
 nature has spent all her substance and is beggared 
 for the time, man opens his richer treasures, and 
 brings forth his most precious stores. Life never 
 seems so rich, so joyous, so boundless in promise, 
 in hope, as when the home circle gathers round 
 the Christmas fire, whose light 'flashes cheerily on 
 the bleak wintry air ; while laughter, song, and 
 softer whispers, seem to mock the moaning wind, 
 and exult joyously over decay and death. 
 
 " My subject here is the autumn of life. A 
 golden autumn, we all may make it, and then it 
 
The Golden Autumn. 279 
 
 is among the most beautiful, yea, the most fruit- 
 ful, of all the seasons of life. 
 
 I. The key to the beauty of autumn must be 
 sought in the coming spring. 
 
 ''At even time there shall he light^'^ is the 
 broad grand promise which stretches like a heaven 
 of brightness over this world of struggle, decay, 
 and death. Evening is lit by the promise of 
 morning, autumn is lit by the promise of spring ; 
 and life's quiet eventide is lit by the radiance of 
 the eternal heaven. Strike out that promise, kill 
 the germ that lies in the heart of decay, the hope 
 that nestles and stirs under the ribs of death, and 
 the world is a huge sepulchre — a chamber of hor- 
 rors, where all loathsome things are gathered, and 
 souls go shuddering by. But God hath writ the 
 promise large, so that every eye can read it — 
 " light at evening timeP To every brave effort, 
 to every high hope, to every strong endm'ance, to 
 every weary day of toil, there is light at evening ; 
 because, to those who have the heart to look for 
 them,, behind the gathering gloom there is God, 
 heaven, and eternity. ITothing that lives need 
 dread the darkness ; to the living it is but the veil 
 of a brighter day. 
 
280 The Home Life, 
 
 And here is the inspiration of life in its de- 
 cline, an inspiration which may make its decline 
 more beautiful, more hopeful, than its spring. 
 At the root of all that can ennoble and beautify 
 the wasting decaying powers, lies the love of God 
 and the hope of heaven. Let a man open his 
 heart in his spring to that fountain of renewing, 
 let him plant himself early by the watercourses 
 of God's grace and love, and he robs the destroyer 
 of all his power and all his terror. The decay 
 which touches his life as a creature,. and begins to 
 wither and waste his powers the moment he has 
 touched his prime — the eclipse which falls over 
 nature as the ear grows dull, and the eye grows 
 dim, are but the wearing out of a dress which has 
 served him awhile ; he watches, not calmly only, 
 but with quiet thankftdness, as it grows thin and 
 drops piecemeal into dust, longing to put on the. 
 braver dress which he will wear in the presence- 
 chamber of the King of kings. 
 
 Give a man love and hope, and what can sad- 
 den hiin % Love for the present, hope for the fu- 
 ture, a spring of pure fresh joy which can never 
 fail him, a glow in the distance hourly brighten- 
 ing, which, as he nears it, flashes out into glorious 
 day. If men nourished their souls more freely at 
 
TJie Golden Autumn, 281 
 
 these foimtains, and breathed more deeply these 
 inspirations, should we hear so much, think you, 
 of sour, crabbed, and querulous old age? What 
 makes men sour and crabbed, but because their 
 roots so rarely touch the everlasting river ? "What 
 makes men querulous, but because they cloud 
 with their vanity and selfishness the flush in the 
 skies of hope % I have known one of splendid 
 power of intellect and spirit, full of the energy 
 that can lead and govern men, made as feeble as 
 an infant, as dependent, by the first touch of ad 
 vancing death ; and he spent long helpless months, 
 nay years, in the calmest acquiescence, the se- 
 renest peace, the most cheerful contentment with 
 the Higher Will to which his life had been one 
 long homage, in the most gentle, nay, playful 
 self-adjustment to the new, and to the onlookers, 
 sad conditions of the strong man's long decay. 
 So also have I seen a smile more beautiful than 
 any which I have seen in living faces, playing 
 around a dead man's lips. 
 
 Feed your spring and summer in the green 
 pastures, and at the* still waters by which the 
 Eternal Shepherd is ever striving to lead you ; 
 grapple your heart of hearts to the Friend whose 
 fellowship, whose love, shall be like "the springs 
 
282 The Home Life. 
 
 and the palms of EKm to tlie panting and faint- 
 ing host, and tten fear not but that the antumn 
 of yonr life, however storm-beaten and bare, will 
 have a golden beauty of its own, which will leave 
 no regrets for summer, and which will have closer 
 kindred with the radiant glory of eternity. 
 
 I have said of old age, dwelling on the aspect 
 which it so constantly and so sadly wears in such 
 a world as this, that the main work and interest 
 of hfe is over when the children go forth and 
 leave the parents in the old home alone. It is 
 true enough in a sense. From that time the day 
 begins to draw downwards, the shadows lengthen, 
 and there is a chill in the evening air that flavours 
 of night. It is much as moonhght to sunlight, 
 this age of life to which the grandchild belongs 
 rather than the child. The age when the stir and 
 struggle of the battle are over, when the business 
 is made, and the position is won, and the busy 
 and burdensome part of it passes into younger 
 and more energetic hands. But the moonlight 
 has its beauty as well as the sunlight, and it is 
 richer in suggestions of the spiritual and heavenly 
 sphere. And God is very tender with us. I am 
 often full of wonder at the tender fatherly touches 
 that lie thick about us in all the order and con- 
 
The Golden Aichomn. 283 
 
 duct of our lives. How few homes are stript 
 quite bare; how few aged ones are left quite 
 alone ! How constantly love, prompted of God, 
 makes some tender provision for their quiet even- 
 ing and darkening night ! One daughter stays 
 by'them perhaps, or a niece, a grandchild, a ward, 
 who finds it a dear and sacred duty to cheer and 
 smooth their down-hill path, and who makes the 
 otherwise desolate home beautiful and blessed by 
 the ministries of devoted and vigilant love. 
 
 And if all the young ones are gone, " John 
 Anderson," and his dear old dame, are not the 
 saddest figures upon earth, as they live over the 
 past again by their " ain fireside," or tread to- 
 gether the shortening path ; and when one goes 
 first, the other is not long in following — God will 
 not keep them too far or too long apart. There 
 is a cloud, and to the eye of sense it looks a dark 
 and a dense one, overshadowing the age of decay 
 and decrepitude ; but we can catch the edge of 
 the silver lining and see a soft fair lustre lighting 
 the path to the very borders of the tomb. There . 
 it brightens with an awful brightness : 
 
 " To death it is given, 
 To see how this earth lies embosomed in heaven." 
 
284 The Borne Life. 
 
 II. To prepare for a golden fruitful alltnmii 
 sliould be one of the main aims of a man in his 
 youth and his prime. 
 
 Not that our chief work here is to prepare for 
 times and seasons, save as far as the preparation 
 for one time is the preparation for all time. 
 There is no schism in the body of our times. 
 Man is one, and his Hfe is one, through all its 
 stages ; and there is nothing better for the child, 
 for the youth, for the man, for the old man, for 
 the dying man, than " to do justly^ to love mercy ^ 
 and to walk humbly with Ms GodP There is 
 nothing which can prepare a man for the peaceful 
 and fruitful autumn of life, which will not equally 
 be his preparation for the winter of death, and 
 the spring of resurrection. But the thought of 
 the years of decline and decay which are before 
 him, " ere yet the silver cord he loosed^ or the golden 
 howl he hrdken^ or the mourners go about the 
 streets ; " when, if he have no springs within which 
 are fed from the perennial spring on high, life will 
 be but a long and terrible wrestling with death, 
 may well drive in on a man's heart and conscience 
 the lesson, " Rememiber now thy Creator in the 
 days of thy youth^'^ and inspire the prayer, " Let 
 
The Golden Autumn. 285 
 
 rq.e live the life of the righteous, that my last end 
 may be like theirs." 
 
 There are few men who do not think anxiously 
 about some provision for the evening of life, when 
 the powers will be feebler for their tasks, and the 
 hope of rest from the toils of business will grow 
 daily more dear. Men will save and pinch, and 
 starve their children's minds at any rate, if not 
 their bodies^ to lay up gold against the days of de- 
 cline and decay. A provision for old age is one 
 of the main inspirations of the years of business 
 toils and cares. " There is another thousand safe 
 against the time when I can work no longer," a 
 man says to himself, and finds in the thought a 
 rich compensation for many privations and for 
 wearing toils. But wherefore spend ye your 
 money for that which is not hreadf and your 
 labour for that which satisjleth not f An old age 
 wdth plenty to feed it, and nothing to occupy, in- 
 terest, and cultivate it, is surely one of the roost 
 dismal things under the sun. I would have you 
 prepare a real and rich provision — ^bread and wine 
 that will make your age fairer and fresher than 
 your youth, which will make your home a nook 
 to which young children love to gather, as bees 
 
286 The Rome Ufe. 
 
 cluster to flowers, to sip the nectar of jour wis- 
 dom, and nestle in the embrace of your love. 
 
 I^or do I mean by these counsels to urge you 
 to what would be called " the exclusive cultiva- 
 tion of piety." It is a great mistake to suppose 
 that God can dispense with the cultivation of any 
 of om* powers. The man who systematically lets 
 mind and body go to wreck, while he cares exclu- 
 sively for what he pleases to consider " the inter- 
 ests of his soul," is in a fair way to spend a joy- 
 less and loveless old age, and to lie at length in a 
 forgotten tomb. Piety is only seen in its true 
 strength and beauty in the harmony of all the 
 powers. It sits as queen, but it is cheerless and 
 joyless without its court. A cleanly, pure, robust 
 body ; a cultivated, well-stored, and penetrating 
 mind ; a large, tender, and sympathetic heart, as 
 well as a pious believing spirit, go to make old 
 age honoured and blest. 
 
 And I would have young men remember, in 
 view of the infirmities and sorrows of age, that a 
 wasteful and wanton youth, makes the chief of 
 the blots which disfigure, and the pains which 
 torment it. If you want years of miserable de- 
 cay, begin early to " hve fast." It is a sure re- 
 ceipt. It is sin, as I have said, which lends all 
 
TTie Golden Autumn. 287 
 
 that is terrible to decay and death. But for the 
 work of sin in ns, the work of time upon ns would 
 be benign and beautiful as on the *^ green bay- 
 tree," whose leaves wither and drop only when 
 they are thrust out by the buds of spring. And 
 excess in youth, excess of all sorts, leaves its bit- 
 ter and inevitable legacy, in a fretful, Tfeary, 
 hateful old age. When I speak of excess, I am 
 not simply thinking of the coarser forms ; girls in 
 their vanities, frivolities, and dissipations, may be 
 as wasteful of the vital energy as men in their 
 gambling dens and stews. You reckon so much 
 saved each day to make your old age " warm," as 
 the saying goes. I wish you would open a larger 
 ledger, and reckon that the manful conquest of a 
 temptation to vicious indulgence, the curtailment 
 of a wasteful amusement or pursuit, the effort to 
 expand the physical powers with which God has 
 endowed you, that you may keep a sound body 
 to be the tabernacle of a sound mind, itself to be 
 cultivated by other discipline, is a far nobler and 
 a far more useful investment, and one that will 
 pay better in the common stuff of comfort and 
 happiness, than untold stores of gold. Paralysis 
 is little the better for gilding. A bleared eye and 
 a shaky hand get but little pleasure out of rolls 
 
288 The Home Life, 
 
 of crisp bank-notes. And youth is tlie time to 
 practise the lesson. " Oh, could I but have my 
 youth over again ! " how many palsied reprobates 
 are crying. For remember, young friends, a con- 
 stitution once impaired, health once broken, vital 
 strength once squandered, no agony of effort, or 
 even»prayer, can repair or restore. 
 
 I would counsel all men and women, and more 
 especially those of constant and close occupation, 
 during their days of enterprise and energy, when 
 the whole time and strength seems to be impe- 
 riously demanded for the day's work, to set apart 
 some small fragment of them rigidly, as conse- 
 crated to yet higher use. I say yet higher use. 
 For I regard the honourable toils of business, or 
 of the home management, as a very high and 
 worthy use of the powers. I would have men 
 throw their energy into commerce, as into a work 
 which is worthy of them; and I would have 
 women master the details of home economy with 
 a thoroughness which would leave their servants 
 but little independent scope. Figures, stuffs, bills 
 — it may seem poor in detail, but it is not a poor 
 thing to help to carry on, however humbly, the 
 great commerce of life. By these things the 
 world lives and grows, and offers an ever-widen- 
 
The Golden Autumn. 289 
 
 ing seed-field to him wlio has the seed of the di- 
 vine culture to cast into it, fresh from the Great 
 Sower's hand. 
 
 But much of the cheerfulness and happiness 
 of life's autumn, depend on the measure in which 
 a man has concerned himself with something 
 other than his business, with the culture of the 
 intellect, the enlargement of the higher faculties 
 of the being, and their education for a superior 
 sphere. How many men when they relax the 
 strain of attention to business, and women when 
 the children are married, and the main parfof 
 their home cares is off their hands, begin at once 
 to stagnate — ^happy if they do not become like 
 sluggish waters, foul with weeds and slime. Men 
 who will not read when they are young, cannot 
 read when they are old. They have no interest 
 in it, and no heart for it. Men who will not go 
 forth into nature, and train themselves to search 
 into her wonders, while their minds and senses 
 are keen, when they grow old sit moping over 
 their fires, or go pottering about their gardens, 
 killing the most precious thing in the universe to 
 the wise man — time, time to think, time to ac- 
 quire, time to love, time to bless mankind. 
 
 But there are men of business, who are not 
 13 
 
290 The Home Life. 
 
 indisposed to cultivate tlieir minds, and lay up 
 some priceless stores of tliouglits and habits to 
 cheer the evening of their days, who yet complain 
 that they have not a moment for study or even 
 for a look at nature; business presses morning, 
 noon, and night, and must be done. Well, the 
 root of it all is " hasting to be rich," to put it in 
 plain terms. You cannot get rich while you are 
 young, and give at the same time some fair culti- 
 vation to your nobler powers. Be absorbe4, body, 
 soul, and spirit, in business, and life becomes a 
 business ; and when you are out of business, you 
 have no business at all in life. 
 
 I would have every man of close occupation 
 make it a sacred duty to keep up a li\dng knowl- 
 edge of, and interest in, some pursuit, science, 
 art, or craft, outside the circle of his daily task. 
 Thereby he will keep his mental faculties in fair 
 play upon their appointed objects, and lay up for 
 himself a pursuit and an education, which will 
 occupy nobly and happily the autumn of life. 
 What men want is something to carry on their 
 education till they die — something which will 
 continually draw them out to fresh observation, 
 fi-esh reflection, fresh acquisition, with ever stronger 
 and riper power. And such objects must be set 
 
The Golden Autumn. 291 
 
 before the mind's eye in youth, they must give 
 their tincture to the blood when it is warm and 
 vivid. ^N'o middle-aged man can hope to break 
 up a new seedfield of thought with any chance 
 of a high success. Clip a bit from your daily 
 earnings rather than from your daily study. Sur- 
 round yourselves with objects of interest and 
 beauty, the mere living with which will be a par- 
 tial education, preparing you to search out their 
 more hidden meanings, when the toil of your 
 busiest years is over, and you can spare time and 
 thought for the things which your soul has taught 
 itself to delight in and to love. 
 
 How many of your friends seem to be en- 
 larging, ripening, and rising heavenward with 
 the years? Cold, hard, selfish, loveless old age 
 abounds ; mainly because men sell so much of the 
 pith and the fire of their youth for gold, and are 
 just like a worked-out mine of force, when the 
 life of earth should be ripening for heaven. The 
 play and even the strain of the faculties — ^the 
 various faculties of body, mind, and spirit, in wise 
 proportions and alternations — ^is the true human 
 joy. Plenty to think of, plenty to observe, plenty 
 to pursue, plenty to delight in, plenty to help, 
 plenty to love — these make the gladness and the 
 
292 The Home Life. 
 
 riclies of tlie being. And men and women who 
 deliberately shut themselves up to a narrow pas- 
 ture, and care just for one thing in life, the busir 
 ness or the household toils, spend a joyless spring, 
 a sunless summer, quite miss their autumn, and 
 settle into the drearihood of winter in their prime. 
 It is said of some nations that they know no child- 
 hood, the children become little men and women 
 as soon as they can flirt and strut. Equally sad 
 is it for a people to have no benign and rich old 
 age. And it is just the goodness and manifold- 
 ness of the objects with which a man occupies 
 himself in his prime, the objects of his thought, 
 pursuit, and love through his spring and summer, 
 which make his autumn golden, and shield its 
 fruits from the blights of winter, till they are 
 gathered into the gamers on high. 
 
 III. The occupations and cares of a golden 
 autumn have a larger scope and richer interest, 
 though they may be inspired by a feebler energy, 
 than those of the youth and the prime. For — 
 
 1. The head ought to grow wiser as the hands 
 grow feebler and the pulse slower. The man 
 whose busy life is well-nigh done, has a noble 
 sphere in counselling the workers, and tenipering 
 
The Golden Autumn, 293 
 
 in due measures the fervour of youth with the 
 calmness, the certainty, and the constancy of age. 
 In due measures, I say, and here is where the old 
 seem so constantly to fail, and to throw them- 
 selves out of gear with the new times. They 
 fight against the current instead of striking in 
 with it, and lose all power of guiding it, in the 
 hopeless, desperate endeavour to stem it or to 
 turn it aside. For stemmed it will not be, aside 
 it will not go. Each age has its new key-note. 
 There are but few of the aged who seem able to 
 catch the tune of the new time, and to strike in 
 with it. The ways, the habits, the needs, the 
 aims, the hopes, of the young generation jar on 
 them. It sounds like a new gospel, and anath- 
 ema is ready on their lips. And the young de- 
 light to parade its newness. They take pride in 
 the new time and in its promise, and flout the 
 wisdom of the past. Yet the new time is much 
 more like the old time, young friends, than you 
 are dreaming ; the thoughts that stir your blood, 
 stirred your fathers' before you were born. But 
 if the old men, instead of looking lovingly upon 
 the new ideas and methods which the young en- 
 ergy of the age invents or announces, and the 
 ardent hope with which it starts on its career, will 
 
294 The Home Life. 
 
 frown, and carp, and sneer, will obstruct enter- 
 prises and prophecy miscarriages, will seek to 
 lower tlie tone of effort, and to cliill the ardonr 
 of hope, they will be diiven to the wall inevita- 
 bly; the tides may be stopped as easily as the 
 progress of the times. I would that old men 
 could believe more heartily in God as the leader 
 of the progress, and be sure that the new age, 
 equally with the old, is under His guiding hand. 
 If they find it hard to trust it, at least let them 
 trust the God who leads it, and show a genial joy 
 in its progress, for it does but continue the prog- 
 ress which in their times they led. 
 
 Above all, I would have the young impetuous 
 spirits believe that then- fathers have pored over 
 the same problems which puzzle them, and have 
 tried in their way the solutions of which the new 
 time makes its boasts. They have made no great 
 discovery, however brilliant may be their specula- 
 tions ; they simply stand on the vantage ground 
 of their fathers' lives, and sweep the horizon of 
 a somewhat wider world. I would have them 
 soften, in their intercourse with the elders, the 
 contrasts which they are prone to exaggerate, and 
 bring forth the common truth which underlies the 
 conflicting statements, delighting to recognise the 
 
The Golden Autumn. 295 
 
 bond wliicli makes tlie first and tlie last genera- 
 tions one. I would have them honour the battle- 
 cries which the fathers bore through many a hard- 
 fought field of intellectual and spiritual conflict, 
 and take their chief joy and pride in that which 
 unites them with the past. We should have less 
 schism then in homes and generations, and the old 
 would be less disposed to moan that God keeps 
 them lingering on ground which they seem but 
 to cumber, and that the world would get on bet- 
 ter, and would escape many sorrows and troubles, 
 if they were fairly out of the way. 
 
 But the true old man's wisdom needs no such 
 pliances and concessions. It will blend kindly 
 with the young enthusiasm; it will guide and 
 temper it ; it will lend it method and firmness, 
 and show to it the way to realise its hope. The 
 old man's chair ought to be the oracle to the 
 young ones of the household, the company, the 
 state. They should be drawn to his wisdom as 
 stars to their sun. The gray-headed patriarch, if 
 he understands the secret of his power, if he 
 grows while he lives, will make his word a more 
 powerful, and his work a more precious thing, 
 than when he could throw into them all the fire 
 and energy of his youth. A wise and genial old 
 
296 TU Borne Life. 
 
 man or woman is one of the noblest of human 
 figures, if not the very noblest. There is some- 
 thing in the true relation of the patriarch to the 
 younger race growing up under his shadow, at 
 which we have just hinted, which is singularly 
 beautiful. But for selfishness — selfish old men, 
 selfish young men — we should realise it as a prin- 
 ciple of divine order in all our homes and states. 
 The quiet withdrawing from the scenes of hot 
 and contentious activity which occupy the prime 
 of every life, should be but the beginning of a 
 new and calmer, but a more constant, benign, and 
 noble energy ; of which the home circle, the busi- 
 ness, the parish, the state, according to the sphere 
 and the habit of the life, should show blessed and 
 abundant fruits. And this leads us to a second 
 point. 
 
 2. One of the main concerns of a life in its 
 golden autumn is charity. 
 
 I use the word in its larger sense. I would 
 include in it all that disciplined, patient, unselfish 
 energy can do to serve mankind, and most espe- 
 cially the afiflicted of this world and its poor. To 
 wise, good men, in their golden autumn, society 
 looks to be dts almoners, its guardians, its over- 
 seers. Rising above the nan'ow interests of a 
 
The Golden Autumn. 297 
 
 business wliich has gain for its inspiration, thej 
 find a wider, nobler field before tliem in the ser- 
 vice of their fellow-men. " The cause that we 
 know not," like Job, thej can " search out for 
 us." " They can be " eyes to the blind, and feet to 
 the lame ; " they can be " fathers to the poor ; " 
 they can " break for us the jaws of the wicked, 
 and pluck the spoil out of their teeth." The wis- 
 dom, the patience, the compassion which they 
 have gained in the battle, they can exercise for us 
 in a nobler field. They can be the elders of our 
 churches, the guardians of our poor, the visitors 
 of our prisoners and captives, the nurses of our 
 sick, the teachers of our ignorant, the guides of 
 our public and private ministries of mercy. Their 
 old age may be more than beautiful ; the golden 
 autumn may glow into glory. There have been 
 men and women in their green old age, with no 
 transcendent powers, who have made themselves 
 names as angels of mercy, which shall ring through 
 the world while the world endures. 
 
 There is thus a large sphere of duty, and that 
 the highest, which they may make all their own ; 
 in which no young, brilliant Elihu can compete 
 with them. And they may so occupy it that, 
 when the tottering limbs fail at last, and refuse to 
 13* 
 
298 The Home L'ife. 
 
 bear the still eager spirit through its wonted 
 rounds, it shall bring poor men's blessings round 
 their dying pillow, thick as the troop of white- 
 winged angels, who wait to bear the worn-out sol- 
 dier of duty from his field of battle to his glorious 
 rest. I think that in God's scheme of our lives, 
 which our selfishness is ever marring, but of 
 which in the lives of our greatest and purest we 
 have gleams, this season of higher service is inter- 
 posed with benign beauty between the busy and 
 too selfish cares of our maturity, and the yet 
 higher service in God's kingdom to which it is to 
 exalt us beyond. 
 
 3. The golden autumn of life ought to be a 
 quiet but profoundly impressive homily upon 
 hope. 
 
 Quiet, I say. The evening does not babble 
 about the morrow. The autumn does not babble 
 about the spring. " In qidetness and confidence 
 shall he your strength'''' is the patriarch's text. 
 Quiet trust, quiet joy, quiet hope. We are almost 
 losing our knowledge of the quiet virtues. Old 
 age, ripe and genial, with a glow still on it, must 
 keep them before our sight. I would not have 
 the patriarchs always talking about heaven. 
 " Pious talk," from lips or from books, has done 
 
The Golden Autumn. 299 
 
 its utmost to mar the witness of pious life. Lit- 
 tle talk there may be, though, words on heaven 
 fall sweetly from aged lips, but I would have old 
 men look as if they were familiar with its path- 
 ways, and not without some rich foretaste of its 
 
 joys. 
 
 The fixed expression of their gentle decline 
 should be hope. Men catch it readily enough, 
 and feel the inspiration of it, when it is there. I 
 am not sure that it was not the unconscious con- 
 tagion of the strange joy and hope with which 
 the apostolic Church was animated, which com- 
 menced the revival that swept with its quicken- 
 ing breath through all the higher philosophy and 
 literature of the pagan world. Hope is a gospel 
 which life really preaches. And children even 
 can see when decay and death are stripped of 
 their terrors, and when the beloved and honoured 
 elders in their home, just 
 
 " Long for evening to undress, 
 That they may rest with God." 
 
 Nothing, I am sure, strikes such a pure, high 
 key-note in a home, as an old age which has a 
 genial smile for earth, and a home-longing look 
 to heaven. And forms of dear and honoured 
 
300 TTie Home Life. 
 
 patriarclis come up into my memory as I write 
 these words, grand and good old men, to live un- 
 der the shadow of whose liyes was a benediction, 
 and who have left households rich in reverence, 
 rich in concord, rich in hope. God send to us old 
 age so full of tender, childlike interest in all 
 human things, that infants may prattle their tales 
 into its ear ; so full of ripe wisdom and celestial 
 love, that angels might find in it fit audience for 
 the histories and the hymns of heaven ! The 
 beautiful link of the two worlds ! Strong, brave 
 father 1 Wise, true mother ! The frame is bowed 
 a little, and the step grows tremulous. There are 
 wrinkles on the broad, calm brow, and the clear 
 pallor of healthy age tones- the once ruddy cheek. 
 The enemy has his touch on- you, but a smile 
 steals up as you recognise the form which brings 
 your summons to your home, your rest. The last 
 legacy, I think, which you will leave to your chil- 
 dren, and your children's children, when you part 
 from them, will be the smile of immortal life, 
 playing around the stifiening lips of death. 
 
XI. 
 THE WHOLE FAMILY. 
 
 " The whole family. ''"' — Ern. iii. 15. 
 
 To comprehend this wholeness we must take 
 in the two worlds. Life completes itself through 
 death. By death only the two bands whom death 
 had severed become one. And this is the Chris- 
 tian victory over death. The terror compelled to 
 become the minister ; the demon transformed into 
 the angel; the great destroyer changed into the 
 great reconciler, and constrained to complete with 
 eternal perfectness that unity which, but for 
 Christ, he had for ever destroyed. 
 
 I cling to the thought of " over-abounding 
 grace " which fills so large a space in the writings 
 of St. Paul. Words have to stretch themselves 
 to their utmost tension, to express what the apos- 
 tle realised when he meditated on the divine mys- 
 tery, " The love of God in Christ., which passeth 
 
• 302 The Home Life. 
 
 hnowledge.'^'^ " Moreover, the law entered that the 
 offence might abound ; hut where sin abounded, 
 grace did much more abound ^ that as sin hath 
 reigned unto death, even so might grace reign, 
 through righteousness, unto eternal life, by 
 Jesus Christ our LordP The contrast between 
 " abounded" and " mucli more abounded," in our 
 translation, verj poorly expresses the force of the 
 contrast in the original expression of St. Paul. 
 Kot a superior but a superlative mastery is ex- 
 pressed by his impetuous words. Grace shall not 
 rebuild ruins only, but recreate with superlative 
 ■^ralidem* and splendour what sin had destroyed; 
 and foremost among these transformations is this 
 transformation of death. Death through Christ 
 completes the edifice of life, and crowns it. The 
 touch which, through the legacy which Adam left 
 us, rifles homes and hearts of their treasures, in 
 Christ becomes their consecration; the dew of 
 death is transmuted into the chrism of eternal 
 
 joy. 
 
 " O death, I will be thy plagues ! O grave, I 
 will be thy destruction ! " cried the prophet in the 
 Divine name, under a dispensation which we too 
 readily believe saw through the veil but dimly, 
 and had but feeble grasp of the realities of " life 
 
The Whole Family, 303 
 
 and immortality." It is just this triumphant 
 sense of power 'over the dark element in life — 
 over all that belongs to the region of the shadow 
 of death — which the gospel of life substantiates. 
 Such passages as these in the Old Testament 
 scripture^ — and they are many — are the first notes 
 of the exulting strain which runs through the 
 l!Tew, and finds fullest expression in the rapturous 
 language of St. Paul. Words cannot express the 
 sense of exuberant power which filled him, when 
 he reahsed what his life as a redeem^ed man in 
 Christ implied and prophesied. All the sadness 
 of life, all the bitterness of death, absolutely van- 
 ished from his field of vision. "Was tribulation 
 his experiencej " hoiids^ affl/ictions, persecutions,^'' 
 a glorious joy possessed him, and bore him through 
 them triumphantly. Did death affront him, and 
 there was no moment w^hen it was far away, he 
 but lifted his voice in a more joyous burst of 
 thanksgiving, that death was for ever " swallowed 
 up in mctoryP 
 
 What timid reading do we give to the words, 
 " If while we were enemies we were reconciled to 
 God hy the death of His Son, much more, heing 
 reconciled, we shall he saved hy His life ! " If 
 the death destroyed death for us, and wrought our 
 
304 The Home Life. 
 
 great deliverance, how mucli more shall the life 
 enrich and glorify life ! Have faith, and exnlt in 
 the boundless possibilities of the future. " Said 
 I not unto thee that if thou loouldest lelieve, {hou 
 shoiddest see the glory of God f " Does any one 
 of us imagine, even faintly, what that may mean ? 
 Ib it a brother restored on earth to a dear embrace 
 — the light shining again in the home, with a 
 tinge in it of celestial brightness, as the risen 
 man, recovered from death, rejoined the familiar 
 company ? Or is it the brothers gathering in the 
 eternal home, purged of all stain, and pure from 
 every taint and flaw, bathed in the lustre of the 
 supernal sunlight, one in love, in life, for ever- 
 more? A strange and awful joy, surely, shall 
 possess us, when we behold once more the parted, 
 and miss for ever the mortal blemish, the flaws, 
 the stains, the weaknesses of sin, and see the 
 noble features which we loved and cherished 
 transfigured, bright with an immortal beauty, and 
 glowing with an immortal life. We shall have a 
 vision then of what " saved ly His life " may 
 mean. Till then, ^' Lord, we helieve ; hut help 
 Thou o^ir ujibelief'' 
 
 Let me ask you to consider with me — 
 
The Whole Family. 305 
 
 I. The inevitable rupture of tlie unity of the 
 home. 
 
 We say not, it may he broken: it must be 
 broken. The hour, comes inevitably when you 
 shall watch the death-shadow deepening on the 
 face that you most dearly love. The last word 
 will be spoken, the last look of love will gleam 
 forth, and then you question the still rosy lips, 
 but they are for ever silent; you search the 
 depths of the beloved eyes, but a film has gath- 
 ered over them, the depths have vanished, only a 
 cold dull mask is there. And a great agony seizes 
 the soul that is widowed ; a great wail, a great 
 appeal, it may be a great protest, goes up from an 
 overstrained heart to God. This lies in the fu- 
 ture of every home, blessed be God. We say 
 blessed be God m faith here, we shall repeat it in 
 open vision there, when death has transplanted 
 the whole family to the home which the Lord has 
 founded and adorned for it on high. But a stern, 
 sad experience lies between all of us and that 
 consummation ; an experience which the steadfast 
 vision of the consummation alone can transmute 
 into solemn and holy joy. 
 
 And Death, who bursts the bond and rifles the 
 treasures of our homes, wears to the eye of sense 
 
306 The Home Life. 
 
 no angelic aspect. In this sin-liaunted sphere lie 
 still wears liis dress of terrors. He is one of God's 
 chief preachers of righteousness, and bears^ form 
 which drives his lessons home. Were death but 
 translation, we conld hail his advent. Enoch, 
 Elijah, found death, the one a gentle, the other a 
 triumphant passage, to the joys and the splen- 
 dours of eternity. But Adam left not transla- 
 tion as his legacy to his children. " Sin entered 
 into the world, and death hy sin,^^ and death, 
 wedded to sin, brought a terror of dying into the 
 human heart. Part of death, perhaps the saddest 
 part, is the inevitable decay ; the long, slow, sad 
 decline, sad but for the light which falls on it 
 from a higher sphere. ''As our outer man de- 
 cayeth, our inner man is renewed day ty dayP 
 " For we Tcnow, that, if our earthly house of this 
 tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of 
 God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring 
 to he clothed upon with our house which is from 
 heaven : if so be that being clothed, we shall not 
 be found nahed. For we that are in this taberna- 
 cle do groan, being burdened : not for that we 
 would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortal- 
 ity might be swallowed up of life " (2 Cor. v. 1-4). 
 
The Whole Family. 307 
 
 God will not have us forget in tlii& world the evil 
 tree, of which sin is the bitter fruit. All the 
 dread apparatus of death, is God's lesson to the 
 living about sin. There is no attempt on the part 
 of heaven to soften or sweeten the homilj. Chris- 
 tianity brought to us no mitigation of the physi- 
 cal pains and fears of dying. Its whole work is 
 in the spirit which endures them, and sees in them 
 the birth-pangs of the life eternal. And this is 
 the solace, yea, the more than solace, of bereave- 
 ment in a Christian home : the whole family, limb 
 by limb, and organ by organ, is being born into 
 the home where it shall dwell eternally. 
 
 A touch of sadness must enter here into all 
 our loves. The closer we twine the heart-strings, 
 the sharper the pain when they part, as part they 
 must. It is the dire necessity of life — death, and 
 the heart-aches, the life weariness that death brings 
 in its train. The family stock lives on, but the 
 old leaves drop and the young buds expand and 
 occupy their room, to wither and die in turn. 
 I^ot only has Christianity not mitigated the phys- 
 ical pain and the fear that attend on death, there 
 is a sense in which it has intensified them. There 
 can be no question that the influence of the gos- 
 pel has raised to a higher pitch our joys and 
 
308 The Home Life. 
 
 hopes. Tlie sensibilities of liiimanity have grown 
 more keen, the bonds have been drawn more close 
 in homes and states. Human joy is a higher 
 thing, pm*er and more intense, since the day when 
 one could say m the name of Chiist, " Hejoice in 
 the Lord alioay, and agavn L say rejoice / " but 
 with intenser joy, also, intenser pain. The larger 
 body casts the larger shadow, and as humanity 
 has grown in strength, dignity, and conception of 
 what Hfe means and life is worth, the pains and 
 the fears have grown with it ; there is more at 
 stake, more to lose, more to suffer. 
 
 And this has been the work of the gospel. It 
 has taught us how to love. It has dignified, pu- 
 rified, and consecrated the most intense of the 
 forms of love. If has made wedded love a loftier 
 thing than anything of which a pagan dreamed ; 
 and it has added fresh strength and tenderness to 
 the relationships which grow out of the home. 
 But it is not afraid of increasing in the circle of 
 light, lest it should increase also the circumference 
 of shadow. It is not afraid of exalting the joys 
 of hfe, because its pain must grow more intense 
 by the same rule ; for it holds that life and joy 
 are the conquerors. Darkness and pain are for 
 time, light and joy are for eternity. In strength- 
 
The Whole Family. 309 
 
 ening tlie life, the love, it is giving to us an eter- 
 nal victory. It bids ns front the peril, and smile 
 at the pain, from which it cannot shield ns, be- 
 cause of its abounding power to bear us through 
 it and beyond it ; and to complete our life in the 
 world where there shall be no more pain for ever. 
 In the home life the double experience is realised 
 most intensely. The Christian home makes most 
 of its relationships, and the gap is widest, the pain 
 is deepest, when the circle is broken in upon by 
 death. But the Christian household aims at a 
 higher completeness than the life of this world 
 can compass. It is not an accident, it is not a 
 stroke, it is a vital stage of its growth, it is a 
 grand step of its progress toward its consumma- 
 tion, when its dearest pass through the veil and 
 beckon the mourners from beyond. For — 
 
 II. The whole family, death only can coni- 
 plete. 
 
 Death has a double aspect, as he works through 
 Christ or through Adam. In the one he despoils, 
 in the other he crowns us ; in the one he disrobes, 
 in the other he arrays us ; in the one he breaks 
 up the unity, which in the other he completes. 
 Wholeness belongs not to this world. There is 
 
310 The Home Life. 
 
 no whole human experience, there is no whole 
 human friendship, there is no whole human pos- 
 session, which is all contained within this world's 
 bounds. I have endeavoured in a former dis- 
 course to prove to you how man must take the 
 eternal into his horizon of vision, if he is to un- 
 derstand tnily even a fragment of his present life. 
 Like some cunning royal texture, where there is a 
 peculiar thread running through the whole fabric, 
 so that the smallest portion tells the tale of the 
 place and year of its production, there is not a 
 broken bit of the most wasted life which has not 
 some feature about it that can be explained only 
 by eternity. And if we can say it of the basest 
 fragment, must we not believe of the noblest fab- 
 ric which the Lord has founded and edified in this 
 world, that it too has an eternal life, which can 
 be seen in its completeness only " in the general 
 assemhly and Church of the first-lorn " on high. 
 The family which we see, that portion of it which 
 earth contains at any moment, is but a ring, a link 
 of a golden chain, which is dropped from heaven 
 and taken up into heaven again. 
 
 Children of a Christian home, it is sacred 
 ground on which you are standing, it has been 
 won for you by the toils, the heroisms, the sacri- 
 
The Whole Family, 311 
 
 fices, perhaps by tlie life-blood of godly sires. 
 That family tradition, that atmosphere of the 
 family life, in which yon were nnrtnred, which 
 you breathed with yonr first breath, and which 
 has lent its tincture from the first to the currents 
 of your blood, was not the creature of accident or 
 even of words. How many noble lives of men 
 and women do you reckon in your line % How 
 many names are in your family Bibles which are 
 also written in the Lamb's book of life % Step by 
 step, perhaps generation by generation, the fam- 
 ily has lifted itself to a higher level, has attained 
 to a wider culture, and has taken a larger part in 
 the affairs of life. Who shall tell what brave 
 struggles, heroic endurances, wrestling prayers, 
 utter sacrifices, have made that fabric of the fam- 
 ily life and the family fortunes, v/hich are your 
 rich inheritance? And what is left of them — 
 these men and women whose sacred dust is your 
 vantage ground, and whose achievements are your 
 heritage ? Is it simply that dust and those sacred 
 memories ? Is a memory of them all that lives 
 in God's universe ? And when you die, is a mem- 
 ory all that will survive of you ? It was for you, 
 for their children's children, that these men toiled 
 and suffered ; that the family might live before 
 
312 The Home Life, 
 
 God, thej watched, and wept, and prayed. They 
 are gone, but have they borne no loves and vis- 
 ions with them ; loves that cling still to the dear 
 ones who hold the legacy of their lives, and vis- 
 ions of the time, when they shall see of their trav- 
 ail as the children join them, and gather the fruit 
 of theii' toils in eternity ? 
 
 Surely there is something in this fanaily stock 
 which has a real existence in tlie universe. It is 
 not a name only, a string on which a succession 
 of individuals may be strung, and wear the ap- 
 pearance of a unity. It is re^ll and not nomi- 
 nal, a thing and not a name. A thing which has 
 a clear existence before the eye of God, and which 
 will have the substance, as well as wear the ap- 
 pearance, of a unity in eternity. There is a 
 whole family Hfe, of which each individual, and 
 even each generation, is but a section. It has 
 a distinct form, a type of feature, a character, 
 and a mission in the world. It would startle us 
 to see how much the essential characteristics of 
 families, running through and tinging the diverse 
 members, tell as a distinct and powerful element 
 upon the development of society. If the family 
 is to nurse the individual man to his complete 
 maturity, it is that he may continue and carry 
 
The Whole Family, 313 
 
 out the influence of tlie family life. Each man's 
 work in his household is to live out with full 
 freedom the special capacity for life which is in 
 him ; that belongs partly to him and partly to his 
 race. That race is a reality before God in its 
 wholeness ; it has a speciality of gift and func- 
 tion, and a work in the world which it only can 
 fulfil. We see this on a grand scale in the char- 
 acter and the mission of nations, but it runs 
 through the whole race. The man and his be- 
 longings, his father's fathers and his children's 
 children, form a whole which enters as a factor 
 into the order^ God's everlasting kingdom. The 
 bond of the household is not accidental and for 
 time, it is essential and for eternity. 
 
 And the treasures which a home life, such as 
 I have striven to picture, gathers, are not treas- 
 ures of this world that can perish in its wreck ; 
 they have the mint-mark of heaven on them — 
 they must pass up and appear on high. The in- 
 fant in the home seems to be the poorest and most 
 helpless of creatures under the sun ; poor in 
 power, but rich in right, and rich in love. As it 
 grows it gathers its riches round it. The work of 
 life is to lay them up in sure storehouses, " where 
 moth and rust corrupt noty a/nd thieves hreah not 
 14 
 
314 The Home Life, 
 
 through to stealP The child learns to lay its 
 hands on the tilings that are needful for the nur- 
 ture and culture of the being, and to lay the clasp 
 of its heart on persons whose love it demands by 
 those sui*e instincts which never fail. Trace child- 
 hood on to its maturity. The man or the woman 
 of fifty have made themselves a name and a place 
 in life ; they are the centres of attraction to troops 
 of friends ; they have sons and daughters growing 
 up in their homes, who pay to them the reverent 
 obedience which they pay to the Father God. 
 They have furnished their minds with knowledge, 
 the universe has unveiled its se^ts, the past is 
 peopled with heroic forms, the future with visions 
 which the eye of faith alone is strong enough to 
 behold. How rich life has become to them, how 
 fuU its storehouses of knowledge, power, and love ! 
 Trace it a stage further. At seventy, the puling, 
 helpless, portionless infant has grown into a pa- 
 triarch, whose wdiite hairs are a crown of honour, 
 before which all men joyfully bow. The sons and 
 daughters have each made themselves a home, 
 and little infants, of whom he has all the joy and 
 none of the care, come climbing round his knee, 
 and twine soft tendrils round the boughs of his 
 Btrength; lending to his age the grace and the 
 
TliG Whole Family. 315 
 
 cliarm of youtli once more. His wisdom has 
 grown ripe with large experience, his affections 
 and sympatliies wide with frequent ministries ; he 
 fills the place of a prince in his circle, and when 
 he falls a wide company of men feels beggared 
 awhile by his loss.- 
 
 And what does his fall mean % What but that 
 a larger and loftier home circle has need of him, 
 that the wise and the good who have gone on be- 
 fore are waiting to welcome him to their fellow- 
 ship, to lead his disciplined and ri]3ened power to 
 the work for which God was training it, and to 
 rest his heart in the home-life of heaven. The 
 rich experience of which the home-life of earth 
 had been the parent, would make the heavenly 
 life strange, and even foreign, if the home did not 
 reappear beyond the river. The man who has 
 been nursed to a noble maturity by such fellow- 
 ship as we have been describing, would find the 
 higher life an exile, if " home " were not the es- 
 sential form of its relationships, if love, the love 
 of kindred souls, and the intercourse which it 
 generates, were not the essential principle of its 
 life. The patriarch of the earthly home, passes 
 out of it to be joined to the patriarchal company 
 — " the spirits of just men made perfect," whose 
 
316 The Ernie Life, 
 
 home-life but perpetuates in heavenly forms all 
 that was best and dearest in his mortal pilgrim- 
 age. And there too the infants, " the flowers that 
 grow between," whom the Angel bears early 
 home, find loving nurses ; there is tender training 
 for the young immortals in a home where love 
 rules all the sphere. 
 
 I have firm belief in the specific uses of all 
 the faculty that is cultured in this world, in the 
 life of the world to come. This seems to me to 
 be the meaning of the Apocalypse, of all the un- 
 veilings of the secrets of the heavenly life wliich 
 the scripture affords. Its simi)le, honest home- 
 likeness, to me is its broadest and most striking 
 feature — the entire absence of strangeness in its 
 objects, its interests, its joys. It may be said this 
 presentation of it is a concession to the necessary 
 imperfections and limitations of our knowledge: 
 that the things unseen can only be represented by 
 familiar images, if they are to carry any sense of 
 realness to our human apprehension; and that 
 the fact of the employment of these earthly im- 
 ages conveys no absolute truth about the eternal 
 world. But there seems to me to be an underly- 
 ing question, the settlement of which may modify 
 our judgment — In a being like man, made in 
 
The Whole Family, 317 
 
 God's own image, and made intelligent by God's 
 own liglit, how far does the necessary use of these 
 human images cast light for ns on the nature of 
 the realities which the Spirit employs them to set 
 forth? The forms of things which man appre- 
 hends, are forms which God has shown to him ; 
 the question occurs, has God, so to speak, two sets 
 of forms, essentially diverse, with which to occupy 
 the intelligence of His child ? Or i^ the one the 
 key to the other, after the fashion of the Mount 
 of Transfiguration ; the body wearing its famihar 
 likeness, yet aglow with the awful splendour of 
 the celestial world? 
 
 I believe in the permanence of gifts and the 
 perpetuity of culture. The artists, the thinkers, 
 the seers, the statesmen, if through faith they 
 gain right of entrance, will find the work waiting 
 for them which they loved best, and were best 
 trained for — their joyous task, their fruitful min- 
 istry to humanity through eternity. Men live in 
 a rank here ; it is the secret of the divine order 
 of society ; they belong to a race, they fall into a 
 line. Dying in faith, they fall at once into a 
 kindred rank in heaven. And there alone the 
 wholeness of a life, of a home, of a line, can ap- 
 pear. It is here in segments, always the com- 
 
318 The Home Life. 
 
 .plete orb is liidden. The eje of faith may faintly 
 trace its outline, as in the young moon on a clear 
 summer night ; but it can only appear, the whole 
 orb illumined, when it moves with full face op- 
 posed to the Celestial Sun. And here we trace 
 Death's loftiest ministry. This wholeness Death 
 only can complete. In the Christian home death 
 is the fulfilment of the highest and most eager of 
 the heart's aspirations ; the hand of God, adding 
 to the beloved the touch of divine completeness, 
 and lifting them to the home where the whole 
 family will at length be one. 
 
 III. Yery benign, too, very precious is the re- 
 flex action of this ministry of death on our home 
 life here. 
 
 That He may bring heaven nearer to the fol- 
 lowing, he separates the two bands. Life never 
 becomes earnest and sacred, as it was meant to 
 be, until the shadow of death has fallen on it. 
 Those only who have questioned the face of the 
 beloved dead know what is meant by life. A 
 family lives but a half life, until it has sent some 
 whom it has clasped in its embrace to join the 
 forerunners whose lives "it inherits ; until those 
 whose work is still in this world, in spirit can 
 
The Whole Family, 319 
 
 cross the river, and fold beloved bnt transfigured 
 forms to tlieir hearts. Some shadow on earth's 
 sunlight there must be, and the darkest of all 
 shadows on a home is this shadow of death. JSTo 
 agony known to mortals can surpass, and but lit- 
 tle can mate, the anguish of Eve, of Jacob, of 
 David, of Mary, when their dearest lay dead. 
 Eut behind it, within it, rather let us say, if we 
 fear not to enter the cloud, lies the glory. " Said 
 I not unto thee^ that if thou wouldest helieve^ thou 
 shouldest see the glory of God? " 
 
 And those who have been permitted to stand 
 by the deathbed of a noble Christian disciple, 
 who have seen him sustained and possessed by 
 the powers of the world to come — the dying eye 
 ranging on through the bounds of the world of 
 sense, and lit by a gleam from some sphere which 
 was beyond our sight ; and then the light fading 
 from the eye, and the face settling into the awful 
 but beautiful serenity of death, till it put on the 
 aspect of a warrior taking his rest on the breast 
 of victory — ^have known a moment of sublime joy 
 which has hardly fallen short of v transport, and 
 have gone down to the common world again, like 
 Moses, with the lustre still on them, and with a 
 
320 The Home Life. 
 
 sacred power to penetrate the inner sanctuarieB 
 of tLe hearts of their fellow-men. 
 
 Those most familiar with the higher aspects 
 of death know most of the higher aspects of life. 
 To them the common ground becomes sacred, for 
 saints who are at rest with God have trodden it ; 
 the common duties become holy, for theylningle 
 with the earthly, the thoughts and the energies 
 of the heavenly sphere. And if God makes 
 breaches in your home circle, understand the lov- 
 ing reason ; it is that lie may separate the one 
 into two bands awhile, still declaring their one- 
 ness, and so may marry the two spheres. The 
 little home that has sheltered you in its sunny 
 nook has expanded. There is now but one home 
 everywhere. Those who are " hone of your hone 
 and flesh of your flesh'''' are treading the heavenly 
 pathways. How often as you gaze longingly on 
 yon fair star, do they cross the line of your sight ! 
 How lovingly will they welcome you, and eiface 
 all strangeness when you join them ! Dear hands 
 will one day lead you through the unaccustomed 
 paths. The ba-inging you into the home, the 
 home of the whole family, will be one of their 
 most intense delights. They wait ; they share the 
 expectant attitude of the universe : God has pre- 
 
The Whole Family, 321 
 
 pared some better thing for all of us ; thej with- 
 out us will not be made perfect. 
 
 The mother who has seen that awful pallor 
 steal over the brow of her nursling, and the life 
 flicker on the stiffening lips, knows then, and not 
 till then, the sacredness of those who are left to 
 her. She knows that she has to train them for 
 two worlds — ^nay, for one, for that godly life 
 which, whether here or there, is life eternal. J^or 
 will the aged pilgrim, who has sent all his dearest 
 on before him, tremble when he too stands on the 
 brink of the river. His heart will be bursting 
 with joy at the thought, " In a moment the veil 
 will be lifted, it is trembling already, and my 
 dead will be clasped to my heart again, to be 
 parted no more for ever." The image of Rachel 
 came back to Jacob as he stood on the shore of 
 the dark rolling stream. It is very touching to 
 note how the memories of her mortal sickness 
 shaped themselves into clear images before his 
 failing sight. " There I hurled Rachel^'' were 
 among the last words on his dying lips. His eyes 
 were dim, the forms around him were fading ; his 
 hands drooped wearily, as he left his last patri- 
 archal blessing to his sons ; but the inner eye was 
 lighting with a strange lustre, was flashing with a 
 14* 
 
322 The Home Life. 
 
 glorious joy, as he saw Lis living Eachel, sunlit, 
 beyond the shadows, and his arms strained forth 
 with no faltering motion to clasp her transfigured 
 form, and gather it to his heart of hearts. 
 
 lY. And what assures it ? Whereby may I 
 know that the vision is true? I see it. I see 
 " the whole family " gathering there in the sun- 
 light ; strong, joyful, radiant, as men that have 
 won a glorious victory. My heart bounds at the 
 thought that one day I may join their company, 
 and bear my part, a victor too, in their triumphal 
 hymn. And whereby may I know that it is not 
 a dream ? 
 
 There are few. sensitive natures, I imagine, 
 which do not shudder sometimes with the dread 
 of disembodiment. " Not for that we would he 
 unclothed,^'' says the apostle, giving utterance to 
 a great fear, which in all ages has preyed on the 
 human heart. And there are few tender, loving 
 hearts which do not often tremble before the ques- 
 tion, "What if all personal links and bonds are 
 snapped in sunder by death ? " The fear of wan- 
 dering forth, a» exile from the flesh, a bloodless, 
 bodiless ghost, was the great tonnent of the spirit, 
 before Christ and the resurrection had been 
 
The Whole Family. 323 
 
 preached in tlie world. And the fear of losing 
 all knowledge of dear and familiar forms, and of 
 being cnt off from all the holiest associations of 
 this life, in eternity, has haunted the Christian 
 ages, and has been a paralysing terror to many a 
 true Christian heart. But these notions, the 
 " sleep of the soul," " the disembodied state," are 
 just the bugbears with which a narrow and hard 
 theology has oppressed mankind. In truth, the 
 whole mediaeval conception of the world behind 
 the veil, is set in too sad a key. The Church 
 then used freely the tones of gloom and terror ; 
 she ruled by fear, and sought to terrify men into 
 the deliverance which her sacraments offered. 
 But her influence has long been waning, she seems 
 to be settling into her second childhood ; and now 
 the gospel, whose first words are joy and hope* 
 resumes its ministry, and good news about God, 
 about death, about eternity, are everywhere 
 abroad. 
 
 The soul never sleeps. There is no disem- 
 bodied human spirit. The definition of man is 
 " an embodied spirit," and it cannot be the very 
 manhood of man that death has» commission to 
 destroy. The body that sin has corrupted, death 
 rends in pieces and buries out of sight. Blessed 
 
324: The Home Life, 
 
 be God, its pains and frets, its stormy passion, its 
 panting lust, lie biu'ied in tlie grave for ever. But 
 a " building of God " awaits the trembling spirit 
 in the moment of dissolution, that it may be " not 
 unclothed^ hut clothed ujpon^'^ and that " mortality 
 may he swallowed up of lifeP 
 
 The witness of this is the Lord's resurrection. 
 The gospel of those wondrous forty days which 
 lie spent with mortals after Ilis passion, when, as 
 Peter declared to Cornelius, " He did eat and 
 di'ink with them," and when " He showed Him- 
 self unto them alive by many infallible proofs," 
 reveals to us the embodiment of departed spirits, 
 and unveils to us the homelikeness of the heavenly 
 world. If He aimed at anything by those famil- 
 iar appearances, iji a bodily form which they could 
 fee and touch, and on which they could count 
 the wounds. He aimed at the assurance, not of im- 
 mortality only, not of resurrection only, but of the 
 full continuity of life. All that constitutes the 
 interest, the work, and the hope of life, is carried 
 through the veil, and resumed with a sacred joy 
 under the blest conditions which here we pined 
 for — the conditions of a sinless and eternal world. 
 
 Personality obliterated! Kindred unrecog- 
 nised I Love aU drawn off from the creature, and 
 
TU Whole Family. 325 
 
 lost in God ! It is treason to tlie Man of the res- 
 urrection to imagine it. Personality will be re- 
 vealed, kinsMp will be discovered, love will be 
 unbound, when the blots and tlie blurs of evil 
 have been purged from tbe spirit. We sball see 
 then, what we knew and loved in part on earth, 
 revealed in its wholeness, and know for the first 
 time what to live and to love may mean. I know 
 not what forms the recovered ones will wear. I 
 know not how the dead are raised up, nor with 
 what body they will come. Enough for me that 
 the great Forerunner, the great Leader of the 
 host, was raised in His human wholeness ; each 
 line, each touch, of His dear humanity more per- 
 fect, than w^hen He w^as with us in the weakness 
 of His mortality. The Lord took all by which 
 man might know Him, and for which man might 
 love Him, through death into the eternal world. 
 He took it visibly, that we might have assurance 
 of the Invisible ; and that we might hold fast the 
 faith, that whatever may have perished of our 
 dear ones, whom we have loved in the Lord and 
 lost awhile, aU that made their dearness lives on, 
 and has grown to a divine completeness under the 
 touch of Death. 
 
 We may perchance have had some glimpse of 
 
326 The Home Life. 
 
 the image wliicli they are wearing, in the moment 
 when the fret and the waste of life seemed to van- 
 ish, and there fell on their faces a solemn and 
 holy beauty, as they settled into the silence of 
 death. One has often seen in a dying face at 
 such moments an ideal beauty, wherein all that 
 might be possible to the nature seemed expressed ; 
 a sign and a prophecy of eternity. Some meet 
 tabernacle must be ready for the spirit when death 
 unbinds it; some organ of intercourse with its 
 fellows and with the great universe, or the tri- 
 umphant language of St. Paul which we have 
 quoted, would be a mockery and a snare. The 
 dead even now are wearing some form, which fits 
 them to mingle in the great congress of the first- 
 bom, already met in fellowship on high. Eut 
 nothing even- there as yet seems final. The com- 
 plete form of the glorified spirit, the body of the 
 resurrection, still waits the trumpet-call of that 
 last great day of God ; the day when the work of 
 restitution shall be finished, the day of the full 
 and final manifestation of His sons. 
 
 And " there they are "before the throne of God^ 
 and they serve Him day and night in His tem- 
 ple : " one band, once more, met again and met 
 for ever. Hearts long sundered, knit again in 
 
The Whole Family. 327 
 
 immortal fellowship ; the struggles and sorrows 
 of earth, their most sacred memory ; " the far off 
 iiiterest of tears," their most dear possession; 
 brothers of an order of which Christ is the Living 
 Elder, and whose consecrating priest was Death. 
 
 ^ 3HJ- JO 
 
 THE END 
 
EKSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 1-I00m-12,'46(A2012816)4120 
 
I LJ C^ /U I /^ 
 
 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDDMDS'lQaO 
 
 101682 
 
 B7