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HAILEYBURY CHAPEL 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SERMONS 
 
Nam quis alius noster est finis nisi perve nire ad regnum cuius nullus 
 est finis? (S. AUGUSTINE, " De Civ. Dei," ad fin.} 
 
 I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ , and I exhort my dear children humbly to try 
 to guide themselves by the teaching of the Netv Testament in its broad 
 spirit^ and to put no faith in any man's narroiv construction of its letter 
 here and there. (From CHARLES DICKENS' Will.) 
 
HAILEYBURY CHAPEL 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SERMONS 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. G. E. JEANS, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1886 
 
HENRY MORSE STEPHO 
 
TO 
 
 u Canon 2Bralibp, 2D.2D., 
 
 LATE HEAD-MASTER OF HAILEYBURY : 
 
 UNDER WHOM I HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF 
 
 SERVING FOR TEN YEARS AS 
 
 ASSISTANT-MASTER OF THE SIXTH FORM, 
 
 WITH EVER-GROWING RESPECT AND 
 
 AFFECTION FOR HIM. 
 
 512087 
 
HAILEYBURIA QUADRATA. 
 
 Reprinted from the Haileyburian, March 6, 1884, by permission 
 of the Rev. J, Robertson, Head-Master of Haileybury College. 
 
 FOUR-SQUARE to all the winds that blow 
 
 Are built the borders of our nest 
 To sunny south and Zembla's snow, 
 
 To rosy dawn and purple west : 
 So shall the banner of our pride 
 
 For either fortune float unfurled, 
 To woo the breeze of summer-tide, 
 
 Or breast the winters of the world ! 
 
 The temple of our boyhood's home 
 
 'Mid busy life embosomed lies ; 
 Yet takes upon her stately dome 
 
 The impress of the vaulted skies. 
 So may each trusty heart that here 
 
 Fulfils his level course below, 
 Be rounded to the perfect sphere, 
 
 Irradiant with ethereal glow. 
 
 O never be the memory drowned 
 
 By manhood's strife or worldly care, 
 Of happy laughter ringing round 
 
 Through all the fragrant summer air ! 
 Of honest work and mimic wars, 
 
 Of bosky heath and misty vale, 
 And holier thoughts beneath the stars 
 
 To music of the nightingale. 
 
 J. R. 
 
TOV dyaOov <paa"t,v etvat TCT/oaycovov. 
 
 ARISTOTLE, Eth. i. 
 
 QUATTUOR a vends quot flant super aetheris axes 
 
 stat bene quadrato limite nostra domus : 
 ille nives Boreae, terras hie spectat apricas, 
 
 utque oriens rubeat sol, rutilusve cadat. 
 omine quo signum fortunam in utramque paratum 
 
 inplendum vends forda corda dabunt ; 
 seu tenerum aestatis flatum captare licebit, 
 
 seu rerunn aspera hiems vincere si qua ferat. 
 
 aedes stat medio veneranda, sed undique circum 
 
 tot puerorum alto murmure mussat opus : 
 sed teres exsurgens camera tholus ille profunda 
 
 prominet, inmensi parva figura poli. 
 tu quoque, fide puer, quod adest complere memento, 
 
 munera quae tribuat sors tibi cumque die : 
 sic se quisque gerat totum teretemque, supernis 
 
 vestiat ut radiis largior ille dies. 
 
 o domus, ut numquam labor inprobus aut mala 
 rerum 
 
 nos cura inmemores suadeat esse tui ! 
 risibus ut resonent omnes puerilibus agri, 
 
 cum tepet aestivis suavior aura locis : 
 laeti opera ut pugnae cieant simulacra protervae, 
 
 silva virens, vallis seu nebulosa iuvet ; 
 ipsa vel ut noctu subeat virtutis imago, 
 
 voce sub astra animum cum Philomela vocat. 
 
 G. E. J. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. HAILEYBURY CHAPEL, OR THE STONE OF 
 
 WITNESS Joshua xxiv. 27 '. i 
 
 II. THE LIBERTY OF AN ENGLISH SCHOOL. 
 
 i St. Peter ii. 1 6 . . . 21 
 
 III. SuRSUM CORDA. Acts i. 15 . . 39 
 
 IV. CHRISTMAS. St. Luke ii.. 14 . . 55 
 V. BIRDS-NESTING. Deuteronomy xxii. 6, 7 73 
 
 VI. THE GREAT QUESTION. St. Luke 
 
 xviii. 8 . . . . .91 
 
 VII. HEAVEN. Zechariah viii. 5 . .109 
 
I. 
 
 HAILEYBURY CHAPEL, 
 
 OR THE STONE OF WITNESS. 
 
 (loth June 1883.) 
 
 Almighty and everliving God, who 
 hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy 
 servants by Water and the Holy Ghost, 
 and hast given unto them forgiveness of 
 all their sins : Strengthen them we beseech 
 thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the 
 Comforter, and daily increase in them thy 
 manifold gifts of grace-, the spirit of wisdom 
 and understanding-, the spirit of counsel 
 and ghostly strength ; the spirit of know- 
 ledge and true godliness ; and fill them, 
 O Lord, with the spirit of thy holy fear, 
 now and for ever. Amen. 
 
 (From the ORDER OF CONFIRMATION.) 
 
2 f ' r ** Hdi'iey-bury Chapel, or 
 
 "3nli 3(o0f)ua 0aiti unto all tf>e people, SSefjolU, tf)i0 
 0tone 0i?all be a toitne00 unto u0 ; for it fjat!) ijeatti 
 all tfje toorU0 of t!>e Horn tolncl) e 0pafce unto u0 : 
 it 0!)all be therefore a toitne00 unto #011, Ie0t ^e 
 tienp ^our c^oli/' JOSHUA xxiv. 27. 
 
 OF course the sermon this Sunday cannot 
 but be about the Confirmation next Thurs- 
 day. Week after week this term we have 
 spent some part of the quiet Sunday in 
 trying to make clear to the boys of our 
 own houses the practical use as well as the 
 duty of this rite : that for them a critical 
 period of their school time is arrived, and 
 that now, if ever, they must make them- 
 selves strong for the stress of the battle of 
 life. Week after week have all the can- 
 didates come together one evening in the 
 Chapel, to be reminded by their great num- 
 bers of the strength of union, and of the 
 
The Stone of Witness. 
 
 might of that army of God in which they 
 are enrolling their name as recruits. And 
 now, on the Sunday immediately preceding 
 the Confirmation, the time is come for the 
 preacher to sum up briefly what you have 
 been taught, and to remind you what a 
 solemn vow to God is contained in those 
 two words : I DO. 
 
 I propose, then, to speak to you of the 
 Book of Joshua ; not at all in the way in 
 which you have it explained for the pur- 
 pose of a Sunday lesson, but purely with 
 this one object ; because the Book of 
 Joshua might almost be edited as a Hand- 
 book to Confirmation. If this sounds 
 strange, think of a few of the texts that 
 crowd this book, and see how apt they are 
 for you to remember next Thursday. For 
 example, how God said to Joshua when 
 
Haileybury Chapel, or 
 
 he began his work, " Be strong and of a 
 " good courage ; be not afraid, neither be 
 " thou dismayed : for the Lord thy God 
 " is with thee whithersoever thou goest." 1 
 Or how Joshua said to the tribes of Reuben 
 and Gad and half Manasseh when they 
 were going to leave the rest just as many 
 of you will leave the rest this term " Take 
 " diligent heed to love the Lord your God, 
 " and to walk in all his ways, and to keep 
 cc his commandments, and to cleave unto 
 " him, and to serve him with all your heart 
 "and all your soul;" 2 and so Joshua 
 blessed them and sent them away. Or 
 how he said in his old age to all the people, 
 " If it seem evil unto you to serve the 
 " Lord, choose you this day whom ye will 
 " serve ; but as for me and my house, we 
 
 1 Josh. i. 9. 2 Josh. xxii. 5. 
 
The Stone of Witness. 
 
 " will serve the Lord." 1 Or lastly, think 
 again of the words of my text, when the 
 great stone of witness had been set up 
 under the oak : " Behold, this stone shall 
 " be a witness unto us ; for it hath heard 
 " all the words of the Lord which he 
 " spake unto us : it shall be therefore a 
 " witness unto you, lest ye deny your 
 " God." 2 
 
 Now, why is this so ? Why is the Book 
 of Joshua more than any other book of 
 Bible history a Confirmation book? The 
 answer is this that the life which we live 
 as individual human beings is reproduced 
 in larger shape by masses of men living 
 together as a nation or state. In other 
 words, a nation, like a man, is born, is 
 educated, grows to its strength, flourishes 
 
 1 Josh. xxiv. 15. 2 Josh. xxiv. 27. 
 
Haileybury Chapel, or 
 
 awhile, begins to decline, and dies. 1 And 
 the point which the Israelites had reached 
 when we read about them in the Book of 
 Joshua is precisely the point which you 
 have reached to-day. For the nation was 
 now awakening to a sense of its common 
 manhood, and was about to be asked in 
 all solemnity whether it would choose, or 
 whether it would refuse, the service of God. 
 I will trace this more fully in the history 
 of that wonderful nation to which the 
 world owes so much. The nation of the 
 Jews was born, we may say, when Jacob 
 settled in Egypt. Then came the time of 
 their childhood a childhood carefully 
 nursed so long as Joseph was there, but 
 afterwards a very hard and bitter child- 
 
 1 Compare Lucretius, ii. 73 : Augescunt aliae gentes, allae 
 mlnuuntur ; also Ov. Met. , xv. 420. 
 
The Stone of Witness. 
 
 hood, like that of a poor little street Arab, 
 during the bondage in Egypt when the 
 people knew no more of the grand destiny 
 in store for them than a child does whether 
 he will be a famous man when he grows up, 
 and when the principal lesson taught him 
 is the lesson of simple obedience. Then 
 arose their great lawgiver, Moses, who first 
 awakened their intelligence by teaching 
 them just as you learn by coming to a 
 great school the consciousness of their 
 being members of one body, and a body 
 with immense capacities for doing noble 
 things if they only had faith to do them. 
 This done, he led them forty years through 
 the wilderness, knowing nothing of where 
 they were going, except that it was to a 
 Promised Land. This was the early school 
 time of the people. Then on the very 
 
8 Haileybury Chapel, or 
 
 edge of the Jordan their master is taken 
 away from them, and the second great 
 change takes place. A new leader they 
 must have ; but now he must be not merely 
 a master, put over them they know not 
 why, but a leader in the truest sense ; one 
 who will lead them by the divine right of 
 his superiority, and whom they will follow 
 to the death, because they believe in him. 1 
 This is where the Book of Joshua begins. 
 The nation is now passing from its thought- 
 less boyhood to its early manhood; the 
 stern battle for life on the other side of the 
 river is coming very close ; the obedience 
 rendered must now be not a blind obedience, 
 but a willing acceptance of duty to be 
 done. Joshua therefore, rather than Moses, 
 confirms them, so to speak, when he asks 
 
 1 Compare the quotation in the note on p. 48. 
 
The Stone of Witness. 
 
 them solemnly and openly either to choose 
 or to refuse the service of God. What is 
 all this but a type of your Confirmation ? 
 
 But we may carry the parallel still 
 further. What were the great duties of 
 which Joshua reminded them? The first 
 for the order is unimportant was 
 utterly to put away all false gods. " Now 
 " therefore," said he, " fear the Lord, and 
 " serve him in sincerity and in truth : 
 <c and put away the gods which your 
 <c fathers served on the other side of the 
 " flood, and in Egypt ; and serve ye the 
 " Lord/' 1 The second was to believe in 
 God's promises both of help and of punish- 
 ment. "Ye know in all your hearts and 
 " all your souls that not one good thing 
 " hath failed of all the good things which 
 
 1 Josh. xxiv. 14. 
 
io Haileybury Chape I , or 
 
 <c the Lord spake concerning you. . . . 
 cc Therefore it shall come to pass, that as 
 c< all good things are come upon you, which 
 " the Lord promised you; so shall the 
 " Lord bring upon you evil things, when 
 " ye have transgressed the covenant of the 
 " Lord." 1 The third was that they should 
 keep the commandments of God. " Be 
 " ye therefore very courageous to keep and 
 " to do all that is written in the book of 
 " the law, that ye turn not aside therefrom 
 " to the right hand or the left." 2 
 
 Now how very close a parallel this is 
 to what the Bishop will say to you next 
 Thursday. He will ask you whether, in 
 God's presence, you will renew for your- 
 selves the vow that was made for you when 
 you were unconscious babies. And your 
 
 1 Josh, xxiii. 14-16. 2 Josh, xxiii. 6. 
 
The Stone of Witness. 1 1 
 
 vow too, like theirs, was a threefold vow. 
 It was, first, that you would put away all 
 false gods : the worship of the selfishness, 
 hollowness, and meanness of the world ; 
 the worship of those yet baser fleshly 
 lusts which you have in common with the 
 brutes ; and above all the worship of that 
 father of lies and of cruelty, the devil. 
 It was, secondly, that whatever you knew 
 to be the Word of God, that you would 
 steadfastly believe. That you would be- 
 lieve in God the Father, who made you 
 and loves you ; in God the Son, who 
 redeemed you by his sinless life and his 
 willing death ; and in God the Holy Spirit, 
 who makes you holy too, because every 
 noble thought we think and every noble 
 deed we do comes straight from the influ- 
 ence of God. Thirdly, it was that since God 
 
12 Haileybury Chapel, or 
 
 wishes you not only to renounce what is 
 bad but to choose what is good, you would 
 keep his will and commandments, and walk 
 in them all the days of your life. These 
 are called the vow of Renunciation, the 
 vow of Faith, and the vow of Obedi- 
 ence. 
 
 Once more, to complete this parallel, 
 how closely the service that day at 
 Shechem resembles what will be our ser- 
 vice here. Joshua, as the minister of God, 
 called the people together, and reminded 
 them of the duties of renunciation, of faith, 
 and of obedience ; then he asked them 
 solemnly to choose whether they would 
 serve the many false gods or the one true 
 God. And the people solemnly made 
 answer, " We will serve the Lord." Then 
 Joshua said, "Ye are witnesses against 
 
The Stone of Witness. 1 3 
 
 u yourselves that ye have chosen you the 
 " Lord, to serve him. And they. answered, 
 " We are witnesses." Then he took a 
 great stone and set it up, perhaps in the 
 very spot where Jacob long ago had wor- 
 shipped, 1 that it might remind them for 
 ever of the choice they had that day made, 
 and so dismissed them. So, too, God's 
 minister, the Bishop, will remind you of 
 your baptismal vow of renunciation, of 
 faith, and of obedience ; he will then ask 
 you solemnly to say whether, " in the pres- 
 " ence of God and of this congregation," 
 you renew this vow for yourselves at the 
 time when life is opening out, and giving 
 you the power to refuse the evil and 
 choose the good. You will answer, I 
 DO ; and in that answer you will have 
 
 1 Stanley : Sinai and Palestine, ch. v. 
 
14 Haileybury Chapel, or 
 
 been witnesses against yourselves that you 
 have chosen the Lord, to serve Him. Then 
 that immemorial form of blessing, by which 
 Joshua himself and the Bishop himself 
 were ordained, will be administered to you 
 by the laying on of hands ; and so with 
 the prayers of the Bishop, of your fathers 
 and mothers, of those who have tried to 
 guide you for this service, and not least, 
 I trust, your own prayers that God will 
 help you not to deny Him, you will be 
 confirmed; and for good or evil it must 
 be one or the other a great moment in 
 your life will be over. 
 
 One thing, however, you may have 
 noticed as wanting to our parallel. That 
 is the ceremony of the stone of witness ; 
 the great stone which Joshua set up under 
 an oak that was by the sanctuary of the 
 
The Stone of Witness. 1 5 
 
 Lord ; l so that when the people looked on 
 it they might remember that day and the 
 solemn choice they had made. What shall 
 be our stone of witness ? 
 
 It is of course true enough to say that 
 our religion must be spiritual ; that if it 
 is to be worth anything it must be graven 
 not on stone but on the fleshy tablets of 
 the heart. That is true, I say, but it is 
 not all. Signs and symbols have not lost, 
 they never can lose, their power of re- 
 calling a fading thought or wandering 
 memory, and of awakening into new life 
 what seemed perhaps to have vanished 
 away. Let, then, this beautiful Chapel 
 itself, with its noble dome rising in 
 the centre of our busy life 2 built and 
 
 1 Josh, xxiv, 26. 
 
 2 See the poem, " Haileyburia Quadrata," at the beginning of 
 the book. 
 
1 6 Haileybury Chapel, or 
 
 decorated by the piety and loyalty of past 
 and present Haileyburians be for ever 
 henceforth to you the great stone of 
 witness ; and among the many memories 
 that will cluster in after days around it, 
 keep sacred and inviolate the memory of 
 the great oath you swore to God within 
 its walls. Let it be a witness to you in 
 the prayers you offer there henceforward. 
 How often has the silent witness looked 
 down on the ghastly mockery of a service 
 that was not even lip-service ; on rows of 
 listless heads reclined on lounging elbows ; 
 on a dull vacancy where there should have 
 been an echoing response ; on God's house 
 entered and left without one thought of 
 God ! Resolve that this at least, for all 
 you who are to be confirmed, shall be so 
 no longer. Think what a hundred and 
 
The Stone of Witness. 1 7 
 
 twenty newly-earnest voices scattered over 
 the Chapel might do for this reproach, and 
 then that mockery will be swept away, and 
 the service will be no bond -service any 
 longer, but a willing offering of prayer 
 and praise, spreading its happy contagion 
 of sympathy through the whole broad con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Secondly, let it be a witness to you 
 when you make your first Communion. 
 For your Confirmation is a preparation for 
 that great mystery ; and next Sunday all 
 of you will come for the first time with 
 your elders to receive the Holy Sacra- 
 ment. Assuredly you will come that first 
 time with reverence and godly fear; but 
 your fear will not be darkness ; it will be 
 the truest light. See, then, that you do 
 
 not let this light grow dim. Make a 
 c 
 
1 8 Haileybury Chapel \ or 
 
 vow then and there on your knees that 
 you will come to that Sacrament regularly, 
 humbly, and thankfully ; not because it 
 is customary or expected of you, but in the 
 full spirit of what Jesus Christ meant when 
 He said, " Do this in remembrance of me." 
 Lastly, let it be a stone of witness to you 
 when you have crossed the river and begun 
 the battle of life in earnest. At the end of 
 this term a larger number than at other 
 times will leave us ; particularly among the 
 prefects, with whom I personally have 
 most to do in the work of the school ; with 
 some of whom I have, I trust, formed ties 
 of lasting friendship ; and some of whom 
 I have prepared for their Confirmation. 
 To you then, specially, my friends, as the 
 last words I can say to you in your places 
 from this pulpit, I repeat, let this be a 
 
The Stone of Witness. 19 
 
 stone of witness to you " lest ye deny your 
 " God." For God can be denied, as He is 
 fulfilled, "in many ways." 1 He may be 
 denied by a coarse atheism, but that is not 
 likely to happen to you. He may be 
 denied in a much more subtle way by a 
 foolish blinking of the truth, by a mean 
 acceptance of a false or low and unworthy 
 idea of him. Most often God is denied, 
 not formally but really, by forgetfulness of 
 him, and putting him out of daily life as 
 if he was only meant for Sundays. When 
 therefore you think of the dear old school 
 you have left, or when you come back to 
 it as old Haileyburians, let the first sight 
 or thought of the Chapel be to you a stone 
 of witness, appealing to you whether you 
 have honestly kept the vow you made of 
 
 1 Tennyson : " The Passing of Arthur." 
 
20 Haileybury Chanel. 
 
 renunciation, of faith, and of obedience; 
 and let it waken you as with the sound of 
 a trumpet from that deadly forgetfiilness in 
 which our better lives are apt to moulder 
 away. So shall it be no silent witness, 
 rising to heaven to appeal against those 
 who have denied their God, but the lofty 
 pillar bearing a beacon light, which has 
 lighted an army now strong and of good 
 courage, as they began for themselves the 
 battle of life, in the struggle to reach the 
 Promised Land. And remember that 
 
 " Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 
 Follow your steps as ye go ; 
 Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
 Strengthen the wavering line, 
 Stablish, continue our march, 
 On to the bound of the waste, 
 On to the City of God. 7 ' * 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold : " Rugby Chapel." 
 
II. 
 
 THE LIBERTY OF AN 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL. 
 
 (Third Sunday after Easter, 1881.) 
 
 Almighty and everlasting God, by whose 
 Spirit the whole body of the Church is 
 governed and sanctified; Receive our suppli- 
 cations and prayers which we offer before 
 thee for all estates of men in thy holy 
 Church, that every member of the 'same in 
 his vocation and ministry may truly and 
 godly serve thee; through our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 (COLLECT FOR GOOD FRIDAY.) 
 
22 The Liberty of an 
 
 " 80 free, anti not using pur lifcertp for a cloak of 
 maliciou0ne00 [toicfcetme00] t iwt a0 tfje 0ertant0 of 
 35otu" i ST. PETER ii. 16. 
 
 WE are very proud of our freedom as 
 Englishmen, and so we ought to be ; so 
 proud of it that we would not merely fight 
 for it almost any nation would do that 
 but would always take care to keep it pure 
 from the stain of anything slavish; and 
 that is a far harder thing. The Romans 
 too were rightly proud of their freedom. 
 " With a great sum," said the chief captain 
 to Paul, " obtained I this freedom." "But 
 cc I," proudly replied the Apostle, " was free 
 u born." l Perhaps, however, of all people 
 that have ever lived the proudest were the 
 Jews. We know how for a long time they 
 
 1 Acts xxii. 28. Compare the well-known passage of Cicero, 
 Verr. v. 63. 
 
English School. 23 
 
 had no king at all ; how they were gradu- 
 ally forced into demanding one because of 
 the obvious disadvantage of any division 
 of power in an army; how they were 
 conquered and enslaved for a bitter time 
 by the great kings of Babylon and Nineveh, 
 but freed themselves at last from that yoke ; 
 and how, finally, like every other nation in 
 the civilised world, they had to bow down 
 before the irresistible might of Rome, from 
 which yoke they could not escape till the 
 Roman Empire itself began to fall to pieces. 
 But they never submitted patiently, even 
 when they had to submit. Every Jew 
 thought it an intolerable hardship, to be 
 resented on the very smallest chance of 
 success ; and the most violent sect, called 
 the Zealots who were like the Root and 
 Branch men in our own Revolution 
 
24 The Liberty of an 
 
 thought it a positive sin against God to 
 acknowledge any king who was not a Jew, 
 or who derived his power from being a 
 vassal of the Roman Emperor. Any ad- 
 venturer, no matter how hopeless his 
 chances were, who once set up the standard 
 of revolt, was perfectly certain of a follow- 
 ing; and hence it came about that the 
 splendid toleration which the Romans 
 showed for all other religions l was naturally 
 put aside in the case of the Jews and the 
 Christians, whom they regarded as being, 
 from the strength of their faith, the most 
 obstinate sect of the Jews. A Jewish 
 Christian therefore had double cause for 
 fear the hatred of his race and the special 
 hatred of his religion. 
 
 1 See a fine example of this toleration in Cic. Ad Yam. iv. 12, 
 with a note on the passage in my Cicero's Life and Letters, p. 323 ; 
 and compare Farrar : St. Paul, ch. xxviii. 
 
English School. 25 
 
 Now in the first verse of this epistle you 
 will see that it is Christian Jews, scattered 
 about in the different countries of Asia 
 Minor, whom St. Peter was mainly address- 
 ing. And he knew very well the danger 
 to which they might expose themselves by 
 violent or even by incautious conduct ; 
 how the name of Christ might be dis- 
 honoured, and the position of Christians 
 be made unsafe, if their liberty as Christians 
 was wrongly used. As Christians they 
 were free from the law of Moses, well 
 and good. But if that were taken to mean 
 that they were free from the duties which 
 the law had taught them, why then their 
 boasted liberty was but a cloak of wicked- 
 ness. As Christians they acknowledged 
 Christ for their true King; but if that 
 meant that they would deny the authority 
 
26 The Liberty of an 
 
 of the Roman Emperor, or the King of 
 Judasa, or the Governor of their own 
 province, then they would rightly be re- 
 garded as pestilent rebels, who learnt their 
 rebellion from their religion. It was the 
 duty then of the Christian, and the birth- 
 right of his freedom, to live both a pure 
 and a law-abiding life. " Dearly beloved/' 
 said the Apostle, " abstain from fleshly lusts, 
 " which war against the soul ; making your 
 " life honourable among the Gentiles : that 
 " whereas they speak against you as evil- 
 " doers, they may when they see your good 
 " works glorify God." 1 And so the Chris- 
 tian freedom really comes to this, that the 
 Christian binds himself hand and foot 
 against everything that is wrong. He 
 glories in submitting himself, just because 
 
 1 i St. Peter ii. u, 12. 
 
English School. 27 
 
 he is free, to the law of God, and for God's 
 sake also to the law of man ; that he may 
 not use his liberty for a cloak of wicked- 
 ness, but as the bond-servant or slave of 
 God. 
 
 Not merely the "servant" of God, as 
 our version has it, but the bond-servant or 
 slave for St. Peter uses the stronger word. 
 And indeed the word must have been a 
 great deal stronger to people then than it 
 can be to anybody now, who has never 
 seen a slave in his life, but only read about 
 them in Uncle Toms Cabin. Think what 
 the ordinary life of a slave in the Roman 
 world was the chattel of his master, just 
 as much as a horse ; and then think what 
 a new life was made his by the preaching 
 of these Apostles, when they told him, with 
 that passionate faith that makes men be- 
 
28 The Liberty of an 
 
 lieve, that he, the poor slave, had a soul to 
 be saved, and one as dear in God's sight 
 as the soul of his master. They told him 
 that Jesus Christ, who was the only Son of 
 God, had chosen willingly to make himself 
 of no reputation, and take upon him the 
 form of a slave, so that in him the divi- 
 sions of Jew and Gentile, bondman and 
 freeman, might be broken down, and all 
 who let themselves be led by the Spirit of 
 God might be the sons of God. That is 
 why the early Christian churches were 
 filled with slaves, and with the poorest and 
 lowest classes of society ; men who, if they 
 had now been led by blind guides, would 
 have revolted against the necessary founda- 
 tions on which all ordered society must be 
 built up just as the Anabaptists, who 
 said that Christ had set them free from all 
 
English School. 29 
 
 law, did in Westphalia and other parts of 
 Germany in the sixteenth century. Had 
 the Apostles given one moment's sanction 
 to this ; had they failed to insist sternly on 
 the duty of the freeman to obey all lawful 
 authority, the Christians would certainly, 
 and not unjustly, have been condemned 
 for their religion's sake, and Christianity 
 would really have proved what Tacitus calls 
 it in his famous sentence, exitiabilis super- 
 sfitio, 1 " an accursed superstition." And 
 when we consider the immense change in 
 all habits of thought involved in this new 
 teaching, that all men are equal in the 
 sight of God and that this teaching must 
 be carried out without overthrowing a 
 single foundation of law and order until 
 some better foundation had been built in its 
 
 1 Ann. xv. 44. 
 
30 The Liberty of an 
 
 place I venture to think that Christ was 
 working through his Apostles just as real 
 a miracle though we do not generally call 
 it so as when he turned the water into 
 wine, or fed the starving multitudes with 
 bread. And the Apostles did this mainly 
 by insisting that the Christian was free, 
 not in order that he might escape from 
 the law, but that he might make himself 
 all the more willingly and absolutely the 
 servant of God. 
 
 Now let us apply this to ourselves. We 
 are proud and again rightly proud of 
 the wide liberty given in English public 
 schools a liberty which excites the amaze- 
 ment as well as envy of every foreign ob- 
 server. 1 We ought to be proud of it 
 
 1 Striking testimony to this is borne by a French master in 
 England, M. Max O'Rell, both in John Bull et son He and in 
 Les chers voisins. 
 
English School. 31 
 
 so proud as to feel that this liberty is a tie 
 much more binding than any number of 
 pions or ushers spying about could possibly 
 be. And then again this freedom is wisely 
 made not invariable, but of a kind that 
 grows with our growth. More trust is 
 reposed in a boy of higher than in one of 
 lower position ; far more still in a prefect, 
 that he may learn the rightful use of autho- 
 rity. Now to all honourable minds a greater 
 trust always brings a greater sense of obli- 
 gation with it, and this is the true force 
 of the really grand old maxim, noblesse 
 oblige. I know it has frequently been the 
 case that a boy who has been in the habit 
 of breaking certain rules while in the Fifth 
 Form, has felt that he cannot do so any 
 longer when he becomes a prefect. And 
 why ? Because he is more watched in his 
 
32 The Liberty of an 
 
 higher position ? No, it is just the con- 
 trary ; it is because this very trusting has 
 awakened his sense of duty in his position ; 
 because the truer sense of his real freedom 
 has made him feel it a shame that his 
 liberty should only be " a cloak of wicked- 
 " ness." 
 
 And if this feeling is right and honour- 
 able, and what you would yourselves feel 
 to be essential for any prefect you would 
 respect, you must remember, my friends, 
 that the same thing applies in its degree- 
 to every one of you. If you forget this, 
 and show one face when a master is there 
 and another when he is away; if you 
 scamp your work or cut it down to the 
 minimum of time because you are in a 
 study instead of a form-room ; if you mis- 
 spend some time entrusted to you for use 
 
English School. 33 
 
 because you will probably not be detected ; 
 then you might perhaps make a tolerable 
 slave under a task -master's eye, but .you 
 are helping to discredit an English public 
 school and its noble traditions of freedom, 
 and you are making yourself unfitted to be 
 hereafter a loyal citizen of that free country 
 of whose liberty you would loudly maintain 
 you are so proud. 
 
 You see, then, that this strange thing is 
 true, that the only way to be really free is 
 to obey the right with absolute obedience ; 
 and that the more entirely unbreakable rules 
 we acknowledge, so long as the rules are 
 right, the freer and happier we are. I will 
 therefore add a word on the four little rules 
 for a free Christian which St. Peter gives 
 in the Epistle for to-day, and so will end. 
 
 They are these : " Honour all men. Love 
 D 
 
34 The Liberty of an 
 
 " the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour 
 " the king." 1 Fear God first, for that is the 
 beginning of wisdom. 2 " I will walk at 
 " liberty," says the writer of the 1 1 gth 
 Psalm ; and why ? Because I do my own 
 will ? No, but " because I seek thy 
 " commandments." 3 Honour the king as 
 representing all constituted authority in 
 your own country: not with any slavish 
 veneration for the king's person, still less 
 for the king's family or surroundings, 
 which is degrading to a free man, but with 
 that loyal respect to all true authority, 
 whether of king or governor, bishop or 
 magistrate, father or schoolmaster, which 
 true self-respect not only does not forbid 
 but demands. Honour all men. For that 
 self-respect which comes with the con- 
 
 1 i St. Peter ii. 17. 2 Prov. ix. 10. 3 Ps. cxix. 45. 
 
English School. 35 
 
 sciousness of freedom, so far from taking 
 away, gives us a new sense of respect for 
 others. Be courteous and considerate to 
 all who are in a lower station than your- 
 self, and do all you can to keep up, 
 not to degrade, that self-respect in them 
 which is their best hope for elevating 
 themselves. There is no man, however 
 low, but is in some sense worthy of 
 honour when we remember that for 
 that poor creature, whether a savage of 
 Central Africa or a savage of London 
 streets, Jesus Christ was not too high 
 to take the form of a slave and to die. 
 And lastly, love the brotherhood, " for 
 " we are all members one of another." l 
 " Do good unto all men," 2 first, if 
 you will, to those who are of the house- 
 
 1 Rom. xii. 5. 2 Gal. vi. 10. 
 
36 The Liberty of an 
 
 hold of faith, but still unto all men, for 
 they are our brothers. For nearly two 
 thousand years we have been slowly grow- 
 ing in the perception of this. We now 
 acknowledge the rights of weak or savage 
 nations in a way that would have seemed 
 foolish or dangerous to an advanced philo- 
 sopher a century ago. We now keep on 
 giving more power to the poorest class, in 
 a way that would be certain destruction to 
 the state were it not for the growing 
 sympathy and understanding, thank God, 
 between class and class, and in that sym- 
 pathy is our security. This is how it is 
 that Christ has changed and is changing 
 the whole social condition of the world, 
 without overthrowing indeed making far 
 stronger the security and peace in which 
 we live ; by showing that the free man is 
 
English School. 37 
 
 the most obedient to good laws, and that 
 his very freedom makes him all the more 
 fear God, honour the authority which 
 comes from God, 1 honour all men because 
 in God's sight they are as himself, and 
 love all men, because they are his brothers, 
 for whom Christ died. 
 
 1 Rom. xiii. i. 
 

 III. 
 
 SURSUM CORDA. 
 
 (Sunday after Ascension, 1880.) 
 
 Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, 
 that like as we do believe thy only- 
 begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to 
 have ascended into the heavens ; so we 
 may also in heart and mind thither ascend 
 and with him continually dwell, who 
 liveth and reigneth with thee and the 
 Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. 
 
 Amen. 
 
 (COLLECT FOR ASCENSION DAY.) 
 
40 Sursum Corda. 
 
 \ 0tan& pe casing up into Beaten? " ACTS i. 1 5. 
 
 ASCENSION DAY is past again, and you 
 have already had it pointed out to you 
 that the obvious lesson to be learnt from 
 the day is one that should appeal rather 
 specially to us Haileyburians, being the 
 same as that noble motto for a public 
 school " SURSUM CORDA/' " Lift up your 
 " hearts " that meets the eye above our 
 gate, and is blazoned in colours on the 
 west wall of our Chapel. But on this 
 day, which naturally belongs to the same 
 season, I wish to add a thought as a supple- 
 ment, which may seem at first sight to con- 
 tradict, but is really necessary to the other. 
 For is not this text of mine, though it 
 comes from the Epistle for Ascension Day, 
 almost a contradiction to the special teach- 
 
Sursum Cor da. 41 
 
 ing of the day ? " If ye be risen with 
 " Christ," said St. Paul, " seek those things 
 " that are above, where Christ is seated on 
 " the right hand of God." l But what else 
 were the disciples doing when the angels 
 rebuked them for standing gazing into 
 heaven, as though they would bid them 
 turn from heaven to earth ? 
 
 And so they did bid them. It was not 
 rapture, even of the most holy kind, but 
 work that their Master wanted of them 
 now. The bright vision had passed into 
 heaven and gone ; and now were coming 
 the stern realities that the Christian faith 
 meant then the hard life of thankless 
 labour, ending perhaps by the sword or 
 the faggot. But did not St. Paul know 
 this too when he wrote those words 
 
 1 Col. Hi. i. 
 
42 Sursum Corda. 
 
 amongst his weariness and painfulness, 
 his watchings often, and daily care of all 
 the churches ? Surely no man ever knew it 
 better than the greatest of all the Apostles. 
 Here then you have the contrast be- 
 tween the two principles of Christian life 
 which I wanted you to mark one, that 
 we must seek those things that are above, 
 where Christ is at the right hand of God ; 
 the other, that we are called upon not 
 to gaze into heaven, but to work for God 
 upon earth. In other words, unless we 
 form in our own minds a very noble 
 idea of what our conduct should be, we 
 shall never be likely to do a noble action 
 at all ; then even the very noblest ideas 
 are of no value whatever, except in so 
 far as they lead to action or help to 
 shape our lives. But if those noble 
 
Sursum Corda. 43 
 
 thoughts and wishes are real and not 
 affected, if they are full of desire to help 
 others, not merely to save ourselves, then 
 they will shape the life even of a child. 
 
 Not long ago I was on the bridge that 
 leads out of the Great Gate at Avila in 
 Spain a wonderful old town, with walls 
 far more perfect than our own Chester, 
 which looks as if nothing but the railway 
 station there was not of the Middle Ages 
 and there I thought of telling you 
 something of the story of St. Theresa. 
 St. Theresa lived at Avila about the 
 middle of the sixteenth century. Now 
 she and her little brother used to read 
 together the lives of the saints and martyrs, 
 until they desired that they too might win 
 the glorious crown. She was but seven 
 or eight, and her little brother younger 
 
44 Sursum Corda. 
 
 still, when they started across that bridge 
 one morning from Avila in order to go 
 to the Moors, who were Mohammedans, 
 and then held the south of Spain, in order 
 to tell them that they loved Jesus Christ, 
 in the hope that then they would be 
 murdered and so go straight to heaven. 
 Poor little creatures ! Of course they were 
 soon found and brought back, and so their 
 child's story ended. But though that 
 story ended, St. Theresa never forgot the 
 idea which shaped her beautiful life. 
 When she grew up she reformed the Order 
 of the Carmelites, diffused a new earnest- 
 ness through all the Spanish Church, and 
 did for a time in Spain much of the 
 best that the Reformation was doing 
 in Germany and England. She is one 
 of the most venerated of the saints, 
 
Sursum Corda. 45 
 
 and in Spanish pictures you may see 
 her with an arrow tipped with the 
 flame of zeal, while at her ear is a 
 pure white dove, signifying the Holy 
 Spirit of God that moulded her pure and 
 holy life. 
 
 But remember that in the sight of God 
 the life of St. Theresa would have been 
 just as pure and as noble if she had suc- 
 ceeded in doing nothing at all of these 
 things, but had only tried her best, and 
 been forced to confess that it was a failure. 
 " Here and there," ae George Eliot says, 
 c< a cygnet is reared uneasily among the 
 " ducklings in the brown pond, and never 
 <c finds the living stream in fellowship with 
 " its own oary- footed kind. Here and 
 " there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress 
 " of nothing, whose loving heart -beats 
 
46 Sursum Corda. 
 
 u and sobs after an unattained goodness 
 " tremble off and are dispersed among 
 cc hindrances, instead of centering in some 
 " long recognisable deed." 1 
 
 Yes, thank God, every one of us has 
 his better moments, such as they are ; the 
 better moments are not given to the saints 
 alone only the true saint seizes on the 
 better moment and makes it a part of his life. 
 Surely I may safely say there is not one of 
 us who does not at times , feel something 
 stirring within him that makes him wish 
 that he was good that he was leading a 
 better life altogether than he is leading. 
 It may be from his Confirmation ; it may 
 be from a letter from home; or because 
 some one whom he loved dearly has been 
 laid in the grave ; or it may seem to be 
 
 1 Prelude to Middlemarcb. 
 
Sursum Corda. 47 
 
 without any reason, as if God had shot a 
 chance arrow into the air. But I appeal 
 to you all without fear has not every 
 one of you felt a longing at times, and 
 found himself the better for so feeling, 
 that he too could do something for the 
 honour of God or to smite the devil at 
 least that it might be said of him after- 
 wards that he had been a manly,, pure, and 
 honourable English boy, and that even a 
 great English public school was all the 
 better because he had once been a member 
 of it ? Well, if you have ever felt any- 
 thing of that kind, you too have been 
 " seeking those things which are above ;" 
 and though you will never reach all that 
 you wish or pray for, that idea of good- 
 ness, like a star in the heavens, has at- 
 tracted your life in the little world below, 
 
48 Sursum Corda. 
 
 as the distant moon silently attracts each 
 little wave of the sea. 1 
 
 Do not think that a preacher is talking 
 above your heads if he urges you to think 
 of something infinitely noble as what you 
 must aim at ; something as far above the 
 life even of a saint as a star is above the 
 ground. There is no fear here of fixing 
 your thoughts so high that you may per- 
 haps miss your mark altogether. Always 
 bear in mind George Herbert's famous 
 lines 
 
 " Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high, 
 
 So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be ; 
 Sink not in spirit ; who aimeth at the sky 
 
 Shoots higher much than he that means a tree." 2 
 
 1 " Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice 
 Him or her I shall follow : 
 As the water follows the moon silently 
 With fluid steps anywhere around the globe." 
 WALT WHITMAN, quoted in Daniel Deronda, ch. 29. 
 2 "The Church Porch." 
 
Sursum Corda. 49 
 
 If the highest ideal that a boy has put 
 to himself is to get his form prize this 
 term, or to get his eleven-colours, and he 
 succeeds in this object, well, he has done a 
 good thing as far as it goes ; but he has 
 not mounted half so high for all his suc- 
 cess as the boy who has said, " God helping 
 cc me I will try to stop a wicked thing,'' 
 and has tried to stop it, and then has failed 
 or been laughed at. That is because one 
 aims at the sky, whereas the other only 
 meant a tree. 
 
 Lastly, I wish to say a few words speci- 
 ally addressed to the elder ones of you in 
 the Sixth Form. Most of you will be 
 leaving us at the end of this term to go to 
 Oxford or Cambridge, or into the army, 
 or to an hospital, or into business. Wher- 
 ever it is, you must of course take a plunge 
 
50 Sursum Corda. 
 
 into different ways of thinking from what 
 you have been used to, and most of you 
 will be quite sure to be carried away for a 
 time by any popular tendency ; and the 
 popular tendency is now (I suppose it 
 always has been) to prevent anybody from 
 ever setting his eyes on any lofty ideal at all. 
 Perhaps I may venture here to quote from 
 a lay-sermon delivered at Clifton College 
 by a warm friend of Haileybury, the well- 
 known author of Tom Brown's Schooldays. 
 Mr. Hughes very truly says, " If you have 
 " not already felt it, you will assuredly feel 
 " as soon as you leave these walls that your 
 " lot is cast in a world which longs for no- 
 " thing so much as to succeed in shaking 
 " off all belief in anything which can- 
 " not be tested by the senses, and gauged 
 " and measured by the intellect, as the 
 
Sursum Cor da. 
 
 " trappings of a worn-out superstition. . . . 
 cc So the high priests of the new gospel 
 " teach, and their teaching echoes through 
 " our literature and colours the life of the 
 " streets and the markets in a thousand 
 " ways; and a Mammon-ridden generation, 
 c< longing to be rid of what they hope are 
 " only certain old and clumsy superstitions 
 " which they try to believe injurious to 
 " others, and are quite sure to make them 
 " uneasy in their own efforts to eat, drink, 
 " and be merry applauds as openly as 
 " it dare, and hopes soon to see the mil- 
 " lennium of the flesh-pots publicly declared 
 " and recognised." 1 
 
 Now, what I have to say to you is this. 
 When you have to make your choice, take 
 
 1 The Manliness of Christ, p. 175. I should like to see this 
 admirable address circulated separately in all our great schools. 
 
52 Sursum Cor da. 
 
 your stand modestly, but boldly and firmly, 
 on the side which offers you not the safest 
 or most popular but the noblest ideal of 
 life. Do not let your attitude to what you 
 have been taught to believe, if it is really 
 noble, be one of half-hearted apology for 
 it, as if it did not matter very much after 
 all what people believed, and that the one 
 thing needful is, not to be very different 
 from other people. 
 
 But even in those special tendencies of 
 our age which you often hear so bitterly 
 denounced there seems to be a hopeful 
 side. If it is true that we are often 
 " Mammon-ridden " that there is a going 
 to and fro and hasting to be rich that is 
 an accompaniment of a vast extension of 
 powers that may be used for good through 
 all the human race. If there is incessant 
 
Sursum Cor da. 53 
 
 and uneasy searching into everything, and 
 often a coarse and vulgar handling of some 
 ark that holds what we deem sacred, yet 
 that is an outward sign of the growing 
 hatred of merely accepting a tradition, and 
 of a desire to find out truth at any risk. 
 Certainly this at least may be said for our 
 age, that at no previous period in all history 
 has the sympathy for suffering, or poverty, 
 or weakness been so widely spread as it is 
 now. It may be that Christianity will have 
 to put off, perhaps with a violent effort, 
 much that has been believed to be of it, 
 but is not really of the Spirit of Christ. It 
 may be that we are, as some think, on the 
 verge of a great revolution of thought. If 
 that be so, it will but appear all the more 
 plainly why the ideal that Christ has set up 
 for us stands so serenely far above all the 
 
54 Sursum Corda. 
 
 possible changes and chances of this mortal 
 life, and that he who lifts up his eyes to 
 the everlasting hills will find that from 
 them comes his help. 1 
 
 Thus the strange truth that Christ sets 
 up before us an impossible standard of life 
 to follow is explained, because each step of 
 the way is possible in itself. " Who shall 
 " ascend into the hill of the Lord ? who 
 <c shall rise up in his holy place ? Even he 
 " that hath clean hands and a pure heart." 2 
 For in the fine words of Emerson, which 
 are written up in the Hall of Marlborough 
 College 
 
 " So close is glory to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 The youth replies, I can." 
 
 1 Ps. cxxi. i. 2 Ps. xxiv. 3, 4. 
 
IV. 
 CHRISTMAS. 1 
 
 (Third Sunday in Advent, 1879.) 
 
 Lord, who has taught us that all our 
 doings without charity are nothing worth ; 
 Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our 
 hearts that most excellent gift of charity, 
 the very bond of peace and of all virtues, 
 without which whosoever liveth is counted 
 dead before thee ; Grant this for Thine 
 only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 
 
 (COLLECT FOR QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY.) 
 
 1 The idea of this sermon was partly suggested by two of 
 Charles Kingsley's A Preparation for Christmas and Christmas 
 Day. 
 
56 Christmas. 
 
 to o& in tlje frief?e0t t 
 SJnti on eartf) peace, eooti toiii totoarti men/' 1 
 
 ST. LUKE ii. 14. 
 
 CHRISTMAS is coming very soon now. 
 There are many things that remind us of 
 this. The ground is white with snow, and 
 the ponds are beginning to be frozen hard ; 
 the shops are putting out their brightest 
 show, and all of us have talked of what 
 we shall do in the Christmas holidays. 
 Before many days we shall all be in our 
 own churches for the Christmas morning 
 
 1 In this sermon I pointed out that the reading of four of 
 the oldest MSS. of the Gospel was evdoidas, not evdoida, not 
 " peace, good will towards men," but " peace to men of [God's] 
 " good will j" and so also in the Vulgate, or version of St. Jerome, 
 "Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis." This has now been made familiar 
 to every one by the Revised Version, " Peace among men in whom 
 " he is well pleased." The Authorised Version however, which 
 is strongly supported in the Speakers Commentary, is so associated 
 with Christmas texts that it seems better (with this note) to retain 
 it here. 
 
Christmas. 57 
 
 service; and there among the bright and 
 pleasant decorations for the day we shall 
 be sure to see the special Christmas text, 
 " On earth peace, good will toward men." 
 Therefore, as we never have the oppor- 
 tunity of saying a Christmas word to you 
 here in this Chapel, I take this text a 
 little before its season, iin the hope that 
 I may give you something fresh to 
 think about it when you see or hear 
 it on Christmas morning, and that this 
 may help to make all the merrier for 
 others as well as yourselves the Christ- 
 mas holidays to which we are looking 
 forward. 
 
 Have you ever thought why we keep 
 Christmas as we do? why we decorate 
 our churches, and give presents to one 
 another, and let our servants have a holiday 
 
58 Christmas. 
 
 if we can, and feel that it is a shame to let 
 a quarrel run over Christmas Day? I 
 suppose you would say, "Because Christ 
 cc was born on Christmas Day," or, " We 
 " keep it so because we are Christians." 
 Here then I must answer, though it may 
 seem a startling thing to say, that, first, 
 so far as we can discover, Christ was not 
 born on Christmas Day ; and secondly, 
 that we should now have been keeping 
 our festival apparently in just the same 
 way if we had been Pagans still and not 
 Christians. 
 
 As to the first, it is hardly possible that 
 Jesus Christ can have been born on the 
 25th of December. In the verse before 
 our text we read how the shepherds were 
 " abiding in the field, keeping watch over 
 <c their flocks by night." Now, even in 
 
Christmas. 59 
 
 Palestine, it would be very difficult for 
 shepherds to remain out in the fields on a 
 December night, and what is more, there 
 would not have been any pasture for the 
 sheep. Hence another fancy arose, but 
 equally without any ground for it, that 
 Christ was born on the early morning of 
 the 5th of April that being the day on 
 which thirty -three years afterwards he 
 died on the Cross. But it certainly was 
 very early that the Christians began to keep 
 their festival of the Saviour's coming, either 
 at the end of the old year, or joined with 
 the Epiphany at the beginning of the new; 
 and since it is quite impossible to find out 
 with certainty what the real time of the 
 year was, we may at once agree that it 
 was a singularly appropriate time to have 
 chosen. 
 
60 Christmas. 
 
 For with almost all the nations of the 
 world that time was a fitting time of 
 rejoicing already. The labours of the old 
 year were done, and the labourers were 
 resting before beginning the round afresh 
 for the new year. The earth too takes 
 her rest at this season, and lies asleep under 
 her covering of snow, so that all the seeds 
 may be matured in her bosom and burst 
 into life when the spring is come. There- 
 fore it was at Christmas time that the 
 Romans kept the great festival of their 
 god Saturn, the god of the seed hidden in 
 the earth, just as the Norsemen then kept 
 the festival of Yule-tide to the bountiful 
 goddess Freya. So the end of the year all 
 over the world was felt to be a fit time of 
 rejoicing; and Christians naturally wished 
 to join in the rejoicing too, but not in 
 
Christmas. 6 1 
 
 honour of those gods whom the heathen 
 world were worshipping, but in honour 
 of the baby who had been born at Beth- 
 lehem, and cradled there in the lowly 
 manger, and yet was the Saviour of whom 
 all the prophets had spoken, the promised 
 Prince of Peace. This, and not any proof 
 that existed, is the real reason why for 
 so many hundreds of years we have kept 
 our Christmas Day on the 25th of 
 December. 
 
 Then again, do you say, we keep Christ- 
 mas as we do because we are Christians ? 
 In a certain sense that is true, or it would 
 not be a Christian festival at all. But it 
 seems probable that we should have been 
 doing very much what we are doing now 
 if we had never heard of the name of Jesus 
 Christ at all. Let us suppose that we 
 
62 Christmas. 
 
 were put down suddenly in the middle of 
 Rome before Christ was born, and that 
 the day of the year was the day on which 
 we shall go home. It would then have 
 been the second day of the great festival of 
 the Saturnalia of which I was speaking. 
 All the shops and the law-courts would 
 have been shut, and it would have been 
 holiday-time in the schools. The streets 
 would have been full of people going about 
 with presents to one another for a Happy 
 New Year ; x and if it was evening you 
 would see maskers and mummers going to 
 play in great houses ; and a favourite 
 amusement was carrying wax tapers, the 
 fun being to keep your own taper alight 
 and blow out other people's, just as they 
 
 1 They were called strenae, from which comes the French 
 dtrennes. 
 
Christmas. 63 
 
 do in Rome now on the last night of the 
 Carnival. 1 To begin a war then would 
 have been thought quite impious. Even 
 the poor criminals in prison were never 
 tortured or executed then, but had their 
 punishment made a little lighter. But the 
 most curious custom of all was that, just 
 for that once, the slaves were recognised as 
 human creatures, and allowed to play at 
 being free. 2 They were allowed to dress 
 up in their masters' or mistresses' clothes, 
 and sat down to a feast in the even- 
 ing where their masters and mistresses 
 waited on them ; and a very good as well 
 as pretty custom this was, because it must 
 have done something to keep alive in a 
 
 1 See Dickens : Pictures from Italy Rome. 
 
 2 "Age, libertate Decembri, 
 Quando ita maiores voluerunt, utere." 
 
 Hor., Sat. ii. 7, 5. 
 
64 Christmas. 
 
 Roman's heart what he was only too 
 ready always to forget, that his slave was 
 a human being after all. 
 
 Well then, if we found ourselves sud- 
 denly one winter in the midst of this we 
 should fancy that people were keeping 
 Christmas. So, perhaps, in a way they 
 were, for St. Paul says, " God in times past 
 " suffered the nations to walk in their own 
 " ways. Nevertheless he left not himself 
 " without witness, in doing us good and fill- 
 " ing our hearts with food and gladness." : 
 Perhaps it was so with these Romans. 
 Those who had worked hard were enjoying 
 their holiday, and that is a good thing. 
 They were expressing their thankfulness 
 to the god who, as they believed, had 
 given them their seedtime, and that also 
 
 1 Acts xiv. 1 6, 17. 
 
Christmas. 65 
 
 is good ; but better still was the kindness 
 of friends and relations to one another, 
 which was shown by these little presents, 
 and the meeting again of families for the 
 festival season, and the stopping of all 
 quarrels, whether with the sword or in the 
 law-courts, for the time, and the sympathy 
 for once of masters and mistresses with 
 their poor slaves ; all of which did tell the 
 Romans before Christ came something of 
 Christ's good tidings of peace on earth and 
 good will towards men. 
 
 When therefore you see this text up in 
 church next Christmas morning remember 
 that though this was no new Gospel, the 
 blessedness of peace and good will, yet 
 that it was Christ's coming which made 
 this the living principle of the Christian 
 
 life. Think of this in reference to those 
 F 
 
66 Christmas. 
 
 things which we generally associate with 
 Christmas time. You will, no doubt, be 
 giving little presents to friends and rela- 
 tions, and receiving others from them. 
 Well, and so did the Romans, you see, 
 before Christ was born; but it is quite a 
 new thing that the thoughtfulness and love 
 implied in each present should be really for 
 the sake of Him who loved us so much. 
 Again, it is a time when we naturally feel 
 that quarrels and bitter feelings should at 
 least be put aside, and so thought the 
 Romans when they stopped their lawsuits 
 and their battles ; but it is the part of a 
 Christian not only to hush for the time but 
 to heal altogether whatever he can of any 
 quarrelling or unkindness that may have 
 arisen in the past year, and to do it for the 
 sake of the Divine Forgiver of injuries. 
 
-C/iristmas. 67 
 
 Again, it is a time when you can do some- 
 thing towards breaking down that inhuman 
 separation of classes that is perhaps worse 
 in free England than in any other country. 
 The Romans, we see, did it a little in an 
 odd way at their Saturnalia, but you can 
 all do much more. Most of you live in 
 country villages, and there it is far the 
 easiest. You can always, to begin with, 
 show a human interest in your own 
 servants at home, and be careful about 
 hurting their feelings, or glad to help 
 them, if occasion arises, by a little sacrifice 
 of your own convenience. You can go 
 about in the village, and get to know 
 something about poor people, and see what 
 a hard life and yet what a patient life they 
 often lead ; and the mere knowing of it 
 will do both you and them good. Poor 
 
68 Christmas. 
 
 people often say that the mere sight of a 
 bright face does them good ; and if you 
 are giving up half an hour, when you might 
 have been skating, to read the Bible to a 
 poor bedridden creature, or giving a little 
 present out of your own money to help 
 a poor woman who is struggling to keep 
 out of the workhouse, or even only giving 
 a few kind words and meaning them 
 to the people with whom you have to do, 
 then you are helping to spread the message 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Lastly, you will have everything at 
 Christmas to remind you of all this, if you 
 only care to think about it at all. Here is 
 a beautiful description of a Christmas morn- 
 ing walk from the great and tender-hearted 
 novelist, who has done more than all the 
 philosophers put together to spread kindly 
 
Christmas. 69 
 
 feeling for the poor, and to break down 
 those inhuman barriers of which I was 
 speaking. "And now/' he says, "the 
 " mists began to rise in the most beautiful 
 " manner, and the sun to shine ; and as I 
 " went on through the bracing air, seeing 
 " the hoar-frost sparkle everywhere, I felt 
 cc as if all nature shared in the joy of the 
 " great Birthday. Going through the 
 " woods the softness of my tread upon 
 " the mossy ground and among the brown 
 u leaves enhanced the Christmas sacred- 
 " ness by which I felt surrounded. As the 
 " whitened stems environed me I thought 
 " how the Founder of the time had never 
 " raised his benignant hand save to bless 
 " and heal, except in the case of one un- 
 c< conscious tree. I came to the village, 
 " and the churchyard where the dead had 
 
Christmas. 
 
 " been quietly buried in the sure and cer- 
 " tain hope which Christmas time inspired. 
 " What children could I see at play and 
 " not be loving of, recalling who had loved 
 ''them? ... In time the distant river 
 " with the ships came full in view, and 
 " with it pictures of the poor fishermen 
 cc mending their nets, who rose and fol- 
 " lowed him of the teaching of the people 
 " from a ship pushed off a little way from 
 cc the shore, by reason of the multitude 
 c< of a majestic figure walking on the water 
 " in the loneliness of the night. My very 
 " shadow on the ground was eloquent of 
 " Christmas; for did not the people lay 
 " their sick where the mere shadows of 
 " the men who had heard and seen him 
 u might fall as they passed along ? " l 
 
 1 Dickens : The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
Christmas. 7 1 
 
 Keep, then, something of these thoughts 
 to make these Christmas holidays happy, 
 and remember that one of the best ways 
 to give glory to God in the highest is 
 to help on earth peace, good will to- 
 wards men. 
 
V. 
 BIRDS-NESTING. 
 
 (May 1885.) 
 
 O God, forasmuch as without thee we 
 are not able to please thee: mercifully 
 grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all 
 things direct and rule our hearts: through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 (COLLECT FOR i 9TH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.) 
 
7 4 Birds - Nesting. 
 
 4i 31 f a birtT0 ne0t chance to be before tf>ee in tf>e toap 
 in anp tree, or on tf?e grounti, tof>etl?er tfjep be poung 
 ones, or egg0, anti tfje Earn sitting upon te poung, 
 or upon tf?e egg0, tf?ou 0J>alt not ta&e t!)e liam toit!? 
 tfre pounc : 5Sut t|)ou 0f>alt in an^ toi0e let tf>e tJam 
 Co, anti ta&e tjje poung to t^ee ; ti?at it map be toell 
 toitf? t^ee, anti tJ)at tJjou mape0t prolong t|?p tap0/' 
 DEUT. xxii. 6, 7. 
 
 I SUPPOSE hardly any of you ever heard 
 a sermon on birds -nesting, and probably 
 it is a surprise to find that there really is a 
 text in the Bible speaking quite plainly 
 about birds - nesting and about nothing 
 else. As the subject then is not too small 
 for the Bible to notice, it cannot be too 
 small for us ; and as it is part of a subject 
 on which I feel very strongly indeed the 
 love of and care for God's creatures I 
 should like to speak of it to you in this 
 summer season, with the birds nesting in 
 
Birds -Nesting. 75 
 
 every bush around us, or their newly 
 taken eggs displayed in everybody's col- 
 lection. 
 
 The first thing we may notice is that, 
 not only does it seem surprising to find 
 a positive command on so small a subject, 
 but that the circumstances under which 
 the command was delivered were as far 
 as we can find out such as to make this 
 more surprising than ever. That wonder- 
 ful people, the Israelites, had not long 
 before been made into a nation at all 
 instead of a mere crowd of slaves, owing 
 to the commanding genius of Moses, one 
 of the grandest figures in all history, whom 
 God raised up for this special work. 
 Under his command they wandered for 
 many long years in the wilderness, slowly 
 working their way towards the Land of 
 
7 6 Birds - Nesting. 
 
 Promise. At last came the time when 
 their great leader was to be taken from 
 them, just when that land was in sight, 
 and when it seemed that under proper 
 guidance a happy settlement was about to 
 begin for the people he had loved and 
 led so well. This then is the professed 
 occasion of the Book Deuteronomy, or the 
 Second Recital of the Law though the 
 actual date of the work is a disputed point 
 the last solemn charge of the great 
 father of his people ; the last reminder 
 of the sure punishment of sinning against 
 God, and His equally sure blessing upon 
 obedience to His commandments. 
 
 Yes, obedience : but not obedience for 
 its own sake, which is no virtue at all in 
 a reasoning being, but obedience to God's 
 commandments, because they are always 
 
Birds - Nesting. 77 
 
 good. The Jewish scribes, being mostly 
 quite incapable of entering into the spirit 
 instead of the letter of their law, used to 
 say that this was the very least among the 
 commandments of Moses ; and sermons 
 have been preached on this text to show 
 that God likes commanding us to do little 
 things in order to put our obedience to 
 the proof; and that it is a higher thing to 
 obey God in something for which there is 
 no reason except that God so ordered it, 
 than to obey in some great thing, such as, 
 Thou shalt do no . murder, which the laws 
 of nature might teach us without any 
 revelation at all. 1 
 
 Now this is exactly the view which I 
 
 1 Canon Melvill, the famous preacher, after whom Melvill 
 House is named, has a fine and suggestive sermon on this text 
 (Sermons on the less Prominent Facts of the Bible, vol. ii.), in 
 which, nevertheless, he uses this deplorable argument. 
 
78 Birds -Nesting. 
 
 want you at once to reject, as dishonouring 
 alike to God and man, both in this and in 
 any other commandment of the Bible. If 
 you glance at the Books of Exodus or 
 Deuteronomy you may find scores of com- 
 mandments which perhaps seem trifling or 
 even absurd, if you want to find anything 
 absurd in them. But if you ask a special 
 student of these books and of that age, 
 he will tell you that while some of these 
 commandments are not yet satisfactorily 
 explained, still, that every year adds to 
 our knowledge on the point : that some of 
 these seemingly mysterious directions are 
 really wise rules about health, adapted to 
 the climate ; some are explained by the 
 idolatrous ritual of the Egyptians or the 
 tribes of Canaan, which was to be care- 
 fully avoided ; others probably bear in 
 
Birds - Nesting. 7 9 
 
 their form the stamp of the personality 
 of the great lawgiver himself. But 
 whether any particular command is fully 
 explained or not, this we may, at any rate, 
 assert as a principle to begin with : that a 
 law is not good because it is God's, but that 
 God has made it His law because it is good. 
 
 I will not, however, lead you any farther 
 into this general question, but will at once 
 ask Why does the Bible say if a bird be 
 sitting on her young, or eggs, that we must 
 not take the mother- bird even if we take 
 her young ? 
 
 And here it may perhaps help us if I 
 quote by way of illustration a very curi- 
 ous parallel that may be found in a poet 
 called Phocylides, who lived at least a 
 thousand years later than Moses. He was 
 a Greek of the great Ionic race living in 
 
8 o Birds - Nesting. 
 
 Asia Minor the race that was then at 
 the head of all the culture and civilisa- 
 tion in the world. Now he wrote what 
 is called didactic poetry ; that is to say, 
 useful maxims or proverbs in verse ; 
 and he happened by chance to lay down 
 a rule of advice on the very same sub- 
 ject as our text. And this is what he 
 says 
 
 " Let no one take all the birds of a nest together ; 
 But leave the mother, that you may have her 
 young a second time." 1 
 
 The Greek poet therefore says, " Leave 
 " the mother alone, because thus you have 
 " a chance of destroying her home and her 
 " young a second time." Moses says, " If 
 
 TLS opvtdas KCL\LTJS &/j,a Trdvras eXeaOw, 
 [Arjrepa d' eKTrpoXifrrfs 'iv' ^%$s iroXi TTJcrde veoffcrovs. 
 There is great doubt as to the genuineness of the fragments of 
 Phocylides, but the question is not worth discussion here, since 
 they undoubtedly express the sentiments of his time. 
 
Birds - Nesting. 
 
 " you are taking young birds, spare the 
 <c mother at least if you wish God to bless 
 " you." You could not possibly have a 
 better example how the words of the great 
 lawgiver lift one into a totally different 
 sphere of thought from the wisest maxims 
 of the ancient world. 
 
 For why is it that the mother-bird, sit- 
 ting on her nest, is in any danger at all more 
 than the father, or than she herself is at 
 other times when she has no nest ? Clearly, 
 because of the sweet instinct which God 
 has given her, to protect her young by 
 any means in her power. You know how 
 a cat with kittens will rout any dog ; how 
 a hen with chickens has even beaten off a 
 kite or killed a large rat ; how a lapwing, 
 not being able to fight, will pretend to 
 have a broken wing to draw you away 
 
82 Birds -Nesting. 
 
 from her nest. And so it is just the 
 nobility of this beautiful instinct which 
 puts the brave little mother in danger, 
 while the father -bird gets safely away. 
 If you have a gentle hand you may stroke 
 some of the tamer birds, such as a thrush 
 or a robin, on their nests ; but what manli- 
 ness or generosity must a boy have who 
 would make use of this brave instinct to 
 capture the poor bird for a cage as well 
 as take her nest ? We may perhaps re- 
 member some other remarkable command- 
 ments which nature and humanity approve 
 of, such as not to kill a cow and her young 
 in the same day, 1 and not to seethe a kid 
 in its mother's milk. 2 
 
 And then again the concluding sentence 
 of the text, " that it may be well with thee, 
 
 1 Lev. xxii. 28. 2 Exod. xxiii. 19. 
 
Birds - Nesting. 8 3 
 
 " and that thou mayest prolong thy days," 
 points us clearly to the true ground for 
 this commandment. One of the ten com- 
 mandments, and one only, expressly called 
 therefore "the first commandment with 
 " promise," 1 has the very same sentence 
 added to it as a sanction. " Honour thy 
 " father and thy mother, that thy days may 
 " be long in the land which the Lord thy 
 " God giveth thee." This is surely inten- 
 tional; it was surely intended that we should 
 see not only that here was a plain rule, but 
 that the rule was good in itself: that not 
 amongst men, but amongst animals also 
 the affection of a mother for her young 
 is a sacred gift of God ; and that to vio- 
 late this, or even to run the risk of weak- 
 ening it by making it a fresh source of 
 
 1 Ephes. vi. 2. 
 
84 Birds -Nesting. 
 
 danger, is to violate the best instincts in 
 our own nature, and so to offend against 
 the laws of God. 
 
 Now if it should seem to you that, if 
 this be so, we have no right to take a 
 bird's eggs at all, I reply that if you really 
 feel scruples about it you had certainly 
 much better not take eggs. But most of 
 you will not feel scruples, and to you I can 
 say that our text seems to give us the 
 wise, moderate, and humane rule. Look 
 at the text again : " Thou shalt in any wise 
 " let the dam go, and take the young to 
 " thee." For God has given all living crea- 
 tures into the hand of man, only they are 
 for our use and not for abuse. The bird's 
 eggs, and even the bird's young ones if we 
 require them, are ours, whether we want 
 them for food, or for the study of natural 
 
Birds -Nesting. 85 
 
 history, or merely for the genuine love of 
 their beauty ; but, whatever our object, we 
 have to remember that no cruelty to God's 
 creatures is so small as to go unnoticed in 
 God's sight. There is no real cruelty, 
 happily, in proper birds - nesting, nothing 
 which we have not a perfect right to do, 
 if only we remember this. And I as one 
 who have collected and delighted in birds' 
 eggs since I was much younger than any 
 of you here, and have helped the collec- 
 tions of so many Haileybury boys, can 
 emphatically assert that the cruelty hardly 
 ever comes from the true collector, the 
 lover of birds and their ways, but from 
 poor ignorant boys who have never learnt 
 to think about birds as God's creatures, 
 or from those much more blamable boys 
 here who thoughtlessly encourage their 
 
8 6 Birds - Nesting. 
 
 mischief. Here then is a plain, easy way 
 of keeping the spirit of this command- 
 ment. You know, for example, how the 
 poor boys round here always pull out a nest 
 bodily in order to make a few pence out 
 of you ; but you, who by buying of them 
 encourage this cruel mischief, will have to 
 answer for it far more than they. Put down 
 then as low and cruel this tearing out of 
 nests to make money, this plundering of 
 a whole nest instead of an egg or two : 
 remember that with the gentleness and 
 care which a good collector always uses, 
 few birds need ever be forced to desert 
 their nests ; and bear in mind the dif- 
 ference between taking eggs (which to the 
 bird, after all, only means some labour 
 spent in vain) and taking young birds, for 
 whom the poor little mother has the same 
 
Birds -Nesting. 87 
 
 affection in kind, though not in degree, as 
 our mothers have for you and me. 
 
 No ; you need not be afraid that a love 
 of natural history, or the thoughtful and 
 careful collection of its specimens, will ever 
 make you more cruel, or increase in the 
 end the misery that so many dumb animals 
 are doomed to. On the contrary, I hold 
 that this, better than anything else, teaches 
 us that sympathy with God's creation 
 which is the best safeguard against 
 thoughtless cruelty ; for a true naturalist 
 is always tender-hearted. We think of 
 Gilbert White, the delightful parson of 
 Selborne, who has first taught so many to 
 love the simple country, and how he de- 
 lighted in the honey - buzzard's egg on 
 Selborne Hanger ; or Waterton, and his 
 walled park in which the birds became as 
 
88 Birds -Nesting. 
 
 tame as in an aviary ; or Thomas Edward, 
 the wonderful Scotch shoemaker-naturalist, 
 who spent whole nights in the woods to 
 watch the badgers and stoats, and how he 
 went up to the high roof for a sparrow's 
 nest when he was a mere baby, but cried 
 when he was a big boy over the fate of the 
 little sparrow he had even trained to do 
 tricks ; or Frank Buckland, whose charming 
 Life has just been published, and who said 
 on his deathbed, " God is so good, so very 
 " good to the little fishes, I do not believe 
 " He would let their inspector suffer ship- 
 " wreck at last:" and, "1 am going on a 
 " long journey where I think I shall see 
 <c many strange animals ; but this journey 
 cc I must go alone." These and many such 
 men have taken both birds and their eggs 
 freely and undoubtingly, and have only 
 
Birds - Nesting. 8 9 
 
 loved the birds the better, and made others 
 love them better too. 
 
 Lastly, I think I have shown you that 
 the spirit of this teaching of Moses was 
 far above the teaching of his own age, and 
 many an age after. But it only received, 
 like every other commandment of the Old 
 Testament, its full authority and light for 
 us in the teaching of Jesus Christ. St. 
 Paul tells us that the whole of God's crea- 
 tion looks for its deliverance in Christ's 
 coming. 1 And that is being slowly ful- 
 filled now. Wherever the savage ferocity 
 of past times, such as in cruel amusements, 
 in reckless sport, or in indifference to suf- 
 fering, is disappearing from amongst us, 
 it is because we are being led higher by the 
 spirit of the Bible and of Jesus Christ, who 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 19. 
 
90 Birds - Nesting. 
 
 taught us that not one sparrow falls to the 
 ground without God's knowledge, 1 and 
 that we, the crown of God's creation, are 
 united with all His living creatures in the 
 great bond of being all the family of our 
 Father which is in heaven. 
 
 1 St. Matt. x. 29. 
 
VI. 
 THE GREAT QUESTION. 
 
 (Advent, 1883.) 
 
 Almighty God, give us grace that we 
 may cast away the works of darkness and 
 put upon us the armour of light, now in 
 the time of this mortal life in which thy 
 Son Jesus Christ came to 'visit us in great 
 humility : that in the last day, when he 
 shall come again in his glorious majesty to 
 judge both the quick and dead, we may rise 
 to the life immortal: through him who 
 livetb and reigneth with thee and the Holy 
 Ghost, now and ever. Amen. 
 
 (COLLECT FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT.) 
 
92 The Great Question. 
 
 " OTfjen tf?e >on of man cometl;, 0f>all |>e finU fait 
 upon tf?e eartfj?" St. LUKE xviii. 8. 
 
 LAST Sunday you heard of the great text 
 of the Jewish prophet Habakkuk, " The 
 "just shall live by his faith," l and how 
 powerfully it influenced those two very 
 different religious reformers, St. Paul and 
 Martin Luther. I also propose to-day to 
 speak of the subject of faith in connection 
 with this searching Advent question 
 When Christ comes again, will he or will 
 he not find faith in us ? 
 
 But what was Christ himself thinking 
 of when he asked the question? It is 
 very difficult to say. The words were 
 spoken in the long talks that he had with 
 his disciples before the last fatal journey 
 
 1 Hab. ii. 4. 
 
The Great Question. 93 
 
 to Jerusalem. He had just told them the 
 parable of the unjust judge, who righted 
 the poor widow, not because it was his 
 duty to do justice, but because he was 
 wearied of her prayers. And if an unjust 
 judge can be made just by unwearied 
 prayers, " shall not God avenge his own 
 cc elect, which cry day and night unto him, 
 u though he bear long with them ? I 
 " tell you he shall avenge them speedily. 
 " Nevertheless when the Son of man 
 <c cometh, shall he find faith upon the 
 "earth?" 
 
 Now this abrupt question certainly 
 looks as if it were not a mere searching 
 of the consciences of those who listened 
 to his words, but a doubt in the very 
 mind of Christ himself. A doubt in the 
 mind of Christ himself ! you may say : 
 
94 The Great due st ion. 
 
 did not he know all things? No; he 
 is careful on this very subject to warn us 
 with special solemnity that he did not. 
 The short time of his wonderful mission 
 was nearly over, and he was about to 
 begin the last act of the awful tragedy. 
 He knew that one of his own disciples 
 meant to betray him. He knew that the 
 boldest of his Apostles would soon deny 
 with oaths the Master that he loved. He 
 knew that this must end in mockery, out- 
 rage, and a cruel death. He may even 
 have had the terrible vision before his eyes 
 of that last moment of apparent utter 
 failure, when he cried in despair, " My 
 " God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 " me ? " And seeing all the horror to come 
 how very little he had been able to do 
 as yet ; how few and poor and weak his 
 
The Great due st ion. 95 
 
 followers were, and how they must be 
 tried he may well have asked himself 
 as much as them, "When the Son of 
 ' c man cometh, shall he find faith upon 
 " the earth?" 
 
 When the Son of man cometh yes, 
 but when will that be? Surely there is 
 no more profound lesson in the Gospel 
 story, none more necessary to remember 
 if we think we honour Jesus Christ by 
 denying the reality of his human nature, 
 than those solemn words, " Of that day 
 " and that hour knoweth no man, no, not 
 " the angels which are in heaven ; not even 
 " the Son, but the Father only/' 1 But he 
 had just told them also that it should be 
 " speedily." And they forgot the warning 
 that even Christ himself did not know 
 
 1 St. Mark xiii. 32. 
 
96 The Great Question. 
 
 when his coming again should be ; they 
 forgot that a thousand years in God's sight 
 are but as one day, and remembered only 
 that he would speedily avenge them. He 
 had told them of a great tribulation 
 soon to come which was fulfilled in the 
 famous Siege of Jerusalem under Titus 
 in that very generation when the terrible 
 Romans would take their beloved city, and 
 defile their beautiful Temple, and all the 
 horrors of siege and famine and sack, 
 aggravated by the fury of conquerors after 
 a desperate resistance, would be suffered. 
 Surely, they thought, when this trial was 
 past, they would see their Master coming 
 in the clouds in power and great glory. 
 But again men's hopes grew fainter and 
 fainter as the persecutions were renewed 
 again and aga^n under the worst Roman 
 
The Great Question. 97 
 
 Emperors, such as Nero and Domitian ; 
 and then the scoffers, of whom St. Peter 
 tells us, began to say, " Where is the 
 " promise of his coming? for since the 
 " fathers fell asleep, all things continue 
 " as they were from the beginning of 
 " the creation." 1 And to some religious 
 people even nowadays it seems, I believe, 
 almost irreligious if you do not now 
 believe, as the Apostles wrongly then 
 believed, that Christ must come within a 
 very few years. 
 
 To me it seems that the more we realise 
 the greatness of Christ's work the less we 
 can believe this possible. When we look 
 on the history of the world we see that 
 Christ's life was to us the great central 
 point of it all. We see that the greatest 
 
 1 2 St. Peter Hi.- 3, 4. 
 H 
 
98 The Great Question. 
 
 conquerors and statesmen who are said to 
 have changed the faces of continents have 
 not, all put together, changed the history 
 of mankind as much as did this young 
 Carpenter of Nazareth. We see that the 
 silent influences of that work act upon 
 those who do not believe in him more 
 shame to us almost as much as on those 
 who do, and that these influences are 
 spreading wider every day. But on the 
 other hand there are whole worlds of work 
 yet left for them to do. And this being 
 so, we may well refuse to believe that 
 Christ's work will be ended while as yet 
 it is utterly incomplete, or that he will 
 willingly cease from being the Saviour of 
 mankind while there are men who need 
 a Saviour at all. But if any one finds 
 that his life is made better by that belief, 
 
The Great due st ion. 99 
 
 if he finds that he cannot watch and pray 
 so well without it, then in God's name let 
 him believe it. There is no difference in 
 the warning to him and to us. 
 
 For remember that this is absolutely 
 certain : that Christ's coming will to you 
 be speedy, though he should not come to 
 the earth for millions of ages. Young as 
 you may be, it cannot be long before, as 
 George Eliot says, " the commonplace, 
 " ' we must all die ' transforms itself into ' I 
 " c must die, and soon/ ): This then is for 
 all the Advent message, Christ is coming 
 to me soon ; what will he find the faith 
 in me ? 
 
 Now there have been, as you know, 
 certain so-called ages of faith upon the 
 earth, when it certainly seemed as if Christ 
 might come suddenly and yet find faith 
 
ioo The Great Question. 
 
 in whole cities or whole countries. Such, 
 for example, were the Crusades, when a 
 single hermit preached all Europe into 
 arms; or the Florence that you read of 
 in Romola, when the whole city gave up 
 its amusements, and took to singing litanies 
 instead, at the preaching of the famous 
 Savonarola. 
 
 But were these really at heart any more 
 ages of faith than our own age ? Would 
 the hearts of Christ's people be more 
 ready to receive Him then than now ? I 
 venture to doubt it. It seems to me that 
 a parish or a country which goes into 
 hysterical fits of general conversion one 
 day, and returns to its old sins the next, is 
 running the risk of letting the seven other 
 devils in, and the last state is likely to be 
 worse than the first. God forbid that we 
 
The Great Question. LQI 
 
 should deny whatever besetting sins there 
 are in our own time : its over-haste to be 
 rich ; its tendency to false pretences ; its 
 failure in the simpler virtues, and so forth. 
 But when we look on the noble efforts of 
 thousands of good men and women for 
 our poorer brethren in the wretched alleys 
 of London ; or the care that is shown for 
 weak and miserable, and even utterly bad 
 people, as compared with any other time ; 
 or the growing hatred of war, and habit 
 of appeal to principles of justice; or the 
 desire that every human being should have 
 a chance of education ; or the feeling for 
 the sufferings of dumb animals : in these 
 and a thousand other ways the influences of 
 Christ are working, and in all these things 
 the Son of man would find His faith in 
 the earth. 
 
The Great Question. 
 
 Christ then will come to you, and soon 
 that is the Advent message. Year after 
 year that message comes ; does it find in 
 us more or less faith than last year ? The 
 pulpit is not a place where any one of 
 us would care to tell much of his inner 
 thoughts ; but at least, my friends, I can- 
 not forget that just a year ago, on Advent 
 Sunday, I was to have spoken to you in 
 this Chapel, and I meant to have spoken 
 on this very text. But God willed it 
 otherwise. When Advent Sunday came 
 I was stricken down by illness, and it was 
 then possible that I should never see these 
 faces from this pulpit again. God in His 
 goodness, however, saw fit to give me 
 back my health and strength ; and has 
 sent me again to deliver His message. I 
 ask you again, as I humbly ask myself 
 
The Great Question. 103 
 
 When the Son of man comes, will He 
 find faith in us ? 
 
 In us individually, and in us as a body, 
 for here, more than anywhere else, we are 
 members one of another. With you, the 
 younger generation in our public schools, 
 as Mr. Gladstone told the boys of Win- 
 chester the other day, rests in great part 
 the future of England. Our history here 
 in this school, though short, has been a 
 noble one, through the courage and the faith 
 of our first pioneers ; and with the end of 
 this term we are coming to that serious 
 trial for every public school the loss of 
 the head-master, whose firm, wise lead we 
 have heartily followed. Let us pray that 
 Haileybury may be guided in the future 
 as it has been in the past, religiously, yet 
 without the cheap parade of religion ; so 
 
IO4 The Great Question. 
 
 strong in faith that we can afford to be 
 gentle to those who are weaker. Let us 
 resolve this Advent resolutely to cast away 
 those works of darkness that from time to 
 time have sullied our name, and make it 
 our earnest endeavour that we may send 
 forth (as the Bidding Prayer puts it) a 
 due supply of persons qualified to serve 
 God in Church and State; and that each 
 of these may in his own degree be helping 
 to make the waste places of the world 
 again into a garden of the Lord. 
 
 And lastly, to each of us individually 
 also is this question put. For you may, 
 by habit, or discipline, or example, be lead- 
 ing a blameless and wholesome life, and it 
 will be the faith of Christ, for the most 
 part, that has made such a life easy for 
 you. But if you have not the faith in you, 
 
The Great Question. 105 
 
 there is nothing else that can lift you into 
 the higher life. " Without faith it is im- 
 " possible to please God." 1 He who fights 
 strongly for what he believes to be true, 
 and is loyal to it whether others laugh at 
 him or not, has the precious gift of faith, 
 whether his faith be right or wrong ; he 
 has not yet received the promises, but has 
 seen them afar off, and is persuaded of 
 them, and embraces them, and confesses 
 that he is a stranger and pilgrim on the 
 earth. 2 For, in the beautiful words of the 
 greatest teacher of our own day, 3 " If loving 
 " well the creatures that are like yourself, 
 " you feel that you would love still more 
 " dearly creatures that are better than 
 " yourself, were they revealed to you ; if 
 " striving with all your might to mend 
 
 1 Heb. xi. 6. 2 Heb. xi. 13. 
 
 3 Ruskin : The Bible of Amiens, Part IV. 
 
io6 The Great Question. 
 
 <c what is evil, near you and around, you 
 " would fain look for a day when some 
 " Judge of all the earth shall wholly do 
 " right, and the little hills rejoice on every 
 " side ; if parting with the companions 
 <c that have given you all the best joy you 
 " had on earth, you desire ever to meet 
 " their eyes again and to clasp their hands, 
 " where eyes shall no more be dim nor 
 cc hands fail ; if preparing yourself to lie 
 " down beneath the grass in silence and 
 " loneliness, seeing no more beauty and 
 u feeling no more gladness, you would care 
 " for the promise of a time when you 
 " should see God's light again, and know 
 u the things you have longed to know, 
 " and walk in the peace of everlasting 
 " Love then the Hope of these things to 
 " you is Religion, the Substance of them 
 
The Great due st ion. 107 
 
 " in your life is Faith. And in the power 
 cc of them it is promised us that the king- 
 " doms of this world shall yet become 
 " the kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
 " Christ." 
 
VII. 
 HEAVEN. 
 
 (November 1885.) 
 
 O God, whose blessed Son was manifested 
 that he might destroy the works of the devil, 
 and make us the sons of God and heirs of 
 eternal life: Grant us, we beseech thee, that 
 having this hope we may purify ourselves 
 even as he is pure; that when he shall appear 
 again with power and great glory we may 
 be made like unto him in his eternal and 
 glorious kingdom, where with thee, O Father, 
 and thee, O Holy Ghost, he liveth and reign- 
 eth, one God, world without end. Amen. 
 (COLLECT FOR THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.) 
 
1 1 o Heaven. 
 
 " 8nfc fyt 0treet0 of t^e dtp 0ijaii be full of 6020 ana 
 CirI0 placing in tf>e 0treet0 thereof/' ZECHARIAH 
 viii. 5. 
 
 SOME children-friends of mine were at a 
 children's service not long ago. They did 
 not remember much of the sermon, but they 
 evidently had been struck by this text, 
 which is indeed a remarkable one. The 
 beautiful vision of happy children playing 
 in the streets of God's own city is indeed 
 so unlike what we generally associate with 
 the stern and grim old prophets of the Jews, 
 that I resolved myself to choose it for the 
 subject of my next sermon, and try to ex- 
 plain the vision to you. 
 
 What is this city in which the streets 
 shall be full of playing boys and girls ? 
 It is Jerusalem but a Jerusalem that 
 never existed at all, except in the Pro- 
 
Heaven. 1 1 1 
 
 phet's mind. But in order to understand 
 what he was now dreaming of you must 
 listen first to what was happening in his 
 time. 
 
 Zechariah was the son of a priest, and 
 was born at Babylon during the time when 
 the poor Jewish captives who had been 
 torn from their homes used to hang their 
 harps on the willows by the hated river 
 Euphrates, when they thought of Jerusalem 
 and the ruined Temple on Mount Zion, to 
 which there seemed no hope of return. At 
 last arose the great King Cyrus, who made 
 the Persians instead of the Medes the most 
 powerful race in his empire the same king 
 whose boyhood and education many of you 
 have read about in the earliest historical 
 romance in the world, the Cyropaedia of 
 Xenophon. Now in the very first year 
 
H2 Heaven. 
 
 that King Cyrus came to the throne and 
 found himself with almost absolute power 
 to do as he pleased, he issued an edict, 
 which turned out in its remoter conse- 
 quences to be one of the most important 
 in history, though no doubt he himself 
 thought it was only an act of generosity, 
 befitting a young king coming to the throne, 
 to a handful of harmless exiles. This is 
 what the Book of Chronicles says, "The 
 " Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king 
 " of Persia, that he made a proclamation 
 " throughout all his kingdom, and also put 
 "it in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus 
 " king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the 
 " earth hath the God of heaven given me; 
 " and he hath charged me to build him an 
 " house in Jerusalem. Who is there among 
 " you of all his people ? The Lord his God 
 
Heaven. 113 
 
 " be with him, and let him go up." 1 A 
 caravan of exiles therefore returned with 
 hope and delight under the commander 
 Zerubbabel, the high priest Joshua, and the 
 prophets Haggai and Zechariah. They 
 pictured to themselves, no doubt, the house 
 of God revived in greater glory than even 
 the Temple of Solomon, and the voice of 
 prayer and praise arising from the people 
 gathered on the holy mountain. But how 
 very seldom do the realities of things come 
 up to our hopes ! Even as they stood in 
 the blackened ruins of the city, with gaunt 
 rubbish-heaps marking where the Temple 
 had stood, they must have felt their hearts 
 sinking, and their fears were only too soon 
 to be realised. 
 
 But I need not stop to say anything 
 
 1 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22. 
 I 
 
H4 Heaven. 
 
 about the history of that period, interest- 
 ing as it is how the Samaritans first tried 
 to join them, and then being rejected did 
 all they could to hinder them; how the 
 supplies of stone and timber were often 
 stopped, or the wages of the workmen 
 were stolen during the carriage from 
 Persia ; how fine houses began to be built 
 at Jerusalem, apparently with the cedar 
 and marble and ivory that had been sent 
 for the house of God ; x until at length 
 Cyrus was dead, and his mad son Cam- 
 byses too, and also the impostor who pre- 
 tended to be the murdered Prince Smerdis: 
 so that it was not until the reign of Darius, 
 twenty years later, that, thanks in part to 
 his finding the half - forgotten decree of 
 Cyrus in the archives at Ecbatana, 2 the 
 
 1 Haggai i. 4. 2 Ezra vi. i. 
 
Heaven. i i 5 
 
 work at length was really finished. That 
 the work was ever finished at all was due 
 not so much to Zerubbabel, the general, 
 or to Joshua, the high priest, or all the 
 other priests together, as it was to those 
 two prophets of the Return, the aged 
 Haggai and the young Zechariah. Time 
 after time when the Jews' hearts failed 
 them did these two prophets inspire them 
 with fresh enthusiasm, and Zechariah, the 
 younger and more eager of the two, is never 
 tired of dwelling, not on their present 
 troubles, but on the happiness and peace 
 that were sure to come. And in answer 
 to those who argued that all these trials 
 were signs of God's anger, and that they 
 ought to fast and mourn to please Him, 
 he answers in splendid words, that remind 
 us of Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets : 
 
n 6 Heaven. 
 
 cc Thus saith the Lord, When ye fasted 
 " and mourned all these years, did ye fast 
 " to me ? Thus speaketh the Lord, Exe- 
 " cute true judgment, and show mercy and 
 " compassion every man to his brother, and 
 " let none imagine evil against his brother 
 " in his heart. For the Lord saith : I am 
 " returned to Zion, and will dwell in the 
 " midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall 
 " be called a city of truth ; and the moun- 
 " tain of the Lord shall be called the holy 
 " mountain. And the streets of the city 
 " shall be full of boys and girls playing in 
 " the streets thereof." 
 
 Alas ! as I said, this city never existed 
 at all except in the prophet's mind. The 
 new city and the new Temple rose up, it 
 is true, in revived beauty, and the people 
 dwelt there safely again. Once more the 
 
Heaven. 117 
 
 tribes came up thither year by year to 
 worship God on the holy mountain. But 
 the perfect purity, justice, and happiness 
 of which he dreamed were not to be found 
 in any city never will be found in any 
 city so long as the world lasts. And so 
 four hundred years later the Temple again 
 was taken, and the streets of Jerusalem 
 were running red with the blood of the 
 boys and girls who had played in them. 
 
 But what of that ? Because the pro- 
 phets only saw as it were in a glass darkly, 
 does that make their visions of no value 
 to us ? Look at the greatest instance of 
 all. In a few weeks we shall be keeping 
 the birthday of that Saviour whose coming 
 all the prophets foretold. Not one of them 
 ever dreamed of anything but a great 
 conquering King and Lawgiver, under 
 
1 1 8 Heaven. 
 
 whom all enemies would be beaten down, 
 and the land rejoice under the shadow of 
 his sceptre. How very different was the 
 form in which the Saviour came the 
 humble Carpenter of Nazareth, who was 
 crucified like a slave outside the Prophet's 
 own city. But that will not, I trust, pre- 
 vent us next Christmas morning from 
 entering into the spirit of that grand first 
 lesson, "Unto us a child is born, unto us 
 " a son is given : and the government shall 
 " be upon his shoulder: and his name shall 
 " be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The 
 " mighty God, The everlasting Father, 
 " The Prince of Peace." 1 
 
 It is not therefore needful that the pro- 
 phecy should have been fulfilled, for us to 
 enter heart and soul into the Prophet's 
 
 1 Isaiah ix. 6. 
 
Heaven. 119 
 
 beautiful vision ; nor is there anything 
 more likely than such a vision to lift us 
 into a purer and brighter world than what 
 we really see around us. Is there any- 
 body indeed, boy or girl, or woman or 
 man, who does not have a dream of Heaven 
 at times ? In that pathetic book, Mis- 
 understood^ which I was reading to some 
 of you lately, there is a sentence about 
 the sermon which came to my mind when 
 I thought over this text. "Humphrey 
 " did not often listen to the sermon, but 
 " to-day it was all about Heaven, and he 
 " liked to hear about Heaven, because his 
 cc mother was there. Feeble must human 
 " language ever be to paint the glories 
 " of that far -off land, but were not one 
 ' c and all bound to the land the preacher 
 " was describing ? And was there one 
 
I2O Heaven. 
 
 u there who could say, What is this 
 " to me?" 
 
 Ah, my friends, is it true that we are 
 all bound to the Happy City? Is it true 
 that we all not only would like to see it 
 realised, but will do our part, God helping 
 us, to make it possible? For unless we 
 do more than wish, unless we do our part 
 each one, be it but the carrying of a brick 
 for the work, be sure that for us God's 
 City will never be built. 
 
 Take the text once more, and see what 
 it is that the Prophet requires. "The 
 " streets of the city shall be full of boys 
 " and girls playing in the streets thereof." 
 
 The first thing then that we notice is 
 the perfect peace and security. No boys 
 or girls can be playing in the streets of a 
 town where robbers and murderers are 
 
Heaven. 121 
 
 about within, or where the foe are shoot- 
 ing their arrows from without. But why 
 is one city ever in danger from another ? 
 " From whence come wars and fightings 
 " amongst you ? Come they not hence, 
 " even of your lusts that war in your 
 " members ? Ye lust and have not : ye 
 u kill, and desire to have: ye fight and 
 " war, yet ye have not." 1 Therefore, to 
 make the Happy City there must be 
 Justice within and without ; no man shall 
 spoil his neighbour's goods ; the weaker 
 shall not fear the stronger. 
 
 Secondly, if the boys and girls are to 
 play in the streets, the desire of Gain 
 cannot have eaten up the whole heart of 
 the City. No one is so foolish as to look 
 on the trade and commerce of a great city 
 
 1 St. James iv. i, 2. 
 
122 Heaven. 
 
 as a sin, with all the far-reaching oppor- 
 tunities that this gives for noble as well as 
 for base uses. A city does well to pride 
 itself upon its stately buildings, its well- 
 stocked markets, its busy harbour filled 
 with a forest of masts and sails from dis- 
 tant lands. But when, as one is often 
 forced to believe, Gain is the one object of 
 a city's desire, to which everything else is 
 to be sacrificed, then surely that is a demon 
 that is worshipped, and not the true spring 
 of human industry. This it is that covered 
 Niagara with advertisements of soap and 
 pills ; that stole half the commons of Eng- 
 land from the poor ; that choked our rivers 
 with poison, and our valleys with slag; 
 that let little children rot away in mines ; 
 and that created those miles upon miles of 
 dismal streets in the north, where the sun 
 
Heaven. 123 
 
 never shines through the heavy vapour, 
 and if the boys and girls ever play at all it 
 must be upon ash-heaps. Assuredly Gain 
 will not be the greatest aim of life in the 
 Happy City. In the famous city of Am- 
 sterdam, itself one of the greatest com- 
 mercial towns in Europe, there still exists 
 a curious custom. In the year 1622, when 
 the cruel Spaniards were trying to crush the 
 Netherlands, and stamp out their freedom 
 and their faith, some children, it is said, 
 discovered a plot to take the city. Ever 
 since then, on the first week of the Kermes 
 or fair, the Great Exchange, where grave 
 merchants ordinarily meet for business, is 
 entirely given up to the boys and girls of the 
 town to play in. I could fancy Zechariah 
 looking on at this, and thinking that part 
 of his vision had already become true. 
 
1 24 Heaven. 
 
 Thirdly, in the heavenly vision notice 
 that not only are there boys and girls, but 
 that they are playing^ without the Prophet 
 thinking it wrong or foolish of them to 
 do so. The real Heaven and the real 
 heavenly things are not, you see, only for 
 older people when they are getting tired of 
 this world ; the boys and girls have their 
 place too, and it is a place they may well 
 wish for at once. What can be sadder 
 than that a child should ever be taught 
 anything else? The dreary Sabbaths, with 
 wholesome exercise for body and mind 
 alike forbidden, the long dull services 
 and sermons, and the wholly unnatural 
 notion of goodness that once used to be 
 common, are now, thank God, very rare 
 in England. Most people would now 
 see that to tell a boy, as one of the 
 
Heaven. 125 
 
 old hymn -writers does, that Heaven is 
 a place 
 
 " Where congregations ne'er break up, 
 And Sabbaths never end," 
 
 is the surest way, if he is a spirited English 
 boy, to make him resolve that he will 
 never run the risk of being sent to Heaven. 
 But show him that the Heaven which the 
 Bible tells of is a place where you are 
 always kind and just to others, because 
 others are always kind and just to you ; 
 show him that the many perplexities and 
 temptations of a boy's life are cleared and 
 smoothed for him by a love greater than 
 that of his father and mother ; show him, 
 above all, that to be fitted for this Heaven 
 he must not be a hypocrite or unnatural at 
 all, but that God loves play in its place, so 
 long as it is kindly and healthy and inno- 
 
126 Heaven. 
 
 cent, just as much as He loves honest work 
 and then it is hard if you do not get 
 that boy in his better moments to resolve 
 that he too will make a push for the land 
 that is very far off. 
 
 Fourthly and lastly, there is something, 
 perhaps, in the mention of the boys and 
 girls together, which seems to speak of the 
 remaining condition for the happy children 
 that they must be pure and innocent in 
 their play. Without that there will be no 
 happiness in their play, you may be sure. 
 With that, it is better that boys and girls 
 should be together at times, each learning 
 something from the other. A girl is better 
 off who has brothers, and a boy is better 
 off who has sisters. She learns that boys 
 are not necessarily the rough rude creatures 
 that foolish people often imagine, and so 
 
Heaven. 127 
 
 encourage them to be, but are generous in 
 proportion as they are manly; and he 
 learns that girls are not unfitted to be his 
 companions, but make him better by their 
 gentler and purer minds, and by calling 
 out that protecting instinct of the stronger 
 towards the weaker, which is strongest in 
 the most generous heart. 
 
 Thus then we see that all the Prophet 
 required to make the Happy City of the 
 boys and girls was Justice, Unselfishness, 
 Sympathy, and Innocence. Surely these 
 need no magic. These need not, like the 
 gates of pearl or the glassy sea, the white- 
 robed harpers or the golden crowns, seem 
 only the distant vision of a dream. The 
 question for you is, Do you really desire 
 these things ? for if you do, you will have 
 
128 Heaven. 
 
 them. But, like the Jews with Zechariah, 
 you will often find your hopes disap- 
 pointed : the Happy City will not be built 
 at once it will not be built indeed in all 
 its glory while this world lasts. But if 
 you really desire Justice, Unselfishness, 
 Sympathy, and Innocence, you will yet see 
 rising ay, even here in a great English 
 public school the walls of that New 
 Jerusalem that prophets and all good 
 men have longed for; and each one of 
 you, as an honest, manly, kindly English 
 schoolboy will be really doing his part to 
 build up the Eternal City of God. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh. 
 
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