SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION
 
 SPIRITUAL APPREHENSION 
 
 Sermons anD Papers 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. J. LLEWELYN DAVIES 
 
 M.A. CAMBRIDGE 5 HON. D.D. DURHAM 5 VICAR OF KIRKBY LONSD/ 
 AND ONE OF H.M. CHAPLAINS 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1898 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE sermons and articles contained in this volume 
 form a somewhat miscellaneous collection, but their 
 general object is to promote that inward action 
 towards things invisible and visible which I 
 have sought to indicate by the title " Spiritual 
 Apprehension." In the expressly theological por- 
 tion which is placed first, I have advocated the 
 principle that our spiritual faculties, which may 
 be summed up in faith and hope and love, have by 
 the Creator's appointment the chief authority in our 
 nature, and that by these we are intended to have 
 a real knowledge of the incomprehensible Being who 
 awakens and attracts them. I have pointed out 
 that these spiritual faculties assert their dominion 
 irresistibly in human life, and that the intellect, 
 which claims to be supreme and to govern, finds 
 itself baffled and confounded in ways that surprise 
 it. And I have inferred from these facts that we 
 do rightly and wisely in yielding ourselves to the 
 lead of the spirit, and that the understanding has to 
 follow and serve the spirit as best it can.
 
 vi Preface 
 
 All the better and truer theology of Christendom, 
 from the New Testament onwards, has represented 
 our knowledge of God as personal and living, such 
 as can be improved by acquaintance and experience, 
 rather than as a matter of intellectual or verbal 
 definition. Nothing is more evident in the Gospels 
 than that our Lord deliberately put back all state- 
 ments about His own nature until He could be 
 spiritually known by those who had opportunities of 
 observing Him, and that He cared for no confession 
 but such as sprang inevitably from a matured 
 reverence. What St. John tells of Andrew and 
 Simon suggested to Keble the lesson 
 
 First seek thy Saviour out, and dwell 
 
 Beneath the shadow of His roof, 
 Till thou have scanned His features well, 
 
 And known Him for the Christ by proof; 
 
 Such proof as they are sure to find 
 
 Who spend with Him their happy days, 
 
 Clean hands, and a self-ruling mind 
 Ever in tune for love and praise. 
 
 Then, potent with the spell of Heaven, 
 
 Go, and thine erring brother gain, 
 Entice him home to be forgiven, 
 
 Till he, too, see his Saviour plain. 
 
 So, in Matthew Arnold's words, " We shall find 
 ourselves more and more, as by irresistible viewless 
 hands, caught and drawn towards the Christian 
 revelation, and made to desire more and more to 
 serve it."
 
 Preface vii 
 
 If some of the special experiences of our age are 
 driving us back upon this Scriptural method, we may 
 hold that it is Divine Providence that is strengthen- 
 ing our distaste for the so-called dogmatic theology, 
 of which the Commination called the Creed of St. 
 Athanasius is the unpleasing representative. The 
 divines who have expressed reverence for the 
 theology of the Quicunque vult have laboured with 
 some success to explain away its damnatory clauses ; 
 but when the attention is thus drawn from these 
 stumbling-blocks to its definitions of the Divine 
 Nature, it will be the more generally felt how unlike 
 these are to the theology of the Gospels and 
 Epistles. Not only have they no nourishing quality, 
 but they tend to obscure the one grand idea of the 
 New Testament theology, the filial unity the 
 unity dependent on the relation between the Son 
 and the Father which gives its life to our own 
 relation towards God. There is a peculiarly infelici- 
 tous disregard, not to call it a contradiction, of this 
 truth in one of those " Proper Prefaces " which are 
 the least valuable portion of our Book of Common 
 Prayer, that for Trinity Sunday, which makes us 
 say that " what we believe of the glory of the Father, 
 the same we believe of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost, without any difference or inequality." This 
 language outdoes that of the Quicunque vult> but 
 was probably one result of its influence. The 
 method which we are being taught to prefer to this
 
 viii Preface 
 
 is so to dwell on the significance of the Divine 
 names, the Father, the Son, the Breath of the Father 
 and the Son, as to be drawn into a sense of an 
 inconceivable Unity in the Eternal Nature. 
 
 The Athanasian Creed has some qualities which 
 have given it favour for a time even with such an 
 evangelical teacher as Maurice : it defies the com- 
 mon rationalism, whilst it is itself the consummate 
 flower of the orthodox theological rationalism ; it 
 turns into heresy any doctrine which assumes that 
 the mind of the Son towards sinners is different 
 from the mind of the Father ; it implies that right 
 conduct, the doing of good, is dependent on the 
 right spiritual apprehension of that which is above 
 us. But if the method of the lines I have quoted 
 from Keble gains upon the general Christian mind, 
 there will hardly be rest in our Church until we are 
 relieved from the saying or singing of this dogmatic 
 canticle in our public services, if not by legislation, 
 then by a general consent of the authorities to its 
 disuse. Already, according to a recent statement 
 of Canon Gore, there are many churches in which 
 the Athanasian Creed is never heard.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i. THE WISDOM OF MEN AND THE POWER OF GOD . i 
 
 " My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive 
 words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and 
 of power ; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom 
 of men, but in the power of God." i CORINTHIANS 
 " 4, 5- 
 
 2. THE TRINITY 16 
 
 ' ' The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, 
 that we are children of God : and if children, then heirs ; 
 heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." ROMANS 
 viii. 1 6, 17. 
 
 3. THE PERMANENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL AFFECTIONS 26 
 
 "Now abideth faith, hope, love." i CORINTHIANS 
 xiii. 13. 
 
 4. THE CONVICTING OF THE WORLD ... 40 
 
 " He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect 
 of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, 
 because they believe not on Me ; of righteousness, because 
 I go to the Father, and ye behold Me no more ; of 
 judgment, because the prince of this world hath been 
 judged." ST. JOHN xvi. 8-u.
 
 t Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5. THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF THE TEN 
 
 COMMANDMENTS. I . . . . -54 
 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
 and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is 
 the great and first commandment." ST. MATTHEW 
 xxii. 37, 38. 
 
 6. THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF THE TEN 
 
 COMMANDMENTS. II ..... 68 
 
 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." 
 EXODUS xx. 8. 
 
 7. THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF THE TEN 
 
 COMMANDMENTS. Ill ..... 81 
 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." ST. 
 MATTHEW xxiii. 39. 
 
 8. MORALITY PROGRESSIVE ..... 93 
 
 "This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and 
 more in knowledge and all discernment." PHILIPPIANS 
 i. 9. 
 
 9. LAW AND REVELATION ..... 104 
 
 "Ye are not under law, but under grace." ROMANS 
 vi. 14. 
 
 10. BROAD CHURCH TEACHING . . . .118 
 
 1 1. THE HIGHER LIFE : How is IT TO BE SUSTAINED 128 
 
 12. "THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION" . . .161 
 
 "The creation was subjected to vanity ... in hope." 
 ROMANS viii. 20, 21. 
 
 13. THE CHURCH AS THE FLOCK OF CHRIST . -175 
 
 " I am the good shepherd." ST. JOHN x. 1 1.
 
 Contents xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 14. THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH CATHOLIC . 188 
 
 15. REUNION . . 204 
 
 1 6. THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH . . . .217 
 
 17. CHURCH PRIDE 227 
 
 " Since ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may 
 abound unto the edifying of the church." i CORINTHIANS 
 xiv. 12. 
 
 1 8. THE MORAL USE OF MONEY . ... .244 
 
 " Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon 
 of unrighteousness ; that, when it shall fail, they may 
 receive you into the eternal tabernacles." ST. LUKE 
 xvi. 9. 
 
 19. PEACE AND WAR 269 
 
 " If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace 
 with all men." ROMANS xii. 18. 
 
 20. PUBLIC SPIRIT 289 
 
 " Not looking each of you to his own things, but each 
 of you also to the things of others." PHILIPPIANS ii. 4. 
 
 21. THE NATURE OF JUSTICE: AN EXPOSITION 
 
 ADDRESSED TO WORKING MEN . . .301 
 
 22. JUBILEE ADDRESSES, 1897 (i) . . . -319 
 
 "Out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice 
 of men that make merry : and I will multiply them, and 
 they shall not be few ; I will also glorify them, and they 
 shall not be small. . . . And their prince shall be of 
 themselves, and their ruler shall proceed from the midst 
 of them ; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall 
 approach unto Me. . . . And ye shall be My people, and 
 I will be your God." JEREMIAH xxx. 19.
 
 Contents 
 
 FACE 
 
 23. JUBILEE ADDRESSES, 1897 (2) . . . . 329 
 
 " Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh 
 and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer (i.e. the 
 stone of help), saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped 
 us." i SAMUEL vii. 12. 
 
 24. "RECKONINGS" IN 2 CORINTHIANS X. . . 337 
 
 25. ST. PAUL'S "GRACE" 343 
 
 26. THE "MANY MANSIONS" AND THE "RESTITU- 
 
 TION OF ALL THINGS" 348
 
 I 
 
 THE WISDOM OF MEN AND THE POWER 
 OF GOD 1 
 
 " My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of 
 wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power ; that 
 your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the 
 power of God." i CORINTHIANS ii. 4, 5. 
 
 IT is a matter of course that in addressing you this 
 morning, my Christian brethren, I should keep in 
 view what is in all our minds that gathering of 
 Churchmen which is to take place this week in your 
 town. The purpose of the Church Congress is to 
 give Churchmen an opportunity of consulting to- 
 gether upon dangers and openings and duties that 
 are of interest to us at the present moment as 
 members of the Church. We are led to consider 
 how the Faith by which we live is now standing 
 with reference to the ways of thinking and the 
 demands of our time. 
 
 Now as I reflect from this point of view upon 
 what is most modern and characteristic in our age, 
 it seems to me that we are being emphatically warned 
 
 1 Preached at St. Mary's, Nottingham, on the Sunday before the 
 meeting of the Church Congress, 1897. 
 B
 
 2 The Wisdom of Men \ 
 
 to fall back upon the old position taken up by 
 St. Paul as a preacher of the Gospel. The method 
 to which he firmly adhered was to proclaim the good 
 news of the crucified and risen Son of God, without 
 regard to any wisdom of men. The wisdom of men, 
 he perceived, was against him : so much the worse, 
 he held, for the wisdom of men. He paid no timid 
 deference to that wisdom, made no attempt to con- 
 ciliate it ; his business was to deliver the message 
 from heaven with which he was charged, whatever 
 might be his hearers' opinions about it. In our day 
 there is a very earnest desire amongst Christians, 
 more general, I am inclined to think, than ever 
 before, to reconcile our Christianity with the wisdom 
 of men. There is so much that is manifestly good 
 in this desire that we can hardly refuse to regard it 
 as a Divine inspiration. But the desire, if it has a 
 high Christian motive, and some good appointed 
 end, may yet be a dangerous one. No such recon- 
 ciliation is at present possible none that is more 
 than partial Or superficial : Christianity cannot be 
 brought into a really satisfying agreement with 
 science. And if we were induced to adhere to 
 Christianity because of its being rational, that might 
 not be in accordance with the intention of God, who 
 would have us hang on the Divine will revealed in 
 Christ, and surrender ourselves to it in thankfulness 
 and trust, and walk as children, not of this world, 
 but of that which is above and to come. 
 
 The scientific investigation of Nature which has 
 had such triumphs in our time finds before it two 
 infinities, those of Space and Time. Our whole 
 solar system is a very small thing amongst the
 
 i and the Power of God 3 
 
 bodies which science can see and measure in the 
 space which is immeasurable : how infinitesimal man 
 is in the universe of which no bound is known, words 
 and numbers fail to make perceptible to the mind. 
 As the men of science look back to the past of 
 things on this speck of a planet, its present state is 
 seen to have grown out of millions of years of ante- 
 cedents. Everywhere growth, gradual and natural 
 growth, is increasingly recognised. The world as it 
 is, including the human race, has grown by degrees 
 from elements of which no beginning can be touched, 
 through the constant pressure of a force which in the 
 animated and organised departments of existence 
 shows itself as a struggle for self-preservation and 
 self- gratification. Sometimes science asserts the 
 altogether non-moral character of this evolution ; at 
 other times it seeks to explain how a working 
 morality, involving a certain control of self, has been 
 naturally produced by care for self. In the universe 
 thus surveyed by science all kinds of grandeur and 
 wonderfulness awe the imagination and stimulate the 
 ardour of inquiry. But it has been increasingly felt 
 in recent years that the universe thus regarded affords 
 no ground of duty, and exhibits men as atoms casually 
 produced by the general creative force. Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer has confessed that "contemplation of a 
 universe which is without conceivable beginning or 
 end, and without intelligible purpose, yields no satis- 
 faction." 1 Mr. Huxley, who had argued triumphantly 
 that man is an automaton moved by the natural 
 forces, in his later years declared his conviction that 
 
 1 Quoted by Mr. F. Harrison in The Positivist Review for August 
 1895, p. 140.
 
 4 The Wisdom of Men \ 
 
 men were bound to fight against nature, in order to 
 save morality. More recently, a striking protest has 
 come from the.small body of men who call themselves 
 Positivists. The Positivists, as some of you will know, 
 are followers of a French man of science, Auguste 
 Comte, who not only co-ordinated the sciences, but 
 also founded a religion. The deity of this religion 
 is Humanity, and the social duties are prescribed by 
 it with religious warmth and stringency. Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison, writing in the name of the Positivists, looks 
 the scientific scheme of the universe in the face. 
 " The infinity in space, in time, and in proportion, 
 which science reveals ... is alien," he declares, " to 
 the very basis of religion, of duty, and of activity, 
 in so far as it reduces humanity to the level of the 
 worm, and converts man's earthly abode into a casual 
 atom. In killing theology, science has paralysed 
 religion ; for the noblest attributes of the human 
 spirit, the inspiration to active conduct, and the 
 power to frame synthetic conceptions, are all alike 
 endangered. The scientific specialist says, ' That is 
 no affair of mine, see thou to that ! ' but religion and 
 philosophy both feel the dilemma." l Referring to 
 the admissions of Mr. Herbert Spencer, he calls them 
 " very honest, very pathetic, very significant words." 
 He does not question " we fully adopt," he says, 
 " the conclusions of science as to our being but 
 infinitesimal bubbles on an infinitesimal speck of 
 dust, whirling about in an inconceivable universe, 
 itself having no intelligible purpose, and presenting 
 unfathomable mysteries." What then does he 
 
 1 The Positivist Review for August 1895, P- '4O.
 
 i and the Power of God 5 
 
 suggest ? " We utterly repudiate the dismal sugges- 
 tion that the business of man is to contemplate this 
 unfathomable universe, without pretence of sympathy, 
 or hope of ever reaching to its realities." 1 He 
 intimates that, without disputing the conclusions of 
 science, he and his friends will disregard them. For, 
 as he writes, "human reason has no preponderant 
 part in a world which is to us pervaded with a sense 
 of human love and human energy. The mysteries 
 around us and within us do not paralyse men whose 
 dominant desire is to achieve some practical result 
 in the world of reality and to hand it on better to 
 their successors." "We admit that, absolutely, in 
 the nature of things, the earth is a bubble and man 
 is a mite ; but we insist that for purposes of human 
 progress and happiness we must think and act as if 
 the world revolved round our globe, and man was its 
 master and its ruler." 2 
 
 Such is the attitude of men who have been 
 supposed to be devotees of science, who have 
 emancipated themselves from Christian doctrines 
 and have discarded the idea of a God, but who cling 
 to morality and to human dignity with persistent 
 loyalty. They cannot persuade themselves that a 
 rational reconciliation between science and morality 
 is attainable ; they see that a choice must be made 
 between the two, and they solemnly determine to 
 choose morality, and therefore to think and act as if 
 the world were the opposite of what science declares 
 it to be. They are for human love and human energy 
 against human reason. They say with Tennyson 
 
 1 The Positivist Review for August 1895, p. 141. 
 2 Ibid. p. 142.
 
 6 The Wisdom of Men \ 
 
 For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill 
 And break the shore, and evermore 
 Make ^and break, and work their will ; 
 Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 
 Round us, each with different powers, 
 And other forms of life than ours, 
 What know we greater than the soul ? 
 
 In refusing to know anything higher than the 
 human soul, in declining to go on with the poet and 
 say " On God and Godlike men we build our trust," 
 the Positivists seem to us to deny some of the pro- 
 foundest needs and instincts, and to crush down 
 some of the finest developments, of the human soul 
 itself. But in their resolve not to make-believe as 
 to any harmony between science and morality, and 
 in .their defiant adhesion to morality, I think they 
 set us Christians an example. 
 
 The persuasion entertained by many of our 
 earnest believers that the Gospel of the Cross, 
 rightly understood, can find a place in its large 
 domain of truth for all the wisdom of men, includ- 
 ing the latest science and criticism, may justly be 
 traced to an ardent desire to do honour to Chris- 
 tianity and to Christ We are saying with emulous 
 confidence that all truth is one, that the one God 
 is the Maker of all the worlds, that in Jesus who 
 died and rose again the Eternal Word of the Creator 
 took flesh ; and we not unreasonably conclude that, 
 if we Christians are conciliatory towards science, and 
 look at both the doctrine of the Church and scientific 
 truth with candour and reverence, we shall have the 
 reward of seeing that science supports, whilst it 
 enlarges, our Christianity. We have lecturers who 
 undertake to justify the Christian Faith in the field
 
 i and the Power of God 7 
 
 of open discussion against all comers. In discourse 
 upon discourse Evolution is welcomed as the true 
 form of Divine creation. Especially is it insisted 
 that what the discovery of the law of Evolution has 
 done has been to compel us to think of God as 
 immanent, and that thus to think of God is the true 
 and orthodox theology. This term means that God 
 abides in all things, is not a Power outside the world, 
 but the Energy working in all existence and causing 
 the universe to be at each moment what it is. 
 
 That certainly seems to be the theology which 
 St. Paul teaches, as when he says of God, " From 
 Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things." 
 We cannot but rejoice in connecting the word " all " 
 with our God. But those to whom the immanence 
 of God solves a great problem, and makes theism 
 scientific and science theistic, can hardly be facing 
 the simple inference that if God be in all things He 
 is in many things in which we shrink from seeing 
 Him. He is in the rage of the tiger and in the 
 subtlety of the serpent as well as in the innocence 
 of the lamb ; in the wave that dashes the helpless 
 crew against the rocks as well as in the lifeboat that 
 goes out to rescue them, nay, in the wickedness of 
 men as well as in the grace that lifts them out of 
 their natural sinfulness. 
 
 The law of Evolution is a developed form of the 
 principle which science has always seen in the 
 nature of things, that each existing thing or 
 relation is entirely caused by what has gone before 
 it. If this is a true fact, and it is at least very 
 difHcult to show that it is not true, science seems 
 to deny human free will and responsibility. But it
 
 8 The Wisdom of Men i 
 
 is not only natural causation that contradicts free 
 will. When we think of God as the First Cause of 
 all things, and as a Being to whom the past, the 
 present, and the future are all one, we cannot see 
 how a man can change by his will the order which 
 God has appointed ; the predestination of God 
 seems to make it impossible for things to be other- 
 wise than as they are foreordained to be. Further, 
 it is a doctrine of the New Testament that all that 
 is good in man is from God, even the first stirrings 
 of good desire. Following St. Paul, who says that 
 God worketh in us both to will and to work for His 
 good pleasure, we confess that all holy desires, all 
 good counsels, and all just works, proceed from God. 
 Yet St. Paul did not deny human responsibility and 
 power of choice ; he actually urges, " Work out 
 your own salvation with fear and trembling, for 
 it is God that worketh in you to will and to work." 
 An exhortation more defiant of reasoning, or one 
 spoken with more simple conviction, we cannot well 
 imagine. And we all even the most necessitarian 
 philosophers and theologians and men of science 
 think and speak and act as if we were free and 
 responsible. And we see that morality and hope 
 and thankfulness and providence, and all that is best 
 and highest in human life, would be blighted to 
 death, if we assume that the future is already fixed 
 by what has been and is. We do not know which 
 of two contradictory principles we ought to hold the 
 more earnestly, whether that all is of God, or that 
 each of us is called upon to choose for himself 
 between good and evil. Those who hold that they 
 can bring the predestination of God, or a fixed chain
 
 i and the Power of God 9 
 
 of antecedents and consequents, or the Divine inspira- 
 tion of all good desire and purpose, into rational 
 coherence with individual responsibility, only delude 
 themselves. 
 
 The effect of what I have been saying is to dis- 
 courage the confident persuasion that what science 
 discovers and reason infers must be in harmony with 
 what the Gospel declares. That hereafter, when the 
 reason has been made a match for the spirit, this 
 persuasion will be justified, I cannot doubt ; I can 
 hardly imagine a Christian not cherishing it as a 
 faith and hope for the future. But at present it 
 seems to be appointed, for the sake of the supremacy 
 of the spirit over the reason, that the reason should 
 be baffled and put to confusion. 
 
 So St. Paul implies, in what he says to the 
 Corinthians. At Corinth, where he was in contact 
 with the Greek intellectual eagerness and love of 
 reasoning, he found that his Gospel, announcing the 
 love of God manifested in the crucified and risen 
 Jesus, was foolishness to the philosophical mind. 
 This experience evidently set him thinking. And he 
 came to these deliberate conclusions that the spirit 
 in man was a higher and more trustworthy faculty 
 than the reason ; that his Gospel addressed itself to 
 the spirit ; and that in speaking to hearers given to 
 intellectual speculation it was especially desirable to 
 forego appeals to the reason. " I determined not to 
 know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and 
 Him crucified. And my speech and my preaching 
 [or, my word and proclamation] were not in per- 
 suasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of 
 the spirit and of power : that your faith should not
 
 io The Wisdom of Men \ 
 
 stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of 
 God." He saw that it might have been really 
 disadvantageous to the cause which he was serving 
 if his Gospel had commended itself to the wisdom of 
 men. He was sent to draw men into a spiritual 
 kingdom ; and with that view it was necessary to 
 bring them into a dependence of thankfulness and 
 trust upon the living God. Such dependence the 
 wisdom of men would not tend to promote. It was 
 good therefore that the wisdom of men should rather 
 be set at naught than courted and satisfied. 
 
 To these convictions of his the Apostle returns 
 from time to time in both the Epistles to the 
 Corinthians. As he dwells on the glories of love, he 
 is led to think how superior love is to intellectual 
 conceptions. With love he joins faith and hope. 
 These are the three chief faculties of the spirit ; and 
 these he perceives to have the great quality of 
 permanence they abide. Knowledge is partial, 
 and "When that which is perfect is come, that 
 which is in part shall be done away. When I was a 
 child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought 
 as a child ; now that I am become a man, I have put 
 away childish things. For now we see in a mirror 
 as on a badly reflecting metallic surface con- 
 fusingly ; but then face to face. Now I know in 
 part, but then shall I know even as also I have been 
 known." Thus subject to change are human 
 intellectual conceptions ; but this is not the character 
 of the spiritual apprehensions they are abiding, 
 and do not change. Faith and hope and love are 
 essentially the same in the child as in the old man, 
 will be essentially the same in the life to come as in
 
 i and the Power of God 1 1 
 
 this life. But St. Paul was not therefore an 
 obscurantist ; he scorned the policy of getting hold 
 of people by the use of mystery and by managing 
 the emotions. He aimed at being perfectly open 
 and straightforward ; if his ministry was of the spirit, 
 it was also a ministry of light. By manifestation 
 of the truth he commended himself to every man's 
 conscience in the sight of God. His Gospel was 
 the shining of light ; if men would open their eyes, 
 they would see and welcome the light, and then 
 they would walk by it. Men, he was convinced, 
 were made to know and love the heavenly Father, 
 and the heavenly Father was adequately manifested 
 in Jesus Christ ; through Christ men were invited 
 to come to the Father who was seeking them, 
 pardoning them, and reconciling them to Himself ; 
 and to come thus to the Father was the supreme 
 interest of every man, the way of light and life. By 
 trusting in God, by hoping for the Divine glory, 
 by loving the gracious Father and the Father's 
 children, men were planting their feet upon the 
 eternal reality, were partakers of the Divine nature 
 which endures. 
 
 Can we of to-day, my Christian brethren, improve 
 upon this method and teaching of St. Paul ? There 
 is much, I cannot doubt, with which St. Paul would 
 sympathise, in that yearning endeavour to effect a 
 reconciliation between our faith and positive science 
 which I have assumed to be characteristic of the 
 Christian thinkers of our age. It is clear, for one 
 thing, that St. Paul would have claimed no immunity 
 from change and improvement for theological 
 propositions. The definitions of theology are of the
 
 1 2 The Wisdom of Men \ 
 
 class of things which were specially in his mind 
 when he spoke of the knowledge which is in part. 
 Some of 'the doctrines which increased secular 
 knowledge or a finer moral sensitiveness has com- 
 pelled Christians in general to give up or to modify 
 have a strong resemblance to the conceptions which 
 childhood inevitably forms, but which the grown-up 
 man puts away. It is not the part of the spiritual 
 man to cling obstinately to early forms of thought. 
 What he will be anxious about, when improvement 
 is suggested to him, will be to see that faith and 
 hope and love do not suffer in the change. We 
 ought to welcome any modification of theological 
 statements which will help us to trust in the living 
 God more happily, to hope more joyfully for the 
 Divine glory, to love God and men more fervently 
 in other words, to grow into a closer fellowship with 
 the Son of God. 
 
 We are not so made that we can do without 
 intellectual forms of feeling and thought. We can- 
 not believe in Christ without having some notions 
 of His mysterious incomprehensible Divine and 
 human nature ; we cannot cherish reverence and 
 thankfulness and devotion towards the Eternal 
 Father without putting His Divinity under some 
 limitations ; the Spirit, when we try to open and 
 submit ourselves to it, will be known to us in some 
 inadequate images of His action. We have to use 
 our numbers our Three and One in guarding our- 
 selves against the worship of separate Beings in the 
 ultimate heaven. The heaven which is God's abode 
 can hardly be thought of except as space over our 
 heads. Just as, when we grow up, we are bound to
 
 i and the Power of God 1 3 
 
 welcome the best corrections of our childish ways of 
 representing to ourselves things visible and invisible, 
 so the Church should willingly grow out of any 
 immature definitions into more rational thought. 
 Christians should get all the profit they can out of the 
 wisdom of men. But this should be on the stern con- 
 dition that no wisdom of men, naturalist or metaphysi- 
 cal, be allowed to put a veil between us and Him 
 who reveals Himself to our faith and hope and love. 
 We are bound to care more for the heart and con- 
 science which Christ quickens and feeds, than for the 
 laws of thought and the demonstrations of science. 
 
 And this obligation will constrain us, for the 
 present and whilst we are what we are, to be 
 tolerant of much that baffles and confounds us, to 
 assent to contradictory statements, and whilst we 
 use our reason as an instrument and subject to 
 deny its paramount authority over us. The ambition 
 to justify Christianity at the bar of reason or science 
 seems to be a mistaken and a hopeless one. Any 
 sciolist can find out weak places in a Christianity 
 which undertakes to prove itself rational. Better to 
 let the sciolist have his way and prove what he 
 pleases when he calls upon us to reconcile the Incar- 
 nation with the law of evolution, or to explain and 
 defend the immortality of human beings, and then 
 to point out to him that his reasoning is equally 
 destructive to morality and to all the higher functions 
 by which man lives and the human race makes 
 progress ; and then, and always, to awaken the 
 conscience into a longing for deliverance from sin, to 
 give an anchor to hope, to bring sunlight into the 
 soul, by affirming the grace of God in Christ.
 
 14 The Wisdom of Men \ 
 
 The God in whom Christians are taught to believe, 
 as the Source and the Lord of all things, as Light 
 without any darkness in it, is one whose dwelling 
 is in the future, rather than in the present and the 
 past. It is our distinction to be forward-looking 
 creatures ; and the more we can throw ourselves 
 into the future in our visions and aspirations, the 
 truer we are to the Divine purpose and creation in 
 us. The most real God to us is the God towards 
 whom we are striving. That is one view in which 
 we may find some satisfaction. Another, which I 
 suggest in conclusion, is that action and life and 
 progress, which are more real than speculation, and 
 have the dominant authority for men, not only 
 respond triumphantly to the revelation of God in 
 Christ, but have some power in reconciling contra- 
 dictories. Knowledge, says St. Paul, puffs up ; the 
 Positivists support us if we add that knowledge 
 paralyses, kills. It is the Spirit that gives life, it is 
 Love that builds. What is there that has proved 
 so capable of inspiring men, of lifting them above 
 nature, of building human society, of promoting and 
 sustaining progress, as the grace of God manifested 
 in Christ, the warmth of the Spirit of Christ, the 
 promises which are to be read in Christ ? The man 
 who offers himself up to the righteous and loving 
 God finds himself equally moved to refer all that is 
 good in him to God, and constrained by a sense of 
 obligation to put forth his own best efforts in the 
 service of God. When we treat the world as the 
 work of the God who has been revealed to us, and 
 look for signs in it of His wisdom and love, and 
 endeavour, as his fellow -workers, to subject it to
 
 i and the Power of God 1 5 
 
 His good purposes, it shines more and more with a 
 Divine glory. If we have grace to walk in the light 
 of God, we are not only preserved from stumbling, 
 but the goal before us is seen, and the things around 
 us are illumined. If we walk in the light of heavenly 
 righteousness and love, we have fellowship one with 
 another, and all the relations in which our Maker 
 has bound us together here on earth will be rich in 
 life and joy.
 
 II 
 
 THE TRINITY 1 
 
 " The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are 
 children of God : and if children, then heirs ; heirs of God, and 
 joint-heirs with Christ." ROMANS viii. 16, 17. 
 
 THE Sunday which has now for a long time been 
 named after the Trinity, follows close upon Whitsun- 
 tide ; and this place of Trinity Sunday in our Church 
 year may be a hint to us to look at the incompre- 
 hensible nature of God, as indicated by the name of 
 the Trinity, in the light of the Spirit. We are still 
 retaining in our religious thoughts the vital truths 
 associated with the great Day of Pentecost ; we are 
 remembering the promise of the Lord Jesus which 
 was fulfilled on that day the promise that a Spirit 
 or Divine Breath should come down with power 
 upon His disciples, through which He and the Father 
 would come to them and abide with them, and make 
 a great house or home in which all believers in 
 Him should find their proper places, a Spirit which 
 would fill them with joy and lead them into all 
 truth, and enable them to bear witness of Him ; we 
 
 1 Preached in Sedbergh School Chapel on Trinity Sunday 1897.
 
 ii The Trinity 17 
 
 are remembering how the Spirit, when thus sent by 
 the Son of God from the Father, first gave to the 
 humble company of Galileans confidence and courage 
 to proclaim the rejected Jesus as Lord and Saviour, 
 and then smote the multitudes with remorse for the 
 national sin of crucifying the Divine Saviour, and 
 then drew the old believers and the new into a 
 wonderful fellowship, in which the tenacious instincts 
 of self-importance and the love of possession were 
 for the moment conquered and dispersed. In the 
 events of that day we have heaven opened and the 
 Eternal Glory revealed to us. Through this revela- 
 tion we apprehend the essence of what we can know 
 about the Trinity. We see Jesus, the Son of God, 
 sending the Spirit, and Himself coming in and with 
 the Spirit, into the hearts of those who acknowledged 
 Him as Lord ; we see Him in such a degree and in 
 such a sense one with the Father, that where He 
 comes the Father comes also ; we see the powerful 
 influence of the Spirit making men feel that Jesus, 
 their Lord, is one with the Father, and that they 
 themselves are brought into a blessed unity with the 
 Son and the Father, and with each other. We 
 Christians cannot think of our God without paying 
 our homage to the Spirit, to the Son, to the Father 
 without recognising the unity of God. 
 
 Can we understand the nature thus brought 
 within the apprehension of our hearts and lives? 
 Assuredly not. All men, when they have tried to 
 understand God, have found Him to be incompre- 
 hensible. We might very truly say that to us, and 
 to every man, God is unknowable. We can frame 
 no intellectual conception of God which will not in 
 C
 
 1 8 The Trinity u 
 
 a moment seem to us inadequate and futile and self- 
 contradictory. There is no attempt in the writings 
 of the Apostles to give us definitions of the Divine 
 nature like those of the Creed commonly but not 
 rightly called the Creed of St. Athanasius. We 
 stand helpless with our reasoning and unifying 
 faculties, before the mystery of the Divine nature. 
 This inability to understand God is fully recognised 
 in the New Testament, and is admitted or insisted 
 upon by our Lord and by the Apostles who were 
 taught by His Spirit. And yet it is true that they 
 speak with great earnestness about knowing God, 
 and assume that Christians may make progress in 
 the knowledge of God. It is the very announce- 
 ment of the Gospel that God has not chosen to hide 
 Himself from men. I have been speaking of the 
 revelation which the Day of Pentecost gave to the 
 believers in Jesus, and which we have under our 
 eyes in the records of that day. We cling to the 
 belief that that which Jesus and the Spirit reveal of 
 God is true and real and trustworthy, and that we 
 have a knowledge of God which does not mock us, 
 and will not betray us. But God, as thus revealed, 
 is made known to the heart and life rather than to 
 the understanding ; and when the understanding 
 attempts to reduce to an intelligible form what we 
 are thus led to believe about God, it fails, signally 
 and hopelessly, in the attempt. 
 
 There is a kind of definition of the Christian's God 
 in one passage of St. Paul. It is in ist Corinthians 
 viii. We know, he says, that there is no God but one. 
 " For though there be that are called gods, whether 
 in heaven or on earth ; as there are gods many, and
 
 n The Trinity 19 
 
 lords many ; yet to us there is one God, the Father, 
 of whom are all things, and we unto Him ; and one 
 Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and 
 we through Him." That is, I think, the nearest 
 approach to a professed definition of the Christian 
 God in the New Testament. And a very valuable 
 passage it is. But the definition has not a Trinitarian 
 appearance. There is no mention of the Spirit in it. 
 The one God is said to be the Father, not the Father, 
 the Son, and the Spirit. And by the side of the 
 one God the Apostle places a single Lord, the one 
 Lord Jesus Christ, whom he exalts far above any 
 heathen god in saying that all things are through 
 Him, and that we men who acknowledge Him and 
 speak about Him are ourselves through Him. So 
 any one, taking this passage by itself, might reason- 
 ably conclude that Christians acknowledge one 
 Divine Being called the Father and the one God, and 
 another Divine Being called Jesus Christ and the 
 one Lord. But St. Paul had a very strong con- 
 sciousness that the Eternal God, to whom Christians 
 have been brought, could not be defined. He was 
 speaking practically, speaking, as I have said, to the 
 heart and life, not philosophically or theologically. 
 He has plainly warned us of this in the immediately 
 preceding words. Knowledge, he says, puffs up, but 
 love edifies or builds up. " If any man thinks he 
 knows anything, he knows not yet as he ought to 
 know ; but if any man loves God, he is known by 
 God." The reader would expect St. Paul to say 
 that the man who loves God, he it is that knows 
 God. But he thinks it best not even to say this, 
 not to give any excuse for assuming that God can
 
 2O The Trinity \\ 
 
 be known by the understanding ; and he changes 
 the expression. Instead of saying he knows God, 
 he says that- God knows him. That is our better 
 way of regarding our relation to God. St. Paul 
 would rather have a Christian say " God knows me," 
 than " I know God." We see that the Apostle was 
 choosing his words deliberately, from what he says 
 to the Galatians : " At that time, not knowing God, 
 ye were in bondage to them which by nature are no 
 gods : but now that ye have come to know God, or 
 rather to be known by God, how turn ye back again 
 to the weak and beggarly rudiments ? " Elsewhere 
 St. Paul speaks abundantly of knowing God and of 
 the knowledge of God, but he was anxious that 
 such language should not be misunderstood. If 
 Christians were in danger of assuming that God 
 could be known as the things of science are known, 
 it was safer for them to say God knows me, than I 
 know God. 
 
 St. Paul had made his own position with regard 
 to this question quite clear to himself. He was well 
 aware that men could not love God, or trust Him, 
 or worship Him, without bringing Him before the 
 mind, without having intellectual conceptions about 
 Him. But he held that these conceptions were of 
 necessity inadequate, were subject to change and 
 enlargement, were secondary in importance. He 
 makes this, as I said, quite clear in that priceless 
 chapter about love. "We know in part, and we 
 prophesy or preach in part : but when that which 
 is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be 
 done away. When I was a child, I spake as a 
 child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child : now
 
 n The Trinity 21 
 
 that I am become a man, I have put away childish 
 things. For now we see in an imperfect mirror, 
 perplexingly ; but then face to face : now I know 
 in part ; but then shall I know even as also I have 
 been known. But whilst knowledge is thus partial 
 and transitory, there are faculties which abide, are 
 not transitory ; faith, hope, love, these three, abide." 
 
 The main thing, therefore, in St. Paul's view, 
 was to look upon God as He appeals to our faith 
 and hope and love, to our spiritual nature. There 
 is much more that is trustworthy in our spiritual 
 apprehensions than in any conceivable intellectual 
 apprehensions. It is the will of God that our 
 understandings should fail us in our relations to 
 the high things of His nature and working. We 
 must make the best use we can of our understand- 
 ings, and we can do nothing, even as spiritual beings, 
 without them ; but we must not be surprised by 
 their being incompetent, by their leaving us quite 
 confused when we try with them to comprehend 
 and define what God is. 
 
 It is to the heart and the life that God reveals 
 Himself; and He has spoken to us as spiritual 
 beings, as living and social persons, in His Son. 
 The Gospel presents to us what it has pleased God 
 to make known concerning Himself. We find that 
 we are led and constrained to believe in a Divine 
 Father, in a Divine Son who is one with the Father, 
 in a Divine Spirit. The faith is in each case 
 spiritual, it is vital and fruitful, and it expressly 
 attaches itself to each of those three names. And 
 our faith in each does not result in our setting 
 before us three Beings separate from each other ;
 
 22 The Trinity \\ 
 
 but the more thoroughly and vitally we believe in 
 each name, the more are we drawn to recognise an 
 ultimate unity. This, it is sufficiently evident, is 
 the New Testament teaching about the Trinity. 
 Explanations of the Trinity, and arguments in 
 support of the doctrine of the Trinity, are apt to 
 assume that the Divine nature can be understood 
 by man, and it is not wonderful therefore if they 
 are found unsatisfactory and inconclusive. The 
 knowledge that feeds the heart and enlarges the 
 mental conceptions is that personal knowledge which 
 the written records and the uniting and animating 
 Spirit join to impart to us. 
 
 Let me briefly illustrate this knowledge. 
 
 i. It is Christ, the Son of God, who gives a name 
 to ourselves and our religion. We are Christians, 
 adherents of Christ ; and our creed and worship are 
 called Christianity. The first account of Christianity 
 which has come down to us in Roman literature 
 describes the Christians as singing hymns to Christ 
 as to a God. Our sacred volume, the New Testa- 
 ment, may be said to be all about Christ. But how 
 does this volume present Him to us ? Expressly as 
 the Son of God. That was the character in which 
 He Himself insisted upon being known. He was 
 come from the Father, come to make the Father 
 known and to execute the Father's will. His words 
 were not His own, nor His works ; the Father spoke, 
 the Father wrought, in Him ; the Father through 
 Him was seeking men to be His children. We can 
 know Jesus Christ, can have at least some knowledge 
 of Him ; but if we know Him at all truly and well, 
 He constrains us to know the Father through Him.
 
 ii The Trinity 23 
 
 " He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father " ; "I 
 and My Father are one." Our knowledge of Christ, 
 which is persona], which implies reverence and 
 gratitude and love, which may be increased by 
 meditation and study and by following Him, opens 
 our eyes to the Fatherhood of God. The Son and 
 the Father become really and livingly One to us. 
 
 2. Men who have not known Christ have been 
 led to give the name of Father to God. They have 
 felt after the invisible Father. But He whom we 
 Christians call upon as Father is strictly the God 
 whom His Son has made known to us. We do not 
 derive our knowledge of the Eternal Father from His 
 visible works or from our own instincts. We ascend 
 to Him with Jesus Christ ; He comes to us as the 
 Father of Jesus Christ Knowing the Father thus, 
 we are able to put our trust in Him ; for the Father 
 of Jesus Christ has every quality which should 
 induce sinful man to trust Him. As we cannot think 
 of or know Jesus Christ without joining the Father 
 with Him, so we cannot think of or know the 
 Father without joining the Son with Him. 
 
 3. Whitsuntide has been reminding us what a 
 great place is occupied by the Spirit in the faith and 
 life of the Christian Church. On the Day of 
 Pentecost, and afterwards, this power from God took 
 possession of men and mastered them ; and His 
 presence and activity were shown by emotional dis- 
 turbance in the bodily nature. The believers in 
 Christ were so filled with ardour and enthusiasm 
 that they burst forth into peculiar utterances of 
 praise. Outsiders might wonder what this remark- 
 able affection was, but to the Christians the Power
 
 24 The Trinity \\ 
 
 was the Breath of God, the Spirit of the Son and of 
 the Father. It filled them with filial emotions 
 towards Godj it made them cry " Father " to Him ; 
 it drew them to Christ, enabled them to feel that He 
 was with them and to rejoice in His nearness ; 
 created a society of persons bound to Christ, and 
 calling on the Father. They knew it to be their 
 duty to yield to this Spirit of the Son and of the 
 Father, not to resist or quench or grieve Him, to 
 allow Him to make them filial in Christ towards 
 God. 
 
 Thus are Christians kept in personal allegiance to 
 the Spirit, to Christ, to the Father, and may increase 
 in .the knowledge of what each of these names 
 signifies. When we try to get beyond such know- 
 ledge, and ask questions about what lies outside of 
 the sphere of our spiritual life, the idea of unity, of 
 a one Divine Being, shines from afar upon our 
 minds ; but we cannot understand it, we find our- 
 selves to be in the presence of a mystery which 
 transcends our comprehension. We are still more 
 uncomfortably baffled ; we are confused with con- 
 tradictions ; what we say at one moment we seem to 
 have to contradict in the next. No one can help us 
 out of these difficulties ; we can only dimly conjecture 
 why they are allowed to trouble us. But all the 
 experience of mankind, and all the efforts of thinkers, 
 seem to prove that our Maker intends us, as reason- 
 ing creatures, to become conscious of being rebuffed 
 and baffled. To the understanding, God chooses to 
 be unknowable ; to the spiritual affections which 
 are expressed in emotion and act, to faith and hope 
 and love, to the aspirations which build up society,
 
 ii The Trinity 25 
 
 God has revealed Himself, and will continue to reveal 
 Himself. That is the will of God ; and we are 
 invited to bow ourselves humbly before it, and to 
 prize and seek the gifts that are offered to us ; to 
 pray that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened, 
 to hope that in another world our understandings 
 may receive a satisfaction denied to them here, and 
 to strive that as sinful imperfect human beings we 
 may grow in that knowledge of the Father, of the 
 Saviour, and of the Divine Spirit, which is the true 
 Life Eternal for men.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE PERMANENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 AFFECTIONS l 
 
 "Now abideth faith, hope, love." i CORINTHIANS xiii. 13. 
 
 THE stress in this statement is on the word abideth. 
 St. Paul affirms that faith and hope and love are not 
 transitory in their nature, but permanent. He claims 
 this great quality of essential permanence not only 
 for love, but for faith and hope also. 
 
 It is curious that this meaning has been so 
 generally missed by readers of the passage. Learned 
 readers, as well as unlearned, have failed to observe 
 it. You may frequently see it assumed, in hymns 
 and other religious literature, that faith and hope, 
 instead of being associated with love in this quality 
 of permanence, as St. Paul declares them to be, are 
 contrasted with it, in that they are transitory, whilst 
 love is eternal. " Faith will vanish into sight ; Hope 
 be emptied in delight ; Love in heaven will shine 
 more bright." Such language is plausible enough to 
 be generally accepted. But it is at variance with 
 
 1 Preached at St. Peter's, Edinburgh, to University students, nth 
 December 1892.
 
 in The Spiritual Affections 27 
 
 St. Paul's view. The passage we are considering is not 
 one of doubtful meaning ; no competent interpreter 
 could question that St. Paul's purpose is to say that 
 faith, hope, love, all three abide ; and that by 
 " abide " he means that they have not the changing 
 and transitory character which belongs to other 
 things of which he has been speaking. It is true 
 that he is asserting the supreme glory of love ; it is 
 greater, he says, than faith and hope. But these 
 two sister graces share with it the significant dis- 
 tinction that they all abide. 
 
 And this is a very interesting light in which to 
 regard them. We have great need in these days to 
 recur frequently to the essential superiority of the 
 spiritual as compared with the intellectual nature 
 and apprehensions. We find that on this superiority 
 will turn our belief in God and in Christ. The 
 proof given to us in the region of our senses and of 
 historical testimony, of the existence of the God 
 revealed to us in Jesus Christ, is often felt to be 
 inadequate to support satisfactorily so weighty a 
 belief. But we are justified, we contend, in the 
 deference which we and our fathers have paid to the 
 instincts of our spiritual nature. When faith and 
 hope and love point to certain objects, and per- 
 sistently demand them, and cling to them with 
 joyful and confident recognition, we have the deepest, 
 the most real, of all possible reasons for believing in 
 those objects. It is very desirable therefore that we 
 should accustom ourselves to appreciate duly the 
 authority of the great moral organs of our life. And 
 it is a main element in the dignity of faith and hope 
 and love that they are exempt from the dominion ot
 
 28 The Permanence of \\\ 
 
 that law of change and decay which is written on all 
 the visible things around us, and on so large a part 
 of our own "being. 
 
 The lesson is one which commends itself espe- 
 cially to those who are immersed in intellectual 
 study, waiting on the instructions of eminent living 
 teachers, and mastering the greatest books and latest 
 treatises in which the mind of man has expressed 
 itself. For the things which St. Paul pronounces to 
 be subject to change and dissolution are intellectual 
 conceptions and modes of utterance. " Prophecies," 
 he says, "will be done away, tongues will cease, 
 knowledge will be done away. For we know in 
 part, and we prophesy in part : but when that which 
 is perfect is come, that which is in part -shall be done 
 away." St. Paul had in view, no doubt, that kind of 
 knowledge or of speculation believing itself to be 
 knowledge which concerned itself with spiritual 
 and invisible things ; and those kinds of utterance 
 in which the* prophets of the Church poured forth 
 their convictions, and the more emotional members 
 of it their feelings. But the knowledge and the 
 utterances may stand, in St. Paul's argument, for 
 forms of thought and modes of expression in general. 
 We have now, he says, partial and imperfect know- 
 ledge, partial and imperfect modes of communicating 
 thought or feeling. And that which is evidently 
 partial cannot put forth the claim of being per- 
 manent. We expect it to give way to that which 
 is complete. Now it is to be admitted that we 
 cannot think of any exercise of faith or hope or love 
 as entirely dissociated from the work of the under- 
 standing or from the faculties of expression. We
 
 in the Spiritual Affections 29 
 
 must have some intellectual ideas about the objects 
 of our faith and hope and love. And, further, it is 
 to be admitted, as St. Paul would, of course, have 
 been ready to allow, that there are degrees of faith 
 and hope and love, there being more in one man 
 than in another, more at one time than at another 
 in the same man. But in themselves the faith and 
 hope and love have a uniform and permanent nature. 
 That is the purport of St. Paul's assertion, and I 
 think we may see for ourselves that he is right. 
 
 He illustrates his meaning by the universal human 
 experience about forms of thought and modes of 
 utterance. " When I was a child, I spake as a child, 
 I felt as a child, I thought as a child : now that I 
 am become a man, I have put away childish things." 
 Each of us is able to say the same thing of himself. 
 You can all remember something of your childish 
 conceptions of things. You are inclined to smile as 
 you recall some of the notions of your childhood 
 which now strike you as absurd. The mind was 
 active, and had not the materials of knowledge, the 
 correctives of error, which have since been acquired. 
 Your childish notions were curiously marked by a 
 disproportion, for example, which an enlarged experi- 
 ence has in some measure rectified. These imper- 
 fections of knowledge, St. Paul, you see, did not 
 shrink from recalling ; nor did he shrink from 
 inferring from them, as many of us might not have 
 the courage to do, the liability to improvement of 
 all our human knowledge. By the side of the history 
 of our personal growth from infancy to adult age we 
 may place the history of mankind through a longer 
 period. That which grown men have thought they
 
 3O The Permanence of m 
 
 knew in past ages does not seem equally true to the 
 grown men of this age. There are stages of growth 
 in the knowledge acquired by mankind as well as in 
 that acquired by a man. And mankind, in the more 
 advanced ages, has had to put away many of the 
 conceptions of its childhood. The contemplation of 
 this imperfection of knowledge did not, however, fill 
 St. Paul with scepticism and despair. Being the 
 Christian that he was, he was able to draw even 
 occasion of joy from it. It set him thinking how 
 much better the fuller knowledge of the future 
 would be. " Yes," he says, " now we see in a mirror 
 darkly, but then face to face : now I know in part, 
 but then shall I know even as also I have been 
 known." It should comfort us, and . not make us 
 miserable, that our recollection of our childish fancies 
 about things suggests to us that our present con- 
 ceptions also may be similarly imperfect not 
 entirely wrong, but limited, disproportionate, imper- 
 fect. We are encouraged to believe that we may 
 look forward to progress and improvement in our 
 knowledge. We shall not always be so baffled as 
 we are now in our endeavours to grapple successfully 
 with the problems of life and the world, and to see 
 further into the mysteries of good and evil, of the 
 Divine Nature, of the origin and the end of things, 
 of the kingdom of heaven, of our own souls. The 
 sense of perplexity by which we are troubled may be 
 claimed as a witness of our higher destiny, a prophecy 
 of more satisfying knowledge to be hereafter enjoyed. 
 St. Paul would have made his argument more 
 complete if he had dwelt more fully upon the contrast 
 between love and the forms of the understanding.
 
 HI the Spiritual Affections 31 
 
 There is something of an ellipse in his reasoning, 
 which we may supply in this way. If we fix our 
 thoughts upon love, we do not perceive in it this 
 same kind of growth, from imperfect forms which 
 the full-grown man can see to be inadequate to forms 
 which better satisfy him. The things of the spirit 
 in a child never become the reasonable occasion of a 
 smile to the spiritual adult. Love in a child does 
 not differ essentially from love in a grown man. 
 And so it is with faith and hope. These three 
 functions or graces of the Spirit are they not the 
 same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever? And if 
 so, what a glory they have as compared with logical 
 acuteness, with learning, with religious eloquence, 
 which bear upon them the signs of inevitable defect 
 and change ! 
 
 Faith and hope and love, these three represent 
 the spiritual or Christian life, called also the eternal 
 life, in the soul of man. It is this which has in its 
 history and essential nature the witness of perma- 
 nence. I have shown that St. Paul found comfort 
 in the evident progress from the more imperfect to 
 the less imperfect which is to be traced in a part of 
 our human nature. But he also derived comfort, 
 and the more indispensable comfort, from contem- 
 plating the signs and working in man of the perfect 
 and eternal Divine nature. And in order to realise 
 that this which seemed to him best in man was 
 really unchanging, he must have looked at it, as he 
 did at the changing forms of mental conception, in 
 the stage of human childhood. In the child he 
 implies, if he does not fully affirm he found the 
 spiritual affections at least as admirable as in the
 
 32 The Permanence of \\\ 
 
 man. These things, faith and hope and love, he 
 perceived, manifest themselves with heavenly beauty 
 in the young ; they are also the signs of God's truest 
 presence in the instructed and experienced man, 
 and they will stand the shock of death, and remain 
 with us, in virtue of their imperishable and eternal 
 nature, in the dimly imagined world that lies on the 
 other side of the grave. 
 
 St. Paul could not have said, " When I was a 
 child, I trusted as a child, I hoped as a child, I loved 
 as a child : since I have become a man, I have put 
 away the things of the child." No : in these 
 respects, on the contrary, he desired to put on the 
 child more and more. For it is in the nature of the 
 child to show faith and hope and love with more 
 freshness and simplicity, less disguised and smothered 
 by feelings learnt in the world, less fettered by the 
 forms of the understanding and of education, than 
 they are as we see them manifested in later life. 
 Hence there is something in these qualities which we 
 willingly describe as childlike. Indeed we might 
 interpret our Lord's saying, " Except ye turn and 
 become as little children, ye cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven," by substituting the words, 
 " Except ye become trustful, hopeful, loving, ye 
 cannot become my spiritual subjects." 
 
 The faith of the very young child is not in God 
 distinctly realised as dwelling in the heaven above. 
 His trust is rather in his parents, or in those who 
 occupy towards him in any degree the place of a 
 parent. But I think we ought to claim even this 
 early trust as having in it the nature of the faith 
 which abides. For it is trust in love and goodness,
 
 in the Spiritual Affections 33 
 
 in wisdom and providence. And through these 
 qualities in the parent the Eternal God is revealing 
 Himself to the child. The trust of the child is 
 repelled and discouraged when he finds hardness and 
 carelessness and frivolity substituting themselves for 
 the protecting kindness with which God endows a 
 parent. As warmth answers to the rays of the sun 
 in the object on which it shines, so is trust fostered 
 in the child by the goodness and wisdom which he 
 is so ready to recognise and assume in those above 
 him. And it is the Creator's ordinance that human 
 faith should be nourished in its beginnings by the 
 parents who are seen, until it can discern through 
 and above them the heavenly Father who is not 
 seen. A child, therefore, trusting in one above 
 himself presumed to be good and wise, is showing 
 the same filial disposition as the grown man, who 
 looks away from flesh and blood to put a calm and 
 thankful trust in the Eternal Father of all. 
 
 Glance again at what hope is in the child. It 
 may be a hope of selfish gratification, of dainties to 
 please the palate, or amusements to excite and 
 occupy the imagination ; and then it is not hope in 
 God. But there are similarly misplaced hopes in 
 adult life, and the sentiment then differs in kind 
 from that of which St. Paul is thinking. The hope 
 that abides is the hope of the glory of God, and 
 the glory of God is revealed in all diffusion of light, 
 in all promotion of that which is good, in all 
 triumphs of justice and humanity over disorder and 
 wrong. A most blessed and Divine sentiment is the 
 hope of such things, full of saving and creative force ; 
 and surely you may recognise it in a child, brightening 
 D
 
 34 The Permanence of m 
 
 the young face and sending thrills of wholesome 
 life through the nature, more easily than in the 
 grown man.- It is characteristic of the young to be 
 hopeful ; their enthusiasm, we say, has not been 
 quenched by the painful experience of the slowness 
 and folly and wickedness of mankind. A boy or a 
 girl looks yearningly for the success of the cause 
 which has been identified with righteousness and 
 nobleness. And this hope, instructed by experience 
 but not changed or different in essential nature, is 
 what seems so Divine and beneficent a gift in men 
 and women, which produces the enthusiasts and the 
 martyrs to whom the world owes so much, which 
 cheers the dullest lot, and makes weariness and 
 suffering supportable, which in words which Plato 
 quotes from Pindar " more than ought else, steers 
 the capricious will of mortal men." Certainly one 
 part of becoming as a little child is to recover the 
 hopefulness of youth. 
 
 It is still more obvious that love in a child does 
 not differ in nature from love in the grown man. 
 Love takes various forms, according to the relations 
 which draw it out. It is conjugal, parental, filial ; 
 love of a friend, love of country, love of Christ, love 
 of the Father. There are also corruptions or counter- 
 feits of true love. But at the heart of the genuine 
 affection, in all its forms, there is the same essential 
 motive. It is the subordination or sacrifice of self 
 for the sake of a worthy object. It is the drawing 
 of the soul towards that which is properly attractive, 
 truly desirable and precious. It may be true, as 
 Henry Taylor has written, that " still the source, not 
 object, gives The secret food whereon love lives."
 
 in the Spiritual Affections 35 
 
 The persons loved may be unworthy. But the true 
 love does not delight in the evil in them ; it has in 
 view their good, their worth, their real happiness ; 
 and it grieves, in proportion to its warmth and keen- 
 ness, over all that is contrary to good in them. 
 And the love which clings to ideal worth grows 
 abundantly in the virgin soil of youth. It has not 
 in children the intensity or steadiness which it may 
 have in older persons, but it has a touching tender- 
 ness and capacity of devotion. It is attracted at 
 first by persons who are seen ; but you know, I 
 daresay, what a profound and reverent attachment 
 the records of Jesus Christ are able to inspire in the 
 hearts of children towards our blessed Lord. The 
 experienced Christian may well envy the pure and 
 fresh emotion with which the love of children goes 
 forth towards the Saviour. This, surely, if anything 
 does, flows from the infinite and eternal Fountain. 
 
 If we were to transfer our thoughts for a moment 
 to the earlier and the more adult stages in the life of 
 the human race, we should be equally ready to 
 admit that the faith and hope and love of primitive 
 generations could not differ substantially from the 
 same qualities in the most advanced race. They 
 may look different at first, through the great differ- 
 ence of the intellectual conceptions, of the religious 
 and the social habits, with which they are com- 
 plicated. But the trust in fatherhood, the hope of 
 the glory of God, the love of God and man, have 
 never been wholly wanting amongst men of whom 
 we know anything ; and these same affections are 
 the chief constituents of Christian life in the apostolic 
 age or in our own.
 
 36 The Permanence of \\\ 
 
 Having looked backward and seen these three 
 graces to be thus identical and unchanging in stages 
 of human growth which are in mental conditions so 
 far separated from each other, we shall have con- 
 fidence in them as we look forward even beyond the 
 grave. Are we to part with faith hereafter ? Only 
 if we give to the name Faith some narrow interpre- 
 tation. Not, surely, if it is filial trust in the Father. 
 It cannot be part of the rewards of the future state 
 that the children of God should cease to be filial, or 
 to cherish that confiding trust in the Fatherly wisdom 
 and goodness which was perfectly exhibited in the 
 perfect Son of God. No ; if childlike faith has con- 
 tinued from yesterday until to-day, we may know it 
 to be of a nature to continue and abide for ever. 
 But must not hope, as they say, be swallowed up in 
 fruition ? Not, it would seem, until the whole work 
 of the Divine creation and government be brought 
 to a standstill. Such an end is beyond the reach 
 of our faculties to imagine. But the death of a 
 Christian will not leave him without objects of hope. 
 After each of us dies there will be plenty of evil 
 still to be purged out of God's world ; there will be 
 endless evolutions of the Divine Purpose for the 
 revealing of the Divine Glory. Those that have gone 
 before us, we may well believe, instead of having 
 ceased to hope, are now hoping more earnestly, 
 more continuously, more joyfully, more calmly, than 
 we are. Of the continuance of love in the life to 
 come I need say nothing, as it has not been possible 
 to fall into the mistake of supposing that love could 
 be stopped by death unless all conscious existence 
 be believed to be stopped by it also.
 
 in the Spiritual Affections 37 
 
 They abide then, these three. They have con- 
 tinued since God breathed into human nostrils the 
 breath of life, and they will continue for ever. 
 Through these we are related to God's own eternity ; 
 they live upon the eternal attributes which are their 
 constant objects. It is the very excellence of the 
 redemption wrought for us by Christ that it draws 
 our faith and hope and love towards the true unseen 
 God. Let us look with due reverence on these 
 affections which are ours and yet not ours. It is 
 more that we should be able to trust, to hope, and 
 to love, than that we should have knowledge to 
 unlock mysteries and should speak with the tongues 
 of men and of angels. Let us cherish these functions 
 of our spiritual nature as our human distinction, as 
 our pledge of immortality. 
 
 There are some special reasons why these truths, 
 which are truths for all, should be urged on the 
 attention of an audience of University students, (i) 
 In coming up to the University of this ancient 
 capital you are introduced into a famous centre of 
 intellectual movement, a renowned house of the 
 most various kinds of knowledge. You are here 
 expressly that you may acquire knowledge, and 
 that your mental capacities those of expression and 
 influence, amongst others may be cultivated. You 
 can scarcely fail to be impressed, if not fascinated, 
 as you have not been before, by intellectual power. 
 The members of a University must always need to 
 be reminded of what the clever and disputatious 
 Corinthians required to be taught that on all the 
 functions of the mind there is a stamp of transitori- 
 ness, of manifest inadequacy ; that the greatest
 
 38 The Permanence of m 
 
 learning, the keenest philosophical insight, all clever- 
 ness, and all eloquence, are in the sight of our God 
 but poor things compared with those spiritual endow- 
 ments which the child may share with the most 
 learned. (2) Again, it is a part of your experience 
 here that your own conceptions and opinions undergo 
 change, and that you become acquainted with the 
 general change which has been going on for some 
 time in our ways of looking at the most important 
 things. Religious traditions have no more succeeded 
 in making themselves immutable than the other 
 traditions which science and criticism have disturbed. 
 St. Paul prepares you for this experience. The 
 mental forms which men must use when they trust 
 and hope and love are subject to change by .the law 
 of their nature. Opinions ought not to be changed 
 lightly, but it is only by being altered that they can 
 be improved ; and the greater and more interesting 
 times of history are those in which the gravest 
 changes have taken place. It is the truest mark 
 of Divine development when the loosening of a 
 traditional conception sets faith or hope or love free 
 from some restriction which had confined and fretted 
 it. (3) Once more, the time of entering upon man- 
 hood is a season in which there may be a dangerous 
 hurry to put away the things of the child. I need 
 not enlarge upon the familiar temptations through 
 which the young man has to pass ; upon the risk of 
 his being corrupted by worldliness, made a spoil of 
 by false philosophy and vain deceit, taken captive 
 by ambition, drowned in destruction by foolish and 
 hurtful lusts. Ah ! let no voice of man or devil 
 persuade you to look down on simplicity, reverence,
 
 in the Spiritual Affections 39 
 
 goodness, as childish things, to be put away by the 
 grown man. Beware of the vanity of knowingness. 
 Believe St. Paul and St. Paul's Master, believe the 
 experience of all the Christian generations, that faith 
 and hope and love are the precious things, the endur- 
 ing forces of human life. Through whatever stages 
 and changes you may be destined to pass, pray that 
 in you these eternal things may abide, for this life 
 and for that which is to come.
 
 IV 
 THE CONVICTING OF THE WORLD 1 
 
 " He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of 
 righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, because they believe not 
 on Me ; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye 
 behold Me no more ; of judgment, because the prince of this 
 world hath been judged." ST. JOHN xvi. 8-n. 
 
 THE words " when He is come " draw our attention 
 to a particular time. The time to which our Lord 
 refers is the great Day of Pentecost. In the con- 
 solations and promises which He gave to His awe- 
 struck disciples on the night before His crucifixion 
 Jesus dwelt chiefly upon a double Coming we 
 might rather say a threefold Coming. He was 
 Himself to come, and to rejoin His friends and 
 envoys ; the Spirit was to come, and to work 
 through them and upon the world ; Jesus and His 
 Father were to come and to make their abode or 
 mansion with them. Thus they would have man- 
 sions or abodes in a Father's house ; they would 
 be inmates, whilst yet living their mortal lives, of 
 a spiritual home ; brothers together of a divine 
 Elder Brother ; children of the Eternal Father, 
 
 1 An Ordination Sermon preached in Ripon Cathedral, 3ist May 1896.
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 4 1 
 
 animated and impelled by an immortal Spirit. The 
 coming on which these results were to depend was 
 to take place at a near and definite date. It was to 
 be for a little while only that the sorrowing disciples 
 were to be left in their desolation. And the promise 
 was quickly fulfilled and the sorrow turned into joy. 
 First came the Resurrection, raising the disciples 
 from their prostration and filling them with wonder ; 
 then the transitional time of occasional appearances 
 of their risen Master, closed with the sign of the 
 Ascension ; and then the mighty outpouring of the 
 Breath of the Father and the Son, which moved the 
 Apostles to bear witness to Christ, and brought the 
 Church of Christ into existence. 
 
 The Spirit, then, that we are to think of as 
 convicting the world was expressly the Pentecostal 
 Spirit, known to us through what He wrought on 
 that day. It was the Power that spoke through the 
 Apostles and created the Church. Its first work was 
 to bear witness to Christ. We see the Apostles, on 
 and after the Day of Pentecost, fired with an extra- 
 ordinary zeal for Christ. They saw Jesus the 
 Crucified, their Galilean Master, at the Father's 
 right hand, and felt Him to be none the less present 
 with them upon the earth. They were encouraged 
 to proclaim Him Saviour and Lord. The seeing of 
 Jesus Christ and the impulse to proclaim Him were 
 from the Spirit. Then their hearers, those who 
 believed, were drawn to Christ in reverence and 
 gratitude and devotion. They were thus drawn, out 
 of the world, from under the power of darkness and 
 the tyranny of their own desires and wilfulness, into 
 a new life of partnership and self-mastery. And
 
 42 The Convicting of the World iv 
 
 this influence was from the Spirit. It is the Spirit 
 of the Apostles of Christ and of the Church of 
 Christ that "we see manifesting Himself when the 
 promised Coming took place. 
 
 That same Spirit has never deserted the Church 
 from the Day of Pentecost to this our time. And 
 the acknowledgment of this living and active Spirit 
 makes us think very seriously of the Church and of 
 its ministers. The Church, we are bound to confess, 
 is inspired, and its ministers are inspired. All the 
 faith and hope and love of Christendom are from the 
 one Spirit, are the Spirit itself stirring in the body 
 of Christ. Those who are called to bear witness to 
 Christ have Christ revealed to them by the Spirit, 
 and all the force of the testimony that comes through 
 their faltering lips is of the Spirit. There are persons 
 to whom it seems evident that, if this is a true belief, 
 then there must be an infallible Church, and its 
 duly authorised ministers must be armed with some 
 exclusive supernatural prerogatives. But that is a 
 perfectly gratuitous inference. An infallible Spirit 
 breathing into fallible men does not necessarily 
 construct them into an infallible society ; an infallible 
 Shepherd does not confer a necessary infallibility 
 upon His flock. It is easy to understand the 
 importunate craving with which men ask for an 
 authority to tell them with the voice of God what 
 creed they are to profess and how they are to act ; 
 and the disappointment, if not anger, which they 
 feel when they are referred to the heavenly Lord 
 and the invisible Spirit is also intelligible enough. 
 It is from these feelings that the doctrines of an 
 infallible Church and a magical priesthood have
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 43 
 
 their origin, and not from the infallibility of the 
 Head of the Church and of the in working Spirit. 
 Human beings, however they may be organised, 
 remain helpless in themselves and dependent on 
 Christ and the Spirit. But that we have a Christ 
 to depend upon, a Spirit to work in us, this should 
 fill us with awe as well as thankful joy. It made 
 the Apostles rejoice, but it made them fear also. 
 " Work out your own salvation with fear and 
 trembling," said St. Paul, "for it is God which 
 worketh in you both to will and to work." Let 
 those who are called to the ministries of the Church 
 of England not shrink from believing that they are 
 organs of the Spirit of Christ. But let the effect 
 of this faith be to make them anxiously docile and 
 submissive towards the infallible Guide, fearful lest 
 vanities of their own and inconsistencies of their 
 lives should mar the work they are appointed to 
 do as witnesses and as teachers. It should be 
 one of their constant studies to consider how the 
 Spirit of Christ has wrought in the history of the 
 Church, and how He is therefore sure to work when 
 He is using us as His instruments. 
 
 On this day, so sacred to those who are being 
 sent forth with holy commissions, so full of interest 
 to the assisting congregation, let us listen to our 
 Lord predicting what His Spirit was to do to the 
 world. By the world we are evidently to under- 
 stand the population surrounding the believers the 
 unbelieving world as affected by the Church with 
 its new faith and its new life. 
 
 i. The Spirit "will convict the world in respect 
 of sin, because they believe not on Me." To convict
 
 44 The Convicting of the World \\ 
 
 the world in respect of sin is to make it conscious 
 of sin, to bring home to the world the reality of sin 
 and the blameworthiness of it. 
 
 The consciousness of sin has never been entirely 
 absent from mankind. It has been the main cause 
 of the fears with which men have regarded the 
 powers of the supernatural world. The heathen 
 religions have been for the most part religions of 
 fear ; and " 'tis conscience that makes cowards of us 
 all." In all times and places men have been con- 
 strained to accuse themselves that is, they have 
 been conscious of sin. But it has also been natural 
 to them to excuse themselves. When men know 
 nothing but this earth, there is no room for the 
 conception of sin in their thoughts. In -this our 
 day there are persons who profess to be guided by 
 science only ; and the observations and conclusions 
 of science will not teach a man to blame himself, 
 or justify him in blaming others. These scientific 
 persons reply to the questions, " Why is a man what 
 he is ? Why does he act as he does ? " by showing 
 that he has inherited a certain nature from his 
 parents and forefathers, and that he has been sub- 
 ject during his life to certain influences ; and they 
 maintain that the inherited nature and the influences 
 brought to bear upon it from without fully account 
 for what the man is and for what he does. Do not 
 suppose that it is easy to refute this theory of 
 human conduct ; I should not be surprised if you 
 never found a way of refuting it that satisfied you. 
 But we can see that it leaves no room for sin that 
 is, for blameworthiness. If a plant flourishes, you 
 do not praise it ; if it withers, you do not blame it ;
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 45 
 
 and if a man is as absolutely a result of his ante- 
 cedents as a plant is, you can hardly praise him 
 when he acts for the advantage of his neighbours, 
 or blame him because he injures his neighbours. 
 The naturalistic theory of life knows nothing of sin. 
 The consciousness of sin has existed in the world 
 because men have believed in a supernatural law 
 having authority over them. 
 
 Christ told His Apostles that, when the Spirit 
 should come, the surrounding world would become 
 conscious of sin through not believing in Him. 
 And that has been so. 
 
 Nature does not explain sin ; but Christ and the 
 Church do. Imagine yourselves to be in the first 
 days hearing an Apostle and looking upon a society 
 of believers. Jesus Christ is proclaimed. You are 
 told of the Son sent by the Father to save men by 
 bringing them to Him. You learn something about 
 the character, the acts, the teaching, of Jesus the 
 Son of God ; you are assured that He gave Himself 
 up to death and was raised again ; you are invited 
 to come to the Father through Him, to the loving 
 Father through the loving Son ; you are asked to 
 join others who have been induced to attach them- 
 selves to Christ. What hinders or delays you ? 
 You are obliged to say within yourself, " This Son 
 of God condemns me ; I am such a one as to be 
 repelled by the Father, not approved by Him ; if 
 this Gospel is true, if these Christians with their 
 repentance and new life are in the right, I am 
 terribly in the wrong. If I believe, I shall have 
 to confess and ask for forgiveness, and consent and 
 desire to be delivered from the things in me and in
 
 46 The Convicting of the World iv 
 
 my habits of life which I see to be displeasing to 
 God." I was asking you to put yourselves in the 
 place of the world when the Spirit was first moving 
 in the Church. But you may perceive that in our 
 own day the same Spirit forces the same conviction 
 of sin upon the conscience. From various causes 
 the sense of sin is not strong or acute in these days. 
 What is it that avails to quicken it, that has power 
 to make sin felt as a reality, and as a painful reality ? 
 Is it not still Christ and believers in Christ ? To 
 perceive Christ as He was and is, is the gift of the 
 Spirit ; and that men should live as members of 
 Christ is also the gift of the Spirit. And it is the 
 vision of Jesus the Crucified, sustained by the assur- 
 rance of reality derived from the faith and lives of 
 true Christians, that makes us feel what sin is. A 
 notion used to prevail that conviction of sin was 
 wrought by threats of punishment ; it is indispens- 
 able, it was said, that men should be convinced of 
 sin, and to convince them of sin you want terrible 
 punishments to alarm them, and therefore the salva- 
 tion of mankind requires that all the horrors of the 
 future state that have ever been imagined should 
 be kept alive. But the fear caused by dreadful 
 threatenings, whilst it may possibly have some good 
 effects, is not the sense of sin. That, I insist, is 
 shame, the feeling of being in the wrong without 
 excuse ; and we recognise the truth of our Lord's 
 statement when He says, "The Spirit" not the 
 tortures of the future state "will convict the world 
 in respect of sin, because they believe not on me." 
 Sin is estrangement from God ; Jesus Christ and 
 Christians show us the wickedness, the needlessness,
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 47 
 
 of sin ; the one escape from the burden and the 
 power of sin is in that which makes it most deeply 
 felt, in being freely forgiven, in accepting with 
 wondering thankfulness the reconciliation offered 
 through the Spirit. 
 
 2. Again, "He will convict the world in respect 
 of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye 
 behold Me no more." 
 
 Righteousness or justice is, as regards most of its 
 ordinary external features, understood with sufficient 
 agreement in each country and generation ; but as 
 regards its essence, what it is and how it is to be 
 explained, it is mysteriously difficult to understand. 
 We know it best, as I think, when we take it to be 
 the moral order of the human world, the fulfilment 
 of those relations which the Creator is developing 
 between Himself and men, and between human 
 beings among themselves. Law is an interpreter 
 of justice, though a very inadequate and imperfect 
 one ; and law says with authority, backing up its 
 injunctions with force and penalties, " You shall 
 render this and that to your neighbour, and your 
 neighbour shall render this and that to you ; you 
 shall do to each other, so far as you can be com- 
 pelled, what the experience of mankind has found 
 it proper to do if harmony and progress are to be 
 realised." Righteousness is the fulfilling of the 
 Divine order, the carrying out in human life of 
 the Divine will. 
 
 Now those who know this earth only, can make 
 nothing of righteousness. They try various defini- 
 tions of it, such as equality of exchange or of con- 
 dition and what is good for the greater number ;
 
 48 The Convicting of the World iv 
 
 but these accounts, besides failing to satisfy the idea 
 of justice, carry no constraining authority to the 
 individual conscience. In the New Testament age, 
 whilst there was a strong tradition amongst the 
 Romans in favour of orderly administration, thinking 
 men were at a loss how to understand justice or 
 righteousness in itself, and the general mind was not 
 dominated by any clear conception of its nature or 
 its authority. What was justice ? What was a just 
 man? Why was any one bound to be just? to 
 such questions no answer was found. Our Lord says, 
 " The Spirit will bring the world to the knowledge of 
 righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye 
 behold Me no more." Righteousness was indeed set 
 plainly, by Christ and the Church, before the world's 
 mind. The Son of man, the perfect man, was at 
 the Father's right hand ; no longer a good and 
 righteous man, but the Man, owned as His Son by 
 the Father. The invisible God had revealed Him- 
 self; His will for men had been seen in Jesus Christ. 
 The inner mind of the Maker and Ruler of the world 
 was to be known henceforth through Jesus Christ. 
 Therefore the purpose of the Eternal was seen giving 
 birth to and sustaining all that was good in man 
 and for man. Towards God the right relation of 
 every man was seen to be that of grateful and 
 reverent dependence, of spiritual sonship. Jesus 
 was the Just One, and He depended on the Father, 
 and yielded Himself to the Father, without reserve. 
 And Jesus lived and died for men, gave Himself up 
 for men's sake ; and all things were now known to 
 be just, that were good for mankind, that tended to 
 keep human society in peace and harmony, in health
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 49 
 
 and happiness and growth. Seeing Jesus, not now 
 with the bodily eye at their head or by their side, 
 but with the spiritual eye at the Father's right hand, 
 the disciples knew that there was a blessed beneficent 
 order proceeding from the Eternal Throne, an order 
 of which all human duties were parts and fulfilments. 
 And as the Spirit in the Church testified to the 
 world around concerning such a one as Jesus revealing 
 the invisible God and ruling from the Father's right 
 hand, the world became aware of a righteousness 
 fulfilled in all good human relations, and commended 
 to men's observance by the authority of the Supreme. 
 This is the one satisfying idea of righteousness, com- 
 bining the elements of immutability and progress, 
 man to man what God his Maker would have him 
 be, and because his Maker wills it. 
 
 3. Once more : the Spirit was to convict the 
 world in respect of judgment, because the prince of 
 this world had been judged. 
 
 To judge is to distinguish, for approval and for 
 condemnation. One who judges says, " This is right 
 and that is wrong ; this man is to be approved, that 
 man is to be condemned." There must be some- 
 thing to go by in judging, and that measure or 
 standard is justice, by which we have understood 
 that arrangement or order of mutual acts and affec- 
 tions which the Eternal God designs. 
 
 The world in our Lord's day was by no means 
 sure to judge according to the Divine standard. A 
 spirit was in the world's air which defied God's esti- 
 mate of things. Money, success, power, were held 
 to be the substantial things, the things to be lived 
 for, to the gaining of which truth and justice and 
 E
 
 50 The Convicting of the World iv 
 
 mercy, if they stood in the way, were to be sacrificed. 
 That was the worldly view, and it had a great deal 
 of experience to support it. Common sense seemed 
 to many to teach them that money, success, power, 
 pleasure, were the primary objects of life ; that truth, 
 consideration-, humility, self-restraint, were secondary. 
 A different doctrine was taught by one Jesus of 
 Nazareth ; but what came of it ? A good many of 
 the common people were attracted to Him, and re- 
 garded Him for a time as a prophet sent from God ; 
 but what was His end ? The rulers of the Jewish 
 people were provoked by Him, and this poor Prophet, 
 pursued by their enmity, after going though a trial 
 which was a mockery of justice, was nailed to a cross 
 and made a spectacle. The rulers of this world 
 seemed triumphant ; they did not know that it was 
 the Lord of Glory whom they were crucifying. 
 Shortly before that humiliating crucifixion Jesus 
 said, " The hour is come that the Son of man should 
 be glorified." And again, " Now is the judgment of 
 this world : now shall the prince of this world be 
 cast out." So different a thing was the Crucifixion 
 in the eye of the invisible God and in reality from 
 what it was in the view of the world and in appear- 
 ance. When the humble followers of the Lord were 
 moved to proclaim Him they defied the judgment of 
 the world. The world said, " Your Master perished 
 ignominiously on the Cross." " Yes," they replied, 
 " that is why we worship and proclaim Him." To the 
 Jews a crucified Messiah was a stumbling-block, to 
 the Greeks foolishness ; but to those who believed in 
 Him Jesus the crucified was the power of God and 
 the wisdom of God.
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 5 1 
 
 The Cross of Christ was the judgment, the con- 
 demnation, of the prince of this world. The world 
 had not known how to judge rightly, had imagined 
 that all was gold that glittered. The Eternal God, 
 the Maker of those very things which the world 
 prized, was the Father of the poor man who hung 
 upon the Cross, was glorifying Him, was actually 
 glorified in Him. In order to judge profitably, we 
 have to take the invisible world into account. 
 
 Wherever Christ crucrfied has been preached and 
 followed, there the world has been challenged to 
 recognise the true principles of judgment. The 
 world, it is true, is very hard to put right. It has 
 found it possible to make Christ Himself a sort of 
 Prince of this world. All kinds of pride and fashion 
 have managed to make alliance with the religion of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. A jewelled crucifix may minister 
 to vanity as really as a jewelled sword or sceptre. 
 But where the Son of man is glorified in the spirit, 
 there false judgment is arraigned, the worldly spirit 
 is condemned, and the Divine that is the true 
 estimate of things is asserted and vindicated. What 
 are the high things, the things to be honoured and 
 chiefly cared for, in the light of the Cross ? They 
 are humility, self-suppression, fearlessness, patience, 
 brotherly kindness, love, the things which Christianity 
 has taught us at least to profess to honour, which we 
 do all honour in our hearts, even if we allow them 
 to be pushed aside by the baser things of human 
 desire in our practical judgment and efforts. 
 
 In the profound words of which I have been 
 endeavouring to develop the meaning, may not you, 
 my brethren of the Christian ministry, see your
 
 52 The Convicting of the World iv 
 
 functions and your hopes defined as in letters of 
 light ? You, as I have said, are organs of that Spirit 
 of which Christ speaks. One of His great purposes 
 in using you as His organs is to convict the world. 
 By your witnessing to Christ, and by the stirring up 
 of Christian life in yourselves and in others, you are 
 to serve the convicting and convincing Spirit. There 
 is some danger in these days lest that grand aim 
 should be superseded in your minds by endeavours 
 to defend Christianity and the Church. In speaking 
 thus I may not be quite in agreement with some of 
 the advisers whom you are bound to respect. But 
 when you discover how hard a task it is to defend 
 Christianity or the Church, and are led to doubt the 
 wisdom of challenging opponents and critics to find 
 out and assail whatever is most assailable and least 
 easy to defend in the traditions and system which 
 we have inherited, it may be a relief to you to remind 
 yourselves that you are called not to defend but to 
 attack. The Apostles have not taught us to regard 
 ourselves, priests or people, as shut up in a fortress 
 which we are to defend. Let us think of ourselves 
 rather as organs of the inspiring Breath of Christ 
 and of God. The title of the Apostles means that 
 they were sent forth ; they were sent forth as 
 witnesses and heralds of Christ, the conquering King. 
 They were emissaries of light and warmth, carrying 
 home conviction to the consciences and taking captive 
 the hearts of men. Christ and the Spirit were the 
 real Powers of which the Apostles were the instru- 
 ments ; they are, my brethren, let us believe, the 
 real Powers that will work through our poor agency. 
 It is our commission to constrain men to know sin
 
 iv The Convicting of the World 53 
 
 through the reconciliation, righteousness through the 
 exalted Son of man, judgment through the Divine 
 condemnation of the worldly spirit May the con- 
 viction be first wrought in ourselves, that the Spirit 
 may work it through us in others with the more 
 power. 
 
 And let us all, my Christian brethren, ask for 
 grace to submit our hearts and our lives to that 
 triple action of the Spirit of Christ. By looking on 
 Christ as the Spirit reveals and commends Him to 
 us, let us be ready to learn what sin is, and righteous- 
 ness, and judgment. May we grow more and more 
 heartily ashamed of all estrangement from the gracious 
 God, of the setting of the perverse human will against 
 the will of the Father of Jesus Christ. Whilst we 
 try to be just and fair in ordinary matters of human 
 dealing let us see behind this external justice the 
 righteousness which is the fulfilling of all divinely 
 appointed relations, which is put on in being con- 
 formed to the image of the Son of God. And let 
 us seek for that judgment which is a true estimate 
 of all things, which discerns what is really dross and 
 refuse and pays homage to that which is precious 
 in God's sight, which declines to accept unsuccess 
 and the world's low opinion as condemning deeds or 
 causes, but asks what sort of sentence will be passed 
 upon them at the judgment-seat of Christ. Let us 
 not doubt that the promise of Christ holds good still 
 for the humble and teachable, and that the Spirit of 
 truth, the infallible Spirit, will in His own time guide 
 them into all the truth.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 
 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
 thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first 
 commandment." ST. MATTHEW xxii. 37, 38. 
 
 A CONSIDERABLE part of the language which we 
 use in our forms of worship might, with some reason, 
 be said to be antiquated. It is not such as would 
 issue naturally from our lips. It implies circumstances 
 quite different from ours ; it cannot be accommodated 
 to our circumstances without undergoing a process 
 of translation. The old Jewish writings have first 
 to be translated from Hebrew into English, and then 
 again the terms of the ancient Jewish life need to be 
 mentally at least translated into terms of our 
 modern Christian life. Some difficulties would be 
 removed if this necessary process were borne in 
 mind. We of this age find ourselves using com- 
 positions histories, prayers, confessions, songs of 
 praise which embodied the faith and experience
 
 v The Ten Commandments 55 
 
 of men of other times. Now, in proportion as the 
 feeling of those men was deep and genuine, so it was 
 sure to express itself in allusions and imagery and 
 modes of thought which were peculiar to their age 
 and circumstances. It is better to keep such words, 
 wise men have thought, in their original freshness, 
 and rot to try by alterations and omissions to 
 bring all the language of religion into external 
 agreement with the circumstances of each new age. 
 But low can we make such utterances of old times 
 true and living for ourselves ? We may do so by 
 accepting them according to the spirit, when we 
 cannot accept them according to the letter. We are 
 to penetrate to the spiritual substance, which was 
 always the real life, of each ancient record, and to 
 :ry to appropriate that. We ought to go through a 
 double process of ascending and descending, as if we 
 were going up a mountain from one country and 
 going down it on the opposite side into another 
 country. We ought to mount up with the speaker 
 or writer from the original region of facts and 
 circumstances in which he dwelt, till we reach what 
 is spiritual in his thought, and then to come down 
 to the modern region of facts and circumstances in 
 which we ourselves dwell. This is most obviously 
 necessary in our use of the Psalms. It is plain even 
 to a child that much of what we say in reciting the 
 Psalms is not literally true of ourselves. The history, 
 the geography, the religious ceremonial, the civil 
 customs, are those of another world. It is hoped 
 that through recalling in our devotions the living 
 piety of the godly men of old we may ourselves 
 be touched and drawn into similar affections with
 
 56 The Christian Interpretation v 
 
 reference to our own duties. For this purpose we 
 take into our mouths the words, as of the Psalms so 
 of other parts of Scripture and of later hymns and 
 prayers, without pledging ourselves to a literal 
 appropriation of them. We must go through, as I 
 said, some process of translation. 
 
 To do this perfectly would require more know- 
 ledge and thought than most of us can bring to 
 bear on our services. But we all do it imperfectly. 
 And sometimes a little increase of knowledge thiough 
 explanation and attention will enable us to do it 
 with more consciousness and more spiritual benefit. 
 
 I propose to consider the Ten Commandrrents 
 from the point of view thus indicated. We make 
 them our own by teaching them to our children and 
 praying every Sunday that God will incline out 
 hearts to keep them ; but in their external features, 
 as you will see easily enough, they are Jewish, and 
 such as could not be observed in the letter by us 
 modern Christians. 
 
 They begin thus : " I am the Lord thy God, who 
 brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the 
 house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods 
 but Me." "The Lord " here, as very commonly in 
 the Old Testament, stands for Jehovah. " I am 
 Jehovah thy God." This beginning of the Com- 
 mandments manifestly suits the circumstances of the 
 children of Israel, to whom the Commandments 
 were given. They had come out of Egypt, in 
 which country they had been serfs or bondsmen. 
 They were now independent, about to occupy a land 
 of their own, and to be governed by their own laws. 
 Other nations had their respective gods, always more
 
 v of the Ten Commandments 57 
 
 than one, each with his or her name. The children 
 of Israel had their God, one only, whose name was 
 Jehovah. He said to them, "Thou, Israel, shalt 
 have no other gods but Me, Jehovah thy God, who 
 have delivered thee from thy bondage in Egypt" 
 
 It was the universal practice amongst surround- 
 ing nations, at the time when the children of Israel 
 received the Commandments, to worship their gods 
 by means of images. These images had various 
 forms. Sometimes they were shapeless masses, 
 sometimes they were figures of men or women, some- 
 times of beasts, sometimes they combined together 
 incongruous parts in a symbolical monster. In 
 primitive times sculpture and painting were mainly 
 religious ; probably in Egypt and the countries with 
 which the children of Israel were connected these 
 arts were almost exclusively associated with the 
 worship of the gods. This was, no doubt, the 
 reason of the severe restriction enjoined in the 
 Second Commandment. " Thou shalt not make 
 to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any- 
 thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, 
 or in the water under the earth." The arts of 
 sculpture and painting were thus absolutely pro- 
 hibited amongst the Israelites. No likeness or re- 
 presentation was to be found in their tents or houses. 
 If any images had been allowed, they would have 
 been sure to be the objects of the perverse veneration 
 which idolatry engendered. And Jehovah, the God 
 of Israel, was declared to be a jealous God. He 
 claimed the whole veneration of His people for Him- 
 self alone. They were not to know Him by any 
 image or symbol, and He would not tolerate that the
 
 58 The Christian Interpretation v 
 
 worship due to Him should be alienated to the 
 symbols of other gods. He would punish those who 
 defrauded Him of the honour He claimed, whilst He 
 would reward those who loved Him. Divine punish- 
 ments and rewards, the Israelites were told, would 
 not expend their whole force on those who had 
 personally deserved them, but would be felt to the 
 third and the fourth generation. 
 
 The God of the Hebrews, who refused to be 
 represented by images, had a name to be known by. 
 To this name the Israelites were called upon to pay 
 the homage which it was then more natural to pay 
 to visible symbols. This name, Jehovah, is incess- 
 antly invoked and presented throughout the Law 
 and the Prophets, as the English reader would per- 
 ceive more clearly if it were not disguised in the 
 rendering " the Lord." Pains were taken by legis- 
 lators and prophets to associate historical actions 
 and moral attributes with the name of Jehovah. 
 This name was to be regarded with solemn rever- 
 ence. The Third Commandment enjoins, " Thou 
 shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain, 
 for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless Jehovah 
 will condemn the man who takes His name in 
 vain." 
 
 When a name is chiefly known as a spoken 
 name, uttered by the lips and heard by the ear, it 
 has naturally perhaps more of a living character 
 than when it is chiefly known by the eye as a written 
 word. At first it would seem as if this Third Command- 
 ment was hardly capable of being perverted. Nothing 
 but good could come of cherishing seriousness and 
 reverence whenever Jehovah, the God of Israel, was
 
 v of the Ten Commandments 59 
 
 named by an Israelite. But it shows the ingenuity, as 
 well as the tenacity, of superstition that in later times 
 when the Jews were completely weaned from any crav- 
 ing for images to venerate, so that they might have 
 broken without inward guilt the letter of the Second 
 Commandment, they took to worshipping the mere 
 letters of the name Jehovah. And they worshipped 
 the name in a curious way by never using it. 
 They substituted for it some expression by which 
 the name was understood to be indicated. They 
 thought the safest way not to take the name of 
 Jehovah in vain was not to take it at all. So 
 possible was it for men to make the Commandments 
 of God of no effect by their tradition. But when 
 this Commandment was first given, and for ages after, 
 the name of their God was continually on the lips 
 of the people. One of their dangers, a snare into 
 which the example of the idolatrous nations round 
 about was likely to lead them, was that of treating 
 their God too familiarly and regarding Him as a being 
 of like passions with themselves. They were bidden, 
 therefore, never to name Him without seriousness, 
 so that thus the feeling of inward reverence towards 
 Jehovah their God, their Ruler and Benefactor, the 
 Righteous Being, might be made habitual to them. 
 
 These Commandments, then, which we accept as 
 binding upon ourselves and pray that our hearts 
 may be inclined to keep, appear to be strictly adapted 
 to the Jews of a remotely distant age. We are not 
 Jews, nor are we in the circumstances assumed in 
 these Commandments. We have not, nor have our 
 fathers, been bondmen in Egypt. We do not call 
 the God whom we worship by the name of Jehovah.
 
 60 The Christian Interpretation v 
 
 We are in the habit of freely making to ourselves 
 graven images and likenesses of all things real and 
 imagined in heaven above, and in the earth beneath, 
 and in the water under the earth. How can we be 
 sincere in praying that our hearts may be inclined 
 to keep these .Commandments ? 
 
 We must apply the principle which I began by 
 laying down. We must look to the inward spirit 
 of these laws, and translate their outward expression 
 into the language of our own calling and condition. 
 
 The Jews were bidden to worship a Being who 
 had called out and instructed their fathers, who had 
 brought them by a great deliverance out of a state 
 of slavery, a Being who was distinct from and superior 
 to all visible things, who was the dispenser of punish- 
 ments and rewards, whom every Israelite was bound 
 to regard with unqualified reverence and love. This 
 is the substance of the Commandments we have been 
 considering. They turn, as you perceive, on the 
 nature and character and claims of the God from 
 whom they profess to come. He is the God of the 
 seed of Abraham, who has bound that people to 
 Himself in peculiar *elations ; but He is not a mere 
 national God, the rival of other national gods. All 
 other gods are either imaginary or feeble beside Him. 
 He dwells in a heaven above their spheres. This God 
 has delivered the nation whose allegiance He demands, 
 and He bases His requirements and commandments 
 on what He has done for them, especially on the 
 great act of forming an independent nation out of a 
 multitude of serfs. He is the God of freemen, and 
 will not consent that His subjects should be slaves 
 even though they should wish it. He trains them to
 
 v of the Ten Commandments 61 
 
 the difficult and responsible duties of freedom. He 
 frames an orderly constitution and manner of life for 
 them. He desires to be known by them as a Pro- 
 tector and Lord, ruling them in righteousness and 
 goodwill. 
 
 We Christians may place ourselves in thought 
 before the God whom we worship, and may ask our- 
 selves what is suggested to us by each clause of the 
 Jewish decalogue. We remember, to begin with, 
 that our God is the same Being as He who redeemed 
 and governed and instructed the Jewish people. He 
 who sent His Son into the world was always de- 
 clared to be the same as He who had given pro- 
 mises to the Jewish fathers ; the kingdom of Christ 
 was always declared to be the fulfilment of those 
 promises. What is the name of our God ? Not, 
 properly speaking, Jehovah. That name is not used 
 in the New Testament. Rather it is Our Father, 
 or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How do 
 we know Him ? Upon what ground does He claim 
 our obedience and worship ? We know Him through 
 His Son, Jesus Christ, who came that He might redeem 
 us from slavery to sin and death, and make us into 
 a society of free children and servants of His Father. 
 Our God says to us, therefore, " I am the Father of 
 Jesus Christ, who have redeemed you out of dark- 
 ness and bondage and have brought you into the 
 light of freedom, and have shown you the true re- 
 lationship by which you are connected together as 
 children of God and brethren : you shall have no 
 other gods but me. I, the Father, am the only 
 God ; I bear no rivals. Worship Him only, from 
 whom all good things come, Him who would have
 
 62 The Christian Interpretation v 
 
 men be freemen and not slaves, Him who is light 
 and in whom is no darkness at all." Should we 
 keep the Second Commandment any better by mak- 
 ing all images and visible representations unlawful ? 
 Surely not. To keep it thus in the letter would not 
 in the least degree help us Christians of the present 
 day to keep it in the spirit We therefore break 
 the letter of the Second Commandment without 
 scruple. What we have to remember is that our 
 God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a 
 jealous God. He is distinct from and above all 
 visible things whatever ; and any tendency to give 
 to visible things the homage which is due to Him, 
 any tendency to let the affections end in visible 
 things, is as wrong as ever, and as sure to draw 
 down punishments from heaven. Put all things 
 most beautiful, most precious, most artistic, the 
 works of nature or of man's device, in competition 
 with the heavenly Father, as claiming our reverence 
 and love : the Second Commandment bids us be- 
 ware how we give away any of our filial love of the 
 Father to the most attractive of visible things. He 
 willingly permits, nay, He encourages and teaches us, 
 to admire and care for all beautiful and precious 
 things ; but He would have us think of them as His 
 gifts, and use or contemplate them with thankfulness 
 as well as pleasure. It is a mistaken interpretation 
 of the Second Commandment to understand it as 
 forbidding art in churches only, and allowing it in 
 other places. There is no such distinction in the 
 Commandment, nor was there anything answering 
 to it in the mind of the ancient Jew. If we are to 
 keep the Commandment in the letter, we must have
 
 v of the Ten Commandments 63 
 
 no images, no statues or paintings, in our houses or 
 public places any more than in our churches. If 
 we are to keep it in the spirit, we must strive that 
 no images in churches or in houses, no visible things 
 whatsoever, shall steal our affections from our Father 
 in heaven ; we must strive so to regard visible things 
 of nature and art that they may help us in knowing 
 God and being grateful to Him. The Second Com- 
 mandment does not legislate specially about art in 
 churches, but it bids us bear in mind that art every- 
 where ought to be subservient to our higher duties 
 and functions. 
 
 The Third Commandment, as we have seen, 
 taught the Jews to cultivate a habit of reverence 
 towards the person and nature of their God. This, 
 then, is what it equally prescribes to us. We are 
 not in precisely the same kind of danger in which 
 the Jews were to whom the Commandments were 
 given. The familiarity in which the worshippers of 
 false and local gods indulge towards those whom 
 they believe to be divine but yet capricious or in other 
 ways morally weak is not a snare into which we are 
 likely to fall. But there is too much irreverence 
 amongst Christians ; too much of inward irreverence 
 towards the Father of our spirits, which shows itself 
 in various outward symptoms. In judging of rever- 
 ence and irreverence we need discrimination. We 
 cannot estimate them safely by conventional rules. 
 Our blessed Lord was thought irreverent by those 
 who prided themselves on outdoing the reverence 
 enjoined by the Third Commandment Whenever 
 reverence for outward sacred things has been cor- 
 rupted into superstition, then it is not irreverence,
 
 64 The Christian Interpretation v 
 
 but rather a profounder reverence, that prompts a 
 true servant of God to outrage and break through 
 the superstition, as Hezekiah broke in pieces the 
 brazen serpent, calling it Nehushtan. This necessity 
 has arisen over and over again in the history of 
 religion, so that we evidently need to distinguish 
 between things that differ in denouncing irreverence. 
 Let us take as our guide this Third Commandment. 
 It demands especially reverence for the name of our 
 God that is, for the name of our Father in heaven, 
 and therefore also for the name of His Son, Jesus 
 Christ, through whom we know and come to the 
 Father. To speak always with seriousness of our 
 Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ is a kind of 
 guide and key to all true reverence. In naming our 
 Father we think of all that is highest and yet most 
 condescending, of all that is perfect in love and 
 providence and goodness. In naming Jesus Christ 
 we think of Him who gave Himself up for us, of 
 ,Him who was compassionate, kind, fearless, true, 
 sinless, of Him who was the Son of man. The 
 man who inwardly reverences the Father and Christ, 
 knowing of them what no one who reverences them 
 can fail to know, cannot be really irreverent He 
 may possibly infringe some conventional regulations 
 of sacredness, but he will do so either from want of 
 knowledge, or from a belief that he is usefully pro- 
 testing against a superstition ; he will not be reck- 
 less or scornful towards the religious feelings of 
 others. There is nothing, perhaps, towards which 
 the really reverent man will be more careful to be 
 tenderly respectful than towards the higher emotions 
 and prepossessions of the human heart, such as we
 
 v of the Ten Commandments 65 
 
 instinctively call sacred. Delicacy is a form of 
 reverence. Those who are governed by the Third 
 Commandment will be reverent towards human 
 beings, made in the image of God ; and, in human 
 beings, not towards rank or wealth, but towards 
 weakness, simplicity, purity, modesty ; towards 
 childhood and old age, towards womanly refine- 
 ment, towards poverty and sorrow, towards the 
 piety of God's little ones, towards the memory of 
 the departed. Reverence, in other words, will tend 
 to produce habitual gentleness and consideration ; 
 to bring out into flower and sweetness what is most 
 beautiful in a human character. And if you exercise 
 yourselves in being respectful to what is most divine 
 upon the earth, you will find your reverence become 
 deeper towards the Father in heaven. His name, 
 the name of the Maker and Giver, will be hallowed 
 in your hearts when you daily learn and feel how 
 much of His own nature He has inscribed upon His 
 works. 
 
 We have often joined in the prayer that God 
 would make us to have a perpetual fear and love of 
 His holy name. And we have felt, I doubt not, 
 how much need we have so to pray. What is the 
 fear, what is the love, which we may have in our 
 hearts towards God, compared with those profound 
 and penetrating affections which should rightly 
 respond to the grace and the holiness of God ? We 
 are wanting in the just sentiments towards God 
 because we really know so little of Him. We need 
 that God should reveal His own name to us in all 
 its living power. We cannot love God, or fear Him, 
 or combine the love and the fear into filial reverence 
 F
 
 66 The Christian Interpretation v 
 
 towards Him, until we see Him to be indeed worthy 
 of our love and our fear and our reverence. Let us 
 bear in mind the warnings of the Commandments 
 not to forget the great work of redemption on which 
 the Father's appeal to us is grounded, not to let 
 visible things -distract us from inwardly acknowledg- 
 ing the spiritual distinctness and superiority of God, 
 not to allow ourselves in habits of levity. Remember 
 that we must look up to God if we are to see Him. 
 We must look up to Him as the high and lofty One 
 who inhabiteth Eternity whilst He dwells also with 
 him that is of a contrite and humble spirit. We 
 must look up to Him from the acknowledged lowness 
 of our own sin and unworthiness. We must confess 
 our natural incompetence, and ask that God Him- 
 self will give MS a child's heart, and eyes of enlighten- 
 ment and understanding, that we may not be blind 
 to Him who is very near to us. These great Com- 
 mandments, speaking to us in the Spirit, will often 
 , convict us of our shortcomings. What can we do but 
 ask for that gift of love which is God's most excellent 
 gift, that in keeping His Commandments from the 
 heart we may please Him both in will and deed ? 
 By sincerely trying to please Him, we shall learn to 
 know Him better. We shall find Him to be in 
 truth what Jesus Christ declared Him to be. We 
 shall not cease to fear God, but the fear will be of 
 the kind which blends with and does not neutralise 
 love. Our knowledge will not be that of a proud 
 wisdom, which flatters itself that it can fathom the 
 mysteries of the Divine Nature, but that of a humble 
 faith, which can trust where it does not understand. 
 We shall be ready to say with the devout son of
 
 v of the Ten Commandments 67 
 
 Israel, " Lord, whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and 
 there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison 
 of Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth : but God 
 is the strength of my heart, and my portion for
 
 VI 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 
 
 II 
 
 " Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." EXODUS xx. 8. 
 
 THE Fourth Commandment has often been pro- 
 nounced to be properly a Jewish ordinance. It is 
 so. But it is not in this respect unlike the others. 
 .The Commandments bid us have no other God but 
 Jehovah, who brought us out of the land of Egypt. 
 They prohibit the arts of sculpture and painting. 
 They require us to pay especial honour to the name 
 of Jehovah. Yet neither we nor our fathers were 
 ever bondmen in Egypt ; we make images and like- 
 nesses with the utmost freedom ; the name of 
 Jehovah is not so sacred to us as that of Jesus or 
 the heavenly Father. The preceding Command- 
 ments prepare us therefore to find the Fourth 
 wearing at least a Jewish form. It is, in fact, just 
 like them a Jewish ordinance, capable of a Christian 
 application. 
 
 The children of Israel were bidden by the Fourth
 
 vi The Ten Commandments 69 
 
 Commandment to keep a day of rest. For the word 
 Sabbath means " rest." " Remember the Sabbath 
 day " means " Remember the rest day." Rest on 
 one day out of seven suggests labour on the other 
 days. Accordingly, labour is plainly enjoined in the 
 Commandment as well as rest. Six days thou (the 
 people) shalt labour ; on the seventh day thou shalt 
 rest. The rest, it is emphatically declared, shall be 
 for servants and cattle and strangers, as well as for 
 those who can do what they please with their time. 
 Jehovah, the Jews are told, wrought six days in the 
 making of the world, and rested on the seventh. 
 Therefore the people governed by Jehovah are to 
 have six days of labour and one day of rest. 
 
 In the version of the Commandments contained 
 in the book of Deuteronomy the allusion to the 
 creation of the world is omitted, and another reason 
 for the observance of the Sabbath is put in its place. 
 After employers have been forbidden to require work 
 on this day from any persons whatever, " that thy 
 man-servant and maid-servant may rest as well as 
 thou," it is added, " and remember that thou wast a 
 servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy 
 God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
 hand and by a stretched-out arm : therefore the 
 Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath 
 day." 
 
 Amongst the Jews, then, no work was to be done 
 on the seventh day. The Commandment sounds 
 precise and emphatic, but when you consider it you 
 will see that the word " work " might occasion much 
 doubt and questioning. Who can say what is work, 
 and what is not ? Endless controversies about this
 
 70 The Christian Interpretation vi 
 
 might be raised amongst ourselves, and so they might, 
 no doubt, amongst the ancient Jews. The Fourth 
 Commandment gives no explanations of what is to be 
 regarded as work unsuited for the Day of Rest ; but 
 such details are partly supplied in other places of the 
 Books of the Law. We see that the Commandment 
 was to be carried out with a good deal of strictness. 
 Primitive legislation was apt to be absolute and 
 peremptory. Two orders are given, one of which 
 must have occasioned some inconvenience if it was 
 scrupulously observed. No fire was to be kindled 
 upon the Sabbath day. Gathering sticks was to be 
 reckoned a thing prohibited. On the other hand, 
 we are not told how the people were to pass their 
 time on the Day of Rest. They could not go to 
 church, for there were no churches to go to. They 
 could not read good books at home, for there were 
 no books for them to read. Apparently they 
 were intended to pass their time in quiet social 
 ^intercourse, and in such recreation as did not compel 
 the man-servant and the maid-servant to go through 
 hard work. 
 
 So much is what we know of the external ordi- 
 nance. The best way to arrive at its spirit or 
 principle is to ask what was its purpose. And this 
 its purpose is declared with sufficient plainness 
 in the Commandment itself, and illustrated by many 
 references in the Prophets. The main object of the 
 institution of the Sabbath day was that the common 
 people might have a breathing -time from work. 
 " That thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest 
 as well as thou." Nor are the dumb cattle forgotten. 
 The following is one of the repetitions of this Com-
 
 vi of the Ten Commandments 71 
 
 mandment in the book of Exodus. " Six days thou 
 shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou 
 shalt rest ; that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and 
 the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be 
 refreshed." The breaches of this Commandment 
 which called forth rebukes from Jewish reformers 
 consisted in carrying on work for the sake of gain. 
 Thus we read in Nehemiah (xiii. 15), "In those 
 days saw I in Judah some treading wine-presses on 
 the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading 
 asses ; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner 
 of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on 
 the Sabbath day." These practices Nehemiah as 
 a Reformer succeeded in putting down. When we 
 bear in mind that a great part of the work in ancient 
 times was done by slaves, who worked by compulsion 
 and not by contract, we understand better how the 
 Fourth Commandment was addressed with peculiar 
 urgency to the well-to-do and employers, in the 
 interest of those who were in danger of being 
 oppressed. " Remember that thou wast a servant 
 or a slave in the land of Egypt." Those who were 
 now in the enjoyment of fields and vineyards owed 
 their prosperity to the act of redemption by which 
 Jehovah had rescued their fathers from bondage. 
 They were bound, therefore, to show sympathy to- 
 wards those who were still bondsmen. But it was, 
 no doubt, believed also amongst the Jews that men 
 needed to be protected against themselves as well as 
 against masters. The desire of gain may tempt men 
 to a drudgery which is a real bondage when they are 
 free to rest if they choose. The law of the Day of 
 Rest was therefrom a general security against the
 
 72 The Christian Interpretation vi 
 
 oppression of overwork, a general provision for all 
 those benefits which come from a regular breathing- 
 time in the midst of labour. The principle of the 
 Fourth Commandment is, let. labour and rest alternate 
 duly in the life of man. 
 
 The succession of day and night is one great 
 witness of the necessity of rest. " Man goeth forth 
 to his work and to his labour until the evening." 
 But night is the time for sleep. It cannot play the 
 part of a Sabbath day. A day of rest is not merely 
 for the restoration of the exhausted energies ; it is a 
 pause in the routine of common occupations ; it sets 
 the mind free as well as the body. If it were 
 capable of being maintained that in any given con- 
 dition of society the benefits aimed at by a seventh 
 day of rest would be better secured by shorter hours 
 of work on every day without a whole day of rest, 
 then, I think, we should be keeping the Fourth Com- 
 mandment in spirit by observing such an arrange- 
 ment. I mention this not because I suppose it 
 likely that any one would support such a theory, 
 but in order to illustrate the reason of this Com- 
 mandment Labour and rest in turn, each aiding 
 and balancing the other, labour that men may earn 
 rest, rest that men may be the better able to labour, 
 are declared to form part of the essential con- 
 stitution or order of human life. 
 
 This principle is supported by an appeal to the 
 Divine work in Creation. Jehovah wrought for six 
 days and rested on the seventh. This is an attempt 
 to express a mystery. The mystery is that in the 
 Divine nature, as exhibited in the created universe, 
 we see activity and repose in harmony. God works,
 
 vi of the Ten Commandments 73 
 
 God rests. The Divine work and the Divine rest 
 are not in reality separated by intervals of time. 
 Time-language applied to God is rarely more than 
 symbolical or illustrative. But men see a Divine 
 energy operating, they think also they can apprehend 
 a joy and satisfaction, a Divine repose, balancing and 
 sustaining the energy. I do not ask you to try to 
 understand more of this than may come home to 
 your minds in seasons of contemplation. But 
 believing as we do that man is made in the image 
 of God, we shall not be unwilling to believe that 
 everything permanent in human nature is a witness 
 or shadow of something in the Divine nature. 
 
 The appeal in the book of Deuteronomy is a 
 simpler one. Men are to remember with gratitude 
 what God has done for them, so that they may be 
 more considerate towards those who do not possess 
 their advantages. The Commandment, speaking to 
 thoughtful religious and well-to-do men, says, Be 
 careful for the liberty of those who seem to be in 
 the bonds of necessity, remembering that you have 
 received your comparative freedom as a gift from 
 God. If you have been placed in comfortable cir- 
 cumstances, take care that you are not indifferent to 
 the comfort of the less fortunate. 
 
 You see that I have not been speaking of religious 
 observances as appointed by the Commandment for 
 the Sabbath day. This is because neither the Com- 
 mandment nor the Old Testament so speaks of 
 them. The Mosaic legislation about the Sabbath is 
 perfectly plain ; it has reference only to work, and 
 the kind of work it means is chiefly that by which 
 gain is made. Nothing is said about devoting the
 
 74 The Christian Interpretation vi 
 
 day to religious observances. The distinction be- 
 tween religious and secular, between things proper 
 for Sundays and things proper to week-days, does 
 not present itself anywhere in the Old Testament, 
 and there is nothing in the Fourth Commandment 
 that implies it* 
 
 And now, having considered what the Fourth 
 Commandment was in the letter for those to whom 
 it was first given, and also what the spiritual law 
 was to which this Commandment was intended to 
 bring the Jews into obedience, we have to ask how 
 we Christians are to keep it with reference to our 
 own times and circumstances. 
 
 If the Fourth Commandment had said to the 
 Jewish people, Thou shalt give up the seventh day 
 to religious assemblies and studies, and shalt not 
 allow the thoughts and interests of common life to 
 encroach upon it, we might have said, This is pre- 
 cisely what we must do, the only change being the 
 substitution of the Resurrection Day, the first of the 
 week, for the Jewish seventh day. But, as I have 
 pointed out to you, that is not at all what the Fourth 
 Commandment says, nor is it so interpreted in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. It enjoins an alternation of 
 labour and rest, and prescribes that the seventh day 
 shall be kept sacredly free from work, in the interest 
 of the humbler classes especially, and as a boon of 
 the God who desires that His people should be free. 
 The obligation which the Commandment imposes 
 upon us, therefore, must be of this purport to see 
 that we respect the ordinance by which God assigns 
 to men regular periods of rest from work, and to aim 
 at carrying out, in the best possible manner for all
 
 vi of the Ten Commandments 75 
 
 classes, the Divine alternation of labour and rest. 
 This Commandment condemns idleness ; it con- 
 demns also a never - intermitted round of work. 
 Against idleness we ought to hear the warning, " Six 
 days thou shalt labour"; against oppressive and 
 unbroken work we ought to hear the warning, " On 
 the Sabbath day thou shalt rest" 
 
 But, so understood, the Commandment remains 
 somewhat vague and indefinite. We need not leave 
 it so, for we naturally associate it with an institution 
 which flourishes amongst ourselves, an institution 
 which, to say the least, corresponds very closely to 
 the Jewish Sabbath. We have our Christian Lord's 
 Day, kept more or less strictly as a Day of Rest. 
 What can be more obvious than to interpret the 
 Commandment as binding us to keep this Lord's 
 Day as it bound the Jew to keep his Sabbath ? 
 
 This is a most reasonable application of the 
 Commandment. The Sunday, we may rightly say, 
 should be to a Christian people what the Sabbath 
 was to the Jews. What then should it be ? 
 
 It should be, as a Day of Rest, a witness in 
 favour of those who are in danger of being oppressed 
 by drudgery or incessant toil. The aim and purpose 
 of our Sunday, regarded in the light of the Fourth 
 Commandment, and kept in the spirit of that Com- 
 mandment, should be the most effectual refreshment 
 of the whole population of the land. We should say 
 to ourselves, " God, in His providence, has given us 
 this day in order that due rest may be secured to 
 the toiling people. Whatever tends to secure that 
 rest is in harmony with the Commandment ; what- 
 ever tends to impair it is against the Commandment."
 
 76 The Christian Interpretation \\ 
 
 It belongs to practical wisdom and Christian 
 experience to determine what usages are on the 
 whole favourable and what are unfavourable to the 
 desired end. The Church of Christ has from the 
 beginning followed one custom. And what applica- 
 tion of the day can be imagined more suitable to the 
 idea of the Day of Rest than that on it Christians 
 should meet together for common recollections and 
 common fellowship, " to render thanks for the great 
 benefits which we have received at God's hands, to set 
 forth His most worthy praise, to hear His most holy 
 word, and to ask those things which are requisite and 
 necessary as well for the body as the soul " ? So 
 long as Christian services have anything of the 
 elevating and restorative character which ought to 
 belong to them, there cannot be conceivably any 
 truer or better occupation on a Christian Sabbath 
 than to join in those services. 
 
 At the same time, it is quite possible for religious 
 observances and restrictions to be so multiplied and 
 enforced, and to be so inflicted like penalties upon 
 the human conscience, that they should become a 
 burden and not a refreshment. As soon as they 
 assume this character they offend against the idea of 
 the Sabbath day and the principle of the Fourth 
 Commandment There is perhaps no more remark- 
 able feature of our Lord's teaching than the steadi- 
 ness with which He refused to keep the Sabbath as 
 the Pharisees thought it pious to keep it. When 
 the Day of Rest has become a day of religious 
 bondage, it is not enough to protest against an 
 excess of religious observance as being more than 
 what God requires of us ; we ought not to think that
 
 vi of the Ten Commandments 77 
 
 there is merely too much of a good thing ; we ought 
 to understand that God's ordinance of the Sabbath is 
 actually thus violated, inasmuch as what He gave in 
 order to promote man's freedom has been perverted 
 so as to crush his freedom. The Pharisees, with all 
 their zeal for the Sabbath, were in God's eyes the 
 true Sabbath breakers. They were not keeping the 
 commandment of God ; they were making it of no 
 effect by their tradition. And there is another 
 remark of practical importance with regard to rules 
 of religious observance on Sundays. Christians who 
 feel the duty and advantage of going to church 
 at all, are sure to think it desirable and becoming to 
 go to church on Sundays. Religious persons will 
 desire to keep the Day of Rest religiously. But a 
 difficulty arises when we have to consider the case of 
 those who do not admit the obligations of Christian 
 fellowship, and to whom churchgoing is neither a 
 duty nor a pleasure. We none of us at the present 
 day would force our neighbours to go to church. 
 But something more is necessary than this abstinence 
 from compulsion with regard to the class of which I 
 have just spoken. When we are laying down laws 
 for the community, whether in placing enactments 
 on the statute-book or in applying social pressure, 
 we are bound by the Fourth Commandment to con- 
 sider how on the whole we may best promote the 
 refreshment of the entire population. On this point 
 honest differences of opinion would arise. The pre- 
 vailing feeling of serious persons in this country has 
 been for centuries in favour of a very quiet as well 
 as religious observance of the Sunday, of abstinence 
 from ordinary pleasures as well as from painful
 
 78 The Christian Interpretation \\ 
 
 labour. Great offence was given to this feeling by 
 an unwise act of King James I., who, advised by a 
 bishop, put out a proclamation signifying his plea- 
 sure that after divine service on the Lord's Day 
 people should indulge themselves in all kinds of 
 sports. The clergy were required to read this pro- 
 clamation in the churches, and one clergyman, after 
 doing so, remarked, " Now you have heard on the one 
 hand the commandment of God, and on the other 
 hand the commandment of man." But there was 
 no such plain contradiction as he implied between 
 the Fourth Commandment and the King's proclama- 
 tion. What the Fourth Commandment forbids is 
 work, not play. Whether play of any kind, and 
 what kind of play, should be encouraged on the 
 Christian Sabbath must be determined, not by the 
 Commandment, but by the general feeling as to what 
 is desirable. And many and various considerations 
 will go to the making of this feeling. To wish that 
 picture galleries and museums may be opened on 
 Sundays is compatible with the utmost reverence for 
 the Fourth Commandment. But we most of us feel 
 a reasonable unwillingness to break with the strong 
 tradition which has come down to us from our 
 Puritan forefathers, and there is unquestionably 
 much to be said in favour of general quiet rather 
 than exciting pleasures on our Sabbath day. 
 
 In dealing with the question of the observance of 
 the Sunday there is one aspect of it which I would 
 ask you to bear continually in mind. This Com- 
 mandment is a public one, intended for a community 
 first, and for individuals as members of a community. 
 If it is clear that some must work on the day of
 
 vi of the Ten Commandments 79 
 
 rest in order that the general population may rest, 
 the interest of the community must prevail. The 
 most conspicuous example of this law is in the case 
 of those who serve sacred things. " The priests in 
 the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless." 
 These are our Lord's memorable words. Nothing 
 could be more religious than the work of the priests 
 in the temple, but it was work, and therefore it was 
 a violation of the letter of the Commandment. The 
 priests profaned the Sabbath, but they were blame- 
 less. Therefore we must not let our consciences be 
 troubled by work done on Sunday, if it is work 
 without which the general rest would be seriously 
 impaired. The interest of the community must pre- 
 vail. On the other hand, we must consider the 
 question how we individually are to spend the 
 Sunday, not only with reference to our own feelings, 
 but with an eye also to the general good. A Chris- 
 tian should ask himself, not whether he may himself 
 do this or that without injury to his spiritual life, but 
 whether it would be for the general good that all 
 should do it. He will feel it a duty to conform to 
 what he sees to be on the whole a good public 
 custom, whether he would think it necessary for 
 himself as a separate individual to observe it or 
 not. 
 
 Let me add one more remark. The Fourth 
 Commandment gives no countenance to the theory 
 that the serving of God belongs any more to the one 
 day of rest than to the six days of labour. Such a 
 notion is one of our chief dangers. All days, of 
 labour and of rest, belong to God alike. We must 
 not so call the Sunday God's day as to imply that
 
 8o The Ten Commandments vi 
 
 the six days are ours or the world's. The rule no 
 public worship except on Sundays, nothing but 
 worship or religious work on Sundays is one which 
 tempts us to keep secular things separate from 
 religion. This is an unnatural and unscriptural 
 divorce. God claims the six days as well as the 
 seventh, our work as well as our rest. We are to 
 serve Him in our labours, to be thankful to Him in 
 our repose. There is no exception to this absolute 
 law. God, our Maker, has made us for work and 
 for rest. We can only work rightly, we can only 
 rest rightly, by remembering that whether we work 
 or rest we are the Lord's.
 
 VII 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 
 
 ill 
 
 " Thou sha.lt love thy neighbour as thyself." ST. MATTHEW xxiii. 39. 
 
 I HAVE made a great point, in two former sermons, 
 of our bearing in mind that all these Ten Command- 
 ments, being originally given to the children of Israel, 
 were adapted to their peculiar circumstances. For 
 this reason it is necessary to ascend to the higher or 
 spiritual significance of each Commandment, and so 
 to ascertain what is the essence of it, and then to 
 consider how such a spiritual or moral principle as 
 is expressed in the Commandment would find its 
 proper applications in our modern life. In the 
 latter six Commandments we are not so forcibly 
 reminded that the Law was given by Jehovah to the 
 children of Israel. With the exception of the Fifth, 
 they might have been given to Greeks or to Hindoos 
 as well as to Jews. The Fifth, however, it is 
 important to read in the light of the Jewish history. 
 It is a Commandment, as St. Paul mentions, with a 
 G
 
 82 The Christian Interpretation vn 
 
 promise. " Honour thy father and thy mother, that 
 thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah 
 thy God giveth thee." The true meaning of this 
 promise is not always understood. It does not 
 engage that each individual who honours his parents 
 shall have a long life. " Thou " in the promise 
 stands for the nation or people. It is true that in 
 the first clause of the Commandment, " Honour thy 
 father and thy mother," we are obliged to think of 
 individual sons and daughters. But this Command- 
 ment, to honour parents, was regarded as given, like 
 the rest, to the whole people, and it is to the people 
 as a whole that the latter clause refers. "Let 
 parents be duly honoured amongst you, that you 
 may have a long and prosperous existence in the 
 land which Jehovah your God is giving to you." 
 In other words, national permanence and prosperity 
 are made the reward of a habit of paying honour to 
 parents. 
 
 Having translated the Fifth Commandment into 
 this more general form, we have all the six Com- 
 mandments in language which is as intelligible in 
 one age or country as in any other. But it is as 
 impossible to be content with the letter, and as 
 necessary to find out and be governed by the spirit 
 of them, in the case of these as in that of the pre- 
 ceding Commandments. Take the Commandment, 
 " Thou shalt do no murder," or, more simply, " Thou 
 shalt not kill." It requires but little thought to 
 perceive that all putting to death cannot be forbidden 
 by the Commandment. Our legislators, like those 
 of other civilised nations, have taken great pains to 
 define what acts of killing are lawful, what are more
 
 vii of the Ten Commandments 83 
 
 or less excusable, and what are to be visited with 
 the utmost condemnation of the law. But as 
 students of the Commandments, our business is to 
 consider what is probably the mind of God in 
 forbidding men to kill, what is the principle which 
 He desires to condemn, and what the disposition 
 which He desires to encourage. In the eye of God 
 the outward act is only significant as expressing the 
 inner mind. Now every child can understand that 
 killing is the act of an enemy, that it naturally 
 represents hatred or ill-will. Therefore if the Sixth 
 Commandment has any spiritual significance, it must 
 forbid hatred and all kindred emotions " envy, 
 hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness." But 
 when once we have realised that ill-will is forbidden 
 by this Commandment, how universal and far-reach- 
 ing the Commandment has become. The act of 
 killing is not regarded with the same abhorrence in 
 all stages of civilisation. In modern times, and 
 especially in this country, human life is guarded with 
 such extreme caution and tenderness, that no crime 
 seems so heinous as that worst kind of killing which 
 the law defines as murder. In rougher times and 
 societies, to kill another man has not been thought 
 to imply of necessity the deepest guilt. And even 
 amongst ourselves what the law calls murder is 
 sometimes palliated by circumstances which tend 
 greatly to excuse it. But the hatred which God 
 looks at and forbids is independent of the act of 
 killing. We are most of us in extremely little 
 danger of committing actual murder. The vast 
 majority of human beings go to their graves without 
 killing a fellow-creature. But many a man now
 
 84 The Christian Interpretation vn 
 
 living is more guilty in the sight of God of breaking 
 the Sixth Commandment than may a homicide of less 
 civilised days. We are all of us guilty ; we have all 
 broken in some degree the spirit of the Command- 
 ment ; we all have need to pray that our hearts may 
 be inclined to keep it. 
 
 One effect of reading the Commandments in the 
 spirit is that they thus rise above the want of com- 
 pleteness and of systematic arrangement which may 
 be easily observed in them. These six Command- 
 ments do not fill the place of a modern code. When 
 we think of the vices which afflict our own country, 
 drunkenness is sure to occur to our thoughts as one 
 of the most injurious and obstinate. But there is no 
 Commandment against getting drunk, nor against 
 other faults which some moralists would place with 
 this in a third section, under the heading " My duty 
 towards myself." And we may fail to discover any 
 rule of order according to which the Commandments 
 are arra'nged. But we may see that they express in 
 a very simple and unartificial manner great prin- 
 ciples of human conduct, which are so fundamental 
 and reach so far to the innermost qualities of the 
 character, that you could not in fact name any vice 
 which would not be exterminated, or any virtue 
 which would not be guaranteed, by a perfect spiritual 
 observance of the Ten Commandments. 
 
 The Church Catechism, which illustrates admir- 
 ably the wide practical applications which may be 
 given to the Commandments, follows the ancient 
 language of the Commandments themselves, and of 
 the Old and New Testaments generally, in speaking 
 of our fellow-man by the name of " our neighbour."
 
 vii of the Ten Commandments 85 
 
 " My duty towards God, and my duty towards my 
 neighbour." There is something simple and homely 
 in this term, although it may not at once occur to 
 our children or to ourselves to think of father and 
 mother as neighbours. But we may take the word 
 as suggesting an instructive principle of all duty. 
 My duty is towards him who stands near to me, 
 towards each person with whom I am brought into 
 contact. My first duties, we may go on to say, are 
 towards those whom God has placed nearest to me. 
 Here is some guidance as to the duties to be pre- 
 ferred whenever there is a conflict of obligations. If 
 I can only see clearly which relation is the closest, 
 then the duties, which are the fulfilment of the 
 relation, will take rank and place corresponding to 
 the nearness of the relation. 
 
 Let me illustrate this from the Commandments. 
 If we suppose young children to be learning their duty, 
 who are the persons nearest to them ? Obviously 
 father and mother. Then it follows that the first duty 
 of children is that towards their parents. Many 
 reasons might be given why the honouring of parents 
 should always hold a foremost place ; but if we 
 regard duty as the fulfilment of relations or con- 
 nections which God has created, then it is evident 
 that the persons the child finds placed nearest to 
 him are his parents, and to be a true good child 
 towards father and mother is his primary duty. 
 
 But if we are dealing with grown persons, the 
 relation between parents and children may be left 
 behind by one yet closer. Nature and the Bible 
 both teach us that the relation of husband and wife 
 is, according to God's ordinance, the closest possible.
 
 86 The Christian Interpretation \\\ 
 
 Therefore the conjugal tie takes precedence of that 
 which binds parents and children together. To 
 fulfil worthily the conjugal relation becomes the 
 primary duty of married persons. A man is to 
 leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife. 
 
 These are the two primary and fundamental 
 relations of human life, those of parents and children, 
 of husband and wife. The duties arising out of 
 these are of supreme authority and can never be super- 
 seded. Persons well grounded in these are not likely 
 to be regardless of other Divinely-ordained obliga- 
 tions. To be perfect in these would imply a never- 
 ending advance in the highest moral qualities. 
 Other relations add themselves variously to these 
 primary ones. A child who has parents has also, 
 very probably, brothers and sisters. These are very 
 near to him, and his obligations or duties to them 
 correspond to that nearness. There are the relations 
 of the household, of business, of citizenship, of church- 
 manship, of the simple brotherhood of humanity. 
 " I am a man," says a well-known line of an ancient 
 poet ; " I am a man, and nothing that is human is 
 strange or indifferent to me." Obligations, revealed 
 and defined for the most part by actual life and 
 experience, rise out of all these relations, and stand 
 to one another in the proportion in which the 
 relations are closer or less close. 
 
 In the Commandments, though probably without 
 any intended system or method, those nearest neigh- 
 bours of whom I have spoken have the most con- 
 spicuous place. "Honour thy father and thy mother"; 
 " Thou shalt not commit adultery." Let us notice, 
 by way of example, how the principles which are
 
 vii of the Ten Commandments 87 
 
 involved in these laws are seized and traced out in 
 our Catechism. It is possible that it may have 
 escaped your observation how the Fifth Command- 
 3ient is there interpreted. My duty is "to love, 
 honour, and succour my father and mother ; to 
 iionour and obey the King, and all that are put in 
 uithority under him ; to submit myself to all my 
 governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters ; to 
 order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters." 
 .^11 this is drawn out of the command, " Honour 
 thy father and thy mother." And it is so most 
 reasonably. This interpretation is justified by ex- 
 perience. Imagine a child well grounded in filial 
 respect towards his parents. It will be natural for 
 him to feel a proportionate respect towards those 
 other persons named in the Catechism. A dutiful 
 and respectful son will naturally go on to be an 
 orderly and loyal citizen ; he cannot be impudent, 
 or rude, or irreverent. By the very fact of having 
 reverence made a part of his character through the 
 inward performance of duty to his parents, he will 
 instinctively behave with reverence towards all who 
 have any claim upon him, similar in kind, though 
 less in degree, to that which his parents have had. 
 The teacher is in loco parentis, in the place of the 
 parent. The authorities of the land, temporal and 
 spiritual, have their Divinely - ordained rights of 
 government. Those who are older and wiser and 
 better have the rights of their relative superiority. 
 Let me give one caution here by the way. Let no 
 one imagine that by " my betters " are meant merely 
 those who are richer than I am. I am not bound to 
 order myself lowly and reverently to all who are
 
 88 The Christian Interpretation vn 
 
 richer than I am. To be the richest person in the 
 land does not of itself constitute any claim upon the 
 reverence of others. My betters are those who are 
 really better than I am better in experience and 
 knowledge and wisdom, better in self-restraint 
 better in virtue and piety. Education and manners 
 do make a kind of superiority, though not the highesl 
 kind. But riches do not. And we need rather to 
 be on our guard against reverencing them. Indeed) 
 the habit of cherishing reverence towards father and 
 mother, and towards those who are wiser and really 
 better, and towards all in authority, whether richer 
 or poorer, will of itself be some security against 
 paying reverence to what is intrinsically so worthless, 
 and so apt to injure and lower the character, as 
 riches. There is no more gracious and beautiful 
 quality than that of reverence towards goodness 
 when found in a humble station and allied with 
 poverty. That is the kind of reverence which the 
 Fifth Commandment would teach us to cultivate. 
 
 Now let us look in the Catechism for what cor- 
 responds to the Seventh Commandment. We find 
 the following words : " To keep my body in temper- 
 ance, soberness, and chastity." These must be 
 intended as an interpretation of that Commandment. 
 They show us how the Commandments are naturally 
 and reasonably brought to bear against drunkenness 
 and other misdoings which are not directly prohibited 
 by them. The duty of conjugal fidelity involves, 
 amongst other qualities, a control of the desires, an 
 habitual self-government, a subordination of the 
 lower impulses of the nature to the rule of reason 
 and to the higher enjoyments. Well, but any one
 
 vii of the Ten Commandments 89 
 
 who is trained in these is brought to a state of mind 
 to which insobriety is repugnant and impossible. I 
 do not deny that there are cases in which a man is 
 temperate in some things and intemperate in others, 
 but I say that the partial temperance which does 
 not struggle at least, and with some success, against 
 the partial intemperance, has not got a thorough 
 hold of the character. Any sincere endeavour to be 
 faithful and pure and refined will tell upon the 
 whole character. 
 
 Thus we might say, if we pleased, that in hunting 
 after one virtue we catch other virtues also. Certainly, 
 to those who desire to hear and obey in the spirit, 
 one Commandment stands in the place of several. 
 And however few Commandments there be, when 
 regarded spiritually, they run into and overlap each 
 other. It is impossible to steal without coveting, 
 not easy to steal without hurting. You can hardly 
 lie without defrauding, without hurting. To commit 
 adultery is to injure and to defraud. Still, there are 
 great departments of life to which each of the Com- 
 mandments most properly belongs. To refrain from 
 ill-will, from licentiousness, from fraud, from false- 
 hood, is to beware of the great temptations which 
 meet a man in the common universal human life. 
 The Tenth and last Commandment seems of a some- 
 what different character from the rest. It might be 
 thought to be included sufficiently in the Seventh and 
 the Eighth. It hinders us from thinking of the Ten 
 Commandments as a systematic code. But it has 
 been of great value as a distinct and separate warn- 
 ing against the covetousness which is so ingrained in 
 human nature. St. Paul in one place treats this
 
 90 The Christian Interpretation \\\ 
 
 Commandment as a kind of summing up of the law. 
 " I had not known sin, but by the law : for I had 
 not known lust or desire, except the law had said, 
 Thou shalt not covet." This Commandment speaks 
 strongly in favour of contentment and a peaceable 
 and unselfish, life. As the Catechism puts it, my 
 duty according to the Tenth Commandment is, " not 
 to covet nor desire other men's goods, but to learn 
 and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do 
 my duty in that state of life unto which it shall 
 please God to call me." An important lesson to 
 learn ! Worthy of a special Commandment to 
 impress it distinctly upon the conscience ! 
 
 The most properly Christian view of the Com- 
 mandments is that suggested by the words of our 
 text, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. It 
 is true that these words do not appear in the 
 New Testament for the first time, but are quoted 
 by our Lord from the book of Leviticus. But this 
 principle is more distinctly brought out by our 
 Lord and His Apostles than it had been before 
 that by love the whole law is fulfilled. St. Paul 
 points out how the fact of a man's loving his 
 neighbour would of itself prevent him from doing 
 any of the forbidden acts by which his neighbour is 
 wronged. 
 
 My purpose in these sermons has been to explain 
 and illustrate the method in which we Christians 
 may still intelligently receive the Ten Command- 
 ments and endeavour, with God's help, to keep 
 them. It is true, as St. Paul teaches us, that 
 Christians are no longer under law, but under grace. 
 It ought not to be our first conception of ourselves
 
 vii of the Ten Commandments 91 
 
 in relation to God that we have certain injunctions 
 to obey. We are called to a life of privilege, of 
 freedom, of happiness. But it remains true that the 
 Commandments set forth the principles to which the 
 life of the redeemed of God will conform itself. 
 They who love God and their fellow-men will keep 
 the Commandments. And these ancient ordinances 
 serve as sign-posts and warnings which may have 
 their use in helping us to walk in the right path. 
 They still threaten us beneficently when we are 
 tempted to go astray. The two great requisites 
 for the right use of the Ten Commandments and of 
 all similar precepts are spiritual insight to under- 
 stand their true meaning, and practical wisdom to 
 apply that meaning to circumstances. If these are 
 granted to us, it is impossible that the Command- 
 ments should bring us into bondage ; but if we 
 blindly read and apply them in the letter, the best 
 commandments may lead us into confusion and 
 moral servitude. 
 
 Let us use, then, these ancient Commandments 
 thankfully and wisely, remembering always that a 
 spirit of life has been offered to us which will move 
 us to keep them in freedom and with joy. The law 
 of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free by 
 making obedience natural and happy to us. The 
 image of a body, consisting of a head and members, 
 suggests to us the ultimate principles of our Chris- 
 tian duty. Let each Christian regard Christ as his 
 Head, and every man as a fellow-member, sub- 
 mitting himself loyally to Christ and honouring his 
 fellow - members for Christ's sake, and he will 
 naturally fulfil all his obligations. Love, supported
 
 92 The Ten Commandments vn 
 
 by a study of the relations which God has or- 
 dained, will compass all duty. Study, then, the 
 relations in which God has placed you, beginning 
 with those of home life, and seek the Divine gift of 
 love, in which alone you can fulfil those relations, 
 and God Himself will guide you in the ways in 
 which He would have you walk.
 
 VIII 
 MORALITY PROGRESSIVE 1 
 
 ' ' This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in 
 knowledge and all discernment." PHILIPPIANS i. 9. 
 
 IF we have occasion to look back to what was 
 taught in former generations concerning the prin- 
 ciples of morality, we find that the moralists who 
 took what was considered the higher ground affirmed 
 strongly that morality was immutable. They had 
 in view the opposite doctrine of those who main- 
 tained that moral laws were derived only from the 
 experience of what had been found to be generally 
 advantageous ; and it seemed to them that if it were 
 believed that duty was nothing more than what men 
 in general had perceived to be for their advantage, 
 individual men were not likely to regard it with any 
 profound reverence. True enough, it was instructive 
 to a man to know what had been found by the mass 
 of his fellow-men for an indefinite number of genera- 
 tions advisable to do, and there was a reasonable 
 presumption that conduct which had been ascer- 
 tained to be prudent for the many would be equally 
 
 1 Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, 3Oth January 1898.
 
 94 Morality Progressive vm 
 
 prudent for the one. But it was also quite possible 
 that the interest of the one might in particular 
 circumstances not be coincident with the interest of 
 the many ; and it was more than possible, it was 
 probable, that under the pressure of strong tempta- 
 tion a man might say to himself that the knowledge 
 of what was generally expedient should not hinder 
 him from seizing upon an immediate pleasure. To 
 guard against this danger, those who were concerned 
 for the authority of moral laws denied vehemently that 
 duty was nothing but what common experience had 
 proved to be advantageous. They maintained that 
 there were eternal laws of human action which men 
 were bound to obey, and they made themselves cham- 
 pions of an immutable and independent morality. 
 
 But I think it must be admitted that these 
 moralists were not felicitous in the position which 
 they thus took up. They had great, if not insuper- 
 able, difficulty in accounting for the historical varia- 
 tions of morality. It was obvious that in different 
 ages and different lands men had different notions of 
 what it was their duty to do. If conscience was an 
 infallible interpreter of an immutable law, how did it 
 happen that one man's conscience could bid him act 
 in one way, and another man's conscience could 
 bid him act in a dissimilar and even opposite way ? 
 The advocates of immutable morality had to give 
 such answers as they could, better or worse, to this 
 question ; but their systems seemed to their op- 
 ponents, and perhaps to many who sympathised 
 with them, to be in the air, supported by energy of 
 assertion, rather than built upon the solid ground of 
 fact and reason.
 
 via Morality Progressive 95 
 
 The mistake of these moralists, who were so right 
 in insisting that the laws of duty must have authority 
 over men, lay in their preliminary assumption that 
 they had to separate morality from religion. They 
 were in general Christians, by personal profession 
 and belief; but they wanted to enter the field as 
 pure moralists against rival speculators who did not 
 share their Christianity. They persuaded themselves 
 that it would be irregular and unscientific, and even 
 a hindrance to the cause of morality, if they intro- 
 duced the name of God, not to say that of Christ, 
 into their ethical systems. 
 
 But a Christian cannot possibly for himself 
 separate the acknowledgment of Christ and of God 
 from his conceptions of duty. Duty is simply and 
 adequately explained to him by his faith. What he 
 is bound to do is what he believes to be the will of 
 God ; and the will of God, as he believes, has been 
 effectively manifested in Christ. No variety of 
 Christian creed can reject these fundamental truths. 
 Let a Christian be what he may Anglican, Roman 
 Catholic, Methodist, Unitarian there is no higher 
 law for him than to find out and do the will of God, 
 and he knows of no other revelation of the will of 
 God which can transcend what has been given in 
 Christ. And therefore a Christian moralist is engaged 
 in a very artificial process of construction when he 
 tries to abstract from the accepted morality certain 
 principles of conduct or propositions of duty, and 
 then gives to these an independent existence over 
 men's heads, and declares them to be independent 
 and immutable. It is a different thing to say that 
 whatever we perceive to be right for us to feel and
 
 g6 Morality Progressive \\\\ 
 
 to do has the authority to us of the absolute and 
 immutable God Himself. 
 
 No doubt a man may tell us that for his part he 
 knows no God ; and if such a man so far contradicts 
 himself as to acknowledge any binding law of duty, 
 we may be glad to meet him on that ground of 
 morality which we have in common with him. But 
 duty is to us the will of God, whatever may be the 
 philosophy of those who speak of duty without being 
 willing to name God. 
 
 And when we believe and affirm that morality is 
 the will of God, we are under no necessity to make 
 right conduct immutable or independent, and to 
 involve ourselves in the difficulties with which such 
 language would embarrass us. On the contrary, we 
 are led to repudiate respectfully those terms. Human 
 morality is not independent ; it is dependent on what 
 is made known to us of the will of God. It is not 
 immutable, but progressive. It is one of the great 
 tasks of Christians to set before themselves and others 
 a dependent and progressive morality. Now more 
 than ever we perceive the need of an authority 
 prescribing conduct which appeals from above to the 
 conscience. We have to stand out, not only against 
 the utilitarian but also against the evolutionary ex- 
 planation of what is right. When our minds are 
 bent upon the process of development, we see how 
 apparently reasonable and unavoidable it is to regard 
 all action as the necessary result of what preceded 
 it, and yet how destructive such a view is to a belief 
 in right and wrong. And human life cries out for 
 an ethical doctrine which, whilst it allows for develop- 
 ment and progress, at the same time bears witness
 
 vni Morality Progressive 97 
 
 to a more real and substantial authority than that 
 of abstract terms or principles. 
 
 According to our Christian faith, the God whom 
 we know as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is 
 leading His human world onwards. In accordance 
 with this action of His, morality, by which we mean 
 men's conceptions of what they ought to do, will 
 advance by degrees from the less perfect to the 
 more perfect. We frankly admit the difficulty, 
 the impossibility, perhaps, of reconciling progress, 
 improvement, change for the better, with the idea 
 of a perfect unchangeable Creator. But in the teeth 
 of this difficulty, or impossibility, we see that move- 
 ment manifestly going on before our eyes, and we 
 refer it with confidence to the incomprehensible 
 Power in whose perfectness we cannot but believe. 
 It is a practical faith, amply commended to us in 
 the New Testament, that we are bidden to grow 
 in knowledge and discernment by attending to the 
 lessons which are given to us, and that as our 
 knowledge grows our action is bound to keep pace 
 with it. When we look at the Apostolic writings to 
 see what they teach us about duty say especially 
 at those of St. Paul we find that Christian conduct 
 is to be such as suits and is required by the Christian 
 calling. It is not laid down for us in precepts ; it 
 is to be learnt freshly from the considering of what 
 children of God in Christ ought to do in the 
 circumstances in which they find themselves. The 
 Christian is to study the will of his God in what 
 we of these days call his environment. He is to 
 look reverently at the relations in which his personal 
 history has placed him, and then to ask, What would 
 H
 
 g8 Morality Progressive vm 
 
 the heavenly Father have me do in this and this 
 relation ? By what conduct will these relations 
 be best fulfilled according to the design of their 
 Maker? Duties will become more clearly defined, 
 through devout and disinterested attention and study ; 
 they will vary also, as the environment varies. When 
 the Christian does not see his way distinctly, he is 
 to go on in hope, trying the most likely directions, 
 resolving always to be faithful to what he sees. "If 
 in anything ye are otherwise minded, God will reveal 
 even this unto you ; only, whereunto we have already 
 attained, by that same rule let us walk." Loyal 
 obedience to what is believed to be right is the 
 condition of further enlightenment. We are to 
 advance in morality by feeling our way courageously. 
 We are to prove that is to say, to ascertain by 
 testing and verification what is the good and 
 acceptable and perfect will of God. The attitude 
 of the Christian towards duty or morality, therefore, 
 ought never to cease to be that of an inquirer. Let 
 us not fancy that we put a stumbling-block in our 
 way by recognising progress in the morality of the 
 past ; let us look for similar progress in the present 
 and in the future. And let our morality not be 
 essentially a code of rules, but modes of action 
 commended to us in the spirit. When any new 
 question as to conduct arises, the inquiry of the 
 Christian should be, What would the Father ol 
 Jesus Christ approve, for the building up of the 
 society which is to be the body of His Son ? 
 
 But as we consider this society itself, we can 
 hardly help being discomposed by a characteristic 
 feature of our age I mean, the breaking down of
 
 vin Morality Progressive 99 
 
 enclosures which have separated Christians from the 
 rest of the world. In the Apostolic age the Chris- 
 tians had to live as little companies of people who 
 had come out from the world, who shrank from the 
 religion and the morals of their neighbours, and who 
 were in their turn an offence to those about them. 
 Now there are no social barriers between those who 
 profess and desire to be Christians and the rest of 
 mankind. It is an age of the breaking down of 
 enclosures, of the grading of convictions, of a desire 
 for largeness of apprehension and comprehensiveness 
 of union. Many good Christians view this feature 
 of our time with dread and disapproval ; to all it 
 may reasonably be a source of some disquietude. 
 It presents new difficulties ; it brings, must we not 
 believe ? new duties. It is not wonderful that such 
 a movement should set many upon saying, "We 
 must enclose ourselves ; we must have distinctions 
 between the Church and the world ; we must have 
 distinctions of social life between believers and the 
 unconverted ; we must have distinctions of dogma 
 between the Church and Nonconformists ; we must 
 revive discipline and tests, and show to the world 
 what a properly fenced-off and self-respecting Church 
 is. We who are religious must take care of our 
 religion, and let those who are secular go their own 
 way, in an age which seems given over to forgetful- 
 ness of the world to come." Christians may speak 
 thus ; but the great influences of the time continue 
 to prevail, and those desired barriers are found to be 
 hard to set up. Christians of the school of St. Paul 
 will therefore be earnestly asking themselves what 
 their duties are in an age of fusion, of permeation ;
 
 ioo Morality Progressive \\\\ 
 
 and will they not see, as they do so, that while trying 
 responsibilities and perplexities are laid upon them, 
 inspiring opportunities are likewise offered to them ? 
 We are called upon to entertain seriously the ques- 
 tion, what the world would be if it were subjected 
 to Christ. This is a different inquiry from that of 
 considering how the believers of a limited society 
 should conduct themselves. And our first impulse may 
 well be to refuse to entertain the question. What ! 
 the world, with its wars, with its political parties 
 struggling for the spoils, with its competitive trade, 
 with its absorbing pursuit of wealth, with its ques- 
 tionable pleasures, with its arrogant determination 
 to impose a worldly standard upon common opinion ? 
 No wonder that it seems the easier, even the more 
 practical, course for the religious to let the world 
 alone and to see to their religion. But I think that 
 the providence of God is calling Christians to the 
 more arduous duty, and will keep them to it the 
 duty, I mean, of applying the Christian standard with 
 grave insistency to all secular action. See how we 
 are forbidden to call anything common or unclean ; 
 how the sincerest Christians cannot help taking a 
 part in all that is going on ; how they seem com- 
 pelled to acquiesce in a compromise, in a second 
 best, when this is evidently better than what went 
 before it and they cannot secure the best ; how im- 
 possible it is to keep the words right and wrong out 
 of politics, out of international affairs, out of the 
 competitions of trade and industry. And, as I 
 have said, the Christian knows no right but the will 
 of his God, no wrong but that which is contrary to 
 His will. A Christian of our day can hardly escape
 
 vin Morality Progressive 101 
 
 from the conviction that he must be genuinely in 
 the world, though he is not of it ; he proves his 
 loyalty to his Master by bearing witness that there 
 is a right and a wrong in all human relations, and 
 that the whole world must by that gradual process 
 which everywhere characterises the Divine govern- 
 ment, be made more and more the kingdom of our 
 Lord and of his Christ. 
 
 It is manifest that old traditions will not be 
 enough for guidance in new circumstances. The 
 character of God stands firm, independent, immutable, 
 in heaven ; and the spiritual activities with which 
 we apprehend and respond to the Eternal Nature, 
 those which St. Paul has summed up under the 
 names faith and hope and love, partake of the abid- 
 ingness of that nature. But when things are chang- 
 ing and developing around us, we may have to walk 
 in untried paths. What hopeful docility is required 
 of us, when, for example, we realise that the ways of 
 industry and trade must not be allowed to defy and 
 outrage the Christian law of fellowship ! Consider 
 this one great economical change the substitution 
 of combinations for individual employers and indi- 
 vidual workers. It is idle to denounce combinations 
 as such ; they cannot be said to have anything in 
 them directly opposed to Christian morality. It 
 follows that we have to inquire what the duties of 
 combinations and of their members are. There is 
 an old saying whose I do not remember that a 
 company has neither a soul to be lost nor a body to 
 be kicked ; but we could not seriously hold that in 
 becoming members of a combination we put our- 
 selves quite outside the pale of moral Christian obli-
 
 iO2 Morality Progressive vm 
 
 gations. Yet we cannot say that the member of a 
 company, a trust, a federation, a union, has exactly 
 the same duties as an individual. The necessary 
 growth of law, in having to deal with such develop- 
 ments as these, is a familiar fact. And law is an 
 expression of the received morality, subject to the 
 two well-known limitations: (i) that law deals with 
 outward acts, and with motives only as they qualify 
 acts ; and (2) that law for the most part declines to 
 give any commands which it cannot enforce with 
 adequate penalties. The conventions of International 
 Law have the strict name of law sometimes denied 
 to them, because they have no defined penalties to 
 threaten for the breach of them. But it may be 
 said that these conventions are feeling after a force 
 which might give them legal sanction, and that 
 already they can inflict some indefinite penalties. 
 
 As belonging to that great union, our country, 
 now our vast empire, we are confronted with prob- 
 lems which we may not be able to solve, but 
 which we ought not to give up as hopeless. What 
 are the claims which other countries have on us? 
 Within what limits is a country justified in consider- 
 ing its own interests only ? When is it permissible 
 to go to war ? How far are dissimulation and 
 simulation excusable in war, how far in diplomacy? 
 To what length should the obligations of a treaty be 
 held binding? I do not think we can expect a 
 conscientious Christian, or the cleverest of Christians, 
 or a Christian saturated with Holy Scripture, to 
 answer these questions at once and definitely for us. 
 If what a St. Paul would say may be inferred from 
 what St. Paul has said, his advice would be some-
 
 via Morality Progressive 103 
 
 thing to this effect Go into these practical problems 
 with the fear of God upon your consciences, but 
 with faithful hope in your hearts, and in time God will 
 show you what you prove yourselves to be earnestly 
 seeking ; do not shrink from any personal sacrifices 
 which may be demanded of you, but beware of 
 supposing that you divest yourselves of responsibility 
 by going away and leaving things to themselves ; 
 and where you can see that you are helping on 
 progress, that you are doing some good, though you 
 may be apparently tolerating much evil, be en- 
 couraged by the belief that in doing the best you 
 know and can, you will have the approval for which 
 alone you care that with which God rewards the 
 good and faithful servant 
 
 True Christians will not allow themselves to 
 despair of guidance in any matter. They know how 
 to breathe up to heaven the old aspiration, " O send 
 out Thy light and Thy truth, that they may lead 
 me ! " Let us be sure that our faith can only be 
 real for ourselves by being ambitious for the world. 
 We cannot have a Divine Spirit which is not the 
 one Spirit of the whole family of God ; we cannot 
 have a Saviour who does not will that all men should 
 be saved and should come to the knowledge of the 
 truth ; we cannot have a Father in heaven who is 
 not the God of heaven and earth, " greatly providing 
 for " the creatures whom He has made for earth and 
 for heaven.
 
 IX 
 LAW AND REVELATION 
 
 "Ye are not under law, but under grace." ROMANS vi. 14. 
 
 THE word Law is one which St. Paul is continually 
 using. His ideas concerning the place and function 
 of law enter largely into his theological teaching. 
 When he speaks of " the law " he may be supposed 
 to have in his mind the law of Moses, by which 
 Jewish life was governed ; but he often names law 
 without the article, meaning law as such, law in its 
 generic or ideal character. 
 
 In modern science the word law is of still greater 
 importance than in Pauline theology. The laws of 
 which science speaks are the laws of nature ; but 
 science also abstracts law from particular laws. 
 Science magnifies law, and has its being in the 
 discovery and ordering of laws. 
 
 It would be an error to confound the law of 
 St. Paul's Epistles with the law of modern science ; 
 but I propose to put the one by the side of the other, 
 and to consider what instruction we may derive from 
 the comparison of them. 
 
 To St. Paul, law was the voice which said to
 
 ix Law and Revelation 1 05 
 
 men, " Thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that." 
 The form which law naturally took for him and his 
 Jewish readers was the law accepted by all Jews as 
 having been delivered to their fathers through Moses. 
 It was a law of commandments contained in 
 ordinances ; moral and ritual directions were mingled 
 in it. Some of St. Paul's language concerning the 
 law, language apparently of repudiation and hostility, 
 might suggest the notion that he had been converted 
 from Judaism to Christianity, and was denouncing the 
 faith of his fathers with the characteristic zeal of a 
 convert. But that would be a mistake ; St. Paul 
 never abandoned the faith of his fathers, he never 
 repudiated the authority of the law of Moses. He 
 might never have departed from the traditional lan- 
 guage of respectful submission to that law but for a 
 movement which opened his eyes and led him to a 
 new and firm apprehension of the nature and function 
 of law. This movement was the attempt to 
 Judaise the Gentile believers in Christ. The Judaisers 
 held that the Gentiles in coming to Christ were 
 accepting the Jewish law, St. Paul held that they 
 were accepting the grace and redemption given in 
 Christ. The question came to be, which of the two 
 was supreme and to be made most of the law 
 which commanded men, or the Divine grace which 
 invited and claimed them. When this question was 
 put to him and to the Church, St. Paul was moved 
 to answer with ever-increasing energy that he was 
 on the side of grace against law ; that whatever law 
 might have to say for itself, it must be thrust aside, 
 rather than that it should be allowed to usurp 
 dominion over grace.
 
 io6 Law and Revelation ix 
 
 We may sum up under two heads the weaknesses 
 of law as they presented themselves to the mind of 
 St. Paul, (i) Law could not give life. He appealed 
 to facts ; he made himself the mouthpiece of the 
 universal human experience. But he was speaking 
 especially to fellow-believers, who had received the 
 Gospel with joy ; and he knew that their inward 
 history must have in some degree corresponded to 
 his own. They had known what it was to disobey 
 the law, though they recognised it as Divine ; not 
 only had they been weak for obedience and righteous- 
 ness, they had found in themselves a rebellious nature 
 which was even irritated by commands into resist- 
 ance. Their outward conformity, whatever it might 
 have been, had not necessarily implied inward happy 
 service. The Gospel, or God declaring His love 
 towards men and inviting them to peace and 
 sonship, had done what the law was powerless to do. 
 Hope had been kindled in the breasts of those who 
 believed, and hope had exerted in them its magic 
 influence. " By hope," St. Paul says, " we were 
 saved." The law was from God ; it was holy and 
 just and good ; but it could not give life ; the Gospel 
 had proved that it could give life .; and life was what 
 men wanted. What a folly it was, what treason 
 against the highest interests of men, to exalt a law 
 which killed over the Gospel which gave life, and so 
 practically to make void the Gospel, and to destroy 
 its power ! (2) A kindred weakness of law was that 
 it did not represent the best relations between God 
 and man. St. Paul was ready to admit that the law 
 was a voice of God ; but it was the voice of God as 
 a Ruler. " Well," a legalist might say, " and in
 
 ix Law and Revelation 107 
 
 what other character can man know his God ? Is 
 not the true God the Ruler both of the armies of 
 heaven and of men upon this earth which He has made? 
 It is through the law, the voice of God the Ruler, 
 that our God has manifested Himself to us. Our 
 place and duty are to know ourselves as His subjects, 
 and to render obedience to His commands." " Say 
 not this," St. Paul would have replied, " to men 
 who have heard of Jesus Christ. The envoys of 
 Christ are sent into the world to report to men the 
 voice of a Father in heaven. The characteristic 
 utterances of the Lord Jesus were such as these 
 ' Thy sins are forgiven thee ! ' ' Come unto Me, all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest.' ' Be not anxious, saying, What shall we eat ? 
 or, What shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ? For your heavenly Father knoweth that 
 ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first 
 His kingdom, and His righteousness ; and all these 
 things shall be added unto you.' In preaching 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we are declaring the 
 Father, and inviting men into the confidence and 
 rest and hope of sonship. And we bear witness that 
 a Spirit has been given, which moves mysteriously 
 in the heart of each believer, and sighs out yearning 
 appeals to God as to a Father." To St. Paul the 
 relation of men to God as of subjects to a ruler was 
 a secondary and subordinate relation, and to choose 
 this as superior to the relation of spiritual children 
 in Christ to a heavenly Father was to do dishonour to 
 God and injury to men. Law was the note of the 
 inferior relation, Promise of the superior. 
 
 That laws and commandments, when they are
 
 io8 Law and Revelation ix 
 
 kept subordinate to the dispensation of grace and 
 promise and sonship, have even under this dispensa- 
 tion their appointed use and value, St. Paul would 
 not have us doubt. In religion as well as in morals 
 he himself set an example of law-abiding habits. 
 He must have held that, even for a righteous man, 
 the observance of regulations was helpful. Impera- 
 tive rules of conduct may serve as witnesses and 
 warnings, and to some extent as guides, for weak 
 mortals, even when they are striving to surrender 
 themselves to the motions of the Spirit of the Father 
 and the Son. But the chief function of law and the 
 penalties associated with law is, according to St. 
 Paul, to restrain transgressions. We may wisely 
 make much of law ; we are bound to honour and 
 enforce it, provided always that we do not exalt it 
 above grace. 
 
 There is a tendency, however, in human nature, 
 which St. Paul was led to combat for the benefit of 
 all generations of Christians, to choose the lower 
 relation of man to God, and to regard God by 
 preference as a Ruler who imposes ordinances upon 
 men, and demands from men the observance of 
 them. That was the habit of mind of the Pharisees, 
 and we see what aversion and anger it excited in 
 the Lord Jesus. It is associated with ceremonialism 
 in religion, with outwardness in morality, with depend- 
 ence on legal machinery and penalties for the raising 
 and purifying of national life. Against this tendency 
 it is necessary for those who would take high views 
 of human well-being to be continually on their 
 guard. The Gospel, which we as Christians have 
 received, seeks to bring men into close spiritual
 
 ix Law and Revelation 109 
 
 relations with God. In it God reveals Himself ; and 
 man's part is to respond to the revelation. The 
 revelation is given to us in Christ living, teaching, 
 dying, rising again, sending His Spirit. Through 
 Him, received and believed in as the Son of God, we 
 see and know the Eternal Father claiming men as 
 His children. To be at peace with the Father is our 
 happiness ; to know more and more of our God is 
 our progress ; to be conformed to the Divine will 
 is our duty and our safety. Yes, and to reject the 
 Fatherly grace of God is our danger. We cannot 
 with impunity follow the devices and desires of our 
 own hearts and set God's will at naught. If we 
 think we can put God off with certain outward 
 conformities and observances and keep our hearts to 
 ourselves, we shall find that we are the victims of a 
 ruinous deception. Not in any attempt to obey 
 regulations, however good and Divine, but in re- 
 sponding with heart and mind and will to what 
 can be seen of God, will man find his highest 
 life. 
 
 Thus far we have been considering law in the 
 Pauline sense as the voice of the heavenly Ruler 
 giving commands supported by threats, a voice 
 exemplified to the Jews in the ordinances which they 
 traced up to their law-giver Moses. We Christians, 
 if we receive St. Paul's teaching, are to reckon 
 ourselves not under law, in this sense, but under 
 grace. Let us now bring before our minds the 
 law of which modern science is the exponent and 
 advocate. 
 
 It has been doubted whether the word " law " is a 
 happily chosen term for the relations or connections
 
 no Law and Revelation ix 
 
 which science seeks after and verifies. There is 
 nothing imperative in the laws of nature. I am 
 not sure whether there is any definition of a law of 
 nature accepted by men of science as entirely free 
 from objection ; but it is not necessary for our 
 purpose to seek anything more accurate than the 
 ordinary impression conveyed by the term. We 
 mean by a law of nature an observed succession of 
 phenomena, some relation of antecedents and conse- 
 quents which may be relied upon as sure to recur. 
 The unscientific man, looking around him, sees 
 phenomena and occurrences as a mere aggregate ; 
 the scientific man sees them connected together in 
 various relations, and what he contemplates is not 
 an aggregate but an order. It has not, indeed, been 
 reserved for modern science to behold order in the 
 world of nature ; even upon the primitive mind the 
 world made some irresistible impression as an orderly 
 structure, and it was the order in it that touched 
 men in' the earliest ages, and drew forth their admira- 
 tion and delight. The Old Testament begins by 
 presenting the creation as the product of an arranging 
 purpose, and its poets and prophets are moved to 
 rapture by the mutual interdependence and regular 
 successions of natural phenomena, such as awaken 
 in us the idea of order. But a man may be said 
 to be scientific, just in so far as he can penetrate 
 more deeply than others into the secret relations 
 which bind the parts and processes of nature together 
 into orderly coherence and unity. 
 
 To the primitive mind the order of nature seemed 
 to imply design and a Maker. And from the most 
 advanced mind it is surely difficult to eradicate the
 
 ix Law and Revelation 1 1 1 
 
 instinct which traces arrangement to an Arranger, 
 structure to a Builder, functions to a Purpose, a vast 
 work to a Creative Mind. But it is pointed out 
 that, if we are inferring from nature only, we have 
 no right to infer if so much anything more than 
 a Power capable of giving existence to what we 
 behold. The ordinary action of the human mind 
 contemplating nature has gone beyond this. Men 
 have imagined a Maker like themselves. They 
 themselves design and shape, and, regarding the 
 world as a product, they have jumped to a belief in 
 One who designs and shapes as they do, and they 
 have represented to themselves a magnified Man as 
 the Creator of the universe. The tendency to place 
 a magnified Man in the invisible heaven has received 
 the technical name of anthropomorphism, and has been 
 used to explain away all religious belief. We might 
 put the- case rather differently. We may say that 
 the God who has spoken to men by divers portions 
 and in divers manners, and has constrained them 
 to believe in Him, has been naturally assumed to be 
 the Creator of the world, and that all the beauty 
 and order of nature and all the adjustments of things 
 to uses and ends bear witness of the Being thus 
 revealed. But we must accept the caution, and take 
 care not to affirm that nature by itself can make 
 known to us the God whom we worship. We must 
 not wonder that science, investigating nature, should 
 report that it finds no just and merciful God, but 
 only a suggestion of some originating Power or 
 Cause, such as the unity of the world seems to 
 demand. 
 
 That is enough, let Christians say confidently, to
 
 1 1 2 Law and Revelation ix 
 
 prove to us that the knowledge of natural things and 
 processes is not intended to suffice for us or to 
 dominate our minds and lives. For us, as creatures 
 with spiritual affections and members of society, this 
 kind of knowledge whatever its present prestige 
 has defects which sentence it to take a lower place. 
 The same terms in which the defects of imperative 
 law were declared by St. Paul will serve to express 
 the defects of natural law. 
 
 In the first place, law does not give life. Some 
 of the most famous exponents of science have found 
 pleasure in dwelling upon the inexorableness of 
 natural law. They tell us that we are placed in the 
 midst of a world which moves on by absolutely 
 regular and unvaried processes, and that do what 
 we will, or pray as urgently as we may nothing 
 will persuade a law of nature not to execute itself. 
 A hand put in the fire is sure to be burnt ; a- cottage 
 standing in the path of a devastating torrent is sure to 
 be swept away. We are entitled to point out that 
 in the midst of these encompassing invariable laws 
 there is a mystery of human will which seems to 
 have power to vary the course of nature, a power 
 which every scientific man is irresistibly compelled 
 to assume to be real, though no man, scientific or 
 other, can explain it or show at what points or in 
 what manner it touches the natural order. But, 
 putting this mystery aside, let us suppose that we 
 know nothing of any Power with which we have to 
 do except that it manifests itself in laws of nature, 
 and that in the presence of these we are powerless ; 
 could there be any condition less likely to give us 
 life? Natural law, dominant over us, may fill us
 
 ix Law and Revelation 1 1 3 
 
 with wonder ; it may greatly interest our intellectual 
 faculties ; it may put us on our guard, so that we 
 may avoid, till our time comes, being crushed by it. 
 But what is there in it to encourage us, to put 
 hope into us, to stir us into effort? Its moral 
 influence can scarcely be other than to daunt and 
 depress us, or to chill us into an attitude of appre- 
 hensive caution. But if the acknowledgment of law, 
 necessary and unvarying, were to advance upon us 
 and embrace ourselves, and it is difficult to see 
 how, in a world known only as one of natural law, 
 man is to be made an exception to its universal 
 range, there is worse than depression from without, 
 death strikes us at the heart of our moral being. To 
 be convinced that we are automata, mere machines, 
 going, in all our thought and will and action, just as 
 we have been made to go, is surely to give ourselves 
 up, and to consent to drift as lifeless creatures upon 
 the stream of time. If St. Paul could say " the 
 letter kills," we are still more clearly warranted in 
 saying nature kills nature, that is, recognised as 
 exclusively supreme over us. 
 
 May we not go on to say that our relation to the 
 natural order is a manifestly inferior one for a creature 
 organised as man is, and living as man has lived ? 
 When we can believe that God has revealed and is 
 revealing Himself to us as the Father of our spirits, 
 our spiritual faculties and affections leap up to the 
 recognition of Him. All that we think of, and cannot 
 help thinking of, as noblest in man, all that is 
 associated with the best progress of our race, is 
 justified and explained. Conscience becomes the 
 spiritual ear, by which we listen to the voice of our 
 I
 
 1 1 4 Law and Revelation ix 
 
 Maker and Spiritual Father saying to us, " This is 
 the way, walk ye in it." Duty becomes the claim 
 of this heavenly authority over us, a claim which 
 speaks for itself and needs no external argument or 
 enforcement to one who in any way acknowledges 
 that authority. Those beautiful and gracious 
 emotions, reverence and gratitude, the entire absence 
 of which makes a man repellent to his fellows, have 
 their inspiring object and receive their daily nourish- 
 ment. Humane behaviour is a self- commending 
 obligation to those who know themselves and their 
 fellow-men to constitute a spiritual family of God. 
 The sense of sin that is, of being blameworthy is 
 accounted for, as nothing but the consciousness of 
 having a Father whom we may love and obey or 
 offend by alienation and rebellion is able to account 
 for it. And hope, the bright nurse of patience, the 
 stimulant of endeavour, the worker of salvation, which 
 makes all present difficulties and troubles incon- 
 siderable, which brings sunlight from heaven into 
 human life, offers itself as the natural heritage of 
 those who can say, " If God be for us, who is 
 against us ? He that spared not His own Son, but 
 delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also 
 with Him freely give us all things ? " When such 
 things as these, my Christian brethren, are in question, 
 it is not wonderful if we have hardly patience to 
 consider whether it would be wise and rational to 
 throw them all away as empty idols, that we may 
 know ourselves according to the latest lights to be 
 nothing but involuntary instruments of nature. 
 
 Our faith is, that God makes some revelation of 
 Himself in nature, and puts us in a certain relation
 
 ix Law and Revelation 1 1 5 
 
 to Himself through our being parts of " that stupend- 
 ous whole," but that He gives the higher revelations 
 in history, in moral discipline, in inspiration, in 
 Christ. Through these we apprehend the righteous- 
 ness and the love of God, the attributes by which 
 He is our Father. These ought we to care for ; but 
 we may add and not to leave the other uncared 
 for. Just like St. Paul with the law, the Christian of 
 to-day, fighting for what he knows to be most 
 precious to man, may be led in appearance or in 
 temporary expression to depreciate the natural order, 
 and that knowledge of it which is the special pride 
 of our age. But our docile reverence is due to all 
 that men find out in the visible creation, and 
 especially to the order and unity which bear witness 
 so powerfully of God, and make deliberate choice 
 and forethought possible to us ; and Christians 
 should be amongst the readiest to pay grateful 
 honour to all who help to make the world better 
 known. 
 
 Believing that we are under a Divine education, 
 and that God plants us, His spiritual children, for 
 instruction and discipline in this world of nature, 
 our relation to the natural laws and processes to 
 which we are subject must be a matter of abiding 
 interest to us. And it forms a problem of curious 
 and baffling difficulty. The study of nature invites 
 and occupies and rewards our intelligence. We see 
 plainly enough that, by a part at least of our con- 
 stitution, we ourselves belong to the nature which 
 we study. Students of nature are drawn, let it be 
 admitted, towards the acknowledgment of nature as 
 supreme.
 
 1 1 6 Law and Revelation ix 
 
 Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 
 
 Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
 
 And, even with something of a mother's mind, 
 And no unworthy aim, 
 The homely nurse doth all she can 
 
 To make her foster-child, her inmate man, 
 Forget the glories he hath known, 
 
 And that imperial palace whence he came. 
 
 But this forgetfulness our heavenly Father will 
 not suffer ; and he breathes into us higher beliefs 
 with which the supremacy of nature is incompatible, 
 and gives a summary rebuff to our understandings. 
 We are made to feel that our observing and deduc- 
 ing intelligence is a key which fits some locks 
 exactly, but that there are other locks opening other 
 doors to us which it does not fit. We are bidden to 
 believe that this universe, which seems to go on with 
 a regularity impressed upon it from the beginning, 
 is, by some method which evades our understanding, 
 plastic in the hands of the Providence which watches 
 over the. most insignificant of God's creatures. And 
 the final lesson seems to be that we are to hold 
 down our self-confident understandings and to make 
 them know their own place ; that our reasonings 
 and our expositions, whilst they should be as good 
 as we can make them, are, after all, those of children, 
 compared with what they may hope to be in some 
 future stage ; and that the supreme calling of man 
 is to know his Father in heaven, to worship Love 
 and Righteousness as dominant over Law, imperative 
 or natural, and to go out with the dutiful response 
 of his whole being towards every revelation which 
 it pleases the Father to give us of Himself. And 
 let us not doubt that, as he who casts away his life
 
 ix Law and Revelation 1 1 7 
 
 for Christ's sake will find the life which he has 
 seemed to lose, and as love is the fulfilment of the 
 commandments which it overrides, so the pious 
 devotion to the Father which puts nature in the 
 lower place will involve in the long-run the most 
 appreciative admiration and the richest knowledge 
 of nature and its laws.
 
 X 
 
 BROAD CHURCH TEACHING 1 
 
 THE influence of Broad Church teaching during the 
 Victorian era is to be chiefly traced in the modifica- 
 tion of general religious belief which has been 
 effected within that period. Let those whose age 
 enables them to look back for a good many years 
 recall what was commonly believed around them in 
 their early days. They will remember that the 
 Bible was then regarded as the one foundation of 
 the faith that is to say, it was held that everything 
 in the Bible was true, and that Christians were to 
 believe as their necessary creed all that was stated 
 in the Bible. Concerning the future state, the 
 commonly received tradition was that all human 
 beings after death went into one of two conditions : 
 either into endless unchangeable happiness and 
 goodness, or into endless unchangeable misery and 
 wickedness. It was a widespread belief, held with 
 most decision by those who had received the Evan- 
 gelical doctrines, that those who were to escape the 
 future misery must undergo a change in this life, 
 
 1 Read at the Church Congress at Nottingham, September 1897.
 
 x Broad Church Teaching 1 1 9 
 
 a change which separated the converted by a deep 
 chasm from the unconverted, so that the one serious 
 division of mankind was into the two classes of the 
 converted and the unconverted. The chief character- 
 istic of the converted was that they had accepted 
 the Atonement, or believed that Jesus Christ had 
 died for them ; in other words, that Jesus Christ 
 had borne upon the Cross the punishment due to 
 their sins, and had thus made it possible for God to 
 forgive them. These doctrines may still be held 
 and professed with their old vigour by some English 
 Christians, perhaps by some clergymen of the Church 
 of England ; but I think it will be admitted that 
 throughout English Christendom in general, they 
 are either openly repudiated, or tacitly ignored, or 
 avowed with bated breath. The late Mr. Spurgeon 
 used to denounce the " down grade " which had 
 proved tempting to many Baptists : if those doctrines 
 are to be figured as the high level, the majority of 
 English Christians must be conscious of having 
 moved down to varying distances from them. 
 
 And when those doctrines concerning the Bible, 
 the future state, the separation of the converted 
 from the rest of the world, the Atonement began 
 to need defence, it was Broad Church teaching that 
 was denounced by their defenders as doing the mis- 
 chief. It would be easy to illustrate this statement 
 from the controversial literature, and especially the 
 religious newspapers, of fifty years ago, but I do not 
 think it will be called in question. My older hearers 
 will remember the anger and alarm excited by the 
 volume of Essays and Reviews, which was regarded 
 as especially assailing the infallible truth of the Bible ;
 
 I2O Broad Church Teaching x 
 
 and it is matter of history that Maurice, who took 
 the lead in rejecting the prevalent doctrines of the 
 future state and the Atonement, was dismissed from 
 a Professor's chair at King's College for heterodoxy 
 on the former of these subjects. And the authors 
 of Essays and Reviews, with Dean Stanley, who 
 might have been expected to be one of them, and 
 Maurice, though he protested against being identi- 
 fied with the Broad Church party, have been 
 universally looked upon as the prominent Broad 
 Churchmen of the earlier years of the Queen. 
 
 There is a word which has often been applied as 
 an epithet of reproach to the Broad or Latitudinarian 
 or Liberal school in the Church the word negative. 
 To a considerable extent the arguments which 
 have been brought against the doctrines which I have 
 specified may be rightly so described. The greatest 
 name of the Broad Church party, considered as a 
 critical and dissolving agency, is that of one whose 
 work and influence have lately been brought before 
 the public by his biography, Professor Jowett. 
 Many years ago I happened to meet my friend Mr. 
 Huxley when he had just returned from paying a 
 visit to the Master of Balliol at Oxford. He was 
 much interested by Jowett, and, like many other 
 persons, could not make out distinctly what his 
 beliefs were ; and he wound up his talk about him 
 by exclaiming, " I call him a disintegrator ! " 
 Huxley, I need not say, thought that there was 
 nothing more desirable than that the traditions of 
 the time should be disintegrated ; and I do not 
 suppose that Jowett would have felt hurt by the 
 description. But to Maurice the title could not
 
 x Broad Church Teaching -' 121 
 
 have been given without extreme injustice, and he 
 himself would have been painfully wounded by it. 
 Maurice's true influence has been that of a most posi- 
 tive and constructive theologian. Not only, however, 
 does the word Broad apply well enough to his views, 
 but he undoubtedly was often by the side of the 
 advocates of liberalism and working with them. 
 For erroneous beliefs may be dissolved in two ways : 
 either by being simply shown to be untenable, or by 
 the announcement and recognition of the true views 
 on the same matters. Maurice hardly cared to 
 expose any error except by showing the truth 
 which turned it into falsehood. He had the con- 
 sciousness of being a witness in many things to the 
 real nature and action of the living God ; and it is 
 through this testimony of his that he has exerted a 
 precious reforming influence upon the thought and 
 life of the time. With Maurice as a positive teacher 
 may be associated the two chief poets of the Victorian 
 age. For there is a great deal of theology in both 
 Tennyson and Browning, and what there is would be 
 described as Broad Church, of the Maurician type ; 
 and if we could weigh and measure influences, we 
 should perhaps find that their poems, with the subtle 
 and penetrative power of poetry, have done as much 
 as any other writings to give to the general Christian 
 belief its existing character and tone. 
 
 The volume of essays entitled Lux Mundi repre- 
 sents the views of a school which is well known to 
 be carrying with it in a forward movement a large 
 proportion of the younger clergy. The writers, under 
 their able and courageous leader, Canon Gore, regard 
 themselves as adjusting the High Church theology
 
 1 2 2 Broad Church Teaching x 
 
 of Dr. Pusey and his generation to the new know- 
 ledge of our day ; and their innovations caused great 
 distress not only to the stalwart veteran, Archdeacon 
 Denison, but to a student of modern thought like 
 Canon Liddon. There is no mention of Maurice's 
 name from the beginning to the end of the volume, 
 but a reader who is familiar with Maurice's writings 
 will trace what will seem to him the lead of Maurice 
 in every one of the essays. Whatever in Lux Mundi 
 has been welcomed as advocating a wise and neces- 
 sary modification of traditional doctrines is included 
 in more positive and profound statements of Maurice. 
 It is not to be supposed that so-called Maurician 
 views all originated with Maurice ; he himself freely 
 confessed his obligations to Coleridge, and also to the 
 remarkable Scottish lay theologian, Thomas Erskine 
 of Linlathen ; but he thought and saw for himself, if 
 any thinker or seer ever did ; and his doctrines have 
 a large comprehensiveness, due to their unity and 
 depth, which keeps them still in the forefront of the 
 whole theological advance of our time. 
 
 Maurice came, it has been said, like John the 
 Baptist, to bear witness of the Light. His mind 
 was set on the gracious will of the perfect God, as 
 revealed in Jesus Christ ; and he brought all doctrines 
 to the test of that living Will. If he could not 
 accept the tradition that the mass of men were con- 
 signed to hopeless rebellion after death, or assent to 
 the theory that the justice of God was satisfied by 
 the infliction of the pains due to the guilty upon His 
 innocent Son, it was because he held that the grace 
 and righteousness of God absolutely and necessarily 
 repudiated and condemned such doctrines. If he
 
 x Broad Church Teaching 123 
 
 declined to build a system of Christian credenda out 
 of the sentences of the Bible, it was because such 
 treatment of the letter of the sacred records was 
 essentially unspiritual. It was his belief in God as 
 the Father of Jesus Christ that obliged him to regard 
 all men as God's children, and that led him to look 
 confidently for signs of Divine revelation and of 
 human feeling after God in all the religions of the 
 world. And believing as he did in the Father of all 
 men, and in the Spirit of the Father and the Son as 
 working in all human life, he could not regard any of 
 the institutes of human society as outside the Divine 
 kingdom. Human duty meant to Maurice surrender 
 to the good Will of God ; the principle of sacrifice 
 was at the root of right human action, and the 
 particulars of ethics were to be found by a teachable 
 consideration of what God's will might be at each 
 time and for each society and person. It was obvious 
 to him that Christ claimed industry and trade, politics 
 and recreation and art, no less than religion, for things 
 of His kingdom ; that the mind and the body belonged 
 as well as the soul to the dominion of Christ and the 
 sphere of the Spirit's operation ; that the progress of 
 true civilisation was part of the growth of the Body 
 of Christ 
 
 To the religious world Maurice was the theologian 
 who, refusing to be bound by traditions, bore too 
 audacious a witness to the righteousness and love of 
 God ; but his countrymen in general, so far as he 
 was known to them, knew him chiefly through his 
 Christian Socialism. The movement thus named 
 was with him a natural inference from his belief in 
 Christ and in the kingdom of heaven. That any
 
 1 24 Broad Church Teaching x 
 
 province of human life should be placed by Chris- 
 tians outside the domain of the law of Christ, and 
 that men should have mutual dealings as employers 
 and workers, buyers and sellers, makers and spenders 
 of money, on principles with which Christ was not 
 to interfere, was in his eyes an intolerable denial of 
 Christ. Human society he held to be a Divine 
 creation ; and it belonged to his theology or his 
 faith to make a distinction, of which some of those 
 who worked with him were a little impatient as a 
 mystical or fanciful one to insist, I mean, that 
 men were not to construct an improved society 
 according to their imaginations of what was best, 
 but should rather assume that the society into which 
 they were born would be right if only the members 
 of it would live and act according to the real and 
 ascertainable designs of its Maker. The bold asser- 
 tion of self-interest as the one or supreme principle 
 of industry and trade roused Maurice into his most 
 vehement protests. Instead of teaching that society 
 ought not to be built up on self-interest, he declared 
 that it was not. In his Christian Socialism he was 
 not merely preferring one economical method to 
 another, he was a witness for Christ and His social 
 constructions against a power of this world which 
 set Christ at defiance ; he was maintaining the 
 absolute supremacy over human life of the laws of 
 the Body of Christ. 
 
 Those who were Maurice's disciples in Christian 
 Socialism were as a rule his disciples in other re- 
 ligious beliefs also ; and what we are now calling 
 Broad Church views owed much to the zealous pro- 
 paganda of the men who fifty years ago stood by
 
 x Broad Church Teaching 125 
 
 Maurice's side Kingsley, Hughes, Ludlow, Hort, 
 and their comrades. It is difficult now to think of 
 these men as having been regarded with suspicion 
 and disapproval by most of the religious persons of 
 their day, and of young people being warned against 
 reading anything that they wrote. But so it was ; and 
 their leader and they had the inspiring consciousness 
 that they were a minority righting for what they 
 believed to be the Gospel of the kingdom against 
 the Pharisees and the Sadducees of the age. In 
 these latter days of the Victorian era we may 
 enlarge Sir William Harcourt's famous dictum and 
 say for the religious world, " We are all Christian 
 Socialists now ! " For we are all confessing that 
 the well-being of the weakest classes should be the 
 special care of a community which calls itself Chris- 
 tian, and that all economic relations should be 
 strictly subjected to fairness and the common in- 
 terest. In advocating on high grounds and pro- 
 moting to the utmost of their power the extension 
 of educational advantages and of the privileges and 
 duties of citizenship to the working classes and to 
 women, Maurice and his followers were in the front 
 of a double movement which has become eminently 
 characteristic of our epoch. 
 
 The subject with regard to which the high 
 spiritual teaching of Maurice has made least way is 
 the nature of the Body of Christ or the Church. I 
 feel sure, indeed, that the divines of the Lux Mundi 
 school, to whom I refer as marking the general theo- 
 logical progress of the time, would shrink from using 
 such language as that of a couplet in Hymns Ancient 
 and Modern, "And still the holy Church is here,
 
 126 Broad Church Teaching x 
 
 Although her Lord is gone" (Hymn 352). The 
 conception of the Church as consisting of a certain 
 number of organised persons to whom a Divine 
 authority of direction has been delegated in the 
 absence of Christ, and who have had a certain store 
 of spiritual force put in their sole charge, is one 
 which has found a natural expression in the con- 
 stitution of the Church of Rome, with its supreme 
 Vicar of Christ ; but when Anglicans try to hold it 
 they are confronted with overwhelming difficulties. 
 This view is the Pauline idea of the Church carnal- 
 ised. Let me not be supposed to speak of belief 
 in a living and present and active Christ, giving 
 direction and communicating life, as an easy faith 
 to hold ; God knows how difficult it is. But that 
 was St. Paul's faith ; and it delivers the Christian 
 who can hold it from the confusion in which those 
 are involved who think themselves bound to re- 
 cognise some corporation set up on earth with 
 exclusive authority to act for Christ. If it is a 
 carnal Church of so many mortal men that is to be 
 reverenced as holy and catholic, the spotless bride 
 of Christ, where is this separate organism to be 
 found ? But the body of a living and present Christ 
 has a perfection which depends on Him, an ideal 
 spiritual perfection which is independent of the 
 miserable shortcomings of the persons and com- 
 munities holding on to Christ and drawing life from 
 Him. We can speak freely of the Church as holy 
 and catholic if we mean a holiness and catholicity 
 subsisting in Christ, if we are thinking of the Divine 
 pattern made in heaven for the societies of earth, the 
 ideal which they should assume to be their true
 
 *x Broad Church Teaching 127 
 
 nature, and up to which they ought to be always 
 striving. As in each Christian there is the true Son 
 of God, defined and claimed in His baptism, of whom 
 it has been said by St. John that He cannot sin 
 because He is begotten of God, so there is in the 
 actual Church the true body of Christ, the holy 
 Catholic Church, seeking continually to realise itself 
 in all the unsatisfactory communions which confess 
 Christ as Lord. 
 
 The chief work which remains to be done by 
 that high Broad Church teaching which bears witness 
 to the living God and the living Christ is to help 
 the present generation of English Churchmen to 
 attain more thoroughly to this Apostolic view of the 
 Church.
 
 XI 
 
 THE HIGHER LIFE: HOW IS IT TO 
 BE SUSTAINED? 1 
 
 IN a recent article 2 on "Science and the Bishops," 
 Professor Huxley writes thus: " That this Christianity 
 is doomed to fall is, to my mind, beyond a doubt." 
 The Christianity of which he predicts the fall is 
 defined to be " that varying compound of some of 
 the best and some of the worst elements of Paganism 
 and Judaism, moulded in practice by the innate 
 character of certain people of the Western World, 
 which since the second century has assumed to itself 
 the title of orthodox Christianity." " The fall," he 
 says, " will be neither sudden nor speedy " ; because 
 enlightenment has always been slow in dispersing 
 darkness. But this Christianity, he holds, will 
 disappear just as rapidly as men in general come 
 to the knowledge of the truth. Now that definition 
 might suggest the inquiry, What is Professor Huxley's 
 view about the Christianity of the first century ? 
 How is that to be distinguished from the singular 
 
 1 From the Fortnightly Review for January 1888. 
 2 Nineteenth Century, November 1887.
 
 xi The Higher Life 129 
 
 compound which dates from the second century ? 
 Can " orthodox Christianity " fall without involving 
 in its fate the Christianity of the Apostles ? To 
 such an inquiry Professor Huxley himself gives a 
 partial answer. He affirms that a faith which is in 
 any way bound up with " the miraculous " will be 
 rejected by all enlightened persons, not because a 
 " miracle " is a priori impossible, but because no 
 miracle is supported by evidence which can satisfy 
 those who understand the nature of proof. 
 
 Professor Huxley shows his characteristic lucidity, 
 both of thought and statement, in what he is 
 accustomed to lay down concerning miracles and 
 the laws of nature. He points out that a law of 
 nature, which is a generalisation from our experience 
 of the past, whilst it has no authority to pronounce 
 any alleged fact whatsoever to be impossible, makes 
 anything reported as a violation of it extremely 
 improbable ; that we reasonably require the stronger 
 evidence of that which is the more improbable ; and 
 that writings of unknown date, by unknown authors, 
 do not supply the kind of evidence which scientific 
 training allows men to regard as incontrovertible. 
 He says, with M. Renan, not that miracles could not 
 occur, but that as a matter of history they have not 
 occurred. I believe that it will be entirely to the 
 advantage of Christianity that we should cease to 
 build our religion upon " the miraculous." We are 
 all familiar with the logical argument: our Lord 
 and His Apostles wrought miracles ; miracles could 
 only be wrought by supernatural power ; it is at our 
 peril if we refuse to accept the statements of those 
 who had supernatural power at their back. Such 
 K
 
 1 30 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 an argument obviously challenges the keenest 
 criticism of the evidence in favour of the alleged 
 miracles ; the kind of criticism with which we sift 
 reports of modern miracles, if indeed we think it 
 worth while to criticise them at all. It suggests to 
 us to refuse belief to the Christian creed until we 
 are satisfied that the evidence for the miracles is 
 such as could prove the most improbable things to 
 the most scientifically sceptical mind. If it is said 
 that we are warranted by the goodness of the 
 Gospel in being content with inferior evidence of 
 the miracles, we are so far abandoning the argument 
 from the miraculous. But in adopting this argument 
 at all, we are departing from our Lord's method 
 and incurring His reproach ; and, as a natural 
 consequence, we are so far spoiling our Christianity. 
 It was His custom to make light of wonders, that is, 
 of miracles ; to assume that they might be shown by 
 false prophets, to repel with aversion the support 
 which His hearers were ready to give Him on the 
 ground of wonders ; to grieve with indignant 
 disappointment over the demand for wonders. When 
 He said, " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will 
 not believe ! " was He praising the disposition which 
 He notes ? Is it not certain that He was deploring 
 it ? If critics will not allow us to take for granted 
 that these words from the " Fourth Gospel " were 
 spoken by Jesus, we can show that they express 
 what is indicated by sayings and actions recorded 
 in the Synoptic Gospels ; and we must observe that 
 it is very remarkable if this was the view of our 
 Lord's mind which commended itself to Professor 
 Huxley's second century. When it is urged that in
 
 xi how is it to be sustained ? 131 
 
 those ages the demand for miracles was universal, 
 and had the natural effect of calling forth the supply, 
 we answer that the repudiation in the New Testament 
 of the method of believing because of miracles is by 
 so much the more striking. 
 
 Is it open to the bishops, then, to shake hands 
 with Professor Huxley on the terms which he seems 
 to have some hope that they will accept that they 
 will give up miracles, and he will " estimate as highly 
 as they do the purely spiritual elements of the 
 Christian faith"? That question raises another, 
 How are we to conceive of these purely spiritual 
 elements of the Christian faith ? Recognising as I 
 do to the full " the supreme importance of the purely 
 spiritual in our faith," on which the Bishop of 
 Manchester has insisted, and the admission of which 
 Professor Huxley so courteously welcomes, I think 
 it may be especially advantageous at the present 
 moment to consider what this phrase means and 
 involves. In the competition between the various 
 creeds which are soliciting general acceptance and 
 endeavouring to commend themselves to open minds, 
 we can desire no better test to be applied to them 
 than this, What support does each provide for the 
 spiritual interests of mankind ? If the question 
 which I have put at the head of this article, " The 
 Higher Life : how is it to be sustained ? " be 
 regarded as a kind of challenge addressed to these 
 creeds, I believe that the most legitimate and the 
 most effective defence of Christianity, and that 
 which will best bring out its proper character and 
 authority, will consist in answering the challenge. 
 
 The " purely spiritual elements of the Christian
 
 132 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 faith" might include both the truest Christian dis- 
 positions and the spiritual objects of Christian belief. 
 What are the dispositions which make up or minister 
 to the higher life of mankind ? We say that they 
 are such as these reverence, trust, self-condemna- 
 tion, self-mastery, courage, self-devotion, regard for 
 fellow- men, indignation against wrong, peace, joy, 
 patience, hope, love. I do not give these as an 
 exhaustive catalogue, but as indicating the qualities 
 which men agree to admire as the noblest and 
 deepest of which - their nature is capable. I assume 
 that, if any of these are to wither, the life of our 
 race will be by so much the poorer ; and it seems 
 to me reasonable to contend that whatever beliefs 
 these demand for their sustenance have an extremely 
 powerful force in their favour. 
 
 It is Professor Huxley's point to lay stress upon 
 the need and the nature of proof. Scientific men 
 are trained to look for evidence and to demand it 
 and to be* governed by it. He holds that there is 
 demonstrative evidence in support of the principle of 
 evolution as explaining nature and man. He looks 
 back, and sees everything growing out of its ante- 
 cedents. When he can see antecedents no longer 
 behind the molecules of the cosmic nebula, what he 
 has to say is simply that he does not see them ; he 
 affirms nothing and accepts no affirmation about 
 what is beyond his intellectual vision. He re- 
 cognises the method of evolution in man as well as 
 in the inferior animals and in the inanimate world ; 
 in the mind and thoughts of man as well as in his 
 body. He admits the mysteriousness of human 
 nature, and, as he cannot trace thought and matter
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 133 
 
 to their junction, he professes himself an agnostic 
 with reference to the questions which divide the 
 spiritualist and the materialist. But he finds evolution 
 to be as much the law of the mental world as of the 
 physical. " The fundamental proposition of evolu- 
 tion is, that the whole world, living and not living, 
 is the result of the mutual interaction, according 
 to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the 
 molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the 
 universe was composed." Mr. Huxley regards the 
 antecedent causes, within the world of our knowledge, 
 as adequately explaining effects within the same 
 world ; everything, to him, is what it is on account 
 of the things that went before it, and it could not 
 be otherwise than as it is. He finds no reason for 
 excepting men's states of consciousness from this 
 general order ; what any one feels at any moment 
 is the result of his organisation and the forces 
 brought to bear upon it. He does not affirm it 
 to be impossible that an unseen Being should say 
 in answer to human prayer interfere with the 
 course of nature ; but he finds no necessity for 
 resorting to such an explanation of anything which 
 has actually occurred. So far as he can see, things 
 have always gone as it was inevitable that they 
 should go. Morality, like everything else, has 
 grown out of the interaction of the primary forces. 
 The interest or the desire of the strongest has 
 prevailed. Experience soon taught men that union 
 creates strength, and they were thus induced to join 
 themselves together ; and the united group, stronger 
 than the strongest single person, has been able to 
 impose its common interest upon the action of
 
 1 34 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 individuals. In this way the social instincts have 
 been cultivated, and consideration for others has 
 been bred as a persistent element in human nature. 
 What a man feels and what he does, at any moment, 
 are the results of his inherited nature and the forces 
 from without that have acted upon it. He could 
 not do otherwise than as he does, or feel otherwise 
 than as he feels. Man is an automaton. That is a 
 conclusion which seems to Professor Huxley, as a 
 scientific observer, to be irresistible and incontro- 
 vertible. 
 
 I do not know that Professor Huxley has allowed 
 the argument to [lead him to the confident assurance 
 as to the future which Mr. Herbert Spencer enter- 
 tains and expresses. The same forces which have 
 thus far socialised mankind must necessarily, in Mr. 
 Spencer's view, go on to make the world a happier 
 and a better one. We may trust to nature for that 
 result. Any one who understands the working of 
 the natura.1 forces will see that no other result is 
 possible. 
 
 Let us suppose these to be ultimate truths con- 
 cerning man and his destiny, brought to light by 
 scientific investigation and demonstrated by scientific 
 evidence the propositions, I mean, that man is an 
 automaton, and that the forces which act within him 
 and upon him can only work together for good. It 
 will then be rational for us all to contemplate these 
 truths, and to adjust ourselves to them. Even in 
 so speaking we seem to give way to the inveterate 
 delusion of supposing ourselves to have a choice as 
 to what we shall do. According to the theory of 
 naturalism, we shall all of us the wisest and the
 
 xi how is it to be sustained ? 135 
 
 most foolish alike, the Spencer and the Darwin as 
 well as the idiot and the lunatic feel and judge 
 and act precisely as the primary molecular forces 
 originally determined that we should. I observe 
 that so-called " determinists " are accustomed to say, 
 in self-defence, " Of course we shall speak as our 
 fellow-men do. We are not going to let our de- 
 terminism reduce us to silence and inaction. If you 
 theologians taunt us with being by our own account 
 nothing more than automata addressing other auto- 
 mata, we can meet you with an argumentum ad 
 hominem ; your own idea of a God implies that all 
 things are determined beforehand by His will." It 
 is true that we theists are in this difficulty. But 
 our agnostic opponents are persons who make it 
 their profession to be guided and governed by 
 science, and it is a boast made on behalf of science 
 that its truths never conflict with one another. Mr. 
 Cotter Morison, who professes to be, as an agnostic 
 and determinist, a devotee of science, writes as 
 follows : " Not less marked in another respect is 
 the difference between the truths derived from 
 religion and the truths derived from science. The 
 truths of science are found to be in complete 
 harmony with one another. Where this harmony 
 is wanting, it is at once felt that error has crept in 
 unawares. We never give a thought to the alter- 
 native hypothesis, that truths in different sciences or 
 departments of knowledge may be inconsistent and 
 mutually hostile, and yet remain truths. On the 
 contrary, we find that the discovery of new truth 
 has invariably among its results the additional effect 
 of corroborating other and older truths, instead of
 
 1 36 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 conflicting with them " ( The Service of Man, p. 6). 
 Mr. Morison, as I said, professes to be a determinist. 
 " The doctrine of determinism," he says, " is now so 
 generally accepted, that it will not be needful to 
 dwell upon it at any length here" (Ibid, p. 284). 
 He puts, however, a strangely superficial and, as I 
 should have thought, unscientific interpretation upon 
 determinism. He seems to take it as meaning 
 nothing more than that human nature inherits much 
 and is capable of being modified by training for 
 better and for worse. " It will perhaps be said that 
 this view does away with moral responsibility ; that 
 those who hold it cannot consistently blame any 
 crime or resent any injury ; that we should not on 
 this hypothesis reproach a garotter who half murders 
 us ; he is a machine, not a man with free will, 
 capable of doing and forbearing according to the 
 moral law." Yes, that is what it seems reasonable 
 to say. " To which the answer is, that the sooner 
 the idea ,of moral responsibility is got rid of, the 
 better it will be for society and moral education. 
 The sooner it is perceived that bad men will be bad, 
 do what we will, though, of course, they may be 
 made less bad, the sooner shall we come to the 
 conclusion that the welfare of society demands the 
 suppression or elimination of bad men, and the 
 careful cultivation of the good only" (Ibid. p. 293). 
 " Though, of course, they may be made less bad ! " 
 May, or may not, according to the virtue and effort 
 of those who choose to make them less bad or to 
 let them alone ! Why, Mr. Morison talks as if he 
 and the philosophers and educators stood outside 
 the course of nature and were not subject to the law
 
 xi how is it to be sustained ? 137 
 
 of necessary evolution, whilst the rest of mankind 
 form a part of nature ; as if mankind in general 
 were the field, and the few who understand science 
 were the cultivator, who may do as he pleases about 
 cultivating the field. No wonder that, after abolish- 
 ing moral responsibility as an unscientific absurdity, 
 and therefore with it both merit and blame, he goes 
 on, in the same paragraph, to use language which is 
 nonsensical unless it implies it. " The soldier who 
 deserts in presence of the enemy is deservedly shot. 
 In civil life there are forms of criminality which are 
 worse than desertions ; they are open hostilities to 
 the best interests of humanity" (Ibid. p. 295). 
 And he goes on to discuss the nature of duty, 
 which he justly interprets as what is owed. "The 
 sense of duty," he says, " is the recognition of 
 claims ; and the altruistic man is one who is prompt 
 in acknowledging claims." But what is this but a 
 sense of " moral responsibility," which has just been 
 repudiated as unscientific ? And who or what can 
 have " claims " on us, if we are merely products of 
 a necessary evolution ? Duty and claims are, on 
 that hypothesis, quite as unmeaning as moral re- 
 sponsibility. Is not this doctrine of determinism, 
 if it be held with the rigour which alone is scientific, 
 absolutely irreconcilable with the universal and 
 persistent conditions of human life? Can any one 
 man live for a day, for an hour, upon the assumption 
 that he and other men are automatic machines ? 
 But, " of course " (as Mr. Morison says), when the 
 devotees of science come to deal with moral ques- 
 tions, they put their determinism on the shelf, and 
 talk like their neighbours, praising, blaming, exhort-
 
 138 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 ing, warning, measuring out just rewards and just 
 punishments, as if men were not automata but could 
 go this way or that. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that we are disciples of Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer, speaking, because we cannot help 
 it, as if we had- some kind of freedom of action, but 
 bending our minds upon the action of the forces 
 inherent in humanity which have gradually and 
 necessarily improved mankind, and which cannot 
 possibly fail to bring about a perfect society. It is 
 through the contemplation of these forces that our 
 morality will be formed and nourished. Mr. Spencer 
 gives a reasonable account of what it will be. It 
 will be a nicely-adjusted combination of care for our- 
 selves and consideration for others. We shall make 
 it our aim to be at ease and agreeable. We shall 
 cherish our bodily health, not only for the most 
 obvious reason, but also because those who are in 
 good health are in good spirits, and those who are in 
 good spirits can make themselves agreeable to their 
 neighbours, and their neighbours will in return make 
 themselves agreeable to them. So, with the inno- 
 cent illusion that we are by our own endeavours 
 doing something which might have been left undone 
 to forward it, we shall be consciously yielding to the 
 movement which carries us on to the paradise of 
 universal ease. That is the morality, I think, which 
 conforms itself as closely as human nature will allow 
 to the conclusions of natural science. 
 
 Mr. Spencer himself follows his argument with a 
 more doctrinaire fidelity than seems possible to others 
 of his school. Mr. Cotter Morison, who seems to 
 have little taste for scientific consistency, calls out
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 139 
 
 loudly for rigorous methods of suppression, without 
 which he sees our modern society threatened with 
 ruin. " The welfare of society demands the suppres- 
 sion or elimination of bad men" (The Service of 
 Man, p. 293). " What shall be done with those who 
 cannot learn belongs to another branch of inquiry, 
 and concerns politics rather than morals " (Ibid. p. 
 298). " Society has a right to suppress the bad 
 man in some effectual way, and, above all, prevent 
 his leaving a posterity as wicked as himself" (Ibid. 
 p. 294). It would be interesting to learn what 
 practical measures Mr. Morison would recommend 
 for the carrying out of his views how he would 
 have " the bad " first discriminated and ticketed, and 
 then, if not put to death or mutilated, restricted to 
 the company of their own sex. On the other hand, 
 Mr. Morison gives high praise to saintly enthusiasms 
 which Mr. Spencer would condemn as irrational and 
 mischievous, and devotes several pages to the glorifi- 
 cation of Sister Agnes Jones, Mother Margaret 
 Hallahan, and Sister Dora Pattison. " Such flowers 
 of exquisite perfume and beauty, grown in the garden 
 of the soul, still arrest the attention of a rationalistic 
 age" (Ibid. p. 218). And he has a notion that 
 flowers like these may be "cultivated" by the 
 approbation of society. His concluding words are : 
 " An ideal society would be one in which an ideal 
 education habitually stimulated and inflamed the 
 good passions, while it starved and discouraged the 
 bad" (Ibid. p. 318). The philosopher Hume was 
 a more consistent advocate of the comfortable virtue 
 of which Mr. Spencer proclaims the certain triumph. 
 "What philosophical truths can be more advantageous
 
 140 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 to society than these here delivered, which represent 
 virtue in all her genuine and most engaging charms ; 
 and make us approach her with ease, familiarity, and 
 affection? The dismal dress falls off, with which 
 many divines and some philosophers have covered 
 her, and nothing appears but gentleness, humanity, 
 beneficence, affability nay, even at proper intervals, 
 play, frolic, and gaiety. She talks not of useless 
 austerities and rigours, suffering and self-denial. 
 She declares that her sole purpose is to make her 
 votaries, and all mankind, during every period of 
 their existence, if possible, cheerful and happy. . . . 
 The sole trouble which she demands is that of just 
 calculation and a steady preference of the greater 
 happiness" (Huxley's Hume, p. 204). But Mr. 
 Huxley has too vivid a perception of the conditions 
 of human life to be taken captive by this picture ; he 
 has too much may we not say ? of the Christian 
 in him to contemplate it with much pleasure. The 
 passage, calls up to his mind the pilgrims who toil 
 painfully, not without many a stumble and many a 
 bruise, along the rough and steep roads which lead 
 to the higher life ; " the hour of temptation in which 
 the question will crop up whether, as something has 
 to be sacrificed, a bird in the hand is not worth two 
 in the bush " ; the image of virtue as " an awful 
 goddess, whose ministers are the furies, and whose 
 highest reward is peace" (Ibid. pp. 205, 206). 
 His own final deliverance about morality is a 
 singular one for this rigorous and exacting 
 preacher of a scientific rationalism. " In whichever 
 way we look at the matter, morality is based on 
 feeling, not on reason " (Ibid. p. 207). " As there
 
 xi how is it to be sustained ? 141 
 
 are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaelles, in 
 whom the innate faculty for science or art seems to 
 need but a touch to spring into full vigour, and 
 through whom the human race obtains new possi- 
 bilities of knowledge and new conceptions of beauty : 
 so there have been men of moral genius, to whom 
 we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, 
 which ordinary mankind could never have attained " 
 (Ibid. p. 208). Mr. Huxley would hardly, with Mr. 
 Morison, regard these exceptional apprehensions of 
 moral beauty as products which ordinary mankind 
 may hope to raise by assiduous cultivation ; but he 
 seems to deny himself, as Mr. Morison does, the right 
 of blaming treachery and foulness and cruelty more 
 than he would blame the want of an ear for music 
 or of an eye for form. 
 
 On the whole, how is the scientific view of things 
 related to those dispositions which I have enumerated, 
 or to what we may call the higher life in general ? 
 The following are effects which seem attributable to 
 it. It assures men that they will add to their happi- 
 ness by considering the feelings of others, and in 
 that way promotes " altruism." It trains men in the 
 habit of trying to understand things as they are and 
 to represent them as they are, and is thus favourable 
 to truthfulness. It brings men face to face with 
 inviolable laws, to which every man must adjust 
 himself; and it thus deepens and strengthens the 
 sense of order. It brings them face to face also 
 with the Unknowable, and contributes to form such 
 religion as the Unknowable can inspire, that is, 
 chiefly, a sentiment of awe and a sense of inadequacy. 
 It seems to have nothing to do with reverence, self-
 
 142 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 reproach, self-respect, self-devotion, hope, aspiration, 
 or with the higher flights of love and joy. It offers 
 no explanation of duty, unless by suggesting that it 
 is a clisguise of compulsion or interest. What it has 
 professed is that it can let these sentiments alone, 
 leaving them 'outside the sphere of knowledge and 
 reason, to assert their existence as they may, and to 
 be cherished by those who like them. 
 
 Mr. Cotter Morison frankly admits that " a 
 belief in the Unknowable kindles no enthusiasm." 
 " Science," he says, " wins a verdict in its favour 
 before any competent intellectual tribunal, but 
 numbers of men, and the vast majority of women, 
 ignore the finding of the jury of experts. They 
 cling passionately to the belief in the supernatural. 
 . . . Above all, they will believe, in spite of science 
 and the laws of their own consciousness, in a good 
 God who loves them and cares for them" (The 
 Service of Man, p. 52). Mr. Darwin, with his 
 perfect simplicity, records, in his Autobiography, how 
 the more exalted feelings wither under the influence 
 of agnosticism. " In my journal I wrote that, whilst 
 standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian 
 forest, ' It is not possible to give an adequate idea 
 of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and 
 devotion which fill and elevate the mind.' I well 
 remember my conviction that there is more in man 
 than the mere breath of his body. But now the 
 grandest scenes would not cause any such convic- 
 tions and feelings to reach my mind." In contrast 
 with this action of scientific agnosticism on the 
 higher nature, it may be shown that the Christian 
 theory accounts for duty, calls out trust and worship
 
 xi how is it to be sustained ? 1 43 
 
 and devotion, feeds a self-respect which involves 
 shame and repentance, animates to the most bene- 
 ficial exertion, justifies love, joy, self-renouncement, 
 enthusiasm. These sentiments, we say, are tfte best 
 and highest part of human nature, and have more 
 right to rule our minds than the conclusions of 
 science and logic. 
 
 Is that so, or not ? Let it be assumed that there 
 is a rivalry, at least, if not an absolute antagonism, 
 between science and what, to use a single word, we 
 may call the soul. Which of the two authorities 
 has the primary claim on our loyalty ? We might 
 be glad if we could say that we can pay equal 
 deference to both. I do not think we can. But in 
 any case that question may be asked ; and it is 
 evident that the agnostics take for granted that it is 
 science that has the primary claim. And their 
 science, as we have seen, knows nothing of the con- 
 victions and sentiments of the higher life. What it 
 knows is evolution, transformation of energy, order 
 of nature, determinism. I say their science ; they 
 themselves, for the most part, profess admiration of 
 these affections. They will regard them as beautiful 
 things which they do not understand. They will 
 even set to work to cultivate them by encouragement. 
 We Christians welcome such personal acknowledg- 
 ments as in all respects a valuable tribute ; but, being 
 confronted with the science of the agnostics, we deny 
 its primary claim on our loyalty, and we hold that 
 we are bound to place the soul, for the purposes of 
 allegiance and surrender, above the scientific faculty. 
 The most important question put to men has always 
 been whether they would follow the light from heaven.
 
 144 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 For the intelligent part of this generation the 
 question appears to have taken this form, Which of 
 the two will you follow, science or the soul ? Science, 
 which looks backwards and downwards ; or the soul, 
 which looks upwards and forwards ? Science, which 
 investigates phenomena, and takes things to pieces to 
 see how they have grown ; or the soul, which drinks 
 in spiritual life, and so gains power to create poetry 
 and art and the social affections and religion ? 
 
 The Christianity of the New Testament appealed, 
 in the most emphatic and almost exclusive manner, 
 to the spiritual consciousness in men. I admit that 
 historic Christianity has been very far from con- 
 tenting itself with this appeal. It has sought to 
 impose its creed upon men's minds instead of offering 
 it to them as an awakening and inspiring Gospel. 
 It has presented a Church, a Book, miracles, to 
 coerce them into accepting its doctrines, instead of 
 conveying a voice from heaven to their souls, and 
 trusting to the self-commending power of that voice. 
 Those whose object it is to overthrow and extirpate 
 the religion of Christendom will bring against it all 
 that they can find to its disadvantage. Those, on 
 the other hand, who undertake to defend the tra- 
 ditional Christianity against attack are in some 
 degree responsible for evoking unpleasant assaults 
 like that of Mr. Cotter Morison, and will meet them 
 as best they can. What I desire to do in this paper 
 is to claim attention for what is primary and essential 
 in Christianity, as compared with what rival systems 
 have to offer, and to follow the order which Christians 
 are bound to regard as having the highest sanction. 
 If we are to judge by the methods set before us in
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 145 
 
 the New Testament, it belongs to Christianity to 
 assume spiritual needs, to appeal to the spiritual con- 
 sciousness, and to seek confirmation in spiritual 
 evidence. 
 
 I must briefly remind my readers of what is 
 patent in the Gospels, and what will scarcely be 
 questioned by any reasonable freedom of criticism. 
 Christ came proclaiming the kingdom of heaven ; He 
 did this with authority in the Father's name ; His 
 chief pretension was to forgive sins. It was not His 
 plan to announce Himself as a supernatural being, 
 and to perform miracles as His credentials ; on the 
 contrary, He was deeply displeased by the demand 
 for miracles, and repelled the support which men 
 were ready to give to a miracle-worker. But from 
 the beginning to the end He assumed authority as 
 having come from the Father ; He taught, and gave 
 commands, and organised His followers, and made 
 plans for the future, as one having authority. The 
 adherents He desired, and whom alone He expected 
 to win, were those who were childlike, and ready to 
 believe in a heavenly Father. To them He offered 
 pardon, guidance, grace, and help of all kinds. The 
 Galileans whom He selected and appointed as His 
 envoys were simple, trustful men, who believed in 
 Him because they could not doubt His assurance. 
 And when these envoys went forth after His death 
 to proclaim Him as Lord, they still made the same 
 remarkable offer that of forgiveness and reconcilia- 
 tion to the Father. He was exalted, they said, to 
 give repentance to Israel and remission of sins. 
 The word committed to them was, "God forgives 
 mankind, be ye reconciled to God." And St. Paul, 
 L
 
 146 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 the chief founder of the Church, was accustomed to 
 protest that he stood on the self-commending power 
 of this message, which was as light to those of his 
 hearers who had eyes to see. 
 
 So far, then, as the Christianity of to-day is true 
 to its origin, that is what it must primarily be saying 
 to this generation. It cannot abandon the office of 
 reporting a voice from heaven, without renouncing 
 the proclamation and the power which brought 
 Christendom into existence. It still offers forgive- 
 ness of sins in the name of Christ and of the Father ; 
 it is still careless of arguments and arts to win the 
 support of those to whom reconciliation to God is 
 unmeaning or unattractive. That offer, I say, is 
 both the beginning and the heart of Christianity : it 
 made the first Christians, and no man ever became 
 a Christian such as St. Peter and St. Paul would 
 have acknowledged as a fellow - believer, without 
 accepting it. It is futile, I would urge, to enter 
 into controversy about the Trinity, or miracles, or 
 the efficacy of prayer, or the relation of science 
 to religion, with those to whom there is no Father 
 in heaven, and to whom Christ is a well-meaning 
 enthusiast. And schemes of Christianity which leave 
 out what it mainly was in the first century, repre- 
 senting it as a form which was taken, in accordance 
 with the laws of thought of the period, by exceptionally 
 pure and fervid aspirations after moral excellence, 
 though they may seek to enable men who cannot 
 believe in a genuine voice from heaven to acquiesce 
 in the name of Christians, do not differ in kind 
 from the ethics of an agnostic. They obviously 
 retain no power to call out and sustain those qualities
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 147 
 
 which I have spoken of as constituting by general 
 admission the higher life of men. 
 
 The primary question at issue, I repeat, is whether 
 the authority which Christ claimed was real or 
 imaginary. That He professed to have a commission 
 from the Father to introduce the kingdom of heaven 
 and to draw men into it, that He invited His hearers 
 to come to Him that He might give them rest, and 
 that He assured men of the forgiveness of their sins, 
 I assume to be a matter of history. I know how 
 much there is to be said about the natural impulse 
 which prompted men in the old times who were 
 bent on improving their fellows to claim a direct 
 commission from heaven, and I can quite understand 
 how easy it is to speak of Gautama Buddha and 
 Jesus and Mohammed as similarly remarkable per- 
 sons. Unbelievers pronounce with confidence that 
 the authority was imaginary. I wish to fix attention 
 upon the opposite belief, that the authority was 
 real, as being the primary and life-giving affirmation 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Agnostics will smile at the simplicity of those 
 who can imagine that the power giving existence to 
 this universe can have anything special to do with the 
 poor human creatures dwelling on this speck of a 
 globe. " The miraculous," it may be said, " is the 
 old stumbling-block ; and what can be so great a 
 miracle as a man charged with a communication 
 from the incomprehensible Creative Power to this 
 human race ? Can it be supposed that the appearing 
 of such a man is to be accounted for by the evolution 
 which, according to science, explains everything ? " 
 Let it be frankly admitted that a strain hardly to be
 
 148 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 borne is put upon our spiritual faith by this initial 
 Christian acknowledgment. We must be able to 
 say to ourselves with a resolution not to be shaken 
 by infinities of space or time or quantity, " Though 
 worlds on worlds in myriad myriads roll, What 
 know we greater than the soul ? " But if we bring 
 ourselves to pay such deference to the soul and its 
 demands and confessions and interests as to refuse 
 to surrender the belief that a God speaks to us from 
 heaven, the greater and more incredible this wonder, 
 the more reasonable is it that we should face with- 
 out quailing any difficulties which it involves, and 
 accept any conclusions to which it irresistibly leads. 
 The agnostic position may claim to relieve us of 
 many perplexities ; if it did not involve the sacrifice 
 of all that is best and most indispensable in life, it 
 would be the simplest of creeds to adopt. But one 
 who believes Jesus Christ to have been charged with 
 a commission from heaven will not think it incredible 
 can hardly- regard it as improbable that a per- 
 son so exceptional should go through exceptional 
 experiences and do exceptional acts. If we are to 
 believe that the man Jesus of Nazareth had a special 
 commission to reveal the heavenly Father, we are 
 admitting what every agnostic would repudiate as 
 a stupendous miracle, and I cannot imagine that 
 if an agnostic were persuaded to believe this, he 
 would obstinately stumble at smaller miracles as 
 incredible. 
 
 The belief that Christ was authorised to open the 
 kingdom of heaven and to declare the forgiveness 
 of sins will, it is obvious, carry many presumptions 
 with it It would not be strange if it should hurry
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 149 
 
 believers into a positiveness of statement on many 
 points which might need to be afterwards modified. 
 So it has been seen that students of science, when 
 they were under the first impressions made on their 
 minds by the regularity of the order of nature, 
 hurriedly affirmed that any variation of the general 
 order was impossible ; and that now the protagonist 
 of science modifies that affirmation into the state- 
 ment that any event for which the recognised laws 
 of nature cannot account is so improbable as to 
 require exceptional proof of its occurrence. 
 
 It was inevitable that those who were induced by 
 Christ's envoys to believe in Him as having come 
 from the Father and gone to the Father, should 
 regard with reverence the institutions and the 
 society which He founded. The Apostles reported 
 that He had spoken much of a Spirit or Breath of 
 God, best to be understood through thinking of the 
 air which moves around the earth and men ; and 
 that He had promised that those who should form a 
 society looking up to Him and bound together by 
 their allegiance to Him should have this Spirit given 
 to them as the power of their common life. This 
 promise seemed to the first Christians to have been 
 fulfilled. The Church of Christ came into existence, 
 an imperfect and growing realisation of a living 
 ideal ; having for its chief institutions a washing of 
 forgiveness and adoption, and a common partaking 
 of bread and wine as representing the person of the 
 Lord. This society has come down to our own 
 day, but in a most broken and divided condition ; 
 and the nature of it has been very much confused by 
 claims made on behalf of the whole body and of
 
 1 50 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 particular sections of it. The authoritative view of 
 the Church appears to be that it is an ideal system, 
 having its truest existence in the living divine pur- 
 pose, and realising itself in features and fragments 
 which yet " ask to be united in the wondrous whole " 
 of a perfected 'humanity. But the believers in Christ 
 also looked back from Him ; and the history of the 
 Jews was seen culminating in their Messiah, and the 
 " Old Covenant " received a glory from Him to whom 
 it led up. When they came into contact with the 
 external world, the acknowledgment of a Son of 
 Man as revealing the Father seemed to them to 
 throw light on all the goodness and all the hopes of 
 the heathen nations. " Of a truth I perceive," said 
 the Apostle of the Jews, " that God is no respecter of 
 persons," that is, of nationality or professed creed, 
 " but in every nation he that feareth Him and 
 worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him." The 
 Apostle of the Gentiles proclaimed everywhere that 
 the God whom he preached was the God of mankind, 
 who had been revealing Himself in less complete 
 ways to all nations. We follow the original Chris- 
 tian teaching, when we recognise most reverently all 
 that is true and good in the beliefs and practices 
 of non-Christians, as having the same origin as the 
 revelation given in Christ. 
 
 It was equally inevitable that they should con- 
 template Christ Himself with a peculiar reverence, 
 and should wonder at His nature. They would 
 naturally recall with especial interest what Christ 
 had said about Himself. It was evident that He 
 had been slow to put forward definite pretensions ; 
 He did not even announce Himself as the Messiah,
 
 xi how is it to be sustained ? 151 
 
 but contented Himself at first with proclaiming the 
 kingdom of heaven, and speaking with authority in 
 the name of the heavenly Father. But His way of 
 speaking of "My Father" implied that He was the Son 
 of God ; and His disciples came by degrees to the 
 conclusion that He was the Messiah. All that they 
 saw of Him helped them to believe that He was of 
 a perfection above their imaginations. They called 
 Him the Messiah, the Son of God ; and when they 
 found themselves constrained to believe that He had 
 risen from the dead they saw, in this triumph over 
 death, their faith confirmed and enlarged. His 
 divine nature grew as they contemplated Him ; and 
 visions of what He must have been to the Jewish 
 fathers, and to the creation, and of what He was to 
 the spiritual life of every man and to that of the 
 whole Church, gradually steadied themselves into 
 positive assurance, and took shape in words which 
 endeavoured to express those relations. It was a 
 matter of course that the Christians should worship 
 their Lord as a God, but they seem to have escaped 
 for some time being troubled with the problem of 
 His relation to the One God. But the problem 
 could not fail to demand solution ; and such solution 
 as they could arrive at came through the name of 
 the Son. The union between the perfect Son and 
 the supreme Father seemed to them to be so close 
 as not to break or infringe upon the unity of God. 
 
 Christ was preached at first without the help 
 of books, just as He might now be preached to a 
 heathen race by a missionary who had left his Bible 
 behind him. But in the course of time the oral 
 statements of the companions and witnesses of Jesus
 
 152 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 began to be written down ; and letters of instruction 
 were written by Apostles, which were treasured up 
 by those who received them. The documents which 
 were most valued by Christians came together, ap- 
 parently, by some natural process of selection and 
 collection. A- concealing cloud rests upon the 
 history of the early Church for a singularly im- 
 portant period of some three-quarters of a century ; 
 and when that is lifted the volume of the " New 
 Covenant " is seen already existing and closed 
 against additions. When we look at it we cannot 
 wonder at the authority it acquired. To those who 
 are worshipping Jesus Christ, and finding Him to be 
 the way to the Father, this volume offers itself as 
 containing all that can be known about Him, and 
 all that can be known about the early years and 
 original beliefs of the society which owes its founda- 
 tion to Him. It cannot be thought surprising that 
 the reasonable reverence for such a volume should 
 have degenerated into an assertion of its infallible 
 truth. All spiritual conceptions which have become 
 popular have suffered some kind of degradation into 
 carnal forms. Criticism has shown that the New 
 Testament is not to be regarded as a mechanically 
 accurate book ; that we have scarcely any solid con- 
 firmation from without of its own statements as to 
 authorship ; that the history of which it is a record 
 is curiously separate from the contemporary history 
 of which we possess other records. Its authority 
 depends primarily upon its reception by the Church, 
 but much more substantially upon its own character. 
 To those who see nothing supernatural in Christ it 
 will be full of problems at once fascinating and
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 153 
 
 irritating ; whilst those who believe in Him will find 
 it difficult not to read it as true from beginning to 
 end. But modern Christians will do well to bear in 
 mind that, whilst the Church was being founded in 
 Asia and Greece and Italy, and throughout the 
 period covered by the New Testament itself, the 
 Church had no sacred book of its own ; and that 
 the Apostles, though they claimed disciplinary author- 
 ity, had evidently no thought of claiming infallibility 
 for any utterances of theirs. The destruction of the 
 theory of the infallibility of the Bible has been one 
 of the means by which we have been prevented from 
 resting in the external and mechanical, and driven 
 to what terrifies us at first as the intangibility and 
 vagueness of the Spirit. 
 
 And what as to the future of mankind and of 
 individual men ? The belief in Christ could not fail 
 to generate expectations of its own. We learn from 
 the New Testament that the first Christians had 
 their thoughts turned steadily with keen interest 
 towards a crisis which was to occur at the close of 
 their age. This is the feature of the New Testa- 
 ment which creates, perhaps, our chief difficulty in 
 reading it as we do for our instruction. The word 
 crisis means judgment, and it was a judgment that 
 was looked for, but it was called by various names : 
 it was a day of the Lord, a presence or an unveiling 
 of the Son of Man, a coming of Christ, a recon- 
 stitution of all things, a conclusion of the ages. For 
 the Christians of the New Testament age, this mani- 
 festation filled the horizon of their hopes and fears. 
 It was to be in the main a heavenly event, but it 
 was to have its earthly effects and signs, and the
 
 154 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 chief amongst these was to be the destruction of the 
 Holy City of the Old Covenant. Those who look 
 back on the close of that age with the spiritual 
 insight of Christian faith can see that the epoch 
 proved itself a momentous one in the divine govern- 
 ment of the world, and that it was not unfitly de- 
 scribed by the prophetical imagery under which it 
 was foretold. But the anticipations of what then 
 came to pass, which have so large a record in the 
 New Testament writings, have not been exactly 
 suited to the spiritual condition of those who have 
 lived in the subsequent ages, and the devout use of 
 the Scriptural language of expectation has given 
 birth to some difficulties of belief. We have little 
 direct guidance of any kind in forming ideas as to 
 what will happen to the world in future ages or to 
 human beings when they die. It is impossible for 
 those who believe that Jesus Christ revealed the 
 Eternal Father to look forward without hope ; it is 
 impossible to contemplate Christ as risen from the 
 dead without taking for granted that there is a 
 future life for men ; it is impossible, we must add, 
 to think of the Christ of the Gospels as ruling the 
 world without associating the thought of judgment 
 and punishment with the triumph of His power. 
 But it is left to the faith and hope and fear of the 
 believers in Christ to create for the most part their 
 own imagery of what the world of the future and 
 the life beyond the grave will be. And many Chris- 
 tians of our day find the traditional imagery of 
 the Church failing them, as not suited to modern 
 knowledge, without being moved by a common 
 imaginative impulse vigorous enough to clothe the
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 155 
 
 spiritual substance of their expectations in acceptable 
 forms. 
 
 Most important of all the inferences which must 
 in the nature of things be drawn from the acknow- 
 ledgment of Christ's mission, are those which bear 
 upon the spiritual relations of men with God. No 
 single term sums up more adequately the purpose of 
 Christ's coming than that which declares Him to be 
 the way to the Father. If anything will be admitted 
 to be certain as to the purport of His teaching, it is 
 that He invited men to trust in God by assuring 
 them that He was a Being in whom they might 
 reasonably trust, that He encouraged them to pray to 
 Him, and that He declared the will of the Father to 
 be the ground and rule of all duty. His disciples 
 repeated this teaching, and reinforced it by their 
 proclamation of their Master as a Son of God who 
 had gone down into human death and been raised to 
 the Father's right hand. The old agnostic contention 
 that prayer is made irrational by the fixed order of 
 the universe has been modified by Professor Huxley 
 into the admission that prayer may be rational if 
 there is a Being who can hear it and who cares for 
 those who offer it, together with a challenge to 
 believers to show that prayer has in any instance 
 been demonstrably efficacious. Christians may be 
 preserved from giving unwise answers to this 
 challenge by remembering two principles which 
 have authority to dominate any theory of prayer. 
 In one of the Prayer-Book Collects we are taught to 
 address God thus : " Almighty God, the fountain of 
 all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we 
 ask, and our ignorance in asking." And this
 
 156 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 acknowledgment rests upon what was laid down by 
 Jesus when He was teaching His followers how to 
 pray : " Your Father knoweth what things ye have 
 need of before ye ask Him." The other principle is 
 stated in words dear to all English Christians : 
 " Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unex- 
 pressed ; The motion of a hidden fire, Which 
 trembles in the breast." The two principles are 
 combined by St. Paul when he says that we know 
 not what to pray for as we ought, but that the Spirit 
 in our hearts intercedes for us in unspoken sighs. 
 Surely the contention that, if a Christian would like 
 something, the act of putting it into the words of a 
 petition and addressing the petition to the Almighty 
 will be a means of obtaining it, is alien to these 
 principles and is forbidden by them. The logical 
 comment on them might be that prayer is made 
 irrational by Christ's teaching, more decidedly than 
 by the fixed order of the universe. If desire un- 
 expressed is prayer, and if we have a Father who 
 knows better than we do what we want, why, it may 
 be asked, should we do anything so futile as to put 
 our desires into words, and address them to God ? 
 Yet Christ and His Apostles taught men to pray. 
 They taught men to place themselves as dependent, 
 desiring creatures at the feet of a perfect heavenly 
 Father, and to utter in simple human language the 
 aspirations which the belief in such a Father might 
 stir in a childlike nature. Prayer is for those who 
 have become as little children, not for philosophers 
 engaged in estimating mechanical forces. We shall 
 continue to pray trustfully and devoutly, so long as 
 we believe through Jesus that we have access to the
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 157 
 
 Father, and shall decline controversy about the 
 mechanical efficacy of calculated requests. " To 
 labour is to pray," said the ancient Christian maxim, 
 and it is certainly truer to regard prayer as the 
 spiritual breath of labour, of voluntary effort, than to 
 imagine that it can be utilised as a mechanical sub- 
 stitute for labour. Work or action, also, according 
 to the Christian revelation, must look to God, 
 and make His will its law and end : He has an 
 absolute claim on all that we can do ; there can be 
 nothing better for us than to please God. " Under 
 its theological aspect," as Mr. Huxley says, " morality 
 is obedience to the will of God " (Hume, p. 207). 
 Duty means what the heavenly Father can claim 
 from His creatures and children. That is a reason- 
 able and satisfying explanation of the word ; no 
 other does justice to its power over the universal 
 mind. We speak, it is true, of duty towards God 
 and duty towards our neighbour ; but duty to man 
 is included in and sustained by duty to the Father 
 and Maker of men. " Morality is obedience to the 
 will of God," and the will of God is to be learned 
 from any modes in which it has pleased or shall 
 please Him to make it known. To one who believes 
 in a Divine Ruler of the world, no knowledge or 
 criterion of duty is more valid than that which is 
 obtained from the testimony of general experience, 
 pointing out by what affections and acts the well- 
 being of mankind is promoted. 
 
 I have distinguished between the conclusions of 
 agnosticism and those of agnostics. In no one's case 
 is it more necessary to do this than in that of Mr. 
 Darwin. He has little of the Christian in him who
 
 158 The Higher Life : xi 
 
 can read without an emotion of reverence that state- 
 ment of his : " The safest conclusion seems to me 
 that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's 
 intellect ; but man can do his duty." Duty is a word 
 without meaning, or rather implying a delusion, to 
 pure scientific agnosticism ; but Mr. Darwin's attitude 
 was that of a man humbly veiling his face, in conscious 
 ignorance, and yet in recognition and trust, before a 
 Power of righteousness and love to which he felt 
 himself bound. No one speaks sincerely of duty 
 without implying such a Power and a relation 
 binding man to it. And to recognise the imperative 
 authority of righteousness and love is to believe in God. 
 A Christian who professes that he knows God with 
 his intellect, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. 
 The only promise of knowing God which we can claim 
 is that which is made to faith and hope and love. 
 
 It is a mysterious condition of our human 
 existence a manifest part of the discipline, as 
 Christians wou-ld say, by which we are trained that 
 our understanding is brought up against insuperable 
 difficulties, like the invisible wall which stopped 
 Balaam's ass. Any scheme of philosophy which 
 professes to evade contradictions or to solve them 
 convicts itself of superficiality. Our intellect gets 
 unceremoniously buffeted by contradictions whenever 
 it makes excursions into the world behind the 
 senses. If, for example, there is one thing which 
 the principle of evolution seems to make evident, it 
 is that there is no beginning of things : it is, indeed, 
 impossible for us to conceive an absolute beginning. 
 But it is equally, or almost equally, impossible to us 
 to imagine an absence of beginning. And evolu-
 
 xi how is it to be sustained? 159 
 
 tionists, quite naturally, however unscientifically, talk 
 of the primordial atoms of the universe. It is not 
 merely that we are made aware of things lying 
 beyond our knowledge, but that contradictory con- 
 clusions seem forced upon our understandings. 
 Space and time ought, one might have imagined, to 
 be simple things, but the consideration of them leads 
 us into insoluble problems. So we have to confess 
 ourselves to be helpless before the problems of pre- 
 destination and choice of action, of the existence of 
 evil in the universe, of a good Power from whom all 
 things proceed, of the nature of spirit, of the clothing 
 of infinity with the finite, and the like. St. Paul 
 held that human conceptions of things beyond the 
 sense-world are no better than the mental attempts of 
 young children, and may hereafter similarly make us 
 smile. The. frank apprehension of the inadequacy of 
 our conceptions and of their transitional character 
 will render it easier to us to acquiesce in traditional 
 religious terms or statements which may not be 
 quite to our mind, as well as in formally contradic- 
 tory propositions. When we try to discover a 
 purpose in this perplexing discipline, we are led to 
 the conclusion that we are intended to learn a dis- 
 trust of our reasoning faculties, as of instruments, 
 useful and necessary indeed, but stamped with 
 inferiority and inadequacy. We follow our best 
 Christian teachers in holding that, with regard to the 
 greater things of life, the mind or spirit which trusts 
 and hopes and loves is the superior organ of know- 
 ledge, and that human beings are put to the test 
 whether they will be guided by the superior organ 
 or the inferior.
 
 160 The Higher Life xi 
 
 It is to these affections, of faith and hope and 
 love, that the revelation of God given in Christ 
 appeals. It assumes that in each man there is a 
 spiritual need, of which it seeks to awaken a dis- 
 turbing consciousness. This communication has the 
 power and no theory of life which does not profess 
 to come from God can claim a like power to move 
 human nature to its depths and to raise it to its 
 proper worth. What gracious or animating senti- 
 ment is there which it does not call forth ? By its 
 declaration of the good purposes of God it creates 
 hope, and nurses its vivifying warmth under any 
 depressing discouragements. By its display of con- 
 descending divine tenderness it softens the heart, 
 and opens its pores to the best influences. By its 
 assurance of a fatherly mind in God it constrains 
 men to have confidence in the Supreme Power. It 
 teaches them to blame themselves, as they look upon 
 the goodness against which they have sinned and 
 the standard -of purity and love exhibited in the Son 
 of Man. By presenting the Son of Man as divine, it 
 makes every man sacred and dear to his fellow-men. 
 It gives an entirely satisfying law of life, a sure basis 
 of duty, a universal and progressive morality. It so 
 far explains the sufferings and trials of life as to 
 induce men to bear them with a refining patience. 
 It holds out a light from beyond the grave which 
 dispels the gloom of death. It opens a fount of joy 
 too deep to be exhausted. If by the decay of 
 Christian faith all these stimulants of the higher life 
 should lose their power upon human souls, what 
 could compensate to mankind for the loss ?
 
 XII 
 "THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION" 1 
 
 " The creation was subjected to vanity ... in hope." 
 ROMANS viii. 20, 21. 
 
 A DISCOURSE of singular interest was delivered some 
 weeks ago at Oxford by Mr. Huxley, in which that 
 accomplished man of science, repudiating the ethics 
 of Evolution, declared his adherence to the old- 
 fashioned morality, with its exaltation of duty, its 
 condemnation of moral evil, its recognition of a 
 paramount authority superior to the impulses of 
 nature. The account of moral conduct given by 
 those who derive their ethics from Evolution alone, 
 if I rightly understand it, may be put into a few 
 sentences, and is of an enviable simplicity. Accord- 
 ing to this view, the one essential motive of action in 
 the animal world is desire. Each sentient being 
 naturally desires pleasure and shuns pain. It does 
 its best to crush or hustle out of its way whatever 
 interferes with its own enjoyment of life. It lays 
 hold of all that it can grasp ; it keeps hold of what- 
 ever it has got. Man has this lust, in common with 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey, 23rd July 1893. 
 M
 
 1 62 " The Ethics of Evolution" xn 
 
 his fellow-animals, for the core of his nature. But at 
 an early stage of their separate existence, men came 
 to see that by acting together in concert individuals 
 might gain more of what they desired than by 
 acting independently. What we call morality has 
 all grown out of this increasing perception. More 
 and more it has been proved and seen that life is 
 bettered through the association of human beings : is 
 bettered, that is, for each associated person, for 
 the worst lot in society is better than that of a man 
 living solitarily as a wild animal. But in order to 
 make combination possible, men have to restrain 
 themselves and to regard others. Self-resjtraint, and 
 consideration for fellow-members of a partnership, 
 thus imposed, are the beginning and end of morality. 
 Human life, in the strict process of natural evolution, 
 undergoes a kind of inversion. The self-regarding 
 desire of the individual, operating amidst the con- 
 ditions surrounding him, evolves the self-denial of 
 the individual, and creates laws of society to which 
 it is itself constrained to submit an authority 
 which not only bends the acts of the associated 
 partners into obedience, but also captures their 
 imagination and their reason. This account of the 
 growth and meaning of morality, however little it 
 may satisfy us, has a certain historical truth which 
 must in candour be admitted by those whom it does 
 not satisfy. 
 
 But where does it leave a thinking man ? Desire 
 remains the one law which he rationally knows as 
 supreme. The principles of the highest morality are 
 reduced to expedients which desire has found useful. 
 Evil means nothing but what causes pain, or obstructs
 
 xii " The Ethics of Evolution" 163 
 
 the gratification of desire. To be good is to choose 
 what on the whole and in the long-run will best gratify 
 desire. Duty is not paramount, but has a subordi- 
 nate executive authority, under the paramount lord- 
 ship of natural desire. A bad state of things is only 
 desire less successful in gratifying itself. 
 
 Against this theory of ethics Mr. Huxley, in the 
 Oxford discourse, has recorded his dissentient protest. 
 In the world below ethical man he sees the cosmic 
 process that has been named Evolution going on 
 everywhere and carrying all things forward in circular 
 courses towards culmination or extinction ; but he 
 will pay no homage to this process in the sphere of 
 human conduct. That explanation of the evolvings 
 of social duty out of desire he barely deigns to 
 notice. He quietly says of it that it gives as much 
 natural sanction to the immoral sentiments as to the 
 moral. " The thief and the murderer," he continues, 
 " follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. 
 Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and 
 the evil tendencies of men may have come about ; 
 but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better 
 reason why what we call good is preferable to what 
 we call evil than we had before " (p. 31). To Mr. 
 Huxley, good is good and evil evil ; and he recognises 
 that good and evil are set before the conscience of 
 man, and that he is imperatively bidden to choose 
 the good, whatever suggestions the cosmic process 
 may make to him about his actions. In this sphere 
 the cosmic process is to Mr. Huxley what the flesh 
 is to St. Paul : the cosmic process lusts against the 
 moral ideal, and the moral ideal against the cosmic 
 process, for these are contrary the one to the other.
 
 164 " The Ethics of Evolution" xn 
 
 Evil is positive, let speculators on the cosmos, materi- 
 alist or theological, manipulate it as they please. 
 " The universal experience of mankind," writes Mr. 
 Huxley, " testifies that, whether we look within us 
 or without us, evil stares us in the face on all sides " 
 (p. 23). And again : "To the man with an ethical 
 ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem 
 full of evil " (p. 54). Disregarding more than, as it 
 seems to me, is quite reasonable the argument which 
 traces social morality directly to the one movement 
 of evolution, he insists that " the cosmic process has 
 no sort of relation to moral ends ; that the imitation 
 of it by man is contrary to the first principles of 
 ethics" (p. 34). "Ethical nature may count upon 
 having to reckon with a tenacious and powerful 
 enemy as long as the world lasts" (p. 36). We are 
 warranted in hoping for a large abatement of the 
 evil of the world ; but it is "an essential condition 
 of the realisation of that hope that we should cast 
 aside the notion that the escape from pain and sorrow 
 is the proper object of life" (p. 37). 
 
 When we recall things we have read about man 
 being an automaton, and a taste for morality being 
 of the same kind as an ear for music, and about 
 human life having for its teachers the inexorable 
 laws of nature, what welcome can be too cordial 
 for Christians to give to the courage and resolution 
 with which this great naturalist now defies the idols 
 of evolution, and separates himself from the philosophy 
 of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and pays homage to the old 
 sanctities of conscience and duty and the ethical ideal ? 
 
 In the second century of the Christian era many 
 inquiring minds were much exercised by the difficulty
 
 xii " Tlie Ethics of Evolution" 165 
 
 of accounting for the evil in the world. Certain 
 thinkers of that age, who came under the influence 
 both of Christianity in its more Jewish form and of 
 ancient Oriental speculations, occupied themselves in 
 devising systems by which the mixed and baffling 
 nature of things might be explained, or at least 
 exhibited. To the Catholic Christians these systems 
 were so many forms of seductive error, and they 
 were denounced by them under the comprehensive 
 name of Gnostic, from the Gnosis, the knowledge 
 or speculative philosophy, of which they were the 
 fruits. In general they represented all existences, 
 divine and earthly, as issuing from a mysterious 
 Depth, out of which powers or energies emanated ; 
 and it was a common feature of them that they 
 assigned the making of the earthly world to an 
 Artificer, a Demiurgus or demiurge, who was more 
 or less evil, inferior to the highest powers, and in 
 some opposition to them. 
 
 We are more familiar in these days with Agnos- 
 tics than with Gnostics. The term Agnostic has 
 been introduced into the discussions of our time I 
 believe by Mr. Huxley in order to define the posi- 
 tion of those who held that nothing can be certainly 
 known concerning the supernatural world, and that it 
 is wise to refrain from both positive and negative 
 assertions, if not from all speculation, about it. But 
 the Agnostic has been asked, and in some cases has 
 been constrained to ask himself, " Are we, then, to 
 throw over the recognition of duty and conscience 
 and the moral ideal, with the hope which never fails 
 to sustain and encourage those who look reverently 
 upwards ? That would be to deprive ourselves of
 
 1 66 " The Ethics of Evolution " xn 
 
 the convictions and sentiments to which the world 
 has evidently owed all that is worthiest in human 
 existence. To know ourselves as well as we can is 
 a knowledge which no Agnostic creed forbids. Are 
 we, then, to know ourselves as automata worked by 
 the cosmic process ? " Mr. 'Huxley emphatically 
 declares that he, for one, will not be a worshipper of 
 Evolution on these terms. He believes in the cosmic 
 process, but he believes with still deeper conviction 
 in the higher law bidding the spiritual man renounce 
 and defy the cosmic process, and in a power enabling 
 him to do something to repel and to curb it. In 
 this awakening discourse he may perhaps be said 
 to be rather Gnostical than Agnostic. Like the 
 Gnostics of the second century he has been fascinated 
 by the brooding speculations of Asiatic sages on the 
 eternal mysteries of the world. The Gnostic Deep 
 or Abyss is named by him Nebulous Potentiality ; 
 the Demiurge or Artificer is entitled the Cosmic 
 Process. Out of Nebulous Potentiality have come 
 not only the Force which carries on the process of 
 evolution, but also a Wisdom, and a Moral Energy, 
 which incite the enlightened human spirit to combat 
 the cosmic process and to aid in rescuing human 
 society out of its grasp. In his language concerning 
 human duty and the spiritual nature of man, however, 
 Mr. Huxley is no complacent philosopher weaving 
 a system of the universe ; he falls back like the 
 simplest of us upon the testimony of conscience and 
 of experience, and allows it to inspire him to a con- 
 fident utterance of faith and hope. In some of his 
 words, indeed, we seem to hear the accents of the old 
 simple Christianity, as when he says, " Ethical nature
 
 xii " The Ethics of Evolution " 167 
 
 may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious 
 and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts." 
 Write enemy with a capital E, and it is Satan, that 
 is, the Adversary ; or the Devil, that is, the inspirer 
 of falsehood and strife, the unscrupulously selfish 
 motive in the struggle for existence. 
 
 Let me guard against misunderstanding by 
 admitting fully that in this declaration of his mature 
 convictions which becomes even more interesting 
 when we compare it with Mr. John Stuart Mill's 
 similarly remarkable Essays on Religion Mr. 
 Huxley by no means professes to hold our Christian 
 beliefs. On the contrary, he appeals in part to the 
 original Buddhism of Gautama, but still more to the 
 highest form of Stoicism, for proof that a noble and 
 severe and humane morality may be held and 
 practised apart from a belief in immortality. But 
 so far as the opposition between the spirit and the 
 flesh is concerned, he is Pauline and Christian. 
 His faith in a moral ideal defies science ; he calls 
 on his fellow-men to live and be saved by hope. 
 
 How the evil in the world is to be reconciled 
 with Supreme Goodness is a problem which is as 
 much alive now as in the times of the Indian sages 
 or of the Gnostics. It is thrown in the teeth of the 
 Christian theology ; it makes philosophical Deism a 
 folly ; it causes anguish to the inquiring Christian 
 child. If we turn to the New Testament, we find 
 there no attempt to solve the problem, no Gnosis 
 about the origin of evil or its place in the world. 
 What may often strike us as unaccountable is that 
 the problem itself does not appear there, that it is 
 not represented in its pages by any doubt or sense
 
 1 68 " The Ethics of Evolution" xn 
 
 of perplexity, such as must have troubled, we should 
 have thought, a mind like St. Paul's. According to 
 our New Testament teachers, evil exists, and is a 
 very serious matter. Essential evil is the willing 
 surrender of the mind and conduct to falsehood, to 
 ill-will, to the rule of the senses ; and this evil is to 
 be simply fought against as the enemy. It is in a 
 very secondary sense that suffering and pain is spoken 
 of as evil ; and in suffering we may distinguish, 
 though we cannot separate, that which is mental 
 from that which is bodily. Mental suffering we are 
 to do what we can to assuage in others ; for ourselves, 
 whilst not rebelling against it or running away from 
 it, we are encouraged to hope that we may ulti- 
 mately be delivered from its pangs and may enter 
 into peace and rest. Bodily pain has still less 
 of positive evil in it ; certainly it is not to be 
 abhorred by the faithful Christian ; it may always 
 in the human sufferer be turned to good. In Mr. 
 Huxley's phrase, " the notion that to escape from 
 pain and sorrow is the proper object of life must be 
 cast aside " by those who look for guidance to the 
 New Testament. 
 
 But though there is no Gnosis about Evil, any 
 more than about Powers and Emanations, in our 
 sacred volume, a principle bearing on the problem of 
 evil is there laid down, which St. Paul delights to 
 state in the most absolute terms he can find. All 
 things are of God : from Him and through Him 
 and unto Him are all things ; there is one God and 
 Father of all, Who is above all and through all and 
 in all. And this principle appeals with irresistible 
 force to our minds. A belief in Unity, though so
 
 xii " The Ethics of Evolution" 169 
 
 penetrating a thinker and so consummate a man of 
 science as Mr. Huxley seems to be rebelling against 
 it and refusing to be bound by it, is one towards 
 which all modern thought leads us. But if there is 
 one God, from whom all things proceed, then evil 
 also must be from God. What can we reply to this 
 logical conclusion ? 
 
 Referring to the ancient speculations upon this 
 subject, Mr. Huxley observes, " Thus, brought before 
 the tribunal of ethics, the cosmos might well seem 
 to stand condemned. The conscience of man 
 revolted against the moral indifference of nature, and 
 the microcosmic atom should have found the illimit- 
 able macrocosm guilty. But few, or none, ventured 
 to record that verdict" (p. 13). No: it seems 
 ridiculous, as well as audacious, for a man to judge 
 and condemn the Maker of the World. We all 
 stand baffled and troubled before this mystery : all, 
 that is, except those to whom Evolution is the one 
 Divinity, to whom a man is as irresponsible as a 
 tree, to whom good means nothing but the pleasure 
 which comes by nature, and evil nothing but the 
 pain which comes by nature : to all but these the 
 problem how to reconcile disorder, cruelty, falsehood, 
 misery, despair, with the nature and work of an all- 
 powerful and all-good Creator, is an insoluble one. 
 Let not Christians persuade themselves that they 
 can solve it ; but, if they cannot, neither, certainly, 
 can others. We are taught that God hates and 
 condemns and punishes moral evil ; we are taught 
 also that all things are of God, and all things include 
 sinful men, and the ape and the tiger in them, and 
 suffering creatures and the pain which the course of
 
 170 " The Ethics of Evolution" xn 
 
 evolution, for a time at least, may be thought to 
 have increased rather than lessened. 
 
 Whilst it is feeble and useless to delude ourselves 
 with attempts to explain away this contradiction, it 
 is entirely reasonable and our Christian duty to make 
 the best of things, so far as we honestly and candidly 
 can. Mr. Huxley's cue was to put the difficulty in 
 its most baffling form. He is too hard, if I may 
 venture to say so, on the cosmic process. For us it 
 is wise and pious to see all the good in it ; and 
 we shall not find ourselves obliged to regard the 
 instinct of self-assertion, the pursuit of pleasure, as 
 essentially evil. Evil, for man who can know good 
 and evil, does not consist in being simply moved by 
 that instinct ; it consists in being a slave to it, in 
 allowing it to have the dominion over him. This 
 pushing instinct we may see to have been the cause, 
 not only of progress, but also of illimitable vital 
 enjoyment throughout the creation. Even in the 
 lower forms it has largely promoted concord and 
 co-operation, with the happiness that springs from 
 these sentiments and habits, as well as strife and 
 mutual injury. And it will apparently remain the 
 mechanical force the steam or electric fluid 
 of human life ; not evil when it is kept well under 
 control, evil when the mastery over inner and outer 
 conduct is conceded to it. So in economic life, it 
 seems idle to expect that co-operation will ever super- 
 sede and exclude the competitive impulse ; what we 
 may hope is that this impulse will be made a servant 
 and not a master. It is not evil that we should seek 
 each man his personal happiness ; but we do wrong 
 when we make the pursuit of happiness the supreme
 
 xii " The Ethics of Evolution " 171 
 
 law of our existence. The evil which we name sin 
 is what ought to be essential evil to us ; let us admit 
 this to be as hard to dispose of intellectually in God's 
 creation as it is to overcome it practically in the 
 moral life. Pain, on the other hand, especially bodily 
 pain, may be comparatively made light of. The 
 world as we know it and we can have no real 
 knowledge of any different kind of world is essen- 
 tially a world of inequality, of degrees, of growth or 
 development : a world in which we, the highest of 
 visible creatures, are to live by hope and desire and 
 effort. In such a world pain is an absolutely neces- 
 sary ingredient. Nor can it be otherwise than un- 
 equally distributed. Equality is no Divine law. 
 One of the most confusing of modern errors is the 
 identifying of justice with equality. Equality is an 
 idol from the worship of which we ought to try dili- 
 gently to free ourselves. Our world, I say, is one of 
 Degrees ; everywhere there is a lower and a higher, 
 a past and a future, something to leave behind, some- 
 thing before us to which we may aspire. Our God 
 is the God of hope ; and He obliges us to look down 
 with disapprobation upon much of what has been 
 and is, in order that we may reach forward with 
 longing to that which may be. 
 
 The moral ideal which offers itself to Christians 
 and draws them onwards is not a fleeting image, 
 magnified by some imaginative faculty, of our own 
 virtues ; it is the perfect filial nature looking to the 
 perfect Fatherly nature. We see this living and 
 acting in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is " our 
 Pattern, to live and to die." In Him we see with 
 assurance what our Maker, being our Father, intends
 
 172 " The Ethics of Evolution" xn 
 
 us to be. In Him we see justified those unselfish 
 impulses which all are compelled to honour and 
 which Nature cannot adequately explain. We see 
 before each man, as he stumbles on with his con- 
 tinual and pathetic failures, the ideal of human per- 
 fection, in a life of perfect devotion to the heavenly 
 Father and of perfect association with our fellow-men. 
 We know nothing better than that ; towards that 
 fulness we may always aspire and strive. 
 
 Social man has been made, and is still making, 
 partly by that process of evolution which Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer explains to us, partly by influences 
 such as those in which Mr. Huxley believes. In 
 all this we Christians are taught to see the working 
 of the Spirit of God. A Divine energy, brooding 
 and creative, enlightening as well as impelling, 
 breathes like a heavenly atmosphere around all 
 human souls ; and the better life, the pure happiness 
 of each is in yielding to it and being inspired by it. 
 Nature, or the inferior* cosmic process, urging the 
 individual to pursue his own pleasure, is controlled 
 and used and turned to its own higher ends by the 
 Divine Spirit. The influence of the Spirit strives, 
 not against Nature so much as against man's inclina- 
 tion to submit himself to Nature, and offers him the 
 emotions and affections which are proper to a child 
 of God. What each man needs is not exclusively or 
 primarily Stoical resolution, but the filial disposition 
 which shows itself in reverence, shame, trust, admira- 
 tion, in the qualities which are not for the enlight- 
 ened few only but which are redeeming and vivifying 
 affections for every man and woman and child. From 
 these may best be generated the persevering and
 
 xii " The Ethics of Evolution" 173 
 
 ever-renewed effort, the defiant resolution, which the 
 moralist demands. And with these a man may 
 most happily adjust himself to the actual conditions 
 of life, to the disappointments, the sufferings, the 
 perplexities and contradictions, by which none can 
 fail to be tried. When we look at such trials with 
 something of the faith and hope which the Gospel 
 inspired in St. Paul, they can be regarded even with 
 thankfulness as the discipline with which the eternal 
 Father is training His spiritual children. All things 
 may be seen to work together for good to them that 
 love God. We are made for hope and progress, to 
 turn our backs on the past and our faces towards 
 the future. How else is it that the cries Onwards 
 and Upwards, every trumpet-call of spiritual battle, 
 all invitations to hope, seem to find us, and speak to 
 us as from a heaven which cannot deceive ? Let us 
 not be too dull to be stirred, or too proud to be 
 helped, by such encouraging voices. 
 
 The good to which we shall thus be led to cleave 
 will give us the most wholesome knowledge of the 
 evil which we are to abhor. If we hold the good 
 and define it well, evil also will be sufficiently de- 
 fined. We shall be armed against the sophistries 
 which so easily excuse what is wrong and bad. 
 Sensuality, stupidity, indifference, vanity these and 
 the like will be to us things which our Maker hates, 
 because they are contrary to the better things to 
 which He is calling us. What we have known of 
 our God enables us to believe in a glory for which 
 it is worth while to work and suffer and strive, in a 
 development of membership, of harmony, of common 
 joy, of intelligence and admiration, of which the
 
 174 " TJie Ethics of Evolution" xn 
 
 Spirit is even now giving us rudimentary earnests. 
 What should be the courage and patience, the readi- 
 ness to help and be helped, the loftiness of character 
 and steadiness of purpose, of those who believe that 
 the God of hope is thus leading them onwards ?
 
 XIII 
 
 THE CHURCH AS THE FLOCK OF 
 CHRIST 1 
 
 " I am the good shepherd." ST. JOHN x. n. 
 
 THERE is one distinction between the ways of 
 Oriental sheep and those of the sheep we know, 
 which it is important to bear in mind when we read 
 what our Lord says about the shepherd and his 
 sheep. In this country the shepherd drives the 
 sheep before him, keeping them together by the 
 help of his dog ; in the East the sheep have them- 
 selves some of the habits of dogs, and know the 
 shepherd's voice, and follow him. Those who travel 
 in Palestine to-day may hear the shepherd calling a 
 particular sheep by name, and may see the sheep 
 recognising the voice and coming to him. The 
 Lord Jesus brings pointedly into view this feature 
 of the pastoral life of His country. The true 
 shepherd, He says, calls his own sheep by name ; 
 he goes before them, and they follow him, for they 
 know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, 
 
 1 Preached at St. Philip's, Waterloo Place, on the igih April 1896 
 second Sunday after Easter.
 
 1 76 The Church as the Flock of Christ xm 
 
 but will flee from him, for they know not the voice 
 of strangers. 
 
 So that in the action of the shepherd and of his 
 sheep that great principle was represented, which is 
 brought before us many times in our services for 
 this morning, the principle, -I mean, that Christ 
 leads, and His people follow. We are reminded 
 to-day that we belong to Christ, as a flock to its 
 owner ; that He is the Shepherd and Overseer, the 
 Pastor and Bishop, of our souls ; that He has gone 
 before us, on the path of devotion to the heavenly 
 Father ; that He seeks us when we wander, and 
 would bring us back to safety and submission ; that 
 our duty and happiness are to hear His voice and 
 to walk after Him in His steps. 
 
 There is another name by which the flock of 
 Christ is more commonly known : it is called the 
 Church, the Catholic or Universal Church. Christ, 
 we say, is the Divine Pastor and Bishop of His flock 
 the Church. There is nothing, it would seem, im- 
 portant or definite to be learnt from the name 
 Church, whether in its English form or in the Greek 
 word Ecclesia which Church represents. What the 
 name of the Church brought to St. Paul's mind was 
 an organised body ; God, he says, put all things in 
 subjection under the feet of Christ, and gave Him to 
 be head over all things to the Church, which is His 
 body. A shepherd leading and guarding and feed- 
 ing his sheep, a head presiding over the limbs and 
 organs of a body, a foundation-stone on which the 
 stones of a building are laid and adjusted together, 
 these are the Scriptural images of Christ and His 
 Church. The using of quite different images has
 
 xin The Church as the Flock of Christ 177 
 
 the advantage of hindering us from resting in any 
 one image and substituting it in our minds for the 
 spiritual reality which the images are intended to 
 help us to see and understand. We should not 
 doubt, I think, that the close and entire dependence 
 of the Church upon Christ is one spiritual fact pro- 
 minently presented by these images, and not least 
 by that of the Eastern shepherd and flock. 
 
 The images given us by our Lord and His 
 Apostles hardly suggest " the Church " of those to 
 whom the flock of Christ is a Queen sitting on an 
 earthly throne, receiving the homage of her subjects, 
 and ruling them with autocratic dominion. The 
 Roman Catholics would not only accept, but would 
 glory in, this view of the Church. The question, 
 according to them, for every Christian is, as to his 
 belief, what the Church bids him confess, and as to 
 his action, what the Church bids him do. The 
 Church's authority is absolute; the Church's voice 
 settles everything without appeal. Such a view 
 leads naturally enough to the acknowledgment of a 
 chosen man sitting on the spiritual throne of the 
 world, in whom the absolute authority of the Church 
 is incarnate, and through whose lips the voice of the 
 Church is heard. To obey the Pope is to obey the 
 Church ; to obey the Church is to obey Christ. To 
 those who do not obey the Pope the Roman Catholics 
 cry, " What will become of you, if you do not enter 
 the fold of the Church ? There is no salvation out- 
 side the Church ; the primary duty of all men is to 
 submit to the Church." 
 
 No one has thus exalted the Church with more 
 enthusiasm than the distinguished Roman and Eng- 
 
 N
 
 1 78 The Church as the Flock of Christ xm 
 
 lish ecclesiastic whose life has proved so interesting 
 to so many Anglican readers. Describing a certain 
 priest with entire commendation, Cardinal Manning 
 sums up his merits by saying that he was * " ecclesi- 
 astical in every way." This is a tribute that may 
 justly be paid to the Cardinal himself, and he would 
 have reckoned it as the highest praise that could 
 be given to him. He was altogether ecclesiastical. 
 Even in his earlier life, before his anxieties about 
 his salvation drove him into what he was led to 
 conclude was the safest because the most imperi- 
 ous of Christian communions, the Church was 
 everything. After he had submitted to Rome, his 
 enthusiasm for the infallible Church and the Papal 
 authority exceeded that of almost all hereditary 
 Roman Catholics. His object in life was to exalt 
 the Church, to win subjects for the Church, to ad- 
 vance by all possible arts and labours the cause of 
 the Church in this country. He was ecclesiastical 
 in every way. Except in the Church he did not 
 know where to look for Christ ; the Holy Spirit 
 could have no existence if it did not speak dogmatic- 
 ally through the voice of an organised body. 
 
 Now think of Christ and His flock that is, of 
 the way in which Christ Himself speaks of the 
 Church of Christ. His sheep hear His voice and 
 follow Him ; but they are in great danger of falling 
 victims to the thief or the wolf. The thief comes 
 to steal and kill and destroy ; the wolf snatches 
 them and scatters them. He, the true Shepherd, 
 defends them with His life ; His hope is to draw 
 from all the world sheep that will follow Him and 
 
 1 Life, vol. ii. p. 269.
 
 xui The Church as the Flock of Christ 1 79 
 
 become one flock under one Shepherd. You can 
 hardly by any effort think of this flock of Christ as 
 ruling its own members with absolute authority ; 
 you cannot think of the sheep setting up for them- 
 selves and seeing it to be their duty to follow with 
 unreserved submission a sheep of their own number. 
 The figure of a Divine Queen, receiving the homage 
 of her subjects and ruling them with despotic 
 authority, will not suit the flock of Christ. Listen 
 to what Faber, himself a convert from our Church 
 to that of Rome, is moved to say or sing as he con- 
 templates Christ and His flock : 
 
 Souls of men ! why will ye scatter 
 
 Like a crowd of frightened sheep ? 
 Foolish hearts ! why will ye wander 
 
 From a love so true and deep ? 
 Was there ever kindest Shepherd 
 
 Half so gentle, half so sweet, 
 As the Saviour who would have us 
 
 Come and gather round His feet ? 
 
 Is it possible to see, in the flock thus imagined, the 
 infallible Mistress of mankind ? 
 
 What the worshippers of the Church say as to 
 the despotic dominion of the Catholic Church, and 
 the necessity for each Christian of submitting to the 
 authority and guidance of the Church, is said in the 
 New Testament of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
 the Holy Spirit. Reading the Apostolic records, 
 we find ourselves invited to believe that Christ is 
 actually the Shepherd of His flock, now as when He 
 was visible in Galilee and Judaea. He is shown to 
 us beginning His pastoral work as a visible Leader.
 
 1 80 The Church as the Flock of Christ xm 
 
 When He went up to Jerusalem to make His culmin- 
 ating sacrifice, He, the Shepherd, went before, and 
 the Apostles and other disciples, His sheep, followed 
 Him ; they followed Him in simple dependence and 
 obedience, awestruck, not understanding, keeping 
 close behind their Shepherd. 'J esus knew well how 
 different it would be for them when He had gone 
 out of their sight. With warnings, with remonstrances, 
 with tenderest assurances of love, with definite and 
 emphatic promises, He sought to prepare His fol- 
 lowers for the different kind of fellowship with Him 
 which was to be their lot when He had returned to 
 His Father. If they could only believe it, He said, 
 it would be better for them, His presence with them 
 would be of a closer kind and more constant, when 
 they should no longer see Him. At first all this 
 pressing encouragement seemed ineffectual. The 
 Shepherd was smitten, and the sheep of the flock 
 were scattered abroad. They reeled under the first 
 blow. But they were beginning to recover a little 
 from the shock, when they were favoured with 
 those appearances of their risen Master which gave 
 them a stage of transition from the visible to the 
 invisible Presence of Christ. When the Spirit of 
 the Father and the Son came in power on the Day 
 of Pentecost, they felt the promises of Christ to be 
 fulfilled. Thenceforward the Apostles of Christ 
 lived in the consciousness that He was leading them 
 and they were following. By their labour and 
 ministry He began to gather together His great flock 
 in all the parts of the world, and the new sheep were 
 taught that they had in Him an actual effective 
 Shepherd, who made use of various ministries
 
 xni The Church as the Flock of Christ 181 
 
 and labours, but parted with none of His own 
 authority. 
 
 That such a confession, the acknowledgment of 
 Christ as the living effective Shepherd of His flock, 
 makes an immense demand on our faith, who would 
 be inclined to deny ? Every one knows something 
 of the feeling which is so often expressed, " Who 
 will tell me definitely and with authority what I am 
 to believe, what I am to do ? New difficulties 
 perplex me, where am I to go to get them solved ? If 
 you say that Christ is my teacher, that the Holy 
 Spirit is my guide, I feel almost as if I were mocked. 
 Do you mean that if I put a direct question to 
 Christ, I can count upon getting a direct answer?" 
 It is beyond denial that immense demands are made 
 upon our faith. No one escapes from such demands, 
 not even by choosing once for all to submit to the 
 Church of Rome. It is hard to believe that it is 
 good for us that our faith should be strained as it is. 
 But the call which Apostolical Christianity addresses 
 to us, that we should look to Christ Himself as our 
 living Shepherd, and yield to the soft pressures of 
 the Holy Spirit, is one which honours us, which 
 appeals to and awakens all that is highest and most 
 truly human in us, which if it may be trusted, if 
 only it may be trusted ! has infinite promise in it. 
 And has it not an answering witness in every heart ? 
 Can we not imagine that it may be good for faith to 
 have arduous tasks laid upon it ? 
 
 It is not to be supposed for a moment that the 
 invisible Shepherd declines the use of visible agencies. 
 It is the part of good sheep, of earnest and dependent 
 followers of the Divine Shepherd, to accept all that
 
 1 82 The Church as the Flock of Christ xm 
 
 has come down to them, all that surrounds them, all 
 that happens to them, with the fullest presumption 
 that through these things Christ is guiding and 
 guarding them. Let us be bold to claim that sons 
 and daughters of England and of the Church of 
 England have right, if any have, to utter the 
 Psalmist's thanksgiving, " The lot is fallen unto me 
 in a fair ground, yea, I have a goodly heritage." It 
 is right for us, let us not doubt, to begin with 
 believing what our fathers have told us. If Christ 
 and the Spirit lead us, they do it primarily through 
 all that is true and good in our sacred traditions. 
 No doubt, if we say this for ourselves, we are bound 
 to say it also for those who inherit religions differing 
 less or more widely from ours. Let us say it freely. 
 It must be right for all human beings to be humble, 
 reverent, responsive, slow to give up what they have 
 been taught until something that they are convinced 
 is better has been shown to them. 
 
 In many ways and "by many agents, let us believe, 
 the Divine Teacher is instructing us and drawing us 
 after Himself. He does not use only ecclesiastical 
 methods of instruction and influence. Let us never 
 think of the Head of the Church as interested in 
 religion alone. Ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical bodies 
 have by no means proved themselves safe keepers of 
 truth. Religion has been largely corrected and purified, 
 under the discipline of Christ and the Holy Spirit, 
 by secular convictions and instincts. The knowledge 
 of justice or righteousness, in particular, and there- 
 fore of the God of righteousness, has been greatly 
 developed by the influences of civil life. They who 
 would be loyal to the Divine Shepherd must keep
 
 xni The Church as the Flock of Christ 183 
 
 their ears open to all that witnesses of righteousness 
 and truth, whether the testimony comes from expected 
 or unexpected quarters. And they must bear in 
 mind that His voice is addressed to the inner spirit, 
 that it always seeks to awaken and constrain and 
 win that which is most spiritual and therefore highest 
 in them, that the question which life puts to them 
 is whether they will be docile as spiritual beings to 
 the suggestions which seem to speak with most 
 authority to their most human consciousness. 
 
 In our own day the path of practical obedience 
 if not the acceptance of a creed is much easier 
 in many ways than it was when Christ offered Him- 
 self to his countrymen in Galilee and Judaea as the 
 true Shepherd. Then, the Lord Jesus was painfully 
 impressed we may venture to say by the sacrifices 
 which His hearers would have to make if they 
 resolved to follow Him. By His gracious words, 
 and the yet more attractive gracious works with 
 which He supported the words, multitudes were 
 drawn to Him. Many were ready to push with a 
 certain eager violence into the Kingdom which Jesus 
 proclaimed. But to this readiness He gave no en- 
 couragement. He continually astonished the multi- 
 tude by repelling their willingness to become His 
 followers. He was always bidding them count the 
 cost of what they proposed to do. Recall what we 
 have just been hearing in the lesson : " There went 
 with him great multitudes ; and Jesus turned, and 
 said to them, If any man cometh unto me, and 
 hateth not his own father and mother and wife 
 and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his 
 own life also, he cannot be my disciple." You must
 
 184 The Church as the Flock of Christ xm 
 
 not suppose these words, and others like them, to 
 have been spoken coldly, as a general instruction to 
 Christians to be at least indifferent towards those 
 whom Nature teaches them to love. No, indeed ! 
 that was no teaching of Jesus Christ. It was because 
 He felt so strongly how deplorable it was that 
 divisions in families should be caused by the following 
 of Him, and yet saw so clearly that thus it must be, 
 that He dwelt resolutely and bitterly upon what His 
 true disciples would have to face. He deliberately 
 made the worst, in paradoxical forms of expression, 
 of the pains and efforts of discipleship, knowing that 
 He was doing what in the long-run would be kindest 
 to the eager people around Him. And he was 
 moved also, we may be sure, by the consciousness 
 of His own yearning desire to win followers ; yes, 
 followers, but of the right sort : not such as would 
 acclaim Him King and then fall away from Him, 
 not such as would say to Him Lord, Lord, and not 
 do the things which He bade them ; but such as 
 came with childlike hearts to the Father in heaven, 
 rejoicing to have their sins forgiven them, and to 
 leave their sins behind them, followers who would 
 face everything, privation, torture of body and of 
 mind, death itself, to be true to Him. 
 
 We, my Christian brethren, have been born into 
 better times. Let us have no scruple in thinking as 
 well of our times as facts will allow us to do ; let us 
 not suppose that we have to adopt all New Testa- 
 ment language as fitting our own circumstances 
 equally with those of the first believers in Christ. 
 We ought to be glad and thankful to recognise 
 whatever blessed changes the Kingdom of Heaven
 
 xin The Church as the Flock of Christ 185 
 
 has wrought in the world. If the path of loyalty to 
 Christ and surrender to the Father is easy to us, let 
 it be easy. If we can combine a happy social life 
 with our discipleship, let us do so by all means with 
 reverent thankfulness. We are under no obligation 
 whatever to make ourselves and those around us 
 unhappy for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. 
 
 Only, let us understand clearly the imperious 
 Lordship of the Divine Shepherd. If we are willing 
 to be of His flock, let us remember that He claims 
 us to be His own, absolutely His own, and that He 
 will not be satisfied with us unless we know Him and 
 hear His voice and follow Him. We are not to 
 hold that He wishes us to forsake the world, in the 
 sense of refusing to have anything to do with its 
 business, its politics, its enjoyments ; how much less 
 in the sense of sitting loose to domestic obligations ! 
 We are to hold, on the contrary, that the kingdom 
 of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord 
 and of His Christ. But let us not make the fatal 
 mistake of concluding that Christ is less exacting, 
 less imperious, now than when He bade the rich 
 young man sell all that he had and give the price to 
 the poor, and called upon His followers to desert 
 their homes. Let us believe that He would have 
 us take a part in the work of the world ; but then 
 we must work in loyal obedience to the principles 
 of His kingdom. To the pure all things are pure ; 
 yes, to the pure ! Every creature of God is good, 
 and nothing is to be rejected, if it be received with 
 thanksgiving ; yes, but we must enjoy with free 
 inward thankfulness to the Father of Jesus Christ. 
 Let those who can regard a Christian walk as easy
 
 1 86 The Church as the Flock of Christ xm 
 
 in this good Christian country of ours do so by all 
 means ; but there will be many more, I take it, who 
 will sigh under its difficulty than be complacent as 
 to its easiness. To some it may even seem that the 
 comparative outward easiness increases the inward 
 difficulty ; that the Christian 'who is called to come 
 out from amongst his neighbours and be separate, 
 and face reproach and opposition, and make painful 
 sacrifices, has really a less arduous spiritual task than 
 he who has to be in the world and to join with 
 sympathy in all the movements and customs of his 
 class and yet not to be of the world. Not to speak 
 of those religious teachers who have exhorted earnest 
 Christians to flee into the desert or into conventual 
 seclusion, there were pious men who warned our 
 grandfathers that if they were truly Christ's they 
 must renounce many of the pursuits of the world, 
 that the converted could not go to dances, or theatres, 
 or races, or play at cards, could hardly hunt or 
 shoot, could not enter into the strife of politics. 
 Was a heavier burden, or a lighter, laid upon those 
 who accepted such teaching with reverence than 
 upon our children who are urged to conquer all 
 things for Christ by sharing freely in all things? 
 The Divine Taskmaster alone knows perfectly about 
 the relation of the tasks which He assigns to the 
 souls on which He lays them. But what we have to 
 understand is that the law of Christ does not vary 
 with circumstances. In every condition of the world 
 the Divine Shepherd will claim the entire devotion 
 of the spirit and with that the presenting of the 
 body as a living sacrifice. Compromise has a place 
 in the work of the world ; but there is no com-
 
 xni The Church as the Flock of Christ 187 
 
 promise allowed in the serving of Christ. In every 
 age those who do not follow Christ with perfect 
 obedience are withholding something of what He 
 claims, are wandering to their own peril, are losing a 
 part of the true happiness of their existence. 
 
 The Jesus of the Gospels was infinitely gracious ; 
 what more gracious words do we know or can we 
 imagine than those " Come unto me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest " ? But there was a strange loftiness also in His 
 bearing. He was disdainful towards irreverent 
 questioners, He flung fiery words in the faces of the 
 false and hard, He would have all or nothing from 
 those who were willing to give him something. And 
 He bade His envoys imitate His own loftiness ; they 
 were to offer the kingdom as a blessing to their 
 countrymen, but to shake off the dust from their 
 feet as a testimony against those who refused it. 
 Let us, my Christian brethren, not forget either the 
 grace in the awfulness, or the awfulness in the grace, 
 of our Saviour and Lord. Let us fear to resist that 
 tender sustained pressure with which Christ, exalted 
 on the Cross, sitting at the Father's right hand, is 
 drawing our hearts unto Himself.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH 
 CATHOLIC 1 
 
 THE discussions which have been so rife during the 
 last year or two concerning the unity of Christendom, 
 and the kind of action by which union might be 
 promoted amongst the separated bodies of Christians, 
 have necessarily involved assumptions as to what 
 the nature of the Church is ; and they have also 
 stimulated inquiry into- the authority and the truth 
 of such assumptions. We in England may be said 
 to have inherited two principal definitions of the 
 Church of Christ. i. The Church is defined by 
 some as consisting of the aggregate of those 
 Christian communions which have preserved a valid 
 succession from the Apostles, and which may, on 
 that account, be regarded as representing the one 
 Catholic Church of the earliest ages. 2. It is 
 defined by others as consisting of all the persons, 
 belonging to any communion, whom God sees to be 
 truly converted and to have the right character of 
 believers in Christ. These persons are sometimes 
 
 1 From the Churchman, March 1896.
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 189 
 
 said to constitute the " invisible " Church not that 
 they are themselves invisible, for they are as visible 
 as their fellow-Christians but because they are a 
 select portion of those who outwardly profess to 
 be Christians, and no man can claim to see with 
 certainty who they are that belong to this select 
 portion. The view of the Church which I am 
 about to advocate, as having advantages for present 
 thought and action over these two, and as the true 
 Apostolic view, may be thus summarily stated : 
 
 The Church is a Divine structure, consisting of 
 Christ the Head, and of men as His ideal members : 
 this ideal Divine organism is not identical with any 
 existing society or combination of societies, but is 
 the order and life which all Christian societies and 
 their members imperfectly and inadequately represent, 
 and into which it is appointed to them to grow, and 
 the spiritual reality which binds them all in one. 
 
 The difficulties which make it hard for any 
 Christians to apply their doctrine of the Church to 
 the actual circumstances of Christendom are so well 
 known that I need only touch upon them briefly. 
 The Roman Catholic position has the advantage 
 so highly estimated as an attribute of doctrine at 
 the present time of being the most definite. The 
 Church of Christ is the Papal Church, and the 
 definition of the Papal Church is that it is governed 
 by the absolute authority of the Pope. A Roman 
 Catholic might hold that view with entire comfort 
 if there were no other Christians besides Roman 
 Catholics in the world. But what is he to make of 
 the non-Papal Christian bodies of our poor Church 
 of England, for one ? At the opposite pole, the
 
 190 The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 view of Evangelical Protestants that the Church of 
 Christ consists of all truly converted Christians in 
 every communion has also a certain simplicity. 
 I need not dwell on the arguments which may be 
 brought against it : the chief real difficulty which 
 besets it in our day goes to the heart of it. The 
 belief in a class of converted Christians, separated 
 by a change of nature from the fellow-Christians 
 who look so like them, has almost ceased to be 
 a living one. The Congregationalist inherits the 
 doctrine that he and the fellow -members of his 
 congregation know themselves and each other to 
 belong to such a class ; but it is hard for him to 
 hold it. He will protest that he does not pretend 
 to decide who are true believers and who are not ; 
 but he would also prefer not to have to answer the 
 question whether there is a division between the 
 true and the nominal believers in fact and in God's 
 sight so deep that all on one side of it belong to 
 the body of Christ, and all on the other side of it 
 are separate from Christ. Anglican Catholics have 
 their own difficulties. Making much of succession, 
 they cannot help being impressed by the prestige 
 of the Roman Church, which if the question of 
 corruption of doctrine and practice be put aside 
 must be admitted to hold the best position in 
 Christendom as representing the old undivided 
 Church. Many Anglicans, as we know, have been 
 disturbed by doubts whether a Church openly 
 rebelling against the see of Rome and ex- 
 communicated by that see, like our own, may not 
 have cut itself off from the Church Catholic. If 
 they fall back on doctrine and practice, and are
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 191 
 
 convinced that the pretensions of the Pope are 
 extravagant, and that in many other things Rome 
 has wandered far from the ways of the primitive 
 Church, they seem to be constituting themselves 
 judges, and to be approaching dangerously near to 
 the position of the Protestant bodies which care 
 nothing for succession, but are ready to maintain, as 
 they do with various degrees of plausibility, that 
 each of them is the most faithful representative of 
 Apostolical Christianity. These Protestant bodies 
 must be a perpetual difficulty to the High Anglican 
 of to-day. He knows something of them, and he is 
 constrained to confess that they seem to be endowed 
 with every Christian quality. The Protestant 
 communities have learning, saintliness, zeal ; they 
 abound in good works ; the devotion they show to 
 Christ is rewarded with remarkable successes in the 
 converting of the heathen ; but they have not the 
 Apostolical succession ; therefore, they do not belong 
 to the Church Catholic that is, to the body of 
 Christ. What can this mean and imply ? Will 
 Christ say to them, "I never knew you"? If not, 
 what sort of relation have they to Christ ? Is the 
 spirit of Christ given as freely outside the Church as 
 within it ? to those who do not belong to His body 
 as to His members? 
 
 To the philosophical observer, contemplating 
 Christianity from the outside, there is no problem 
 in the multitude and variety of the Christian 
 communions. He is familiar with the tendencies 
 to variation, and can trace with more or less of 
 sureness how each of these bodies began to diverge, 
 and by what causes it has been led to become what
 
 192 The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 it is. It may interest him to make out how much 
 there is of common Christianity in the creeds and 
 sentiments and practices of all these sections and 
 subsections of Christendom. But we Christians are 
 not so free. We inherit this name of the Church ; 
 and the idea of a One Church clings to our 
 Christian minds, and refuses to be overpowered 
 and extinguished by all the divisions which force 
 themselves on our notice. This tenacity of the idea 
 of the Church depends, as we may see, on our belief 
 in Christ. All who believe in Christ as at the 
 Father's right hand are obliged to think of Him as 
 the Elder Brother of a family, the Head of a body 
 or society, the King of a commonwealth. The One 
 Lord gives a necessary unity of some kind to those 
 who belong to Him. 
 
 And this is precisely the view of the Church 
 which we find in the New Testament. The Church 
 there is a dependency of Christ. The unity of the 
 Church is not derived" from any circumscribing line. 
 It depends on Christ the Head. 
 
 All Christians, including the Roman Catholics, in 
 their appeal to the past and to authority reach back 
 and up ultimately to the New Testament. In this 
 volume we find the words of Christ and His Apostles, 
 the history of the beginnings of the Church, the rock 
 whence we were hewn, the hole of the pit whence we 
 were digged. The Roman Catholics claim, indeed, 
 that the Church has been developed, and that this 
 development has been under Divine guidance, and 
 that the Church of to-day enjoys the advantages of 
 delegated Divine authority as much as the Church of 
 the Apostolic days a claim which represents, in a
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 193 
 
 perverted form, what ought to be the universal faith 
 of Christians ; but this claim does not bar the appeal 
 to the New Testament as preserving for us the 
 original and essential principles of Christianity and 
 of the Church. 
 
 Going back, then, along the lines of the historical 
 Church till we cross the threshold of the New Testa- 
 ment, we come upon the Church as the Apostles 
 founded it and left it. At the close of the Apostolic 
 age there were a number of societies scattered over 
 the cities of the Roman world, the members of which 
 had accepted Jesus the Crucified as Lord and 
 Saviour, and had been moved by a Spirit which they 
 believed to have come from heaven, from the Father 
 and the Son. They had all been baptized into the 
 name of Jesus that is, into the name of the Son 
 and the Father and the Spirit. They had received 
 the Gospel, directly or indirectly, from the Apostles 
 or Envoys of Jesus Christ the Twelve and St. 
 Paul and they were under the absolute authority of 
 the Apostles. Every society had for administration 
 and guidance under the Supreme Authority elders or 
 overseers appointed by the Apostles, and in general 
 some ministers or servers also to do practical work. 
 All these societies counted themselves branches of 
 one body, as being all united to Christ, the one 
 Head, and as being moved by the same Spirit. In 
 addition to the one baptism by which every member 
 was received into the body, all the members were 
 accustomed to meet regularly for fellowship, and at 
 their regular meetings they partook of a sacred 
 ceremonial meal the same in all the societies 
 which fed a common union to Christ. The name 
 O
 
 194 The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 " Church " (ecclesia) came into use for each society 
 and for the whole body. We read constantly of the 
 " Church " and the " Churches," and of the " brethren," 
 the " saints," the " called," the " faithful," who are the 
 members of the Church. Besides what they were 
 told concerning Jesus Christ by their teachers, the 
 believers were taught that the body to which they 
 belonged came into existence on a certain Day of 
 Pentecost, through the action of an overpowering 
 Spirit, which brought thousands of strangers into 
 joyous brotherhood and partnership. 
 
 It is obvious that a line might easily have been 
 drawn round this Apostolic Church. Let this be 
 conceded to those who insist that some circumscrip- 
 tion must be found for the Church, to separate it 
 from the rest of mankind. The Church consisted of 
 all the Churches, and these of the members who had 
 been admitted by the baptism, and had not separated 
 themselves or been separated from the communion, 
 which were the badges of the society. There 
 were no Protestants, no Nonconformists, no sects of 
 heretics, in the age of the New Testament. But 
 there were many persons included amongst the 
 members of the Church whom we are surprised to 
 find the Apostles allowing to remain within the 
 fellowship. St. Paul, it is evident, could not have 
 thought of the body of Christ as having its sanctity 
 created by the faith or graces of its members. He 
 refers to misbelieving, to immoral, to insubordinate 
 Christians, without showing any desire to drive them 
 out of the Church. He nowhere gives the least hint 
 of making a distinction in his own mind between the 
 truly converted as constituting the body of Christ
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 195 
 
 and the other merely professing Christians as not 
 belonging to the body. Believing, as he did, in the 
 holiness of the Church, he could not have regarded 
 this holiness as identical with, or dependent upon, 
 the purity and devoutness of its actual members. 
 
 St. Paul may be said to be the theological 
 exponent of the doctrine of the Church amongst the 
 New Testament writers ; and his account of the 
 Church is chiefly to be found in the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians. In the first half of the epistle he sets 
 forth the calling of Christians, and in the second half 
 the duties which spring out of the calling. The idea 
 of the Church is closely associated with the calling 
 the calling being the expression of the eternal 
 Divine purpose. The Apostle saw in Christ God 
 choosing men to be His children, holy and without 
 blemish before Him in love. That this purpose 
 might be carried out, the Son of God was manifested, 
 died, was raised to the Father's right hand, to be the 
 Head of this family of God. Every one who accepted 
 the Gospel was taken into this family ; was joined to 
 Christ as a member of His body. But the reality 
 and perfectness of the family, the society, the body, 
 were in God's purpose and idea. That which St. 
 Paul saw in the Church was what God had made and 
 was making. And he could, therefore, contemplate 
 the Church without qualification as a perfect body 
 with perfect members. The actual Christians and 
 their societies had all sorts of deformities and weak- 
 nesses. But it was God's design that individual 
 members and the several Churches should grow into 
 the perfection of the ideal Church, of the family 
 which God had prepared, of the body which was the
 
 196 The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 proper fulness or completion of the Divine Head. 
 The various institutions and provisions of Christian 
 Church life were given in order that the actual 
 imperfect members might be nourished, and trained, 
 and adjusted into their proper forms and places. 
 
 I do not deny that there is a certain difficulty in 
 forming a mental conception of this ideal Church 
 a Church which is more real than any actual society, 
 because it is God's purpose and creation ; but the 
 difficulty seems to me to be of the same kind as 
 that of all our truest theological thoughts. And I 
 offer two or three considerations which may perhaps 
 diminish the difficulty, (i) Christ, contemplated as 
 we know Him, has the ideal Church, so to say, 
 attached to Him. It makes a great difference 
 whether we are looking about for a separate Divine 
 Church on the earth, or are letting Christ in heaven 
 suggest and bring home to us the Church which is 
 His body. Christ evidently sought to hinder His 
 followers from thinking of Him by Himself. He 
 desired to be associated by them, on the one hand 
 with the Father, on the other hand with mankind. 
 It was a main part of the purpose of His coming, 
 that He should attach men to Himself, and Himself 
 to men. We know Him most truly when we con- 
 template Him as the Son of the Father and the 
 Head of His body. And the body, thus regarded as 
 completing Christ, becomes easily to our minds ideal, 
 spiritual, prophetic : a vision of what should be and 
 is to be, not made by our imaginations, but discerned 
 in the will of God by our faith. (2) Again, it may 
 be helpful to place the Church by the side of the 
 kingdom of Christ, or of God, or of heaven. During
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 197 
 
 the last generation or two we have been learning 
 how much Christians have lost by falling into a way 
 of identifying the kingdom of heaven with happiness 
 after death. It is generally recognised now that the 
 establishment of the heavenly kingdom on the earth 
 is the key to the Gospel narrative. It is sometimes 
 said that the kingdom of Christ is the Church ; and 
 there is substantial truth, I think, in the identifica- 
 tion. The kingdom by no means occupies in the 
 Acts and the Epistles the place which it does in the 
 Gospels ; and where it does occur, we might some- 
 times perhaps, without injury to the sense, substitute 
 the Church for it. But this could not always be 
 done. The name retains its own proper meaning, 
 and suggests the ideas associated with a kingdom 
 and commonwealth. It should set us thinking of 
 the King, Christ the representative of God, the Son 
 of the Father ; of the laws, which are the impulses 
 of the Spirit of Christ ; of the franchises and posses- 
 sions, which are spiritual ; of the subjects, who are 
 admitted into it and bound to be loyal to its authority 
 and brotherly with their fellow-citizens ; of the terri- 
 tory, which is the world of human feeling and action. 
 We are referring to the same condition of things, 
 whether we speak of Christ as the head of His body 
 the Church, or as the Prince of the heavenly kingdom. 
 And it seems to me that the idea of the heavenly 
 kingdom, with Christ reigning in it upon the earth as 
 King of kings and Lord of lords, does not demand or 
 invite that circumscription and definition of its subjects 
 which the idea of the Church has been thought to 
 make necessary. (3) A third consideration is, that 
 a parallel may be found for the ideal Church and the
 
 198 The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 actual Church or Churches, in the ideal Christian and 
 the actual man. Take such statements as those of 
 St. John : " Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not : 
 whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither 
 knoweth Him." " Whosoever is begotten of God 
 doeth no sin, because His seed abideth in Him ; and 
 he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God." A 
 reader who knows the actual only must be perplexed 
 by such sayings ; he will understand the Apostle as 
 implying that there are certain persons, the truly 
 regenerate, who never fall into sin ; as dividing man- 
 kind between the class of sinless persons, the children 
 of God, and the class of sinners, the children of the 
 devil. But he finds the same Apostle protesting, 
 " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 
 and the truth is not in us." What St. John means 
 is, that the true son of God does not sin, and cannot 
 sin. He knows that in the actual human beings 
 whom the Father has called His children, there is 
 also another nature different from that of the child 
 of God. What St. John wishes to impress upon his 
 Christian reader is that, when he sins, he is denying 
 his true self, is violating the nature which he has 
 received of the Father. It is right and well that 
 sinful human beings should be called children of 
 God ; it is most desirable that every Christian should 
 account himself a son of God. There is always 
 the true man, of God's making, accompanying the 
 imperfect sinning man ; and to this ideal man the 
 actual man must strive to conform himself. As 
 Milton says in his grand style : " He that holds him- 
 self in reverence and due esteem, both for the dignity, 
 of God's image upon him and for the price of his
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 199 
 
 redemption, which he thinks is visibly marked upon 
 his forehead, accounts himself both a fit person to do 
 the noblest and godliest deeds, and also much better 
 worth than to deject and defile, with such a debase- 
 ment and such a pollution as sin is, himself so highly 
 ransomed and ennobled to a new friendship and filial 
 relation with God " ( TJie Reason of Church Govern- 
 ment, chap. iii.). It seems not unlikely that when 
 our Lord said of little children, " Their angels do 
 always behold the face of My Father which is in 
 heaven," He meant by the " angel " the spiritual 
 double, the ideal heavenly form, of the earthly 
 person. 
 
 If, then, we think of the One Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church as the ideal Divinely -created 
 organic structure into which actual Churches and 
 their earthly members are to grow, how shall we be 
 led to regard existing Christendom and its many 
 Christian communions ? 
 
 i. Our faith will be less shocked and disturbed 
 by the split -up condition of Christendom. I say 
 " less," than if we felt ourselves bound to identify the 
 Bride of Christ with some one of the existing com- 
 munions, or with the aggregate of so many of them, 
 or with a body of select persons more or less hidden 
 in them. There must be much to trouble us in the 
 sight of Christian bodies disowning each other, as 
 there is in the defects and faults of every Christian 
 body, and in the immense non- Christian world still 
 unconquered at the end of the nineteenth century. 
 But we shall not refuse to see some advantages as 
 we often have to recognise with thankfulness good 
 coming out of evil that appear to result from
 
 2OO The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 separation and diversity. Functions and powers of 
 the kingdom of God, which might have been other- 
 wise dormant, have been developed through the 
 special energies and special adjustments to environ- 
 ment set going by the separateness of communions. 
 The Christianity of the world' may be perceived to 
 be larger and richer than it might be if it were the 
 religion of a single well-disciplined body. We are 
 freed from the painful supposed duty of judging 
 and disowning great Christian societies, and are 
 encouraged, on the contrary, to discern all the good 
 we can in them. 
 
 2. It is natural to members of the Church of 
 England to value highly succession and order and 
 authoritative institutions. Whilst there is nothing to 
 forbid our admitting that the Church of Rome has 
 advantages not possessed by ourselves or by the 
 non- Episcopalian communions, we may reasonably 
 congratulate ourselves on having Episcopacy with an 
 unbroken succession, the Sacraments, the inheritance 
 of the Christian literature of all ages. It may 
 rightly seem to us a great gain that Christian 
 Churches should be as national as possible. We 
 may hold and contend that the kingdom of Christ is 
 best established in any part of the earth where the 
 ancient order has been preserved and the organised 
 nation of the land worships God and cleaves to 
 Christ in a Church of its own. But all that we may 
 be obliged to protest against and to condemn in the 
 Churches of Rome or of Eastern Europe will not 
 bind us to " unchurch " them, or to pronounce them 
 separated from Christ. 
 
 3. But we shall follow the whole stress of the
 
 I 
 
 xiv The Nature of the Church Catholic 201 
 
 New Testament in looking reverently for the fruits 
 of the Spirit, in person and society, and holding 
 them to be trustworthy credentials of fellowship with 
 Christ. Christ bade His followers " beware of false 
 prophets." How were they to discern them ? Did 
 Christ say, " Take care that any one who undertakes 
 to teach and guide you shall show himself to be 
 authorised by Me, or by the Apostles .whom I com- 
 mission as My representatives " ? The criterion He 
 gave was, " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 Nothing could be more marked or definite than the 
 commission which Christ gave to the Twelve. They 
 knew themselves to have His commission, and they 
 felt even their number to be important, and as the 
 Twelve they ruled the Pentecostal Church. But if 
 Christ had charged His followers, " Listen to no one 
 but the Twelve, or those whom the Twelve may 
 ordain," they would have been bound to treat St. 
 Paul as a false prophet. Saul of Tarsus did, indeed, 
 excite suspicion and misgivings in the Twelve and 
 their adherents. He appeared outside of Christ's 
 order, rendered no allegiance to the Twelve, took 
 his stand on the commission he had received in a 
 vision, and claimed to be known and judged by his 
 fruits. His credentials, he boldly declared, were the 
 Churches he founded these and his own manifest 
 integrity and devotion. The irregular Apostle did 
 a greater work in spreading the kingdom of Christ 
 than all the regular Apostles together. It is im- 
 portant, however, to notice that St. Paul was not 
 indifferent to the unity of the Church. He laboured 
 zealously and successfully to keep his Churches in 
 fellowship with those of the Twelve. What more
 
 2O2 The Nature of the Church Catholic xiv 
 
 impressive testimony could we have than St. Paul 
 and his work, that by the will of Christ there should 
 be room amongst Christians for unauthorised service 
 and leadership ? Christ made solemn choice and 
 appointment of the Twelve, and then, without giving 
 any explanation or notice to the Twelve, sent a 
 thirteenth, whom they were to accept as a colleague 
 against their first surprise and misgivings, because 
 they could not help seeing that he was doing Christ's 
 work and had the Spirit with him. Such warrant 
 have we for acknowledging the presence of Christ 
 and the Spirit with the Christian societies which 
 reject one part or another of the traditional order of 
 the Church. We know these societies by their 
 fruits. 
 
 4. Our own Church we may thankfully and 
 reverently perceive to have a peculiarly important 
 place amongst the aggregate of the Christian bodies. 
 It is a great Church, with special privileges, and we 
 may humbly hope that its work in the world is not 
 altogether unworthy of it. But it is further im- 
 portant through the middle place in which it stands. 
 If an unfriendly critic might taunt the Church of 
 England with being neither one thing nor the other, 
 neither loyally Catholic nor frankly Protestant, we 
 shall prefer to believe that it is both. And it may 
 be for the advantage of Christendom that we should 
 not throw in our lot either with those to whom 
 succession and order are everything, or with those to 
 whom a Church is a collection of persons who happen 
 to agree in the deductions they draw from the New 
 Testament. 
 
 5. Lastly, if the perfect Church of Christ is
 
 xiv The Natiire of the Church Catholic 203 
 
 represented on the earth by those many inadequate 
 and fragmentary and transitory bodies which profess 
 loyalty to the one Lord and Saviour, and if each of 
 the bodies has life and truth in proportion to its 
 real loyalty to Christ the Head, then the royal road 
 to unity must be through each drawing closer to 
 Christ as a member to the Head. To be open to 
 the light of Christ and so to drop errors, to study 
 what the Son of man will approve in policy and 
 conduct, to weigh interests and values in the scales 
 of God, to understand that the aim of all Christians 
 and of all Christian societies must be to grow into 
 perfect fellowship with Christ these are the ways 
 of progress for the bettering of each Church in itself 
 and for the uniting of Church to Church.
 
 XV 
 REUNION 1 
 
 IN any consideration of the question of the Reunion 
 of Christendom, the intermediate position of our own 
 Church will be felt to have special interest and im- 
 portance. We stand between the Church of Rome 
 on the one side and the non- Episcopalian com- 
 munions on the other. I am not forgetting the 
 Eastern Churches, or their high claims on our 
 sympathy and respect ; but we in England are less 
 closely in contact with these than with the great 
 Latin Church and the Protestant bodies which have 
 dispensed with the Episcopal succession. Those of 
 us who yearn for reunion are looking, as our leanings 
 incline us, either towards Rome, or towards non- 
 Episcopalian Protestantism ; we are considering on 
 what terms we might consent to be joined again in 
 some way to the Roman Church, or by what con- 
 cessions any Protestant communions might be 
 induced to coalesce with the English Church. 
 
 I think it will be universally admitted that 
 negotiations aiming at actual reunion on either side 
 are at the present time quite hopeless. As regards 
 
 1 From the Churchman, December 1896.
 
 xv Reunion 205 
 
 Rome, Roma locuta est. The demands of the Papal 
 See are more exacting than ever. Leo XIII. is the 
 most benevolent of Popes, most anxious to commend 
 himself and his Church to all non-Papal Christians ; 
 but in his recent Encyclical letter on the Unity of 
 the Church he declares as positively as possible that 
 he will hear of nothing on the part of those who are 
 now separated from Rome but absolute submission 
 to the chair of St. Peter, absolute acceptance of 
 every dogma affirmed by the Vatican Council. And 
 there is no movement in the Roman Catholic 
 Church pretending to overbear the personal authority 
 of the Pope. Anglicans may go over to Rome 
 individually, as they have done ; of no other way of 
 reunion can they entertain at present the slightest 
 hope. Nor is there any desire of corporate reunion 
 with the Anglican Church, here, or in the Colonies, 
 or in the United States, stirring in any single Non- 
 conformist communion. Dissenters find it a simple 
 matter to join the Church, and this way of reunion 
 is the only one thought of. 
 
 At the same time it is reasonably urged that 
 aspirations after reunion cannot be without effect ; 
 that if the sense of the unchristian nature of schisms 
 in Christendom is growing deeper and more acute 
 in Christian minds, such a feeling must be a breath 
 of the Spirit of Christ ; and that it is most desirable 
 that we should let our hopes play freely about ideals 
 of Church Unity. Ah, yes ! Christians ought surely 
 to be intolerant of disunion amongst professing 
 Christians ; they ought to be convinced that there 
 is something wrong, something to be corrected, if 
 believers in Christ cannot worship and labour in
 
 206 Reunion xv 
 
 unison. I know what the sectarian spirit has found 
 to say. This is the language it is accustomed to 
 use : " It is no doubt very deplorable that there are 
 so many of those who call themselves Christians who 
 do not entertain right views in religion ; the fact is 
 a mystery, and not the only mystery in human 
 existence ; but truth is truth, and, whether those who 
 hold the truth are many or few, the truth must be 
 maintained firmly and without compromise ; those 
 who have been taught by Christ and the Spirit cannot 
 consent to associate with themselves any who have 
 not been thus taught." What can sound more 
 plausible ? Thus have churches and sects and 
 cliques wrapped themselves in cloaks of self-com- 
 placent separatism. But it is one good thing in our 
 age, that the bulwarks set up to divide Christians 
 from one another are being undermined. In all 
 denominations we are not so sure of ourselves ; we 
 see in those who are not of our communion signs of 
 truth, proofs of goodness, which forbid us to assume 
 that Christ has not taught them, that His Spirit has 
 not moved in them. The Pope may still be obliged 
 to tell us that he is very sorry, but he can only 
 regard us as rebelling against Christ so long as we 
 decline to accept the minutest particulars of what the 
 Church of Rome teaches ; but good Roman Catholics 
 do not feel like that. And we of the Church of 
 England are happily not bound to " unchurch " 
 Roman Catholics whatever unchurching may mean. 
 You may easily meet with delightful instances of 
 intimate Christian fellowship between Anglicans and 
 Roman Catholics, the letter of repulsion proving 
 powerless against the spirit of attraction. And as
 
 xv Reunion 207 
 
 regards Dissenters, when we see our High Church- 
 men, including bishops and archbishops, inviting 
 dissenting ministers to join them in prayer-meetings, 
 we want no other proof that Christian union can 
 live and work underneath denominational differences. 
 
 The desire of reunion with Rome may indeed 
 mean nothing but uneasy misgivings as to the safety 
 of our Anglican position. Those who are always 
 dwelling on the " Nulla salus extra ecclesiam " may 
 well be anxious to know for certain what the true 
 Ecclesia is. The question, " Is the Church of Rome 
 the true Church or not ? " has haunted and troubled 
 many Anglicans until they have succumbed to the 
 pretensions of the Church which at all events claims, 
 as no other does, to be the one only Church of 
 Christ. And those who cannot bring themselves to 
 the point of going over would find comfort in getting 
 their Church recognised in some way by Rome. 
 But with this kind of craving for reunion I do not 
 deal. I assume that we here are interested in, and 
 sympathise with, that nobler Christian longing, 
 which is troubled by the divisions of Christendom as 
 violating the unity for which Christ prayed. As I have 
 said, we can find no encouragement in the signs of the 
 times to pursue any scheme of corporate reunion. But 
 we do find encouragement, wonderful encouragement, 
 to follow after Christian fellow-feeling, by cherishing 
 a common belief that Christ is seeking all men, a 
 common tenderness towards each other's pious pre- 
 possessions, a common desire and hope that all the 
 world may be subdued to Christ. In that direction, 
 we may confidently believe, Christ is pointing. 
 
 I can understand its being doubted whether it is
 
 208 Reunion xv 
 
 desirable to get over the repugnance to popery and 
 the dread of Papists which have been the traditional 
 instincts of Protestants. Such a change of feeling 
 is a very serious 1 matter, and mere indifference to 
 dogma is not a state of mind in which earnest 
 Christians can find comfort. But where Christ leads 
 it is safe to follow, even if the path is an untried one. 
 And to the simple and teachable Christian mind 
 there is a great deal that is attractive and of high 
 promise amongst Roman Catholics at the present 
 time. There is a new interest in the Scriptures, a 
 new desire to get at their real meaning, which may 
 inspire the best hopes. And in a multitude of pious 
 lives we may see that what is dominant, what is 
 vital, is that devout, over-mastering reverence for the 
 true Christ which makes all Christians one. With 
 that it cannot but be right to sympathise ; and 
 when any mutual approach between Roman Catholics 
 and ourselves is prompted by Christian sympathy, 
 we shall not think it .necessary to guard ourselves 
 from misunderstanding or infection by some solemn 
 repudiation of Romish error. The one thing that 
 offers the best promise for the future is that in every 
 section of Christendom hearts should be increasingly 
 drawn towards Christ and increasingly influenced 
 by the Spirit of Christ. It does not matter so 
 much that errors of belief should remain in the 
 formal profession, if they are tending to drop out 
 of the real religion of those who profess them. 
 Churches and denominations are terribly clogged 
 with the mistakes of past generations, and it is 
 difficult to see how false doctrines are to be got rid 
 of; but the first necessity is that they should wither
 
 xv Reunion 209 
 
 and grow dead which is a thing that may easily 
 happen. 
 
 But if Christians in all Churches and sects were 
 to be moved to cultivate spiritual sympathy and 
 mutual respect towards each other in Christ, might 
 not this disposition tend to make them satisfied 
 with a Christendom cut up into a multitude of de- 
 nominations, and be dangerous to belief in that 
 unity of the Church on which stress is undoubtedly 
 laid by the Apostles, as well as by all the later 
 Fathers of the Church? The fear of such an 
 influence has given birth to that pathetic pleading 
 on behalf of the unity of the Church which the Pope 
 has addressed to the Christian world in his recent 
 Encyclical letter. This manifesto is a declaration 
 against the possibility of any kind of union of 
 Christians except under one absolute earthly govern- 
 ment. There is nothing new in the Pope's doctrine 
 concerning the Church ; he asserts, as he could hardly 
 help doing, that there is but one Church, that the 
 Roman Church is the one Church, that all who do 
 not belong to it are cut off from the grace of Christ, 
 and that if they call themselves Christians they are 
 rebels against Christ ; but we seem to trace in this 
 letter a new shrinking from the old sentiment and 
 language of Rome about non - Roman Christians. 
 And there is a certain novelty also, if I am not 
 mistaken, in the ground of the Pope's argument. 
 " Christ the Lord," he says, " instituted and formed 
 the Church ; wherefore, when we are asked what its 
 nature is, the main thing is to see what Christ wished, 
 and what, in fact, He did. ... It is so evident?, from 
 the clear and frequent testimonies of Holy Writ, 
 p
 
 2io Reunion xv 
 
 that the true Church of Jesus Christ is one, that no 
 Christian can dare to deny it. But in judging and 
 determining the nature of this unity many have erred 
 in various ways. Not the foundation of the Church 
 alone, but its whole constitution, belongs to the class 
 of things effected by Christ's 'free choice. For this 
 reason the entire case must be judged by what was 
 actually done. We must, consequently, investigate 
 not how the Church may possibly be one, but how 
 He who founded it willed that it should be one." 
 That is precisely the modern method of inquiry, 
 commonly called the historical method. And it is 
 the Protestant method also, inasmuch as the appeal 
 is to Holy Writ. And the inquiry to which the 
 Pope invites us is of primary interest to all who are 
 thinking about reunion. For we are anxiously 
 asking ourselves what we are to make of a Christen- 
 dom divided as we behold it. Is the one Church of 
 Christ conceivable except as a single organised 
 community ? Is it the first thing for a Christian to 
 do, to find out which of the competing communions 
 is the true Church, and to " unchurch " all the rest ? 
 Or is it safe to hold that a Christian ought to respect 
 the particular calling he has received in his birth, 
 and that his first duty is to believe in and follow 
 Christ to the best of his knowledge and power in the 
 denomination into which he has been born? Let 
 us welcome this appeal of the Pope. We cannot do 
 better than go with him to the New Testament, to 
 see what we can learn as to the original making and 
 form of the Church. 
 
 But the Pope soon disappoints us sadly. To 
 find out about the Church of the first days, we should
 
 xv Reunion 211 
 
 look as a matter of course to the Acts, the Epistles, 
 the Revelation ; but all this larger part of the New 
 Testament the Pope ignores, as completely as if he 
 did actually in the more proper sense of the word 
 ignore it as if he was entirely unacquainted with 
 it. He quotes the familiar words addressed by our 
 Lord to St. Peter : " Upon this rock I will build My 
 Church " ; "I have prayed for thee that thy faith 
 fail not " ; " Feed My sheep." Disregarding his own 
 principle, he lays down a priori that " Christ must 
 have given to His Church a supreme authority, to 
 which all Christians must render obedience " ; that 
 Christ " was obliged, when He ascended into heaven, 
 to designate a vicegerent on earth " ; and then he 
 concludes that the supreme authority which Christ 
 was bound to delegate was given to Peter and to his 
 successors. " God confided His Church to Peter, so 
 that he Peter might safely guard it with his un- 
 conquerable power " ; " Jesus Christ appointed Peter 
 to be the head of the Church ; and He also deter- 
 mined that the authority instituted in perpetuity for 
 the salvation of all should be inherited by his suc- 
 cessors, in whom the same permanent authority of 
 Peter himself should continue." But the Pope does 
 not go on to exhibit to us even Peter, whilst he 
 lived, exercising authority over the universal Church, 
 and guarding it with his unconquerable power. What 
 we do see in the sacred history is a very different 
 state of things : we see Paul founding the Gentile 
 Churches, defiantly declaring that he holds no com- 
 mission from the Twelve, rebuking Peter, claiming 
 to be the autocrat of his own Churches. The Pope 
 makes no allusion to all this. Certainly nothing
 
 212 Reunion xv 
 
 that Roman Catholics can say can explain away the 
 fact that neither in the Acts, nor in the Epistles, nor 
 in the Revelation, is there a single hint that St. 
 Peter had any authority over St. Paul or St. Paul's 
 churches. 
 
 To all Christians, and not only to Roman Catholics, 
 there must be something very surprising and not 
 easy to account for in the calling and ministry of 
 St. Paul. It is undeniable that Christ in the Gospels 
 bestows on the Twelve a most definite commission 
 and a special training ; that He promises them the 
 twelve thrones of His kingdom ; that He gives them 
 much tender and solicitous instruction about the 
 work they were to perform as His representatives 
 and envoys. The Pope adds something, with the 
 usual Roman freedom, to the facts when he says, 
 "To the Apostles and their legitimate successors 
 alone these words have reference : ' Go ye into the 
 whole world to preach the Gospel ' ; ' Baptizing 
 them ' ; ' Do this in commemoration of Me ' ; ' Whose 
 sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.' And 
 in like manner He ordered the Apostles only, and 
 those who should lawfully succeed them, to feed 
 that Is, to govern with authority all Christian 
 souls." 
 
 But it is evident that on the Day of Pentecost 
 and for some time after the Apostles understood their 
 commission as giving them jointly supreme authority 
 over the Church, and that their authority was recog- 
 nised without question. But in course of time Saul 
 of Tarsus appears on the scene. He was not one 
 of those to whom the Lord Jesus had given the 
 special apostolic commission. He declared that he
 
 xv Reunion 2 1 3 
 
 had a commission given to him directly from heaven. 
 The Twelve were not informed by their Master that 
 He was giving to another an extraordinary apostolic 
 commission ; and as we should have expected 
 they regarded him who claimed this appointment 
 with some suspicion and jealousy. St. Paul, for his 
 part, desired to be as a Christian brother with the 
 Twelve, but he would in no way put himself under 
 them. After a while it was recognised by the 
 Apostles and the Church in general that Saul or 
 Paul had a calling from Christ to carry the Gospel 
 to the Gentiles ; and he did his work with such 
 effect as to found churches, which included Jews 
 and Gentiles, in a multitude of Gentile cities. He 
 earnestly desired to preserve unity with the Christians 
 of Judaea, and with the Apostles to whom they 
 looked up ; but he maintained his absolute inde- 
 pendence. And he was led to do this with the 
 more emphasis because his position gave great 
 offence to many followers of the Twelve, and they 
 denounced him as an unauthorised teacher, who 
 rebelled against the authority which Christ Himself 
 had set up in His Church. St. Paul's defence, as 
 we know, was that his churches were themselves his 
 credentials. 
 
 Well, then, when we ask Holy Writ to tell us 
 what Christ willed and actually did in founding and 
 constituting the one Church, it presents to us a 
 number of societies, one section of which is subject 
 to St. Peter and the Apostles, to whom Christ in 
 His lifetime gave plenary authority and power, and 
 the other to St. Paul, who professed to have received 
 a commission of his own from Christ in heaven.
 
 214 Reunion xv 
 
 The Pauline Churches were in fellowship with the 
 Petrine, but on a footing of independence and equality. 
 That was the state of things which existed during 
 the active period of St. Paul's Apostleship. It would 
 seem that Christ, when He had sanctioned the prin- 
 ciple of formal regularity and' order in appointing 
 the Twelve, and keeping the Church subject to them 
 for some time, chose to violate that principle surpris- 
 ingly and conspicuously in the interest of direct 
 heavenly action and spiritual life, by making an 
 irregular Apostle the greatest and most successful 
 of the founders of the Church. I do not know what 
 we can infer from this actual choice and operation 
 of Christ, by which the Pope so rightly lays down 
 that we should be guided, but these two conclu- 
 sions : (i) That order and succession and transmitted 
 authority are good ; (2) that they are not so good 
 as the Spirit and life. 
 
 St. Paul stands before us unmistakably a Divine 
 exception, a heavenly justification of irregularity, an 
 authoritative intimation that God may choose to 
 interfere with His own ordinance. And we may 
 find a great deal in human history that answers to 
 this revelation. From all parts there arises evidence 
 that order and transmitted authority cannot guarantee 
 to men goodness and life ; nay, that with all the 
 benefits which it belongs to them to bestow, they 
 have a dangerous tendency to ally themselves with 
 lifelessness and corruption. The best external order 
 may tempt men to look to it, rather than to God. 
 Our Lord and those whom He called had known 
 the Jewish priesthood, and had seen to what ungod- 
 liness the sacred institutions of Israel might be made
 
 xv Reunion 215 
 
 to minister ; and must we not believe that Christ 
 foresaw that it would not be well for His Church 
 that it should become one organised body, governed 
 by one external authority? Let us thank the Pope 
 for so emphatically putting before us the living 
 action of Christ for our guide ; and let us consider 
 what was implied for the instruction of the future 
 Church when He that wrought for Peter unto the 
 Apostleship of the circumcision, wrought for Paul 
 also unto the Gentiles. 
 
 Meditating on the true unity of the Church, in 
 judging and determining the nature of which many 
 as the Pope says have erred in various ways, let 
 us note that Christ did not set up a vicegerent to 
 rule the Church and the nations ; that He kept the 
 supreme authority in His own heavenly hands ; that 
 when the Twelve were actually governing the whole 
 Church, in the belief that they had received from 
 their Master a commission to do so, He did not will 
 that this order should become universal and per- 
 manent, but sent another Apostle out of due course 
 to be independent of the Twelve, and to labour more 
 abundantly and with more success than they all ; 
 that it may be called a law of God's kingdom that, 
 when order grows stagnant, life is brought in some 
 irregular way from above ; that no regulated creden- 
 tials, no authorised transmission of power, should be 
 so sacred to God's children as His own Spirit work- 
 ing in the hearts and lives of men. 
 
 If we can believe in Christ as the living Head, 
 we may take His one body to be something more 
 perfect than any of the earthly organisations by 
 which it is so imperfectly set forth, and may see a
 
 2 1 6 Reunion xv 
 
 true limb of the body in each of these organisations, 
 just in so far as it is faithful to Christ and instinct 
 with His Spirit. We are under no compulsion to 
 circumscribe any one or more of the societies which 
 profess allegiance to Christ, and to force upon our- 
 selves the distasteful conclusion- that Christ owns all 
 within the circle, and disowns all without it. For 
 ourselves of the Church of England, we may rightly 
 prize and hold fast all the advantages that have 
 come down to us, and especially our Church's un- 
 broken history and national form, so long as these 
 do not move us to arrogance, but to thankfulness 
 and a desire to serve. I believe that St. Paul would 
 say to each Christian society, See that you fill your 
 place in the one body of Christ through earnest 
 obedience to the Head, and submission of your 
 hearts to the Spirit, and wait the time of Christ for 
 such readjusting of the Churches as may be necessary 
 to the perfect organisation of Christendom.
 
 XVI 
 THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH 1 
 
 IF a number of persons belonging to our communion 
 were to be asked, " How is it determined for you 
 what in matters of religion you are to believe and 
 to do?" some would answer, "I receive my 
 directions from the Bible " ; others, " I receive mine 
 from the Church." The adherent of the Church 
 would be ready at the same time to speak with 
 the utmost deference of the Bible ; with more 
 hesitation, and probably not without a cautious 
 definition of the Church to safeguard the admission, 
 the adherent of the Bible would admit that we owe 
 much to the Church. To the Protestant, the Bible 
 has primary and absolute authority, and the Church 
 holds a strictly subordinate place ; to the Catholic, 
 the authority of the Church comes first, and the 
 Church is the keeper and interpreter of the Bible. 
 
 There is a third answer that may be given to the 
 question I have supposed to be asked, representing 
 what I should venture to call a more excellent way. 
 A Christian may fitly profess, " I look to the living 
 
 1 Read at the Church Congress at Folkestone, 4th October 1892.
 
 2 1 8 The Bible and the Church xvi 
 
 God as the source of the directions I receive for 
 thinking and doing. His teaching has come, and 
 still comes, through various channels ; but I am 
 bound to think of God Himself as the one supreme 
 Teacher and Director, who keeps the instruction of 
 His children in His own hands-, and uses agents and 
 methods according to His will." 
 
 Such a profession of faith would be pushed aside 
 by many with a feeling of impatience. They would 
 admit with due solemnity that God is the supreme 
 Teacher and Director; but the practical question, 
 they would promptly urge, is how He makes His 
 mind known. " He Himself is out of our reach in 
 heaven ; where is His oracle on earth ? If God's 
 teaching is to be of any use to men, there must be 
 some instructor on earth to whom they may go as 
 to God's delegate." And some virtually say, " The 
 Bible is our representative of God " ; and others, 
 " The Church is our representative of God." But is 
 not God making it clear to us in this age, that He 
 will have no power or person or thing to be a 
 substitute for Himself, either to the conscience of 
 Christendom or to the conscience of the individual 
 Christian ? If people will object that it is not 
 practical to refer to God in heaven as our Teacher 
 and Director, is it at all more practical to appeal to 
 the Bible or to the Church? Whilst men were 
 asserting for the Bible an exclusive infallibility, 
 seekers after truth and reality have been led on to 
 scrutinise this substitute for God, with the result that 
 the priceless volume which has been deified by the 
 Protestant world can no longer be worshipped as an 
 infallible idol. The Bible seems to be failing us in
 
 xvi The Bible and the Church 219 
 
 these days ; because it has been used as God will 
 not have it used. Is it practical, again, to make 
 the Church an oracle ? Let us leave to the Roman 
 Catholic the comfort he enjoys in having a Pope to 
 give infallible utterances : but we Anglicans, if we 
 depend on the living Voice of the Church for 
 infallible direction, have a hardly soluble problem 
 confronting us in the question where we are to find 
 that Voice, and through what organ it is to be heard. 
 Till there is more agreement amongst us as to the 
 mouth by which the Church speaks, we do not 
 gain much by holding that the Church speaks with 
 infallible authority. 
 
 If we have any ear for what the living God is 
 saying, we shall hear Him warning us in these days 
 with an emphasis which compels us to listen, that 
 there is no infallibility for us except in Himself, and 
 that He will tolerate no substitute for Himself in the 
 region of spiritual apprehension. It is an awakening 
 lesson, if we have faith for it. In the light of this 
 teaching we shall see that the first step in consider- 
 ing the authority of the Bible and that of the Church 
 and the relation between the two is to have done 
 with the assumption of any infallibility inhering in 
 either. What, then, is the Bible ? and what is the 
 Church ? Not substitutes for God, but instruments 
 through which we believe, agencies used for our 
 instruction and discipline by the one infallible 
 Instructor. 
 
 There can be no merit or piety in blinding our- 
 selves ; it cannot be disloyal or irreverent towards 
 God to look with as searching a gaze upon the Bible 
 and the Church as upon the natural creation. The
 
 2 2O The Bible and the Church xvi 
 
 more searchingly we consider them, so long as it is 
 with a reverent faith in God, the more likely we are 
 to understand and appreciate their designed value 
 and power and their appointed functions. The Bible, 
 it is evident, is not in form a manual of faith and 
 practice ; it is a collection of various kinds of 
 literature, each piece of which had what seemed at 
 the time of its composition a natural origin unless 
 we are to except from this statement the Apocalyptic 
 portions of it, which wise Christians have never 
 valued more than a Gospel or one of St. Paul's 
 letters. According to the old titles, the two volumes 
 of Holy Scripture are the select literature of the two 
 Covenants respectively. In various ways they help 
 us to understand the revelation which God gave of 
 Himself, first in the history of the Jewish race, and 
 then in the coming of Christ and His exaltation to 
 His kingdom. The New Testament leaves Christ, 
 the Son of God and Son of man, reigning in the 
 spiritual kingdom newly established for Him in 
 heaven and on earth. The worth of the Bible is 
 in the knowledge which it enables us to gain of God, 
 of Christ, and of the Kingdom. According to our 
 Christian belief, Christ has been reigning since the 
 New Testament volume was closed, and is reigning 
 now ; we are subjects in His kingdom. There 
 might, conceivably, be a select literature of this 
 continuing reign of Christ ; there is no such collec- 
 tion, and it is not probable that there ever will be ; 
 but if there were, it would be another volume of 
 sacred records, and it might be called the Book of 
 the Church. Such an imaginary book suggests to 
 our minds the materials of which it would be
 
 xvi The Bible and the Church 221 
 
 composed ; and we can see that it would incorporate 
 the institutions and liturgies, the historical crises, 
 and the theology, of the Church. From this point 
 of view, the antithesis between the Bible and the 
 Church tends to disappear and to resolve itself into 
 a succession. The Scriptural books of selected 
 records have been followed in the Divine order by 
 a series and accumulation of records from which no 
 recognised selection has been made. " The Church " 
 often means chiefly this accumulation of sacred 
 institutes of the Kingdom of Christ, the com- 
 prehensive tradition of the kingdom, the Christian 
 ministry and sacraments, the history and the religious 
 literature of the Christian ages. By means of the 
 Biblical records, and by means of these various 
 expressions of the Divine mind and will which 
 have been given in the developing of Christ's kingdom, 
 God, we hold, is teaching and training the Christian 
 people of to-day. 
 
 What, then, are the authorities to which we owe 
 deference as Christians and members of the Church 
 of England ? That authority, I should reply, has 
 the first title to guide us, which commends itself to 
 us most impressively, which is backed most strongly 
 by circumstances, which seems for each and at the 
 time to be most charged with the Voice of God, and 
 which promises to bring us nearest to God. In any 
 consideration of the authorities by which we are 
 directed in believing and doing, that which rules us 
 with the most of power and right ought not to be 
 passed by without notice : I mean the authority of 
 parents, including in a subordinate degree accord- 
 ing to the exposition of the fifth commandment
 
 222 The Bible and the Church xvi 
 
 given us in the Catechism that of all whom the 
 constitution of society sets over us. It is natural 
 for children to think as their parents do, and to 
 imitate them ; and as soon as they begin to know 
 anything about duty, the primeval command teaches 
 them that they are bound to honour father and 
 mother by rendering to them respect and obedience. 
 The most fanatical Christian would not deny that 
 the child of Mussulman parents ought to begin by 
 trying to be a good Mussulman like his parents. 
 Yet we do not regard parents as infallible. Here, 
 then, we see the Divine principle as to authority in 
 general, and the deference due to it, illustrated. It 
 is not uncommon, nor is it an ungracious sign, for a 
 young child to assume his father to be infallible. 
 But as he grows older, he becomes aware of other 
 authorities which prove his father to be fallible ; and 
 when he is well brought up, he is led to believe in a 
 perfect God, whose will he is to find out by all ways 
 that are open to him, and then to obey with absolute 
 submission. The true man, as the child of God, 
 defers to any authority which he finds to be claim- 
 ing his respect and obedience, until he becomes 
 aware of some other which he feels to be teaching 
 him something better, and which he recognises as 
 having a superior right over him. 
 
 Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round ! 
 Parents first season us ; then schoolmasters 
 Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound 
 To rules of reason. 
 
 English children for many generations have had the 
 Bible held up to them by their parents and teachers
 
 xvi The Bible and the Church 223 
 
 as the supreme authority for belief and conduct, and 
 the Bible, when they have studied it, has won for 
 itself their reverence. They have also been trained 
 to respect the clergyman and the Prayer-Book the 
 clergyman chiefly as expounding the Bible, the 
 Prayer-Book as agreeing with the Bible ; and the 
 Church of England, represented by the clergyman 
 and the Prayer-Book, has been eulogised to them as 
 an eminently Scriptural Church. Of the Church 
 Catholic the Protestant generations have not known 
 much. But Roman Catholics, and of late years 
 Anglo -Catholics, have been trained in their child- 
 hood to look up to the Church, chiefly at first in the 
 person of the priest and in the ceremonies of re- 
 ligion, as the authority directing them what to 
 believe and to do. God, we are constrained to say, 
 has been directing Protestants through the Bible, 
 Catholics through the Church. In either case God 
 ought to have been seen from the first as above the 
 Bible and above the Church ; but it has been a 
 natural error to make the Bible or the Church a 
 substitute for God, and to appeal to the one and the 
 other as ultimate and infallible guides. Of this error 
 the study of the Bible and of the Church should be 
 the best corrective. The records of the two Cove- 
 nants are throughout bearing witness of God of God 
 who called out Abraham, and governed and taught 
 Israel, and who manifested Himself in His Son, so 
 that a spiritual kingdom with Christ as its Head 
 might be established for men. Therefore one who 
 is truly taught by the Bible should have his mind 
 possessed by the living God, the one Director and 
 Inspirer of mankind and of men. As the New
 
 224 The Bible and the Church xvi 
 
 Testament sets before him the beginnings of the 
 Church, it ought to be profoundly interesting to him 
 to observe how Christ has been ruling His kingdom, 
 and how men have served Him as His subjects, since 
 he was exalted to His throne down to the present 
 time. On the other hand, one who studies the 
 Church is led to think of it as the bride of Christ, 
 as the Body of which Christ is the Head, as existing 
 to serve and glorify Christ, as the Father's house in 
 which men through the Spirit dwell with Christ and 
 the Father. What can be so important, then, to 
 one who looks up to the Church, as to know Christ ? 
 And how are we to seek the most authentic know- 
 ledge of Christ, the Husband and Head of the 
 Church ? Obviously it is in the Gospels that He is 
 to be found, and in the rest of that volume which 
 the Church has preserved as its most sacred and 
 precious possession. All the literature of the sacred 
 volume is charged with interest and authority for 
 one who is led through- the Church to Christ. So 
 the Bible naturally sends its readers on through 
 Christ of whom it bears witness to the Church, and 
 the Church naturally excites, through Christ whom 
 it worships, a profoundly reverent interest in the 
 Bible. 
 
 It seems to be natural, also, that religious minds 
 should experience more or less of pain in learning 
 that the writings in the sacred volume have no 
 guaranteed immunity from error, and that the 
 societies on earth representing the ideal Church, the 
 Bride of Christ, form a scene of so much confusion 
 and imperfection. In making these discoveries, 
 some will have a sense of losing their faith. But
 
 xvi The Bible and the Church 225 
 
 it is not faith in Christ, faith in the living God, that 
 should be thus lost. Faith in the God of the Bible 
 and of the Church, as in the God of our parents, 
 may be quickened and called higher by discoveries 
 of the fallibility of Bible, Church, and parents. The 
 Bible and the Church have only been of use to us 
 in so far as they have trained us to believe in the 
 living God. And to those who can believe in Him, 
 whilst they see that nothing can rightly take His 
 place in the guiding of His people, all the means He 
 uses for the revealing of Himself will have their 
 appointed honour and value. Deference to parents, 
 deference to the communion in which each is 
 brought up, deference to the Scriptures of the 
 Covenants, deference to the teaching of time, will 
 by such believers be cherished for themselves, and 
 instilled into the young. The last of these authori- 
 ties is perhaps that in which the Voice of the living 
 God speaks most decisively to each generation. 
 According to an old saying quoted by Lord Bacon, 
 " Truth is the daughter of Time." And what is 
 Time but the living God leading His creation 
 onwards ? The Bible can uphold no statement, the 
 Church can uphold no doctrinal propositions, against 
 the revelations of time. But whilst time, or the 
 Divine Evolution, is not to be silenced by Church or 
 Bible, it is surely proving itself to be no enemy or 
 scorner of either. Time means what God is doing 
 and saying now, the Church and the Bible present 
 to us what the same God did and said in the days 
 of our fathers and in the old time before them. 
 Not one of these instructors is authorised to teach 
 us mechanically, or is permitted to appropriate our 
 Q
 
 226 The Bible and the Church xvi 
 
 faith to itself. In learning from each, it is necessary 
 that the mind of the Christian and the Churchman 
 should strive to be spiritual and to discern the things 
 that are more excellent, and should listen with filial 
 docility for the heavenly Voice which alone imparts 
 perfect truth. Whilst the Eternal Spirit uses these 
 outward channels of instruction, He Himself, as 
 Christians are encouraged to believe, speaks directly 
 to the listening ear, and leads by secret guidance 
 the obedient soul. But these spiritual touches can- 
 not be made the basis or material of common agree- 
 ments as to belief and practice. Only we have this 
 confidence through Christ to Godward that those 
 who look up to God with inward humility and 
 teachableness will be led on by His kindly light, 
 and will be enabled to make a profitable use of the 
 methods of teaching which He employs. But the 
 Bible, the Church, and the progress of mankind 
 each of the three will be an effectual help to us in 
 apprehending what is best and of highest authority 
 in the other two. Working together for our in- 
 struction, they will cause us to increase and go for- 
 wards in the knowledge and faith of the Father and 
 of the Son by the Holy Spirit ; because they are all 
 from the one God who was and is and is to be, and 
 who gives the knowledge of Himself as the prize 
 and crown of our lives.
 
 XVII 
 CHURCH PRIDE 1 
 
 "Since ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may abound 
 unto the edifying of the church." i CORINTHIANS xiv. 12. 
 
 LOOKING over the texts from which one was to be 
 chosen for this morning's sermon, I noticed that 
 they refer almost without exception to the minis- 
 trations of preachers of the Gospel. As the sermon 
 is to be a warning against the sin of pride, it would 
 seem that the founder of it was anxious that the 
 ministers of Christ and all who work with them 
 should be warned against any form of pride to which 
 they might be specially liable, and which would 
 hinder and damage their efficiency as builders of 
 the Church. In accordance with this indication I 
 am taking as my subject what I will briefly designate 
 as Church Pride. 
 
 Whenever we reflect upon pride, we find ourselves 
 obliged to recognise at the outset that there is pride 
 which is the opposite of sinful. We often speak of 
 a proper pride. And this is not one of the cases in 
 which the same word happens to be used for two 
 things which are easily distinguishable from each 
 
 1 Preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, 2oth November 1897.
 
 228 Church Pride xvn 
 
 other. The two kinds of pride appear to have a 
 good deal of sentiment in common, and it is by no 
 means obvious how the line is to be drawn between 
 them or what makes the one sort good and the 
 other bad. If a person whom we do not know is 
 described to us as being proud, we are likely enough 
 to be in doubt whether we should approve of his 
 pride or not. Sometimes a personal pride which 
 would be resented by a vulgar appreciation might 
 be held in honour by a more discriminating taste. 
 Englishmen know what it is to have a pride in their 
 country. We do not feel ashamed of showing it. 
 It is not without some complacency that we read 
 the couplet in which Goldsmith characterised his 
 countrymen " Pride in their port, defiance in their 
 eye, I see the lords of human-kind pass by." But 
 there is an English pride which reasonably excites 
 anger and aversion in the people of other countries, 
 and of this we cannot think well. So there is pride 
 in a family, in a school', in a college, in a university, 
 which may be either proper or improper, which shows 
 a generous nature and is of high value, or which is 
 objectionable and gives just offence. Never was a 
 fine regimental pride more nobly illustrated than by 
 that speech of a few words which bids fair to carry 
 down the name of the Gordon Highlanders with 
 honour to a remote posterity ; but there is an empty- 
 headed pride in belonging to a crack regiment which 
 does not commend itself to general admiration. If 
 there is thus pride and pride in the feelings with 
 which we regard ourselves and all the fellowships 
 into which our lot may throw us, it must be thought 
 probable that pride in the Church the communion
 
 xvn Church Pride 229 
 
 which enfolds all other relations may also have 
 the twofold character. 
 
 In the case of personal pride we are accustomed 
 to express our approval or disapproval by the use of 
 terms which have acquired a distinctive connotation, 
 such as self-respect, self-esteem, arrogance. By self- 
 respect we always mean something good, but self- 
 esteem is not commonly used in a good sense, and 
 arrogance certainly never. But these terms in them- 
 selves do not help us to understand the difference 
 which they indicate. The true explanation of it is 
 given in some lofty words of Milton, which occur in 
 his treatise on " The Reason of Church Government." 
 " There is," he says, " an esteem whereby men bear 
 an inward reverence toward their own persons. And 
 if the love of God, as a fire sent from heaven to be 
 ever kept alive upon the altars of our hearts, be the 
 first principle of all godly and virtuous actions in 
 men, this pious and just honouring of ourselves is 
 the second, and may be thought as the radical mois- 
 ture and fountain-head whence every laudable and 
 worthy enterprise issues forth. . . . He that holds 
 himself in reverence and due esteem, both for the 
 dignity of God's image upon him and for the price 
 of his redemption which he thinks is visibly marked 
 upon his forehead, accounts himself both a fit person 
 to do the noblest and godliest deeds, and much 
 better worth than to deject and defile, with such a 
 debasement and such a pollution as sin is, himself 
 so highly ransomed and ennobled to a new friendship 
 and filial relation with God." l If every man has, 
 
 1 English Prose Writings of John Milton, edited by Henry Morley, 
 pp. 1 68, 169.
 
 230 Church Pride xvn 
 
 besides the actual nature which expresses itself in 
 his daily doings and experiences, another form, the 
 image of him as God's plan and purpose would have 
 him be, the redeemed filial nature which cannot sin ; 
 if he has a calling which plainly puts before him 
 what he ought to be, then he can cherish this ideal 
 of himself with what Milton does not hesitate to 
 name an inward reverence. And it is something of 
 this reverence which gives its quality to all proper 
 pride. 
 
 We may be the more satisfied with this explana- 
 tion of the right kind of pride when we see that it 
 also explains the right kind of humility. If the 
 ancient codes of ethics did not include humility 
 amongst the virtues, no one can doubt that Christians 
 are bound to seek it and cherish it as a heavenly 
 grace. The notion that the just estimate of ourselves 
 is the mean between pride as one extreme, and 
 humility as the other, will not bear a moment's 
 consideration. But whep a man has a deeply rooted 
 consciousness of himself as made in the Divine 
 image and redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, and 
 called to be a true son of God and how could he 
 have a higher estimate of himself than that? he 
 will be unable to shut out the secondary conscious- 
 ness that he is not feeling and living as one so made 
 and redeemed and called might be expected to feel 
 and live. The difference between his appointed 
 perfection and his actual life and mind will often 
 make him ashamed and conscious of unworthiness. 
 He will be very little inclined to think complacently 
 of himself or to boast of his doings. To glory in 
 the Lord will be to be humbled in himself.
 
 xvn Church Pride 231 
 
 We may trace this double consciousness, as in the 
 individual man, so in the man as a member of a 
 community. It is right for us to be proud of our 
 country. The most sensitive Christian amongst us will 
 not reproach himself for the pleasure with which he may 
 be thrilled by those famous lines of Wordsworth : 
 
 In our halls is hung 
 
 Armoury of the invincible knights of old ; 
 We must be free or die who speak the tongue 
 That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold 
 That Milton held ; in everything we are sprung 
 From earth's first blood, have titles manifold. 
 
 But the poet, at the very time that he thus gloried, 
 was reproaching his countrymen for being unworthy 
 sons of such a country ; he called his England " a 
 fen of stagnant waters " ; he feared that plain living 
 and high thinking were no more. He was at the 
 same moment proud of his country for what it had 
 inherited, and ashamed of much in the Englishman 
 of his day which did dishonour to its glories. And 
 that will often be the double feeling of the fervent 
 patriot. There will be in his mind a proud apprecia- 
 tion of the calling and ideal of which the past history 
 of his country bears witness, and a keen sensitive- 
 ness about opinions and sentiments, it may be an 
 attitude and a policy, of his countrymen, which seem 
 to him to fall below his country's honour. He will 
 sometimes ask himself whether he is doing, for his 
 part, all that a proud and grateful Englishman ought 
 to do. Is not that the patriotism which we should 
 desire to cherish in ourselves and to see strengthened 
 in our fellow-countrymen ? We can easily recognise 
 a vulgar pride, the pride against which Christians
 
 232 Church Pride xvn 
 
 ought to be on their guard, in the patriotism which 
 gloats over the extent of our empire and the amount 
 of our wealth, which finds a pleasure in making men 
 of other nations feel our superiority ; and we can see 
 that such a pride knows nothing of any correlative 
 humility. But think of our England in its relation 
 to the God who makes every nation of men to dwell 
 on all the face of the earth, determining their 
 appointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation ; 
 think of it as having a calling legibly interpreted by 
 the signs of that favour with which the Lord hath 
 hitherto helped us ; imagine to yourselves the part 
 which a nation so uniquely blessed might be expected 
 to play in the world -wide developments of the 
 Divine counsels, and then you will understand how 
 any English exhibition of arrogance, instead of 
 elating us, should make us wince ; how anxious we 
 should be that the international virtues which are 
 time's latest birth, magnanimity and courtesy, 
 equitable estimation of rights, consideration towards 
 the weak, generous readiness to assist less fortunate 
 races, should be the proudest elements of our 
 country's glory ; what an ambition it should be for 
 us to show to the world the spectacle of a people' 
 united and contented, with their minds set upon 
 righteousness, a true people of God throughout the 
 length and breadth of our dominion. 
 
 Yes, the lesson that will rightly instruct us about 
 all pride is contained in that short word of St. Paul's, 
 " He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." 
 Let us meditate, not arrogantly on what we may 
 claim for ourselves, but with reverence on God's 
 purpose claiming us for its fulfilment, both as
 
 xvn Church Pride 233 
 
 individuals and as tied together in our smaller and 
 our larger associations. 
 
 I have suggested that it may be possible, even 
 with regard to the Church, for the pride we ought to 
 feel as members of this highest of our social organisms 
 to be adulterated with some infection of the improper 
 pride. If there is such a danger, it must be one of 
 which we ought to take serious heed. 
 
 It is well understood that the Christians of our 
 time are much more interested in the Church than 
 those of some former generations have been. We 
 who belong to the ancient Church of our land are 
 none of us content that our thoughts of the Church 
 should be confined within the limits of the Church 
 of England ; the time for that sort of narrowness 
 has gone by. It is with the Church Catholic that 
 our minds are occupied, and we think of the Church 
 of England as a part of the Church Catholic. 
 However we may define the Universal Church, we 
 shall all admit that our definitions leave difficulties 
 outside them which give no little trouble both to our 
 minds and our hearts. These difficulties, added to 
 that craving for definition by which so many minds 
 are possessed, make Church questions the more 
 interesting to anxious Christians. 
 
 In the Apostolic language about the Church we 
 recognise a parallel to that twofold view of the 
 individual Christian which I have illustrated from 
 our Milton's writings, but which we also find in the 
 New Testament. St. Paul, during his imprisonment 
 at Rome, was much occupied with contemplation of 
 the Church. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, an 
 outpouring of peculiar Christian enthusiasm, he gives
 
 234 Church Pride xvn 
 
 three distinct images of the Church, two chiefly 
 illustrating its unity, the third its purity, and all 
 setting forth its close relation to Christ. The 
 Church is a Body, all the members making but one 
 Body, and Christ is the Head. From the Head 
 is derived the law and form of the Body, and also its 
 life. The Body is well proportioned ; it has liga- 
 ments binding limb to limb, and special functions 
 for every part and organ ; it is a perfectly adjusted 
 framework, with love for its principle of life and 
 growth. The Church is a Bride, loved by her 
 Husband Christ with a perfect conjugal love ; He 
 gave Himself up for her, consecrated and cleansed 
 her that He might present her to Himself in her 
 glory, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, 
 but that she should be holy and without blemish. 
 The Church is a Temple, a house for God to dwell 
 in ; Christ Jesus is the chief corner-stone ; the first 
 confessors and witnesses of Christ are primary 
 foundation-stones ; each individual believer is a stone ; 
 associations of believers are so many chambers of the 
 whole building. So St. Paul and his fellow-believers 
 conceived of the Church, and so they desired that 
 all Christians should think of the society into which 
 they were taken. But when they looked at the 
 daily doings of the Churches in the East and in the 
 West, did they behold the unity and the glory of 
 which they had visions ? What they saw filled them 
 with conflicting emotions. They were moved to give 
 fervent thanks to God for the faith and hope and 
 love which were everywhere bearing undeniable 
 fruit ; but the vanities and jealousies and immor- 
 alities which were continually breaking out amongst
 
 xvii Church Pride 235 
 
 the Christians filled them with shame and grief. 
 Perfect harmony, spotless purity, were by no means 
 characteristic of the actual Church of the Apostolic 
 age. So there was abundant reason for the double 
 consciousness ; to glory in the Lord was the privi- 
 lege and duty of the Christian society a privilege to 
 be enjoyed without misgivings, a duty not to be 
 neglected ; to glory in itself was what facts forbade 
 it to do. Pride and a sense of unworthiness not 
 only had to be combined ; each sentiment aided and 
 nourished the other. 
 
 But that the actual Church, composed of frail and 
 sinful members, should glory in itself, and should 
 take the unity and purity and attachment to Christ 
 of its heavenly image as entitling it to glory in itself, 
 has not proved to be an impossibility. There has 
 been an assumption, running down through the ages, 
 and penetrating into every part of the Christian 
 community, that the actual Church must have some 
 method or other of asserting itself to be what it is 
 called to be. The obstacles put in the way of such 
 an assumption might have been thought to be in- 
 superable. That a Roman Catholic, reading the 
 history of the Papacy, should have to believe the 
 aggregate of those who submit to the See of Rome 
 to be, one and alone, the spotless Bride of Christ, is 
 enough to excite our pity. The theory that the 
 spotless Bride, the perfect Body, consists of those 
 persons in every Christian communion whom God 
 sees to be truly converted, has a certain elusiveness 
 in its favour, but it is greatly discouraged at the 
 present time by the many objections which can be 
 brought against it. The doctrine of those Anglicans
 
 236 Church Pride xvn 
 
 who hold that the Church, the perfect Body, the 
 spotless Bride, is made up of the Church of England, 
 the Church of Rome, the Oriental Churches, and 
 any other communion which has the Episcopal 
 succession unbroken a doctrine which seems to 
 require that races sunk in superstitious idolatry shall 
 be regarded as more vitally attached to Christ and 
 more truly fellow-members with ourselves than the 
 best of non-Episcopalian Christians can hardly be 
 an easy one to believe. 
 
 Whether inspired by this doctrine or not, there 
 are certain visible stirrings of English Churchmen's 
 pride in their Church, about which, if there is always 
 spiritual danger attending pride, I hope it may not 
 be disloyal to express some apprehension. I speak 
 in the belief that the proper pride and the wrong 
 pride are not easily to be separated and marked off 
 from each other. 
 
 i. An opinion is being expressed in favour of 
 refusing Christian baptism to infants where there is 
 no trustworthy security for their being brought up as 
 members of the Church. It must be admitted to be 
 true that a large number of English people are not 
 leading regular Christian lives, most of whom have 
 been baptized in their infancy, and nearly all these 
 in the fonts of the Church of England. This is 
 especially true of the populations of our large towns, 
 though it is jiot without truth in our country districts 
 also. Many of these baptized persons are very 
 ignorant of Christian doctrine ; some of them do not 
 even profess to hold the Christian faith. Not a few 
 are openly immoral in their conduct ; many more 
 are rarely seen inside a church. We are all of us
 
 xvii Church Pride 237 
 
 incessantly deploring this state of things, and con- 
 sidering and consulting how we may win these 
 careless and alienated persons to real membership of 
 the Church. We feel and acknowledge that the 
 non-Christian lives of persons who were brought to 
 Christian baptism as infants are a standing discredit 
 and reproach to the Church. The proposed remedy 
 for this evil, to which I am now referring, is that we 
 should relieve ourselves of a considerable part of 
 such discredit by declining to baptize those who 
 seem likely to be brought up under bad conditions, 
 and declaring that we do not know them and are 
 not responsible for them. We are reminded by this 
 proposal of what I presume to be the arguments of 
 those whom we call by a shortened name Baptists. 
 They think it safer and more in harmony with the 
 character and claims of the Church of Christ not to 
 baptize infants at all. Assuming the Church to be a holy 
 body, they seek to preserve its holiness by admitting 
 into it only such persons as give trustworthy evidence 
 that they have been changed and made new creatures 
 in Christ That certainly seems the more thorough 
 policy, if it is the credit of the Church as a holy 
 body that is to be kept in view. It is perhaps 
 believed by those who recommend that we should 
 decline to baptize the less favoured infants, that it 
 will be better even for the rejected that they should 
 not be baptized. There is an oppressive doctrine of 
 post-baptismal sin which represents the condition of 
 the baptized sinner as only the worse and the more 
 hopeless for his having been baptized. But when 
 we consider what sinners we all are, this doctrine 
 would seem to make it kinder not to baptize any
 
 238 Church Pride xvn 
 
 infants at all, and would even suggest the postponing 
 of baptism not merely to the years of discretion, 
 but to the articulus mortis. On the whole, where 
 this plan of selecting and rejecting infants finds 
 approval, it will probably be not on account of the 
 lessened danger for the rejected,' but in the interest 
 of the Church's character ; and what will seem to 
 many of us decisive objections to the plan will be 
 neutralised by the feeling of pride in the Church. 
 
 2. We hear it contended, again, that ecclesiastical 
 discipline over the laity should be restored. What 
 can be thought of a Church, it is asked, which does 
 not dare to exercise such discipline over its members ? 
 As we try to imagine what this would mean, the 
 suggestion seems a sufficiently bold one. The 
 penalty brought into action would be, it may be 
 presumed, exclusion from the Sacrament of the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, and therewith from all 
 ecclesiastical offices and rights. Only communicants 
 would be recognised as members of the Church, and 
 by exclusion from the Holy Communion the Church 
 would purge itself of unworthy members. Soundness 
 of belief, as well as decency of moral conduct, would 
 be required in communicants. The introduction of 
 such discipline would be a serious matter. It will 
 occur to some that our Lord did not think better 
 of Pharisees, whom discipline would pass by or 
 stamp with approval, than of the sinners whom 
 discipline would cast out. So far as the Sacrament 
 is concerned, it has little need at the present time 
 to be protected from outrage. I have heard of its 
 being a custom in the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland 
 that the minister should " fence the tables " by a
 
 xvn Church Pride 239 
 
 preliminary address, in which he warns his hearers 
 against unworthy partaking of the communion ; and 
 the address, it is said, has sometimes been so telling, 
 that only a few, and those the most hardily self- 
 righteous, have ventured to present themselves. 
 Many of us may think that in the Church of 
 England the Table is already fenced, even to excess, 
 by the prevalent feeling about the Sacrament. But 
 as in the movement concerning the other Sacrament, 
 all arguments against the restoration of effective 
 Church discipline will count for little, with some, 
 in comparison with the demands of the honour of 
 the Church. And therefore it is that I venture to 
 suggest a doubt whether the pride in the Church 
 which has this working is entirely of the right 
 sort. 
 
 3. Once more, there is a movement, which has 
 been sweeping Diocesan Conferences before it, in 
 favour of demanding self-government for the Church. 
 And the force of this movement is due partly, 
 indeed, to a hope that abuses may be more quickly 
 and effectually remedied by a representative Church 
 Body than by Parliament, and that new forms of 
 spiritual activity may be developed, but mainly to 
 a feeling of tenderness for the honour of the Church. 
 When the scheme of a self-governing Church comes 
 to be seriously considered, it will probably be seen 
 that, if the self-government is to be real and vital, 
 the change will be a revolutionary one. Some of 
 those who support the movement have been stipulat- 
 ing that the independence of the Church is not to 
 be absolute, but is to be controlled by the veto 
 of Parliament. We have examples of independent
 
 240 CJmrch Pride xvn 
 
 Anglican Churches in the Colonies, in America, 
 and in Ireland ; but a self-governing Church subject 
 to a veto of the State upon all its actions is one of 
 which we have no example ; and we might reason- 
 ably expect such a constitution to start a struggle 
 between the ecclesiastical independence and the 
 civil veto which would continue until one triumphed 
 over the other. As the Dissenting bodies become 
 more and more indifferent to the special doctrines 
 or methods which brought them into existence, it is 
 probable that the Church will grow stronger, both in 
 the country and in Parliament ; and the people and 
 their representatives will the less see the need or 
 advantage of surrendering the powers which they 
 and their forefathers have exercised for so many 
 generations. At this early stage of the movement, 
 however, it is the Church sentiment that supplies 
 the motive force. Churchmen look at other religious 
 bodies, and see them enjoying the privilege and the 
 dignity of governing themselves, and they say to one 
 another that it is a humiliation to the Church of 
 England to be subject as it is to the State. The 
 self-governing bodies are able to reproach the Church 
 of England as Erastian, and there is no word of 
 reproach so stinging to Church pride as Erastianism. 
 Churchmen ask why they should not now at length 
 be delivered from Erastianism, and be as the Roman 
 Catholics, as the Methodists, as the Positivists. It 
 may surely be asked, on the other hand, why we of 
 the Church of England should wish to be as the 
 Dissenters and the Roman Catholics. Are they so 
 much better than we ? I hope it is not a wrong 
 pride in the Church that would compel us to ask this
 
 xvn Church Pride 241 
 
 question. Are we bound to acknowledge that we 
 see in them a higher spirituality, proofs of a more 
 abundant blessing of God upon them, such as we 
 can distinctly trace to their not being subject to 
 State control ? The assumption that the Divine 
 Spirit is specially pledged to guide ecclesiastical 
 government has no little historical experience to 
 contradict it. 
 
 It is no doubt a telling argument for the change 
 that is demanded that in this our day the Parlia- 
 ment has come to contain many men who are not 
 Churchmen, and that there is no security that the 
 Prime Minister should even be a professing Christian. 
 But Englishmen have learnt not to be much affected 
 either by existing anomalies or by anticipations of 
 what may happen in the future. Our explanation 
 of the many anomalies with which we may be taunted 
 is that they represent the living forces of our national 
 history. Pious men have faith to believe that the 
 irregular-looking conditions which the Hand of God 
 has prepared for us out of the various elements of 
 the past are to be preferred to a regular man-made 
 constitution. We find that in general that which 
 is of God in human experience and human life is 
 marked by contradictions. It will hardly be denied 
 that a Parliament including unorthodox members 
 may be a better body to control Church matters, 
 and more likely to act with reverent right feeling, 
 than some Parliaments and kings that have been 
 formally orthodox, as even the heathen Caesar, 
 ordained of God to govern, was a truer instrument 
 of God's will than the orthodox ecclesiastical Council 
 of the Jews. Are we sure that it must be a godly 
 R
 
 242 Church Pride xvn 
 
 pride in the Church that chafes under civil govern- 
 ment, and insists that for the honour of the Church 
 its government must be made purely ecclesiastical ? 
 
 Not that we are bidden by loyalty to the God of 
 our fathers to believe that whatever is, is right, and 
 that our part is simply to let things drift. Assuredly 
 we are placed here to improve our inheritance, to 
 confess what is wrong amongst us, and to do our 
 best to put it right, to shrink from no change, how- 
 ever revolutionary, which the glory of God and the 
 cause of the kingdom of Christ may seem to demand. 
 I am only pleading that, with regard to the Church, 
 we may not be misled by plausible notions of honour 
 and dignity ; that we should endeavour to make our 
 improvements with insight and with a wise use of 
 the opportunities afforded to us. What I suppose 
 we have to do, as faithful Christians and students of 
 the Apostolic teaching, is to keep the true image of 
 the Church as the Bride of Christ, arrayed in fine 
 linen and bright and pure, continually before our 
 minds, and to glory in it, whilst we look with humility, 
 and with such self-reproach as we deserve, upon the 
 Church as it now exists upon the earth. We are 
 not to begin by taking for granted that there is no 
 Church but what is to be seen somewhere in the 
 societies of sinful men here below, and therefore to 
 try how we can impose all the features of the heavenly 
 Church by theory and arrangement upon some one 
 or more of such societies. We can say to ourselves 
 with the conviction of faith, " All Christians ought 
 to be one in a holy fellowship, all the societies of 
 those who bear the name of Christ ought to be 
 moved and restrained by the Spirit of Christ " ; and
 
 xvn Church Pride 243 
 
 in the power of that conviction we can work and 
 strive towards perfection, daring to give thanks for 
 all the good things of our inheritance, and holding 
 ourselves the more responsible as members of the 
 Church of Christ for every advantage that has been 
 given us. We shall be kept in mind that all true 
 Church progress must be spiritual, whilst we shall 
 understand that the inward spirit will issue into out- 
 ward forms, and that outward things are made by 
 the Divine law subservient to spiritual life. We 
 may well be appalled by the greatness of the task 
 laid upon Christian England, and by the manifold 
 and far-reaching opportunities of our English Church. 
 But the calls which fill us with awe should also 
 inspire us with hope and energy. For God does 
 not show us a duty without also giving the strength 
 to fulfil it.
 
 XVIII 
 THE MORAL USE OF MONEY 1 
 
 "Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of un- 
 righteousness ; that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the 
 eternal tabernacles." ST. LUKE xvi. 9. 
 
 THE Authorised Version of the New Testament is 
 still predominantly in use amongst us, and it is prob- 
 able that an indefinite number of readers continue to 
 be misled by its way of rendering this passage. It 
 is constantly assumed in popular speech and in the 
 newspapers that to '< make friends of the mammon 
 of unrighteousness " means to make friends with 
 mammon, to come into some sort of alliance or com- 
 promise with mammon. It is not to be supposed 
 that the translators intended to convey that sense. 
 To make friends of mammon could hardly be the 
 same thing as to make a friend of mammon. There 
 are other sayings of our Lord in which the word " of" 
 is misleading ; as in " My kingdom is not of this 
 world," " I speak not of myself." In these places 
 "from" would express the sense better to our ears: 
 " My kingdom is not from this world," " I speak not 
 
 1 Preached before the University of Cambridge, i6th February 1890.
 
 The Moral Use of Money 245 
 
 from myself." In our text we need the unambiguous 
 form which the Revisers have given us. What our 
 Lord said was, " Make friends for yourselves by 
 means of the mammon of unrighteousness," " Let the 
 mammon of unrighteousness be to you a means of 
 making friends." 
 
 It is important that this saying should be rightly 
 understood, for it is of singular significance and 
 value. It does not indeed give us, what many of us 
 may often have craved, practical directions as to the 
 manner in which we should deal with money or 
 money's worth which may come into our possession. 
 Our Lord took care to avoid putting into the hands 
 of His disciples what they might regard and use as a 
 directory of conduct. When He delivered practical 
 precepts they were often in such a form that they 
 could not be, and were manifestly not intended to 
 be, observed in the letter. A vivid precept of action 
 may be the most telling expression of a principle; and 
 our Lord would have us look through every precept 
 of His to the principle, the motive, the reason behind 
 it. What He sought to do, and did, was to declare 
 principles to those who would accept Him as Master. 
 And in this moral of the parable of the unrighteous 
 steward Christ gave to His disciples a profound and 
 comprehensive law for the employment of money. 
 They were to make friends by means of it In what 
 particular ways they were to seek this end He does 
 not lay down ; He leaves to them the duty of finding 
 out the best ways. But for every generation and in 
 all kinds of circumstances it is a luminous principle 
 that those who have money are to aim at making 
 friends by the ways in which they use it.
 
 246 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 The story of which the parable consists was 
 probably told for the sake of this moral only. A 
 parable may, or may not, be susceptible of interpreta- 
 tion through all its parts. We are not at all bound 
 to assume that the rich man stands for any one in 
 the spiritual world, or the steward, or the debtors, 
 or that the acts of the story the wasting of the 
 goods, the calling of the steward to account, his 
 dealing with his lord's debtors have spiritual acts 
 analogous to them which they are intended to bring 
 to our minds. Our Lord called attention to the one 
 lesson which He desired to convey. As the dis- 
 honest steward had sought by dishonest means to 
 provide himself with friends against the time of 
 destitution which was coming upon him, so the 
 children of light were bidden to provide themselves, 
 by a worthy use of money, with friends for the time 
 when money should fail them. Without pronouncing 
 that the parable has no other less obvious interpreta- 
 tion, it is reasonable that we should give our attention 
 first and chiefly to the lesson to which our attention 
 is called. And the reflections which follow this lesson 
 will be seen to support the view that our Lord in- 
 tended to declare not merely one use to which money 
 might well be put, but the comprehensive purpose for 
 which money is entrusted to men. " If ye have not 
 been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will 
 commit to your trust the true riches ? And if ye 
 have not been faithful in that which is another's, who 
 will give you that which is your own ? " Every man, 
 according to the teaching of Jesus Christ, is made to 
 be a slave of God. God entrusts to each certain 
 possessions, of which he is allowed to have the
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 247 
 
 control and disposal. He is bound to be faithful in 
 the administration of these. And what the true 
 Lord of the possessions and of the man sets him to 
 do with them is to make friends by means of them. 
 
 It is a noticeable feature of this teaching of Jesus 
 Christ that He speaks of money for we may con- 
 veniently designate all external possessions by the 
 name of money as the mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness, the unrighteous mammon. Mammon, it is said, 
 meant simply riches, and is a neutral word ; and 
 money would therefore be a fair equivalent of it 
 To us it might be said, ye cannot be slaves to God 
 and to money. But our Lord, in His expressions, 
 makes money the natural ally or instrument of 
 unrighteousness. Obviously He must have meant to 
 recognise, or to complain, that this was as a matter 
 of fact a character of money. " Let money," He says, 
 " which is so habitually associated with unrighteous- 
 ness, be in your hands a means of making friends." 
 This is one example of that open and direct pre- 
 judice against riches which the Lord Jesus entertained 
 and expressed. The Pharisees, who hated Him, and 
 whom He defied and denounced, had it for one of 
 their characteristics that they were rich and loved 
 money. Poor men, it was seen, could more easily 
 become followers of Jesus than rich men ; and He 
 took note, with anger and emphasis, of this fact. 
 " It is easier for a camel to go through the eye 
 of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the 
 kingdom of God to become my true disciple." 
 Those whom He addressed were familiar with the 
 unrighteousness the dishonesty, the strifes, the 
 worldliness, the inhumanity of which the pursuit
 
 248 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 of money was the cause or occasion. And Jesus had 
 no desire to palliate these evil fruits or to make the 
 least of them. He thought it expedient, and rather 
 safe than dangerous, to refer to money as if it were 
 itself an evil thing. He sought to encourage what we 
 might call a prejudice against it in .the minds which 
 were open to His teaching. He taught those who 
 wished to do the will of the Heavenly Father with 
 regard to money to look at it with suspicion. 
 
 In this day of ours we may hear riches and the 
 rich denounced by champions of the poorer classes 
 with a freedom which is sometimes compared vrith 
 that of Christ. Bold and generous spirits, chiefly of 
 course amongst the young, instead of treating mon?y 
 with the traditional respect, are assuming it to be 
 the root of almost all the evil in the world. By 
 money I mean the personal owning of possessions. 
 To get rid of this, it is held, would be to reform 
 the world, to make all men happy. Some, in a 
 half and half way, would stop short at the abolition 
 of the personal owning of land ; others are more 
 thorough, and would forbid the owning of things in 
 general. It is clear, indeed, that the maleficent 
 power of money would be in no degree broken by 
 the abolition of property in land. And the philo- 
 sophical speculators who anticipated the extreme 
 Socialists of to-day, and who seeing the many evils 
 which might be referred to the influence of money 
 on the senses and imagination of men were 
 tempted to take the short course of destroying the 
 occasion of such evils, undertook to construct 
 commonwealths in which no man should have 
 anything which he could call his own. There is
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 249 
 
 no Hyde Park demagogue who condemns private 
 property with more decision than Plato, the scorner 
 of the demos, or Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor 
 of England. Let me quote a few sentences from a 
 bishop's translation of a Lord Chancellor's book. 
 " I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have 
 no other notion of all the governments that I see or 
 know than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, 
 who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue 
 their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts 
 they can find out first, that they may without 
 danger preserve all that they have so ill acquired, 
 and then that they may engage the poor to toil and 
 labour for them at as low rates as possible, and 
 oppress them as much as they please. . . . Yet 
 these wicked men, after that they have by a most 
 insatiable covetousness divided that among them- 
 selves with which all the rest might have been well 
 supplied, are far from that happiness that is enjoyed 
 among the Utopians ; for the use as well as the 
 desire of money being extinguished, much anxiety 
 and great occasions of mischief are cut off with it. 
 And who does not see that the frauds, thefts, 
 robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions, seditions, 
 murders, treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are 
 indeed rather punished than restrained by the 
 severities of the law, would all fall off if money 
 were not any more valued by the world ? Men's 
 fears, solicitudes, cares, labours, and watchings 
 would all perish in the same moment with the value 
 of money ; even poverty itself, for the relief of which 
 money seems most necessary, would fall." " When 
 I balance all these things in my thoughts, I grow
 
 250 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 more favourable to Plato, and do not wonder that 
 he resolved not to make any laws for such as would 
 not submit to a community of all things ; for so wise 
 a man could not but foresee that the setting all upon 
 a level was the only way to make a nation happy, 
 which cannot be obtained so long as there is 
 property." The Utopians are said to have been 
 attracted to Christianity by the fact that Christ and 
 His followers lived by their rule of having all things 
 common, and that the rule was still kept up in some 
 communities amongst the sincerest sort of Christians. 
 And it is charged against the later preachers of 
 Christianity that " they, observing that the world 
 would not willingly suit their lives to the rules that 
 Christ has given, have fitted His doctrine, as if it had 
 been a leaden rule, to their lives, that so some way 
 or other they might agree with one another." 
 
 It cannot be disputed that Christ saw and noted the 
 evils which have been associated with money no less 
 seriously than those who before Him and after Him 
 have advocated as the only effectual cure of those evils 
 the extinction of money. His example also may be 
 claimed in that He and His band of followers had 
 for a time a common purse. And there cannot but 
 be the most solemn significance in the impulse which 
 moved the thousands of believers on the Day of 
 Pentecost to throw their possessions into a common 
 stock. It is equally true, however, that Christ did 
 not ordain that His followers should have ail things 
 common. There is no evidence of His having issued 
 any such command. The precepts of conduct which 
 He did give to His followers expressly imply that 
 they would possess personal property. A man could
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 251 
 
 not give alms, could not lend, could not invite the 
 poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind to a dinner 
 unless he had means of his own. 
 
 It would be unwise to infer from this legislation 
 of Christ that the substitution of a universal com- 
 munity of possession for separate ownership, such as 
 Plato and Sir Thomas More and the most extreme 
 modern Socialists have advocated, is necessarily 
 forbidden by Christianity. The suppression of 
 selfish desires and the setting of the general good 
 above the gratification of the individual may be justly 
 regarded as characteristically Christian principles ; 
 and any change of the institutions of society which 
 should be suggested by these principles, and should 
 commend itself as likely to establish them amongst 
 men and to promote the universal well-being, might 
 claim the authority of Christ as in its favour, although 
 it might alter customs which Christ recognised and 
 to which He adjusted His exhortations. In accord- 
 ance with this view we do not hesitate to regard the 
 abolition of slavery as a Christian movement. But 
 Christians have as much right nay, are as much 
 bound to be rational and to see their way as the 
 most worldly ; and to almost all Christians it seems 
 certain that community of possession has not, for 
 mankind in general, the sanction of the Divine Ruler 
 of the world, and that the attempt to establish it 
 would introduce confusion and would end in ruinous 
 disappointment. 
 
 Our duty therefore is to attend to what Christ 
 teaches us with regard to the use of possessions, on 
 the assumption that God still grants separate owner- 
 ship to each of us. He leaves us, we understand,
 
 252 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 still to be tempted. It is by this method of 
 discipline that we can see the human race throughout 
 its history to have been governed. The great 
 appetitive force has been always and everywhere at 
 work in human nature. The modern exposition of 
 the natural history of man gives a place of supreme 
 importance to this force ; there are some naturalists, 
 indeed, who see nothing but this in all human history 
 from the beginning. Each man, according to their 
 description, is seen to have been pushing himself 
 forward, struggling to keep himself alive, seeking to 
 gratify the desire that works in him, trying to get 
 hold of as much as he could for himself. The 
 drawing together of men, and their submission to 
 social restraints, may be traced to this one sovereign 
 impulse, because the individual has derived strength 
 and security, as well as pleasure, from association 
 with others. There is so much undeniable truth in 
 this doctrine that we ought to beware of contradicting 
 it. It is a vulgar error to suppose that Christians 
 are taught to make friends with mammon ; but it is 
 assuredly good policy for our creed to make friends 
 with evolution. We must be ready to see the hand 
 of the Creator in this primal appetitive force, or we 
 shall be obliged to put a great deal of creation out 
 of the hand of our God. What the Bible teaches is 
 that there was always something in man, more or 
 less developed, which was intended to control 
 appetite and self-assertion ; that temptation is the 
 great moral process to which men have been 
 subjected, and the invariable condition of spiritual 
 progress ; that the Creator gives to man the desires 
 of the flesh, in order that he may learn to rule them
 
 xvni The Moral Use of Money 253 
 
 with the sense of duty and the affections of the 
 Spirit. It may be admitted that human beings, in 
 the consciousness of their weakness, do wisely when 
 they shun temptation, and put it so far as they 
 can out of the way of the weak ; this is the reason- 
 able action of that self-distrust which we ought to 
 cherish. But the God who is training us will not 
 let temptation be put away from us ; and the Bible 
 has not taught us to look for progress through the 
 exclusion of temptation. We pathetically plead with 
 God that He knows us to be set in the midst of so 
 many and great dangers that by reason of the frailty 
 of our nature we cannot always stand upright ; but, 
 knowing this, God sets us in the midst of the 
 dangers, and we must believe that He sees it to be 
 better for us that we should be tempted and fall, than 
 that we should not be tempted. But His will is 
 that we should be tempted and not fall ; and this is 
 the issue upon which we should set our minds and 
 our hopes. 
 
 We recognise, then, in money, in the owning of 
 little or much, an extremely serious instrument of 
 temptation. It may cause us to fall, it may do us 
 harm, and we may do harm with it. What is our 
 Lord's counsel with regard to it ? Not that this 
 occasion of evil should be destroyed ; not that each 
 should for himself refuse to take it, but that we 
 should make friends by means of it. 
 
 It is God's will that men should be friends 
 together ; so the Son of God reports of His Father's 
 mind. Yes, the God who made money to tempt 
 men, wills that they should make friends of each 
 other. Across all the jealousies and strifes and hatreds
 
 254 Tke Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 and mutual injuries which have seemed so natural to 
 men, this higher law has at all times been felt and 
 even discerned. The divisions have been the more 
 superficial ; the uniting forces have been the deeper 
 and more permanent. Every man, it has been 
 acknowledged, ought to be a friend to every man. 
 There is something wrong when men quarrel and 
 try to harm each other. The true Maker of men 
 has willed, and continues to will, that they should 
 not be enemies, that they should not be indifferent 
 to each other, that they should be friends. All the 
 natural occasions of mutual assistance, all the reasons 
 for combination, all the gratification that one is able 
 to afford to another these are indications and 
 works of that higher purpose which designs that men 
 should be drawn together by ties of sincere goodwill 
 and desire of each other's welfare. Before Christ 
 came, the chosen people had been hearing a voice 
 saying to them, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself. This old commandment was issued again 
 as new by Jesus to His disciples ; for they were to 
 love one another as He had loved them ; their love was 
 to be an imitation of the love which the Heavenly 
 Father had shown in Christ, a response to that love, 
 a fruit of it. Jesus said to His disciples, Love not 
 your friends only, but your enemies also ; love them 
 whilst they are in the act of injuring you. The 
 purpose of the Creator of mankind was to be fulfilled 
 by a universal goodwill between man and man, and 
 for this end a persistent Divine influence was to work 
 in men's hearts, which would not suffer itself to be 
 quenched by any ingratitude or malice, but would 
 resolutely set itself to conquer evil with good. If
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 255 
 
 friends were to be made by the use of money, it was 
 because to make friends was to be the aim of all 
 communications between man and man, because 
 every man was intended to feel as a friend towards 
 his neighbour, and to desire that his ^neighbour should 
 feel as a friend towards him. Only through the 
 relation of men to God, and of men to each other 
 in God, is human life in any of its parts to be 
 thoroughly understood. 
 
 But it may be said that to make friends was not 
 the final object set by the Lord before His hearers, 
 but to obtain admission into the eternal tabernacles. 
 According to the parable, if the dishonest steward 
 tried to put certain persons under an obligation to 
 him, it was with a view to his own advantage. It 
 cannot be denied that our Lord's precept might with 
 some plausibility be thus interpreted Give money 
 freely to pious persons, that you may win the reward 
 of going with them to heaven. Most of us would 
 not willingly, I think, lower the Lord's precept to 
 such a sense as this. We have learnt to regard the 
 habit of giving to the Church and of doling out 
 alms for the sake of gaining an entrance into abodes 
 of bliss after death as an unworthy kind of religion. 
 What St. Paul would have thought of it we may 
 infer from the vehement protest, " If I bestow all my 
 goods to feed the poor, but have not love, it profiteth 
 me nothing." Yes, and what Christ would have 
 thought of it may be inferred from another parable 
 of His, with which He enforced another lesson. His 
 eager disciple, Simon Peter, having heard Him speak 
 with unusual emphasis of the hindrance which riches 
 put in the way of those who might have followed
 
 256 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 Him, reminded his Master, " Lo, we have left all and 
 followed Thee: what shall we have therefore?" 
 And this claim of reward grieved the Lord Jesus. 
 All genuine surrender, He replied, would be richly 
 rewarded ; but there might be apparent surrender 
 which would not win God's favour. * There were 
 first that might be put last. And the disciple who 
 should plead " I have sacrificed much more than 
 most men, and hope I may be proportionately 
 rewarded," would find himself rebuffed. The Divine 
 rewards were not to be given according to any 
 external scale of labour or surrender, but would pour 
 confusion upon such measurement. We shall not 
 readily believe, therefore, that our Lord taught His 
 disciples to give largely for the sake of securing 
 happiness after death. 
 
 It seems probable, certainly, that our Lord was 
 referring to what might happen after death. If the 
 old reading " When ye fail " had held its ground, the 
 failing would be taken as a matter of course to mean 
 disappearance from this life. And the failing of the 
 mammon may be most naturally supposed to occur 
 at the moment of death. There are other sayings 
 of our Lord which point in this direction : To the 
 rich man who planned the comfortable enjoyment of 
 his riches " God said, Thou foolish one, this night is 
 thy soul required of thee ; and the things which thou 
 hast prepared, whose shall they be ? " " When thou 
 makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, 
 the blind : and thou shalt be blessed ; because they 
 have not wherewith to recompense thee : for thou 
 shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the 
 just." " If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou
 
 xvm The Moral Use of Money 257 
 
 hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
 treasure in heaven." I admit, therefore, that in these 
 words " that, when it shall fail, they may receive you 
 into the eternal tabernacles," we shall reasonably 
 read a promise of reward after death. What I 
 would urge is that we must understand the promised 
 reward in the light of our Lord's teaching concern- 
 ing service and recompense, and that the emphasis 
 of the precept is upon the making of friends. A 
 faithful administration of possessions as a trust is 
 what Christ demands, and He indicates a higher gift 
 which will reward proved faithfulness. " If ye have 
 not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who 
 will commit to your trust the true riches ? And if 
 ye have not been faithful in that which is another's, 
 who will give you that which is your own ? " This 
 higher endowment, which is much, is true or genuine, 
 is your own, must be spiritual treasure ; it must con- 
 sist in knowledge of God, in godly affections, in pure 
 fellowship, in worthy joy. And it is not our Lord's 
 custom to speak of such treasure as belonging 
 exclusively to the life after death. Spiritual endow- 
 ment is not withheld from men in this life ; the 
 kingdom of heaven was for this world as well as for 
 the next. We should not therefore be departing 
 from the characteristic method of Christ's teaching 
 if we were to adopt an interpretation of His precept 
 which understands Him as saying, " Use the money 
 which God gives you for Him, not for yourselves, 
 and it will bring in friends who will not merely give 
 you the temporary refuge which the cast-off servant 
 sought, but will receive you in your hours of weak- 
 ness and sorrow into their very heart of hearts, will 
 s
 
 258 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 bear you with them when they are kneeling in the 
 presence of their Father." Whatever Christ promises 
 for the future life has a foretaste possible in this life. 
 " Make to yourselves friends," Christ says, " with 
 whom you may have the fellowship of the higher 
 world ; friends to whom your relations will be not of 
 a worldly but a heavenly kind. And use money, 
 which may be so easily misused, to knit such friend- 
 ships." 
 
 But how this is to be done, by what use or uses 
 of money human friendship of the nobler kind is to 
 be created, our Lord left it to His hearers in that 
 generation, and in the generations which have followed, 
 to find out. And the art which so long ago He bade 
 men learn proves to be a much more difficult one 
 than any one supposes it to be until he gives his mind 
 to it. The little progress that has been made in it 
 may be due in part to the entirely inadequate 
 appreciation of its difficulty which has prevailed up 
 to the present day. When we, look back through the 
 ages of Church history, we perceive what we may call 
 a simple but unreflecting acceptance of the New 
 Testament teaching on this subject. Preachers have 
 recognised the dangers to which money exposes the 
 possessor of it ; they have glorified the surrender of 
 it ; the general strain of their teaching has been, 
 " Give to the poor ; give to the Church ; in either 
 case you will be giving to God, and God will amply 
 repay you for the gift." For special societies, like 
 those of the religious orders, the entire renunciation 
 of personal property has been thought a highly 
 Christian rule. Some speculators, as in the Utopia of 
 which I have reminded you, have made the universal
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 259 
 
 abolition of personal property an object of aspiration. 
 In our own day more study has been given to the 
 Christian use of money than ever before. The 
 penetrating investigations of economists had suc- 
 ceeded in dispersing what might be called universal 
 errors on purely economic questions ; and those who 
 desired that, from a moral and Christian point of 
 view, money should be well applied, have perceived 
 that the study of processes and effects was very 
 necessary for their purpose also, and that common 
 opinion and practice were at least seriously impeached 
 by what study began to bring to light. People are 
 asking what good can be done by great wealth an 
 interesting and important question ; but many who 
 are not wealthy are more exercised by the question 
 what is their own duty with regard to money than 
 by solicitude about the duty of the great plutocrats. 
 For, indeed, no one can touch the matter closely and 
 sincerely without perceiving that there are problems, 
 as there is duty, for those who have little, no less than 
 for those who have much, for those who have the 
 hundreds a year, no less than for those who have 
 the hundreds of thousands. And this direction of 
 anxious thought I take to be an evidence that the 
 Spirit of Christ is giving a somewhat new impulse to 
 the minds of men in this our day ; and I have hoped 
 that on this Quinquagesima, or Charity Sunday, we 
 might usefully look for the great principles and aims 
 by which we may see our Master guiding us towards 
 the right employment of our means. 
 
 That our money is not our own, but is entrusted 
 to us for the chief purpose of making friends in the 
 kingdom of heaven, we have heard Christ teaching us.
 
 260 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 It was inevitable that hearers of Christ and readers 
 of the Gospels should assume the obvious way of 
 making friends by means of money to be the giving 
 of it to the poor. No one can listen reverently to 
 Christ without taking the duty of giving to the poor 
 into his heart as one of the most solemn of obligations. 
 But the first thing we have learnt from the study of 
 beneficence is that to give to the poor is very likely 
 to do them harm. It would be a faithless wish 
 but how one is tempted to wish that this knowledge 
 had been kept from us ! It would have been so 
 simple to give, and go on giving. There would have 
 been no problem ; sincere Christians would have 
 known what to do, faithful preachers of the Gospel 
 would have known what to urge. Undoubtedly 
 thoughtful persons have been restrained from free 
 giving by a prevision of the harm it would do, before 
 these days ; but it is wonderful how little recognition 
 there was in former times of a fact of experience, 
 a connexion of cause and effect, which has been so 
 clear to many of us now. Even now the knowledge 
 is very unwillingly received, and there are those who 
 will insist that it must be right to give to the needy, 
 and that it is the duty of the Christian to obey the 
 commands of Christ without regard to consequences ; 
 and if you urge that it can hardly be Christian 
 wisdom to shut your eyes, and that you have only to 
 look round the corner or into next week to see the 
 results of your giving, they will perhaps treat you as 
 the doctrinaire devotee of an inhuman science. They 
 ought to know better. The truest friends of the poor, 
 the men and the women who have given up the most 
 of their lives to the considering and helping of them,
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 261 
 
 are those who will entreat you to refrain from 
 attempts to help them which experience proves to be 
 weakening and injurious. It is a most Christian and 
 human regard for the poor that forbids free giving, 
 and that would look with dismay upon the distribution 
 of thousands and millions even if it were in bread 
 and coals and clothing amongst the neediest of the 
 population. Nor is the giving of alms a sure way of 
 making true friends. I have myself known givers of 
 alms to be spoken of very disrespectfully by those 
 who have taken advantage of their benevolence or 
 misguided sense of duty. So that we find ourselves 
 stopped from doing what Christian instinct and the 
 words of Christ would first prompt us to do. No 
 considerable portion of the riches of the world could 
 be advantageously laid out in adding directly to the 
 comforts of the poorest As much as we can venture 
 with our eyes open so to apply ought of course to be 
 given with joy, and nothing ought to put a limit to 
 almsgiving except the real interest of the poor. It 
 would be a shame indeed that in this country and 
 this age our almsgiving should be limited in amount 
 by anything else. 
 
 But the largest amount of almsgiving that a 
 regard for the poor could sanction will leave the bulk 
 of our means still in our hands. And we should 
 like to take the precept of Christ as referring to more 
 than a small percentage of what we have. We are 
 accustomed to think ourselves bound to make gifts, 
 not only to the needy, but to the Church and to the 
 general interests of the community. If we speak of 
 anything as given to God, we do not mean to imply 
 that it is not also given to our fellow-men. And
 
 262 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 though the gifts to which I refer are not intended to 
 relieve destitution, it is almost always assumed more 
 or less distinctly that they have in view the advantage 
 of the poorer and less-favoured classes. A far larger 
 amount is given, and rightly given, to public objects 
 than is expended in the direct relief of the poor. 
 May we not say that those who use money in such 
 ways are making friends by means of it, and are so 
 fulfilling the Lord's precept? They are acting as 
 themselves friends to their neighbours and fellow- 
 countrymen, and they assuredly succeed in winning 
 a great deal of friendly feeling in return. Indeed, 
 the general appreciation of munificence is so ready 
 and fervent, that large giving might have been 
 expected to be more attractive to members of our 
 wealthy class than it actually has been. There are 
 some social reformers who, by taxation or otherwise, 
 would extinguish rich men and prevent them from 
 existing. They could not easily persuade us that the 
 result would be a gain to the' community, or find a 
 way of accomplishing it which would not be disastrous 
 to an industrial commonwealth. But the wisdom of 
 making friends by applying their wealth in some 
 visible way to the service of the public and diverting 
 a substantial portion of it from themselves, will 
 perhaps be brought home increasingly in the im- 
 mediate future to our rich men and women. The 
 preachers of Christ may tell their fellow-Christians 
 that in so doing they will not only be acting prudently, 
 but will be fulfilling their Lord's command. And 
 though munificence is for the rich, and great wealth 
 has in a special degree to excuse and justify itself, 
 and the task of considering how to appropriate
 
 xvni The Moral Use of Money 263 
 
 thousands and hundreds of thousands is a burden 
 which may help the less rich to be content with their 
 lot, we are none of us exempt from the duty of 
 thinking how with some portion of our means we 
 may best serve the higher interests of mankind. For 
 we are daily learning what may be done by combina- 
 tion. And what could more fitly be one of the 
 dominant social thoughts of a Christian democracy 
 than to be always considering by what express 
 efforts of the few and of the many together the 
 highest well-being of the community and of mankind 
 may be most effectively promoted ? 
 
 But let us suppose that Christians in general, 
 after giving generously to religion, to education, to 
 public art, to the health and recreation of the people, 
 to social fellowship, continue to use the larger part 
 of what they have in private expenditure. Must we 
 hold that in that proportion they are disregarding 
 the law of Christ? that they are assuming them- 
 selves to be absolute owners and not stewards, and 
 are not compelling the mammon of unrighteousness 
 into the service of true friendship ? I would rather 
 believe that the common instincts and customs and 
 conventions of mankind have more of the will of 
 God in them than such a conclusion would imply. 
 Let him who sees his way to it lay down the law 
 about expenditure in positive regulations for loyal 
 Christians. A Count Tolstoi, who himself walks in 
 the way which he marks out, is entitled to sym- 
 pathetic respect, and such devotion cannot fail to be 
 a beneficial testimony. But the impulses and habits 
 which have brought the races of men up to their 
 present level must not be hastily assumed to be
 
 264 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 altogether evil ; and those who find themselves 
 unable to frame a scheme of life to supplant them 
 are thereby warned to make the best rather than the 
 worst of them. We may be too hard on the money- 
 making and the money-spending which constitute 
 shall I say? the brute stuff of the world's life. 
 Look at them without hatred, and you will admit 
 that they have an immense effect in the way of 
 making friends. What a significant thing it is that 
 every operation of trade, every industrial compact, 
 so far as it is free, implies the advantage of both the 
 parties to it ! The excessive laudation of trade as 
 sure to establish the peace of the world and the 
 universal friendship of men, which expressed the 
 hopes of our great free-traders, may have been dis- 
 credited. A great deal of evil, including wars, must 
 be put down to the account of trade or traders ; but 
 so must, undeniably, a great deal of good, and in 
 particular an immeasurable development of friendly 
 relations and friendly sentiments amongst men. 
 And how would it be if all money - making and 
 money-spending were simply honest ; if there were 
 no fraud, no overreaching ; if even bare legal just- 
 ness of dealing were observed ; if men knew that 
 in matters of business they could trust one another ? 
 Think of the occasions of intercourse that are created 
 by pecuniary transactions, of the opportunity which 
 they afford for the growth of human sentiments, of 
 the multitudinous crossing of lines of demarcation 
 which they involve. But when we suppose it to be 
 a loyal Christian who is making money and spend- 
 ing it, we must credit him with more than a shrink- 
 ing from fraud. Let him be a clever energetic man
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 265 
 
 of business, liking with the hereditary human in- 
 stinct to see the profits of his talent and industry, 
 going in general by the haggling of the market, not 
 imagining that he can escape out of the range of 
 competition ; let him allow himself to be drawn on 
 by the traditional custom of expenditure, spending 
 more freely as he grows richer upon the ordinary 
 objects. But he will never have anything to cjo 
 with any man without the Christian feeling that he 
 ought to be friends with him ; he will shrink not 
 only from being but even from seeming to be 
 unkind or ungenerous ; he will be possessed by the 
 continual desire that nothing which passes between 
 him and another in buying and selling may have a 
 tendency to make Christian brotherhood between 
 them impossible. As a matter of fact, one who in 
 spending money or making it creates an impression 
 on the minds of those around him that he is always 
 honourable, always liberal, well on his guard against 
 being cheated, but not suspicious, not in the least 
 purse - proud though he may be rich, knowing the 
 superiority of man to gold, a master of mammon 
 and not its slave such a one does win confidence, 
 esteem, affection, does make friends, more than if 
 he kept for himself the bare necessaries of life and 
 got rid of the rest of his means in gifts. 
 
 God forbid that I should be one of the preachers 
 who may justly be reproached with making the law 
 of Christ a leaden flexible rule, to fit it to the actual 
 worldly lives of men. What demand indeed can be 
 more exacting than that men living in the world, 
 getting and spending, should cherish an altogether 
 unworldly mind ? It is in truth a weaker and less
 
 266 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 arduous advocacy of Christian morality to assume 
 that it is to be followed by a few who can break 
 away from the world and lead exceptional lives, 
 rather than that it is the law for all practical pro- 
 gressive human life. If we accept Jesus Christ as 
 the Father's Son, who reveals to us the mind of the 
 Maker of the world, we must hold that His com- 
 mandments can be obeyed by all to the world's 
 advantage, and are equally binding on all who pro- 
 fess to believe in Him. If He has declared that 
 money is a trust, and that it is to be used for making 
 friends, the preacher of Christ must testify to every 
 man, whether he has much or little, however he may 
 be getting or have got it, that what he has is not his 
 own, and that he is responsible for giving and spending 
 it in such ways as to win esteem and confidence and 
 goodwill. Entire giving away, absolute renunciation, 
 is the ideal Christian mind for every one who has 
 and spends, and until a Christian attains to this he 
 has still to pray and strive: If he quails before 
 such a demand, the Gospel offers that mind to him 
 as an emancipation and a happiness, and promises 
 the Spirit of God to create it in him. To be in 
 bondage to mammon is bad for a man ; to exchange 
 bondage to mammon for bondage to God is the only 
 way to escape out of an evil condition, and is per- 
 fect freedom. " Blessed are the poor in spirit " ; 
 happy are they who inwardly divest themselves of 
 possessions, and could bear without murmuring the 
 loss of them. 
 
 How such a law of inward renunciation would 
 operate on outward life, no moralist, no theological 
 casuist, is competent to pronounce beforehand.
 
 xvin The Moral Use of Money 267 
 
 Every one can see that it would quickly reform 
 away many of the disgraces, most of the insincerities, 
 of ordinary human conduct. But the Divine Spirit 
 has reserved to Himself the ultimate direction of 
 practice. It is only by the study of circumstances 
 and by experiment that the way of realising the 
 will of God is to be found out. Different persons 
 will be led to act in different ways, and wisdom will 
 be justified by her children. It would be interesting 
 to see how the principle of stewardship, the law of 
 friend - making, more thoroughly accepted and 
 followed, would tell upon our social system. There 
 would be cases, as there are now, more, probably, 
 than there are now, of total abandonment of posses- 
 sions ; not a more difficult form of obedience, but 
 requiring more enterprise, and such as we call more 
 heroic. We have the examples of the Apostles 
 before us. " Lo, we," said St. Peter to his Master, 
 " have left all and followed Thee." They had made 
 the renunciation first in heart and mind, and then it 
 had seemed right for them to carry it out straight 
 into visible act. They left their boats and nets and 
 homes, and went after the Master who attracted 
 them. They had one great aim and one great 
 reward. They sought to make a friend, and they 
 gained a Friend. " Ye are My friends," said the Lord 
 Jesus. And an apostle even greater than the 
 Twelve tells us that he had gladly suffered the loss 
 of all things that he might gain Christ. Our 
 Church has taught us in its collects to regard the 
 Apostles as our leaders, and to set their renunciation 
 as an example before us. Let us keep the same 
 goal in view as they did. The precept of Christ
 
 268 The Moral Use of Money xvm 
 
 will not be altered in its bearing, and it may obtain 
 greater force over our hearts, if we change it slightly 
 and read, " Make to yourselves a Friend by means 
 of the mammon of unrighteousness ; that, when it 
 shall fail, He may receive you into the eternal 
 tabernacles."
 
 XIX 
 PEACE AND WAR 1 
 
 " If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men." 
 ROMANS xii. 18. 
 
 THERE is a line in the Faery Queen in which 
 Spenser notes the unshrinking resolution with which 
 loving pity faces darkness, filth, and foul smells, in 
 setting itself to rescue a half-dead captive out of a 
 dungeon. " Entire affection," he says, " hateth nicer 
 hands " hands, that is, too nice or fastidious to put 
 themselves to such work. Similarly, we are insisting 
 in some of these lectures, whole-hearted Christianity 
 hateth nicer hands. There have been persons, even 
 divines of high reputation, to whom war has seemed 
 too repulsive a fact for Christianity to have anything 
 to do with. They have regarded wars between 
 nations as inevitable ; they have not been able to 
 understand how the course of the world could dis- 
 pense with them ; but war is so dreadful to Christian 
 feeling, that they have concluded that the only thing 
 for religion to do is to pass by on the other side. 
 To us the spirit of Christ is bearing witness that our 
 faith must not pass anything by on the other side. 
 
 1 Preached in Lent 1895, as part of a Course of Sermons organised 
 by the London Branch of the Christian Social Union.
 
 270 Peace and War xix 
 
 The worst and most impracticable things in the 
 world are those which belief in Christ is specially 
 called to affront and to attack. We have no right 
 to turn away from blood and carnage, or to admit 
 that, if war is wrong from the Christian point of view, 
 it is to be allowed to go on. And though it may 
 seem honourable to the gospel to affirm that its 
 morality is peremptory and will have nothing to do 
 with compromises, we can see that the method of 
 Christ in His ruling of the world does not disdain 
 the partial remedying of evils, the gradual improve- 
 ment of human society. 
 
 I should be making but a futile use of the oppor- 
 tunity given me to-day if I were to content myself 
 with repeating Christian commonplaces about peace 
 on earth and good-will amongst men. It is the wish, 
 I am sure, of those who have organised these lectures 
 that the preachers should in all practical questions 
 come to the point. It is true that international 
 relations belong to " high politics " ; but in a demo- 
 cratic age those who are but units of the population 
 cannot entirely divest themselves of responsibility, 
 and may perhaps exercise some influence, even with 
 regard to matters that must be practically dealt with 
 by experts of administration. We are warranted in 
 assuming that international peace is not only a 
 Divine ideal, commending itself to all the good 
 aspirations of mankind, but also a proper object of 
 the efforts of statesmen and the policy of govern- 
 ments. During centuries of almost unceasing war 
 between the nations, all who have gone to church 
 have been bidden to pray that it may please God 
 to give to all nations unity, peace, and concord.
 
 xix Peace and War 271 
 
 But the Christian Church has not in old time done 
 much has hardly even laboured with conscious 
 endeavour to prevent wars from occurring. George 
 Fox and his followers have made protests, with a 
 sincerity which they have attested by voluntary 
 sacrifices, against the causing of bodily pain to any 
 one either by individuals or by nations, as an act 
 altogether forbidden to Christians ; but the under- 
 standing of Christ's precepts in the letter is mis- 
 chievously confusing to the Christian conscience, and 
 it is doubtful whether such repudiations as those 
 of the Society of Friends and of Count Tolstoi 
 have not done more to discourage than to stimulate 
 intelligent and general efforts to avoid war. In 
 our own age, however, many causes have been co- 
 operating to awaken the conscience of Christendom 
 on this question, and to set people thinking how peace 
 between nations may best be preserved. Our eyes 
 have been in some degree opened to the kingdom of 
 heaven as a living reality, and we have been led to 
 see that this spiritual kingdom claims all the earth, 
 with its kings and its nations, and all provinces of 
 human life, for its own ; and it is evident that when 
 two nations are fighting with each other they are 
 breaking the pax c&lestis, and that one of them 
 certainly, if not both, has been showing disloyalty 
 to its heavenly Lord. The idea of the Catholic 
 Church has at the same time begun to shine with 
 more of steady and attractive light before the minds 
 of all Christians ; and the song has a new music to 
 our ears in which the four living creatures and the 
 four-and-twenty elders pay homage to the Lamb, 
 saying, " Worthy art Thou to take the book " the
 
 272 Peace and War xix 
 
 book of destiny " and to open the seals thereof : for 
 Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with 
 Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, 
 and nation, and madest them to be unto our God 
 a kingdom and priests ; and they reign upon the 
 earth." And then the immense increase of inter- 
 course and the growing complexity of interests 
 between the different countries on the face of the 
 globe make war more unnatural and more ruinous : 
 whilst the development of the machinery of destruc- 
 tion causes the imagination to quail before the terrors 
 of the battle-field and the siege. So that whilst the 
 childish doctrine that Christians ought never to 
 consent to go to war at all takes no hold of men's 
 minds, many earnest persons are much occupied 
 with anxious thought as to the ways in which war 
 might be superseded, or the chances of its occurring 
 be diminished, or its horrors, if it should occur, be 
 mitigated. 
 
 The suggestion that nations should be persuaded 
 to contract together for a proportional reduction of 
 their armaments does not seem to be entitled to 
 much serious consideration. But the movement in 
 favour of referring differences between nations, such 
 as have so often ended in war, to impartial arbitra- 
 tion, is undoubtedly what we call a practical one. 
 The method of arbitration has been actually tried 
 with success ; and it is admitted by the most un- 
 romantic statesmen that there is promise in it for 
 the future. Apart from the particular cases in which 
 irritating and threatening differences have already 
 been thus settled, the very fact of nations submitting 
 their claims to what they hope will be just judgment,
 
 xix Peace and War 273 
 
 and then acquiescing in any concessions which the 
 judgment imposes upon them, is likely to exercise a 
 very important moral influence. And this submit- 
 ting of differences to independent judgment is the 
 line which the historic progress of peace in the world 
 has hitherto taken. The savage way of settling 
 quarrels is to fight them out, till the weaker is killed 
 or has had enough. The interest of the community, 
 as soon as a community of the most elementary kind 
 has existed, has always sought to restrain the free 
 indulgence of personal anger, and with that view the 
 ruling power has undertaken to see any complainant 
 righted and to punish the wrong-doer. The ruling 
 power forbids the members of the community to 
 avenge themselves ; it pronounces judgment, and 
 enforces its judgment upon all the parties concerned. 
 And so peace is preserved, in a greater or less degree, 
 in a tribe or a nation. Not only are individuals thus 
 kept from trying what one can do to injure another, 
 but combinations of persons, sometimes embracing 
 large numbers, bring questions of right and wrong 
 into the courts, and submit to the judicial settlement 
 of them. It has been easy to ask, Why should not 
 nations, which are large combinations of persons, 
 have their differences similarly adjusted ? And the 
 answer has unfortunately been equally obvious. 
 Nations are not subject to a ruling power. If Europe 
 were divided into a hundred small countries, it might 
 be possible to establish a European federal govern- 
 ment, with an adequate force to maintain peace 
 amongst the federated States. But, as things now 
 are and tend to be, we cannot even imagine a central 
 European force that would undertake to treat say 
 T
 
 274 Peace and War xix 
 
 France and Germany as subjects, and to prevent 
 them from fighting. And we are obliged to admit 
 that the internal peace of communities would have 
 had a poor chance if it had depended on voluntary 
 submission to arbitration. 
 
 With regard to the apparent hesitation on the 
 part of the United States to act on the judgment 
 given by the Court of Arbitrators in a recent con- 
 troversy, it is impossible that the American people 
 could be guilty of such treason to the cause of peace, 
 and so dishonour themselves, as definitely to repudiate 
 the obligation which they have incurred. But the 
 very hesitation is greatly to be deplored. 
 
 Whilst, then, the lovers of peace will do all that 
 they can to promote the international use of arbitra- 
 tion in particular cases, and to establish such a 
 custom of submitting disputed points to arbitration 
 as may have some constraining moral influence over 
 statesmen and people, it is idle to hope for any 
 such success in these endeavours as will warrant a 
 great Power in disarming. When national safety 
 and national honour are at stake, it will not do to 
 trust unreservedly to the kindness and unselfishness 
 of other nations. Arbitration may do mankind the 
 great service of preventing some wars, but no sensible 
 person will persuade himself that it lies in arbitration 
 to abolish war. There are questions which no Eng- 
 lish statesman would think of referring to arbitra- 
 tion, unless he meant to surrender altogether his 
 country's independence, and to make England the 
 vassal of some Power or Powers outside itself. Our 
 occupation of Egypt is a living example of such a 
 question. Frenchmen, it is said, will never be heartily
 
 xix Peace and War 275 
 
 friendly to us so long as we retain our control of 
 Egypt. I am afraid there is truth in this statement, 
 and it is a serious one for us to keep in mind. But 
 we cannot imagine any earthly judge or jury to whom 
 we could be expected to submit the simple question 
 whether we are to retire from Egypt or not. It 
 would be equivalent to saying to the court, "You 
 must undertake to govern Egypt, and the British 
 empire, and the world." For there is a second 
 question which would require an immediate answer, 
 " What is to happen in Egypt, not to speak of other 
 parts of the world, if we withdraw ? " 
 
 But my business in this place is to ask what our 
 Christianity prescribes with regard to international 
 peace ; and the direct concern of our faith in Christ 
 is not so much with expedients as with tempers and 
 affections. And the properly Christian spirit, if it 
 responds to the heavenly voice which is bidding it 
 claim public affairs as one sphere of its duty, cannot 
 fail to be a powerful influence in the promotion of 
 international peace. 
 
 Magnanimity seems to be the name that will 
 best describe the temper proper to a great Christian 
 nation in its dealings with other nations. A state 
 differs from an individual, and national duty is not 
 quite the same as individual duty. But it is a great 
 point to recognise that there is such a thing as duty 
 towards a neighbour nation. To the Christian eye, 
 not only are men of all races members of the 
 universal human race, but the nations are under one 
 heavenly law, and each one has its place and its 
 calling in the great Divine economy. As regards 
 sacred precepts of policy, we are at a disadvantage
 
 276 Peace and War xix 
 
 from the fact that the New Testament age was not 
 an age of independent nations, but of an empire 
 with subject provinces ; and every precept of Christ 
 and His Apostles possesses the reality and life of 
 being meant for those to whom it was first addressed. 
 The New Testament is the book of the Catholic 
 Church, of redeemed mankind. But the New Testa- 
 ment is supplemented by the Old, which is the book 
 of a nation. And even in the New Testament there 
 is enough to make nations honourable and sacred to 
 those who see, as we do, that God is at this time 
 constructing the world out of them. I must take 
 this for granted, and I will ask, Have we in England, 
 we English Christians, acquired thoroughly the habit 
 of honouring the nations with which we stand side 
 by side in the world ? Do we always bear in mind 
 that they are entitled to our respect, to our good 
 will, to our friendly consideration, to a favourable 
 construction of their sentiments ? Do we feel it to 
 be wrong, an act to be ashamed of, a violation of 
 God's law, though there may be no human tribunal 
 to punish it, that one Power should behave unjustly 
 or offensively to another Power ? 
 
 There are those who persuade themselves that 
 wars are the wanton work of kings and diplomatists, 
 -and that if we could only get the populations con- 
 sulted before coming to blows, there would to a 
 certainty be an end of war. But most of us do not 
 so read history. A population often has more 
 passion, a hotter sense of outraged pride or interest, 
 less prudence, than sovereigns and ministers of state. 
 And with us in England, there is no great danger 
 of the Government hurrying us into a war which the
 
 xix Peace and War 277 
 
 people would judge to be unnecessary and unjusti- 
 fiable. At all events, a gracious and magnanimous 
 feeling on the part of the general population towards 
 foreign nations would quickly tell on the policy of 
 our Foreign Office : nay, why should we not con- 
 gratulate ourselves on its having told already? For 
 I do believe that in the general mind of England 
 there is more of a desire to act justly, considerately, 
 peaceably, towards all other nations, great and small, 
 than is abroad put to the credit of perfidious Albion. 
 If we venture to think fairly well of ourselves in this 
 respect, let us try earnestly to justify our self-esteem. 
 By our own habitual temper and way of speaking 
 we should let our representatives know that we wish 
 them, not to weaken our fighting force, not to lessen 
 our influence for good in the world, but to refrain 
 carefully from all that an impartial judge would 
 pronounce to be aggressive, insolent, vexatiously 
 exacting, and to make liberal allowance for national 
 susceptibilities. 
 
 I have admitted that, as regards Christian duty, 
 we cannot transfer the principles of conduct straight 
 from the individual to a nation. The Christian law 
 of personal duty is that a man should surrender 
 himself absolutely to the disposal of the heavenly 
 Father, so that by him and through him the Father's 
 will may be done : not as sacrifice is sometimes 
 perversely misunderstood that he should throw 
 himself away, or make himself less serviceable to the 
 Father's purposes than he might be ; but that he 
 should offer himself, the best he is and the best he 
 can make of himself, to the doing of the Father's 
 will. And this we may believe to be also the true
 
 278 Peace and War xix 
 
 principle of a nation's conduct. But an individual 
 may easily be called, in this sacrifice of himself, to 
 give up his life or his property : for a nation, on the 
 other hand while we may refrain from laying down 
 that it can never be conceivably a nation's duty to 
 give up its life it seems to be almost an absolute 
 duty to cherish and defend its life. It is not a selfish 
 feeling in a citizen to rejoice in his country's inde- 
 pendence and greatness. 
 
 And such a feeling will of itself dispose the wise 
 patriot to desire that his nation should cultivate an 
 unaggressive and respectful policy, a policy of good- 
 will and consideration, towards other nations. For 
 a nation may take to itself the encouragement given 
 both under the old covenant and the new to indi- 
 viduals : " He that would love life and see good 
 days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his 
 lips that they speak no guile : and let him turn 
 away from evil and do good ; let him seek peace, and 
 pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the 
 righteous, and His ears unto their supplication ; but 
 the face of the Lord is upon them that do evil." It 
 cannot be hurtful to a nation in the long-run that it 
 should endeavour, at the cost of some self-restraint 
 and of any reasonable concessions, to be on the best 
 possible terms with its neighbours. I am far from 
 advocating a feeble external policy, but before and 
 beneath any duty of going to war and of trying to 
 be victorious in war, the Christian must set, for his 
 country as for himself, the great ideal of peace and 
 good-will amongst men. The Lord, whose slaves we 
 Christians are, is the Prince of Peace. If He forbade 
 us absolutely to strike with the whip or with the
 
 xix Peace and War 279 
 
 sword, to deal death with rifle or artillery, we should 
 be bound to obey Him. When He bids us fight, it 
 must be because the true peace which He loves, and 
 which He came to establish, is to be better attained 
 by fighting than by submitting. Inasmuch as the 
 Son of God is the heavenly Peacemaker, there is a 
 blessing on all who anywhere make peace, and they 
 shall share His name, and be called sons of God. 
 
 But St. Paul's precept admits that the keeping of 
 peace does not depend upon one party only. The 
 most peaceable of men may be forced into a con- 
 tention, into an appeal to the law which may result 
 in bringing serious punishment upon his adversary. 
 And a nation may be forced into war more easily, 
 according to Christian principles, than a single person 
 into a quarrel ; because kings and ministers of state, 
 and all citizens in their degree, are trustees for large 
 and high interests, which it is not within their right 
 to surrender as men may surrender things which 
 are privately theirs. At present there is no way of 
 securely preventing war. That a great nation should 
 make it known that nothing will provoke it into war, 
 and should let its high spirit run down and its 
 weapons of attack and defence grow rusty, is un- 
 questionably the way to invite treatment from other 
 powers which no self-respecting nation could tolerate. 
 If you could imagine England persuaded by blind 
 letter-worshipping Christians to disarm itself, totally 
 or partially, that would be the worst service that 
 could be rendered to the cause of peace. 
 
 We have to reckon upon war as possibly inevitable. 
 I do not enter into argument with those who hold 
 that a Christian man is not allowed in any circum-
 
 280 Peace and War xix 
 
 stances, in a private or a public cause, to lay a finger 
 of force upon a fellow-man. I believe that they 
 entirely misread the New Testament ; but they are 
 few, and almost silent. A far more injurious notion 
 is that of those who assume that war is an unchristian 
 sort of thing, but also that it is a necessity in such a 
 world as this. If it is necessary to go to war, it is 
 not unchristian. Nothing that is necessary is for- 
 bidden by Christ. And if we can enter upon war 
 with a clear conscience, it is foolish to urge that we 
 should disable ourselves beforehand for the conflict. 
 The chance of having to go to war implies to a 
 rational mind our making ourselves ready for war. 
 What can we think of the good sense of those and 
 there are such persons who in the same breath will 
 denounce armaments and demand that our Govern- 
 ment should instantly protect Armenians from the 
 cruelties of Turks and Kurds? It is not for me to 
 express an opinion as to what our armies and ships 
 of war and defences should be, and I do not know 
 that there is any slackness on the part of our people 
 in making such preparations as their responsible 
 advisers tell them are necessary. Every one can 
 understand how important it is to protect our trade 
 and guard our dense population from being starved. 
 But it does not appear to me to be unsuitable that 
 I should appeal to our Christianity as not merely 
 permitting but enjoining us to keep ourselves well 
 armed, and to nourish a courageous spirit. 
 
 I remember being present a good many years ago 
 at a meeting for religious discussion, at which Mr. 
 Henry Richard was invited to plead the cause of 
 peace. Mr. Richard was a good man, who drew to
 
 xix Peace and War 281 
 
 himself the reverent esteem of all who knew him. 
 We listened to him with sincere respect as he dwelt 
 upon the horrors of war, and made appalling calcu- 
 lations of the money spent on armaments. And we 
 were then constrained to ask him what his counsel 
 was with regard to our armies and fleets. He pro- 
 tested rather warmly that he had never maintained 
 that we ought to disarm ourselves altogether. What 
 then ? Did he contend that we were spending four 
 times as much, or twice as much, on armaments 
 as we ought to do? But he disliked being thus 
 questioned, and replied that he was sorry not to meet 
 with more sympathy from his audience. No doubt 
 we ought not to blind ourselves to the wounds and 
 deaths and destruction of property which war causes, 
 nor to the fact that the millions which we spend on 
 our army and navy might be otherwise spent on 
 various good objects. But a nation which spends 
 what it deems necessary, however immense the sum 
 may be, on self-preservation, may rightly ask, " Is not 
 the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? " 
 An accurate description of a field of battle, of a rout, 
 of a siege, of an army wasted by disease, may be 
 painful beyond what we can bear. But it is not 
 amiss to remember that there are other human 
 sufferings which would not form a pleasant picture. 
 These soldiers who have been killed or badly 
 wounded were not otherwise going to live for ever 
 in perfect health. How many of them might not 
 have suffered as much or more before they died, if 
 they had not been victims of war? And the lives 
 of many of them, if they had been prolonged, would 
 not to a certainty have been of great value. Human
 
 282 Peace and War xix 
 
 life is not all golden. We often express without 
 misgivings a deliberate wish that there were not so 
 large a quantity of it upon certain areas as there is. 
 But if we decline to go into uncomfortable com- 
 parative estimates of this kind, the horrors of war 
 and its expensiveness, honestly and sternly faced, 
 may produce another impression upon our minds 
 than that of daunting us. 
 
 If there are any lessons characteristic of Christianity, 
 this is one of them that we are to set the things of 
 the spirit above the things of the flesh. There is no 
 amount of fleshly ease that can be weighed in the 
 scales of Christ against even a low spiritual value. 
 And the honour and consciousness of a nation are 
 spiritual things. It has often been alleged by free 
 critics that the morality of the New Testament is 
 defective in not including patriotism amongst the 
 Christian virtues. But Christianity puts no slight 
 upon the Jewish patriotism, that supreme virtue of 
 the Old Testament, which is # part of our Christian 
 inheritance. If you could bring together under one 
 view all the deaths and wounds that Englishmen have 
 suffered and inflicted in war, and make one colossal 
 addition sum of all the moneys spent on war by 
 English governments from the days of Alfred till now, 
 can we set the pain and the cost for a moment against 
 what England has been and is in the realm of the 
 spirit to her sons ? The truth on which I am insist- 
 ing has been expressed in some vivid sentences by 
 the author of Ecce Homo : " War is frequently de- 
 nounced as unchristian, because it involves circum- 
 stances of horror : and when the ardent champions of 
 some great cause have declared that they would per-
 
 xix Peace and War 283 
 
 severe although it should be necessary to lay waste a 
 continent and exterminate a nation, the resolution is 
 stigmatised as shocking and unchristian. Shocking 
 it may be, but not therefore unchristian" (p. 278). 
 Whilst he condemns religious persecutions as deplor- 
 able mistakes, carried on with much evil passion, he 
 is yet bold to testify "the ostensible object of such 
 horrors was Christian, and the indignation which 
 professedly prompts them is also Christian, and the 
 assumption they involve, that agonies of pain and 
 blood shed in rivers are less evils than the soul spotted 
 and bewildered with sin, is most Christian" (p. 280). 
 I do not see how we can refuse our assent to these 
 statements ; and in days of softness, when an absurd 
 value is set upon human life as mere existence, it 
 must be well that we should steep our minds in such 
 convictions. At the same time, it is a comfort to 
 know that Christian humanity has done something, 
 and may probably do more, to mitigate the horrors 
 of war, as well as to make its occurrence less likely. 
 Under international rules, which it is the interest of 
 all Powers to observe, non-combatants have now a 
 degree of protection which formerly they could not 
 claim ; and to the fighting men war is made by 
 various prescriptions less exasperating than it used to 
 be. Here is a field on which our Christianity is bound 
 to push its influence to the furthest possible point 
 
 Some of those who denounce war would meet the 
 argument that there are spiritual values for which 
 we must be ready to suffer and inflict the pains 
 involved in war by asserting that war necessarily 
 degrades the contending nations by the unspiritual 
 passions which it stimulates and lets loose. I find
 
 284 Peace and War xix 
 
 it alleged, for example, that " the moral deterioration 
 and the depraving of right principle involved in war 
 are much more serious than the visible and immediate 
 results of this abysmal evil." I believe that actual 
 experience calls for some modification of this judg- 
 ment. There is a terrible war, producing hideous 
 slaughter, now going on between China and Japan. 
 It looks as if it were an aggressive war on the part 
 of Japan. But I feel little doubt that the Japanese 
 'people are raised in the moral scale rather than 
 lowered by this war ; that they hate the Chinese less 
 now than they did before the war began ; that the 
 patriotic sentiment inspiring the whole people to make 
 joyful sacrifices for the sake of the safety and aggran- 
 disement of their country is on the whole an elevating 
 one. The most shocking war of my lifetime was the 
 American civil war ; and I do not believe that any 
 American who lived through the war in either Northern 
 or Southern State would admit that the general moral 
 tone of the population was lowered by it. As to the 
 moral effect of the Crimean war I can speak with 
 more knowledge. Some of my hearers may think 
 that I am making myself an apologist for war ; but I 
 am conscious of no other desire than to do justice to 
 the good I have known. It is impossible for those 
 who lived during that war to forget how deeply we 
 were all moved by it ; and every emotion that it 
 stirred, of hope, of anxiety, of awe, of grief, was a 
 nobler one than the habitual feelings of ordinary life. 
 We had no malignant hatred of the enemy. The 
 luxurious class sent out its men in larger proportion 
 than any other class to die and to suffer cruel hard- 
 ships for their country. I was then living and work-
 
 xix Peace and War 285 
 
 ing in Whitechapel, and I had much to do with 
 correspondence between families there and soldiers in 
 the Crimea, and I could not help seeing how humble 
 lives were exalted by the demands and the dangers 
 of heroic service. I had a friend who was with our 
 army as chaplain in the Crimea, and who saw all the 
 miseries of that terrible campaign without the stimulus 
 of being a combatant ; and after his return he told 
 me that, as he reflected on the past, he was sure he 
 had never lived in so good a spiritual atmosphere as 
 that of the English army on those blood-stained 
 heights. Do not suppose me to say that we should 
 do well in going to war for the sake of the moral 
 advantages that we might gain by it ; I have suffi- 
 ciently declared that I count it a sin to bring on a 
 needless war: but I hold myself warranted in believ- 
 ing that, if at any time we felt that as a self-respecting 
 nation we had no alternative but to accept a challenge 
 to battle, we might expect a fine thrill to go through 
 every section of the population, waking up unselfish 
 aspirations, drawing us into mutual sympathy and 
 united effort, and teaching us to value more worthily 
 the glories and blessings of our national heritage. 
 
 As I am asking you to look at the question of 
 international peace and war in the light of reso- 
 lute uncompromising Christian faith, and especially 
 with reference to the personal duty lying upon us as 
 citizens of a Christian country, I do not dwell at any 
 length upon the aspects of war which have presented 
 themselves to historical inquirers, when they have 
 endeavoured to estimate the effects of particular wars 
 upon the nations which have been engaged in them. 
 But if we reject the doctrine that a war has always
 
 286 Peace and War xix 
 
 been sin and wickedness from beginning to end and 
 on both sides, and hold that a nation may be obeying 
 Christ in taking up arms, there may well be some 
 Christian satisfaction in recognising the service which 
 war has been made to render to the progress of man- 
 kind. We rightly desire to see in the history of the 
 world as many signs of a beneficent governing Hand 
 as we can discern. Looking back upon the period 
 which comes within living memory, we find results 
 of primary importance ascribed by political observers 
 to almost every great war of the period. There seem 
 to be knots in human affairs which cannot be untied 
 by negotiation, and which require the violence of war 
 to cut them. I suppose there is no American, even 
 in the Southern States, who does not now recognise 
 that the sufferings and losses of the civil war were a 
 price that it was worth while to pay for the deliver- 
 ance of the continent from slavery, and for the 
 higher and closer unity which binds the several States 
 and their people into one great nation. On the soil 
 of Italy rivers of blood have been shed in our time ; 
 but the result of the carnage has been to change Italy 
 from being a geographical expression into a united 
 nation and an important European Power. As to the 
 terrible war between Germany and France, it is im- 
 possible that Germans can regard it as a baneful and 
 fruitless crime ; whilst even Frenchmen, smarting 
 under the humiliation of their country, have been 
 able to recognise great compensating advantages in 
 the downfall of the Second Empire and in the forcing 
 of wholesome thought into the minds of the French 
 people. Those who value trade highly, as most do 
 of those to whom war is entirely evil and absolutely
 
 xix Peace and War 287 
 
 wrong, will not be able to blind themselves to the 
 good which may at least be occasioned by evil, if 
 victorious Japan should compel the Chinese to open 
 their whole empire freely to foreign trade. This will 
 do the Chinese themselves more good, in the mere 
 maintenance of physical life and well-being, than they 
 will have suffered harm in the slaughter of their 
 worthless armies and the disabling of costly vessels. 
 A war is sharp, but it does not last long, whilst these 
 vast boons go on spreading their influence from year 
 to year and from generation to generation. 
 
 Such historical observations may make us doubtful 
 whether the time has yet come in the counsels of 
 God for the superseding of war, and therefore less 
 willing to risk the honour and greatness of our country 
 on the chance that no foreign Power will ever offer us 
 an insult or do us an injury : but they ought not to 
 persuade statesmen and I do not believe that they 
 would to speculate in war as a means of gaining 
 something for their country and for mankind. I 
 would echo the doctrine of the Quakers, that where 
 duty is clear, the results of doing it are to be left in 
 God's hands. God knows better than we do how His 
 world is to be governed. He must have ways, whether 
 we can imagine them or not, of governing the world 
 without war. He must know how to save a people 
 from being engrossed by money-getting, or surrender- 
 ing themselves to the excitements of frivolity and 
 carnal pleasure, or being turned into sheep by the 
 dull and comfortable routine of a quiet life. And 
 nothing can be clearer than the Christian duty of 
 doing what makes for peace. It can never be right 
 to be insolent, grasping, false to engagements. We
 
 288 Peace and War xix 
 
 ought to be lovers of our country, and it cannot be 
 wrong that a blush of anger should come into the 
 cheek of a Christian citizen if the honour of his nation 
 should be outraged or its rightful interests assailed ; 
 but it Is still more certainly right that the blush 
 should turn itself into one of shame if the country 
 that he loves should be betrayed by its Government 
 into aggressive or justly irritating action, especially 
 towards a weaker state. The ideal bearing of a 
 Christian Power in international relations seems to be 
 that of a high-spirited gentleman of the old time of 
 a person, that is, trained to the use of arms, ready to 
 resent a purposed outrage, but mindful of the obliga- 
 tions of courtesy and honour and social harmony, 
 conscious that his station pledges him to self-restraint 
 and magnanimity, //^willing to wound yet not afraid 
 to strike.
 
 XX 
 
 PUBLIC SPIRIT 1 
 
 " Not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also 
 to the things of others." PHILIPPIANS ii. 4. 
 
 I AM about to speak of Public Spirit as a Christian 
 virtue, included in the comprehensive sum of Christian 
 duty. Before I do so, let me refer to a way of 
 thinking about it which may be thus expressed : 
 " Public Spirit is a civic virtue which has nothing to 
 do with religion. When we study it where it has 
 existed in greatest force, we observe that it is bred, 
 or at least strongly stimulated, by particular circum- 
 stances. It is often made a part of a strictly human 
 and secular morality. It may indeed, especially in 
 the form of patriotism or love of country, be a whole 
 religion in itself. If religion be, according to 
 Matthew Arnold's definition of it, morality touched 
 with emotion, then a patriotism like that of the 
 Greeks of to-day has seriousness enough to be 
 reckoned a religion. But the Greeks, or at least 
 many of the most fervid of them, are not thinking 
 of their duty to God or to Christ when they are giving 
 themselves up for their country." 
 
 1 Preached at St. Edmund's, Lombard Street, in Lent 1897. 
 U
 
 2 go Public Spirit xx 
 
 Well, but suppose we want to urge public spirit 
 as a duty, to say to people, " You ought to have more 
 public spirit than you have," how are we to do it ? 
 It is not enough to tell them that public spirit is 
 bred by particular circumstances. To believe that, 
 and nothing else, about it, seems to make all 
 exhortation foolish. Say to a man, " If you wish 
 to be moral, you will be public -spirited ; for the 
 moralists of highest authority include public spirit in 
 morality," he will not be irrational if something within 
 him replies, " But suppose I do not wish to be 
 moral ! You may tell me that I shall then incur 
 so much disapprobation, or at least fail to win so 
 much admiration ; but I may be able to put up with 
 that disadvantage." 
 
 It is a different thing when we can assert, as 
 the Christian does, a supernatural claim upon us. 
 Morality, when it appeals to no superhuman authority, 
 has to make the most of opinion and interest to 
 back it, for it has nothing to say to the conscience. 
 The conscience has no meaning without a God to 
 whose voice it is an ear. We Christians have nothing 
 to say against morality ; we claim the very best 
 morality, the most refined, and comprehensive, and 
 universal, as ours by right. What we do is to put a 
 foundation under it to give it something to rest 
 upon ; or, to use a better figure, to show and bear 
 witness to the living root from which good human 
 conduct grows. It is not a case of morality on one 
 side and Christianity on the other, but of Christianity 
 beneath and morality built upon it. The morality 
 that chooses to be of this world only may be as 
 good as possible, but to us it wants support and
 
 xx Public Spirit 291 
 
 force ; and Christianity on its part is artificial 
 and worthless if it does not quicken and shape all 
 conduct. 
 
 It is with the Christian principles of life, with the 
 Christian revelation which gives us those principles, 
 that we here, I in the pulpit and you in the church, 
 are properly concerned. Let us look to the New 
 Testament for these principles as they bear on the 
 subject which is to occupy us. 
 
 You will easily recall what supremacy and power 
 the idea of communion had in the first days of the 
 Church. "The multitude of them that believed 
 were of one heart and soul ; and not one of them 
 said that aught of the things which he possessed was 
 his own ; but they had all things common." You 
 remember how this idea is insisted on as the govern- 
 ing principle of life by the Christian teachers, and 
 especially by the chief Christian teacher, St. Paul. 
 The believers were to regard themselves as the many 
 members the various limbs and organs of one 
 body. " We that are strong," said St. Paul, " ought 
 to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please 
 ourselves." We ought : that is, such fellow-help is 
 required of us by the claim which God and Christ 
 make upon us, and by the constitution in which we 
 are set together ; and our God holds us responsible 
 for it. Say that this is religious teaching ; so it is : 
 but what kind of action does it prescribe ? That is 
 the question. It bids every Christian every one 
 who desires or is willing to be reckoned a follower of 
 Christ regard himself, not as an isolated individual, 
 but as a member of a body, bound to fill his own 
 place and do his own work in the interest of the
 
 292 Public Spirit xx 
 
 body as a whole ; it forbids him to say that anything 
 that he has is his own ; it constrains him to look, 
 not only to his own advantage or pleasure, but also 
 to the advantage or pleasure of others ; it calls upon 
 the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak, and 
 not to please themselves. The dispositions thus 
 enjoined cannot but take the form of civic or public 
 spirit, in those Christians who belong to a country and 
 are citizens of a commonwealth. True Christianity, 
 it is evident, will go a long way in furthering social 
 happiness ; it subjects and coerces the individual 
 more inwardly, and therefore more thoroughly, than 
 any secular socialism can do, to the service of the 
 community. 
 
 " Zeal for the public good," wrote Addison two 
 centuries ago, "is the characteristic of a man of 
 honour and a gentleman." An excellent maxim 
 which ought still to be taken to heart by those who 
 hold themselves to be under the obligations of men 
 of honour and gentlemen. But our age is a different 
 one from Addison's. We do not see why other men 
 should not have a zeal for the public good as well as 
 those of the upper class; and we have plenty of 
 evidence that poor men may have as much public 
 spirit as the rich. It is sometimes assumed that, 
 under a democracy, the many will be, more or 
 less excusably, bent upon getting as much as they 
 can of the good things of the country for themselves ; 
 if they are, they will not be unlike the classes which 
 have gone before them ; but democratic movements 
 have always had much more in them than the covet- 
 ing of personal advantage. The largest element 
 in the active democratic spirit has always been
 
 xx Public Spirit 293 
 
 sympathy : and the masses of the people are easily 
 moved by a common generous impulse. What we 
 are now recognising is that zeal for the public good 
 is characteristic of the Christian citizen, whether he 
 be rich or poor, a person of influence or one of the 
 many. 
 
 Patriotism and public spirit do not seem to be 
 quite the same thing. In England there has always 
 been an inexhaustible reserve of patriotism to rely 
 upon in all classes. Englishmen have known at the 
 bottom of their hearts the claim that their country 
 has upon them ; and during Queen Victoria's reign 
 our country has greatly multiplied and strengthened 
 its claims upon the whole people and on every class. 
 When the occasion comes, it will once more find 
 Englishmen ready to make any sacrifices for the 
 safety and the honour of this inviolate land. But 
 in the century now drawing to its close there has 
 been more of individualism to use the modern 
 phrase amongst us than in any other time or place. 
 Circumstances have favoured the struggling of each 
 individual to get on in life ; and it is admitted that 
 the amazing increase of the wealth of the country, 
 and some other important advantages, are in great 
 part due to this freedom and energy of competition. 
 Together with this success of individuals, the senti- 
 ment and assumptions of individualism have become 
 prevalent. People have clung tightly to what they 
 have obtained by energy and adventure and toil. It 
 has been thought that a man has an absolute owner- 
 ship of what he happens to possess, a right to enjoy 
 it himself as he pleases, and to leave it to be enjoyed 
 by others after his death as it may please him to
 
 294 Public Spirit xx 
 
 dictate. It has been assumed to be rather hard 
 upon the individual that he should have to contribute 
 to the public needs. The right of a man to do what 
 he likes with his own has been thought to be at the 
 foundation of society, at the very roots of things ; 
 the right of the country to take from a man for the 
 benefit of the community to be very secondary, and 
 a claim which it has been legitimate to regard with 
 suspicion and hostility. There has been a certain 
 amount of liberal giving ; but it has been treated 
 as something exceptional, and made so much of 
 that one would have thought there would have been 
 more of it for the sake of winning the admiration 
 accorded to it. 
 
 The result of these influences is, that we are 
 behind no country in private wealth and its personal 
 and domestic expenditure, but are behind many 
 countries I rather think, behind all other countries 
 in the scale of what is applied to the service and 
 enjoyment of the community. Now public expenditure 
 is really better, more reasonable and more Christian, 
 than private. If this statement seems doubtful to 
 you, consider it. . Imagine St. Paul, or any other 
 honoured teacher of mankind, visiting two countries. 
 In the one, let us suppose, he finds the private houses 
 modest, personal luxury moderate, but all things 
 belonging to the public edifices, lands, institutions, 
 administrations showing signs of pride and care 
 and free expenditure ; in the other, let us suppose, 
 he finds individuals and families vying with one 
 another in cultivating the pleasures and exhibiting 
 the adornments of life, but whatever is to be held 
 and used in common starved and looked at in a
 
 xx Public Spirit 295 
 
 jealous and grudging spirit. Which of the two 
 nations, think you, would be pronounced to be the 
 wiser and more Christian ? To our forefathers, in 
 this England of ours, the claim of the community 
 was stronger than it has been to Englishmen of 
 recent generations. The magnificent cathedrals, our 
 precious parish churches, the ancient colleges and 
 schools, remain as evidences of what was dedicated 
 to God and the public in ages which had not, I dare- 
 say, the hundredth part of our wealth ; and in those 
 same times the demands made on property and lives 
 for the incessant wars at home and abroad were what 
 we should call ruinous. Even the castles of the great 
 were public fortresses more than private pleasure- 
 houses. 
 
 Those were not democratic ages, as regards forms 
 of government. But in our time, democratic institu- 
 tions seem to be specially successful in calling forth 
 public spirit. Those who travel in the United States 
 tell us of the many proofs of public spirit that 
 America exhibits : in the newest settlements, the 
 places of worship, the schools, the institutes, the 
 libraries, surprise the English visitor by the amount 
 spent upon them. That direction of effort and 
 expenditure is due to the strong hold that the 
 common life and the public interest have upon 
 Americans in general. The voluntary gifts of 
 wealthy Americans are on a splendid scale ; but 
 the rates or taxes levied for public purposes are also 
 on a scale not known in this country. A rate may 
 be a gift, as really as a subscription, from those who 
 agree willingly to impose it upon themselves ; and 
 amongst the members of a self-governing community
 
 296, Public Spirit xx 
 
 a liberal public spirit will show itself in generous 
 rating for the common good. 
 
 There are signs of progress in this direction 
 amongst ourselves. We see something of democratic 
 self-respect stirring in our large populations. Whilst 
 we retain, with universal acquiescence and satisfaction, 
 the forms of our ancient monarchy, and Queen 
 Victoria sits on the throne of Queen Elizabeth, we 
 do not disguise from ourselves what the reality of 
 our Government is. Gradual changes have spread 
 the powers of legislation and administration more 
 and more widely amongst the people. So far, under 
 these changes, our country has prospered. The 
 comforts of life were never so widely diffused, con- 
 tentment and concord never prevailed so universally, 
 as at this time. You will not suppose me to be 
 stating that all is with us now as it should be : what 
 I do affirm is that things are better, in the most 
 important respects, as regards the country in general 
 and all classes in it, than they ever were before. 
 There is a general willingness that legislation should 
 occupy itself with attempts to improve the condition 
 of the classes which most need legislative help. We 
 have every reason, as Englishmen and Englishwomen, 
 to be thankful and to be hopeful. 
 
 In order that things may go better and better in 
 this dear country of ours, we especially want two good 
 things to be given to us in richer measure : that public 
 spirit of which I have been speaking, and intelligence. 
 I have maintained that the true public spirit is 
 essentially a Christian virtue. 
 
 On the one hand, I cannot imagine the Christian 
 consciousness to be strong in any man and by the
 
 xx Public Spirit 297 
 
 Christian consciousness I mean devotion to Christ 
 and thankfulness to the Father without its making 
 him public-spirited. I have reminded you that by 
 the Christian calling every Christian is to regard 
 himself as a member of a body, as having received 
 from God whatever he possesses, and as holding it 
 all in trust for the common good. A man who is 
 arrogant or exclusive, a man of selfish ambition or 
 close class-feeling, has not been mastered by Christian 
 convictions. 
 
 And, on the other hand, I believe that political 
 public spirit will show itself wanting in depth and 
 permanence, unless it is rooted in the religious awe, 
 and sense of brotherhood, and power of sacrifice, 
 which we know as Christian. We want an increase 
 of the Christian public spirit in all classes. Our 
 richer people have nothing like the sense of duty to 
 the public, the communis sensus, which has been 
 shown by the rich in other ages and in other countries. 
 They do not understand how largely they owe what 
 they have inherited or what they have acquired to 
 their nation. They and their property are created 
 by their country by its past, by its laws, by its 
 greatness ; and they owe to their country not only 
 their lives, but the best use they can make of their 
 possessions for their country's good. And as 
 Christians they are bound to regard all that they 
 have as not their own, but as held by them in trust. 
 And the classes that we should not call rich, the 
 working people and those not much above them, 
 these need public spirit also. No doubt the class- 
 feeling amongst the working people, which is 
 admittedly strong, may almost claim to be public
 
 298 Public Spirit xx 
 
 spirit, because they form the bulk of the population, 
 and because the poor need sympathy and help more 
 than the well-to-do. But so far as it remains class- 
 feeling, it has not the full virtue of public spirit, and 
 cannot claim to be that Christian civic feeling by 
 which all the sons of Christian England should be 
 distinguished. We all want a stronger conviction 
 that the general good has a divine claim upon us, 
 upon soul and body, persons and means. We 
 must learn to take a pride and grateful pleasure 
 in the places to which we belong, and which have 
 ministered so largely to our happiness as well as to 
 our existence. It is always honourable to a city 
 when its people show that they care for it, and 
 do not grudge making sacrifices for its credit and 
 advantage. 
 
 And then we want intelligence. That apostolic 
 saying will come into Christian minds, " If any of you 
 lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to 
 all liberally, and upbraideth not." It is important 
 that in trying to serve the public in the Name of 
 Christ, we should have the best aims before our 
 minds, and should pursue them in wise manners. 
 We have one great warning, that we cannot trust 
 for guidance to our sympathetic impulses only. 
 What is more natural for those who hold themselves 
 responsible for their fellow-countrymen and brethren 
 than to wish that public relief should be given freely 
 to the needy, and especially to those who excite our 
 compassion the most ? Many persons are taking for 
 granted that a Christian liberal spirit in a community 
 cannot be better shown than in insisting that the 
 utmost relief now allowed by the law should be given
 
 xx Public Spirit 299 
 
 to the poor, and in helping to get the restrictions 
 imposed by the law abolished. But experience gives 
 a strange rebuff to this desire. All those who have 
 studied the question practically and in the most 
 Christian spirit are convinced that there is no surer 
 way of lowering and injuring the poorest class than 
 that of encouraging them to look to the rates for 
 relief. Wherever relief is given freely, there to a 
 certainty pauperism, with all its degradations, will be 
 promoted. I do not know anything that so forces 
 a Christian to reflect, and pause, and look up as this 
 surprising fact. It obliges us to recognise and keep 
 in mind that it is a higher duty to lift up the 
 character of our poorer and weaker brethren, and to 
 care for their independence and human dignity, than 
 to give them what is needful for the body. We 
 want our population to consist of persons who, down 
 to the very lowest, maintain themselves and those 
 who belong to them in honourable independence; and 
 therefore we must beware of doing anything which 
 experience shows to be hurtful to their self-respect and 
 moral strength. 
 
 We want our population also to consist of 
 temperate persons, and if there are some who see 
 their way confidently as to the best methods of 
 securing universal temperance there are many who 
 feel strongly the need of being guided wisely by 
 experience and knowledge in this important matter. 
 Again, we want our population to be well educated ; 
 and for doing the best that can be done towards this 
 end also, we need similar guidance and readiness to 
 follow it. Who, once more, will doubt that we 
 want a keen and temperate intelligence, as well as
 
 300 Public Spirit xx 
 
 courageous sympathy, for the development of the new 
 conditions of labour in the new epoch on which we 
 have entered ? 
 
 The true social feeling, welcoming light and 
 guidance from above and from around us, that, my 
 Christian brethren, is what should 'be strong in a 
 Christian community. Through that the Spirit of 
 God will work out the divine purposes in this 
 favoured land. Let us open our hearts with awe to 
 His gracious influences ; let us lend ourselves to be 
 instruments and ministers of higher than selfish aims, 
 of nobler interests than those of personal enrichment 
 or ambition ; let us be glad to give each his help in 
 whatever promises to make us a more united, a more 
 intelligent, and a more Christian people.
 
 XXI 
 
 THE NATURE OF JUSTICE: AN EXPOSI- 
 TION ADDRESSED TO WORKING MEN 
 
 IN taking for my subject the nature of justice, I am 
 attempting to deal with a question which may per- 
 haps put some strain upon your attention ; but it is 
 manifestly a very important one, and, whilst in many 
 ways it comes home to us all, it has a special interest 
 for those who have anything to do with industrial 
 operations or with political affairs. We are to ask 
 why it is that any arrangement or mutual dealing 
 between man and man is pronounced to be just or 
 to be contrary to justice. I can understand, indeed, 
 that some may be inclined to say, "Any one can 
 see, without going into the reason why, that some 
 arrangements that prevail now, and some things 
 that are done, are unjust. What we want is that 
 the injustice may be redressed without delay, and 
 that things may be arranged more fairly, so that we 
 may all have our rights." But thinking men find it 
 a great satisfaction to know the reason why ; and 
 whilst there will be always differences of opinion as 
 to what is just, the differences are likely to be aggra-
 
 302 The Nature of Jitstice : xxi 
 
 vated if we are unable to explain what makes any- 
 thing just. It is not enough to go by feeling; there 
 will be different feelings on different sides ; we want 
 to understand, if we can, what justice means. 
 
 There is a very general disposition to catch at 
 the notion of equality as explaining -justice. It has 
 been affirmed that all men are equal, and that per- 
 fect justice would consist in their all having equal 
 advantages. " Why," it is asked, " should one man 
 have more than another ? " But what ground is there 
 for saying that all men are in any sense equal ? 
 The statement seems utterly inconsistent with fact, 
 and I know of no sense in which it can be made 
 out to be true. The person who asks, " Why should 
 one man be rich and another poor when all men 
 are naturally equal ? " might go on to ask, " Why 
 should one man be tall and another short ? Why 
 should one man have better health, better looks, 
 mpre talent, a nicer wife, finer children, more virtuous 
 parents, than another ? " The iruth is that inequality 
 exists everywhere in the world, and that we should 
 be extremely puzzled to make a world upon the 
 principle of all being equal. And it is never equality 
 that we really want You may be struck by the 
 different degrees in which health is distributed 
 amongst men. It pains us to think of the amount 
 of ill-health that there is in the world. But you 
 would not wish to bring about equality by making 
 some less well whilst you make others less ill. You 
 would aim at making the sick more healthy, not for 
 the sake of equality, but for the sake of their being 
 happier and being able to do more. If any one 
 objects that it is Nature or the Creator who makes
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 303 
 
 all the other inequalities, but that it is man who 
 makes some rich and others poor, and that man 
 ought to refrain from imitating Nature by the pro- 
 motion of inequality, that is a distinction which will 
 not hold good. Men become richer than others by 
 nature, as we may say by being clever or lucky 
 or parsimonious, much more than by any artificial 
 arrangements created by law. No, the foundations 
 of the world are not laid on equality, nor will the 
 perfection of society be found in making men equal. 
 Harmony of various and unequal parts, not equality, 
 will characterise the perfect society. 
 
 Another explanation of justice, which puts equality 
 altogether aside, is of special interest because it 
 issues from that great doctrine of evolution which 
 is characteristic of our time, and has been expounded 
 by the illustrious philosopher who is the chief author- 
 ity on evolution, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Justice is 
 defined by him to be the social equilibrium between 
 the desires of the individual and the desires of the 
 many. He accounts for its production in this way : 
 The one creative principle in the history of the 
 world, from the beginning till now, is asserted to be 
 the desire of every living thing for preservation and 
 gratification. It is to this desire that all progress 
 is due. Like Oliver Twist in Dickens's story, who, 
 on a celebrated occasion, "asked for more," every 
 living creature is always asking, for more. But it so 
 happens that each may often get the more may 
 gain safety and possessions and enjoyment through 
 the combination of individuals in a society. Social 
 unions make rules for the advantage of their members 
 in general, and these rules, whilst they have their
 
 304 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 origin in the desire of each for gratification, yet 
 restrict the efforts of each to obtain gratifications for 
 his independent self. Justice, teaches Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, is the balance or equilibrium which has 
 established itself at any time between the self-seek- 
 ing activities of the individual and. the rules made 
 by society for the protection and benefit of its 
 members. Laws are attempts to register the equili- 
 brium, and to enforce the observance of it on all ; 
 and the object of the best laws and most advanced 
 justice is to secure the largest freedom for the indi- 
 vidual to assert himself and to gain advantages for 
 himself that is compatible with the interests of 
 society that is, of the other individuals around 
 him. This is an interesting theory, to a considerable 
 extent fitting the facts of the case ; but it fails to 
 explain why we should reverence justice as we do. 
 It reduces justice to a casual result of competitive 
 self-seeking. Each individual may be forced to 
 conform himself to this justice by the power of the 
 many ; but what is there in the equilibrium pro- 
 duced by the power of the many restricting the 
 desires of the one, to strike awe into the conscience, 
 or to constrain us to moral obedience ? 
 
 When conflicting interests are disturbing the 
 equilibrium which has for a time prevailed, say 
 when there is a struggle between labour and capital, 
 there is a general feeling that if we could only find 
 out what is just, a new equilibrium might be 
 established in accordance with justice. The name 
 of justice is always invoked by the workers as 
 supporting their demand for higher wages or better 
 conditions of labour. But Mr. Spencer's theory
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 305 
 
 knows of no justice but the equilibrium itself, 
 which will be attained when the conflicting forces 
 have agreed in a compromise or have otherwise come 
 to rest. 
 
 Now, to urge that justice demands that workers 
 should be paid so much is surely to say that some 
 law or authority to which all men owe deference 
 enjoins that so much should be paid. When you 
 can say, " This is unjust," " That would be just," 
 you do so with confident assurance that those who 
 are concerned in the matter ought to, are bound to, 
 conform to what is just. You assume that there is 
 an authority of some kind over them, regulating the 
 matter in question, to which, as good and reasonable 
 men, they ought willingly to submit, and to which, if 
 they are not willing, they should be made to submit. 
 Let us say, then, that social justice in general is 
 what this law to which all men owe deference 
 prescribes as to their dealings with one another. 
 What the supreme or Divine law ordains for the 
 mutual dealings of men, that is just. 
 
 We find in this view a recognition and a partial 
 explanation of the deference which we all pay to 
 justice. We all confess that justice has authority 
 over ourselves that we are bound to seek and do 
 what is just. We hold also that justice has authority 
 over other men ; that we are right in enforcing 
 justice upon our fellow-men, whether they like it or 
 not ; that justice is something to live and to die for. 
 The simplest explanation of the deference thus due 
 to justice and I know nothing else that adequately 
 explains it is that we recognise in justice" the will 
 of the good Maker and Ruler of mankind. 
 x
 
 306 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 I am well aware that devoted worshippers and 
 champions of justice are to be found amongst those 
 who do not profess to acknowledge a God. But in 
 worshipping justice they are really worshipping the 
 nature and will of Him whom they refuse to 
 acknowledge by name. Why are 'any of us bound 
 to reverence justice, and to submit to it, and to do 
 it, unless it is the law of the Power that makes us 
 and is above us ? 
 
 In the book entitled Paris, written by the French 
 novelist whose trial has lately attracted the attention 
 of the world, the author advocates atheism and 
 justice as against Christianity and charity. Charity 
 has had its trial, he says, and has failed has failed 
 to produce social happiness. Science, taking the 
 place of Christianity, is to bring about a justice 
 which will make mankind happy. But whenever 
 he approaches any explanation of justice, he implies 
 that it is what would come to pass if men were to 
 act wisely and well in accordance with the true laws 
 of life. We can get no notion of a justice other 
 than the mere will of the stronger, a justice com- 
 manding our respect, without thus implying that it 
 is what the Maker of men ordains. But how are we 
 to know what the Divine law ordains ? 
 
 In this way. You need not look far back upon 
 human history to see that there is progress in the 
 world, and progress along certain lines. You perceive 
 that the Supreme Power is building up mankind, 
 or to use the more frequent language of the day- 
 developing the human race. During the last half- 
 century improvement has been wonderfully rapid 
 and general, in this country perhaps more than any-
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 307 
 
 where else, but also throughout the world. Ask any 
 old man with a good memory to tell you how things 
 were sixty years ago with regard to the wages of 
 the working classes, their food, their dwellings, their 
 education, their self-respect and manners, the feeling 
 that prevailed between different classes of society, 
 and you will get some notion of what the improve- 
 ment has been in the condition of the largest part 
 of the population. You would receive a similar 
 impression if any one were to describe to you the 
 chief changes in the laws which have taken place 
 during the same period. 
 
 Now, in all social improvement we read the 
 purpose of the Builder of mankind. A machine 
 does not grow as society grows ; but continual 
 improvements are made in machinery, by which it 
 becomes more complicated, more effective, and more 
 admirable. So it is with mankind. Human society 
 is at its best when its members are severally happiest, 
 and the largest variety of elements are contained in 
 it, and these elements or members are most in 
 harmony and fellow-feeling with each other. The 
 Supreme Power has been mysteriously content with 
 slowness of progress ; but the great commonwealths 
 of to-day are on the whole far happier and more 
 socially perfect than those of any former day. 
 
 By social justice we mean, then, the plan, the 
 whole system of relations, according to which the 
 Supreme Power is building or developing the human 
 world the living order which the Maker appoints 
 for the good of society, and which therefore has the 
 Maker's authority to back it. 
 
 By far the largest and most important part of
 
 308 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 social justice is to be found in the law of the land. 
 The law fixes and enforces those regulations of 
 mutual intercourse and exchange which have so 
 far been found by general consent to be most 
 satisfactory ; and by doing so it confers inestimable 
 benefits on mankind. It enables people to get on 
 together without friction, and so it provides free 
 play for the affections and charities of human 
 nature. The law lays down for us what we can 
 depend upon, and makes it possible to provide for 
 the future; and so it cherishes that sense of re- 
 sponsibility without which a man can have no dignity, 
 and that quiet confidence without which a life of 
 responsibility cannot be a happy one. A popula- 
 tion that understands what it owes to the laws will 
 be heartily a law-abiding people. And what we call 
 men's rights are for the most part what the law 
 gives and secures to them. 
 
 But we are continually amending our laws. That 
 is one of the proofs that the human race is made for 
 progress. It is the evident purpose of the Maker of 
 mankind that the communities of men should grow 
 more perfect, that improvements should be made 
 without ceasing in their social machinery. Society, 
 or the energetic portion of it, is strongly possessed 
 at this time by a belief in improvement and a long- 
 ing for it, and a readiness to make changes in order 
 to obtain it. We often say that some arrangement 
 differing from what the law now fixes and enforces 
 would be just, and that we can appeal to justice in 
 demanding it What do we mean by affirming it to 
 be just, and by urging that it ought to be adopted 
 with universal consent because it is just? I have
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 309 
 
 contended that social justice consists in the best 
 arrangements with regard to mutual dealings that 
 men have been led to make for the good of society. 
 Well, when we see plainly that some new arrangement, 
 to be enforced by law or by opinion, would be to 
 the great advantage of some, and would also promote 
 the general well-being, and could be introduced at 
 once without such disturbance of possession or ease 
 or feeling as would neutralise its value, then we 
 can believe confidently that this is what the Father 
 of men is desiring and intending to bring about, 
 and we claim His authority for it by affirming that 
 it is just. Nothing but this appeal to an unseen 
 authority can account for the difference which we 
 hold ourselves bound to pay, and which we call 
 upon others to pay, to justice. It often takes some 
 time to see what is just You observe that I said 
 that we pronounce a new arrangement to be per- 
 emptorily demanded by justice when it is practicable. 
 It is not till we see it to be practicable that we have 
 the inner confidence that the authority of the good 
 Lord of society is backing it, and can therefore 
 challenge the world to deny that it is just. 
 
 Let me take an illustration from a province 
 outside labour questions. During the last half- 
 century some of the most inportant social changes 
 that have been made have concerned women's rights. 
 The changes have been made slowly, but surely and 
 progressively, and with remarkable general assent. 
 They are partly legal, and partly they depend on 
 opinion. They have been promoted by Conservatives 
 as well as by Liberals. The law now gives to married 
 women, for example, a control over their property
 
 310 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 which they did not formerly possess. It was urged 
 that it was just that they should have it, and that it 
 was their right. The interpretation of this contention 
 was that the control of their property would be good 
 for married women themselves, and that it could be 
 conferred on them with advantage to society in 
 general. It has also been demanded, as you know, 
 that women should have the same votes that men 
 have ; and it is asserted by most of the advocates 
 of women's suffrage that justice requires that they 
 should have votes, and that women are kept out of 
 their rights till they get them. Some votes, such as 
 those for municipal administration and the working 
 of the Poor Law, have already been given to women, 
 but the parliamentary franchise is still withheld from 
 them. If you are in favour of women's suffrage you 
 will probably say that a woman has a right to vote 
 as well as a man ; and opponents will reply with 
 evident force that they do not understand a natural 
 or inherent right to vote ; that the law does not give 
 the vote to every man, but to such men as it chooses ; 
 that it makes the young man of twenty-one years a 
 voter and disfranchises the young man who is only 
 a day younger, and in other ways asserts the right 
 to select and to reject at its discretion. The fact is 
 that, when people say that it is only just that women 
 should have votes, it is not because they hold women 
 to be equal to men which is no more true than that 
 men are all equal to one another but because they 
 believe it to be clear enough for every one to be able 
 to see it, that the extending of the parliamentary 
 franchise to women would make women more satis- 
 fied and happier and better, and would not be to the
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 311 
 
 injury but rather to the advantage of society in 
 general. Having this confidence, they unconsciously 
 or consciously recognise the authority of the Maker 
 and Ruler of mankind as on their side, and then they 
 feel that they can appeal to justice. 
 
 You will kindly bear in mind that I am speaking 
 of the proper interpretation of the words just and 
 justice. Using the term in the largest sense, I 
 should say that justice is the whole Order, spiritual 
 and external, of the human creation ; the Order or 
 system of relations which we are already able in part 
 to apprehend, and towards higher perfections of 
 which the Supreme Power is leading mankind 
 onwards. The just or righteous man will be he 
 who studies and respects this Order and sets himself 
 to do his part in fulfilling it. 
 
 I have said just or righteous. In other 
 languages, including Greek, which is the original 
 language of the New Testament, and Latin, and the 
 modern languages derived from the Latin, such as 
 French and Italian, there is only one word for justice 
 and righteousness. Our fathers and we, taking 
 advantage of our having the two words, one from 
 the Latin and one from the Saxon, have given 
 them different shades of meaning. When we use 
 the word righteousness, we think more of the whole 
 of life, and take more definitely into account our 
 spiritual nature, than when we speak of justice. 
 Righteousness includes all our duties, all that it is 
 right that we should do. But it refers, as justice 
 does, to the Order which God has appointed and 
 has confirmed by the sanctions of experience and 
 law, to the relations in which He has placed us
 
 312 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 towards Himself and towards one another. St. Paul 
 says, " Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for 
 this is just." Justice requires that children should 
 obey their parents. In this and like cases we should 
 prefer the word righteous or righteousness. But, 
 whichever be the word used, we are to understand 
 St. Paul as implying that the relations of parents 
 and children, of husband and wife, of fellow-members 
 of the same community, are of the Creator's appoint- 
 ment, as well as those of employer and employed, 
 of buyer and seller. And the complete justice or 
 righteousness of human life is the due fulfilment of 
 all divinely appointed relations. The laws do what 
 they can to secure the performance of what is due 
 from one to another in those various bonds ; but 
 law cannot regulate the affections ; and we generally 
 use the word justice to denote what the law is able 
 to enforce. 
 
 It is to the well-being of society, understood as 
 well as we are able to understand it, that we are to 
 look for instruction in what is just ; I mean the well- 
 being of any parts and of the whole taken together. 
 No benefit that could be acquired by a class to the 
 inevitable injury of the whole could claim the sup- 
 port of justice, because it would not have the 
 authority of Him who is building up mankind into 
 harmony and well-being. It is natural for those 
 who are enamoured of justice, as every Christian 
 ought to be, to set their minds at work upon such 
 perfecting of the social order as they can imagine. 
 Their thoughts will naturally be arrested by those 
 parts of the complex machinery in which they per- 
 ceive special suffering and bondage ; but they can
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 313 
 
 never be regardless of the general well-being and 
 harmony ; and they will necessarily desire that when 
 a change is made there should be as little friction 
 and disturbance, and as general and willing a con- 
 sent, as possible. It is always a living and progress- 
 ive Order, the growing well-being and happiness of 
 mankind, and this issuing from the highest source of 
 authority, that draws to itself the hearts of the just, 
 and makes them desire to live and die as its servants. 
 Let us dwell for a moment on the question of 
 the due share of labour in the profits of industry. 
 Imaginative minds have found no difficulty in pic- 
 turing to themselves a state of society in which 
 there should be no rich or poor, but all should work 
 and all should be well-off. Where they have chiefly 
 differed amongst themselves has been with regard to 
 the apportionment of remuneration for work ; some 
 have thought that all the members of the community 
 ought to be made as equal as possible, without con- 
 sideration either of the kind or of the amount of the 
 work they do ; some that the less agreeable work 
 should be more highly rewarded that a street- 
 sweeper, for example, should be better paid in 
 honours and comforts than an inventor or a judge 
 or a minister of State. Mr. Ruskin, who has done 
 so much admirable work, and to whom we are so 
 profoundly indebted for much of his teaching, is 
 somewhat fancifully speculative in economical 
 matters ; and his view is that all who do the 
 same kind of work ought to receive equal wages, 
 fixed by some public authority. He states this 
 view with characteristic courage and confidence. 
 " The best labour," he says, " has been, and is, as all
 
 3 1 4 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 labour ought to be, paid by an invariable standard. 
 ' What ? ' the reader perhaps answers amazedly, ' pay 
 good and bad workmen alike ? ' Certainly. You 
 pay with equal fee your good and bad physician and 
 Prime Minister, why not your bricklayer? So far 
 as you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no 
 less than good work." These speculators do not in 
 general propose any method of making people work 
 if they are disposed to be idle. I think they assume 
 that when the social order which they devise comes 
 into play, human nature will be altered and every 
 one will hate being idle and be eager to do the work 
 he is wanted to do. But how far will each creator 
 of an ideal commonwealth be able to claim that his 
 social order is just, and that any order which differs 
 from his is unjust? If he believes that his system 
 not only will make every one happy but is one which 
 men might set themselves immediately to carry out 
 with safety and advantage, he will have for himself 
 the satisfaction and support of holding it to be just ; 
 but until it comes nearer to actual life, so that many 
 persons who have knowledge and a cool tempera- 
 ment think of it as immediately practicable, he and 
 his partisans will not be able to claim publicly the 
 support of justice with the confidence, say, of those 
 who demand a " living wage." 
 
 Those of us who are less imaginative, or who do 
 not set a high value on dreams of this kind, may 
 easily put before our minds less revolutionary im- 
 provements in the condition of those who contribute 
 the manual labour to industrial operations. We 
 might think it not unreasonable that every one 
 employed in great and thriving industries should 

 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 315 
 
 have a clear 3 a week. Would this be too much, 
 we may ask, to keep a skilled artisan and his family 
 in decent comfort, and to enable him to provide for 
 the future ? You may feel in your minds that this 
 would be no more than just. But you are hardly 
 prepared to demand so much in the name of justice 
 for all workers, or to complain that they are wronged 
 or kept out of their rights in not having it. And 
 you know why you are not. If companies and 
 other employers had to pay much more in wages 
 than they are paying now, they would not be able 
 to tender at such prices as would bring them orders. 
 A large and universal rise in wages, however desirable 
 it may be, and however we may hope for it in the 
 future, does not seem to be immediately obtainable. 
 Sober and practical persons see no way of getting 
 it. If enthusiasts say to the working masses : " You 
 have the physical strength, you have only to upset 
 society and take possession of what you ought to 
 have," they do not succeed in persuading many that 
 they would be able to get what they desire in that 
 way. But those who insist on a minimum wage 
 in any department of industry, do so in the belief 
 that it can be had without seriously imperilling 
 the industry, and therefore the whole means of 
 living of the workers. The law authorises men 
 to ask as high wages as they choose ; and justice 
 supports them in demanding as high wages as they 
 can get. The more the condition of the whole 
 labouring population can be improved, even if it 
 be at the cost of reducing the luxuries of the rich 
 few, the better ; and we may be sure that such 
 improvement has the authority of the Builder of
 
 3 1 6 The Nature of Justice : xxi 
 
 mankind to back it ; and therefore we say con- 
 fidently that it is a just and righteous thing that 
 the condition of those who are worst off should 
 be improved to the utmost possible extent. But 
 it is where the wages are lowest that there is the 
 greatest practical difficulty in insisting on and 
 obtaining a living wage ; and before we denounce 
 the injustice of those employers who pay miserable 
 wages, we must be sure that they would be able 
 to go on giving any employment at all if they had 
 to pay better wages. How the position of the 
 worst-paid part of our population is to be improved 
 is a very large question, on which I do not enter 
 here. We are now speaking about justice ; and I 
 say that an improvement is supported by justice, 
 and may claim to be just, when it is seen to be not 
 only desirable all round, but also such as can be 
 immediately and safely carried out. As Browning 
 says 
 
 The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, 
 Is not to fancy what were fair in life, 
 Provided it could be : but finding first 
 What may be, then find how to make it fair 
 Up to our means. 
 
 If I may, however, add a brief exhortation or 
 two to my general argument, I would ask you to 
 be on your guard against thinking too lightly of 
 what we owe to the law ; I mean to the law of the 
 land, as administered by our courts and enforced 
 by penalties. It is true that the law is essentially 
 imperfect ; it has to deal with external facts, and 
 the courts often have great difficulty in ascertaining
 
 xxi Addressed to Working Men 317 
 
 what even the external facts are ; it sometimes costs 
 a good deal to go to law for our rights ; but our 
 laws are better than those of any other generation 
 or any other country, and it is the well-founded 
 boast of our land that they are administered honestly 
 and without favour. Such a state of things has 
 been described in old times as a condition of almost 
 paradisal felicity. Under the silent and unobtrusive 
 protection of the law we can in general go about 
 our work and enjoy our pleasures without hindrance 
 or molestation, no one making us afraid. Some 
 think we have already more protection from the law 
 than is altogether good for us, and that it is too 
 much the habit in this age to ask for laws to 
 regulate everything. That may be said to be a 
 proof of our confidence in the law. We may perhaps 
 expect even too much from it. At all events let 
 us be thankful and proud to be citizens of a country 
 that has such good laws, such effective government, 
 and such uncorrupt tribunals. 
 
 Let me ask you also to have faith in progress. 
 Christians are bound to believe in it, because they 
 believe in the heavenly Father, in whose hands are 
 the destinies of mankind, and who is ever leading 
 His creation onwards. Let no one despair about 
 any improvement of which he can distinctly realise 
 the form and the bearings. But if it is our belief 
 in the heavenly Father's kingdom and righteousness 
 that gives us hope, we must bear in mind that He 
 cares more for the souls than for the bodies of His 
 children, and that the progress which He chiefly 
 desires is that of personal character and mutual 
 affection and spiritual aspiration. The highest part
 
 318 The Nature of Justice xxi 
 
 of the Divine order consists in the relations of 
 spiritual beings to God and to each other ; and in 
 the eyes of God the ease of the body will always 
 be subordinate and subservient to the freedom and 
 dignity of the inward man. First that which is 
 spiritual, then that which is natural or physical. 
 There is eternal truth in the precept which our Lord 
 gave to the poor and suffering multitudes who 
 crowded to hear Him " Seek ye first the heavenly 
 Father's kingdom and His justice ; and all the things 
 which the Gentiles seek, the meat and the drink and 
 the clothing, shall be added unto you."
 
 XXII 
 JUBILEE ADDRESSES, 1897 
 
 " Out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that 
 make merry : and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few ; I 
 will also glorify them, and they shall not be small. . . . And their 
 prince shall be of themselves, and their ruler shall proceed from the 
 midst of them ; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall 
 approach unto me. . . . And ye shall be my people, and I will be 
 your God." JEREMIAH xxx. 19. 
 
 IT is well within the truth to say what is in the 
 minds of all the subjects of the Queen, and of their 
 fellow-men throughout the civilised world that the 
 history of mankind does not exhibit in any part of 
 its annals such a national period as that which we 
 are contemplating on this memorable day l : such a 
 time, we mean, of happiness, of peaceful progress, 
 of expansion ; such a time lasting over so many 
 years. Great deliverances, trying wars, splendid 
 achievements of genius, have more power to thrill 
 the heart and kindle the imagination than these 
 special blessings of the Victorian era. The Reform- 
 ation, Shakespeare, Elizabeth, Cromwell, Trafalgar, 
 
 1 aoth June.
 
 3 2 o Jubilee A ddr esses, 1897(1) xxi i 
 
 and Waterloo are names of light in our history to 
 which our sixty years show nothing comparable. 
 But for the triumph of peace, for growth in all the 
 features and functions of national life, for diffused 
 happiness, there has been nothing in the past we 
 can hardly suppose there will be anything in the 
 future to outdo the reign of Queen Victoria. 
 
 We are giving thanks to-day for the good things 
 thus lavished upon us we older persons who can 
 remember for ourselves what the things around us 
 were at the beginning of the reign, and you of 
 younger age, to whom the noble works have been 
 declared which our God has done for us in these two 
 generations. What a thought it is this of the vast 
 volume of thankfulness going up from the earth to 
 the throne of heaven ! Let us think with gladness 
 of the millions and scores of millions of fellow-souls 
 with whose thanksgivings ours ours from this West- 
 morland valley are blending in these festive days ! 
 " It is a good thing to sing praises unto our God ; 
 yea, a joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful." 
 It is a breath of God, rich with health and life, that 
 thus moves us all, and constrains us to confess, " Not 
 unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name 
 give the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy 
 truth's sake ! " In the larger part of to-day's services 
 you all are the actors ; yours are the minds, yours 
 are the voices that here worship the God of our 
 fathers ; but you have heard some passages of Holy 
 Writ which have power to feed and to lift your 
 thoughts, and it is the preacher's duty to set before 
 you as best he can some of the reasons which are 
 universally felt to justify and call for the general
 
 xxn Jubilee Addresses i 1897(1) 321 
 
 thankfulness. These are well stated in the special 
 Thanksgiving of the day. " We thank Thee for pro- 
 gress made in knowledge of Thy marvellous works, 
 for increase of comfort given to human life, for 
 kindlier feeling between rich and poor, for wonderful 
 preaching of the Gospel to many nations." You will 
 perceive these words of the Thanksgiving to be care- 
 fully chosen, and I am glad to follow the guidance 
 that they offer. 
 
 But you may have observed that this thanks- 
 giving includes no recognition of the Sovereign's 
 personal goodness as one of the blessings by which 
 we have been favoured, nor is there any direct praise 
 of her to be found in the appointed services. That 
 is well, if it were only because these services are 
 appointed by the Queen's own authority. But her 
 subjects are not ungrateful for the advantages which 
 her whole empire has derived from her high and 
 endearing qualities. It is matter of common know- 
 ledge that she has steadily used her great influence 
 in support of seemliness of life ; that she has spared 
 herself no labour, and has shown a trained patriotic 
 intelligence in the performance of her constitutional 
 duties ; that she has interested herself heartily in the 
 well-being of her distant subjects, in India and else- 
 where ; that she has submitted with dignity and 
 cheerfulness to the modern English restraints upon 
 Royal power of action ; and, what has touched her 
 people most, that she has shown a peculiar tender- 
 ness and readiness of sympathy with suffering. I 
 limit myself to what is, as I have said, matter of 
 common knowledge. It is easy to see that a genuine 
 enthusiasm of loyalty has been called forth by the 
 Y
 
 322 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (i) xxn 
 
 virtues and kindnesses that have adorned the long 
 life of the Queen, an enthusiasm chastened into 
 reverence by the domestic sorrows with which that 
 life has more than once been darkened. 
 
 The personal character which we thus thank- 
 fully recognise in Her Majesty has worked in a 
 gracious harmony with the movements which we 
 perceive to be characteristic of her reign. I do not 
 dwell upon the vast extension of the territorial 
 dominions, or the corresponding increase in the 
 number of human souls subject to the British Crown. 
 I ask you to consider that fourfold advance of which 
 the Thanksgiving takes note, in knowledge, in com- 
 fort, in social good feeling, in evangelistic work. 
 
 i. The knowledge of God's marvellous works has 
 been increased, in that much more has become known 
 about them, and also in the sense that knowledge has 
 been spread more widely. 
 
 The greatest name in science for the last sixty 
 years is that of an Englishman, Charles Darwin. 
 The idea which took possession of his mind, and 
 which was verified by his wonderfully acute and 
 patient observations that of the gradual variation 
 of living creatures under definite influences, and 
 especially through the struggle for existence ; that is 
 to say, the idea of gradual and not sudden creation 
 has proved so far-reaching and fruitful that our ways 
 of looking at everything have been modified by it. 
 For the large extension of astronomical knowledge 
 within recent years, and in particular for the know- 
 ledge of the sun and other heavenly bodies which 
 has been obtained through spectroscopic analysis, we 
 may claim, I believe, the chief honour for subjects of
 
 xxn Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (i) 323 
 
 the Queen. To Englishmen, again, is mainly due 
 the discovery of the fact that energy or force can 
 change its form, passing, for example, from heat into 
 electricity, but does not perish. The germ theory of 
 disease may be counted one of the triumphs of 
 French science, having been clearly apprehended and 
 verified by M. Pasteur. This is not the place, how- 
 ever, nor am I the person, to enlarge on scientific 
 discoveries. These brief allusions may serve to 
 indicate a progress in which every branch of human 
 knowledge has, I believe, had a part during the last 
 half- century or the sixty years of Her Majesty's 
 reign. 
 
 But the reign has also been distinguished by an 
 unprecedented diffusion of knowledge. It has been 
 a great educational epoch. One important feature 
 of it has been the admission of women to all the 
 higher studies. A student who traces her parentage 
 back to Kirkby Lonsdale has taken the highest 
 mathematical place of the year at our chief seat of 
 mathematical study, the University of Cambridge. 
 Elementary education, so far as the law can secure 
 it, has been made universal, and has been con- 
 siderably raised in character and aim. Education in 
 all its branches has been the object of unceasing 
 attention and effort on the part of patriots and 
 philanthropists. Our rulers will not be allowed to 
 rest until the national provision for secondary and 
 for technical education has been made more com- 
 plete. It has been one of the steady convictions of 
 the Victorian era that we ought to become to the 
 utmost of our capabilities an educated people. 
 
 2. The " increase of comfort given to human life "
 
 324 Jubilee Addresses, 1897(1) xxn 
 
 is largely the result of the extension and diffusion of 
 knowledge. All kinds of inventions, and especially 
 the new facilities of locomotion, have been adding 
 incessantly to the comforts enjoyed by the mass of 
 the people. These same causes have operated 
 indirectly in making the general life more comfort- 
 able by promoting prosperity. Wages and prices 
 are the powers which increase and diminish the ease 
 of life for the working population ; and if you want 
 to know what has been the history of these during 
 the reign of Victoria, ask any aged person whose 
 memory is good to tell you about them. It is 
 certain that there is no section of our working popu- 
 lation that is not better off than the fathers and the 
 grandfathers of the present workers were. The two 
 most powerful causes of this prosperity have been 
 Free Trade and steam. The setting of trade free 
 and the application of the force of steam have com- 
 bined to make the wealth of this country grow by 
 leaps and bounds during the last two generations. 
 And though some who contemplate the needlessly 
 great riches of the successful few may be inclined to 
 complain that even more of the new wealth has not 
 been divided amongst the poorer producers of it, it 
 is evident beyond contradiction that these poorer 
 producers have everywhere had a share of it. Wages 
 are worth what they will buy, and their real value 
 depends not only on what they are in the current 
 coin, but also on the current prices of the necessaries 
 of life. Cheaper food and cheaper clothes mean 
 more of comfort for the poor. And we have solid 
 grounds for rejoicing that the poor are able to live 
 more comfortably now in all parts of the Queen's
 
 xxn Jubilee Addresses, 1897 ( J ) 3 2 5 
 
 dominions than the corresponding class could do 
 when she began her happy reign. 
 
 3. And the fact that the lot of the poor is easier 
 accounts in part, no doubt, for that kindlier feeling 
 between rich and poor in which we may also rejoice. 
 " Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, 
 to dwell together in unity ! " And who will say that 
 we are not now dwelling together in unity ? Amongst 
 ourselves, for example, here in Westmorland, what is 
 there lacking to a wholesome and reasonable concord 
 between class and class, between party and party, 
 between Church and Dissent, between one school in 
 the Church and another? We are using to-day an 
 old Prayer for Unity which expresses an excellent 
 sentiment, but of which the language is blessedly 
 out of date. It speaks of great dangers, such as 
 we ought seriously to lay to heart, which we are in 
 by our unhappy divisions ; it assumes that there is 
 hatred and prejudice to be taken away from amongst 
 us. Such language was appropriate when the prayer 
 was made ; but it has almost lost its truth now. It 
 is not godly to make ourselves out to be worse than 
 we are ; rather do we glorify God's grace by making 
 the best of ourselves. We are glad to use old 
 prayers and old psalms, but we use them with a neces- 
 sary freedom. The new prayer fits the circumstances 
 of to-day ; and if our forefathers perceived that there 
 was serious danger as well as a reproach to their 
 Christianity in their unhappy divisions, it is our 
 duty to thank God with all our hearts for the kindly 
 feeling prevailing amongst us and making our 
 England a country that it is at unity in itself, and 
 to be the more ashamed of the individual pettinesses
 
 326 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 ( : ) xxn 
 
 of jealousy and the like which ought to find no home 
 in the breasts of English Christians. 
 
 4. Lastly, we give thanks for " wonderful preach- 
 ing of the Gospel to many nations " as a blessing 
 which has marked the Queen's reign. 
 
 It has been common of late years-to speak of the 
 loosening of old religious beliefs and the free rejection 
 by many of the Christian theology as one of the 
 most serious signs of the time. Undoubtedly there 
 has been much in the literature of the day to disturb 
 and alarm religious persons. The question, how far 
 Christianity was losing its hold upon educated minds, 
 has not been an easy one to answer. All persons of 
 more than middle age are aware that the Christianity 
 of our land has undergone some change. But there 
 are reasons for believing that the change, being a 
 change for the better, and at the same time a rever- 
 sion to the real theology of the New Testament, has 
 helped a large number of persons to be the truer 
 Christians. Our Thanksgiving notes one remarkable 
 piece of evidence as to the permanence and force of 
 Christian faith amongst us. It does not refer, I 
 imagine, to the efforts put forth in this country to 
 draw the careless part of the population to Christ, 
 though there is no section of the land in which these 
 efforts, made by Churchmen and non-Churchmen alike, 
 have not been hearty and sustained. The preaching 
 of the Gospel to many nations must mean what we 
 especially call missionary work. And this has certainly 
 not flagged during our sixty years. Our missionary 
 annals speak not only of large outlay, but of enthusi- 
 astic personal service, of lives cheerfully and heroic- 
 ally laid down in the cause of Christ, of the readiness
 
 xxn Jubilee Addresses^ 1897 (i) 327 
 
 of men and women to step into the breaches made 
 by pestilence and the sword, and of the successes 
 granted in recompense to these sincere Christian 
 efforts. Yes, the flame of faith must still be burning 
 in Christian England, or we should not see all 
 Churches seriously bending themselves to the task of 
 conquering the world for Christ. The Gospel, puri- 
 fied as it has been from conceptions which did 
 dishonour to the Divine Nature, has not lost its 
 power over hearts and consciences and lives. Christ 
 as the Son of the Father, Christ as the Lord of the 
 heavenly kingdom, Christ as the Builder of human 
 society, is more simply believed in and proclaimed 
 than when His Divine Figure was obscured by doc- 
 trines which have been seen to be inconsistent with 
 a high morality as well as with scientific and literary 
 discoveries. The larger views about other religions 
 and the Divine government and care of all the races of 
 mankind, which belong to our age, are now repre- 
 sented freely and fully in the preaching of Christian 
 missionaries, and are not found to kill the desire of 
 believers in Christ to bring all men to the one 
 Saviour. The remarkable encouragement given to 
 the preaching of the Gospel through the breadth of 
 Africa from Uganda southwards, must make it seem 
 to us all worth while to do more and more for missions, 
 whilst the difficulties to be overcome in China and 
 in India, and the very limited success in making 
 converts in those countries, have rather the effect of 
 stimulating enterprise and determination than of 
 daunting hope and endeavour amongst the Christians 
 of the world. 
 
 Let us not mingle, therefore, any down-hearted
 
 328 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (i) xxn 
 
 apprehensions, as Christians anxious for the interests 
 of the kingdom of Christ, with our patriotic thanks- 
 givings. Let us not be slow of heart to believe that 
 it is Christ who is leading our world onwards in that 
 progress of which the steps are so cheeringly visible, 
 whilst it is so difficult to understand, its final goal. 
 There remains, and will long remain, a sad abundance 
 of things to be sorry for, to be ashamed of ; there is 
 work enough for the servants of Christ to do with 
 their might. Alike for patient perseverance in well- 
 doing and for heroic devotion, the heavenly service 
 has its demands. All the voices of the past and of 
 the present are calling us to go forward. "Onward!" 
 they are saying to us, " Onward, Christian soldiers, 
 Marching as to war, With the Cross of Jesus going 
 on before."
 
 XXIII 
 
 JUBILEE ADDRESSES, 1897 
 ii 
 
 "Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, 
 and called the name of it Eben-ezer (i.e. the stone of help), saying, 
 Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." i SAMUEL vii. 12. 
 
 ALREADY on Sunday, the anniversary of the Queen's 
 Accession, we have assembled in our churches to 
 render our thanksgivings to God for the blessings 
 vouchsafed to this nation during her long reign, and 
 to offer up our prayers with more than usual earnest- 
 ness for our Queen and our country. We meet 
 together again to-day, 1 as fellow-countrymen and 
 fellow-citizens, to keep time, here in Kirkby Lonsdale 
 also, with that wonderful procession which is re- 
 presenting to its countless spectators the greatness 
 and the unity of the Empire. No Englishman can 
 think unmoved of that winding train which is now 
 following the Queen along the great arteries of 
 London. This is a day, let us not shrink from 
 saying, of pride for Englishmen ; a day, let us also 
 acknowledge, on which our responsibilities may well 
 fill us with awe. 
 
 1 22nd June.
 
 330 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (2) xxm 
 
 We should know still better the consciousness 
 natural to the people of an empire not too vast to 
 be of one heart and soul, if we were called upon to 
 defend our honour and our liberties and the multi- 
 tudinous interests committed to our charge against 
 enemies that would assail them. Then there would 
 be an electric response to the call. This round world 
 would be girdled with defiant English resolve as 
 with bands of flame. Such a call might come ; and 
 we ought to be prepared for it. This is, thank God, 
 a time of peace ; and we are thinking almost ex- 
 clusively of the blessings and triumphs of peace. 
 The Queen of our Empire is not an Alexander or a 
 Napoleon, nourishing dreams of the conquest of the 
 world. We are all anxious to be on friendly terms 
 with our neighbours, and we are welcoming at this 
 moment as the guests of the Sovereign representa- 
 tives of all thrones and republics. But we are not 
 omitting from our demonstrations of this week the 
 evidences of our readiness for war. . The head of our 
 State, a woman venerable for age as well as for 
 peaceful virtues, is to review a fleet which, like 
 other products of the time, surpasses all that has 
 been known or imagined in magnitude and costliness, 
 in novelty and variety of expedients. Englishmen 
 do not mean to be backward or grudging in the 
 maintenance of their Navy. We may find comfort 
 in the reflection that it is good for the peace of the 
 world that England should have a strength to be 
 respected. But let no one be troubled by the notion 
 that Christianity, or the Sermon on the Mount, or 
 the love of God in Christ, forbids us to face the 
 horrors of war. War, when justifiable, is not
 
 Jubilee Addresses, 1897(2) 331 
 
 unchristian ; and it cannot be Christian to reduce 
 armaments without abolishing them, any more than 
 to have a weak woman as the only policeman in a 
 town. Let us freely allow ourselves an honest 
 English pride in being strong as well as in being 
 rich. 
 
 It is not necessarily wrong to be proud. There 
 is a pride which does not ape humility, but which 
 actually begets the genuine humility. It is right 
 that we should say to ourselves, " We are citizens of 
 no mean city." It is not a small thing to be an 
 Englishman ; the England of these British Isles is no 
 insignificant country. We may well be proud that 
 Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, pay homage 
 to the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, and that their representatives are amongst 
 the most enthusiastically loyal of the Queen's subjects. 
 But can you not understand the feeling that came 
 into the heart of Solomon when he was set on the 
 throne of David his father ? It was a grand position 
 for an Israelite, and Solomon did not think lightly 
 of it ; but the greatness of it made him feel his own 
 inadequacy. " O Lord my God, Thou hast made Thy 
 servant king instead of David my father : and I am 
 but a little child ; I know not how to go out or 
 come in. And Thy servant is in the midst of Thy 
 people which thou hast chosen, a great people, that 
 cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give 
 Thy servant therefore an understanding heart to 
 judge Thy people, that I may discern between good 
 and evil ; for who is able to judge this Thy great 
 people?" If there is one general impression to be 
 left by the pageants of this week, and by all that is
 
 332 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (2) xxm 
 
 written in our journals and preached in our churches 
 and spoken at public dinners, to be left on the 
 minds of the people who through the Parliament and 
 the Ministers of State govern this unprecedented 
 Empire, ought it not to be a deepening of the feeling 
 expressed with such simplicity by Solomon ? 
 
 It has been the common belief of political philo- 
 sophers that such a thing can hardly be imagined as 
 the successful governing of a vast and complicated 
 empire by a democracy. Well, the Lord God, in 
 His providence, has called a democracy to the govern- 
 ment of this British Empire, and so far the task has 
 been performed with some success. Hitherto hath 
 the Lord helped us. One of our Victorian poets, 
 comparing England to the fabled giant Atlas who 
 was said to carry the globe on his shoulders, spoke 
 of our country as staggering under " the load, Well- 
 nigh not to be borne, Of the too vast orb of her fate." 
 That was thirty years ago ; now the load is a heavier 
 one; the orb has grown vaster ; but, there is no sign 
 yet of our country giving way under the burden. 
 The colonies that call England mother are not now 
 gathering round the couch of an age-stricken and 
 enfeebled parent ; rather do they remind us of the 
 quiverful of arrows that enable their possessor to 
 speak unashamed with enemies in the gate. 
 
 The question is not so much whether the ruling 
 power consists of one, or a few, or of the many, but 
 of what quality the ruling power is. A God-fearing 
 people ought to govern better if there were the 
 whole world to govern than a self-pleasing monarch 
 or a corrupted aristocracy. The point of infinite 
 importance for us English and for mankind is that
 
 xxin Jubilee Addresses, 1897 ( 2 ) 333 
 
 the people who elect the British Parliament and set 
 our statesmen on high should be a wise and religious 
 people. 
 
 i. And one quality which a God-fearing people 
 will cherish is that of a reverent and thankful feeling 
 towards the past. At this moment we are looking 
 back over an integral portion of our national history, 
 but our thankfulness is dwelling chiefly on the pro- 
 gress which God's goodness has enabled us to make 
 during the last sixty years. We are thanking God, 
 not at all in a godless spirit, that we are now greater 
 and even better than our fathers. We are remind- 
 ing ourselves how much smaller the England of the 
 Queen's Accession was than that of the sixtieth 
 anniversary of it ; how many things that needed to 
 be altered have been reformed. But we must 
 remember that we who have thus grown greater and 
 better are the children of a noble England of the 
 past ; of an England whose history is full of inspira- 
 tion for us, and should keep us reverent, and steady 
 us with a sense of responsibility. As our own 
 Wordsworth has grandly put it, " In our halls is 
 hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old ; We 
 must be free, or die, who speak the tongue That 
 Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold Which 
 Milton held : in everything we are sprung Of earth's 
 first blood, have titles manifold." The old com- 
 mandment promised a long continuance in their land 
 to a people by whom father and mother were 
 honoured. And experience has proved that there is 
 nothing so likely to enable a nation to command 
 the future as pious reverence for its past. English- 
 men can say without bated breath, " Let us now
 
 334 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (2) xxm 
 
 praise famous men, and the fathers that begat us. 
 The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through 
 His great power from the beginning." Let the 
 thought be ever present with us that we have high 
 traditions to honour and to carry forward. 
 
 2. And when we put our hands to the governing 
 of our Empire, if it be but by the showing of a feel- 
 ing and the utterance of a sympathy, let us hold fast 
 the conviction that a God-fearing people must govern 
 in accordance with its faith. One of the surest and 
 happiest evidences that our God is leading us 
 onwards is that it is affirmed with increasing con- 
 fidence, and more persons are coming to see, that 
 what we believe as Christians we must act upon not 
 only in private life, but in politics. Two bad old 
 notions are still delaying the general acceptance of 
 this principle one, that the life of nations is neces- 
 sarily the brute struggle for existence, and that what 
 each nation has to do, if it would not fall out and be 
 thrust aside, is to contend unscrupulously for its own 
 advantage ; the other, that religion is a private 
 matter between a man and his God, and means the 
 saving of his own soul in the way in which he 
 happens to think that souls are to be saved. But 
 the true Christian, with the pious Hebrew, addresses 
 his God thus : " O God of my fathers, and Lord of 
 mercy, who hast made all things with Thy word, and 
 ordained man through Thy wisdom, that he should 
 have dominion over the creatures which Thou hast 
 made, and order the world according to equity and 
 righteousness, and execute judgment with an upright 
 heart ! " Is not that a fine aim for a great ruling 
 power to order the world according to equity and
 
 xxin Jubilee Addresses, 1897 (2) 335 
 
 righteousness ? My hope is that this is becoming 
 more and more the desire of the English people, of 
 the democracy which chooses our great administra- 
 tors and makes them the instruments of its purposes. 
 Those who represent us have duties towards the 
 subjects of the Crown and duties towards other 
 nations. It is their business to study to preserve 
 God's people committed to their charge in wealth 
 (or well-being), peace, and godliness ; to see to it 
 that by their endeavours all things may be so 
 ordered and settled upon the best and surest 
 foundations that peace and happiness, truth and 
 justice, religion and piety, may be established 
 among us for all generations. Other nations they 
 are bound to know as portions of the one great 
 family of God, and to treat them to the utmost of 
 their power and wisdom with fairness, courtesy, and 
 good-will. It is possible that the difficulty of being 
 Christian in international relations is greater than 
 that which has to be overcome in any other pro- 
 vince of morality. But the difficulty has to be 
 faced, if we are honest Christians ; and we need not 
 have the least doubt that those who in this struggle 
 set themselves to find out and do the will of God 
 will have light on their path, and bring down bless- 
 ings on their country and on mankind. 
 
 3. Once more. The English people is made up 
 of its constituencies, of families, of individuals. A 
 steady nation cannot be created out of light-headed 
 citizens. The policy of a country will not bear the 
 marks of noble aims, of high-mindedness, of courage, 
 of care for the weak, of respectfulness, of the fear of 
 the righteous God, if the many whom its authorities
 
 336 Jubilee Addresses, 1897 ( 2 ) xxm 
 
 represent are absorbed in anxiety about their petty 
 personal interests or in careless pleasure-seeking, or 
 are moved in crowds without thought by catching 
 sentiments. We, here, are not a very important 
 section of the English people ; but we desire, I am 
 sure, to do what in us lies to uphold the honour of 
 our sacred land, and to contribute to its prosperity 
 and greatness. We are thankful for the blessings 
 bestowed upon us in the high character and long 
 life of our Queen, and in the progress and expansion 
 which give distinction to her reign. This thankful- 
 ness we cannot show more effectually, we cannot 
 serve our Queen and country more loyally, than by 
 endeavouring to prove ourselves personally good 
 English Christians. Let us be glad that our daily 
 humble efforts to do our duty should be quickened 
 and stimulated from time to time by a joyous breath 
 of patriotism. The sobriety and good sense and 
 sympathy and unselfish devotion to duty that will 
 make good English citizens are the same qualities 
 that will make happy English homes ; and these 
 and all precious qualities will grow out of the fear of 
 God and the following of Christ. Let us yield our- 
 selves willingly to the emotions of the day as to 
 thoughts and feelings which our God inspires. As 
 this great Jubilee calls to us to lift up our hearts, let 
 us answer in faith and hope, " We lift them up unto 
 the Lord ! "
 
 XXIV 
 SOME INTERPRETATIONS REVISED 1 
 
 I 
 "RECKONINGS" IN 2 CORINTHIANS X. 
 
 I THINK I may assume that the frequent recurrence 
 of the word \oyl%ea-0ai in this passage, and the bear- 
 ing of this recurrence on the interpretation to be 
 given to \o^La^oi in verse 5, have failed to attract 
 the notice of expositors. I venture to write without 
 consulting the most recent commentaries on this 
 Epistle, but it can hardly be a work of supereroga- 
 tion to call attention to a feature which was evidently 
 not observed by the Revisers of the English New 
 Testament. 
 
 The sentences in which the word occurs are thus 
 rendered in the Revised Version : " I beseech you, 
 that I may not when present shew courage with the 
 confidence wherewith I count to be bold against some, 
 which count of us as if we walked according to the 
 flesh " (v. 2) ; " If any man trusteth in himself that 
 he is Christ's, let him consider this again with him- 
 
 * From The Expositor, 
 Z
 
 338 Some Interpretations Revised xxiv 
 
 self, that, even as he is Christ's, so also are we " (v. 
 7) ; " Let such a one reckon this, that, what we are in 
 word by letters when we are absent, such are we also 
 in deed when we are present" (v. 1 1). That the 
 Revisers did not render the word uniformly is in any 
 case rather surprising ; but it may- be taken for 
 certain that if they had thought there was anything 
 pointed in St. Paul's use of it, they would have given 
 the same English for it throughout. " Reckon " is 
 the most obvious equivalent for \oyie<r0at. And 
 there seems to be no reason why we should not 
 read, " I reckon to be bold against some who reckon 
 of us," " Let him reckon this again with himself," " Let 
 such a one reckon on this." And then it would be 
 congruous to render Xoyio-povs by " reckonings." 
 
 The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is full of 
 traces of extraordinary excitement. The whole com- 
 position becomes luminous in the light of a partly 
 hypothetical but nearly certain explanation of the 
 circumstances which occasioned it. . They seem to 
 have been as follows. Not long before he left 
 Ephesus St. Paul had sent Timothy to Macedonia 
 and Corinth (Acts xix. 22, I Cor. xvi. 10). Timothy 
 had found the Corinthian society painfully disturbed. 
 Some persons had arrived at Corinth who brought 
 with them credentials from the Jerusalem Apostles, 
 and had been impugning the authority of St. Paul. 
 Their statements had shaken the loyalty of his 
 converts and friends. One man had stood forward 
 as the leader of the movement against St. Paul. 
 He and others had said many disparaging things 
 about the absent Apostle ; they had dwelt on his 
 want of credentials, had spoken lightly of his personal
 
 xxiv "Reckonings" in 2 Cor. x. 339 
 
 powers, had put wrong constructions on some of his 
 acts, and had charged him with self-seeking. Timothy 
 had hastened back with the melancholy tidings of 
 this revolt, and had met his master at Troas. St. 
 Paul immediately despatched Titus, a disciple of 
 more strength of character than Timothy, with a 
 sharp and threatening letter to Corinth. The letter 
 had not long been gone before St. Paul began to 
 wish he had not written in such anger. But the 
 letter produced its effect upon the Corinthians. Their 
 self- reproachful sorrow was great They put the 
 chief blame on the leader of the shameful attack, 
 whom they denounced and repudiated (2 Cor. ii. 5-8, 
 vii. 11). Meanwhile St. Paul had come on, in a 
 very restless and unhappy state of mind, from Troas 
 into Macedonia. There Titus met him with the 
 good news of the repentance of the Corinthian 
 believers, and St. Paul poured out his feelings at 
 once in a letter which he sent forward to precede 
 his own arrival this Second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. 
 
 The letter exhibits a tumult of contending emo- 
 tions. Wounded affection, joy, self-respect, hatred 
 of self-assertion, consciousness of the authority and 
 importance of his ministry, scorn of his opponents, 
 toss themselves like waves, sometimes against each 
 other, on the troubled sea of his mind, and accordingly 
 the letter abounds in the rhetoric of passion. There 
 are two kinds of rhetoric the artificial kind, which is 
 cold and tiresome, and that which heated feelings 
 throw out, the foam of agitation. Strong language, 
 not seldom stronger than the occasion seems to 
 warrant, figurative expressions, abrupt turns, phrases
 
 34-O Some Interpretations Revised xxiv 
 
 seized and flung at his assailants, words made up, 
 iterated, played upon, mark this epistle far more 
 than any other of the Apostle's letters. All these 
 features will show themselves plainly to a reader 
 who is on the look-out for them. Even the calmer 
 parts of the letter are influenced as to their style 
 by the emotion which breaks out in the more 
 vehement. 
 
 The tenth chapter begins with a soft note ; but, 
 as the image of his assailants presents itself to the 
 writer's mind, his feelings quicken, and he becomes 
 somewhat bitter and defiant. He welcomed back 
 the remorseful Corinthians to his heart, but he was 
 not inclined to spare his detractors. The word 
 X<>7tb/iat is not an uncommon one with St. Paul ; on 
 the contrary, it belongs to the characteristic Pauline 
 phraseology. But there is something obtrusive in 
 the use of it here. The repetition of it in the 
 second verse, and the double defiance expressed in 
 it in the seventh and eleventh verses, seem to show 
 that St. Paul used it in a meaning way. This use 
 of the word will be explained if we suppose that St. 
 Paul was taking up an expression which had been 
 reported to him, and by which he had been displeased. 
 One of his assailants may have said that he "reckoned" 
 this or that to be the case about St. Paul. Some 
 such observation causes St. Paul to fasten on the 
 phrase. 
 
 Some of you, I hear, "reckon" of me as if I walked 
 after the flesh, as having the motives and the ways of the 
 carnal man. I for my part " reckon " that I will proceed 
 against such persons with a power which they will not be 
 able to resist. The weapons of my warfare are not carnal.
 
 xxiv "Reckonings" in 2 Cor. x. 341 
 
 The power of God is with me to cast down " reckonings " 
 and whatever sets itself up on high against the knowledge 
 of God, and to take every thought captive to the obedience 
 of Christ. Yes, I am prepared to punish all disobedience. 
 If any one is confident in himself that he is Christ's, let 
 him " reckon " that I am Christ's as much as he is. Some 
 one has told you that though my letters are strong my 
 bodily presence is weak and my speech of no account ; let 
 him " reckon " on this, that I will act as strongly as I 
 write. 
 
 A little farther on, xi. 5, the word occurs again ; 
 and it seems probable that we may class this use of 
 it also with those which have just preceded it. " I 
 ' reckon ' that I am not a whit behind those super- 
 lative apostles (TWV V7rep\iav a7ro<rToXa>z/)." It is 
 more doubtful whether a further use of it, in xii. 6, 
 is suggested by any remnant of the irritated feeling : 
 " I forbear, lest any one should ' reckon ' as to me 
 (et? e'/ie Xoyia-^rai,, should account of me, R.V.) above 
 that which he seeth me to be, or heareth of me." 
 
 There are two other places in this epistle in 
 which the word Xoyt^ecr&u occurs. In v. 19 it has 
 obviously that simple sense of " reckoning " in which 
 it is so frequently used in the Epistle to the Romans. 
 But this sense has not been usually given to \oyi- 
 o-aa-dat in iii. 5. Here it has been commonly 
 supposed to mean the exercise of the mind on 
 spiritual subjects. The Authorised Version has, 
 " not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think 
 anything as of ourselves " ; and the Apostle has been 
 generally understood to be protesting that he was 
 not sufficient of himself to do any of the thinking or 
 reasoning of his Apostolic ministry, that his teaching 
 was not his own, but God's. And no doubt \oyt-
 
 34 2 Some Interpretations Revised xxiv 
 
 o-/iou9 in x. 5, rendered "imaginations" or "reason- 
 ings," has been held to confirm this interpretation. 
 But the Revised Version has "not that we are 
 sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from 
 ourselves " ; where the comma must be intended to 
 guard the reader against making ' " to account " 
 depend upon " sufficient." St. Paul, according to 
 this amended translation, says, " not that of myself 
 I am sufficient (for my ministry), that anything I do 
 should be reckoned as from myself." It will be 
 found, I think, that everywhere in the New Testament 
 \oy%e<T0cu preserves its proper sense of " reckoning " 
 or " taking account."
 
 XXV 
 SOME INTERPRETATIONS REVISED 
 
 II 
 ST. PAUL'S "GRACE" 
 
 THERE are many places of the New Testament in 
 which the Revisers have made alterations which to 
 most readers it has seemed hardly worth while to 
 make ; and there are many in which they have 
 refrained from making alterations which critical 
 readers wish they had made. But I do not know 
 of more than one place in which they seem to me 
 to have altered any rendering of the Authorised 
 Version for the worse through misapprehension. 
 
 The place to which I refer is Philippians i. 7 ; 
 " Even as it is right for me to be thus minded in 
 behalf of you all, because I have you in my heart, 
 inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence 
 and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers 
 with me of grace." So the Revisers give the last 
 clause. But the Authorised Version has, " ye all 
 are partakers of my grace." I shall endeavour to 
 show that the Authorised is right here, and that St,
 
 344 Some Interpretations Revised xxv 
 
 Paul was speaking of a particular grace bestowed 
 on himself. 
 
 The Greek is a-vyrcoivwvoix; fiov r?}<? %dpiro<; irav- 
 r<z9 u/ia? 6Wa?. The article before ^aptro? is not 
 conclusive, but it agrees better with the Authorised 
 rendering than with the Revised. -That St. Paul 
 was accustomed to think of himself as having re- 
 ceived a special %ap? is to be inferred from several 
 passages of epistles written at different times. The 
 word %/349 he uses abundantly and in all its senses. 
 Its primary meaning, I suppose, is an act or move- 
 ment which gives pleasure, something which charms. 
 In its New Testament usage it means (i) kindness, 
 (2) active kindness, (3) beneficent spiritual influence, 
 (4) a gift or boon ; and also (5) gratitude or re- 
 sponse awakened by kindness, and (6) thanks. 
 The word is sown lavishly over a section of 2 
 Corinthians, chaps, viii. and ix., in which it occurs ten 
 times, in addition to ev^apicniav and ev^apia-ricov. 
 In viii. i, 9, ix. 8, 14, it has the familiar sense of 
 the Divine goodness acting with spiritual influence 
 upon human souls. In viii. 4 rr)v %dpiv is perhaps 
 equivalent to charity, the sympathetic charity of the 
 benevolent ; in 6, 7, and 1 9 this " charity " is more 
 definitely the collection for the poor at Jerusalem. 
 In viii. 1 6 and ix. 1 5 %/H? is thanks, " Thanks be 
 to God." When St. Paul is speaking of his %a/)t? 
 he means by the word a gift or privilege conferred 
 by God upon himself. 
 
 He dwells upon this most fully in the Epistle to 
 the Ephesians, which was written in the same year 
 and under the same circumstances as the Epistle to 
 the Philippians, so that the one may reasonably be
 
 xxv St. Paul's " Grace " 345 
 
 a guide to the thoughts of the other. In the third 
 chapter we read, " For this cause I Paul, the prisoner 
 of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles, if so be 
 that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace 
 of God which was given me to you-ward ; how that 
 by revelation was made known unto me the mystery, 
 ... to wit, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and 
 fellow-members of the body, and partakers of the 
 promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, whereof 
 I was made a minister, according to the gift of that 
 grace of God which was given me according to the 
 working of His power. Unto me, who am less than 
 the least of all saints, was this grace given, to 
 preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of 
 Christ." Nothing could be more explicit than these 
 last words ; but the whole passage sets forth the 
 wonderful- privilege, the grace, that had been con- 
 ferred upon St. Paul when he was called to be the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles. His particular grace, then, 
 was his Apostleship, his commission to proclaim the 
 good news of Christ to the Gentiles. 
 
 When, some years earlier, he was writing to the 
 Romans, he was already accustomed to speak of the 
 commission given to him as his grace. There is a 
 not quite definite use of the term in i. 5, "Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, through whom we received grace 
 and apostleship, unto obedience of faith among all 
 the nations." In xii. 3, " I say, through the grace 
 given unto me, to every man that is among you, not 
 to think of himself more highly than he ought to 
 think," it is tolerably certain that St. Paul is referring 
 distinctly to the authority with which his commission 
 invested him. This is still plainer in xv. 15, "I
 
 346 Some Interpretations Revised xxv 
 
 write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as 
 putting you again in remembrance, because of the 
 grace that was given me of God, that I should be a 
 minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles." In the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, written at nearly the same 
 time, there are two places in which tie connects the 
 word grace with his call and commission ; but in 
 i. i 5 the grace is the Divine will to give rather than 
 the gift itself " When it was the good pleasure of 
 God, who . . . called me through His grace, to 
 reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him 
 among the Gentiles " ; in ii. 7-9 it again means 
 distinctly the Apostolic commission, " When they 
 saw that I had been intrusted with the gospel of the 
 uncircumcision, even as Peter with the gospel of 
 the circumcision ; . . . and when they perceived the 
 grace that was given unto me, James and Cephas 
 and John . . . gave to me and Barnabas the right 
 hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the 
 Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision." 
 
 We see, then, that it was habitual to St. Paul to 
 describe his Apostolic commission as a special privi- 
 lege and favour for which God's goodness had 
 selected him ; in a single word he called it the 
 %a/w or grace given to him. To the Philippians 
 he feels deeply grateful because they had associated 
 themselves with his Apostolic work. This association 
 is what strikes the note of joy throughout the 
 epistle. It was chiefly by the sending of gifts, first 
 in the beginning of the Gospel, and then during the 
 imprisonment at Rome, that the Christians of 
 Philippi had made themselves his partners in the 
 work of spreading the Gospel ; but the gifts of money
 
 xxv St. Paul's " Grace " 347 
 
 had been consecrated to him by their being thus 
 devoted to the cause of the Gospel of which he was 
 the commissioned preacher. And he pours forth 
 his gratitude in those cordial words, " I thank my 
 God upon all my remembrance of you, always in 
 every supplication of mine on behalf of you all 
 making my supplication with joy, for your fellow- 
 ship in furtherance of the gospel from the first day 
 until now ; being confident of this very thing, that 
 He which began a good work in you will perfect it 
 until the day of Jesus Christ : even as it is right for 
 me to be thus minded on behalf of you all, because 
 I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my 
 bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the 
 gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace." They 
 had proved their fellowship with St. Paul in the 
 furthering of the Gospel ; they had made themselves 
 partners of his Apostleship of his special grace in 
 the imprisonment and in the defending and establish- 
 ing of the Gospel. If grace in this passage is taken 
 to mean the spiritual influence shed on all believers, 
 the preceding words lose their point. How had the 
 Philippians shown themselves to be partakers of 
 Divine grace in St. Paul's imprisonment ? The share 
 in furthering the Gospel, the association with the 
 imprisonment, and with the active work on behalf of 
 the Gospel, involved in the sympathetic assistance 
 they had given him, made the Philippians his 
 partners, not only in the general Divine grace 
 bestowed on all Christians, but in his Apostleship. 
 And St. Paul so cherished the office entrusted to him 
 that to claim a partnership in it was the surest way 
 to his heart.
 
 XXVI 
 
 SOME INTERPRETATIONS REVISED 
 in 
 
 THE "MANY MANSIONS" AND THE 
 "RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS" 
 
 THE interpretations of these two phrases which I 
 am about to advocate have this in common that 
 they bring into this life and into the past and the 
 present what has generally been put off into another 
 life and the future. 
 
 " In My Father's house are many mansions ; if it 
 were not so, I would have told you ; for I go to 
 prepare a place for you " (St. John xiv. 2). Every 
 one would admit that the word " mansions " is not a 
 happy rendering of jiovaL Etymologically, indeed, 
 it is an exact equivalent ; mansion means an abiding 
 or abode, as fiovrj does. But it has acquired in 
 common use a different sense from that which it first 
 bore. But what are the fiovai or abiding-places in 
 the Father's house? I think it is assumed in all 
 comments on the passage that they are the places to 
 be occupied in the future world by the faithful
 
 xxvi The " Many Mansions" 349 
 
 disciples of the Lord. Bishop Westcott in his note 
 on the verse expounds the words as relating to 
 " the future being of the redeemed," to " future 
 happiness." 
 
 The nature of the fwvai will depend upon the 
 nature of " My Father's house." In Bishop West- 
 cott's words, this is " the spiritual and eternal antitype 
 of the transitory temple " ; " Heaven is where God is 
 seen as our Father." There are many references to 
 the house of God or of the Father in the New 
 Testament, and none of them obliges us to think of 
 the future life. The material house is so natural an 
 image of the spiritual or domestic house, that in some 
 passages we cannot distinguish sharply between the 
 two senses of the word. Where St. Paul speaks of 
 the Gentiles being brought into the Divine family, 
 he makes large use of the double significance of 
 oto<?. " So then, ye are no more strangers and 
 sojourners (irdpoiKoi), but ye are fellow-citizens with 
 the saints, and of the household of God (oiKetoi rov 
 0eov\ being built upon the foundation of the apostles 
 and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief 
 corner stone ; in whom each several building, fitly 
 framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the 
 Lord ; in whom ye also are builded together for a 
 habitation of God in the Spirit" (Eph. ii. 19-22). 
 St. Peter uses the image in the same manner, 
 remembering, it would seem, that saying of his Lord 
 of which his name (stone) was a witness " unto 
 whom coming, a living stone, ye also, as living stones, 
 are built up a spiritual house" (i Peter ii. 4, 5). In 
 a passage of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the 
 word rendered " built " is KarcKricevdo-as, it is doubtful
 
 350 Some Interpretations Revised xxvi 
 
 whether the writer is thinking at all of the construc- 
 tion of a material house, or only of the founding of 
 a human house ; but God's house is to him what it 
 is to St. Paul and St. Peter. " He [Jesus] has been 
 counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by so 
 much as he that built the house hath more honour 
 than the house. . . . And Moses indeed was faithful 
 in all His [God's] house as a servant, for a testimony 
 of those things which were afterwards to be spoken ; 
 but Christ as a son, over His [God's] house ; whose 
 house are we, if we hold fast our boldness and the 
 glorying of our hope firm unto the end " (Heb. iii. 
 3-6). The Apostolic writers always assume that the 
 Father's house was the home of themselves and their 
 fellow-believers whilst they were still living on the 
 earth. 
 
 Christ went, He tells the Apostles, to prepare a 
 place for them. He " went," through His death and 
 departure into the unseen world. But He adds, " If 
 I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and 
 will receive you unto Myself ; that where I am, there 
 ye may be also." The natural sense of these words 
 is, not that the disciples when they severally died 
 should go to Jesus and be with Him, but that He 
 would come to them. This return of His began with 
 the Resurrection and was fulfilled on the Day of 
 Pentecost. Jesus promised that the Spirit should 
 be given ; and the Spirit would construct a Divine 
 home. " I will not leave you desolate (or bereaved) : 
 I come unto you. Yet a little while, and the world 
 beholdeth Me no more ; but ye behold Me : because 
 I live, ye shall live also. In that day ye shall know 
 that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in
 
 xxvi " The Restitution of all Things" 351 
 
 you. ... If a man love Me, he will keep My 
 word : and My Father will love him, and we will 
 come unto him, and make our abode with him." Here 
 abode is fj,ov^v. This is the only other place in 
 which fjiovq occurs in the New Testament, though 
 /i/&>, abide, is almost the key-word of St. John's 
 spiritual teaching. 
 
 The Apostles evidently understood their Master 
 to promise that, when He had gone out of their 
 bodily sight, He would come to them again in 
 spiritual presence, and they would dwell with Him 
 and the Father in a spiritual home ; and after the 
 Day of Pentecost they were accustomed to assume 
 that the promise had been fulfilled, and that they 
 were living as the Father's children with the other 
 members of the Divine family, looking up to the 
 Divine Son as their head. The " many mansions " 
 are places in this household, occupied by the oliceloi 
 rov 6eov. The kingdom of heaven is opened to all 
 believers, the home of God is established on the 
 earth ; and Christians are to know themselves as 
 fellow-subjects of the kingdom, as fellow-inmates of 
 the home. 
 
 The phrase " restitution (or restoration) of all 
 things " occurs in the following passage of St. Peter's 
 address, spoken in explanation of the cure of the 
 lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple 
 " Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins 
 may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons 
 of refreshing from the presence of the Lord ; and 
 that He may send the Christ who hath been ap- 
 pointed for you, even Jesus : whom the heaven must
 
 352 Some Interpretations Revised xxvi 
 
 receive until the times of restoration of all things, 
 whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy 
 prophets which have been since the world began " 
 (Acts iii. 19-21). 
 
 The Apostolic expectations with regard to the 
 future form a constantly recurring -difficulty in the 
 New Testament. Commentators are apt to assume 
 that when they have adopted the belief that the 
 Apostles expected what did not come to pass the 
 difficulty is disposed of. But that is not so : it re- 
 mains difficult to know what the expectations were. 
 That difficulty confronts us in this passage. Leav- 
 ing out of account what actually occurred in the 
 Apostolic age, what are we to suppose that St. 
 Peter meant, and that the author of the Acts under- 
 stood him to mean ? The Apostle seems to say 
 that, if his hearers turned to God by believing in 
 Jesus as the Christ, the Christ would be sent to them 
 from heaven, and there would be a happy spiritual 
 time ; but that the Christ would remain shrouded 
 in heaven " until the times of restoration of all 
 things" or, in other words, until they, the Jews 
 who heard Peter speaking, should repent. That 
 restoration of all things had been the subject of all 
 the prophets. All the prophets, from Samuel on- 
 wards, had " told of these days," Kar^yyeiXav ra<? 
 r)/jipa<; ravras. St. Peter expressly associates the 
 sending of Christ, the blessed time, the restoration of 
 all things, with those days, with the age in which he 
 and his hearers were living. And it is remarkable 
 that the address closes with the statement that the 
 Christ who was to be sent to the people on their 
 repenting, had been already sent to them after His
 
 xxvi " The Restitution of all Things" 353 
 
 death that they might repent. " Unto you first 
 God, having raised up His Servant, sent Him to bless 
 you, in turning away every one of you from your 
 iniquities." In the Divine history, it would appear, 
 Christ had come. To those who, through repentance, 
 had eyes to see Him, He was present, and had brought 
 His blessings with Him ; but those who still had a 
 veil on their hearts could not see Him or enter into 
 those blessings : for these He had yet to come. The 
 restoration of all things was then taking place in the 
 Divine history, and would be actually accomplished 
 all things would be put in their right order in 
 the general recognition of the Christ who had come. 
 The restoration of all things, air o tear do-rao-i? 
 Trdvrwv, cannot be separated from that remarkable 
 saying of our Lord's recorded in Matthew xvii. 
 After the vision of Moses and Elijah talking with 
 Him, Jesus commanded His disciples, " Tell the vision 
 to no man, until the Son of man be risen from 
 the dead. And His disciples asked Him, saying, 
 Why then say the scribes that Elijah must first 
 come ? And He answered and said, Elijah indeed 
 cometh, and shall restore all things (d-rroKaraaTrjcrei 
 jrdvTo} : but I say unto you, that Elijah is come 
 already, and they knew him not, but did unto him 
 whatsoever they listed. . . . Then understood His 
 disciples that He spake unto them of John the 
 Baptist." And aTroKaraa-rija-et is the word used in 
 the Septuagint version of Malachi, where the Hebrew 
 is rendered " turn." " Elias shall restore the heart 
 of father towards son, and the heart of a man to- 
 wards his neighbour" (iv. 5). These coincidences 
 can hardly be accidental. 
 
 2 A
 
 354 " The Restitution of all Things" xxvi 
 
 It was the establishment of the Messianic king- 
 dom, the turning of mankind into the Divine family, 
 that the prophets and our Lord and St. Peter had in 
 view. The coming of the kingdom would put all 
 things right In being the herald of the Messianic 
 kingdom, John the Baptist, that other "Elijah, brought 
 in this restoration. The essence of the right establish- 
 ment of all things was the fulfilment of true spiritual 
 relations. To put hearts right was to put all things 
 right. When men, repenting and turning to God, 
 saw and confessed the Son of man reigning at the 
 Father's right hand, all would be right with them ; 
 family life, social life, would be perfected in the 
 acknowledging of Christ. When St. Peter spoke, he 
 knew that the Christ was reigning ; and he knew that 
 the blessings of His reign were enjoyed by His true 
 spiritual subjects ; and he was convinced that for his 
 countrymen their Messiah was come and all was put 
 right if only they would turn to Him with their 
 hearts and acknowledge Him as their Lord. 
 
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