HEROISM. ' LOKD, shall sin work Thee shame, To cloud Thy glorious Name ? No ; Thou art so good and just, Sin and sorrow serve Thee must : While they last and when they die, Thou art hope, Thou victory. ' The cross and sepulchre On love the crown confer ; Suffering has vanquished pain, Dying has 'made death a gain : Wicked hands but wrought their deed, That a Saviour might succeed." RF.V. THOMAS T. I.VNCH, Tiit Kn-a.'ef, HEROISM; (]QD OUR FATHER. OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT, OMNIPRESENT HORACE FIELD, 13. A. LUND. " Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glail : for great is your reward in heaven." MATT. v. u, 12. " The desire to benefit others without a view to reward constitutes heaven in man." NEW JERUSALEM AND ITS HEAVENLY DOCTRINE, No. loj. DON QUIXOTE "I tell thee, brother Panza, that there is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate." SANCHO PANZA" But what greater misfortune can there be than that which u:iits f>.r time to cure ami for death to end?" LONDON: i . ) x ( ; M ,\ \ s. < ; K i-: E x, i< K A u K u. & D v E K. 1867. GLASGOW: hRINTED BY BELL AND BAIN, MITCHELL STREET. D ED 1C A TION. 'I'll!'. BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDE, THE LAMU AND THE LAMP'S /F//-7-:, IX WHOSE MARRIAGE '' Thou shall be a crown of glory in the hand of Jehovah, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy (lod ; thou shall no more be termed Forsaken. neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate." 2017637 O N T E N T S. PKOI.OGl'K, XI INTRODUCTION. The power of the Omnipotent limited by His own laws, ........ I One mode of reconciling foreknowledge and free-will Not satisfactory The apparent possession of free-will no argument for believing in it, . .2 Another mode of reconciliation God's government so obvious that men must be gifted with a seem- ing freedom only, ...... 3 Clod all in all Man but an appearance The devil God's agent, ....... 4 Application Each man at all times alone with God, meeting Him only, and acting only the part He appoints All arranged as it is, that man may seem to possess powers God cannot delegate, . 5 Men mere actors, 6 Mere puppets in God's sight, .... 7 But intended to feel as free men This view a comfort to the weary and heart -sore, . . 8 b VI CONTEXTS. I'AGE The existence of evil Heaven and hell, ... 9 Angels and devils may both be happy when in suitable worlds Familiarly illustrated, . . IO God's goodness therefore justified, . . . .11 Reasons for this double creation, . . . .12 The gift of free-will, 13 Recapitulation of my theme, . . . . . 14 The views stated, those commonly held Our feeling of freedom as real as the rest of our being, . 1 5 Free-will, therefore, practically a reality Seeming imperfections in God's works necessary to their perfection, . . . . . . .16 God Himself, placed as we are, deluded like our- selves, 17 ON EVIL. The good the evil man's presence brings to the good man, 18 Affords a field for the exercise of true nobleness, . 19 Illustrated in Christ's life and death, . . .20 Dimness of vision sufficient alone to produce a world where self-sacrifice is possible, . . . .21 The evil man's presence gives a priestly office to the good man, ....... 24 The good the good man's presence brings to the evil man The battle of life an inner one, . . 25 The result of contagion This battle gives a seeming freedom to the evil man, . . . . .26 The evil man's destiny wretched only in the eyes of the good man, ....... 27 Evil thoughts by God's inspiration consistent with what we observe about us, . . . .28 CONTENTS. Vll PAGE Lies consistent with certain natures, . . -3 And may therefore be inspired direct by God if those natures subserve good ends The good man and bad man each marked indelibly with his own nature 32 A devil as like a creature of God's make as a tiger Freedom from the devil to be obtained only by daring him, 33 And this may be done fearlessly, because he is but God in disguise, ...... 34 ON GOOD. The good man the blessing of creation, . . 35 Our life an imitation of Christ Two periods in Christ's life The first, life in the world, . . 36 The second, life with the good only Christ's life as in the first period may be the life in s, 37 In the first period our Lord the teacher of both good and bad, . . . . . . . .38 In the second, of the good only Most men called to minister to good and bad, . . . -39 And then can but embody the spirit of much of Christ's teaching, .... . 40 The institutions of the world depend for their ex- istence on the presence of bad men, . . .41 Men like Edward Irving wanted from time to time, 42 They are willing to be martyrs Hell hateful only so long as we are subject to its influence, -43 The evil race not hateful, but to be resisted to the death, .44 V1H CONTENTS. PAflE No truce with the devil, .45 The in-dyed nature of the evil race, . . . .46 Their future reformation unlikely, . . . .48 The good effects, on the good, of their incurability, . 49 No need for the, evil race in heaven They have no power to credit any motive except self-interest, . 5 Must be kept at arm's-length, . . . . .52 The races, though quite distinct, indistinguishable by us We may hence be calling down future blessings where npw greeted only by curses, . 53 Delusions by direct inspiration from God, . . 55 As credible as by His permission only, . . . 56 The nobility they produce, . . . . -57 ON FREE-WILL. Man, the harp ; God, the harper Love, a gift from God, 59 So also all other powers, the desire for every seem- ingly free act The world within and without in the form of freedom, . ... . .60 Seeming freedom as good as real freedom Seem- ingly free acts but few, . . . . .61 Not much, therefore, has to be resigned in order to find our Father everywhere The doctrine does not lead to idleness, 62 1 Jut to prayer in action, 63 The sonship of God and repose in Him, . . .64 If our meditations are .for gpod, we ar of the good; if for evil, of the evil : in either case may trust in God, 65 " Vile " thoughts direct from God, . . . .66 Given that we may know hell frojn heaven, . . .67 CONTENTS. IX The counterpoise of heaven and hell, . . .68 Conjugial love a parallel case The acting of the woman Delusion the essence of the love, . 69 Other contradictions in human nature, . . -7 The wise man's mode of action, . . . 7 1 ON PRAYER. Prayer, God's address to Himself An account ac- cording with the usual account, . . . 72 All prayer must be heartfelt He sends the state of heart, 73 Foreknows the word'that will be uttered The object of prayer, its influence on us, . . .74 Letter to Pall Mall Gazette, 75 Earnest men love most to be used as givers, . -77 An outer object seldom gained by prayer Inner peace always, and thus our highest nature fed, . . . .... . . .78 Of our dependence on God, an intellectual acknow- ledgment only necessary, . . . . -79 Outer gifts possible only for those abandoned in trust in God, So \Ve cannot be so abandoned unless we believe God all in all God no "deceiver," . . . .81 Though he seems to create a world with the purpose of deception, 82 The same appearance of deceit in all ownership, . 83 The feeling of possession innate, . . .84 Through God's abandonment of Himself to us in love, 85 The world created through man, . . . .8(1 God so loves us that He makes His appear ours, . 87 CONTENTS. ON THE WORD OF GOD. PAGE All words God's words, ...... 88 But those called God's words which point exclusively heavenwards They are recognized by their inner influence, . 89 The Bible the soul's sun and shield Its power felt as unassailable, ...... 90 Describes all things with the eyes of the heavenly man Judas Iscariot Jewish history a drama, . 91 Men described as puppets by our Lord, . . .92 Our Lord's temptation Profane and Holy Writ, . 93 Men mere puppets, a Bible truth, ... -94 ON LAW. Law necessary to give us seeming independence, . 95 Law in science and in human character, . . .96 The family a man, ....... 97 The nation a man This man its " ideal king," . 98 Appoints and controls the visible king Cannot be God, 99 Must be of infernal or evenly balanced nature Law makes God's doings appear ours, . . . 100 CONCLUSION. Examples, 102 SUMMARY, 108 EPILOGUE, in O L O G U E. ARGUMENT. PROLOGUE in verse, as imaging victory over pain. Home-desolation the origin of the book ; such desolation, making pain, which is a mere adornment of life when endured for those we love, become unendurable, and forcing the author to search for a new home, the doors of which, when found, he feels constrained to open. Pain dealt with as incurable by us, because, although wholly unphilosophi- cal, no one can so isolate himself as to be cured by philosophy till all men are cured ; such cure, therefore, in the dim distance, if, indeed, the constitution of the world does not point to pain con- tinuing as long as the world lasts. Our love for our Lord dependent on His having endured pain. The book shows that pain is direct from God, and traces a use in pain as pain. A FRIEND AND THE AUTHOR. Fr. In verse your prologue 1 Auth. Yes; in measured verse I write within, " We bear real wounds shed tears;" But if the wounds be borne with gladsome face, The tears of sorrow fall as drops of dew, Xll PROLOGUE. And image back the sun ; from sober prose Our wounds and tears are turned to smiling verse. With measured tread I therefore introduce The limping prose of deadly deeds and sin. Fr. Some hundred pages, rather more, I see ; 'Tis a long string of words. A nth. You name my thought. The heaped up foam of a great inner tumult, For God has willed a will I dare not question To veil in clouds of weary night the sun That lit my home, in clouds that rise no more. Thus cold and dreary, I am forced to seek A home where cheering sun doth shine, and I Without a sun to shed on me its radiance Yet once or twice while with my pen I watched, Mapping the footsteps of my eager thoughts, The dream sped round about with sob and sigh. That I again in outer form had found The sunshine lost. A dream! a dream ! no more. A dream where dazed I see my home re-lit By golden veiled sun ; while o'er the hills Love in her train each single moment's deed Comes gaily trooping back, and glorious pain High o'er the cavalcade Love's ornament PROLOGUE. XI II Swoops through the distant air with glittering - wing. The grazing flocks are scared ; and next, I see The fluttering thoughts I mapped start up erect, Then quick on bounding wing drift down the gale. It is a dream ! a bold, deceptive dream ! I have no home ! One hearer wanting me, I in the ears of many tell my tale, And the unuttered language of content That daily grows, to troubled watcher on An anxious search constrained, I do transform ; And now, the house of " many mansions" found, Alike constrained, I open its barred doors, That all who will may enter. Fr. Ah, thus ! on pain You've much, I see, on pain. A nth. Ay, truly, sir, An essay written thus, and published thus, May well be styled like many kindred essays " An essay on the cause and cure of pain," The pain, that daily pain, which round us wraps An icy cloak, tell-tale of frozen lands. Fr. I thought you told of pain that was but joy, A joy in sober clothes ? XIV PROLOGUE. Anth. No; you mistake. You will not find it there. I hear of such I with exultant gladness hear of it ; Yet for myself and you 'tis a wild theme. Fr. Wild therne ! Auth. However deep and desperate our pain, When we reflect that He, the life of love The only life directs, ordains, decrees, Besets us round about as closely now As when He bade the world outside assume A very different form, despair itself E'en lank despair bids us pluck courage up And whistle away care; and when we paint The great I AM in all His drapery, Reflect that those whose forms lie mouldering in The grave, whose looks were love, whose every deed Was love, shed God upon us in each look. Breathed Him in every deed; breathed Him who still Our comfort is, our daily life, our bread.* * However bold this language may seem, it pales before the words of our Lord, " I am the bread of life . . which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." "He that eateth my PROLOGUE. XV Do we not know the Love that gave the looks Is ours as much to-day. If in Rude husk our life is coated now, instead Of tender rind, and we the rind desire With very hungry eagerness, we're sure The Perfect One so clothes Himself to-day, That we may substance love, and gorgeous show, In right proportion, not love too much the show. That God loves both, the little daisy knows : Thus also we, He calls His children, may; And from the Perfect One assured may be We both are getting in the perfect way. Fr. 'Tis glorious, sir! how then wild theme, I say? Auth. For you and me to-day We're not alone must grieve with others' grief, Bear others' woe, weep through their ignorance. I had but yesterday rebuke to bring, To fiercely censure those who know no rule But their own selfish will. To-day I bade The mother, child in arms, and busy father, In name of public law pull down the shed flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." XVI PROLOGUE. Whose fost'ring shelter hatched a few slight gains For a penurious store. To-morrow ! Well ! It has its tear laid by : for if perched up On lofty crag we look with eagle's eye, As clearly seeing, know we're fools to weep ; Yet when on others we must press the yoke We know to be no yoke, we grieve that they Will find it gall, not be the wings of angels. Ay, grief and pain too deeply far are round Us piled to be pressed through to-day. Fr. Ah, thus! The words just now told of their disappearance. Auth. Of light o'er darkness, rather sun o'er shade; For though the glad Philosophy you love, Like clear-eyed Joseph, Pharaoh's wise purveyor, Is gathering from the fields the golden fruit, Rich with the power to rid all men of pain, The spacious barns, the gorgeous palace walls In quiet splendour clad, the busy men, The creaking trains of waggons heavy laden, With naked eye we barely can distinguish, So long 's the road, if broad, that leads to them ! A confined road, hemmed in on either side, PROLOGUE. XVll By trees that push the sun away, or, niggards, Deal it out in thrifty threads and dots ; The road a dappled avenue doth seem, Into whose dark, o'ershadowed entrance we May press and dimly see far, far away, With eyes that pierce a mist like that of ages; The houses, barns, and all the busy scene A living landscape blazoned by the sun. Ah, glorious sight ! But when, with shaded eye, You, dazed say, " Ha ! ha ! I'll nearer draw, I see the folly, sin, the ignorance, In every mental pain ; convinced I'll be Exempt. I'll run until with shout I reach Th' entrancing sun." You'll sadly, weeping, find You dream a prophet's dream of other lands Of golden lands, not of the world we fill. Fr. Ah, yes ! of one that we may fill. Aitth. Not so. Not so: for we are bound, are chained Immoveably to men who swarm around, The dull-eyed multitude, more keen to seek The fruit at hand than scan the distant scene; A slowly pacing cavalcade, in which Each mortal denizen that limps the road XV1I1 PROLOGUE. From earth to heaven has his own place with thine. And truly, sir, to me, strange though it be, The barns, the palaces, the gorgeous scene Seem to recede away as rapidly As we poor mortals shuffle after them. Fr. Oh, say not so ! Auth. We can but look, not order, And what we see with eye still open tell. Thus in the visions of this short-lived world, That weird-like pass before my anxious gaze, Life here and pain I cannot disunite ; Our Lord felt pain, and hence our adoration, Our all-absorbing love. We must feel pain, Or whine the cry, "Am I my brother's keeper?" But feeling pain, we may exorcise it, Gain strength, return, feel pain again, and thus Bleed out our lives thus pay back life for life. The brilliant sunshine of the distant scene We'll thank God for with lowly head, bent knee. It adds a lustre to a dark foreground, A glorious setting to a vale of tears The foreground ours and the distance too ; This as the foreground's setting, and no more. PROLOGUE. XIX Fr. Such is your theme ! And thus the icy cloak About our loins you tie immoveably. Cold is our lot. Auth. 'Tis cold outside. Yet, as In arctic lands, the glitt'ring ice itself The great protector is of heat within. Our God and Father is the all in all, And piercing sorrow comes by His decree ; Life of His life, dark thorny husk, it brings The gorgeous dowry His Spirit gives. 'Tis thus I write, this my esteem for pain. In arms of love uplifting this strong faith, I would with reverent care some purpose show In sorrow's bright red line both bold and strange, Tracking the tangled path we daily tread. Toward the goal you seek, a tott'ring step, Perhaps you'll say, yet even so, a step. But to the fruit itself. Taste it and try; If bitter, cast it forth, not angrily; If sweet, accept, and not the sweet deny. THURLOW ROAP, HAMPSTEAD, N.W., > 1867. fc j|OD even cannot make black white, or two and two into five. Omnipotence, therefore, sets bounds to its own self in its own laws. It cannot do and undo at the same time. Imagine all things but God Chaos, and He may surely make a universe, governed by any laws He pleases ; but, once made, that universe can exist only by God regarding the laws that gave it birth and continue it in existence. If one of God's gifts to men be free-will, it is, to say the least, difficult to reconcile His foreknowledge and foreordaining of events and this holy gift, so difficult, that men, in- wardly convinced of their free-will, are fain to tamper with those prerogatives of God in order 2 INTRODUCTION. to leave room for its existence. " Great events are governed by Him," they say, " but not small." To me this is an impossible division. If walking from London to Birmingham, we certainly seem free to choose the road on which we will walk ; and yet, had we selected some other road than the one chosen, we might have lost our lives. We certainly seem free to choose whether we will walk out on a holiday or sit at home and read; and yet, had we omitted the walk, we might not have met a friend who has afterwards become our good or evil genius. If, then, the apparent possession of free-will is the reason why we believe in it, we have as much cause to put faith in the above actions being free as in any other ; and yet, from these seemingly free actions, the whole course of our lives has befen fashioned for good or ill. Did God govern these actions, or did we 1 I altogether deny, however, that the apparent possession of free-will is any argument whatever for believing we possess it ; for, if contemplation of the world about us allows us to think that all INTRODUCTION. 3 thoughts leading to acts, important and unim- portant, are inspired in us directly from God, then we must allow that He can, accompanying the thought, inspire also the desire to do the acts ; and we mean nothing else by being free than doing the acts we desire to do. If God, then, so deals with us, we seem to be free, while we are mere puppets in His hands. Another theory, however, which I must men- tion, used to be the favourite one with me for reconciling foreknowledge and free-will. I thought that it was possible God understood our character so thoroughly that He could fore- tell what we should do, ourselves remaining all the while free. This theory, however, needs but to be stated to refute itself. For such knowledge implies that our character can be reduced to law, that, given the man and the position, the act can be foretold; and thus a man and his acts become the outgrowth of the nature received at his birth and the position in which he is placed. If so, his doings result from this combination, and not from free-will. The world seems to me so clearly under the control of some regulating power leading it 4 INTRODUCTION. steadily on to foreordained results, that I must believe in this power. I cannot, therefore, be- lieve in free-will. We certainly seem to have it, and must therefore continually act as if we had it. This must be the result of that seeming; but it is, like our whole selves, after all, but a seeming. The only reality is God God in heaven, God on earth, God below the earth, in air, sea, land, everywhere ; and creation but an appearance, borrowing all its reality from God, its Creator, and living wholly by His breath. When I say that man himself is but an appearance, I certainly rob him of nothing in saying his free-will is of the same nature as his whole being ; man but an appearance most deeply fathomed when we see God working in him and through him. God, then, must work in the evil man and the good man in devil and in angel. If He did not, I cannot but believe, with the child, that God would destroy the devil. There must be an end gained in his existence that could not be gained without it. If God, then, allows the devil to exist for good ends, the devil is in reality God's servant, and He reigns in him. INTRODUCTION. 5 I will apply this. The table at which I sit, the ink with which I write, the lamp that lights me, the people in the room with me, the car- peted floor, the fire, the chairs, all spring from God's presence, and are His. The evil man I meet, the meeting with whom I dread, comes by God's direction; his angry voice and threat- ening language is by God's appointment; he could not speak nor look but for God's will and for God's purposes. As, then, we become wise, we feel ourselves to walk alone at all times with God. In our wisest moods we retire, as our Lord did, upon the quiet mountains of the soul, and pray alone with God ; there we are, though the mouth of the scorner mock us, and the lash of the angry man strike us. As we recover strength from this lonely worship, from the perception that these things are all from God, so do we return back among men, as our Lord did, and heal by the gentle word or unsparing rebuke, as He did ; and all this, with ourselves actors in it, I call a seeming, having every moment fashioned and every breath drawn out of God's will, that we may seem to be that which we cannot be, men living independently INTRODUCTION. of God ; that we may seem to be that which God has no power to create in its fulness sons of God, gifted with the divine attribute of free-will an attribute He cannot delegate, and still keep control of the world : He can- not delegate to short-sighted men, who, if they could be so gifted, would, like the fabled Phaeton, whelm the world in ruin. " If I understand you," it may be said, " you make men mere actors ; you put a literal truth on Shakespeare's words ' All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.' " Truly; I am pleased to find words so explicit. I am glad to have so great a seer as Shakespeare to support my theory ; and now I will ask, " Were, How to create a race of creatures who should enjoy the pleasures of free-will, while free-will was a gift that could be delegated to none were this the problem God had to solve, could He solve it otherwise than by making ' all the world a stage,' by giving to this race the feeling that they did possess what they never could possess 1 " and if God knew that the reins INTRODUCTION. 7 of the world must be kept in His own hands, was not this the problem 1 ? For my position is, There is no real distinction between great events and small. Small events are but the seeds of great events, and each event jostles and hustles the other in its course. If God rules at all, therefore, He rules altogether; and man, while seeming to direct, does direct noth- ing. Meanwhile, we have each this seeming free-will; and, therefore, I say from my point of view, this was the problem before God ; and if it be a strange problem for the Omnipotent to place before Himself, still our possession of this heavenly gift in seeming though it be springs only from His having placed it before Himself. Let our wonder, therefore, at least clothe itself in thankfulness. From God's point of view, then, I say man ' has no independent existence. He comes into the world, he lives in the world, he goes out of the world, just as God wills and pleases ; he has a seeming existence of his own, inde- pendent of God, which is not real ; he has a seeming will of his own, independent of God, which is equally unreal. From man's point of 8 INTRODUCTION. view, while provided through God's goodness with power to gather food and raiment for himself, he has an existence independent of God, and a will of his own on which he can act independent of God's will. God intended man to feel this : and it is therefore certain he will, and is right he should ; but while so feeling, he should acknowledge that to God this is but a seeming; or, as Swedenborg says, while acknowledging he acts from God, he should act " as of himself." I dwell on this question so much, and pro- pose to dwell on it at still greater length, because, for the comfort and support of the weary and heart-sore, and for the encourage- ment of all that is independent and Godlike in the character, I desire to make the fact that men, both good and evil, events, happy and unhappy, being by God's immediate and special appointment, we really live every moment in no other presence than the presence of God Himself; that in the noisiest and most bust- ling, in the most painful and most dreadful moments, we are still alone with God : the breath cannot blow upon our cheeks except INTRODUCTION. His will stirs it ; the axe cannot fall upon our necks except by His appointment. " And now, if these things be," it will be asked, " How can evil exist ? " If, accompany- ing faith in man's free-will, there be also faith in God's foreknowledge, an answer is equally,, difficult ; for if man was created, and his Creator knew he would fall away from Him, and evil come into the world, it must have been His intention from the beginning that this should happen. Grant God's foreknow- ledge, then, and the theory stated creates no new difficulty. To answer the question, however, I must premise a little. Heaven, as I conceive, is a place in which v the neighbour is loved even better than self; hell, a place in which self is loved above all. The angel's nature is Christ's nature one in which the love of the neighbour overbears even the love of life ; the devil's nature, that of the animal, if we extract from it such faint unselfish love as animals sometimes manifest. In the angel's nature all the devil's propen- sities are present, as servants willingly obedient 10 INTRODUCTION. to the love of the neighbour; in the devil's nature the angelic affections are present as servants to the selfish nature. If this be a true account of heaven and hell, why may not both angels and devils be happy, if in suitable worlds, such as heaven and hell may be I Angels, we all admit, can be happy ; and if devils are but wholly selfish animals, why may not they be as happy as the animals we see about us, if suitably governed 1 and their government being, as it must be, through fear (love existing in them only in slavery), will ever to the angel, who is governed through love, appear the tortures of hell, perhaps the punishments of hell less so, indeed, than its delights. Has the reader ever unexpectedly found him- self in a betting ring or a " knock out " after an auction 1 If so, he will probably be able to realize, with the writer, what an assembly of selfish men bent wholly on furthering their own interests resembles to us, with such unselfish- ness as we possess; and yet the men assembled are in the full enjoyment of their own delights, and are probably none of them wholly aban- INTRODUCTION. II doned to self. A feeling of shrinking disgust, similar to that felt in the betting ring and in the "knock out," I have also felt when some highly gambling nature has stumbled unex- pectedly into a whist party ; and from these experiences have been able to form a concep- tion of what hell must seem to an angel, what a place of utter repulsion, punishment, and torment ; while to the devil himself it may be the place of his delight. Now, if devils may be happy in their home happier, because more intelligent, than the most intelli- gent of the animals about us the goodness of God is fully justified in their creation. If their creation be needful for His purposes, and if for these purposes those destined for heaven and for hell be gifted with a common form, and so mixed together that our blindness cannot do otherwise than call them all by the common name of men, nay, if in their origin they be so much alike that it is a mere question for each whether the higher or the lower faculties shall gain pre-eminence, why . not, and yet God's goodness shine forth still i undimmed? If in the end each attains a 12 INTRODUCTION. state in which his nature is fully satisfied, can any complain, because, seeming to start so equally, such different destinies await them, an endless day the one the other an endless night ? Tears may be shed over the course of the devil as he appears to the dim eyes of the angel, and yet God be justified; Christ utter His passionate lament over Jerusalem, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate," and yet God's goodness be justified.* And now, if it be asked, wherefore this double creation 1 Avithout feeling that the theory which brings into prominence the idea of God omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, would be invalidated if I gave no answer I yet will give such answer as I can. The feeling that we possess free-will that we * Such an address we must always remember is made to the mixed multitude, and may, in God's mighty drama, serve as the trumpet-call at which the heaven- bound spring to their destiny. INTRODUCTION. 13 are able to do as we please that we can act \ and refuse to act that we invent, make and unmake that we can be good or evil, however illusory this feeling may be however much we do but follow an instinct in all things, I call the heavenly gift which makes us seem to ourselves capable of becoming the sons of God in a sense similar to that in which we are sons of earthly parents ; and this feeling, through the mingled constitution of the world made up of incipient angels and devils, and all the evils and trials this mixture brings becomes so real, so ineffaceable, we seem so distinctly to have ourselves chosen good or evil, that while intellectually we acknowledge God is all in all, and men and their free-will mere appearance, we cannot forbear to think and act as if gifted with what God can but give in appearance ; for God must be and remain all in all, must have every smallest insect, every heavenly orb, each seemingly unimportant thought, and each life-guiding resolution, alike beneath His control. I need now to pause and encourage myself in my seemingly ungrateful task of persuading 14 INTRODUCTION. men to step down from the lofty pedestal of an independent being. If I persuade to the truth, I might doubtless rest well assured of good consequences, did I foresee none; but with this assurance only I doubt me I should still remain silent The feeling that we stand so lonely in our bitterest sorrows, so unapproach- able, so powerless to receive comfort from our fellow-men even as our Lord and Master was lonely has driven me to wail, till to the shrill echo of my grief has succeeded the voice of God; and now, perforce, I must speak. I must find Him everywhere, or I can find no comfort. I must feel that He it is who bids the angry man beat me down with his insulting words ; or my grief to have to face them, for ends so vain as that of carrying on existence here, becomes unbearable; but if every word and tone spring out of God's permission and appointment, if it be, in fact, God's voice and tone, what need we fear ] for then we are assured it is for good ends it comes ; then do we ever gaze into the face of God, are upheld by His embrace, which, though it may destroy this body, yet, so destroy- ing it, gives, in the heroism called forth, a gift INTRODUCTION. 15 attainable only through the torture of the flame and at the point of the sword. Amen. Even so, my Father. When Mrs. Oliphant writes of Major Och- terlony, shot in war " A chance bullet, which most likely had been fired without any purpose at all, had done its appointed office in Major Ochterlony's brave, tender, honest bosom" what does she assert more than most men and women would assert; and if there be no distinction between great things and small, what do I assert more than she 1 But for the overshadowing faith in free-will, which, in the vain effort to save itself, feigns them to be straws, the angry look and angry word must be alike confessed God's look and word. Surely the reconciliation of these differences is, that God gives us the appearance of free- will without the reality. On the stage, however, on which we enact parts seemingly our own, but in reality parts every word and deed in which God makes us stand up, and speak, and act, wounds draw blood, pain causes suffering, there is scorn, contempt, crucifixion, death all to us l6 INTRODUCTION. as real, though no more real than our seeming possession of free-will. The conclusion reached, then, is, that in God's eyesight we have no free-will ; in our own, we possess free-will as certainly as we suffer scorn, contempt, crucifixion, death; just as to the unerring eye the earth is seen to revolve on its own axis, while to our uncor- rected vision the sun unmistakeably revolves round the earth. Henceforth, then, while claiming God to reign in all things, be the cause of all things great and small, I need no longer, for daily purposes, speak of free-will as a seeming, but as a possession. And now it may be said, " God's works are perfect. It is therefore impossible that this world a world so manifestly imperfect that most men's daily reading is mainly of reforms and changes needed it is impossible such a world can be wholly His in what needs reform and in what we would leave untouched." I reply, " This world's perfection requires these things we call imperfect." Our idea of God is formed on observation of His works, within and without. The plants and trees are His. INTRODUCTION. 1 7 Do we call them perfect? They have often deformed leaves and flowers, and leaves and flowers eaten in part or wholly. We, to feed ourselves, contribute to these deformities. Are not His works for use 1 and if use does what we call deform them, should not they be de- formed ? I believe God's works to be wholly perfect for the end designed an end that, for a time at least, needs the existence of what to our short-sighted vision seems imperfection. Here I may remark, that when such a dis- cover)' dawns on the mind as that, while seeming to possess free-will, we are really but doers of God's will, the appearance of God in the world in the person of His son, who laboured, and loved, and spoke, and wept, and suffered, and was affected by delusive appear- ances, like ourselves, gives to our perceptions a local habitation and a name shows that even God Himself, placed as we are, thinks, feels, acts, weeps, and suffers like ourselves, throws a heavenly radiance of reality round our acting. V V I L. j|LAIMING, then, that every word the bad man utters is really God's word, I feel called on to point out more plainly the good the evil man's presence brings to the good man. I have hinted at this good in my introductory remarks, and I will now dwell on it at greater length. I am sure I speak the faith of all that is worthy when I say " that man alone is en- throned in our hearts who, having to go through contention and drive men to perform their duty, feels that, should he shrink from their anger, contempt, and threats, he is unworthy to press with his lips the lips he loves that he dare not couple in thought his own image and the loved one's, unless he dares, without ON EVIL. 19 anxiety or fear, in calmness of spirit, meet this anger and contempt. Thus to feel is alone to be loveable and worthy to love." We might be thus brave, we might be thus gifted with calm courage, like our Lord's, and have no occasion for its exercise, but we could not be assured of such gifts without the occa- sion ; and this occasion we owe to the existence of evil. Are we not indeed, then, debtors to the evil propensities in, men, which give such a field for the exercise of true nobleness a field that could not exist but for them 1 And, if assured that the ultimate destiny of the evil man is one in which himself delights, may we not gladly praise God for his existence, and that we have been thought worthy to be trained in the fiery furnace his presence brings ; and when our weekly trials come round, rejoice if a "sensitive nature" has not led us to find a way of escape from them; but has, instead, allowed itself to become servant to the heroic nature, and tempered with its gentleness the deeds of those that dare not press the lips they love unless their soul lies open to the beams of the heroism they adore 1 2O ON EVIU The bad genius in a play is said to be always the cause of its interest, and this is as true in real life. In both, our good sympathies are enlisted by the sight of noble character, not exhibited in words or looks alone, but also in deeds deeds that are possible only because of the existence of evil. Christ died upon the cross because there were evil men in the world to crucify Him; and had He not died, how could our adoration have gathered round Him as it now does? how would it have been possi- ble for the invisible Father to have poured His Holy Spirit into us absorb our life in the life that flows from within were it not for the love with which we are drawn to the visible Son embracing our whole nature, by exhibiting in the life He lived, crowned by the death He suffered, a love for us that has no flaw or blemish 1 The Lamb of God ! Oh, what an image ! but how comparatively inexpressive, had not the Lamb, depicting God in the world, lived and roamed fearlessly amid beasts of prey. To the orthodox this may seem a fearful doctrine, and yet they claim the redemption ON EVIL. of the world to have been effected by God sacrificing His Son. They therefore make the Jews God's executioners, and thus they claim <4vL&& the savage nature of the Jews to be one stone in the temple of our redemption : but for this nature this world-saving sacrifice could not have been effected. Of what avail Christ's appearance in the world if no executioner had ^ been forthcoming 1 If we love our neighbours as ourselves, or more than ourselves, our every deed partakes of the nature of self-sacrifice ; for all we do is as all God does so far as we can see, full of regard and love to others ; and, in a world " filled with beings in whom the love of the neighbour was pre-eminent, there would still be occasion for self-sacrifice if, without being subject to evil propensities, they are yet subject to dimness of vision ; for in such a world two persons not electrically alive to the state of things about them, dim in discerning God's purposes, may desire, and for a time pursue, after the same end, and we can easily see how much that is gentle, los'eable, and full of self- sacrifice may be displayed in the desire of 22 ON EVIL. each noiselessly to withdraw out of the other's way when the perception of their mutual pursuit dawns upon them. If, in speaking of such a world as I describe, I may compare small things to great, by bringing forward the interests of this world in which we live, I shall perhaps illustrate my remarks better by filling up yon general suggestion with the particular case so often seized on by play-writers and novelists, of two men with their thoughts turned lovingly toward one woman. If to one of these men the fact that the sunlight from this daughter of God warms with a special heat the bosom of the other, and lights his footsteps, becomes sud- denly revealed, how noiselessly would he step aside ! how chokingly would he keep back the expression of his own inarticulate yearning ! beneath how deep a shadow would he anxiously watch the words, the looks, the gestures, the steps of that woman and that man, until con- vinced that his duty and highest delight bid him step out of the shade, or withdraw for ever from a pursuit on which his dull vision only has allowed him to enter ! This is a case of self-sacrifice where no evil is present; and so ON EVIL. 23 peaceful, so calm, so full of joy does a world in which such self-sacrifice is alone called for appear to me, that I yearn for it with a sort of broken heart. Nor am I ashamed, for in shrinking from this every-day life with its scorn and deadly deeds, I can shelter myself beneath an all-absorbing example. I speak of Him who uttered the words, " O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Ay, even so. I am stronger than I was. I love heroism better than I did. My spiritual mus- cles are more vigorous and hardened ; and yet yonder is my prayer, and the response God seems to give " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." From my visions I put my life again into God's hands and pass on. I have pointed out the good I consider evil to effect in the world its presence here making possible heroism and self-sacrifice even to the bearing of bodily torture and the loss of bodily life. I must now mention another good. The presence of evil men in the world on 24 ON EVIL. their road to a region which is, to the angelic vision, one of unutterable anguish, and the fact that these men are undiscernible, either by us or themselves, gives a missionary character a kind of priestly office to all who endeavour to labour for God alone. Although we say God is all in all, and has foreordained, pre- destined all things, yet the characters we have to play among each other, in His work, are given to us to seem * real and earnest as real and earnest as our own being, with all its joys and sorrows, a being, indeed, bound up in- separably with our acts. By this intermixture, therefore, of good and evil, we can be made to seem to ourselves to be bringing about that highest of all results, the redemption of men. Every man to whom it is given to seem to labour earnestly in all things in God's service, seems to himself in every act to spread abroad * I have used the words " given to us to seem," or similar words, where I felt the key-note of the essay again needed striking. Though I consider them the correct words to use throughout. I feel myself no more bound to use them than, as I have already remarked, I am bound to use similar words when speaking of the sun's apparent orbit round the earth. ON EVIL. 25 God's Spirit, to be a light expelling darkness from the world about him, and to manifest the power and peace of the kingdom of God. No enjoyment with which we can be gifted is so high as this, not that this excludes other enjoyments, but rules over them : it occupies the first place. The hearts of those destined for heaven come to feel that, for the sake of this enjoyment, " brother, and sister, and mother," must all be deserted, if need be ; nay, indeed, that if their nature be not nourished on this food, it becomes a nature in which a brother's, sister's, mother's love can never grow ; that as God is our Father, so the love of the work in which we are God's most immediate agents is father to all other loves. The seeming battle in the good man, which God produces in the world by the inter- mixture of good and evil, is effected by the selfish propensities in the evil man seeming to rouse the selfish propensities in the good man, and make them endeavour to obtain the mastery; and the good result this has upon the good man, in giving occasion for a seeming 26 ON EVIL. heroism and self-sacrifice I have already dwelt on. Now, the effect of the missionary work of the good man the result of the contagion of his unselfishness in like manner gives occasion to a seeming animation of the good qualities in the selfish man, which is felt by him also as a battle, with all its pain and fear. And now, it may be asked, what is the good effect on the evil man of this painful conten- tion? for we may be well assured that God's work is so perfect that the evil man, if used for the good man's good, produces also good to himself in his very use. No one thing is made for the mere enjoyment of another, like the pieces of a puzzle, each fits in its place exactly, and they mutually bless each other. And does not the evil man, like the good man, receive the gift of a seeming free-will through contact with his enemy ? If a seeming choice between good and evil lay not before him, a choice in which his seeming decision is made among throes and struggles of his soul, how could he suppose himself gifted with that gift which spreads a glory round the devil's head, and makes him seem to adopt his own ON EVIL. 27 destiny by his own selection ? Peace is arrived at in both in the evil man and in the good when God sees well to bring contention in the soul to an end, by letting each, without further struggle, travel direct onward to the kingdom destined for him ; and they carry, as the chief reward of wounds dealt and received, the conviction, indelibly marked upon them, that they have chosen freely, and are still free to choose ; and if to the bright angel, rising ever to greater heights of unselfish- ness, to whom with increased intelligence the gift of more fully comprehending God and His ways can be continually given, the destiny of the devil appear to be to lower and lower depths of misery, the reason is, that the meat of the one is the poison of the other ; the one roams over the boundless sphere in which God's unselfish presence is gloried in, and felt as, the life-giving warmth, the circling blood ; the other revolves only in the narrow sphere bounded by his selfhood. To the angel, the selfishness of the devil is ever hateful, as the real enemy in his soul which he has had to overcome, and which the 28 ON EVIL. presence of the devil in the world served to magnetize; the devil himself is never hated or hateful, for he is obedient only to the nature in him ; and while regarded as in God's hands and beneath His control, is in- deed transformed into an angel, producing light by the contact of his darkness with the soul. A difficulty here occurs. However useful the evil man may be, how can God's Spirit produce in him " evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies 1 " God has certainly made the evil man, and as certainly, it would seem, must, when He made him, have known what he would do. His evil words and deeds, then, must have been intended ; and if so, there is some deeper mystery in the matter than appears on the surface. God gives life to the animals about us, the whole career of many of whom is murder and every animal act ; and we feel no offence at this, because we see they are without a sense of sin. If it be life direct from God in them that does all these things, the things ON EVIL. 29 are not things we would do, but it is right enough for them, " Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so ; Let bears and lions growl and fight, For 'tis their nature too." And when we come to evil thoughts, deceit, and lies, ought we to consider them harmful in a nature which believed everything should be subservient to it, which considered no one derived any right to anything except through itself, which held the neighbour altogether as a thing of nought, to whom no regard beyond that of necessity and convenience need be paid? We may say the nature is a very de- testable nature, as we may also say of the animal, and that it must surely be subservient to some far higher purpose than its own existence as is probably the case ; but if God, for good ends, has seen well to create such a nature, we shall not feel there is any incongruity in His animating it with every appropriate thought, and making it bring forth every lie that need be spoken for any purposes He may have in view. 30 ON EVIL. A lie ! not simply by God's permission, but by His direction, as the result of the inbreath- ing of His Spirit ! How can this be 1 Well ! a lie. There are creatures we can imagine, I say, to whose natures a lie belongs, with whose natures it is consistent ; to be the natural product of whose natures we feel no offence. The reason a lie is a crime is two-fold, ist. Because it is an offence against the neighbour. 2nd. Because it is an offence against God. Every lie told for self-interest is an offence against both God and the neighbour. A lie told simply to spare the neighbour or his feel- ings springs out of no hatred to the neighbour, but really out of love for him short-sighted, doubtless, but still love for him. Such a lie is, however, an offence against God, because it proceeds on the assumption that the world and its events are badly managed ; that we could bring about better results than God can ; that it would have been far kinder to the neighbour if the event concealed or misrepre- sented had not happened as it did happen, or not happened just then. Let me refer, in particular, to a lie told to spare a person OX EVIL. 31 dangerously ill, or to such a lie as the one often seized on in novels, where, perhaps, a sister thus saves her brother from un- deserved imprisonment or death. Such lies appear offences against Clod only ; but against Him they are distinct offences. They cast a slur upon His government, and can never be spoken by those who love and trust Him. Xow, if we imagine a creature that does not believe in a God, and who, regardless of his neighbour, except so far as he subserves his own interest, thinks it right li That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can " of such a creature, a lie is a proper outbirth ; and if you say, " I cannot imagine such a one ; " I say, look at the animals about you. If a cat could speak, would not she tell lies to catch the sparrow 1 Look at the animals about you, and endow their natures with intelligence and speech, of course, a devil is the result, but a being with whose nature a lie is no inconsistency ; and granting always that they subserve good ends turned wild among higher 32 ON EVIL. spiritual natures, to be driven by them from all hypocrisies, and tamed into the control of such laws as those of political economy, if they but serve good ends, why may not God's Spirit express itself through them in lies and deceit 1 Nay, my good, good man ! do not misunder- stand. They are not like you ; they are of another race, a different species Cain's chil- dren from their birth. Thy destiny is light, the glory of God ; their destiny, the fate they want, the home they long for their kingdom of rest, and peace, and quietness, where they may tell lies among their fellows, and none give them an uneasy conscience, as you would; their kingdom is to thine, the flicker of gas lamps amid fetid smells, to the glow of mid-day sunshine, and the airy fragrance of flowers. This matter is very important, but I think the whole difficulty in understanding it will be removed if we keep clearly before us that the embryo devil and embryo angel, though here inscrutably mixed together, are each indelibly marked one with his blackness, the other with his light ; and though so alike to our eyes, are ON EVIL. 33 of natures tending in directions diametrically opposite. If I met a tiger in the jungle, a crocodile on the Nile, a bear in the Polar seas, my fear of them would not make me doubt that I met a creature of God's making ; and why should I doubt if I meet a devil in the streets, or if he comes into my office, and sits down on my chair, and would play all his devilish pranks on me, try to trap me into some confession on which he can get up a case to accuse me of negligence and my employer of rapacity, and so save for his pocket the few pounds justly due from him 1 Are his pranks any more savage or cruel than those of the tiger ? They may indeed result in effects more cruel, for he has power far more subtle ; but do they spring from a nature different, except in the intelli- gence by which it guides itself in the desire to feast upon my ruin ? Do we wish to be free from the devil ? We can but be rid of him by braving him, by bearing straight onward in our course, and leaving him to do the worst ; remembering that that worst may indeed bring to us con- 34 ON EVIL. tempt, scorn, crucifixion, the seeming depriva- tion of eveiy outer thing, those pangs which in the world God has made precede the birth of the angel in our bosom. Take God's right hand, and fear not. He looks out on thee in every gentle smile, beneath every frowning brow. He gives the kiss, and He directs the blow that kills away from thee the mortal, the evil, the perishable. Look with a piercing eye through the devil who sits there, and behold it is God, thy friend, thou seest wrapped in that lawless nature ; 'tis God, thy Father, who loves thee so that He will make a hero of thee. N O O D. j|ND Good ! Dear Friend ! Does my page brighten to see thy glorious name head it; and having greeted evil with so many words of welcome, have I none left for thee I Thou that makest creation glorious, at whose touch the hills are clad with verdure ; who nourishest the evil man, although his nature is thy opposite ; who restrainest his hand, that in his blind selfishness he may not destroy the herbage from the hill-side on which he feeds; who givest him all that can be given : who givest him the greatest gift of all, defence against himself, by pouring into his shelves and dunning into his understanding the teachings of political economy, showing him that self- interest is best served when kept subservient 36 ON GOOD. to the interests of the community. If the evil man blesses thee by giving thee occasion for true heroism, surely thou blessest him with the convictions which make his living in society, his own existence, possible. Our life, we read, should be an imitation of Christ. Our life should truly be Christ's life in us, for in His life is summed up the life of every good man. His life, however, has two periods. Of the first of these periods we know little more than that "the grace of God was upon Him," that He felt He was engaged upon His Father's business, and this general epitome, " And He went down with them [Joseph and Mary], and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them ;" " And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." * * In my remarks on the Word of God I have pointed out that the Bible is holy, because it does not touch on the interests of the mingled race, nor of the infernal man, but addresses itself solely to the heavenly man ; and therefore it is that this first period of Christ's life, in which His interests, we must suppose, were those of the mingled race, admits only of the lew passing words that record it. ON GOOD. 37 Of the second period we find a record in the New Testament, full enough to make that book the seed of all goodness in humanity. In this second period we find food produced by miracles. Of it we read "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." In it His disciples are bid " Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat." In it, so far from growing in favour with God and man, we find the favour of God growing on our Lord, indeed, from within, yet seeming to depart from Him from without. And for man's favour, at one trying moment in His career, we find Him deserted by this altogether. If we ask, " Of which of these periods is the life of Christ the life in us?" the answer must be for most of us, " If of either, of the first." Christ, as He was in this first period, may be the life in us ; His life, as it was in the second period, is not, probably cannot yet be : for if we ask ourselves at any moment, " How 30 ON GOOD. would our Lord act here?" we must think of Him as He was at the time when subject to Joseph and Mary, growing in stature and favour with God and man. We have, of course, to judge of what He was at this period chiefly by our after knowledge of Him. We have to judge of the germ by the fruit ; but back to this period our ideas must recur. We must clothe the spirit we find in the fuller record, with the form of life lived out in the shorter. Men, as we call ourselves, we must, like Job and his comforters, be content to learn of one perhaps far younger in years than ourselves. The difference between the first and second period of our Lord's life, in- deed, is, in my apprehension, essentially this: In the first period our Lord was a teacher of both the good and bad type of men. The good received a further inspiration toward goodness from Him ; the bad were led by Him to recognize, in a form of life outwardly heavenly, the form best suited for the enjoy- ment of selfish passions. In the first period our Lord lived among outer rewards and punishments among offices. ON GOOD. 39 situations, salaries, fines, and imprisonments as one who had to use them, and teach the right use of them just, indeed, as we live among them ; and these are institutions which dog the footsteps of the evil man, are of use only in enforcing, by means of self-interest, a life outwardly regardful of the neighbour : any teaching as to their use, therefore, can be of eternal benefit only to the occupants of the infernal kingdom. In the second period of His life our Lord addressed Himself to the elevation of the good man, and the opening of the gate of Heaven for him. He broke away from the evil type of men altogether, painted their life in the aspect only in which it appears to the good man, acting thus on the evil man from the side of repression, not of persuasion ; and hence His crucifixion and death. I consider this account of Christ's life com- plete ; and from it I infer that there is a humble use to which the bulk of good men are called that of ministering to men, good and bad by inspiring the good with something of their courage and love of God, and expounding to 40 ON GOOD. the evil that their deity, self-interest, is best served by doing the things the good man is led to do, and sees to be right, from the higher ground of duty; and thus lending, as it were, their eyes to the evil man, enabling him to see that which, unaided, he could never see, and that which, in a future world, will uphold a social life among intelligent and selfish beings impossible on any other foundation. Those who fill this humble office live out- wardly as they must suppose Christ lived in His earlier life, not as He bids us live in the Gospels, whenever the action inculcated is suitable only for the teaching of the heavenly man. He, therefore, who feels that his office here is for the double purpose of teaching the hell- bound and the heaven-bound, can only embody in his actions the spirit of such instructions as, " Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also ; " " If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also ; " " Give to him that asketh thee." The spirit of this teaching, we are sure, dwelt in Christ's actions ON GOOD. 4! in the days of His subjection to worldly authority, when He grew in favour with God and man ; but we are also sure that such actions, if literally performed, contain the worst of lessons for the infernal man can only encourage him in all his vices. Just so far as we live in houses secured to us by title-deeds, take and grant leases and agreements, run up bills at the butcher's, baker's, and linen-draper's, keep balances at the banker's, institute and defend law-suits, form committees and gather subscriptions by appeals and lectures, send missionaries abroad supported by funds at home, and write and read books on " How to make the best of both worlds," just so far we become teachers by word and deed of lessons understood and accepted by both good and evil of lessons the value of which to the former perishes with their life here : for we climb not to heaven on lands and houses, or on the means which procure and keep them, but by a heart free of guile ; while to the latter these lessons form the never-dying key-note of their life, for hell is maintained through the perception that 42 ON GOOD. a selfish world is made the best of by a life outwardly regardful of the neighbour. A man like Edward Irving may, in his wild enthusiasm, step out of the beaten track, and startle the ears of men by denunciation of all reliance on subscriptions and committees in work he deemed especially divine, and bid men, in following the literal teaching of our Lord and the apostles, break away from all catering to the apprehension of their fellows of the evil race a race whom God has made and who, while they do not offend against the laws of society, have a full title to live unmolested by the heavenly man, although their every action springs from that old offender the source of all we call evil self-love. I am thus friendly in speaking of evil men, for God created them ; but so also did He that " Enthusiasm of Humanity " which already once has filled the world with heavenly light, and ever, from time to time, may be needed to shine out afresh, and separate good from evil. Any of us may be called, as our Lord was, to appeal to the good alone by persuasion, to the evil by denunciation and repression ; ON GOOD. 43 and if so called, of this we may be assured, we shall not scruple to quit houses held by title-deeds, to have done with bankers' balances, the defence of the law, subscriptions and appeals, and to abandon ourselves wholly to God, as did our Lord, as our Lord bade His disciples do. If we thus feel called, may God speed us in our holy work, make us content to have our life wrapped in a maze incomprehensible by the evil, wholly offensive to them, and willing to put on our heads the martyr's crown handed to us by God's executioners, the men of evil. To the good man, who sees in acts their motives only, the doings of hell, so long as he regards devils as fallen men, consist of robbery, deceit, evil speaking, adultery, murder, and every crime ; for however much, out- wardly, the influence of heaven in such teach- ing as that of political economy a science demonstrating that state of mind which is the heart of all crime, to be most fully gratified by an external subserviency to the neighbour's in- terest however much outwardly such teaching 44 ON GOOD. may keep hell in order, the inner air and life of it must ever be crime in its essence to the good man, while he regards devils as men, or while they can influence his nature sympatheti- cally, but no longer. I refer again to animal life. We have a cat, for which we feel much affection, till one day we see it seize on a mouse, play with it in its timorous endeavour to escape, and finally devour it. If, forgetful of the cat's nature, an unwise affection has given it any human attributes which call forth our sympathy, we are shocked by the cruel sight, and expel the cat into the darkest regions of the house. We say it is the nature of the tiger to destroy other animals, regardless of their sufferings, and even, if pressed by hunger, to eat its own offspring ; and with a certain shrinking from anything so savage, we pass it by. W T e abhor, ' spurn, hate, only when we believe there is in the savage creature a higher nature he disre- ; gards in obeying his savageness. If, then, I regard a man I meet as possibly an evil man, with a nature like the tiger's, I cannot hate that man. I may resist to the death any of his doings, which, if not resisted, would call for ON GOOD. 45 deceit, an abandonment of trust, any unworthi- ness on my part ; but I cannot hate the man I only feel that he would bring his wares to the wrong market ; he would have the heaven- bound act as if they were hell-bound. His very rage at me shows that he cannot grasp my motives. The good man in the world must ever be toward the evil man like the Archangel Michael in Raphael's picture, who, with calm, stern, ( unruffled brow, and with a foot sparkling from the starry floor of heaven, is alighting on the prostrate form of Satan, his spear, held in both hands, he is about to thrust through the fallen form with the resistless strength of his uplifted arms, wrapped up in the momentum of his descent. There must be no truce, no terms with the devil; not because he is a devil, but because he would tear down its ramparts, and climb to heaven. Let the brow be calm, for, poor fellow! he knows no better; it is an offence, a crime, a mocker)', a hypocritical pretence to withstand him : he will frighten you out of it, coax you out of it, bribe you out of it ; and if he cannot, he will spurn you, and scorn you, and carry his hatred towards you to every 46 ON GOOD. deed he regardful of the policeman and his own self-interest dare. A friend of mine, the physician to one of the London prisons somewhat of a faithless sceptic, I confess, and so far observant of the sceptical side of things remarked to me many- years ago, with a smile of contempt, the falseness of the priestly faith, that the prisoners had qualms of conscience for their deeds. They would pretend they had, if such pretence was likely to bring them any indulgences; and their prison experience might for the future make them more cautious thieves, put a few political economical principles into their heads, make them think honesty might possibly prove the best policy; but as for being remorseful that they had robbed the poor man of his store, that they had made existence a burden to the man they had kicked and beaten, that they had made the dark hours of the night a time of almost unbearable alarm to the woman keeping house alone, not a tithe of them but would do all they had done again to-morrow, if to-morrow it should be as possible and seem as desirable as it did yesterday. Such men ON GOOD. 47 are tigers, or on the high road to so become ; and even Mr. Ruskin will join in blessing political economy, if their experience of this life should enable its doctrines to keep a crew like that in order. Such are the assertions of my friend the physician ; but we are, unfortunately, not reduced to dependence on his experience. Thieves and robbers do not exist among pick- pockets and burglars only. We all meet them almost daily, men who act parts to trade upon our charity; men who try to pass off their goods upon us by false pretences; men who will take advantage of any ignorance we may display as to the prices and value of things ; and if we do not often meet personally "men who seek to compass the ruin of an innocent and solvent company or firm by persistent attacks on its credit, and do this for the sake of getting a higher profit on a specu- lative sale," * or with tradesmen who weigh with false weights or scales, and sell short measure, we read of them in the papers, and at * Daily paper. 40 ON GOOD. times hear of them at the police court, and even of their continuing the same career of robbery after conviction. We none of us doubt that habit has made these things appear hardly a crime to many, and are perfectly sure that to others exposure produces no remorse : we should, indeed, as soon expect to see St. Paul's Cathedral walk into our houses as to find the great bulk of such men refund their ill-gotten gains. I may surely, therefore, appeal to our own experience among these fair weather thieves, in confirmation of my friend the physician, and of the faith that, unless repent- ance be on the deathbed, these men carry their sins with them into the grave. When they reach the distant shore, does reformation wait them there t This may be. My faith as to the other life says no ; and if I have shown, and shall show, that God's goodness is fully justified even if they are not reformed, and if without appealing to any fanciful views I may hold as to the laws of the spiritual world which renders reform there impossible I further show that their not being capable of reform re-acts to the advantage of heroism and goodness in OX GOOD. 49 this world, I give strong reasons for thinking their state of selfish love on leaving here is a final state. The good effect of the evil on the good in this world springs out of collision with the good. If we believe among those we meet some have a nature to be tamed only by fear, never by forbearance, ready to the last to turn on, bite, and destroy him that forbears, far greater intensity is given to this collision than if we believe all men alike will one day thank us for every gentle deed. How much more sacred to God and His goodness is our resistance made in the one case than in the other! The former faith keeps the edge of heroism sharp and keen ; the latter leaves it blunted, as in a time of peace. The former faith tends to rear the hero; and I do not think I am far wrong in stating that the latter points, as its highest result, to an expressionless character, possessed of a gentleness which we feel unreal, because satisfied that it would never bear contact with actual life a character often the seeming beau- ideal of the clergyman. I need not ask which of these characters a good man in actual life 50 ox GOOD. must bear, nor to which of them the creation of God who makes man in His own image is most likely to point. It is, again, absurd to say, " God would not make a creature so like a man remain a devil for ever: He would not so thin the family of heaven." If such a creature be necessary in the creation the spiritual birth of the angel why not ] and as to reducing the family of heaven, this is a thing of which we cannot talk. Heaven must be peopled at that rate, and that rate only, which God sees needful. He could surely make good men grow on trees, or multiply like rabbits, were it fitting, without using the race of evil men for the purpose of filling heaven. Let them go to the dark homes in which they delight. They have a use, be assured, no good man can fulfil. I assert, then, that the world, peopled so seemingly with men of one race, is, in God's eye, peopled with races diametrically opposed. If this assertion be true, those about us of the dark race not only do not, but have no power to believe in any but selfish motives. Do we find such people in the world 1 I believe they ON GOOD. 51 abound. If I am wrong, my theory falls to the ground : I admit, we are all heaven-bound. Let the reader consider this point a "point on which, in actual life, a correct conclusion is of great moment and, so far as his faith is concerned, abide by the result. For myself, I find the attempt to make most of those I meet believe I am actuated by motives of duty certain to produce faith only in my hypocrisy; so certain, that I never name the word duty, even when forced officially to control men from this motive alone, but point out, that to neglect such control would be impossible for me from the worldly side only ; and thus, and thus alone, can I procure a hearing. I could name a number of men, the greater part of whom, I am sure, should they stumble across this book, have no power to believe it published from any other motive than self- interest deeply buried, perhaps, but still self- interest. They have no power to credit that, while rather shunning than caring for publicity, I yet feel impelled dare not refuse to court such censure and such praise as this public .~2 ON GOOD. exposure of my faith may call forth. They might seem to credit my statement : but test their " faith by any action which it would influence, and with what self-satisfied assurance would they proceed on the certainty of my motives being those of self-interest ! Whatever they may seem to think, they hold in their hearts no other faith than this. Kept at arm's length, and amid the interests they understand not catered to out of kindness of heart which they will misread for fear or a desire for bribes but ever held rigidly beneath the rule of a considerate justice, checked resolutely by the dread of evil con- sequences, they may prove manageable men, with even a jovial air about them ; for manage- ableness and joviality then best consort with the self-interest they worship that self-interest in respect to which we read in the parable, " The children of this world are in their genera- tion wiser than the children of light." If I describe a well-known race correctly, and if I say truly that heaven is a place where the love of others rules over the love of self, I describe a race that cannot be raised to ONT GOOD. 53 heaven, for they have no eyes to see it, no hearts to understand it ; their home and that of the heavenly man must be as the two poles asunder. Dark, however, as these men with whom we meet, talk, dance, bargain, may be both here and hereafter, in the sight of God, indelibly marked, and never for a moment to be confounded with the good, they are, to our mortal vision, so mixed with the good, and undistinguishable from them, that we can draw no line of separa- tion, and in such close resemblance in our eyes this new advantage appears. The man so seemingly hell-bound may, after all, be heaven- bound, we cannot tell ; and we, in resistance to his pretensions, may be made the seeming means of animating in him the divine life of giving to his heavenly nature the predominance. God may thus work out the game of life; and if we deny any merit in ourselves, the actors used if we say that our real inner self is but passive in the whole action, we at all events have to acknowledge that our inner self is not without its suffering that heroism has to be born in it with pangs and throes that the now ,>4 ON GOOD. clearly heaven-born man has reached his new- state at the cost of our endurance;* and hence the keeping of the command, " Judge not, that ye be not judged;" the believing that each man we meet may be an angel in disguise comes to us enfolding the accustomed blessing like the marshal's baton, said to be wrapped in the French soldier's knapsack. We can never tell that our very resistance is not turning the vilest enemy into the dearest friend. The separation of the hell-bound and heaven-bound "judgment" belongs to God only. As an outer fact impressing this inseparability by us with vivid force on the mind, we read that one crucified beside the Lord was a thief, who was yet pointed out as on his way to paradise. Every thought, word, and deed is, I say, God's thought, word, and deed; and yet, as we are well aware, our thoughts the conclusions * "The Mystery of Pain" takes for its theme this result of our sufferings, and points out with much ability that, just as the sick man owes it to his sickness to feel that exertion pain which the healthy man finds pleasure, so the unregenerate man owes it to his fallen nature to find those things suffering which, if regenerate, he would feel as the pleasurable pain of exertion. ON GOOD. 55 \ve draw from what passes through our minds are often inaccurate. A combination of events led me on one occasion to vary my hitherto almost constant habits. This variation, remarked on by another, induces a strange smile. I am puzzled almost offended. A few nights after, in dreams upon my bed, I suddenly, as I think, understand the smile, and with the understanding conies a new life to all my hopes, and a perception of the value for my present purposes of the change of habit I had intended to last for one day only, and with a whirr among my thoughts, like the rising of a covey of partridges, or the rushing noise of a stream bursting into a new channel, I adopt the change of habit. All seems as I expect. I push my action on with vigour. A delusion ! I misunderstood the smile, and the tender web of all my dearest hopes is torn into rags by my action. My hope rose in the air like a rocket like a rocket it bursts; the flicker- ing sparks descend, and all is darkness. Similar experiences are doubtless common to all men. The devil, some will say, deludes men thus '56 ON GOOD. not God. Ay ! but if the devil be God's agent, how then ? On my theory, of course, the smile, the con- clusion drawn, the daily false meditation and baseless vision, the action founded thereon, the extinction of my hopes thereby, were all intended, inevitable, the result of the direct working of God's Spirit on mine. As such delusions would result were we free, I hold it to be a necessary part of the inspiration in our minds that we should be subject to them : and to say that it is unworthy of our idea of God that He should so act directly upon us, who would so act by His intention had He given us free-will, is like saying a man who would light a train of gunpowder and then run away, that he might not see the effects of the explosion, may be more worthy than he who lights it and stands by. Besides the seeming manliness that is produced in our characters, the seeming independence is so obvious ! How noble, human, loveable that character which says, " Delusions abound in my mind : I know it quite well ; but I will act fearlessly all the same, on the best con- ON GOOD. 57 elusions I can deduce; and when I do get knocked down against hard facts, I will get up again; and the staff, as I know by ex- perience, on which I shall then rise, with an increase of trust, is faith in God, and this certainty. Expecting easy victory, I have found hopeless defeat; if yet, though defeated, I have borne my defeat regardless of my own loss, and careful only to shield others from pain, then I have been led by the delusion to give increased faith in all I think manly, in a place where, but for the delusion, I had never ap- peared, and where, possibly, such influence only as has sprung from my defeat is of value." One who thus speaks is being schooled by delusions to love actions for the nobility in them, while one guided by an infallible instinct must come to love them for their outer results only. A truce with defence! I repeat: we do not blame God for what we see in the world when we suppose men free; and if God had foreseen what would follow from freedom, and yet had ordained it, He would have been surely quite as worthy of blame as if, men -,8 ON GOOD. I not being free, He yet gives the appearance of freedom by directly inspiring all that would have followed from freedom if He leads us to go right and to err in that way precisely in which we should have gone right and erred, had we been free. N - WILL. |HE man himself, then, I consider a mere sentient existence on which God operates the harp on which He plays. We certainly experience pain and joy; we feel love and all the other emotions of the mind; and though we know by experience that some of these emotions will, as a rule, follow certain external positions in which we seem to have the power of placing ourselves, and though we seem to have a certain control over these emotions, this control takes the form alone of government and restraint. No more than we can turn one hair black or white can we cause any of these emotions to come, however much we may desire the result of their coming. Who would not reanimate 60 ON FREE-WILL. in his soul the sweet influence of love, if he has once felt that influence ] and yet, what longing of his can so reanimate it ? We can but wait and hope. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit;" and every one in whose heart love is animated. Just as we must acknowledge love and many emotions to be but gifts from God, so, I con- sider, we must acknowledge all other powers, thoughts, words, deeds, and acts to be direct operations of His Spirit in us, the thought leading to every seemingly free act being inspired in us, and, accompanying the thought, the desire to do the act also given, and thus all these things coming to us with a seeming freedom about them; and this world, with its varied play and emotion, its trivial and im- portant acts, its doubts, considerations, weigh- ings, pro and ton, thus ordered that it may take the shape which free-will, if really ours, would give it a shape, however, for ever tending more and more to the fixed peaceful form, with the ON FREE-WILL. 6 1 calm onward movement of all our desires and deeds, which it will assume when the result of our present doubts and hesitations is reached, in the impression left ever vividly on our minds, that we are really free an impression which, while it remains, makes us as good as free. What is it to us, in our daily conversation and daily interests, that philosophers demonstrate the earth to revolve on its own axis, while our eyes so unmistakeably tell us that the sun goes round the earth. It is of no moment The motion of the sun round the earth is indeed the most real motion of the two to us, until tor any rare practical purpose we need correct appearances by demonstration. How few acts of our lives do we even seem to do for ourselves ! We eat food seemingly of our own free-will : once received in the stomach, all further operations upon it are deprived even of this seeming ; and how multi- tudinous are such operations compared to the simple act of eating ! We move our hands seemingly of our own free-will, and guide them to certain acts to which we seem to have carefully trained them ; but beyond such acts 62 ON FREE-WILL. we can do nothing with them ; and the number of things they seem able to do are, to those we know they cannot do, as one grain to the sea-sand. We seem able of ourselves, with their help, to put seeds in the ground, and then no more to gather the fruit, prepare for use or replanting, and then no more. Everywhere we seem able to do a few things ourselves, and then the whole process has confessedly to merge into God's hands. If I say, then, that to these few seemingly free acts this freedom is but in seeming, I do not deprive much of our being of the greatly desired prerogative, and the seeming being as real as it is indestructibly real we may learn to be grateful that it is but a seeming, if by so acknowledging we can find our Father everywhere, in every prick of a pin, in every stroke that beheads; if we can feel that the whole web of the world is as seamless in its weaving as our Saviour's coat, as newly formed every day from God's hand as the wing of the insect that lives but for the day. To say that this doctrine leads to idleness, is to say that God is imperfect in His doings. ON FREE-WILL. 63 It does so tend, perhaps, until we see it in its fulness until we perceive that God acts in the world through men, and that to give any of us the desire to act, is to give also the feeling that the act is done out of our own free-will, and that till we have this feeling He does not ever work through us; or, in common parlance, God does nothing until we exert ourselves. If we desire to receive my doc- trine out of love to God, that love will swell in our bosom till it becomes the soul of an activity in which our ambition is to resemble Him who, sleepless and unwearied, preserves a world in life by momentary acts of new creation who gives life to our own souls by hourly renewing the occasion for exertion, and the heart with which to fill out the occasion. Idleness 1 If my doctrine presents to the soul a wider field for the love of God to occupy a greater scope for trust in Him idleness is blown away as by a rising wind, and the calm, peaceful desire and power for exertion fills every crevice of the soul ; and in place of idleness comes that hopeful, vigorous waiting upon God which is prayer in action, 64 ON FREE-WILL. and a state of mind in which the seeming independence of ourselves and our acts is received as the greatest, holiest, and most perfect of gifts. And does not this doctrine lead us to regard God as Father pre-eminently as Father? Father of every thought, wish, desire, hope, and deed ay, of every fear, care, trouble, fears, cares, and troubles created to be exorcised by a trust in Him which acknowledges Him to be all in all ; for the things feared can be brought against us only to induce in us heroism and every good and noble gift, if, indeed, they are the result of His presence, if they come from Him so utterly, so direct. There is an event my dream by day, my hope by night whether it will occur, God only knows; but if I believe my day dreams and my night dreams to be the effect of the sigh- ing of His Spirit upon my soul; if I believe the schemes and plans to bring about my hopes are all of His handwriting, and that the schemes of to-morrow will be His alike, how snugly do I roll myself in my coat woven of faith in Him, and there abide the issue, assured that ON FREE-WILL. 65 the result, whether like or unlike my desires, will have a glory the web and woof of which is woven out of the trust and faith I feel, which is His gift also, though the shape in which it comes to me marks it so sweetly as a thing of my own inducing. We thus are the harps, and God the harper. In all our seeming meditations, for good or ill, it is not we who meditate, but God in us. If the meditation be for good, we are possessed of that higher nature which loves others better than ourselves ; and being thus Godlike, we may be brought at last to do as God requires us to do, out of love for the deed itself. If the meditation be for evil, we are possessed of that lower animal nature which cares for self above all, and cannot therefore be kept in God's ways ways ever regardful of the good of others except through the fear that want of such regard will damage ourselves. We are, then, made like the leopard the leopard so glorious in form and wonderful with his spots, we are like animals upon whose make and maintenance God expends unfathomable skill, and being like them, we 66 ON FREE-WILL. may be sure that skill as great is expended upon our make, and will be on our security and maintenance. And yet one step further. Some dreadful thought persistently seizes upon the mind, and will not be driven away; some horrible, de- basing thought, that makes us shrink within ourselves almost abhor ourselves and feel it were a mercy were we dead. And do I mean that this thought is from God direct? Even so. Not sent for the nature of the thought itself, but for the results. Covetousness, mur- der, incest, are not horrible in the mere animal ; God has so made them, and God has in like manner, as I understand things, so made the evil man. Let the evil man once fall wholly into his selfish or animal nature, and he will restrain himself from these things only so far as he feels his own self-interest requires him. That which in the good man is a desire for wealth, that he may bless others with it a disregard of life as compared to higher ends a holy love, becomes in the evil man covetous- ness, an indifference to murder, incest. The life of the evil man is in things every one of ON FREE-WILL. 67 which is abhorrent to the good man. Form a mixed world, then, such as ours is, and give to the atmosphere which breathes from the evil a seeming power to infect the mind of the good, and of the good to infect the mind of the evil, and you immediately have a world of conflict such as ours ; and if God has seen good to place us in this world, we may be sure He is not ashamed, does not shrink from His own work. We honour Him, therefore, but little, if we think He cannot, in keeping with the world in which He has placed us, blow across our souls the thoughts of the evil man, the mere animal (thoughts, remember, innocent in them), that we may see the difference between the state of the good and the evil between heaven and hell and rejoice with holy joy to have the hateful thought withdrawn, and heaven if it be with its cloudy verge alone closing once more around us. It is that we may, by intellect and experience, perceive the difference between a good and evil nature, and be able to have the love of the good inspired in our souls, that we find evil here ; that we may with a seeming freedom 68 ON FREE-WILL. of choice select of ourselves the thoughts which make us sons of God, angels of heaven. Swedenborg says that the existence of hell, as a counterpoise to heaven, is necessary to secure our freedom. To me this counterpoise appears to give a seeming freedom only. Hav- ing the two states of mind shown to us within, in the experience of our own souls in which we perceive capacity for any evil, as well as aspiration after a goodness continually beyond our grasp and having the fact that both capacities may be woven into living and acting characters exhibited outside us, a reality is given to the existence of both good and its opposite which is unmistakeable. Between the two we stand : we seem to be able to turn to either; to be able to have the predominating love of the one or the other inspired into our souls ; we follow the inspiration of that love, become endued with the angel's nature, or with equal relief escape from the conflict and fall into the service of self when getting away from the sense of sin, we cry out with Satan, in Paradise Lost, " Evil, be thou my good." My statement is, then, that God Himself ON FREE-WILL. 69 directs all our movements, and so directing, gives us the feeling that we direct ourselves. There is a process so strangely parallel among our social relationships that I cannot pass it by. I refer to conjugial love. An observer of the working of the heart well knows that conjugial love springs from the woman and returns to her. It originates with the woman. It is a gift from her to the man, which he feels in himself as though he originated it, and feels this so strongly that it will even vanish away as the woman is herself well aware if she by acting failed to keep up this strange delusion in his mind. Shakespeare makes Rosalind relate the art employed to effect this purpose, among the other female secrets he allows her to betray under her male disguise " Orl. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. " Ros. Me believe it ! You may as soon make her that you love believe it ; which I warrant she is apter to do than to confess she does ; that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences." Now, the remarkable part in all this is, that the delusion in the man's mind, that he himself 70 ON FREE-WILL. originates the love, is essential to the existence of the love itself; just as when doing any act at the direct bidding of God, the delusion that we do it ourselves is the heart of all social existence. Human nature is full of such contradictions. We may say, for example, to a mischievous child, " Your whole life is needfully a cause of trouble to all about you ; you ought to try, therefore, and give as little needless trouble as you can, not that we do not all delight to take trouble for you we should, indeed, be lost without it but our delight will pass away if we do not see you endeavour to relieve us of all the trouble you can ; " and thus desire to rob us of trouble is the only way to keep up our delight in it; and these contradictions must be in the heavenly nature, if we regard its essential life to be self-sacrifice, until they culminate in conjugiai love, the essence of which is the complete absorption of the gift by the receiver, and its consequent return to the giver. In conjugiai love, then, the woman plays toward the man the part of Deity. She gives ON FREE-WILL. 7 I that all-engrossing heavenly love to him, accompanied by the persuasion that he himself originates it. She first selects him from among other men, and he perceives it ; each advance is hers, and he feels it as his own, because he loves it; she induces the final declaration, but the man speaks the word, and heaven and earth cannot persuade him that he is not the author of it, because he pours out his whole being in it ; and these persuasions she will induce in him at any cost, and will not disturb him in them no, not at the price of life itself. And what does the wise man do when convinced of these truths'? He accepts these doings on the part of the woman as of her true nature ; he revels in the delusion itself thus valued by her, and thus supported as the richest jewel in her diadem, and as men thus deal with women as to conjugial love, so should the whole race deal with our Father in heaven as to free-will, receive the inspiration to the deed, accom- panied by the love for it, as His gift, and adore Him for ever that the gift thus given persuades them that they, and not God, are the authors of their acts. N PRAYER, then, consists of words spoken by God and addressed to Himself, listened to by us in pass- ing, the sense seized on, its applicability to our seeming state perceived, and the words given to us with the feeling that they contain our own address to our Father, who has fashioned them as He has fashioned all things. Is this seemingly strange account of prayer different from the account in general accepta- tion] A prayer like that of the king in Hamlet, which, rising from his knees, he thus despair- ingly describes ' ' My words fly up, my .thoughts remain below ; Words without thoughts never to heaven go "- ON PRAYER. 73 we all, from Shakespeare onward, admit to be vain and valueless. The prayer desired, the prayer whose efficacy is alone acknowledged, is that in which the lips express in words a prayerful state of heart. And how is such prayerful state to be procured ? Not manifestly by prayer, because it must pre- cede prayer. It is true the spirit of prayer increases in volume with the utterance of the words; but even in its increase it is felt as a gift, which can be given only to a reverential or prayerful state of heart. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." As to prayer and all spiritual states we obvi- ously wait at all times on the Lord. He sends these states upon us as He sends His winds, as He creates us with our bodies and their several members. We may philosophize on how these states come, but we do not think of control- ling them, even seemingly, except the desire for certain states be first in us. If this be so, r if this desire be sent by God, and arise in us , tat Kt - > ' . 74 O^ PRAYER. only so far as He sends it, and if He foreknows the words it will produce ; if He " knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him," then, sending the desire and knowing the result of the desire, He practically addresses Himself through us as completely on the theory of our being, generally held, as on the theory I have stated. This result must follow if we admit the initiatory prayerful desire on which all our prayerful habits and experiences are built, to originate with God, as the first Former of our being, and not with ourselves ; to be born in us and breathed on us as the members of our body are born with it, and as the life- giving breath of heaven is breathed upon it. All genuine prayer, then all prayer that is not lip service comes from an inward desire to address God, and such desire is God's gift to us ; may seemingly be cultivated and improved, but cannot even seemingly be initiated ; and God, foreknowing all the results of such desire, addresses Himself through us in every prayer. Now, clearly, the object of such address is the influence it will have upon us, and not upon Him. In the Revelation we have the nature ON PRAYER. 75 of prayer beautifully illustrated. The elder beside John first asks John a question, and then answers it himself. "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they ? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Just so God puts a question into our minds, and then Himself answers it It is intended, in order that we may feel ourselves children of God, that inquiries and desires should arise in our mind, which take the form of prayer. Stirred out of my usual patience by some remarks of the Pall Mall Gazette on the sub- ject of prayer a paper always wise, generally liberal, though sometimes, from my point of view, dull sighted I recently sent them the following letter, which they did not think well to insert : " The Pall Mall Gazette seems not to recog- nize that prayer may be as much one of the intended results of God's laws as smoke from 76 ON PRAYER. straw when set on fire. If God be our Father in heaven, the influence of His laws upon us must be one of their intended effects, and prayer, therefore, also, if prayer be the natural result of that influence on the child. My little child in her bed by my side wakes me several times by an unusual restlessness, seeming to betoken some coming illness ; at first irritable, a holier influence comes over me. I wake more fully, and I say, ' O God, my Father, give this child a quiet sleep.' The child rises up and asks, a second time, for a drink of water. She again drinks, and goes off quietly to sleep. You may deny the second drink and the quiet sleep to be the result of my prayer; but you will hardly, perhaps, deny that in the provi- dence of God it was foreseen, I would say ordained, that my prayer should precede the drink and the sleep ; and no one accustomed to children will deny the peaceful sleep-pro- ducing influence of a peaceful and holy state of mind in those near them. You, the Pall Mall Gazette, seem to me to be where I was when in my youth I wrote, ' Go ! in a corner whine and squeak, and let His will go by. His will ON PRAYER. 77 is His. Twere also thine couldst thou but know thyself.' A place from which I have trudged many a weary mile, and to which I would not return, no, not for all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. I can but wonder at the dropping fire in such re- marks as yours upon the prayers of the Roman Catholics for the temporal power, to the effect, ' Why supplement your prayers by acts 1 ' and doubt whether, indeed, you write for earnest men or dolts." On the latter part of this letter I need but repeat the wonder with which I regard such observations as that commented on, which, if addressed to any earnestly prayerful man, are about as markless upon him as a sentence in Hebrew on an unlearned man. If we love God our Father, and are, above all, grateful for the seemingly free powers with which He has gifted us, the most prominent desire for aid from Him is that it should be given, if possible, through those powers so seemingly our own. Who delights to bring to a friend a gift put into his hand by another so much as a gift earned by the sweat of his brow? 7 ON PRAYER. What earnest man that desires the temporal power of the Pope, does not desire that it should be given through his own acts/ if pos- sible, rather than fall on the Pope from heaven ? On the incident referred to in the letter, however, I must observe that the result prayed for was allowed to follow immediately on the prayer. This is riot always so ; not, indeed, often, as regards any outer result. An inner result, however comparative peacefulness of mind with me, and, I presume, with others, invariably follows prayer, if the gift of prayer be given me. " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me," seldom removes the outer cup; but if the prayer be earnest, the nature of the cup is invariably changed by our being able to add, " Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt," where the heroism that dares all in God's service replaces the dread that was at first inclined to regard His will as harshly unchangeable; and in how few cases would we not rather drink the cup in the spirit given, than have it removed out of regard to our dread? How much more surely, therefore, in ON PRAYER. 79 the invariable inner answer, does God feed our truest nature than if the outer answer were the certain one. And now I feel this remark in the air about me, " How the fool talks, as if he thought we spoke and acted just as I think we speak and act, while he asserts that we really do nothing, but God all." I do so talk, and so assert, and say that I talk and assert rightly, because to repeat my remarks I claim for the assertion an intellectual acknowledgment only, while I say that God, for all ordinary purposes, appoints that we should do, feel, and talk as if we did all things ourselves. Is there, then, little attraction in prayer, if it be as I describe, and little efficacy to be expected from it, if the words be not, indeed, a voluntary address from one independent being to another? It is useless presuming we live in a fancy world! The force of our Saviour's words, teaching that an Infinite Father, boundless in knowledge, love, and power, will be sure to be more liberal in His gifts than an earthly father, is irresistible. Our Saviour bids us, 8o ON PRAYER. therefore, never despair, but pray always; and yet, how seldom do any of us procure by prayer the outer things we desire in the way we desire them, or with any approach to the seeming liberality with which an earthly father would respond. Some inner gift, therefore, that can be but slowly given, must obviously precede the giving of these outer gifts, or we should have but to ask, and receive. Our experience tells us what this inner gift is. Peace of mind, trust in God, and complete readiness to take whatever follows our prayer, whether in de- struction or confirmation of our hopes. Mr. MUller, with his orphanage dependent on gifts procured by prayer, does not advise others to follow his example, clearly because he knows so few can bring the abandonment to God, trust, and faith, required. And what does abandonment to God, and trust, and faith, mean, but that we put ourselves, body and soul, into God's hands leave him to act for us as He will? And before we can have such trust and faith, what must we believe? That, in fact, He is all in all, as I proclaim Him that, in fact, he does govern the angry man and the ON PRAYER. 8 1 good man, the devil and the angel, hell and heaven ; and that therefore, in truth, the angry looks and good looks, the heavens and the earth, the air, and all we breathe, are direct from God," and full of His Spirit. We cannot have abandonment to God, trust, and faith, as I see it, without the doctrine I advocate; and if so, prayer must be of the kind I describe : and we can but bless God that, making us feel as if we were what we are not, He has given us prayer also, so needful a result of that feeling. Am I thus making God a deceiver? The sun appears to us to revolve round the earth; the root and stem to throw off the leaves of trees, not the root and stem to be produced out of the leaves. The rain seems to us to fall from the clouds, not to condense in drops out of the whole body of the air. To a childish philosopher, the condensation on the window- panes appears to have come through the glass. To a physician, the symptoms of consumption appear those of bronchitis, and the patient dies. Does God deceive in these cases? Does He not rather, knowing that we shall be so mis- G 8 3 ON PRAYER. taken, leave it to time and philosophy to correct our errors I But it may be said, " No ill effects follow while we live under the above delusions, except in the last case mentioned, where the acknow- ledged different opinions of men warn us to distrust our conclusions." And what ill effect has followed from the faith of men that they had free-will, when they had not? The ill effect, if there be any, will rather be in the discovery of the contrary; and it is the purpose of all I write, to show this discovery as a good rather than an ill. The clear, distinct, un- deniable impression that we have free-will, is no greater than our clear impression as to a thousand natural phenomena about which we are mistaken. How, then, does God deceive in the one more than in the other I You are not satisfied I " No ! To produce the nature you describe your free-will an organized system of deception must exist on all sides of us; a system that would fail in its purpose if it did not deceive. Admitting that God foreknew we should suppose the sun to revolve round the earth, and yet did so make us and the ON PRAYER. 83 sun, you cannot say it is vital to our being that we should be so deceived; but of free-will you do say this you say that faith in the deception is the heart of all social existence is our glory. Is this possible 1 ? Can God be such a one as to deceive us, and make our faith in the deceit essential to our being ] " If God be the real owner of all things, and we but the apparent owners, " deceit " of the kind you refer to is inherent in all human ownership. For the free nature of which I speak sub- stitute flocks and herds, lands and houses, food and drink ; these we are ready to maintain ours at the sword's point, and yet the uncertainty of their possession marks them ours only in appearance somewhat more mine than yours, but mine in no sense wholly, death, fire, robbery, a thousand events we call accidental, may at any moment deprive me of my seeming possession. The custom is to call all these things God's, as indeed they are. How comes all this 1 ? Surely the "deceit" is as great in making our relationship toward them such that, while they seem our own, we have yet to 84 ON PRAYKR. acknowledge the uncertainty of their possession makes them God's. I would not, however, be understood to assert that faith in free-will, or any other possession, is produced in us by appearances, but that such faith is God's direct gift to us a gift which more than any other entitles us to be called God's children and that the outer world is created as it were through us, and assumes the form which it must assume to be accordant with this gift. With the first scream of the infant its sense of ownership comes into the world. It cannot be otherwise, then, than inborn. And now I must fall back on conjugial love. When this love is perfect, the woman gives herself to the man so completely that he feels her inspirations in himself as his own. We call this the perfection of love ; we do not call it deceit. While we intellectually ascribe to the wife the heaven-born female nature with which we are possessed, there would be no love did we not appropriate, adopt, feel the nature as our own. That God intends us to feel His nature, as giveu to us in the same way, we have ON PRAYER. 85 abundant proof in many passages of His Word. I need not quote more than one. Our Lord prays for His disciples, " That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." * Assume, then, that God does thus give us His nature, that He gives us our momentary thoughts, words, and deeds, making them feel in us as our own and that He makes the world without assume the form which it must assume to be accordant with the inner state we thus receive through His utter abandon- ment of Himself to us in love, is this deceit ] If the appropriation of God's nature were produced in us by the operation upon us of the creation outside, it would be produced by deceit ; as would the wife's influence with the husband, if produced by her deeds, instead of sealed and confirmed by them deeds that spring from her absorption in his interests. If her loving life were deliberately planned to * This prayer I understand to be simply one for illumination. We are always really one with God. The prayer, therefore, is answered when we are made to perceive the unity. 86 ON PRAYER. create in the husband the false feeling that he possessed her nature, she would, in the same way, be trying to deceive him. In true con- jugial love, however, we all know that this is not so, but that the felt union produces the deeds. And if, talking, as we must, from appearances, we do not intellectually correct our words, but regard God as planning the outside world in order to re-act on man and produce in him false impressions, we also ascribe deceit to God ; but if we regard Him as giving Himself to man in the abandonment of love, and creating the outer world through the combined divine and human nature, there is simply concordance not deceit. In the light of this apprehension I read the first chapter of John, where, speaking of the Word that " was made flesh," it is written, " In the beginning was the Word, and the W'ord was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him ; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life ; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; ON PRAYER. 87 and the darkness comprehended it not." In these words I see the statement that the outer world was created through the combined being, God and man, just as home is created through the combined man and wife ; and the creation being from within outwards, I can see no more deceit in the one creation than in the other. Without under-estimating, however, the im- portance of regarding the world outside as formed from the world within, God's dealing with us, after all, comes to this, He so gives Himself to us that He makes things that are His appear ours. Looking boldly at this statement, we must admit that, if so to deal with us be deceitful, it certainly is deceit of a kind of which we can neither receive nor give too much. Let us, then, thank God that while He breathes the prayer that speeds up- wards, He has given us souls that can love and appropriate the words, and feel that we are rightly called children, and He our Father. Let us learn to know Him by that name which sums up all explanation in one word " LOVE."* * Hence the central nature of God's marriage" wi