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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 VITAL RELIGION 
 
 OR 
 
 THE PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF 
 CHRIST. 
 
 BY 
 
 G. H. S. WALPOLE, D.D., 
 
 Examining Chaplain to the Archbishop of York, Rector of Lambeth. 
 
 NINTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 
 
 1907.
 
 68 
 
 yvlk v 
 
 Preface 
 
 WE believe, though we should hesitate in making a 
 prediction, that the tendency to find a basis for 
 faith in actual experience is likely to strengthen during the 
 present century. The power of authority has sensibly 
 weakened, and the reliance upon argument as being in itself 
 adequate to sustain religious faith is not so constant as it 
 was. More and more, serious men are being led to ask 
 whether Religion is not largely a matter of personal ex- 
 perience. It is not that they feel authority can be discarded, 
 or intellectual processes cast aside, but that, as Mr. Mellone 
 asserts in his book on " Leaders of Religious Thought in the 
 Nineteenth Century," experience is of first importance in 
 religious belief. By this is not meant an isolated experience 
 unshared by others, nor one the chief characteristic of 
 which is feeling, but, on the contrary, one that is reason- 
 able, continuous, sober, resting on sure foundations. 
 
 The word Religion itself, according to the popular con- 
 ception of it, encourages this expectation, for it expresses 
 the idea of an obligation by which man is bound to an 
 invisible Lord.* If that may be accepted as generally, if 
 not etymologically, correct, then Vital Religion must mean 
 our sense of that obligation. Or, to go further, if the 
 Christian Religion may be defined as expressing the idea of a 
 living union with a Living Lord, then Vital Christianity must 
 mean our personal experience of that union. Or, again, if 
 
 * Liddon : Elements of Religion, p. 19.
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 the cardinal truth of the Christian Religion is that this 
 Living Lord is endowed with the fulness of a perfect human 
 nature, like in all points to our own, sin only excepted, then 
 it is difficult to see how the Life of our union with Him can 
 be grounded in anything but a human experience. Of 
 course, constituted as we are, there must be " outward joints 
 and bands," but, however sacred and venerable these may 
 be, and are, they can never be more than the channels and 
 pledges of that Life which finds its true home in union with 
 the human spirit. 
 
 But all this, it may be said, is admitted. Why labour it? 
 Yes, admitted theoretically, but not practically. Many a 
 man recognizes the obligations of Religion, looks upon it as 
 a bulwark of morality and a stimulus to lofty thoughts and 
 ambitions, confesses that it is often a great help to him, and 
 that its services, when well conducted, have a beneficial 
 effect, but if you speak of his relation to the Person to 
 Whom the worship is offered, of the claims that Person 
 makes upon his attention and affections, more intimate and 
 pressing than those of mother, wife or sister, he is silent. 
 He has never supposed it necessary to look into that, any 
 more than a good patriot would regard it necessary to con- 
 sider his personal relation to the sovereign. As patriotism 
 consists in devotion to the country, so he would say religion 
 in devotion to the Church. As patriotism is expressed in 
 bearing the country's burdens, in obedience to its laws and 
 in loyalty to its sovereign, so religion in supporting the 
 Church's work, in obeying her laws, and in loyalty to her 
 Sovereign Head. The loyalty in both cases is of a similar 
 character, general rather than personal, occasional in ex- 
 pression rather than continuous. The Christian Religion, 
 according to this conception, has very much the same 
 character as the Jewish religion. It excites an interest in 
 a great spiritual Society which has a thousand lofty
 
 Preface. vii 
 
 historical associations intertwined with it, which is more 
 national than universal, and as political as it is religious. 
 The Church, in both cases, occupies a larger place than its 
 Sovereign Lord. 
 
 There is much to be said for this view of the question. 
 Such a Religion certainly binds men together by an attach- 
 ment to the greatest Society the world has known. It 
 inspires them with devotion to the highest aims, moral and 
 spiritual, that have ever been conceived. It stirs their 
 enthusiasm by simple and moving ceremonial, by most 
 solemn and deeply mysterious rites. It quickens their 
 intelligence by divinely inspired narratives and instructions ; 
 but — and here lies the fatal defect — it leaves untouched the 
 most powerful motive the world knows, and that, personal 
 affection. As we turn from this conception to that of 
 the New Testament, it is like passing from the crowded 
 political meeting, where a national cause has been pleaded, 
 to the yet more crowded streets, where the Queen is passing 
 in her Jubilee procession. In the one case there is enthu- 
 siasm for a principle, in the other for the Person that 
 embodies the principle. We need not say which is the 
 more powerful, or which is predominant in the Gospels, 
 Acts, and Epistles. Personal devotion to Christ is the key- 
 note struck in every page of the New Testament. It is 
 everywhere assumed that all Christians have it, and have it 
 as a result of their own personal experience. The Church, 
 her Sacraments, Worship, Morality are identified with Christ. 
 As Canon Liddon writes, in a noble passage : " Christ is 
 Christianity . . . Detach Christianity from Christ and 
 it vanishes before your eyes into intellectual vapour. For it 
 is of the essence of Christianity that day by day, hour by 
 hour, the Christian should live in conscious, felt, sustained 
 relationship to the ever-living Author of his creed and of 
 his life. Christianity is non-existent apart from Christ ; it
 
 Vlll 
 
 Preface. 
 
 centres in Christ ; it radiates now, as at the first, from 
 Christ. Christ is the quickening Spirit of Christian 
 humanity. He lives in Christians. He thinks in Christians. 
 He acts through Christians and with Christians. He is 
 indissolubly associated with every movement of the Chris- 
 tian's deepest life."* 
 
 It is this old truth, experienced as a fact and not 
 imagined, that the author has endeavoured to present 
 in the pages that follow. He believes it to be needed. 
 There is no question that the general attitude towards 
 Religion is unsatisfactory. Not that there is hostility, 
 carping criticism, or even dull indifference, but life is 
 too full for its serious consideration. The opportunities in 
 work and recreation have enormously increased. In the 
 one, the man is less and less the machine ; in the other, he 
 has almost infinite variety. Papers, magazines, cheap novels 
 are constantly engaging the mind, so that it scarcely ever 
 finds time to realize its own deep needs, and, when they do 
 assert themselves and produce their inevitable consequence, 
 depression, it is not difficult even for the artizan to get 
 sufficient change of scene by train, tram, or bicycle to lift 
 the cloud. And in the last resort there are stimulants. The 
 excitement aroused by sport may be maintained for a time by 
 gambling ; the exhaustion that follows laborious work and 
 recreation may be momentarily relieved by drugs or intoxi- 
 cants. So it is possible for a man to go on for many years 
 absorbed in his work and pleasures, and to regard with 
 amused contempt the friend who suggests that there are 
 claims of tremendous importance which will one day make 
 themselves felt, and which can only be satisfied by Religion. 
 
 For this state of things the popular conception of Religion 
 is largely to blame. Religion has lost its romance. Men 
 see it embodied in a huge social organization, apparently 
 
 * Liddon : Our Lord's Divinity, p. 127.
 
 Preface. ix 
 
 cold, formal and mechanical. They believe it " makes for 
 righteousness" and upholds moral order, is worthy of a 
 moderate support and occasional consideration, but it very 
 distinctly lacks interest. They have no doubt that on the 
 whole it is a good thing, but then it is in competition with 
 other good things which prove their power to interest more 
 quickly. Its demands, too, are somewhat imperative. They 
 have seen it presented as man's best friend, but always 
 either as an exacting friend or a friend conscious of being 
 slighted. It is not the laughing, pleasant friend that 
 Pleasure is, who cries, "You may have me or not, as you 
 please." "But what is to be done?" cries the devoted 
 member of the organization. "You cannot make Religion as 
 attractive as Pleasure. No amount of dressing up will do 
 that. Look at the Gospel presentation of it. Is it not, as 
 one of its preachers declares, as offensive as possible ? No 
 artist can make the Cross an object to be embraced. No; 
 the fault, if fault there is, is in not making the disciplinary 
 side plainer and more severe. Let the contrast with the 
 world's offer be as sharp as possible. Make your rules and 
 take care that they are kept, and you will have religious 
 force even if it is restricted." 
 
 The answer is plain. It is true the Gospel comes to us in 
 the shape of a Cross, but never apart from its Founder. 
 Christ can make, as He has made, even the Cross 
 attractive ; and He can make, as He has made. Religion 
 attractive in spite of the world's tempting offers. His ser- 
 vice, if properly understood, is "perfect freedom." If I can 
 tell my pleasure-loving companion that all the opportunities 
 he values are mine as freely as they are his, but that in my 
 Religion I have found a Friend Who makes them much more 
 attractive and more permanently interesting ; One Who 
 doubles my enjoyment in work, and will never, if I follow 
 His advice, allow me to spend a dull hour ; One Who
 
 x Preface. 
 
 quickens the imagination, stimulates the intellect and braces 
 the will ; One Who throws over nature and art, over the 
 world and man, a subtle, inexplicable charm ; One Who, in 
 spite of His position as King of kings, has shewn by word 
 and act a strange regard for me, and a still stranger desire 
 for my regard for Him ; One Who is present in indefinable 
 ways in every act of worship, so that the Church to the man 
 with eyes open is "aflame with God" ; One Who is to my 
 friend all that He is to me :— if I can make this clear, then I 
 have dethroned the formidable rival, made it my King's 
 willing slave, and shewn my friend that in spite of his full 
 and interesting life he has yet to learn the romance of living. 
 This I conceive to be Vital Religion, for it means Life : Life 
 emotional and intellectual, Life more and more abundant, 
 Life that is proved to be Life in the market place as well as 
 in the Church, in Society as well as in the secret chamber, 
 Life that never fails, that is really eternal, for it flows out of 
 Perfect Love into the Ocean of the Love of God. And so 
 we use this day's Collect with great hope : " O Almighty 
 God, Whom truly to know is everlasting life ; grant us per- 
 fectly to know Thy Son Jesus Christ to be the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life ; that, following the steps of Thy holy 
 Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly 
 walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life ; through the 
 same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.' : 
 
 S. Philip and S. James. 
 May i, IQ02.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface ... 
 
 I. The Importance of the Knowledge of 
 Jesus Christ ... 
 
 II. The Knowledge of Christ — What it is 
 
 III. The Cost of the Knowledge of Christ 
 
 IV. Knowledge through the Scriptures 
 V. Knowledge by the Holy Ghost 
 
 VI. Knowledge by Prayer... 
 
 VII. Knowledge by Prayer ... 
 
 VIII. Knowledge in Work 
 
 IX. Knowledge in Suffering 
 
 X. Knowledge in the Holy Communion 
 
 XL The Hindrance to Knowledge 
 
 XII. The Assurance of Knowledge 
 
 XIII. The Knowledge of the Son in His 
 
 Relation to the Father 
 
 XIV. The Knowledge of Christ and Unity 
 XV. The Knowledge of Christ as King 
 
 XVI. Conclusion 
 
 PAGE 
 
 v 
 
 i 
 1 1 
 19 
 3° 
 42 
 
 53 
 66 
 
 79 
 
 89 
 
 101 
 
 in 
 
 122 
 
 133 
 
 J 45 
 158 
 175
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Importance of the Knowledge of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This is life eternal, that they should know . . . Him Whom Thou 
 didst send, even Jesus Christ. — S. John xvii. 3. 
 
 " r I '"'HIS one thing is the first and last they learned 
 x. of him, that the personal friendship of Jesus 
 Christ our Lord was that gift which God was incarnate 
 to bestow on every man who sought it. And the 
 second thing to which he turned ever more and more, 
 with a trust more full of awe and yet ever more full of 
 resolute confidence, was the thought that that Personal 
 Friend would come again to judge the world."* Such 
 are the words with which Archbishop Benson sums up 
 the teaching of Prince Lee, his schoolmaster, for whom 
 his son tells us he had a reverence as for "a character 
 almost divine." 
 
 " The personal friendship of Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 "A gift to every man who sought it." At first we 
 hardly take in the offer, and immediately we begin 
 to take it in we qualify it ; we assume that it must 
 mean something less than what it says. Friendship, 
 we say, that same relationship that I have with so and 
 
 * " Life of Archbishop Benson,''' by his son, A. C. Benson, 
 vol. i., p. 41. 
 
 I
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 so, that intimate fellowship which enables me to dis- 
 pense with formalities, to be perfectly at home, where 
 all is understood and a fuller knowledge only brings 
 fuller joy and a more perfect freedom. Is it this 
 that is offered, and offered by the King of kings and 
 Lord of lords? It may be that we have been denied 
 the friendship of the great or the famous ; we have 
 never personally known the men whose biographies we 
 read and admire ; our friendships have been on a lower 
 plane. But we should have liked to have known them : 
 the great poet, a Wordsworth, a Tennyson, a Brown- 
 ing ; the great statesman, a Pitt or a Gladstone ; the 
 philanthropist, a Wilberforce or a John Howard ; the 
 divine, a Wesley, a Pusey, a Maurice, a Westcott ! Yes, 
 we say, how fortunate were the friends of these good 
 men, to have their esteem, their thought, their affection, 
 to receive visits or letters from them, to be remembered 
 on their birthdays, to be helped in their difficulties, 
 consoled in their sorrows, to feel that their homes 
 were always open to them, that they would never be 
 unwelcome, never strangers, to have their great gifts 
 always at command. Yes, such friendships must have 
 been rich and valuable, but they are not ours, and 
 never will be ; we must be and are content with those 
 we have. 
 
 But here we have the offer of the personal friendship 
 of Christ. How is it that it moves us so little ? How 
 is it that it fails to send the same thrill through us as an 
 invitation from some great and good man in our neigh- 
 bourhood ? We remember how flattered we felt when 
 we were told that one occupying a high position in 
 the county, of wide influence, whose good name was 
 in every one's mouth, wanted to see and know us, and 
 that he had promised to visit us. W T e were quite moved
 
 Vital Religion. 3 
 
 by the news, and the only shadow that fell on our hopes 
 and expectations was occasioned by the dread lest we 
 should disappoint him. And yet, as I say, the offer of 
 the friendship of Christ affects us quite differently. 
 Why ? Is it less interesting ? Impossible ! Who 
 could say that ? Is it, then, less real ? Perhaps this 
 is the main reason. The proposed friendship seems 
 purely imaginary, like that which we might seek to 
 establish with some great historical character who has 
 passed away whom we can neither see nor hear, a 
 friendship maintained entirely by faith, a friendship that 
 would seem to be all on one side, namely, ours ; for all 
 the effort, the sacrifice, the countless acts that go to 
 make fellowship will come from us. What is there, we 
 ask, that answers to our friend's visit, to the cheering 
 tone of his voice, to the inspiration that comes with 
 him ? To have Christ in our home but for the inside of 
 one day would last us a lifetime, but that we can never 
 expect. Are we not right, therefore, in saying that this 
 of which Prince Lee was so full is less real than, in fact 
 has no analogy with what we understand of earthly 
 friendships ? 
 
 Now, without answering all the questions here raised, 
 some of which we hope to discuss later, we will content 
 ourselves with suggesting two thoughts which will at 
 least shew that the subject is a practical one. The one 
 is, that the knowledge of Christ is set down in the 
 Scriptures as the purpose of all that we call life ; and 
 the other, that the ignorance of Christ is set down as the 
 all-sufficient reason for exclusion from the happiness of 
 the life hereafter. It may be said that we are not 
 talking of knowledge, but of friendship ; but there is 
 practically no difference. The real knowledge of a good 
 man means his friendship, for he will not make himself
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 known except to his friends. If we know Jesus Christ 
 we are amongst His friends, must necessarily be so. 
 
 We need not discuss that further, but at once proceed 
 to our first statement, that the purpose of life is the 
 knowledge of Jesus Christ. Our Lord declares this in 
 that moving prayer which He made on the eve of His 
 Passion : " This is life eternal, that they may know 
 Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou 
 didst send." Life eternal, i.e., that power within us which 
 death cannot touch, which is immortal, is manifested in 
 the reaching out after the knowledge of the true God 
 and Jesus Christ. It lies, as Bishop Westcott taught 
 us, "not so much in the possession of a completed 
 knowledge as in the striving after a growing knowledge. 
 The that expresses an aim, an end, and not only a 
 fact."* The words are not so difficult as they seem. 
 All that we call life consists in the pursuit of know- 
 ledge. The life of business derives its chief interest 
 from the knowledge of men and things with which 
 the merchant is brought into contact ; the life of an 
 artizan or labourer is full or poor in proportion as he 
 seeks to know his trade or his husbandry ; the life of a 
 physician exhilarates or palls in proportion as the know- 
 ledge of the body and its mysterious organism claims 
 his attention. Life is always felt in the pursuit of 
 knowledge, and interest only begins to flag when its 
 limits seem to be reached. And personal knowledge is 
 much more engrossing and exciting than the knowledge 
 of things. When the thing that has for many years 
 claimed our attention is identified with a person, then 
 we realize how difficult it is to rein ourselves in. The 
 poet who finds the knowledge of nature or men concen- 
 
 * The Speaker's Commentary. Gospel according to S. John, xvii. 3.
 
 Vital Relieion. 
 
 trated, as it were, in some person, some man or woman, 
 feels that his desire to know takes a wonderful leap. 
 We have Browning finding the object of his quest 
 embodied in Elizabeth Barrett, and therewith a fuller, 
 stronger life. We find the young artist or scholar 
 discovering in some older friend all, or what seems 
 to him all, that he had been seeking through pictures 
 or books, and rejoicing in the fuller life that the 
 new personal character of knowledge gives him. And 
 so, too, on the other hand, knowledge begins to 
 lose its interest, ' i.e., its life, when its relationship 
 with a person is no longer seen. So Browning has 
 shewn us in a masterly way in his poem, " Easter 
 Day." The man whom the Divine Judgment has 
 excluded from heaven finds to his amazement that 
 instead of the hell he expected, he is condemned to 
 the knowledge of the world he loved, a knowledge, 
 however, without any personal relationship. He is given 
 the knowledge of things, a whole world of things to 
 know and find out about. Nay, he is given art, and a 
 mind to know art as well as nature. The Divine Judg- 
 ment consists only in limitation — the limitation of things 
 to what they mean in themselves, without any relation 
 to a person. At first the situation seems delightful. 
 
 I breathed free : to my heart, back fled 
 
 The warmth. " Bat all the world ! " I said. 
 
 I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, 
 
 And recollected I might learn 
 
 From books how many myriad sorts 
 
 Of fern exist, to trust reports 
 
 Each as distinct and beautiful 
 
 As this the very first I cull. 
 
 Conceive then earth's resources ! Vast 
 
 Exhaustless beauty, endless change 
 
 Of wonder !
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 o 
 
 But he soon discovers that the wonders of nature and 
 art apart from their connection with a person pall and 
 sicken. He longs for love. 
 
 Then I — " Behold my spirit bleeds, 
 Catches no more at broken reeds — 
 But lilies flower those reeds above : 
 I let the world go, and take love ! 
 Love survives in me, albeit those 
 I love be henceforth masks and shows, 
 Not loving men and women." 
 
 It is not, then, difficult to understand that eternal life 
 is seen and known in its desire after personal knowledge, 
 and reaches its fullest measure in the personal know- 
 ledge of God and Jesus Christ Whom He sent. Once 
 this is abandoned as unreal, unpractical, imaginative, 
 then the flow of eternal life is dammed and the soul of 
 man becomes dry and parched. With this before us, the 
 only question, surely, that remains to be considered is 
 this : Can we know God ? Can we know Jesus Christ ? 
 
 But in order that its practical importance may be still 
 more fully demonstrated, look at it from the negative 
 point of view. We have seen that our real life is 
 measured by it ; we are now to see that to be without it 
 means of necessity exclusion from the new life. " The 
 door was shut." These words, amongst the most terrible 
 in Holy Scripture, are used of professing Christians whose 
 only fault was, alas ! — an irreparable one — they were not 
 known. Our Lord teaches the awful truth it enshrines 
 in a parable, that of the Ten Virgins. These Virgins 
 had all gone forth to meet the Bridegroom and accom- 
 pany Him to the wedding feast, but only five were 
 admitted. The others were excluded, not because they 
 were wicked or immoral, but for a reason which would 
 obtain to-day in like circumstances — they were strangers.
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 When they entreated to be allowed to enter the bright 
 home of the festivities, the voice of the Bridegroom was 
 heard saying, " Verily I say unto you, I know you not." 
 This admitted of no appeal, and they were excluded. 
 
 There are certain intimacies, a wedding festivity is 
 one of them, in which it is impossible to admit 
 strangers. If one should urge that the rebuke is not 
 "Ye know Me not," but "I know you not," the reply is 
 that the latter includes the former. In one sense, of 
 course, Christ knows every one through and through, as 
 it was said during His earthly life, He knew what was in 
 man. In another sense, He only knows those who 
 know Him. Personal knowledge is, and must be, 
 mutual. It may be said, however, that the parable, 
 whilst mentioning this, does not lay stress upon it, but 
 rather on the lack of oil for the lamps. That is true, but, 
 when carefully regarded, this only makes the matter we 
 are discussing the more plain. It is clear that the lamps 
 and vessels signify all those outward actions which 
 distinguish Christians from others ; they refer to the 
 ceremonial side of the Christian life. It is obvious that 
 one danger which besets what we may call the ritual 
 side of our religious life is the supposition that in itself, 
 independent of its aim or spirit, it is sufficient. The 
 teaching of the parable shews, however, that the value 
 of these outward forms depends upon the life by which 
 they are fed. And this life — the power of the Holy 
 • Ghost— is rich or poor according to the attitude of the 
 soul towards our Lord. Directly the reading of the 
 Scriptures, the ceremonial of the Church, the offering of 
 the Eucharist are regarded as ends in themselves, they 
 lose their life and power, and are no longer able to 
 impress even the world with a sense of their beauty. 
 That our Lord felt that there was considerable
 
 8 Vital Religion. 
 
 danger, not only in outward forms but in religious 
 works losing their vitality through missing their end and 
 object, is plain not only from this parable, . but from 
 other words of His given in the Sermon on the Mount.* 
 Many, He said, would demand admission into the new 
 Kingdom on the ground that they had preached in His 
 name, cast out devils, and done many wonderful works, 
 but these claims He would put aside with the words, " I 
 never knew you." It would seem that nothing that we 
 do is of permanent value unless it leads, indirectly or 
 directly, to a further knowledge of God and of Jesus 
 Christ. The subject, then, that we are discussing is a 
 very practical one. Our life here and our life hereafter 
 depend upon our realization of it. 
 
 It is not necessary to pursue the matter any further in 
 this chapter ; it is sufficient to have shewn from our 
 Lord's testimony how highly He rates it, how all- 
 important He feels it to be. We have not yet said 
 anything as to its character beyond that which the word 
 Friendship gives. We have chosen this word as being 
 simple and easily intelligible. It may be that some 
 other word or phrase could be found which would 
 embrace more of the thoughts contained in the con- 
 ception. This is not, however, important. The really 
 important matter is : Are we growing in the knowledge 
 of the Lord ? Is He more to us than He was ? 
 Perhaps in no age does the question demand such 
 attention as in our own. It is not that men are careless 
 about knowledge : on the contrary, they are eager in the 
 pursuit of it ; but the many are content to pursue it 
 without reference to the living God. They suppose that 
 the addition of that great subject to the object of their 
 
 * S. Matt. vii. 22-23.
 
 Vital Religion. 9 
 
 search will embarrass it, that their profession, business, 
 trade will be the better without it. So far as nine-tenths 
 of their life is concerned, it is of little or no moment 
 whether the Incarnation and the Atonement are facts or 
 fictions. They prefer to do their work within the limits 
 of a narrow horizon ; and this is the horror of it, they 
 may wake up in another state of existence to find that 
 the opportunities here given can never be repeated and 
 that they have missed their chance. They are like 
 children who do their daily tasks with an eye to an 
 immediate reward, but with no knowledge as to the part 
 these same tasks will play in the world of life ; or like 
 the clerks in a great bank, who do their separate duties 
 conscientiously and with some little interest, but without 
 any conception of the relationship that their own depart- 
 ments have to the banker's plans. They are servants, 
 faithful servants it may be, but always servants, very 
 rarely rising to the position of friends. And it may be 
 that our one opportunity of knowing Christ as a Friend 
 is given us in this life. Countless opportunities of 
 service may be found in the next, but friendship may be 
 denied. And yet it is this to which our Lord calls us, 
 to which He would lead us. " Henceforth," He said to 
 the men who had been in and out with Him for nearly 
 three years, " I call you not servants ; for the servant 
 knoweth not what his lord doeth : but I have called you 
 friends ; for all things that I have heard of My Father 
 I have made known unto you."* They were friends 
 because they were admitted to share His secrets and 
 His plans, and, being so admitted, they felt that their 
 little daily duties were linked to His great schemes 
 and were a part of them. They at once became 
 
 * S. John xv. 15.
 
 io Vital Religion. 
 
 honourable and important, as the general's servant, who 
 is his master's friend as well as servant, feels the care of 
 his horse to be of consequence ; or the organ blower, 
 who has a loving insight into the musician's mind, the 
 attention to the bellows. They were not like men who 
 worked separately at allotment gardens, competing one 
 with another, but like builders in the one great city, 
 the Maker and Founder of which was God. What a 
 lift such a discovery gave to their lives. It is precisely 
 such a lift that most men need to-day, a lift secured by 
 the personal knowledge of Christ.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Knowledge of Christ — What it is. 
 
 The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. — Phil. iii. 8. 
 
 WE have seen that the knowledge of Christ is 
 all important. It is now our duty to inquire 
 more closely than we have yet done into its nature. 
 What do we understand by the personal knowledge of 
 Christ ? 
 
 In the first place, we may set aside what it is not. 
 It is not knowledge about Christ. It is not the know- 
 ledge that Christ was born in Bethlehem some nineteen 
 hundred years ago, and was crucified at Jerusalem when 
 He was about thirty-three years of age. It is not the 
 knowledge that He worked many miracles, and rose 
 again the third day from the dead. It is not even the 
 knowledge that He was Divine. I may indeed know all 
 the facts of the Creed, and yet not know Him ; just as 
 I may know all the circumstances and events of the 
 great man who lives in my neighbourhood, without 
 passing even into the circle of his acquaintances. The 
 knowledge of a person implies so much more than the 
 mere acquaintance with certain events in his life, that it 
 may be said that we can pass to the former without 
 the latter. Neither S. John nor S. Andrew could have
 
 12 Vital Religion. 
 
 known much about our Lord when they had their first 
 interview with Him, and yet they knew Him from that 
 hour with a certainty which admitted of no doubt. 
 The difference between intellectual knowledge about 
 anyone and spiritual knowledge of him is almost as 
 wide as that between acquaintanceship and friendship. 
 Eut whilst we recognise this, we find it very difficult to 
 explain clearly the distinction. It may be said roughly 
 to consist in this, that whilst the intellectual knowledge 
 of the facts about our friend tells us what he has been 
 and is to others, the spiritual knowledge tells us what 
 he is to us. The one is hearsay, the other is personal 
 experience. In the one case we infer certain things; 
 we judge that he is likely to say this or that, to behave 
 in this way or that ; but in the other we pass beyond 
 inference to actual knowledge. We say, " I know he 
 would say this," or "It is impossible he could say that; 
 I know him too well for that." 
 
 Now, from this it is plain that personal knowledge 
 implies self-revelation. I can only know that person 
 who chooses to reveal himself to me. I may be in his 
 presence several hours during each day, and for six days 
 in each week, and yet at the end of ten years know him 
 no better than the servant who brushes his clothes. 
 The presence of a person is not like the presence of a 
 fact on which we can exercise our thought, and feel 
 that we have learnt all that there is to learn about it. 
 Unless there is self-revelation, we are almost as far 
 off from knowing the person as though we had never 
 seen him. 
 
 The personal knowledge of our Lord implies, then, a 
 willingness on His part to communicate Himself to us, 
 a readiness to speak or act in such ways to us indi- 
 vidually as may lead to knowledge. In this, as we know,
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 lies the chief difficulty in our knowing those whose 
 position, character, or gifts attract us. We may have 
 the opportunity of meeting them, of being with them 
 alone, but we find they are not interested in us, and 
 have no mind to let us know them. We ask, almost 
 with bated breath, Would it be so with Him ? Is it so 
 with Him ? Disparity in mind or position is one of the 
 barriers which prevent mutual knowledge in the world; 
 and in the case of our Lord the disparity, of course, is 
 enormous, not merely in His position as King of kings, 
 as Holiest amongst the holy, Wisest amongst the wise, 
 but as Creator. " By Him we were made." Is it likely, 
 then, that He will condescend to such infinite depths as 
 to tell me of His own relationship to me? We have 
 indeed heard stories of princes or nobles bestowing 
 their friendship on those of low degree, but in any 
 reliable cases of the kind the disparity has been like that 
 described in the Lord of Burleigh, one of position 
 rather than of mind. We have heard of the confidences 
 Christian masters have given to their Christian servants, 
 but here again there is no such barrier as that which 
 sin raises between the Holy and unholy. In fact, the 
 more we consider it, the more impossible it seems to be. 
 A revelation to the world is not so hard to suppose. 
 We have seen, in the letters of our late Queen, how a 
 great sovereign will reveal her heart to her subjects 
 scattered throughout a wide empire. England knew 
 and loved the Queen, and the men and women of 
 England shared in that knowledge ; but it was not the 
 knowledge that some of her Balmoral tenants had, 
 certainly not that enjoyed by her friends. It was not 
 personal. Now, it is this personal revelation to each 
 individual in the world that we are now concerned with; 
 and we ask, What assurance can we have that it will
 
 14 Vital Religion 
 
 be made to us? Fortunately, the Scripture leaves us 
 in no doubt on this all-important question. 
 
 In the first place, the Incarnation of the Son of God 
 of itself makes such a revelation probable. It would be 
 making a large assumption to say that this universe con- 
 tains no other self-conscious and sentient beings beyond 
 the angels and those who have lived on this earth. 
 We know our planet to be a mere speck in the universe, 
 our great solar system to be only one of many ; why are 
 we then to suppose that from the vast spaces surround- 
 ing our system and planet there arises no appeal to, no 
 praise of, the Lord of the Universe ? And if there be 
 other beings, then, in the very selection of our earth as 
 His temporary home, in the very selection of our 
 humanity as the nature to be taken up into God, we 
 have a prophecy of individual self-revelation. Having 
 so far condescended for the race, He will not stay there, 
 but condescend to the individuals composing it. And 
 the Gospels confirm the expectation. Again and again, 
 under one figure or another, that of the prodigal, the 
 lost sheep, the lost coin, He declares His interest in the 
 individual. The ninety-nine are left for the one, the 
 nine are left for the one, the elder son is for the time 
 left for his wasteful brother. 
 
 In the second place, the story of His life makes it 
 certain. Great as is the attraction of the Lord, vast as 
 are the crowds that follow Him, the individual is never 
 lost sight of. Out of the disciples there is selected 
 an inner circle of twelve, and out of them a chosen 
 body of three. S. John, S. Peter, S. James, S. Mary, 
 S. Mary Magdalene are all examples of the pains our 
 Lord took to make Himself known. And not only 
 these, but all the twelve, save Judas, are His friends. 
 So He calls them. "Greater love hath no man than
 
 Vital Religion. 15 
 
 this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Ye are 
 My friends."* And that they may not suppose that the 
 title is an empty compliment, He, as we have seen, 
 explains it by saying that He has given them this name 
 because He has kept no secrets from them. All that 
 He heard from His Father He made known to them. 
 Otherwise He would have used the word " servants," 
 for servants do not share the confidences of their 
 master. If any further proof were necessary, it would 
 be found in the fact that not only did our Lord 
 give personal names to some of His followers, but 
 that to one was allowed that close intimacy which we 
 express by the term "bosom friend," and which was 
 then expressed by the position he was permitted to 
 assume, that of leaning on his Master's breast. 
 
 Of course, it may and will be said that these are ex- 
 ceptional cases ; but if we press this to mean what it 
 ordinarily means, namely, that our Lord had partialities, 
 was drawn more to one than another, we must at once 
 qualify it. We are constantly told that God is no 
 respecter of persons, and therefore all that we can admit 
 in explanation of S. John's closer intimacy is that he 
 sought more and therefore found more; or, to put it in 
 another way, that he gave a larger response to our 
 Lord's love, and had therefore a greater freedom, the 
 natural consequence of greater confidence. 
 
 May we, therefore, say that our Lord is ready to 
 discover Himself with the same unreserve to any one of 
 the millions of Christians now on this earth as to S. 
 John or S. Peter, the same conditions being present? 
 How can we reply " No," when we must confess that we 
 are all in precisely the same relation to Him. Nay, the 
 
 * S. John xv. 13.
 
 1 6 Vital Religion. 
 
 relationship established by baptism must be even closer 
 than that of the Apostles before they received the gift of 
 His Spirit after the Resurrection. And yet we hesitate. 
 The privilege seems too high, and, shall we not add, 
 too universal. 
 
 There are, however, happily two considerations which 
 must, if dwelt upon, remove all further doubt. The first 
 is the duty which is laid by Him on every conscience of 
 love to Him and the Father. Again and again does this 
 appear, sometimes in a negative way, failure to love 
 Him first, above those united by the closest natural ties, 
 being regarded as a proof of unworthiness ; at other 
 times, in a positive way, as securing the greatest bless- 
 ings : " He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, 
 and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him."* 
 
 Now this duty, as the words we have quoted plainly 
 shew, carries with it " self-manifestation." In the first 
 place, it shews that we are loved, for we never ask the 
 love of anyone for whom we do not care ; nay, the love 
 of a person to whom we are indifferent would be dis- 
 tasteful to us. In the second place, it cannot exist 
 without response. I cannot love a picture or a statue, 
 no matter how beautiful they may be ; I can only love 
 that which, whilst I am loving it, is feeding my love 
 with a growing revelation of beauty and with manifesta- 
 tions of affection. The duty, "Thou shalt love," which 
 we must remember is put first as the great command- 
 ment, and which lies on every conscience, carries me at 
 once within the circle of the disciples. Their love is 
 not more earnestly asked than mine ; and the promise, 
 " I will manifest Myself," is not given to any one of 
 them with more assurance than it is given to me. 
 
 * S. John xiv. 21.
 
 Vital Religion. 17 
 
 To that first consideration, which carries weight with 
 it, we may add this, which may serve as an explanation 
 of this self-manifestation. Though it is true that 
 
 That love is false which clings to love 
 For selfish sweets of love, 
 
 yet love must find something on which it can fasten. 
 There must be something in each human being which, 
 in spite of the sin that covers it, is attractive to out- 
 Lord. That " something " we believe to be personal 
 individuality. We have often been struck with the 
 marvellous variety of human faces, no two, not even 
 those of twins, being quite alike ; but the variety of 
 characters is still more striking. Each man has some- 
 thing in his make-up distinct from that which is found 
 anywhere else. There is, however, one place, we 
 believe, where that is found, and that place is Jesus 
 Christ. "In Him" we were all created, and in Him, 
 therefore, we are all found. Separated off from one 
 another as we are by a peculiarity, an unlikeness that 
 no one quite understands, we are not separated off from 
 Him. He has it though no one else has ; and it is 
 because He has it, and not only because He made us, 
 that He can rightly claim a love prior to that which we 
 owe to husband or wife, parent or child. It is because 
 He has it that He understands us as no one else does, 
 and, on the principle that like loves like, cares for us as 
 no one else does. 
 
 That individuality, then, which we are apt to tire of, 
 to change if possible by imitation, is the link that 
 binds the soul to his Saviour. There is one indication 
 of this truth in the Bible. There is a promise in the 
 message to the Church in Pergamos which has a 
 characteristic mark of individuality in it nowhere else
 
 1 8 Vital Religion. 
 
 found. It is this: "To him that overcometh will I 
 give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white 
 stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which 
 no one knoweth but he that receiveth it."* There is no 
 occasion to enter here upon any question as to what is 
 meant by the " white stone " ; the point we are pressing 
 is quite clear. Between the man who overcomes and 
 his Lord there is a secret shared by no one else, and this 
 secret is spoken of as a "new name." Now a name is 
 the expression of character, and a name given by Christ 
 must exactly express the character it marks. We seem, 
 then, to have here a promise that the man who has 
 battled faithfully will have revealed to him that con- 
 nection which exists between himself and the Lord 
 alone. It is a new name, because his old earthly 
 names have never been able to mark that hidden per- 
 sonality which has so often indeed eluded his own 
 observation. A time will, however, come when he will 
 see, with what joy and pride we need not say, that the 
 self he distrusted, feared, rebuked has its glorious 
 counterpart in the Lord Himself, Who now reveals in 
 the new name not only the inherent value of his soul, 
 but its union with Himself. 
 
 Enough has now been said to shew, not only that the 
 personal knowledge of Christ is a mutual knowledge, 
 but that it is the glorious privilege held out to every 
 son of man. To us, as to S. John, S. Paul, or S. Peter, 
 He will reveal Himself in all the wonderful tenderness 
 and majesty of His character, if we will but observe the 
 conditions of such knowledge. What these conditions 
 are it will be the duty of the following chapters to 
 inquire and discuss. 
 
 * Rev. ii. 17.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Cost of the Knowledge of Christ. 
 
 I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge. — 
 Phil. iii. 8. 
 
 n[^HE man who wrote these words knew by personal 
 X experience what loss is. He had lost everything 
 that we count dear. Some thirty years before this he 
 had, as the accredited representative of the Jewish 
 Sanhedrin, the opportunity of considerable wealth, 
 but so completely had he lost this that when he wrote 
 this letter he was, as he tells us, dependent on his 
 Philippian converts for the means of subsistence. But 
 we value health more than wealth. Yet this, too, we 
 must believe S. Paul had sacrificed. It is true that he 
 does not say much of his sufferings, yet we know that 
 he had gone through unparalleled hardships and pains. 
 It is certain that the repeated scourgings and beatings, 
 the stoning, the labours, the imprisonments, the jour- 
 neyings, the varied perils of which he speaks in his 
 second letter to the Corinthians must have permanently 
 affected his health. He who bore in his body "the 
 marks of the Lord Jesus" was probably never free from 
 bodily pain. Moreover, he had lost not only money and 
 health, but reputation. He was once highly thought of. 
 In this particular he could look back and claim for
 
 20 Vital Religion. 
 
 himself distinctions that the average man was without. 
 His birth, education, social position and zeal had won 
 for him not only a position of confidence amongst the 
 aristocrats of his nation, but amongst the Jews generally. 
 In this letter he refers to these natural advantages ; not, 
 however, with the purpose of boasting of them, but rather 
 that he might give added point to the reality of his 
 sacrifice. Now, at this time, he who was once so highly 
 esteemed, so popular, is the best hated man in Asia 
 and Europe, and he who once had so many friends is 
 compelled to write that he has no man like-minded with 
 him. 
 
 Poverty, pain, obloquy are marks of a great loss ; it 
 seems as though nothing could be added ; and yet 
 liberty is perhaps dearer than all. We are so accus- 
 tomed to it that it is hard to realize circumstances in 
 which we are deprived of it, difficult to imagine how 
 chafed and fretted we should be if we could no longer 
 go where or when we pleased, if we were confined to 
 four walls, could only see those whom our jailer allowed. 
 Yet not only was this the Apostle's condition, but he 
 suffered the additional trial of never being alone. Day 
 and night he was chained to a Roman soldier ; day and 
 night he had to suffer the companionship of a rough, 
 coarse, and rude man who would probably despise and 
 hate him. 
 
 S. Paul, then, had lost everything. Some men may 
 know of the loss of money, or of friends, or of health, 
 but how few there are who have known so complete a 
 loss as this which the Apostle experienced. And there 
 is this further fact that is remarkable about the sacrifice: 
 it was not forced from him. At any time he could have 
 resumed his liberty, got back his fortune, recovered his 
 reputation if not his health. He made this sacrifice
 
 Vital Religion. 2 1 
 
 willingly, of his own mind. And this not because, like 
 some Eastern devotee, he might attain some high peak 
 of sanctity from which he could look down with pride on 
 those who were grovelling amongst earthly things. He 
 had something better in view than that. S. Paul was no 
 spendthrift, throwing away great blessings for a little 
 temporary applause. He valued health, and bade his 
 young fellow labourer be careful of it ; he valued, too, 
 the privileges of independence and popular esteem, and 
 had no intention of parting with them except in the 
 hope of getting something better. But this he felt he 
 had obtained. Looking back over thirty years, during 
 which time he had lost these blessings, he has no regret, 
 is still of the same mind. "Yea, and I (still) count all 
 things but loss." The return had evidently been satis- 
 factory, was evidently worth more than what he had 
 spent to gain it. What was it? In his first statement 
 he writes shortly, " Christ "; in his second, he explains 
 it by the words, " The excellency of the knowledge of 
 Christ Jesus my Lord." 
 
 Our first feeling is, to speak frankly, one of surprise. 
 We ask ourselves whether we should be prepared to 
 sacrifice any one of these four great blessings for the 
 sake of the knowledge of Christ. Are we ready to give 
 up our independence, to become dependent on the 
 charity of others, for the sake of the knowledge of 
 Christ, provided we can obtain it on no other terms? 
 Are we ready to become chronic sufferers, if we learn 
 that we can only know Christ in that way ? Are we 
 ready to face unpopularity, to be hated by our old 
 friends, to be looked on not only as misguided, but as 
 dangerous, if that is the only path to this knowledge ? 
 Most of us hesitate. We hope we should do it, but we 
 do not feel sure. Any one of these items is a large
 
 22 Vital Religion. 
 
 price to pay for knowledge. Of course we should for 
 salvation ; our future happiness or misery is directly 
 involved there. But knowledge? No; we remain un- 
 certain. 
 
 And yet we remember that we have paid very high 
 prices for knowledge. The knowledge of letters, that 
 most elementary knowledge, has not been purchased 
 without the loss of money, time, and perhaps tears. Do 
 we regret it? Do we not wish that we had spent more 
 lavishly? Could we think of resigning that knowledge 
 by which we learn day by day what the world is doing, 
 by which we learn what it has done in the past ? Should 
 we not be immeasurably vexed and mortified if we were 
 obliged, like our ancestors, to be dependent on what 
 others reported to us ? No, the knowledge is far more 
 valuable than what we gave for it : our only regret is that 
 we are confined to one, two, or three languages, instead 
 of being able to read the thoughts of all mankind. We 
 have the same feeling with regard to the knowledge of 
 art. The music we know, the skill we have in drawing 
 or painting, is worth far more than we ever gave for 
 it. Surely a little thought will quickly convince us that 
 knowledge is one of the few investments which bring us 
 a much larger return than we expected. And so far 
 from esteeming those foolish who have lost health or 
 social advantages in pursuit of knowledge, we consider 
 them wise and good, for they have not only enriched 
 themselves, but others. We see Palissy, the potter, 
 heaping upon his furnace his tables, chairs and furniture, 
 and we admire the sacrifice that won for us the secret of 
 the enamel. We see Darwin shutting his mind off from 
 subjects in which he was once interested in order that 
 he may concentrate his energies on his one pursuit, and 
 we reverence his spirit of devotion whilst we regret
 
 Vital Religion. 23 
 
 that the highest knowledge of all seems to have been 
 undiscovered. 
 
 For, as we have already seen, there is^a higher 
 knowledge than that of things, and that the knowledge 
 of persons. Indeed, the knowledge of things is chiefly 
 valuable because it leads to that of persons. The words 
 friendship and love express to us what that knowledge 
 is. We cannot imagine Tennyson writing an " In 
 Memoriam " on the loss of a library. The know- 
 ledge of a person awakens response, kindles the flame 
 of interest and affection. And the more beautiful 
 the character of the person, the more deeply we are 
 interested in knowing it. It is a natural instinct that 
 leads the soul to seek to know the great and noble, and 
 it only becomes contemptible when servile methods are 
 adopted for obtaining it. Such a search carries with it 
 expectation and hope. To be admitted to know the 
 really great, the mind of a S. Paul or a S. John, of a 
 Shakespeare or Milton, of a Bayard or Gordon, to know 
 them, to become their friends, share their thoughts, 
 would be a wonderful enrichment to our lives. We 
 should be content with the knowledge of much less 
 eminent people. All this goes without saying. What is 
 not so obvious, or, in any case, what we habitually forget, 
 is that this kind of knowledge needs sacrifice also. 
 
 " Friendship ! All like the purchase, but who the 
 price will pay?" Why should we pay any price? we ask. 
 Ought not friendship, and the knowledge that underlies 
 it, to be the spontaneous response to our self-revelation ? 
 Is it worth anything if it is not? If my friend will not 
 allow me to know him unless my earnestness in the 
 matter is first proved by numberless acts of devotion 
 and sacrifice, is his friendship worth the search ? So we 
 are apt to argue ; but a little thought will convince us
 
 24 Vital Religion. 
 
 that we are wrong. The knowledge of a person differs 
 from the knowledge of a thing in this, that it is a 
 complex process. The living person can baffle us in a 
 way that nature, with her uniformity of law, cannot. 
 He does not care to be known to all the world ; he will 
 hide himself from the gaze of the foolish or impertinent ; 
 he will not reveal himself to the eye of the stranger. 
 He needs to be assured of our motives, whether we are 
 seeking him for what he is or for what he has. Study, 
 thought, patience are obviously necessary. But not 
 only these things: we must be in sympathy with his 
 mind, care for the things that he cares about, have 
 similar tastes and interests. And this means, very often, 
 considerable self-sacrifice : and the better a man is, the 
 more self-discipline is needed in order to know him. 
 So far, then, from supposing that it is easier, involves 
 less time, labour, and self-sacrifice to know a person 
 than to know a language or science, the contrary is 
 the case. And this is the reason why only a few 
 friendships are open to any one ; there is no time for 
 more. It is also the reason why so many marriages 
 which promised so well have turned out comparatively 
 failures. In the early days, sacrifice on both sides was 
 constant, and sacrifice always brings fresh knowledge ; 
 but after marriage it was supposed that the mutual 
 knowledge would grow apace without it, and so the 
 growing friendship and love faded away into acquaint- 
 anceship. 
 
 From what we have said, it is clear that all knowledge 
 demands sacrifice, and the knowledge of persons is 
 more exacting than the knowledge of things. We are, 
 then, in complete accord with S. Paul's principle. And 
 if we look at the application, can there be any doubt as 
 to his wisdom ? His complete sacrifice of all was not
 
 Vital Religion. 25 
 
 for a thing, but a Person, and that Person the very 
 highest. Amongst all the men he had ever met in his 
 long and varied experience there was no one who had 
 awakened the same vehement desires and expectations 
 as the Person of Jesus Christ. Amongst all the visions 
 of attractive loveliness that earth or heaven had disclosed 
 to him, none had been so strangely enticing as the Vision 
 on the way to Damascus. From that moment all per- 
 sons, all subjects lost their interest, except so far as 
 they were associated with Him. All desirable know- 
 ledge was focussed in Jesus Christ. In Him were 
 hidden all "the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."* 
 " That I may know Him "f was the one passionate 
 desire of his heart. 
 
 But it was plain from the very outset that this would 
 mean struggle, pain and loss. To know One Who never 
 thought of Himself, never pleased Himself, Who when 
 on earth went about doing good, would and must mean 
 sacrifice, for that was the root principle of His mind. 
 Again, to know One Who was invisible, Who could only 
 be known through revelations in life, would mean of 
 necessity certain circumstances which would, as it were, 
 make these revelations natural. In other words, diffi- 
 culties, trials, hardships, when S. Paul would be neces- 
 sarily thrown on his Friend, would be the most likely 
 conditions of knowledge. This, too, would involve loss. 
 Then, again, the extraordinary loftiness and greatness of 
 His character, Who is God as well as Man, would mean 
 all that sacrifice which attends self-purification, penitence, 
 and strivings after holiness. If we must concentrate to 
 know a language, an art, a science ; if we must put 
 out all the forces of our mind to know a person, and if, 
 
 * Col. ii. ?. | Phil. iii. 8.
 
 26 Vital Religion. 
 
 in proportion as that person is noble and saintly in 
 character, our study must be more and more severe, 
 what must not the knowledge of Christ involve? As 
 Mr. Illingworth says : " It is obvious that in proportion 
 to the awfulness of His Personality, this desire " (i.e., to 
 know Him) "must be both intense and sincere. We 
 have already seen the impossibility of trifling with a 
 natural or moral science, or a human friendship, and 
 the seriousness with which they must be approached ; 
 and it will hardly be denied that to trifle with the study 
 of the Infinite Source of all things must be yet more 
 impossible still."* And he notes three qualifications as 
 necessary for this study, all of which demand sacrifice. 
 
 In the first place, the desire must be sincere. There 
 must be no selfish motive mixed up with our study. 
 We must not seek to know Him for any worldly advan- 
 tage or gain, but for His own sake. The wife who 
 makes her household management her chief concern, 
 and only seeks the knowledge of Him in order that she 
 may better compass it, will find that neither is satisfac- 
 tory. The husband who, in his affectionate regard for 
 his family, concentrates his mind upon his business, and 
 only seeks to know Christ that he may be kept straight, 
 will find the personal Christ fading away into some 
 abstract conception of duty, which fails when a really 
 strong demand is made upon it. The priest who, in 
 his devotion to the Church and her interests, in his 
 ambition that she may meet with success all the 
 problems of the age, only seeks to know Christ in order 
 that he may be wise enough to direct her aims, will find 
 that the work is in danger of becoming mere routine, a 
 department of ethics, instead of the manifestation of a 
 
 * Illingworth: Personality, Human and Divine, p. 120.
 
 Vital Religion. 27 
 
 living Person. Intensity is necessary, intensity in the 
 sense of concentrating all our powers on Him and His 
 character, that we may know Him for His own sake, 
 and not for what the knowledge may bring. 
 
 In the second place, the desire must be intense 
 enough to counterbalance the multitude of desires which 
 conflict with it. We live in an age when not only business 
 and study, but books and magazines, games and innocent 
 recreations, society and travel make imperious claims 
 upon our time. We are hurried from one pursuit to 
 another, and rather enjoy the excitement which the 
 quick changes bring. To stay, " be still and know God," 
 seems impossible. We therefore drift on and on in the 
 comfortable presumption that eternal life will be in a 
 large measure the continuance of the present ; that there 
 is no reason, so far as we can see, why there should be 
 any violent change ; that "the angel faces we have loved 
 long since and lost awhile" will be there to smile upon 
 us, that we shall meet with the same kind of welcome 
 that we should find on going to the colonies ; and that 
 the judgment men talk of will be very much what an 
 examination is here, a determination of the particular 
 place in heaven where we shall do best. And then a 
 sudden change, a serious loss, or an illness makes life 
 different. We are left alone, and realize something of 
 the loneliness of that going forth whither we know not. 
 We long to be certain of a Friend then, for the sake of 
 the one we have lost, if not for our own sake. We stretch 
 out our hands. A new desire fills heart and mind, 
 which begins to overmaster all other desires. We long 
 to know Jesus Christ. But why should it have been born 
 of pain and loss ? Why not develop it now, and find 
 in life's happiness a sign of His Presence ? How often 
 the reply is : " It will mean trouble, and I have enough
 
 28 Vital Religion. 
 
 without it." Yes, it will mean trouble, for the knowledge 
 of Christ demands not only concentration and sincerity, 
 but the daily purification of character. 
 
 This is the third and chief qualification for personal 
 knowledge. The knowledge of things, of arts and 
 sciences, claims certain gifts which we do not all 
 share alike, and the poor and ignorant are left 
 behind in the race. But in the knowledge of per- 
 sons, character, in which the poor are as fortunate as 
 the rich, is of such importance that it may be said 
 to dwarf all other qualifications and be looked upon as 
 the one essential. We can all improve our characters ; 
 and just in proportion as we improve, our knowledge of 
 Christ, if that be our aim, improves. It is often found 
 that a poor cottager, unable to do more than read "his 
 Bible, has a closer and clearer sight of the Lord than 
 the scholarly and intellectual landlord whom he serves. 
 
 All this clearly shews that the personal knowledge of 
 the Lord must involve self-sacrifice. "Affinity with a 
 Holy Being implies a progressive and life-long effort of 
 the will. The moral virtues, . . . seen to be necessary 
 for success in science, are departmental, and do not 
 cover the whole range of conduct ; some are needed and 
 others not. But to know a Person who is perfectly 
 holy, we must focus our entire moral character upon 
 
 Him Such an effort of the will is not easy 
 
 either of attainment or of maintenance.'"'* 
 
 " I count all things but loss/' We are not, it may 
 be, asked for health, freedom, money, or reputation. 
 It may not be demanded of us, as it was of S. Paul, 
 that we should make a clean sweep of all that life offers. 
 Perhaps it is only the sacrifice of time, or undesirable 
 
 * Illingworlh : Personality, Human and Divine, p. 121.
 
 Vital Religion. 29 
 
 friends, or personal comfort and freedom in the adoption 
 of some rule of life which may check and prune our 
 over-strong earthly desires. But even this demands a 
 strong, determined will and a lofty purpose. And the 
 question arises : Is the personal knowledge of Christ a 
 prize of sufficient stimulus for the sacrifice it involves? 
 Let a man ask those who have it in any measure, or let 
 him study the lives of those who, like S. Paul and S. 
 John, have been filled with it. Let him mark the 
 change which came over the narrow-minded Pharisee 
 and the Galilean fisherman when they came under the 
 power of it. Let him ask himself what such friendship 
 as he has known has done for him ; and in the light of 
 these several answers brace himself for the task that lies 
 before him, and determine "to count all things but 
 loss" for the surpassing worth of the knowledge of 
 Christ.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Knowledge through the Scriptures. 
 
 The key of knowledge. — S. Luke xi. 52. 
 
 WE have considered the importance of the subject 
 we are discussing, and the claims it has upon 
 our attention. We have also examined its character, 
 and noticed that the only condition on which it can 
 be obtained is self-sacrifice. We now enter upon the 
 way of this knowledge, asking how it is to be found and 
 what are its hindrances and difficulties. 
 
 Our first question is, What are we to start with ? 
 what is the key to the position ? In seeking an answer, 
 we go to experience. We ask, how is it that we first 
 came to know our friend ? And as we think about its 
 first beginnings, we remember that long before we saw 
 him we had an interest in him. We had heard of him 
 from some friend who knew him, and he told us of all 
 that he was to him : how he had helped him in his work, 
 strengthened him in facing difficulty, sympathized with 
 him when he was in trouble ; and further, that he had 
 expressed a wish to know us. This awakened curiosity 
 and interest; and then perhaps good fortune took us to 
 his neighbourhood, and we saw the house where he lived, 
 the garden where he wrote and saw his friends. We 
 felt we were getting into closer touch, and then some
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 i 
 
 one who knew him well said that as he was not at 
 home he would take us round the house, shew us the 
 tree under which he sat, the flowers he loved, the 
 library with his books, the dining room and hall with 
 his pictures, the study with innumerable photographs 
 of places and friends. All this greatly interested us ; 
 and we felt, after we had seen everything, as though we 
 knew him. And though we now see that the know- 
 ledge then gained, compared with what we enjoy now, 
 was very elementary, yet we recognize that the outward 
 was a very important help to the knowledge of the 
 inward. It was our first step. It may be, then, that 
 the first step to the knowledge of Christ will be through 
 the outward, through the knowledge of His surround- 
 ings, His friends, His words and actions. 
 
 We are encouraged to believe that this is the case, 
 because we find that it was the method He adopted 
 with His disciples. For three years they were with Him 
 in and out : they saw His daily ways, watched Him at 
 prayer and at work, saw Him when He was entertaining 
 others and when He was being entertained. They 
 observed His wonderful patience in bearing contradic- 
 tion and the singular power by which He silenced His 
 enemies. They noticed how entirely free He was from 
 any kind of condescension or patronage in His dealings 
 with the poor, how He hated the very appearance of 
 ostentation and vanity. And so, gradually, they came 
 to know Him in an outward kind of way. He became 
 their Master and their Lord. It is true that this was 
 to a large extent a knowledge of Christ after the flesh ; 
 but it was a great help, a very definite step to that 
 other knowledge which after Pentecost was to be theirs. 
 
 It may be said here that the further discussion of this 
 is useless, as Christ is gone, and it is no longer possible
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 to have the wonderful privilege of hearing and seeing 
 Him. It is true that we can neither see Him nor touch 
 Him; but we have unsurpassed opportunities for gaining 
 a clear conception of the outward setting of Him we 
 seek to know. 
 
 In the first place, we have in Nature what answers to 
 the garden and grounds of our friend. We know that 
 it is His handiwork, and it will be very strange if our 
 observation of it does not lead us to some clearer 
 knowledge of Him. We can see His love of Beauty 
 in the modest charms of the violet that hides her head 
 beneath the grass, as well as in the brilliant splendour of 
 the sunset. We can trace His pleasure in Order in the 
 wonderful grouping of plants, insects and animals, as 
 well as in the evolution of the more perfect from the 
 less. We can see His Power in the resistless storm, the 
 hurricane and cyclone, as well as in the still evening 
 when He seems to be holding all in the hollow of His 
 hand. And if we are scientific, we shall none the less 
 appreciate these outward features of His mind ; on the 
 contrary, the very wonders with which we are brought 
 into such close contact will only increase our sense of 
 the marvellous wisdom by which He not only shaped, 
 but sustains creation. 
 
 As He Himself shewed His disciples again and 
 again, Nature bears its own witness to Him, and we are 
 very short-sighted if we are unable to read it. We 
 ought, then, to take every advantage of the suggestions 
 that poets and prose writers give us, and seek in the 
 pages of Wordsworth and Keble, of Ruskin, Shairp, 
 and Hugh Macmillan, and many others, the stimulus 
 which will make the dullest neighbourhood the garden 
 of the Lord. 
 
 But we are not confined to the grounds and gardens.
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 Wisdom, the Divine Wisdom, has builded for Him- 
 self an House according to His promise, " Upon 
 this rock I will build My Church." And in this House 
 is to be found not only His own gracious Presence, 
 but various rooms, so we may describe them, in which 
 we may learn a great many things about Him. There 
 we find the library He Himself used, and there also 
 pictures and writings which tell us much, very much, 
 about Him. There also we are able to see His servants 
 at work ; there also the love and reverence they pay 
 Him in their worship. The Church, then, is to the 
 Christian what the houses of our great men are to their 
 friends. As they tell us much that we should not other- 
 wise know, and in various ways, small as well as great, 
 bring us into closer touch with men who have hitherto 
 been only a name to us, so the Church, if we move 
 about it under sympathetic and skilful guidance, becomes 
 a means of education whereby we are brought into the 
 fuller knowledge of Christ. 
 
 We pass within its doors, and are at once shewn in 
 the first room, in a series of pictures, the principles on 
 which the garden in which we have been walking was 
 laid out, and how its original beauty was marred, and 
 those features which we always thought strange, and 
 even ugly, found a place. In the same room we learn of 
 His relationship to our first parents, and how that, too, 
 was spoiled. There, too, we have pictures which reveal 
 His mind in a series of contrasts. We see the terrible 
 judgments of the flood, the plagues, the destruction of 
 the Red Sea ; but we see also, side by side, His quiet, 
 homely fellowship with simple men and women, shewing 
 His delight to be with the sons of men. There are few 
 pictures which are more engrossing than these early 
 ones, which shew so clearly His care for the individual. 
 
 3
 
 34 Vital Religion. 
 
 In other parts of the House we have His interest in 
 nations pictured forth. We see groups of people, tribes 
 and nationalities, treated as though they had individual 
 responsibility. We find pictures which portray judg- 
 ments on Egypt, on Assyria and Babylon ; and we feel, 
 with a sense of relief, that the political life which interests 
 us so greatly is the object of His concern. We now 
 know that the great events of which our newspapers 
 write affect Him as they affect us ; nay, more, for He is 
 intimately concerned with them, and always directing 
 them so far as the limitations imposed upon Him by 
 His gift of free-will allow. China and Japan, then, are 
 like the great world powers of Assyria and Babylon ; 
 and Europe and America, Australia and New Zealand, 
 where His Church by her manifold influences guides 
 and governs, like the favoured land of Palestine. Passing 
 through the halls and corridors we see, carefully pre- 
 served, the songs and poems of those who have, 
 at various times, sung of Him or His Kingdom. The 
 Psalms show us not only how much He has been loved 
 and trusted, but how greatly blessed those were who 
 clung to Him in spite of all obstacles. Some of these, 
 and perhaps they touch us more nearly than any others, 
 were stained with the tears of those who realized the 
 injury they had done to Him through their sins. 
 
 Entering a room where the light was not so clear, we 
 find ourselves amongst rolls and records which describe 
 the longings and expectations that men have expressed 
 respecting His coming. The details of some of these 
 were not always easy to see, but their general meaning was 
 clear enough. With them were placed the intellectual 
 struggles of those who had tried to solve some of the 
 great problems which the history of man has aroused. 
 Their questionings were so bold that at first we were
 
 Vital Religion. 35 
 
 surprised to find them in the House at all, but we 
 learned that He regarded them as very precious, and we 
 then knew that He not only sympathized with all those 
 who sought the truth, but that their honest inquiries 
 and searchings were remembered by Him and valued. 
 
 Interesting as these rooms were, they had not and 
 could not have the same deep interest as those into 
 which we were now admitted. We were shewn into 
 His own study, the very workroom of the Lord Himself. 
 On the walls were the pictures of His close friends, the 
 men He chose to be princes in His new Kingdom. 
 Most of these were without that outward stamp of 
 greatness that we find in pictures of men like Socrates 
 and Plato, Moses and Isaiah, but they were all alike 
 distinguished for their singular simplicity and humility. 
 They had the look of children, and yet there were firm 
 lines about the mouth which shewed how difficult it 
 would be to make them swerve from their loyal devotion. 
 And about them and with them were pictures illustrating 
 the principles of His own work. Like those of His 
 friends, they were simple enough, picturing acts of 
 mercy and kindness ; and yet each one, we were told, 
 was a study of some method of working which He 
 employs now as He did then. 
 
 Away from the other rooms, apart by itself, was one 
 into which we entered with feelings indescribable. It 
 was the death room. On each of the four walls were 
 pictured with extraordinary plainness the incidents of 
 the last week of His earthly life and of the Crucifixion. 
 This too, we learned, illustrated certain principles of 
 His work. It was a relief to turn from this to the 
 room which pictured victory over death. Here we saw 
 not only His own personal victory, but the conquering 
 march and progress of His Divine Society continued to
 
 36 Vital Religion. 
 
 the very gates of Rome. And when we asked what 
 was the secret of their triumph, we were allowed to see 
 the letters of the men who took part in it, and we found 
 that it was summed up in the one word " Christ." 
 
 We supposed that we had seen all, but we were told 
 that if we climbed to the very top of the House we 
 should see a picture not only of what had been, but 
 of what would be ; and so we saw in strange symbols, 
 most difficult to make out, the inner history of the 
 world, since He came to the present time. We saw 
 something of the causes at work by which history is 
 made. 
 
 The reader may think that we have pressed our 
 parable too far, and that, whilst it may be freely granted 
 that there are passages here and there in the Old Test- 
 ament which refer to Christ, yet it can never be made 
 out that it is from beginning to end a revelation of His 
 mind and actions. If we had treated it as the history 
 of an ancient and interesting people who were under 
 Divine education, there would have been no room for 
 criticism, but to change the point of view, and say that 
 the object of the Book is to reveal the Educator rather 
 than the educated, is to miss its significance. Now no 
 one would deny that the Old Testament is, to use Dean 
 Stanley's expressive phrase, a history of the Jewish 
 Church, a history of a people chosen out of the nations 
 to witness to God and to be the home from which the 
 Messiah should come forth. But is this its chief signi- 
 ficance ? Is this the point to which Christ and His 
 Apostles turn ? Do they not, on the contrary, look to 
 it as a revelation of the Son of God ? " They are they," 
 says our Lord of the Scriptures, "which testify of Me."* 
 
 * S. John v. 39.
 
 Vital Religion. $7 
 
 " Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded 
 unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
 Himself."* "Then opened He their understanding, 
 that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto 
 them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to 
 suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day."t He 
 was the Person on Whom patriarchs, lawgivers, and 
 prophets fastened their eyes. Abraham rejoiced to see 
 His day ; Moses wrote of Him ; David in spirit called 
 Him Lord ; Isaiah saw His glory. It would be difficult 
 to point to a single passage which shews that Christ or 
 His Apostles used the Old Testament for any other 
 purpose than as a testimony to the Son of God. " The 
 idea of the Written Word is the Word Incarnate." 
 
 As Archbishop Magee points out in a well-known 
 sermon : " The Jews had quite lost sight of this ; they 
 had come to regard the Scriptures as having in them- 
 selves that eternal life which was only in the Christ to 
 Whom they testified ; they searched them for life, but 
 they searched them not for Christ, the Giver of life. 
 And because they did this, because they had thus 
 almost lost the idea of the Christ out of all their 
 Scriptures, save in some few passages which seemed 
 more expressly to foretell Him, Scripture had ceased 
 to be light, had become darkness to them." As we 
 read these words, we ask, Is there not the same danger 
 to-day? In the reaction against that allegorizing of 
 Scripture which some perhaps carried too far, the witness 
 of the Old Testament, to Christ has been largely lost, 
 and parts of it have no longer the same interest to 
 Christians. It was this that the Archbishop feared : 
 " If we should come to look upon any part of that 
 
 * S. Luke xxiv. 27. f S. Luke xxiv. 45-46.
 
 38 Vital Religion. 
 
 Word as having no reference to Him ; as having, as 
 the Jews thought it had, only a local and a Jewish 
 use ; as being, in short, only a Jewish, and not also a 
 Christian Word, we, too, like the Jews, will most 
 assuredly misuse and misapply it, or, still more probably, 
 reject it altogether, for this latter is the danger to 
 which the Christian Church is more especially exposed, 
 exactly the opposite one to that to which the Jew was 
 liable, though arising from the same cause. The Jew 
 who failed to see Christ in his Scriptures, trained as he 
 was in superstitious reverence for the Word, rejected the 
 Jesus to Whom that Word did not seem to him to 
 testify. But the Christian, trained to believe in and 
 worship Jesus of Nazareth, would in like case be in 
 danger not of rejecting Him, but of despising and 
 rejecting those portions of Scripture which seemed to 
 have no connection with Him or His religion. The 
 Jewish Scriptures, if divested of their reference to Christ, 
 must have for the Christian student as little beauty that 
 he should desire them, as Jesus of Nazareth had in the 
 eyes of a Jewish student ; the very conception of them 
 which gave them all their charm for the Jew, that they 
 were Jewish and for Jews alone, tending to divest them 
 of all interest for the Gentile Christian.''* 
 
 Enough has been said, I hope, to justify the point of 
 view from which Scripture is regarded in this chapter, 
 to make it clear that its chief purpose is to help us to 
 know about Christ. Assuming this, it may be asked, how 
 does it effect its purpose? In the first place, it creates 
 an atmosphere in which Christ may be seen; or, to use 
 another metaphor, it prepares the plate on which the 
 activities of Christ are to be mirrored. With many, 
 
 * Magee : Christ the Light of all Scripture, p. 5.
 
 Vital Religion. 39 
 
 Christ has less to do with the world now than when He 
 was in Palestine : the historical Christ of the Gospels is 
 a more striking reality than the living Christ of the 
 Acts. And with us all an effort is required before we 
 can realize that our newspapers record day by day the 
 results of His guidance. Even so earnest a believer as 
 the late Dr. Dale, one who has in his sermons and 
 books borne such noble testimony to Christ, confesses 
 that this full conviction of the living Christ was some- 
 what late in reaching him ; or, rather, that he on one 
 occasion received an added consciousness of the fact, 
 and whilst under its power became quite excited at the 
 thought how little his people knew it. And yet the 
 Resurrection was all in vain if Christ be not alive and 
 active and the acknowledged Ruler of the Universe 
 to-day. Why, then, is there this dulness of spiritual 
 perception, this inability to perceive the living Christ? 
 And the answer is, want of preparation. The world is 
 so much with us that we are unable to see beyond its 
 horizon. Our thoughts are practically bound by it. 
 Now it is the duty of the Scriptures to correct this, to 
 tell us of spiritual powers and agencies constantly active 
 and at work; to remind us, as.it does so frequently, that 
 neither greatness of place nor insignificance of position 
 can absolve us from spiritual responsibility ; that our 
 work, whether to us important or unimportant, is a 
 part of a vast network of causes and effects which the 
 Christ is guiding, and that He expects us to do our very 
 best. We see, for example, the enormous influence for 
 good wielded by the pious farmer Abraham, and we see a 
 similar influence for bad wielded by the unprincipled King 
 Ahab ; and the Bible shews us that the main difference 
 between the one man and the other is that the former 
 was sensible of a spiritual world enwrapping this, over
 
 40 Vital Religion. 
 
 which One ruled Whom he sought, and the latter, 
 ignoring that world, played only for this and lost. Such 
 pictures, and the prose or poetry which illustrates their 
 principles, if seen and read day by day, must have an 
 effect over the thoughtful man, and prepare his mind 
 for messages or signs from that spiritual world which 
 daily becomes more and more real. He is on the look 
 out for revelations of the Christ similar in principle to 
 those of which he reads ; and at the end of the day, 
 when he examines and develops the prepared plate, he 
 finds, as the expert photographer does, much more upon 
 it than he supposed. Quiet thought in the darkened 
 chamber, from which the light and sounds of this world 
 are shut out, reveals sights which surprise and cheer him. 
 
 But this is not the only purpose of Scripture. It not 
 only prepares men to see the actions of Christ in our 
 modern life, but it reveals the principles of His action. 
 We become familiar with His ways ; we begin to under- 
 stand how different His thoughts are from ours, His 
 ways from ours. We recognize the righteousness of His 
 judgments, the love that underlies His discipline, the 
 patience that characterizes all His actions ; how He will 
 wait for years and years before interfering ; and yet, on 
 the other hand, how He will suddenly strike without 
 notice or warning. And as we see Him in His actions 
 towards others, we can realize in some way what His 
 actions towards ourselves will be. 
 
 The Scriptures, then, are to us what our Ix>rd describes 
 them to be, the " key of knowledge." They are not the 
 knowledge itself; that, as we have seen, is a personal 
 communication with the living Christ ; but they open 
 the way to that personal knowledge, and are of such 
 importance that it is difficult to see how any one can 
 know Christ here without them. Moral affinity, as we
 
 Vital Religion. 41 
 
 saw in the last chapter, is essential for personal know- 
 ledge ; but where shall we find such a helpful guide to 
 the development of that moral affinity as in the teaching 
 of the Bible? How can we know what Christ likes 
 without it ? How shall we learn what is distasteful to 
 Him without it? How shall we know what kind of men 
 His friends are without it ? We never expect to have 
 any real personal knowledge of a man about whose life 
 and actions we are profoundly ignorant, and we cannot 
 expect to have any knowledge of Christ unless we have 
 learnt from His own Word not only what He was to 
 His disciples, but what He has been to man ever since 
 his creation. Knowing this, we can then hope to be 
 able to trace His steps in history, philosophy and art. 
 We can then find that one element which men have 
 long searched for, and that is, the unifying principle of 
 all knowledge, and gain a new meaning to the old words, 
 " Christ is all, and in all."* 
 
 But this means effort and cost. The secrets of Nature 
 are not discovered to the indolent, to those who take no 
 pains to study her ; so the secrets of Christ, which lie hid 
 in His Word, will never be revealed to those who are 
 too busy to read it, too preoccupied to care for it. We 
 must find time, nay, make time, to get a long and quiet 
 look at it, and then force ourselves to think about what 
 we have read. It is, of course, from this point of view, 
 of very little value reading it, as Matthew Arnold 
 recommended it, for its literary beauties, or for the sake 
 of giving us a larger historical knowledge, because that 
 diverts us from the real quest, namely, to find out what 
 Christ is doing now, to get hold of His principles, and 
 learn, as S. Paul learned, how they apply to the circum- 
 stances of the world of to-day in which we live. 
 
 * Col. iii. 11.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Knowledge by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The Spirit of Knowledge. — Is. xi. 2. 
 
 SO far, we have seen how men may get to know about 
 Christ, may find an interest in Him, a deep 
 appreciation of His character, His life and actions ; but 
 this is a long way from knowing Him personally, or, 
 perhaps it would be more accurate to say, an altogether 
 different thing. It is of high importance that men 
 should have this, and there is no doubt that much good 
 work has been done by those who have never got any 
 further ; but it is not the goal that Christ proposes. 
 Such are never more than servants. Our Lord cannot 
 discover His secrets to them ; they can only guess at the 
 meaning of His actions. 
 
 But it may be asked, How are we to get this 
 personal knowledge without the advantages that the 
 disciples had in having Christ with them in the flesh ? 
 To go back to the analogy pursued in the last chapter : 
 it is as though after we had seen the house and grounds 
 of the friend we are seeking to know, we were told that 
 we were to develop out of that scanty outside know- 
 ledge a friendship. We have heard of imaginary letters 
 to dead authors, but we never supposed any real fellow- 
 ship was obtained by them.
 
 Vital Religion. 43 
 
 Now, in answering this objection, it may be well first 
 to ask : How much would be gained by the presence 
 of Christ in the flesh amongst us ? Should we really 
 get to know Him better? It is said, of course, that 
 the Apostles, who knew Him best, got their knowledge 
 in this way. But did they ? How well did they really 
 know our Lord at the time of the Crucifixion ? It is 
 not easy to say precisely, but the facts we have, seem to 
 shew at best a very confused and imperfect knowledge. 
 That Christ was their Messiah they had no doubt, but 
 with this was the erroneous conviction that He was only 
 a national Deliverer. They had no knowledge that He 
 had as Man as intimate relations with Greece and Rome 
 as He had with Judea. They knew, too, that He was 
 the Son of God, but probably by this title they only 
 meant that He was above all men in the place that He 
 had with His Father. When He was delivered up to 
 His enemies, they felt He was beaten ; when He died 
 upon the Cross, they never expected to see Him again. 
 Had any one asked them pn Good Friday as to Who 
 He was, they would have probably replied, as the two 
 disciples going to Emmaus did, "A prophet mighty in 
 deed and word before God and all the people." And 
 we all know how very far short this falls of a true know- 
 ledge of Christ. And so far from blaming them, it is 
 difficult to see how, under the circumstances, they could 
 have known much more. The presence of Christ in 
 the flesh had its disadvantages as well as its blessings, 
 its hindrances as well as its helps. We must remember 
 that our Lord dressed as a Jew, spoke as a Jew, and had 
 the manners of a Jew, and yet He was really no more a 
 Jew than a Gentile. But how was that to be found out? 
 Our reason is more under the sway of the outward than 
 we care to confess. The appeal through the eye is very
 
 44 Vital Religion. 
 
 powerful ; and if we saw our Lord amongst us to-day, we 
 should at once be face to face with all the difficulties 
 which the limitations of dress, language and manner 
 present. Again, our Lord was often tired ; sometimes 
 pained ; on one occasion, and probably on many others, 
 was hungry and thirsty; and these were valuable helps 
 to the knowledge of Christ as bearing our afflictions and 
 sorrows. But such sights must have seriously con- 
 tradicted the disciples' consciousness of His co-equality 
 with the Father. The truth is, the universality of our 
 Lord's character could not be portrayed in any single 
 outward way, and, therefore, as He Himself told them, 
 it was expedient for Him to go away. So far, then, 
 we see that it is difficult to be sure that our own 
 knowledge of Christ would be increased by His sojourn 
 amongst us. 
 
 But, whilst saying this, we do not deny the necessity 
 for the outward. It was limited, partial, open to mis- 
 understanding, but it was necessary. It is difficult to 
 see how any knowledge whatever can be obtained 
 without it. We must have the objective fact before we 
 can receive the subjective impression which is the 
 beginning of knowledge. But what is of more con- 
 sequence than the abiding presence of the outward 
 is the power to understand it. The outward really 
 takes the form that our minds give it. To one 
 man, the stream is only so much power for a water 
 mill ; to another, it is a parable of life. To one man, 
 a human face speaks of nothing but plainness ; to 
 another, it is radiant with spiritual and intellectual light. 
 We see that which we have the capacity for seeing. If 
 our capacity be small, we see only the surface of things ; 
 if it be large, we see what lies behind the outward, that 
 is, more or less thoroughly. It has been most truly said
 
 Vital Religion. 45 
 
 that the difference between thorough knowledge and 
 superficial knowledge lies not in the volume of intel- 
 lectual matter taken in, but in the aim and ability to 
 make good use of the material ; that what is needed is 
 not quantity, but an enlarged personality. It is this that 
 the Apostles needed. They had an abundance of 
 material ; sufficient, and more than sufficient, as S. John 
 tells us, to fill all the books the world could contain ; 
 but they lacked the ability to deal with it, they needed 
 "an enlarged personality." And it is this that our Lord 
 promised them in the gift of the Holy Ghost. The 
 Spirit, when He came, would not only bring to remem- 
 brance all things that the Lord had said;* He would not 
 only take them and declare them unto the disciples, as a 
 master explains the truth to his pupils, but He would be 
 in their minds and spirits, enlarging their understanding, 
 so that they would be able to comprehend what His 
 words and actions meant. He would not only testify to 
 Christ, i e., direct their attention to Him at times and in 
 places when they were not thinking of Him ; He would 
 not only glorify Christ, i.e., shew the beauty and 
 attractiveness of His character; but, by His indwelling 
 Presence, He would give them the power to know 
 Christ. 
 
 And what was promised came to pass. It is difficult 
 to see in the Peter who stands up on the Day of 
 Pentecost and speaks with such fulness of knowledge 
 about his Master the man who, six weeks before, denied 
 that he knew Him. No appearances of the risen 
 Christ could of themselves have produced that power of 
 interpretation which enabled him to see at one glance 
 how the events of Pentecost were in accord with pre- 
 
 S. John xvi. 14.
 
 46 Vital Religion. 
 
 diction. It was all due to the power of the Spirit. And 
 so, too, no continuance of Christ in the flesh could of 
 itself have produced that phrase so frequently used in the 
 New Testament as descriptive of the Christian's relation- 
 ship to Christ, " In Christ." S. Peter would not have 
 used it of others as he does, had he not known by his 
 own experience what it meant. It meant something 
 quite different from anything he could remember in the 
 days of the Galilean ministry. He knew then what it 
 was to be " with Christ," but not what it was to be " in 
 Christ." The fellowship with the outward was changed 
 to a fellowship with the inward. The knowledge of the 
 outward was exchanged for a knowledge of the inward. 
 
 The Apostles, then — for S. Peter's experience was that 
 of them all — would have been amazed at any such 
 question as we proposed at the beginning, namely, 
 whether we had not lost by the Ascension of our Lord a 
 great help towards the knowledge of Him. They would 
 have replied, " The knowledge we had of Christ in the 
 days of His flesh was so elementary and formal, com- 
 pared with our present knowledge, that we might almost 
 say that we then never knew Him at all." Indeed, it is 
 not improbable that they would have used S. Paul's 
 expression to denote the change, " Even though we have 
 known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so 
 no more."* S. Paul seems there to refer to some know- 
 ledge of Christ in the flesh which he himself had had, 
 some knowledge which was evidently precious, and not 
 to be easily laid aside ; for he says, " Even though we 
 have known," as much as to say, " Even though I have 
 had the great privilege of seeing that outward human 
 form which enshrined the Son of God, yet now I know 
 
 * 2 Cor. v. 16.
 
 Vital Religion. 47 
 
 Him so no more." Why? Because a loftier conception 
 had taken the place of that which the outward form 
 supplied. As he no longer recognized men after the 
 flesh, as their outward appearance and circumstances 
 faded away into insignificance before the greatness of 
 their spiritual reality, so he no longer knew Christ after 
 the flesh, for the outward fashion of Christ and the 
 external accompaniments of His earthly life paled before 
 the glory of the Christ he came to know. The Christ 
 in the limitations of His humanity had disappeared in 
 the Christ now everywhere present, penetrating the 
 inward as well as the outward, indwelling, abiding, and 
 so filling the individual as well as the universe that he 
 could say, " Not I, but Christ Who dwelleth in me." 
 
 Now, from what we have said, it is quite clear that in 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost the Apostles had all that was 
 necessary for the personal knowledge of Christ. Every 
 help was theirs, and that knowledge after Pentecost 
 depended on their own personal effort, or, rather, co- 
 operation with that new Friend, the Comforter, W T ho 
 had come to make Him known. In the following 
 chapters, we shall see in what directions these efforts 
 were made. It is now only necessary that we should ask : 
 Have we the same Helper ? Have we now One Who 
 can do for us what was done for them ; that is, so 
 enlarge our personality that we can know thoroughly 
 what we should otherwise only know superficially ; that 
 we, contemplating the image of the living Christ as 
 presented in the outward aspects of the Gospel, may 
 be enabled to see not only His relation to others, but to 
 us; not only His interest in Judea, but England; not 
 only His love for the society of the Apostles, but for 
 the Catholic Church ; that we, watching, as we do, our 
 modern life, may see in its great movements, its crises,
 
 48 Vital Religion. 
 
 its struggles, the clear marks of the Son of Man ; that 
 we, noting the details of our own small life, may see His 
 Hand guiding and interfering? There can be no doubt 
 about the answer. 
 
 The universality of the gift of the Holy Ghost was 
 made plain from the very beginning. S. Peter, on the 
 very day of His coming, declared the gift was for the 
 men in the street as well as for those in the upper 
 room ; and that there should be no doubt about His 
 love for the heathen, the same Apostle gives it as his 
 own experience that on one occasion, even before they 
 entered the waters of baptism, the Roman and his 
 friends at Csesarea shewed that they received the very 
 same gift that he and his fellow Apostles had received 
 some years before. Indeed, it is constantly assumed 
 throughout the New Testament that all Christians are 
 partakers of the Holy Ghost. His Presence is the 
 natural accompaniment of Holy Baptism, and the 
 realization of it tied to faith in Christ. " Did ye not 
 receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed ? " the Apostle 
 asks, in some amazement, of those who had evidently 
 shewn signs which indicated that they were without 
 Him.* In fact, the Christian life was begun in the 
 Spirit.! 
 
 This, however, is so familiar that we need not labour 
 it further. What is not so generally perceived is that 
 the purpose of His coming was to give not only 
 Apostles, but all men, that intimate interior knowledge 
 of God in Christ of which we are speaking. " We 
 received," writes the Apostle of his Corinthian converts 
 as well as of himself, " not the spirit of the world, but 
 the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things 
 
 * Acts xix. 2. t Gal. iii. 2.
 
 Vital Religion. 49 
 
 that are freely given to us by God."* And those things 
 are summed up for us in the Son Whom the Father 
 freely gave for the life of the world. 
 
 That, then, was the purpose of the gift, knowledge. 
 But not mere outward knowledge. S. Paul is anxious 
 to make it quite plain that it was a knowledge of a 
 different kind from that which every man has. He gives 
 an illustration : " Who among men knoweth the things 
 of a man," i.e., who knows the motives, the hidden 
 secret springs that determine a man's actions ? " Who, 
 save the spirit of the man which is in him ?" Well, then, 
 as that kind of intimate knowledge of a man's inner 
 nature is only known to himself, so the intimate know- 
 ledge of God is only known to the Spirit of God and to 
 those to whom He reveals it. It is this that explains 
 the passage which creates so many difficulties, I mean 
 that one in which S. Paul declares plainly that " the 
 natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
 of God." f How is this ? men ask. Does not the 
 ordinary man who makes no claim to any special 
 illumination of the Holy Ghost, nay, who would 
 repudiate it, does he not know what is meant by the 
 Christian creed in precisely the same way as he knows 
 what is meant by the Mohammedan or Buddhist creeds ? 
 Yes, it is true that he may know these creeds, and in 
 precisely the same way. The intellect can take in the 
 phrases, understand their logical meaning, supply illus- 
 trations as to their force, but it cannot penetrate behind 
 the setting, understand their real value and efficacy. 
 This interior knowledge is only given through the Holy 
 Ghost. Not that the gift is limited. As we have said, 
 it is given to every member of the Christian Church. 
 
 * I Cor. ii. 12. T 1 Cor. ii. 14. 
 
 4
 
 5<d Vital Religion. 
 
 The weakest and most insignificant is in no way behind 
 in this respect. All may know, nay, the object of His 
 Presence with us is that all shall know, and with such a 
 Teacher all ought to know. 
 
 If now we ask why this personal experience of the 
 living Christ is confined to a comparative few out of 
 the large mass of Christians, it must be admitted that 
 the chief reason is " want of faith in the Holy Ghost." 
 In the first days, the evidences of the work of the Holy 
 Spirit were so many and powerful that no Christian 
 could fail to be reminded of Him. The strange scenes 
 that were constantly witnessed in the early Christian 
 assemblies, when speaker after speaker would be carried 
 away in ecstasy to utter words hard to be understood, 
 made all conscious of His Presence. And yet, even 
 then, those who had never experienced those wonderful 
 results of His working, those who never spake with 
 tongues, began to doubt whether He was living and 
 moving in them, just as many to-day who have never 
 passed through any spiritual crisis, who have never been 
 very powerfully moved, wonder whether the Pentecostal 
 gift has ever been received by them. It was necessary 
 for the Apostle to remind such that no one could 
 come to the conviction that Jesus was the Lord except 
 by the Holy Ghost,* that that most elementary know- 
 ledge which stands at the foundation of the Christian 
 life is only obtained through His power and working. 
 In these days, when the manifestations of the Spirit's 
 power are not so clear, when the gifts of tongues 
 and miracles seem to be withdrawn, or changed in 
 their expression, and His many other gifts are generally 
 recognised as having only a human origin, it is not 
 
 * i Cor. xii. 3.
 
 Vital Religion. 51 
 
 surprising that many fail to seek His aid, and sup- 
 pose that by faith in Jesus Christ and the exercise of 
 their own intelligence they may have all that they 
 require. To such S. Paul's words, just quoted, should 
 come as a needful reminder. Even the first stage in the 
 knowledge of the Lord, that which conveys a recogni- 
 tion of His lordship, cannot be reached except by the 
 help of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Before concluding this chapter, it may be well to insist 
 on one condition which would seem to be necessary to 
 secure His help, without which all our desire to know is 
 useless, and that is "stillness." "Be still, and know 
 that I am God." * We know how essential quiet is for 
 all knowledge; how we like to get away by ourselves, free 
 from noise and interruption, if we are eager to know 
 some difficult matter. We know how it is not otherwise 
 with the knowledge of persons ; how in seeking to know 
 our friend better, we get alone with him, even resenting 
 the intrusion of another as a barrier which will prevent 
 the realization of our hopes. How, then, can we expect 
 to know Jesus Christ, even with the help of the Holy 
 Ghost, unless we are prepared to be alone ? Why 
 should we suppose that that knowledge which is the 
 most difficult of all to attain is to be picked up, as it 
 were, without effort as we go a'ong the dusty path on 
 our daily duties ? The friend whose company we never 
 sought, for whom we could never find time, would soon 
 cease to be a friend ; and had it not been for the 
 extraordinary patience of Jesus Christ, many would have 
 lost His friendship long ago. We need, then, a time 
 in every day when we can be still ; when, shutting out all 
 sights and sounds, we may concentrate our minds on 
 
 * Ps. xlvi. 10. 
 
 4—2
 
 52 Vital Religion. 
 
 Him Whom to know is everlasting life. The common 
 objection to this suggestion is that which Martha 
 virtually made when she complained to our Lord of 
 her sister's selfishness in giving her all the work 
 to do whilst she sat at His feet listening to His 
 teaching. " This duty must be done, and I have 
 no right to seek quiet until it is finished," is what 
 we say. But our Lord refuses to recognize it. The 
 good part is that which Mary chose, namely, fellow- 
 ship with the Lord. That is the first thing, the 
 all-important thing, coming even before attention to His 
 wants, and He would not interfere with it. But what 
 about the many things that claimed Martha's attention ? 
 What about the anxieties and worries of a small house- 
 hold, where much has to be done and there is but little 
 to do it with ? What about them ? Important though 
 they may seem to be, they are not of prime importance. 
 Even if the preparations are marred for lack of time, 
 even if the business is not so clearly laid out because 
 the hour was reduced to half an hour, it is no great 
 matter. What is essential in the host or hostess, what is 
 essential in the business man, is a calm and quiet mind. 
 The feast so carefully thought out and prepared, and the 
 interview for which so much was brought in readiness, 
 alike depend for their success on the spirit of those who 
 arrange them. And that depends on the time given to 
 fellowship with the Lord. To have come fresh from 
 quiet communion with Him is to come with life which 
 will make itself felt in all our intercourse with others. 
 A large part of the time spent in business would be 
 saved, and much of the dulness and formality of our 
 entertaining would disappear, if men gave more time to 
 quiet fellowship with Him Who knows our business 
 better and loves our friends more wisely than we do.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Knowledge by Prayer. 
 
 Filled with the knowledge of His will. —Col. i. 9. 
 
 WE have seen in previous chapters that not only 
 are we made to know Christ, being made in 
 Him ; not only have we every help in the fellow- 
 ship of the Holy Ghost for knowing Him ; but that 
 He seeks to know us. We ought, then, to know 
 Him better than we know our best friend ; and this He 
 expects, for He tells us that unless we place Him first in 
 our regard we cannot be classed even amongst His 
 disciples, i.e., His learners. How, then, is it that our 
 knowledge is so superficial ? We have already said that 
 it is due in part to our want of faith in the Holy Ghost ; 
 it is due also to the fact that we make so little use 
 of the means He has provided. It is of these that we 
 intend to speak ; and first of Prayer. 
 
 Directly we apprehend what the knowledge is that we 
 are seeking to obtain, we see that prayer must be 
 necessarily the chief means for obtaining it. For this 
 knowledge implies personal communion. It is not like 
 the knowledge of a great historical character, which 
 necessitates chiefly intellectual ability, sympathetic in- 
 sight and width of mind, and which depends for its
 
 54 Vital Religion. 
 
 fulness on the number of facts that can be obtained 
 and verified ; it is as open to the simple and ignorant 
 as to the clever and wise, and grows through com- 
 panionship. The life of this companionship in the 
 spiritual world is what we call prayer, for prayer is the 
 exercise of the soul in its endeavour to find and know 
 God. 
 
 We have already noticed the objection that the 
 knowledge of persons is hindered by absence, and have 
 seen how it has been met. But we may say here, in 
 addition to what we said there, that it is not difficult 
 to imagine that if the correspondence of two friends 
 who never saw one another were perfectly free and 
 unconstrained, and unfettered by the limitations which 
 hamper it, it might establish a friendship of a purer, 
 higher character than that which is made by constant 
 visits. The thought and care which correspondence 
 demands, the desire to give pleasure and happiness 
 which animates it, the opportunity it gives to the 
 writer to say what he could not frame his tongue to 
 repeat, are all in favour of a man giving his best to his 
 friend in his letter, of giving a better best than he would 
 in actual conversation. So, too, on the other side, the 
 memory is so treacherous that we forget or are in hesita- 
 tion as to what it was our friend actually said ; we wish 
 that it had been written down. So we find that the 
 letter not only gives us something of the same pleasure 
 that our friend's presence would supply, but that we are 
 able to enjoy it again and again, going over the very 
 words and living upon them. It is not, therefore, impos- 
 sible to imagine a true and noble friendship growing up 
 between two who never saw one another, but whose 
 friendship was built up upon correspondence. Nay, the 
 multiplication of means of intercourse more spiritual
 
 Vital Religion. 55 
 
 than that which the post supplies — e.g., the telephone 
 and wireless telegraphy — suggests to the imagination the 
 possibility that without even letters a friendship might 
 be formed. All that is really necessary is that in some 
 way I may communicate my mind to my friend, and 
 may have in return his. Now this is what we under- 
 stand by prayer. It is the means by which we reveal 
 our mind to One Who, though invisible, is very 
 near ; the means by which we ma)* know Christ and 
 Christ may know us ; for we must not forget that true 
 knowledge is mutual, and that if we know not Christ, 
 He knows not us. 
 
 Here we are at once met with a difficulty. All men 
 pray more or less, and yet but comparatively few know 
 Christ. It seems as though prayer failed in its purpose. 
 But do we not know that correspondence, nay, inter- 
 views, may entirely fail us in obtaining knowledge of 
 people ? How many are of a purely business character, 
 in which the personal element does not enter at all. 
 The writers do not expect, nay, in many cases do not 
 wish to know their correspondents. They desire some 
 advantage or help, and are satisfied when they get it. 
 And is not this the character of many prayers ? There 
 is no thought of communion or fellowship, but a sense 
 of need or danger which God will supply or save us 
 from. No knowledge is sought for or desired, and, it is 
 needless to add, none is obtained. As to the character 
 of Him to Whom we pray, we are no wiser after prayer 
 than before. 
 
 The first thing necessary, then, is to look upon prayer 
 as we look upon the letters we write to our friend, as 
 being chiefly means of intercourse with Christ. But 
 this means thought ; for our letters to friends are not 
 confined to our needs, nay, we are rather ashamed to
 
 56 Vital Religion. 
 
 mention them, lest we should be supposed to be simply 
 writing for selfish purposes. We feel that our friendship, 
 or rather our sense of the value to us of our friend's 
 friendship, is imperilled by many petitions. We like him 
 to feel that we care for him for what he is, not for what 
 he gives. It must not be otherwise in our prayers to 
 our Lord. It is true that we are encouraged, and freely, 
 to lay every need before His throne ; but that generous 
 care for our circumstances must not be abused. There 
 must be a proportion in our prayers. Praise and thanks- 
 giving must hold their place with petition. We need, 
 then, in the first place, to think carefully of what we are 
 going to say. Even with a valued earthly friend we do 
 not at once rush off a letter. We think of our corres- 
 pondent, of what will interest him. It may be that we 
 have heard how some one appreciated something he 
 said or did, or how his counsel was needed in some 
 difficulty, or of some gift that we have recently received ; 
 and so, having the mind prepared, we write. 
 
 It is in this spirit of thoughtful care for Him to 
 Whom we are about to speak that we should prepare for 
 prayer. A wise leader in the devotional life has said that 
 if we had but three minutes for prayer, two should be 
 spent in realizing God's presence. That is a much needed 
 caution ; but that realization should carry with it the 
 further thought of what we desire to say. What are the 
 subjects of which we shall speak ? Of what will He like 
 to hear? Some one may ask, Why should we suppose 
 that He will be interested in hearing of that which is 
 already known to Him? We can tell Him nothing 
 new, nothing that will give Him the pleasant shock of 
 surprise. That is true ; but does a father feel no 
 interest in his child's letter because he knows so well its 
 subject? It is not information that he looks for, but
 
 Vital Religion. 57 
 
 the affection which prompts the child to write, and the 
 development of character which his letter reveals. So 
 with us : we may be sure that " He is always more 
 ready to hear than we to pray"; and that His delight 
 lies partly in the love which leads us to pray, partly in 
 the revelation of character the prayer itself displays. 
 It is, then, our duty to bestow some thought on our 
 prayers, to learn how to pray. We must not only think 
 what our prayers are to us, but what they are to Him. 
 We must try to picture the pleasure with which He sees 
 us fall to prayer and the interest with which He listens 
 to what we say. 
 
 Thought, then, is the first essential for prayer. A 
 good model is the next. It is not difficult to imagine 
 how, if we were suddenly told to write a letter to our 
 king, we should welcome a little guidance and help. 
 The very fact that we were called upon to address one 
 occupying a very different station from our own would 
 introduce a difficulty. It was this feeling with regard to 
 prayer that led the disciples to ask to be taught to pray. 
 Strictly speaking, lessons in the art of conversation 
 would seem to make it formal and mechanical; and we 
 feel that lessons in the art of prayer would have the 
 same result. But, on the other hand, is it not true that 
 we only come to freedom through rule and the discipline 
 of learning? We learn even to talk, and we gain no 
 freedom in music or drawing without the formalities 
 involved in scales and perspective. It is not otherwise 
 with prayer. We must learn both the method and lan- 
 guage. And in this particular, Churchmen are well off. 
 In the first place, we have the Lord's Prayer clearly set 
 before us in the Prayer Book as the model of our public 
 prayers, and therefore, by implication, our pattern for 
 private prayer. Our early familiarity with it, and the
 
 ^8 Vital Religion. 
 
 excellent exposition of it given by the Catechism, ought 
 to have taught us how to frame our prayers, what things 
 we should put first and what last. 
 
 It is surely significant, in view of the way in which we 
 are now looking at prayer, that the first petition concerns 
 the Divine Name, i.e., His character, that we should be 
 taught to think of Him before we think of ourselves. 
 It is the method that one friend would certainly adopt 
 with another. Some expression of affection, some desire 
 that his correspondent might be more widely known 
 and appreciated would naturally find a first place. 
 " Hallowed be Thy Name" is the language of intelligent 
 and reverent devotion, but the devotion of a friend 
 rather than that of a slave. 
 
 So, too, the end of the Prayer. How natural it is for 
 us to conclude our letters with expressions of confidence, 
 trust and affection, especially if we have had occasion to 
 ask for some help. We wish our friend to feel that now 
 that we have put the matter into his hands we have no 
 further anxiety. We trust him entirely. Again the 
 address of a friend, but not of a servant. 
 
 Further, the order of the direct petitions suggests the 
 same feeling. In proportion as we care for our friend, 
 we care for his interests rather than our own. The wife 
 writing to her husband who is in London engaged in 
 parliamentary work is chiefly interested in the success of 
 his measures. Their results seem to be more important 
 to her than to him, and she longs that they may win a 
 large measure of support and speedily pass into law. 
 To the gardener or butler they are of small moment, for 
 they know too little about them ; they are servants, not 
 friends. Here, again, the language, "Thy kingdom 
 come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," is 
 suggestive of intelligent friendship. It is not different
 
 Vital Religion. 59 
 
 with the two petitions which follow, which are confined 
 to essential needs. The stranger, the servant, seek for 
 something more than is absolutely necessary. " Bread" 
 will not content them. They, too, are concerned with 
 the future. They like to extort a promise of future 
 help, that they may rest on some written guarantee when 
 an emergency arises. The friend, on the other hand, 
 barely mentions the subject of need, and then only that 
 which is immediately pressing. So, too, the plea for 
 forgiveness, on the ground that we are trying to catch 
 and exhibit His own generous spirit, is just that which 
 friendship would develop. From this bare outline, it is 
 easy to see how much we may learn of the proper spirit 
 of prayer in the Lord's Prayer. And as He taught us 
 to pray like that to the Father, can we do better than 
 use His own method in our prayers to Him? 
 
 But not only in the Lord's Prayer, but also in the 
 Collects of the Prayer Book we have valuable models 
 which, if carefully considered and imitated, must lead 
 not only to an orderly framework of prayer, but also 
 an expressive language. The Attributes which preface 
 the Church's prayers, such as Almighty, Everlasting, 
 Creator and Preserver of all mankind ; the noble 
 foundations on which faith builds up her expectation, 
 as in the words, "The Author of peace and Lover of 
 concord," when we are asking for peace ; or the words, 
 "Whom truly to know is everlasting life," when we are 
 asking for knowledge ; the aspiration to which the 
 prayer leads, and the touching conclusion, "Through 
 Jesus Christ," or " Through the merits and mediation of 
 Jesus Christ," all these supply helps in the framing of 
 our prayers which we shall do well to make use of. But 
 not slavishly. Whilst we learn the principles underlying 
 the formation of prayers and the lofty language by which
 
 6o Vital Religion. 
 
 they are characterized, we must not become mere imita- 
 tors, but rather intelligent users of the examples supplied 
 us. We must not only pray with the spirit, but with the 
 understanding also, and the understanding is greatly 
 helped by instruction. He, then, that would pray 
 profitably, that would enter into communion with a 
 living Lord, must catch the spirit and expression of 
 those who themselves have known the Lord, and from 
 a long experience in prayer know how they may best 
 speak with Him. 
 
 Beside the prayers of the Prayer Book, we have much 
 help in such books as Andrewes' " Private Devotions," 
 Wilson's " Sacra Privata," and others. The Churchman, 
 then, ought to be a better disciple in the matter of 
 prayer than others, for he is continually being taught. 
 Yet we must with sorrow confess that it is often the 
 other way. We must suppose that some are content 
 with the use of the words of others, without venturing to 
 make them their own. Such a practice not only robs 
 prayer of a large part of its interest and reality, but it 
 effects nothing in the way of the knowledge of the Lord. 
 Prayer, as we have seen, is mainly an opportunity of 
 intercourse, of communion with our Lord, and the 
 most valuable effect of the use of model prayers is that 
 they gradually teach us to think in accord with His 
 mind. Through His own words and the words of those 
 who have lived close to Him, we learn how He looks 
 at our earthly life, what things are important, what 
 things stand in the second place, and we begin to grow 
 into His mind. And so that view of prayer which 
 sometimes unhappily is put forward as though it were 
 the only one, I mean the subjective view, is of great 
 importance. It may be quite true to say, with Mr. 
 Robertson, in his sermon on Prayer, that "all prayer is
 
 Vital Religion. 61 
 
 to change the will human to the will Divine," provided 
 we do not forget the objective side in prayer. It is, 
 indeed, a process of spiritual education by which the 
 man of earth climbs to the position of his true home, 
 and learns to look at all things as a citizen of the 
 Kingdom of God. Or, to use another metaphor, it is a 
 lesson in the language of the Other Life, and through it 
 we learn, as we do with a foreign tongue, not only the 
 expression of those brought up differently from ourselves, 
 but, what is more valuable, the ideas that underlie it. 
 We learn to become at home in ways that are higher 
 than our ways, in thoughts that are higher than our 
 thoughts. 
 
 But a question here arises of great importance. Are 
 we not taught by our Lord to pray to the Father rather 
 than to Himself? And if all our devotions are con- 
 centrated upon the Father, then how will there grow 
 up that reverent, intimate fellowship with Christ of 
 which we are speaking? Nay, is it not true that that 
 spiritual movement of devotion to the Father, which 
 has had such blessed results in making clearer than ever 
 before the meaning of that Holy Name, lost something 
 of that warm and tender affection for Christ which was 
 and is the strength of Evangelicalism ? It is, of course, 
 undeniable that our Lord usually points men to the 
 Father. They are to ask the Father in His Name, and 
 He will do what they ask, but it is that "the Father 
 may be glorified in the Son."* Yes, though the Father 
 is to be the ultimate goal of their thoughts, it is 
 quite clear that the Lord never expected that the 
 intimate fellowship which they had enjoyed with Him 
 was to cease. Nay, His illustrations of Communion, 
 
 * S. John xiv. 13.
 
 62 Vital Religion. 
 
 abiding, eating, drinking, clearly imply that it is to be 
 fuller, not less full, than it was before. And this the 
 Apostles expected. It was natural for S. Stephen to 
 turn to his Lord in his last hour, natural for S. Paul 
 always to look to Him in his needs and distresses.* 
 
 It is true we look to the Father, but only " through 
 Jesus Christ"; and that "through" is no mere empty 
 formula, but implies an actual communion of thought 
 and fellowship of mind. It is true we yearn to know 
 the Father, but He is only known in Christ. If we are 
 to make any distinction at all between prayer to the 
 Father and prayer to the Son, we may follow our own 
 Litany, the larger part of which is addressed directly to 
 the Son, but the whole of which is commended, both at 
 the beginning and the end, to the Father. Or we may 
 go still further back, and take the " Te Deum " for our 
 example. Here, as a recent writert advocates with much 
 probability, the whole of this Psalm of Praise, except 
 three verses, is addressed to the Son, though the worship 
 of the Father and the Spirit finds its place in the middle 
 of the hymn. We cannot be wrong, then, in holding 
 very full communion with our Lord in prayer and 
 praise, whilst we shall naturally, when such spiritual 
 communion has lifted us up to the Father, conclude our 
 devotions with the Lord's Prayer and such other prayers 
 as are immediately addressed to Him. Any possible 
 risk that such a practice may expose us to would be 
 always provided against by our public services. They, 
 linked as they are to the Holy Eucharist, which is 
 necessarily addressed to the Father in the Spirit, will 
 
 * Acts vii. 59-60 ; I Cor. i. 2-3 ; 2 Cor. xii. 8 ; I Thess. 
 iii. 11-12. 
 
 r Jackson : The Prayer Book Explained, chapter viii.
 
 Vital Religion. 63 
 
 preserve that due proportion which is the safeguard of 
 all true devotion.* 
 
 Enough has now been said to shew that our know- 
 ledge of the Lord very largely depends on prayer, prayer 
 independently of any replies which it may obtain. And 
 we have seen, further, that it must be prefaced and 
 sustained by earnest thought, just that thought we 
 should give in writing to a dear friend who occupied a 
 position very much above us. It is needless to say that 
 this means effort, and very earnest effort. That is part 
 of the cost which we must pay for the knowledge of the 
 Lord. We do not hesitate to give it, and give it freely, 
 to our earthly friends, for whom we undertake strange 
 tasks, learning languages and difficult arts ; shall we 
 then doubt about bestowing it generously on the Son 
 of God ? Let any one compare what he does for his 
 friend in letter-writing alone with what he does for the 
 Lord, and then let him cease wondering why his friend 
 is more to him than Christ. "No one is likely to do 
 much at prayer," wrote Bishop Hamilton, in words often 
 quoted, " who does not look upon it as a work to be 
 prepared for and entered upon with all the serious 
 earnestness which a difficult task demands." We might 
 use the very same words about friendship. No friend 
 was ever won or could be won by the unintelligent 
 scraps of intercourse with which we are accustomed to 
 seek our Lord. The fragment of the morning united to 
 the fragment of the evening, how poor a whole they 
 must make. But we are fettered by other difficulties 
 than those of want of thought and care ; and of these, 
 
 * For clear and helpful teaching on Prayer to Distinct Persons 
 in the Eternal Godhead, see Worlledge : Prayer, pp. 93-97; and 
 Liddon : The Divinity of our Lord, pp. 387-422 (4th edition).
 
 64 Vital Religion. 
 
 the habit that clings to us that we can only pray when 
 kneeling is not unimportant. Many would probably spend 
 a much longer time in communion with our Lord than 
 they do if they could bring themselves to believe that 
 standing, walking, sitting, and even lying down may be 
 attitudes of prayer. All are brought under the Apostle's 
 injunction that we should pray without ceasing, and all 
 but the last are recognised in our own public service. 
 It is much to be wished that the same variety of posture 
 should be employed in private as in public, that so we 
 might not only learn to make the half-hour or hour 
 spent with Him as restful as possible, but to associate 
 every attitude that we adopt with Him. 
 
 The words of the Bishop of Durham, giving his 
 own experience, are most apt and to the point. "As 
 regards utterance, I rarely allow myself to pray quite 
 silently in secret. For myself, I find the wanderings 
 of the mind very much limited and controlled by 
 even the faintest audible utterance of thought. And as 
 regards attitude, I very seldom venture to kneel at 
 prayer in secret. At night it leads almost invariably, 
 and very speedily, to sleeping on my knees, and even in 
 the morning hour, I know not how, recollectedness and 
 concentration of heart and mind are usually quickened 
 in my case by a reverent standing attitude as before the 
 visible Master and Lord, or by walking up and down, 
 either in-doors or, as I love to do when possible, in the 
 open air. A garden may prove a very truly hallowed 
 oratory."'* 1 ' 
 
 The Book of Psalms, the Prayer Book, the private 
 devotions of saintly men, when taken up with thought 
 and care, will, then, provide a way for the knowledge of 
 
 * All in Christ, pp. 82-S3 (Marshall Brothers).
 
 Vital Religion. 65 
 
 the Lord which will grow easier and more delightful as 
 the years roll on, and we shall find the exercise of 
 prayer not what it so often is, a time of constraint, 
 but a time of refreshing, uplifting, and strengthening 
 the mind and spirit, as well as winning countless 
 blessings for ourselves.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Knowledge by Prayer. 
 
 He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love 
 him, and will manifest Myself to him. — S. John xiv. 21. 
 
 WE have already seen how we may come to know 
 Christ by the use of prayer ; how prayer, in its 
 reflex action, tends to make us like Christ, and, there- 
 fore, to know Him better. But no one can be satisfied 
 with this. A knowledge of a person that was obtained 
 through thinking over or using the real or imaginary 
 correspondence of others with him would not lead us 
 far. We need something more than that. We need the 
 assurance that the person we seek to know not only 
 thinks of us, but cares to shew that he does. In the 
 knowledge of the Lord we need the confidence that He 
 not only knows, but reveals Himself to us. And some 
 words of His which we have noted before contain the 
 promise that He will do this.* " He that loveth Me 
 shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and 
 will manifest Myself to him." Nothing could be more 
 plain and simple than this declaration. Personal mani- 
 festation is assured to all on the one condition that we 
 love Him. 
 
 And this is no vague subjective manifestation, the 
 
 * S. John xiv. 21.
 
 Vital Religion. 67 
 
 product of our own imagination. As Bishop Westcott, 
 in his Commentary on the Gospel of S. John, explains 
 to us, the Greek word translated "manifest" implies 
 " a presentation in a clear, conspicuous form." It is the 
 word used of the manifestation of those who rose out of 
 their graves after the Crucifixion and appeared to their 
 friends ; of our Lord Himself during the great forty 
 days. It is clearly objective. The Apostles expected 
 that, and nothing short of it would have satisfied them. 
 S. Jude, who was standing by and heard the promise, 
 expressed surprise, not at that, but that it should be 
 private and not public. He, in common with the other 
 disciples, had looked for a great, open, triumphant 
 manifestation of the Messiah before the whole world, 
 and he regarded this substitution of the private in- 
 dividual revelation of Christ as a change of plan. 
 " What has come to pass," he asks in astonishment, 
 " that Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the 
 world? "* And in reply, our Lord explains that, though 
 objective and real, as we should say, yet such manifest- 
 ation is only discoverable to those who love Him and 
 keep His words. " If a man love Me, he will keep My 
 words : and My Father will love him, and We will come 
 unto him, and make Our abode with him." Here, again, 
 the words emphasize the objective reality of the vision. 
 To quote Bishop Westcott once more : " The idea is the 
 recognition of the Divine without (so to speak), and 
 not of the consciousness of the Divine within. The 
 Christian sees God by him . . . and does not only 
 feel Him in him." 
 
 From this brief examination we see two things 
 clearly : — 
 
 * S. John xiv. 22.
 
 68 Vital Religion. 
 
 (i) That the manifestation will, though objective, be 
 of a character not discoverable by the world. It will 
 not, then, be in outward form, and in this respect will 
 differ from what we ordinarily understand by the word 
 " manifestation." 
 
 (2) It will only be made to those who love Christ and 
 keep His words. 
 
 It may be objected that to say that the manifestation 
 will be in a clear, conspicuous form, and yet not 
 outward for all to see, is to make an admission and 
 then to take it away. For what idea can we frame of 
 a personal manifestation irrespective of outward form ? 
 In reply, we say : Does not a letter, in proportion 
 as it is genuine and true, give us a revelation of the 
 character we are seeking to know ? May we not see 
 as much, nay, even more, through a letter than through 
 a personal interview ? Philemon probably knew more 
 of the heart and mind of S. Paul through his letter 
 about Onesimus than he had ever known before. And 
 even letters are not the only means of self-revelation. 
 The action of others may reveal our friends to us. Let 
 us imagine that A writes in great distress to his friend B 
 for a loan of ^5, and that B, feeling that the gift of the 
 money may sap A's independence, gets a friend of his to 
 offer him a piece of work which will bring in that sum. 
 B meanwhile writes regretting that he is unable to give 
 him the particular help he asks for, and secretly sets in 
 motion the other means of assistance, which he thinks 
 will be more effective. A, on receiving B's answer, may 
 take B's regret to lend the money as it appears, or he 
 may, so to speak, read between the lines, and in the 
 very terms of the refusal see a determination to help 
 him. When, then, the work is offered which will give 
 him the assistance he needs, he sees his friend's hand in
 
 Vital Religion. 69 
 
 it, and on inquiry finds that it is as he believed. Now, 
 he has not seen his friend, nor has he heard from him in 
 the way he once expected, and yet his friend has been 
 really manifested to him by his action. He knows how 
 easy it would have been for him to have sent him the 
 cheque, how much more trouble this other way of 
 helping him involved, and how much more personal 
 consideration this really shows. He sees his friend as 
 he never saw him before. 
 
 Now, it is not unlikely that Christ's answers to our 
 prayers may be of this character. There will not be 
 outward visions such as men have at all times longed 
 for, forgetting that we live in the dispensation of the 
 Spirit, and not of the Flesh ; nor will there be anything 
 answering to the outward form of letters but there will 
 be some change in our circumstances which the Holy 
 Spirit, Who witnesses to Christ, will teach us is a revela- 
 tion of the Christ. 
 
 It will not be easy to see ; nay, it will only be seen by 
 those who love Christ and keep His word. To the 
 world, the revelation is a piece of good fortune, a strange 
 coincidence, a stroke of good luck and the like ; it does 
 not see His hand, and smiles at the believer who persists 
 in saying that in it he can discern the Christ. It is not 
 uninterested in answers to prayer, but fails to see what 
 relation these answers bear to the prayers ; for they do 
 not appear to be at all obvious. The expected relief 
 does not come in the way that was asked for, nor at the 
 time when it was asked. Weeks, perhaps months, have 
 elapsed since the difficulty was mentioned, and, now it is 
 removed, the world considers it superstitious to connect 
 its removal with the prayer. Now, Christians are often 
 troubled to know what to say in reply to these thoughts 
 which sometimes fill their minds; and they ask them-
 
 jo Vital Religion. 
 
 selves whether, after all, they are not trying to find what 
 is not there. Perhaps the best reply is that which a 
 close study of the Gospels gives us. They tell us of 
 many prayers to Christ and of many answers. But 
 when we look into them, we find very much what we 
 discover in our own experience, that there are delays, 
 answers unlike the petitions, and generally such disturb- 
 ing elements as we should not have expected. As a 
 matter of fact, many of our Lord's answers to prayers 
 are very like His answers to the questions that were 
 from time to time put to Him. And with regard to 
 these, Dr. Hort draws attention to what we must have 
 often noticed, and that is, " that few, if any, of the 
 questions addressed to our Lord received an answer in 
 the shape that was desired." He then explains why 
 his was so : " It is not enough to say that His merciful 
 wisdom withheld such replies as might have proved 
 injurious to the moral state of the questioners. The 
 replies which He gave weie not merely more profitable, 
 but more true, and more apposite in their truth than any 
 others could have been. . . . His constant aim is less 
 to give present satisfaction than to seize on the present 
 demand as an opportunity for initiation into a future and 
 progressive satisfaction to be vouchsafed to ripening 
 powers and expanding knowledge."* 
 
 This principle applies to the answers He makes to 
 prayers. His aim there is "less to give present satis- 
 faction" than to make the demand an opportunity for 
 a further knowledge of Himself. So, whilst He might 
 always, as He did sometimes, have healed by a word, 
 He preferred that the petitioner should be brought into 
 close personal relation to Himself by a touch, or some 
 
 > 
 
 • Hort : The Way, The Truth, The Life, p. 4.
 
 Vital Religion. 
 
 outward sign, which must have sent a thrill of feeling 
 through and through the sufferer. 
 
 It is true that He sometimes granted the request at 
 once, as in the case of the leper, but even then 
 demanded silence, that the mind of him who w r as healed 
 might not dissipate the blessing by idle chatter, but 
 rather use the gift with a view to a nearer relation- 
 ship with Himself. The request was not, however, 
 always so granted. The nobleman who begged for 
 his son's life was met with the apparently stern 
 rejoinder, " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye 
 will not believe,"* and bidden to depart from the 
 good Physician without a single sign such as he 
 had looked for, and only the bare promise, " Thy 
 son liveth." So, too, the ten lepers who besought the 
 Lord so earnestly for healing naturally expected that 
 they would be healed there and then, but were told to 
 depart on a long journey to Jerusalem, in the faith that 
 when they reached it they would be well.f So, too, the 
 sick of the palsy looked for healing of the body, but the 
 first words he heard were, " Son, thy sins be forgiven 
 thee."! And sometimes the object sought for could not 
 be given until the petitioner's attitude of mind was 
 changed. It was so, we may well believe, in the case of 
 the Syro-Phoenician woman. § She approached our Lord 
 with words which, to her, must have been quite unreal. 
 Though living on the borders of Israel, and in close 
 contact with the Jews, she had apparently manifested no 
 wish to adopt their religion. She remained an outsider, 
 degraded by the abominable superstitions and practices 
 of the Canaanites. And yet, heathen as she was, she 
 addressed our Lord as the Son of David. Was it that 
 
 * S. John iv. 48. t S. Mark ii. 5. 
 
 t S. Luke xvii. 14. § S. Matt. xv. 22-28.
 
 J 2 Vital Religion. 
 
 she hoped in this way to disguise the fact of her heathen 
 connections, and to appear as a member of the coven- 
 anted people ? If so, there could be no answer until 
 her prayer was stripped of its sham; and there was none: 
 " He answered her not a word." She then dropped the 
 title, and simply cried, " Lord, help me." But she had 
 still to be taught, as the woman of Samaria had, the 
 honour that belonged to the Jews, the people of the 
 Covenant ; she had still to learn that they stood in a 
 special relation to the Father ; and it was only when 
 she accepted the lowly position of one outside the 
 Covenant that she gained the blessing she so earnestly 
 sought. It was the same dislike to unreality that led 
 our Lord to meet the rich young man's question, 
 "What good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 
 with the words, " Why callest thou Me good ? " It is 
 essential to prayer that every word be true and sincere. 
 In other cases the blessing had to be delayed, though 
 the delay might cause much suffering, because some 
 great truth which it was of high importance to learn 
 could not be learned in any other way. This was so 
 with the urgent prayer of Martha and Mary that the 
 Lord would come and heal their brother, Lazarus, who 
 was dangerously ill. The Lord answered the prayer by 
 staying where He was and allowing Lazarus to die.* The 
 pain of those five days before the sisters saw our Lord 
 must have been very severe, and yet He could not 
 relieve it without sacrificing something of that great 
 truth of the Resurrection which it was so important for 
 them and for us to learn. 
 
 Now, from these few examples, and they might 
 easily be multiplied, we learn what is the real pur- 
 
 * S. lohn xi. 6.
 
 Vital Religion. 73 
 
 pose of prayer. This is clearly not so much the 
 satisfaction of a need as the revelation of a Person. 
 Our Lord's aim was always to make the need a 
 new link with Himself. He wished in every case to 
 manifest Himself, and the crying want gave the oppor- 
 tunity. Prayer is, then, intended to be a very important 
 means of knowledge ; but it can only be this if we make 
 certain rules about it. And the first must be absolute 
 sincerity. We ask, and we have not, because we ask 
 amiss.* Like the Syro-Phcenician woman, we use high, 
 exalted titles without understanding or believing all 
 that they imply. We start with an air of unreality. We 
 address God as King of kings and Lord of lords, and 
 yet our listless behaviour seems to shew that we have 
 but a faint realization of Him as such. We speak to 
 Him as "our Father," and may almost hear Him asking, 
 " Why callest thou Me Father ? " Our prayers, like 
 our conversation, run on too fast, quicker than our 
 thoughts. Insensibly we adopt the view that we shall 
 be heard for our " much speaking." We should be 
 ashamed to spend the time we give in the morning to 
 but one prayer, slowly and carefully thought over; and 
 yet five words spoken with deep meaning are better than 
 a thousand which only convey a general idea. It is 
 true, as Du Maurier reminds us, " Thinking's praying, 
 very often " ; but it is still more true that praying is 
 thinking, and cannot be divorced from thought. 
 
 And this leads us to the second rule of prayer, 
 and that, the serious consideration of what we are going 
 to ask for. Many, no doubt, are accustomed to use the 
 same prayers day by day, having done so from child- 
 hood ; and there are, no doubt, many prayers of a 
 
 * S. James iv. 3.
 
 74 Vital Religion. 
 
 general character which are most suitable for repeated 
 use, but even with these we should pause to ask our- 
 selves, from time to time, whether we are conscious 
 that they are being answered ; whether, for example, 
 we have connected the humiliation that we experienced 
 in society or business with the petition against vanity 
 and pride which we have used for years ; or whether 
 we recognized that the long, tiresome wait at the 
 railway station or in the train was connected with 
 the desire that we had expressed every day for patience. 
 Or it may be that we asked to be free from the 
 deceits of the world, and then repined because we 
 were not asked to some entertainment which would 
 have certainly carried us off our feet. In proportion as 
 we are real in our prayers, so will our lives be shaped. 
 We often like the prayers better than their appropriate 
 answers. We sing with fervour, " Nearer, my God, to 
 Thee," not realizing, any more than the mother of 
 Zebedee's children, that we are asking for tribulation 
 and suffering, laying ourselves open to the question : 
 " Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink 
 of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am 
 baptized with?"* " Our God is a consuming fire,"f and 
 to be near Him is to feel the flames. It is better to be 
 sparing in our words than, in our desire to imitate the 
 language of saints and martyrs, to ask for what we 
 should be frightened to receive. 
 
 But the real interest of prayer lies less in its general 
 features, the same to-day as they were ten years ago, 
 than in those special characteristics which the daily life 
 gives it. The thoughtful man looks over his day's 
 engagements, his day's work, his day's recreation before 
 
 * S. Matt. x\. 22. t Heb. xii. 29.
 
 Vital Religion. 75 
 
 he speaks. He considers the special difficulties or 
 blessings with which it has begun, which form, as it 
 were, the day's atmosphere. It may be there is illness 
 in the house, or he must face his work feeling quite 
 unequal to it. It may be that a great joy has been 
 given him, or that he feels peculiarly fit. The prayers 
 will take their colour from his temperament, and he 
 looks with shrinking or with fearless confidence to their 
 demands. He asks simply and directly, taking each 
 stage in his work in order." He considers the people he 
 is likely to see, and, knowing how easily meetings and 
 interviews are spoiled, prays with a view to them. Like 
 the Psalmist, he sets his prayer in order,* bringing 
 his work and pleasure, faggot by faggot, for the Divine 
 sacrifice. Having done so, like him, he mounts his 
 tower and " watches " for the manifestations of the Lord 
 which he is sure will follow. 
 
 And here we come to the third rule in prayer : 
 Watching, or seeking. This is really the most important 
 principle of the three. It will be remembered how our 
 Lord joins the two together : " Ask and ye shall have ; 
 seek and ye shall find." Many obey the first without 
 considering the second. It is this second that invites 
 our own co-operation. No sooner is the prayer spoken 
 than the answer is given. It is our duty to find it. If 
 it should be urged that we are really making our small 
 concerns of absurd importance by supposing that they 
 can be subjects of God's care, then, with Ruskin, we 
 reply that " we treat God with irreverence by banishing 
 Him from our own thoughts, not by referring to His 
 will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority 
 or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small 
 
 * Ps. v. 3, R. V.
 
 j6 Vital Religion 
 
 things. There is nothing so small but that we can 
 honour God by asking His guidance of it or insult 
 Him by taking it into our own hands." But we must 
 seek. 
 
 And in seeking, taught by the many examples we have 
 of our Lord's methods in replying to suppliants, we learn 
 that, in the first place, we must be patient ; that we are 
 not to give up looking because the blessing is not found 
 on the day when it was asked for. Secondly, that we may 
 be asking in the wrong way, and that, before we can find 
 what we need, the form of our prayer must be changed. 
 Thirdly, that the blessing may be wrapped up in some 
 duty which has to be done, but which we have for- 
 gotten ; and, lastly, that it will come in some way 
 which will bring us into closer fellowship with our 
 Lord and enable us to know Him better. And so we 
 patiently look out. And in the evening we look back 
 on the matters that gave us disquiet as we faced them in 
 prayer, and ask ourselves how we have fared. And what 
 is our experience ? Do we not find that the good hand 
 of the Lord has been plainly with us? The work we 
 feared as dull and tiresome brought unexpected interest; 
 the weakness we felt as we awaked, passed away ; the 
 meeting was long and trying, but an unexpected turn 
 brought us nearer to the goal than we had been before ; 
 the recreation was disappointing, but we seemed to be 
 lifted up above it, and found enjoyment where we had 
 not expected it. We may not feel that we made any 
 great success, but we do feel that He has been with us, 
 using us and teaching us. We could not expect to find 
 any help that would spoil those virtues of poverty of 
 spirit, penitence, meekness, purity, on which He lays 
 such stress and to which He attaches such great bless- 
 ings, but we did look for the peace of God which passeth
 
 Vital Religion. jy 
 
 all understanding, and that we feel we have enjoyed. 
 He has never promised to spare us pain and tribulation ; 
 nay, He has expressly told us that in the world we shall 
 have tribulation, that unless we suffer with Him we 
 cannot expect to reign with Him. But half the pain of 
 pain is gone when we see its purpose; and this seems 
 to have been gradually explained to us; and, though 
 we feared as we entered the cloud, we were cheered by 
 the thought of the vision that we knew would follow. 
 
 Thus each day brings its own manifestations, its 
 own confirmations of the truth of the Lord's promise, 
 " If any man love Me, and keep My words, I will 
 manifest Myself to him." And, as the years pass, they 
 become clearer and clearer. As Dr. Dale writes in a 
 touching sermon, "Love for Christ": "The proofs are of 
 a kind tha* exclude the possibility of doubt ; the most 
 impressive and the most touching are probably those 
 which belong to regions of life known only to Christ and 
 themselves. Difficulties have been solved for them in 
 ways which to themselves were unquestionably Divine ; 
 they were as sure that the light which came to them 
 shone from Christ as they are that the brightness which 
 breaks through the clouds comes from the sun. Or 
 they asked Christ to expel from them some evil spirit of 
 temper which shamed them, which made them despise 
 and hate themselves, but which they could only check 
 and could not drive out; and, in answer to prayer, Christ 
 expelled it. Or they asked for other forms of spiritual 
 blessing — every one must tell the story for himself — and 
 what they asked for was given. And just as a man 
 might sit down over a packet of letters which he had 
 received at intervals during many years from his father 
 or mother — letters written to congratulate him on hear- 
 ing of his honours and successes, or to express sympathy
 
 J 8 Vital Religion. 
 
 with him on hearing of his troubles, or to give advice in 
 answer to a statement of his perplexities — and as he 
 turned them over and recalled the circumstances in 
 which they were written, might come to realize more 
 vividly than he had ever realized before the warmth, the 
 intensity, the endurance of his father's or his mother's 
 love for him, so the remembrance of the special proofs 
 that Christ has heard and answered our prayers pro- 
 duces sometimes what may be described as a revolution 
 in our thoughts about Him. The reality of His per- 
 sonal affection is suddenly brought home to us, and 
 there are relations — shall I call them relations of 
 mutual confidence ?— established between Him and us 
 the blessedness of which transcends all our hopes." 
 
 So we grow in the personal knowledge of the Lord, 
 every day adding something to it, a knowledge of 
 another kind to that which the Bible gives us ; for there 
 we are told what He is to others, but here what He is to 
 us ; there of His plans for the world, here of His plans 
 for us.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Knowledge in Work. 
 
 His servants shall do Him service, and they shall see His face. — 
 Rev. xxii. 4. 
 
 WE have seen how we grow into the knowledge of 
 Christ by prayer. By making it a study, a 
 subject to be learned like a language or an art, we 
 insensibly grow into His mind, have " the mind of 
 Christ"; by watching its effects, we unconsciously learn 
 His principles of action.* It is true that we only know 
 in part ; that we only see a reflection of Christ, as it 
 were, as in a glass ; we are not as yet face to face ; but 
 such knowledge is quite sufficient for life, more than 
 enough to make us feel sure that we not only have real 
 relations with a living Christ, but that the living Christ 
 cares for us. We are able to say with S. Paul, " I know 
 Whom I have believed." t 
 
 Have we now exhausted our means of knowledge? 
 Is fellowship in thought the only basis of friendship? 
 Surely not. We not only learn to know our friend 
 by conversation and correspondence, but still more 
 by work. It is when we receive a note from him, 
 asking us to come up and help him in his day's 
 
 * I Cor. xiii. 12. f 2 Tim. i. 12.
 
 80 Vital Religion. 
 
 duties, that we feel not only honoured by the 
 request, but delighted with the prospect of getting that 
 further insight into his character which a share in his 
 work will certainly give. Perhaps the invitation is to be 
 his secretary, and we shall then see how he bears him- 
 self in relation with others ; or his messenger, when his 
 mind will be laid open to us in the secrets he confides ; 
 or it may be he proposes to give us a piece of work 
 to ourselves, and we shall have the happiness of dis- 
 covering how it ought to be done. 
 
 It is not otherwise with our Lord. His revelations 
 are not reserved for those smaller and more definite acts 
 of communion with Him which we call prayer. The 
 larger parts of life are illuminated by His Presence. 
 When we begin to realize that all our work is work for 
 Him ; that the work in the study, the office and the 
 shop may be His as truly as the ministry in the Church 
 or the mission room, then we shall learn to expect such 
 visits of encouragement and guidance as some great 
 employer of labour now and again pays to his work- 
 people. At first, indeed, it seems as though such could 
 never be so vivid or illuminating as the tokens of His 
 Presence granted in prayer, but we soon learn that this 
 is not so, and that even the spiritual help which is 
 given in prayer is intended to be used in work; is 
 given, indeed, that the work may be the better done. 
 
 It may be that as we have prayed we have ex- 
 perienced something like that which a friend of the 
 Bishop of Durham describes in such glowing terms : 
 " While heart and mind were kept in perfect peace, and 
 not the slightest enthusiastic disturbance of judgment 
 was to be suspected, it was yet as if a heaven had 
 opened around me, and the joy of the Lord flowed in 
 divine effusion over my being. The glory and beauty
 
 Vital Religion. 81 
 
 of my Saviour's Person, the indescribable reality of His 
 Presence both in me and around me, the absolute ' all 
 sufficiency' of His grace and power, the loveliness and 
 attraction of His ' perfect will,' all shone upon me with a 
 brightness of which the August sunshine seemed but a 
 type and shadow."* It may be that we have known 
 something like that, and, whilst the sense of it was 
 strong upon us, there came a sudden summons to go off 
 to some dull, prosaic duty, some work that we could not 
 well postpone : the help to a child in his lessons ; the 
 direction of a servant; the interview with some visitor. 
 It seems almost profane to disturb that Presence which 
 is now so near us. But to us, as to the monk in the 
 Legend, come the words : 
 
 Do thy duty ; that is best — ■ 
 Leave unto the Lord the rest ; 
 
 and as we go forth in obedience, his experience is ours. 
 As the brightness of the Lord's Presence illuminated not 
 only the cell, but the whole convent, 
 
 Like a luminous cloud, expanding 
 Over floor, and wall, and ceiling, 
 
 so not only the path we take to our work, but the work 
 itself is glorified by His manifestation. As the Bishop's 
 friend expresses it : "In a sense the glory passed away, 
 as to special excitation. But in a sense, in a yet deeper 
 sense, it abode, diffused among the experiences of life, 
 and proving 'its sober certainty of waking bliss' by its 
 power amidst these experiences to calm and purify and 
 lift above the selfishness of the old life." 
 
 * Moule : Vent Creator, p. 135.
 
 82 Vital Religion. 
 
 But not only shall we take into our work the sense of 
 that fellowship which has been our joy in prayer, for 
 
 Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled, 
 
 but we shall find in it, from time to time, what we may 
 best describe as " surprise visits, - ' i.e., special manifest- 
 ations of His Presence such as He has again and again 
 granted to His friends. 
 
 It was whilst Moses was watching his father-in-law's 
 sheep, that God was revealed to him. It was when 
 Joshua was inspecting the walls of Jericho, and wonder- 
 ing how a difficulty apparently greater than that which 
 Jordan presented to him was to be overcome, that he 
 saw the Lord standing in his path. It was whilst Gideon 
 was threshing his wheat that he saw the mysterious angel 
 of the Lord watching his work. It was whilst Manoah's 
 wife was sitting in the field, doubtless engaged in 
 some household occupation, that she saw Him Whose 
 countenance she described as being like that of an 
 angel of God. It was whilst Saul was seeking his father's 
 asses that his future was first revealed to him. It was 
 whilst Levi was at his business at the receipt of custom 
 that the Lord appeared to him with the summons, 
 " Follow Me." It was whilst the disciples, S. James, 
 S. John and S. Peter, were busy washing their nets that 
 they received that revelation of the Lord which led 
 them to forsake all and follow Him. It was when the 
 women were returning from the sepulchre, whither they 
 had gone to anoint the Lord's body, that He met them. 
 It was after a fruitless night's fishing that the risen Lord 
 shewed Himself to the five disciples on the sea of 
 Galilee. 
 
 Instances such as these might be multiplied not only 
 from the Scriptures, but from the experience of those
 
 Vital Religion. 83 
 
 who have had faith to look for them. Indeed, in the 
 early days of Christianity, so natural was this expecta- 
 tion of the Lord's Presence, and so often was it realized, 
 that Tertullian was led to say, " Perhaps the majority of 
 men learn to know God from visions." S. Theresa's 
 account of the Lord's revelation to her can only be 
 thought to be fanciful by those who suppose that there 
 is no revelation except through the senses. "I was 
 once with a person," she says — " it was at the very 
 beginning of my acquaintance with her — when our Lord 
 was pleased to shew me that these friendships were not 
 good for me. Christ stood before me stern and grave, 
 giving me to understand what in my conduct was offen- 
 sive to Him. I saw Him with the eyes of my soul more 
 distinctly than I could have done with the eyes of my 
 body. The vision made so deep an impression on me 
 that, though it is more than twenty-six years ago, I seem 
 to see Him present now."* Handel's account of the 
 manifestation of the Divine Presence when he was at 
 work on the "Hallelujah Chorus" — "I did think I did 
 see all heaven before me and the great God Himself" — 
 is not strange to many an artist, many a writer, who 
 in some picture or poem afterward famous, has felt his 
 heart burn within him, the sure sign of His Presence 
 Whose " delight it is to be with the sons of men " 
 whilst engaged in labour. 
 
 It would be interesting indeed to make a collection of 
 such experiences, if they were not too sacred for the 
 public eye. To the world they would mean nothing ; 
 but to the man who believes in an ever living, ever 
 active Christ, Who is never so busy with the affairs of a 
 universe that He forgets the plaintive cry of some 
 
 * Lewis : Life of S. Theresa, cap. vii. Ill 
 
 6—2
 
 84 Vital Religion 
 
 Ishmael, or the strong appeal of some Apostle, they 
 would be full of suggestion if nothing more. They 
 would give point to words which awakened considerable 
 interest when they were discovered but a short time ago, 
 words which some still believe to have been spoken by 
 the Lord. I allude to the words: " Lift the stone and 
 there thou shalt find Me. Cleave the wood and I am 
 there."* Of the many interpretations, that which refers 
 them to the revelation of our Lord amidst humble duties 
 seems to be most satisfactory. Neither the lifting of 
 stones nor the cutting of wood is work of a specially 
 interesting and lofty character, and yet all are at times 
 engaged in such pursuits. The removal of a stumbling 
 block from the path of some weak and careless brother ; 
 or of some difficulty in the way of a puzzled child ; 
 or the simpler tasks fulfilled by every teacher in making 
 learning easier and pleasanter, these may be means by 
 which the Lord will be found. The cutting of wood, 
 whether it be the preparation of material for a friend's 
 task, or for some social duty ; or whether it be such 
 a humble task as that of which the great Apostle was 
 not ashamed, gathering sticks to light a fire, may be, 
 as the latter indeed proved itself to be, an opportunity 
 for the revelation of the Lord. It is in " lifting the 
 stone" we see Him, in "cleaving the wood " that His 
 Presence is manifested. So we find from the witness of 
 the Scriptures and Christian biographies, and from a 
 comparison of the revelations made to those at work 
 with those made to such as were engaged in prayer or 
 worship, that we are more likely to meet the Lord 
 whilst pursuing our daily duty than whilst occupied 
 
 * For this thought I am much indebted to a sermon by the 
 Rev. A. Plummer, D.D. , Master of University College, Durham.
 
 Vital Religion. 85 
 
 in private devotion. The work may, indeed, seem to 
 be poor and dull by comparison, but the character 
 of the work matters nothing provided it be " in the 
 Lord." 
 
 Enough has, perhaps, now been said to emphasize the 
 fact that work as well as prayer offers a natural means 
 for knowing the Lord. But it is not difficult to imagine 
 some one saying : " All the examples you have given so 
 far are evidently of a very exceptional character. What 
 they were, how they were seen or apprehended, it is 
 most difficult to say; but one thing is clear, they have 
 but a small place, if any, in the ordinary Christian life. 
 We are quite ready to admit that the susceptibility to 
 spiritual impressions of that kind is in these days very 
 small, and that we see no reason why, if our faith and 
 spiritual sight were more largely developed, we should 
 not see sights to which at present we are blind ; but we 
 must look at things as they are, and, taking the Christian 
 life as it is to-day, we must deny any outward manifest- 
 ation of Christ's interest in our ordinary life and work 
 unless there are other signs than those you have spoken 
 of." 
 
 In answer, let us say at once that we have not cited 
 these experiences with any other object than to shew 
 that Christ has in the past directly revealed Himself to 
 His workers whilst engaged in some duty. That what 
 He has done He will continue to do is contained 
 in the words, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and 
 to-day, and for ever.''''* But the manner of His doing 
 this will not only vary from age to age, but with the 
 individual ; for, here again, we must remind ourselves 
 that the main purpose of His revelation is that we 
 
 * Heb. xiii. 8.
 
 86 Vital Religion. 
 
 should know Him. Now, an outward form would, we 
 venture to think, be the least effective in reaching our 
 spiritual consciousness. Naturally we should be so 
 taken up with the external aspect as to be in danger of 
 losing the spiritual message it was intended to convey. 
 And so we may believe that not only in our own time, 
 but in the apostolic age, that form of revelation was 
 uncommon. From time to time there were, no doubt, 
 startling revelations needed by some particular occasion, 
 or to emphasize the truth that Christ was alive and was 
 with His disciples in all the work they undertook, but 
 these were clearly exceptional ; and, for the most part, 
 Christian disciples and saints have gone on with their 
 work steadily and obediently without any open manifest- 
 ation such as S. Paul occasionally experienced in his 
 life. But though without these particular and peculiar 
 manifestations of His Presence, they have had others, 
 perhaps, of more value to them for the purpose they 
 were designed to serve. Professor Robertson Smith tells 
 us that " the Hebrews were aware that the vision in 
 which spiritual truth is clothed in forms derived from the 
 sphere of the outer sense is not the highest form of 
 revelation."* S. Paul, too, evidently felt that such open 
 manifestations were not without spiritual danger, for he 
 tells us that lest he should be exalted above measure 
 through the abundance of the revelations, there was 
 given to him a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan 
 to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above measure.! 
 Again, our Lord reminds S. Thomas that a special bless- 
 ing belongs to those who have not seen and yet have 
 believed. We may, then, expect that as in prayer so in 
 
 * Prophets of Israel (1895 e( ^-)> P- 22 °- 
 t 2 Cor. xii. 7.
 
 Vital Religion. 87 
 
 work, the revelations of the Lord may be made known by 
 such signs as only the intelligent faithful may discern. 
 
 Bishop Westcott, in his Studies on the Risen Life of 
 our Lord, shews that even to the last the disciples 
 " knew the Lord only through the interpretation they 
 put upon their experience. . . . Without patient obedi- 
 ence, without cheerful labour, without living insight, 
 those to whom the Lord came would not have known 
 Him. He would have been to them only as one mere 
 chance wayfarer who had crossed their path. This is 
 the uniform law. 'The world beholdeth Me no more, 
 but ye behold Me'* is the final promise to the faithful. 
 . . . It was in vain that His brethren, in a moment 
 of unbelief, bade Him manifest Himself to the world. f 
 From the world, which has not the will to obey or the 
 eyes to see the true Christ, the true Christ, the risen 
 Christ, must be always hidden." But, on the other 
 hand, the eye of faith sees Him, and " He is recognized 
 not by His person, but by His working. The gift of 
 success and the gift of refreshment are seen to belong to 
 Him and to make Him known. "J The gift of success ! 
 How often we are tempted to take it as the natural out- 
 come of the work. ^Ye have laboured for it, taken 
 every pains to secure it, and, therefore, it is natural that 
 we should have it. It is our own doing, and the con- 
 gratulations of our friends assume that it is. Or even if 
 we do recognize that it is from the hand of Christ ; if, 
 like S. John on the sea of Galilee, we say when we see a 
 result far beyond our expectation, " It is the Lord"; 
 yet, even then, we are not disposed to pursue the 
 matter further and to see what special revelation it 
 
 * S. John xiv. 19. f S. John vii. 4. 
 
 t Westcott : Revelation of the Risen Lord, p. 118.
 
 88 Vital Religion. 
 
 carries with it, what further knowledge of Him we reach 
 by it. It may be to us something very like a miracle, 
 but it is not a sign of what He is doing. And yet it is 
 as a sign that it is given to us: a sign either of appro- 
 bation of the methods we have adopted, or of encourage- 
 ment that we may go further, or of teaching that as by 
 a parable we may learn its spiritual counterpart. And 
 as we dwell on it, ponder it, and consider its relation to 
 ourselves, our families, or the Church, we learn what is 
 meant by it, and through it gain a new knowledge of the 
 Lord. 
 
 It is not otherwise when the work brings refreshment 
 or failure. In the one case, we have a sense of the Lord 
 working with us and imparting to us the joy that 
 sustained Him in all that He did, and we feel that it is 
 His law and appointment that work should bring life. 
 In the other case, we learn that failure is no necessary 
 mark of disapproval; that whilst it rightly leads to 
 revision and careful consideration of principles and 
 methods, it also reminds us that He Whose work 
 was perfect failed, failed in Capernaum, Chorazin and 
 Bethsaida. And so, taught by the Spirit of God, all our 
 work becomes a canvas on which is worked in fuller and 
 fuller measure the face of Christ ; and we begin to 
 understand something of what Bishop Lightfoot looked 
 forward to when, on entering upon his work in Durham, 
 he bade the large congregation that had assembled in 
 the cathedral for his enthronement to pray " that 
 glimpses of the invisible Righteousness, of the invisible 
 Glory might be vouchsafed to him; and that the Eternal 
 Presence, haunting him night and day, might rebuke, 
 deter, guide, strengthen, comfort, illumine, consecrate 
 and subdue the feeble and wayward impulses of his own 
 heart to God's holy will and purpose."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Knowledge in Suffering. 
 
 That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and 
 the fellowship of His sufferings. — Phil. iii. 10. 
 
 WE have now considered two spheres for Christ's 
 manifestation: (i) The life of prayer, the 
 inner contemplative life; (2) the life of work, the outer 
 active life. These do not, however, sum up all the 
 experiences of life. There is a dark background, some- 
 times so illumined by the light of Christ's Presence 
 that life looks glorified, even as some black cloud on a 
 summer's day, when lighted up by the sun, adds beauty 
 to the landscape, sometimes forgotten in the joys and 
 pleasures of the foreground. This, which stands behind 
 all life, at times overshadowing it completely, is what we 
 call pain, suffering. It may not be pain of body nor 
 distress of mind ; it may be only the pain of weakness, 
 the pain begotten by a feeling that we are of no use, 
 can benefit no one, and are cumberers of the ground. 
 But whatever its character, we can but rarely feel 
 entirely free from its influence. And it has this im- 
 portance, that it forms character, influences life more 
 than thought, more than work. 
 
 And yet, though there is a general recognition that 
 suffering of some kind is the normal accompaniment of 
 life, though we try to comfort our friends in their trouble
 
 90 Vital Religion 
 
 by telling them there is nothing unusual in the difficulties 
 or sorrows they are called upon to face, yet the chief 
 bitterness of pain often consists in the feeling that we 
 are alone, are being singularly dealt with. The man 
 who is struggling with poverty or narrowness of means 
 looks out on those whom he knows, and, judging from 
 what he sees, fancies that no one is so hardly placed as 
 he is. The invalid sees the strong and healthy pass in 
 and out of his room, watches from his window the 
 passers by, and wonders why God should afflict him 
 alone. The desolate, sitting in widowed loneliness, 
 and only learning through letter or newspaper of the 
 lives of others which seem marked by good fortune, 
 cannot understand why he should be singled out to pass 
 the rest of his years in solitude. The disappointed, who 
 have to face the lost chance which looked as though it 
 would have secured all they wanted, feel that fortune 
 smiles on all but themselves. The exile, longing to be 
 home again, to see the green fields and hedges of 
 his native land and enjoy familiar scenes, imagines 
 that all who feel as he does have the opportunity to 
 return, all but he. The married envy the single, who 
 are spared household anxieties and family sickness ; the 
 single envy the married, who are constantly welcomed 
 by the brightness and love of home. The rich man 
 envies the simple happy life of his cottager, who has no 
 social worries ; the cottager, the wealth of his landlord, 
 who has always a balance at the bank. The weary and 
 anxious long for the strength of the man who always 
 seems fit for his work ; and the strong man longs for the 
 intellectual quickness, the emotional temperament of the 
 weaker, which makes him such a pleasant companion. 
 The soul knows its own bitterness, and imagines that 
 there is nothing elsewhere quite like it.
 
 Vital Religion. 91 
 
 It is only as we grow in experience of life that we 
 recognize that the experience of God's people, as 
 recorded in the Bible, whether it be that of the nation 
 in the difficult and trying experiences of the wilderness, 
 or of individuals like Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, David, 
 is one of constant trial and difficulty; that "man is 
 born to trouble." The New Testament, which reads as 
 though it were written for pilgrims and sufferers, is 
 found to be more universal in its application than we 
 thought. We understand that the Cross is found 
 in many other places than churches, and that the 
 "crucifixion of the old man" is not such an isolated 
 experience as we might expect. 
 
 At first, the discovery is very unwelcome. Bethlehem, 
 Gethsemane, and Calvary are beautiful as historical 
 scenes, but we shudder as we see them expressed again 
 in courts and alleys, in castles and beautiful homes. 
 We wonder how it is that the world is not better 
 managed. Our own difficulties are trying enough, but 
 they are small compared with those of "the submerged 
 tenth," to say nothing of the millions of degraded 
 heathen. To admit that half the world does not feel 
 them as we should is not much alleviation, for the 
 indifference to the ugly features of life is of itself a 
 fresh difficulty. We grow impatient with the sights our 
 hospitals, streets and lanes disclose. We would fain 
 shut them out, and bar our doors against every entrance. 
 " Subscribe ! Yes, we'll subscribe ; but, for God's sake, 
 don't tell us anything about them. Let us be occupied 
 with the good, the beautiful and the true, and shut both 
 eyes and ears to anything that would disturb the 
 peace and joy that spring from their contemplation." 
 
 This feeling is only for a moment. Directly we think 
 of Him Who holds the solution of pain and trial in His
 
 92 Vital Religion. 
 
 hand, we recognize that such selfish conduct is im- 
 possible. His life was the very opposite. Suffering 
 and pain were the atmosphere in which He moved. 
 His arrival in any village or town was the signal for the 
 exposure of every ill the place knew. The main street 
 looked as though a fire had taken place in some 
 hospital, and its sufferers had been for the time laid 
 there. Cripples, paralyzed, blind, epileptic, possessed, 
 were pressing their attention upon Him as best they 
 could. And when every want had been supplied, and 
 it was possible to go elsewhere, then the circumstances 
 changed, and darker scenes were revealed : hatred, strife, 
 ill-nature, even quarrelling amongst His own friends, in 
 His own family. And when opposition had been met 
 and disarmed, and peace restored, then it was not in the 
 pleasanter and more open spaces of the towns that He 
 was found ; but in the slums, where vice walks abroad 
 with unblushing front, there He could be seen battling 
 hand to hand with sin, unbuckling fetters and loosing 
 chains. 
 
 It is, then, quite vain to expect that we shall ever 
 know Him if we shun those aspects of life with which 
 He was most familiar. We might as well hope to know 
 the painter whose art we never looked at, the musician 
 whose music we never heard, or the poet whose 
 poems we never read, as to expect to know the Man 
 of Sorrows without looking at the sorrows He soothed, 
 the sufferings He healed. And this not only because, 
 as we have said, He moved in and out amongst them, 
 but because He bare them : " Himself took our infirmi- 
 ties, and bare our sicknesses.'*'* He was not like a 
 doctor, who is more interested in the sickness or pain 
 
 * S. Matt. viii. 17.
 
 Vital Religion. 93 
 
 than the patient. The patient, in all cases, was of chief 
 importance. And the effort to help the person as well 
 as cure the disease was one which took the strength out 
 of Him, and so wearied Him that at times, as when 
 His disciples took Him to the boat, He was too tired 
 to walk. His sympathy, indeed, was so intense, so 
 close, that He felt the actual pain the patient was 
 suffering, " bare the sickness," as S. Matthew says. 
 Men's pains and trials were not, then, matters of interest 
 requiring skill and attention, but subjects of thought 
 graven upon His Mind and Heart, which He could not 
 dismiss if He would. And they were His from the 
 patient's point of view, and not merely from the 
 Physician's. He saw how they were felt and regarded. 
 To know Him, then, without knowing suffering would be 
 like knowing Shakespeare without knowing life, or Milton 
 without knowing the Bible, or Bunyan without knowing 
 sin and grace. It cannot be done. So it is that 
 S. Paul, in the expression of his aspiration, adds the 
 knowledge of His sufferings to that of His Person. 
 "That I may know Him . . . and the fellowship of 
 His sufferings." And it is worth noting that he does 
 not simply say "sufferings," but "the fellowship of His 
 sufferings." He was not content with the thought of 
 being amongst sufferers as his Master was, but he 
 desired to know the actual sufferings of the Lord, to 
 have his share in them. If we ask why, we find in the 
 answer a new thought that springs out of sharing our 
 Lord's suffering experience, and that thought is intro- 
 duced by the phrase, " The power of His resurrection." 
 "That I may know Him, and the power of His resur- 
 rection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being 
 made conformable unto His death."* 
 
 * Phil. iii. 10.
 
 94 Vital Religion. 
 
 The Apostle felt that bound up with the personal 
 knowledge of the Lord was the experience of His risen 
 power. How, indeed, could he know Him, unless he 
 had from time to time evidences of this ? Christ was 
 now the Risen Lord, and resurrection power was there- 
 fore the proof of His living, present interest in His 
 servants. S. Paul naturally, then, longed for practical 
 assurance of this. But where was he likely to find it ? 
 Surely, in time of need and difficulty. When all went 
 well, and he felt his powers sufficient for the task he had 
 in hand, he could not realize the Presence of the 
 unseen Partner of his labours. But when he was swept 
 off his feet in some storm like that which overwhelmed 
 him in Jerusalem when the mob tried to murder him, 
 or when he had to face the Caesar's judgment seat, 
 absolutely alone without a single friend by him,* then 
 he felt an inrush of Divine Power, which made him 
 realize that the Lord was standing by him and strength- 
 ening him. Such an experience was worth a hundred 
 tumults ; for such a blessed realization he would face 
 Caesar's judgment seat as often as his bitterest enemy 
 might desire. He therefore began to take positive 
 pleasure in desperate situations, for they were always 
 occasions for revelations of the living Christ. To be 
 beaten or stoned, to suffer shipwreck and spend a night 
 and day in the deep, to be in danger of drowning or of 
 being waylaid by robbers,! to be hunted from place to 
 place by his countrymen, to be worn out with fatigue or 
 constantly suffering pain, to be starved with cold or 
 from want of food, these were experiences sufficiently 
 severe to have tried the bravest spirit and to have led to 
 defeat, but for one thing, and that was that the more 
 
 * 2 Tim. iv. 16-18. + 2 Cor. xi. 25-27.
 
 Vital Religion. 95 
 
 trying they were, the more certain, the more vivid the 
 realization of the presence of that Friend Who sticketh 
 closer than a brother. He had learnt through prayer 
 that this was to be expected. In suffering from some 
 terrible pain, which he could only describe under the 
 image of a sharp thorn or stake driven into his flesh, he 
 had entreated, not once, but three times running, that 
 he might be spared and the pain taken away. But the 
 answer had come with great definiteness : " My grace is 
 sufficient for thee : for My strength is made perfect in 
 weakness." In other words : " If you will but trust, you 
 will not suffer defeat ; and further, the weaker you are, 
 the more conscious will you be of My divine strength." 
 S. Paul's infirmities, then, whether physical, mental, or 
 spiritual, became not a subject of complaint, but of 
 boasting ; for in them he found, to use his own words, 
 "the power of Christ" resting upon him.* How much 
 he learnt through them it is impossible to say ; but 
 suffering was, from the time of the discovery of Christ's 
 Presence within it, wholly changed. He rejoiced in it ; 
 just as a wife has rejoiced in the poverty which is to 
 bring her the husband she loves ; as some royalist has 
 rejoiced in the perils that brought him the presence of 
 his king; as an Alpine climber has rejoiced in the 
 dangerous crags and precipices that led to a new revela- 
 tion of the presence of God in nature. 
 
 Now, the experience of S. Paul has been that of all 
 faithful Christians since his time. S. Stephen, when 
 standing alone, braving the mob of infuriated Jews, 
 found, as we should have expected, that his Master 
 revealed Himself standing, may we not say with open 
 arms, to welcome His brave servant. S. Polycarp, when 
 
 * 2 Cor. xii. 9.
 
 g6 Vital Religion. 
 
 waiting on the racecourse of Smyrna to be burnt alive, 
 heard, above the derisive yells of the mob, the words, 
 " Polycarp, be strong, and play the man," shewing the 
 nearness of his Captain. So, in modern times, we are 
 told that when a poor lad in Staffordshire had recovered 
 from the effects of being roasted before an iron furnace 
 because he would not deny his faith, he gave as his 
 experience, " I never felt Jesus so near before." 
 
 Charles Kingsley, too, speaking of some dark and 
 awful days he had experienced, tells us that he 
 challenged our Lord in such earnest prayer to fulfil 
 His promise that he almost expected Him to appear 
 visibly ; but though He did not do this, He gave him a 
 sufficient answer in the still small voice which brought 
 peace to his soul. Ellen Watson, for a long time a 
 suffering invalid, and feeling the depression that comes 
 with chronic illness, writes : " But I am not, and never 
 shall be again, despairing. At the very worst times, 
 such strength, not my own, has been lent me, that now 
 I know it will not fail. . . . There is something better 
 than happiness ; the blessedness which comes to us in 
 our worst griefs." 
 
 Caroline Fox, in her delightful letters, writes : " I 
 have been brought through a sharp little attack of 
 bronchitis, and feel bound to record my sense of the 
 tender mercy that has encompassed me night and day. 
 Though it may have been in part my own wilfulness 
 and recklessness that brought it on, that and all else was 
 pardoned ; all fear of suffering or death was swallowed 
 up in the child-like joy of trust ; a perfect rest in the 
 limitless love and wisdom of a most tender Friend, 
 Whose will was far dearer to me than my own. That 
 blessed Presence was felt just in proportion to the needs 
 of the hour, and the words breathed into my spirit were
 
 Vital Religion. 97 
 
 just the most helpful ones at the time, strengthening 
 and soothing. This was specially felt in the long, still 
 nights, when sometimes I felt very ill : ' Never less 
 lonely than when alone with God.' Surely I know more 
 than ever of the reality of that declaration : ' This is life 
 eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, 
 and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent.' " 
 
 Very different these witnesses are : the apostolic 
 deacon, the bishop, the ironworker, the reformer, the 
 consumptive patient, the aged invalid ; but it is the 
 variety of the testimony that witnesses so fully to the 
 reality of the promise : " When thou passest through 
 the waters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, 
 they shall not overflow thee : when thou walkest through 
 the fire, thou shalt not be burned ; neither shall the 
 flame kindle upon thee."* 
 
 Enough has now been said to shew the importance 
 of suffering as an element, I had almost said a sacra- 
 ment, of knowledge. But it is painfully true that whilst 
 to a comparative few it is illuminated and cheered by 
 the presence of the Lord, others, and they the larger 
 number, know nothing of His presence in it. To them, 
 such experiences as we have referred to appear to be the 
 results of a sanguine imagination. It would be difficult 
 to disprove this to those who were not Christians, but 
 all Christians must be forced to admit that if Christ is 
 alive, and the character the Gospels represent, then it 
 would be more difficult to account for His absence than 
 His presence when His friends are in trouble. 
 
 Why, then, is the experience not more common ? 
 The reply is easy : lack of faith. One of the effects of 
 trouble or pain is the disturbance of faith. We are 
 
 * Is, xliii. 2.
 
 98 Vital Religion. 
 
 driven in upon ourselves, forced to think of our needs, 
 when we would gladly think of anything else. The 
 central difficulty, at such times, is how to pray. We 
 have neither the will for it nor the power to fashion it. 
 It seems easier to let the storm carry us where it will. 
 And so we continue in the darkness when we might be 
 in the light. 
 
 Or it may be that we are more concerned with 
 immediate relief than with the revelation that it brings, 
 and are quite ready to dispense with the latter if only 
 we may have the former. We are not sufficiently con- 
 vinced of the value of the knowledge of our Lord, and 
 we are ready to barter it, though it is at our very doors, 
 for riddance of the pain or anxiety. We may believe that 
 it will mean a lift into a fuller conception of Christ in 
 His own personal relation to us ; but we beg, feverishly 
 and impatiently, that that may come in some other way. 
 It was otherwise with General Gordon, who said of 
 some suffering that he had imposed upon himself: 
 "The experiment is a safe one; it is like going through 
 a severe operation for an illness, with the certainty of 
 ultimate cure." Many, however, do not feel that the 
 experiment is safe ; they dare not venture upon the 
 operation, and they pray that they may be saved from it. 
 Who can tell how much of Christ's friendship he has 
 missed through failing to urge, in some darkness or 
 pain, "Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done"; 
 through failing to face the suffering and distress in the 
 confidence that he will know, as he never knew before, 
 what it is " to know the Lord." 
 
 It is to us often a matter of surprise that those who 
 we know are living very close to Christ should be called 
 upon to submit to stroke upon stroke from His hand. 
 Directly, however, we feel that affliction is bound up
 
 Vital Religion. 99 
 
 with knowledge, we cease to wonder. They are learning 
 in the school of suffering, as they could learn in no 
 other way, the knowledge of the Lord. They are 
 drinking from His cup, being baptized with the baptism 
 that He was baptized with, and so growing in a nearness 
 to Him that no mere position can illustrate. 
 
 Suffering, then, much as we naturally shrink from it 
 and fear it, is necessary for the personal knowledge of a 
 suffering Lord. It is, then, our duty, if we seek His 
 friendship, to make use of the opportunities suffering 
 gives us, by doing what we can to relieve that which 
 lies in our path, or is to be found in our neighbourhood. 
 It is in the hospitals, the prisons, the homes and haunts 
 of the poor and wretched, that there is most likelihood of 
 meeting Him. "I was in prison ; I was naked ; I was 
 an hungred ; I was thirsty ; I was sick " are words the 
 meaning of which we shall know, if we have not learned 
 them before, when we are judged. We shall then be 
 surprised that we avoided just the very places where He 
 to Whom we expressed such devotion was to be found. 
 If we are wise, and really in earnest in our desire to 
 know Him, we shall take advantage of the many oppor- 
 tunities that the sad experiences of life give us, and find 
 Him in His suffering poor. 
 
 Secondly, we shall prepare ourselves for the suffering 
 that God may send us. How much the disciples might 
 have learnt from the Crucifixion if they had only given 
 heed to our Lord's teaching about the Cross ; thought 
 about it, and steeled their hearts to expect it. S. John, 
 the only one who had courage to go through that awful 
 experience, had, in the marvellous sign of the water and 
 blood, a testimony to His Master's Divine Person of 
 unspeakable blessedness. This the others missed ; and 
 so it may be with us that, through want of preparation 
 
 7—2
 
 ioo Vital Religion. 
 
 for our Calvary, we may miss that intimate knowledge of 
 Him that it was intended to bring. Such a preparation 
 means the daily practice of self-sacrifice, the willing 
 shouldering of the cross, the ready will to sympathize 
 with the sufferings of others, the serious and sober 
 consideration of life as a school of discipline, the con- 
 quest of the daily cares and worries in the power of the 
 Spirit. Then, when the trial conies, it will not meet us 
 unawares. We shall have known, by anticipation, some 
 of the phantoms that haunt the dark valley of the 
 shadow of death, and perhaps seen in the experience of 
 others that He is always there ; seen, perhaps, what 
 Archbishop Benson saw when he sat by the bedside of 
 his dying son. " That he saw Christ," is the Arch- 
 bishop's witness, " we who watched him are as certain 
 as of anything we know at all." The dark paths and 
 deep valleys are not wholly strange, and as we enter 
 them it is with the sense of wonder that accompanied 
 Charles Kingsley's descent : " I wonder what it will be 
 like!" i.e., what will it be like at the other end, when, 
 having left our friends here, He takes us by the hand, 
 round that bend of the path hidden from the living, 
 which none but those He guides have ever seen, that 
 turn where He reveals Himself in His full glory, and we 
 at last know what it is " to know the Lord "?
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Knowledge in the Holy Communion. 
 
 He was known of them in the breaking of bread. — S. Luke xxiv. 35. 
 This cup is the New Covenant in My blood. — S. Ltike xxii. 20. 
 
 IN any consideration of the question of knowledge of 
 persons, we cannot ignore the part that Nature 
 plays. We have evidence in the fact that members of 
 the same family usually know one another better than 
 those who are not of the same blood ; and that this 
 familiarity is not merely due to their living with one 
 another under the same roof appears from the fact that 
 twins, who participate more intimately in the same 
 nature, not only resemble one another in face and 
 feature, but also in character and intellect, understanding 
 one another as it is impossible that others in the same 
 family will. But we have a still more interesting proof 
 of the power of nature, in the influence it exercises 
 over husbands and wives. By marriage, two people 
 become, in our Lord's words, " one flesh," and in the 
 course of years so grow into one another, provided the 
 bond of nature is deepened by love, as not only to know 
 intuitively one another's thoughts, but even to resemble 
 one another in face and character, and that long after 
 the features have lost their plastic power. The same 
 likeness in mind and manner is not seen in two friends 
 who have known one another for many years. 
 
 There would seem to be, then, a mysterious unifying
 
 102 Vital Religion. 
 
 power in the transmission of a common nature; and the 
 more fully we are able to share in it, the more fully are 
 we likely to know one another. We say " likely," for 
 there is no such necessary sequence of cause and effect 
 as would make it certain that knowledge will follow. 
 As a matter of fact, there are some marriages where 
 this mutual knowledge never follows. It depends very 
 largely on will, and the action of will in self-sacrifice. 
 And the knowledge that was springing up so fast in the 
 first days has, through the selfishness of the one or the 
 other, lost the promise it once had. But though this is 
 so, though it is true that Nature of itself will not create 
 mutual sympathy and knowledge, yet in it lies the possi- 
 bility. It forms a groundwork or basis for knowledge. 
 The Englishman born and educated in France is more 
 likely to know his compatriots, other things being equal, 
 than his French friends. And it is not untrue to say, 
 with a writer in the Manchester Guard/an, that " a man 
 of Irish blood landing in Ireland for the first time when 
 a man, has a curious sense of having been in a foreign 
 country and of coming home to one in some ways better 
 known." It is only an illustration of the proverb that 
 blood is thicker than water. 
 
 Now, the belief in this is so deeply grounded in our 
 moral system that throughout the world there has been 
 a persuasion that if you can but obtain the nature you 
 then and there obtain the friendship, the knowledge. 
 Hence the emphasis which is laid upon what is called 
 the blood-covenant, a means of contracting friendship 
 which was at one time probably universal. It was done 
 and is still done in some countries, as in Africa, in 
 various ways; sometimes by incisions of the flesh of those 
 who are covenanting one with the other and commingling 
 the blood thus shed ; at other times by drinking it.
 
 Vital Religion. 103 
 
 Livingstone* describes a ceremony of this kind that 
 he once witnessed. " Incisions were made on the 
 clasped hands, on the pits of stomach of each, and on 
 the right cheeks and foreheads. A small quantity of 
 blood is taken off from these points, in both parties, by 
 means of a stalk of grass. Each one then drinks the 
 other's blood, and they are supposed to become per- 
 petual friends or relations " He himself unexpectedly 
 became a blood relation ; for, whilst removing a tumour 
 from the arm of a young woman, he was stained with 
 her blood. The woman at once said : " You were a 
 friend before, now you are a blood relation ; and when 
 you pass this way always send me word, that I may cook 
 for you." Stanley and other travellers mention the 
 same custom. The tie formed by it is extremely close. 
 In the East it is believed to be closer than that 
 established by birth ; brothers in the covenant of blood 
 being estimated to be closer than brothers at a common 
 breast,f "blood brothers" being more truly one than 
 "milk brothers." And so far is this idea carried, that 
 " the marriage of a man and woman between whom this 
 covenant exists is held to be incest." Now it is not likely 
 that what has been once an universal custom has no 
 basis of truth. And if we ask what this is, we say at 
 once it is the belief, borne out by a large human 
 experience, that the participation of a common nature 
 is the basis of mutual knowledge and friendship. 
 
 Now it would seem, at first sight, as though we had 
 reached here a line of argument for which there was no 
 analogy in the knowledge of our Lord. And yet we 
 must have felt all along that the aim we have set before 
 
 * Travels ami Researches in South Africa, pp. 290-296. 
 f Trumbull: The Blood Covenant, p. 13.
 
 104 Vital Religion. 
 
 us is so high, so entirely beyond our powers, that, unless 
 there is something beyond prayer, work, and suffering, the 
 likelihood of our knowing the Lord as we should wish is 
 but small. How can the finite know the Infinite? How 
 can the unholy know the All-Holy? Is not the position 
 of the agnostic, that man with his limited knowledge 
 cannot possibly know Him Who has no limitations, a 
 reasonable one? So men have thought; but in thinking, 
 they*have not remembered the power of the Lord or 
 the extent of His mercy. The difficulty was once 
 forcibly stated by a working man, whose words suggest 
 the answer. The Bishop of Manchester, in one of his 
 visitation addresses, had been enlarging on the subject 
 of "knowing God," and shewing the unreasonableness 
 of the agnostic's objections. After he had finished, a 
 man in his shirt sleeves, who had been cleaning out a 
 school, came up to him and said : " I am so pleased at 
 what you have said ; and now I want to ask you a 
 question. I reckon what you mean is this : If God 
 Almighty means us to know His-sen as He knows 
 His-sen, He'll have to make us like His-sen." The 
 question he came to ask was, how was this going to be 
 done? This, indeed, is the very heart of the subject. 
 In some way we must be made like God if we are to 
 know Him : but how? 
 
 Now, we have already seen that a persuasion has 
 existed in the world that to receive a man's blood, i.e., 
 his nature, is to have the potentiality of being made like 
 him. And it is more than interesting to find that the 
 further conviction has arisen that if we would be made 
 like the gods we must receive their blood, or in some 
 other way hold intercommunion with them. As an 
 example of the power supposed to lie in the blood 
 of the gods, we may take the following from the
 
 Vital Religion. 105 
 
 Egyptian " Book of the Dead." In it the departed soul 
 is described as saying to the god : "Give me your arm ; 
 I am made like as ye"; which words the "Book of 
 Ritual " explains as meaning that the soul has received 
 the blood of the god, by which it is united to him.* 
 There are many examples of fellowship with the gods 
 through food. In China, India, and Assyria, men were 
 believed to hold communion with the gods either 
 through food, of which the god is supposed to partake, 
 or through the blood of a victim, which the god is 
 believed to receive. And if we turn from heathen 
 records to the Old Testament, we find abundant con- 
 firmations of the same expectation. 
 
 Every reader will remember the part that blood plays 
 in the foundation or establishment of covenant relation- 
 ships with God. There is the mysterious rite of circum- 
 cision, by which the Father of the Faithful and all his 
 children first entered into covenant with God. And 
 then, as supplementing this individual act of fellowship, 
 we have a description a little later of the national 
 covenant, of the means by which the nation is brought 
 into friendship with God ; and here again it is by blood. 
 First, the words attesting the pledge of Israel's fidelity to 
 God are written down; then peace offerings of oxen are 
 sacrificed, symbolizing the readiness of the people to 
 give their lives to God ; and then, not only is the 
 parchment containing the pledge of loyalty marked with 
 blood, but half the blood is sprinkled upon the altar, 
 which stood for the Presence of God, and half on the 
 people. f It is true that here the people now entering 
 upon their national life do not give their own blood 
 to God ; this would be obviously impossible with a 
 
 * Bunsen : Egypt's Place, v. 174, foil. t Exod. xxiv.
 
 106 Vital Religion. 
 
 million and a half of souls ; but they do it by representa- 
 tion, the slain oxen standing, as it were, for them. It 
 would not be difficult to shew, by reference to all the 
 sacrifices which after this time became a part of the 
 worship of Israel, that blood was as significant in 
 founding or cementing the tie of fellowship between the 
 nation and God and the individual and God, as else- 
 where in the world in forming friendship between two 
 individuals. 
 
 But, as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews so 
 clearly shews, such formal external use of blood could 
 not do more than remind the Jews that mutual sacrifice 
 of that which is most precious is the only foundation for 
 fellowship and friendship, could only serve to "the 
 purifying of the flesh";* something more was necessary 
 to affect the will and produce that inner likeness between 
 man and God which it is the purpose of religion to 
 develop. But no one could guess how that would be 
 provided. It seemed incredible that God Himself 
 would suffer, and so suffer that man might partake of 
 His blood. Through the Incarnation, the inconceivable 
 became possible. God became man, took man's nature 
 into Himself, and was therefore able, if we may dare 
 so to say, to give His blood to man. It is this fact, 
 transcending human thought and imagination, that is 
 laid open to us in those remarkable words of our 
 Lord, which have come down to us in two varying 
 versions, as expressing the truth more forcibly and fully 
 than would be possible by one form : "This is My 
 blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto 
 remission of sins."t "This cup is the new covenant 
 in My blood, even that which is poured out for you. "J 
 
 * Heb. ix. 21. f S. Matt. xxvi. 28. % S. Luke xxii. 20.
 
 Vital Religion. 107 
 
 The word "covenant" suggests the friendship and fellow- 
 ship of which we have been speaking. We think of the 
 covenants made between Jonathan and David, between 
 Abraham and Abimelech, Jacob and Laban, and we 
 then feel that the full meaning of the word is friendship. 
 Our Lord, then, is speaking of a friendship which He 
 is about to establish with His disciples, and describes 
 it as "new." If we wish to know what was novel or 
 fresh in the covenant now about to be made in our 
 Lord's blood, we turn back to one of the old promises 
 of God. Some six hundred years before, God had 
 promised His people, through Jeremiah, that a time 
 would come when He would make a new covenant with 
 His people. This new covenant was to differ from the 
 old in this respect, that it was to be real rather than 
 formal, internal rather than external, a friendship rather 
 than an alliance. "This shall be the covenant that I 
 will make with the house of Israel ; After these days, 
 saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, 
 and write it in their hearts ; and will be their God, 
 and they shall be My people. And they shall teach 
 no more every man his neighbour, and every man his 
 brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they shall all know 
 Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, 
 saith the Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, and I 
 will remember their sin no more."* From these words 
 it is clear that the difference between the old and the 
 new covenant lay in this : the old was one in which 
 duty largely figured ; the new, one of which love was the 
 chief element. The difficulties that men had felt in 
 the past in obeying God's laws would, to a large extent, 
 disappear. In the future, men would not only under- 
 
 * Jer. xxxi. 33-34-
 
 108 Vital Religion. 
 
 stand them, but prefer them ; they would have a natural 
 inclination for them, and so come to know Him Who 
 laid them down. Under the old covenant God was, to 
 a large extent, a stranger to His people ; they did what 
 He bade them because they feared the punishment that 
 would follow if they did not ; but now man was to 
 understand God and His ways, to rejoice in the 
 mysterious discipline of the Cross, to feel by his own 
 life's experience, without any outside teaching, that He 
 was their God. 
 
 But how was this to be done? By blood. "This is 
 My blood of the new friendship. This cup is the new 
 friendship in My blood." That which man had been 
 feeling after in all parts of the world, and expressing 
 in blood covenants, was now to be set forth in such 
 memorable terms as could never be forgotten. As man 
 became united to a stranger, became his blood brother 
 through drinking his blood or commingling his own with 
 it, so man was to become united to the Son of God by 
 drinking His blood. For the blood of which the Lord 
 spake was not to be poured out and then stored up or 
 exposed as in some Holy Grail, it was to be received 
 and drunk : " Drink ye all of this ; for this is My 
 blood of the new friendship." 
 
 If we ask how the Lord's blood is to influence man's 
 mental and spiritual life ; how it is to become a fountain, 
 as it were, of beautiful thoughts and suggestions so 
 attractive that Christ's service becomes perfect freedom 
 and Christ's law "the perfect law of liberty": how it is 
 not only to develop spiritual instincts and desires, but 
 to brace the will to follow them out, we are asking what 
 no man can answer. But we do know that a similar 
 wonder is experienced in the natural life, in the partici- 
 pation of blood or life. And the true significance of
 
 Vital Religion. 109 
 
 blood lies in its being the means or channel of life, 
 developing certain natural instincts and affections which 
 otherwise we should be without. Not, however, without 
 our co-operation. In all blood covenants the heart of the 
 ceremony lies in the mutual concurrence of both parties. 
 The blood must be from both of those who are coven- 
 anting, otherwise the bond is worthless. So our Lord 
 coupled with the reception of His blood the command, 
 " Do this for My memorial." To what is He pointing ? 
 What are those whom He invites to partake to do ? 
 Surely that which He Himself is doing. But what is 
 that ? Shedding His blood for man ; giving His body 
 for man. At that time He was offering His life to the 
 Father, by so breaking His body and shedding His 
 blood that He might be wholly ours. " My blood, even 
 that which is " (not shall be) " poured out for you." 
 He calls upon us to do the same. We are to break our 
 lives for our fellow men. We are to drink with thank- 
 fulness the cup of discipline which the Father sends us. 
 As He loses something for us, we are to lose something 
 for Him. So the covenant is complete, the friendship is 
 established, and the knowledge of the Lord wells up as 
 a fount of continual blessing. 
 
 It is this, as will be remembered, that our Communion 
 Service lays such stress upon. After we have received 
 His life, we are taught to solemnly offer ourselves up, 
 " our bodies and souls, to be a reasonable, holy and 
 lively sacrifice unto " the Father. We give, as it were, 
 our own blood to meet the reception of our Lord's 
 blood. It is to be feared that this is often forgotten ; 
 that men are either content with observing the ceremony, 
 as though this were following the Lord's command, or 
 receiving with gratitude and lively faith the blood of 
 the Lord, without remembering that there must be
 
 i 10 Vital Religion. 
 
 blood for blood if we are to enjoy the full blessings 
 of the gift. Frequent communions are great oppor- 
 tunities, opportunities for the Lord to plant Himself, 
 as it were, more securely in our hearts and wills, to 
 set in motion those wonderful powers which lie deep 
 in the mystery of all nature, whereby He makes us 
 more and more like Himself; but they call for special 
 sacrifices. Communicants have often been surprised 
 that their Eucharists have been followed by severe trials 
 and difficulties, which seem to be so much out of 
 harmony with the love and peace which the service 
 expresses. They have forgotten that Reception is only 
 one side, that Offering is the other ; that to be brought 
 near to the Lord is to be brought near to the fire 
 which burns out all that is selfish and impure ; and that 
 if we are slack in providing the sacrifice we have pro- 
 mised, then He will, it may be through strange and 
 seemingly hard ways, Himself supply the occasion. 
 
 If Himself He comes to thee, and stands 
 
 Beside thee, gazing down on thee with eyes 
 
 That smite and suffer ; that will smite thy heart 
 
 With their own pity, to a passionate peace ; 
 
 And reach to thee Himself the Holy Cup, 
 
 Pallid and royal, saying, " Drink with Me," 
 
 Wilt thou refuse ? Nay, not for Paradise ! 
 
 The pale Brow will compel thee, the pure Hands 
 
 Will minister unto thee ; thou shalt take 
 
 Of this communion through the solemn depths 
 
 Of the dark waters of thine agony, 
 
 With Heart that praises Him, that yearns to Him 
 
 The closer for that hour. Hold fast His hand 
 
 Though the nails pierce thine too. Take only care 
 
 Lest one drop of the sacramental wine 
 
 Be spilled, of that which ever shall unite 
 
 Thee, soul and body, to thy living Lord ! 
 
 H. Hamilton King.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Hindrance to Knowledge. 
 
 Can two walk together except they be agreed ? — Amos iii. 3. 
 
 IT may now be asked why, with such wonderful — we 
 may say unique — opportunities for knowing our 
 Lord, so many who are using them more or less are still 
 hardly removed from that knowledge which we call 
 acquaintanceship. Why is it that He occupies so small 
 a place in their thoughts and affections ? The answer is, 
 unfortunately, obvious enough. It is contained in the 
 one word "sin." We know how it is with human friend- 
 ship, how apposite is the prophet's question, "Can two 
 walk together except they be agreed?"* We know how 
 easily the fellowship is disturbed by coldness and 
 indifference ; how our estimate of our friend's character 
 changes ; how surprised we are that he does not see the 
 matter from our point of view ; how we confess to 
 disappointment, and feel chilled. And parents will know 
 that whilst it is true that a tender compassion is always 
 present, ready to heal the differences that may have 
 arisen between themselves and one of their children, 
 yet that a child's obstinate preference for an evil course 
 disturbs mutual confidence and makes further know- 
 
 * Amos iii. X.
 
 1 1 2 Vital Religion. 
 
 ledge impossible. For a time, the child's loving 
 appreciation of his father's character is stayed. He 
 believes him to be selfish, hard and cruel. 
 
 Now, assuming that the knowledge of our Lord is as 
 real and living as the knowledge of a friend or parent, 
 that it is subject to the same disturbances, we can easily 
 see how sin affects it. For sin is not mere coldness and 
 indifference, but the definite preference of a thought or 
 action that He hates. It not only means that we think 
 we know better than He does, but that we are resolved 
 to shew that we do. It is not merely a difference of 
 taste or feeling, but of principle. It strikes at the root of 
 all confidence and trust, and whilst it remains we not 
 only do not know the Lord, but we have a wrong idea of 
 Him. 
 
 We are usually so much concerned with the human 
 consequences of sin that we forget, or do not consider, 
 how it affects Christ, how it hinders His work with us, 
 stays the expression of His love and necessarily exposes 
 us to His anger. His anger! The words are terrible, 
 and yet they must be faced. At first we refuse to listen 
 to such a paradox as " the wrath of the Lamb." We 
 are so accustomed to long-continued states of passive 
 indifference, in which neither love nor hatred are felt, 
 that we cannot realize that the only alternative to Divine 
 love is Divine wrath. Our own attitude towards large 
 numbers of people is one of indifference. We should not 
 care, as we say, whether we ever saw them again. They 
 are nothing to us, and we should probably be annoyed if 
 we were anything to them. Now this state, with which 
 we are very familiar, is unknown to God. The Bible 
 makes it perfectly clear that though He may be angry 
 with man, as He is certainly loving to him, He is never 
 indifferent. The interests are too close and intimate.
 
 Vital Religion. 1 1 
 
 As it is impossible to conceive of a good mother careless 
 about or indifferent to her children's interests or 
 character, as they either excite her joy or indignation, 
 so it must necessarily be with Him Who is called both 
 Father and Love. It can never be a matter of indiffer- 
 ence what we do or what we are. If He does not 
 rejoice, He grieves over us. We are always a pleasure or 
 a pain to Him. The thought is quite bewildering as we 
 think of the millions of souls and the number of ties He 
 must necessarily have, and we should be crushed with 
 the magnitude of the thought presented to our minds 
 were it not for the Gospels. They exhibit on a small 
 scale what is always happening. The love of Christ for 
 S. John and the wrath of Christ on the Pharisees are 
 but examples of this double expression of the Divine 
 character. The conversion of a soul to the personal 
 knowledge of God must, as we are told it does, give 
 Him great joy. 
 
 Now, bearing this in mind — that our Lord is never 
 indifferent to us — we can understand something of the 
 interference sin causes in our relationships with Him: 
 how it at once hides away all revelations of His 
 presence, brings in misunderstandings of His word, 
 prevents answers to prayer, and in every direction 
 hinders the progress of our knowledge. And not only 
 is this the result of what we may call presumptuous or 
 wilful sins, but also of sins of ignorance and carelessness. 
 For though much less heinous, they yet proceed from 
 the same cause, want of thought and affection for Him. 
 We may quite unintentionally injure our friend's 
 interests, and yet feel that if he had been the first 
 thought in our mind it never would have happened. 
 Now, with our friend, there may be no occasion to 
 reproach ourselves because he did not occupy that 
 
 8
 
 i 14 Vital Religion 
 
 place, but not so with Christ. He must be there or 
 nowhere. And in all our relations with the world or 
 others, His interests must be first considered. Failure 
 to do that involves of necessity sins of ignorance and 
 consequent disturbance of our relations. We see, then, 
 how easily our knowledge of the Lord may be stayed, 
 how quickly our spiritual sight may be blurred and our 
 spiritual hearing dulled. There are the same sights and 
 sounds to-day as yesterday, when we rejoiced in His 
 presence, but we are not the same people ; the malaria 
 of sin has affected our whole spiritual organization, and 
 we can neither see nor hear. In human affairs such an 
 estrangement is the most difficult to repair. It is easy 
 to fall out with our friends, but very difficult to fall in 
 again. We are not only disposed to say that our friend 
 who has damaged our reputation never can be the same 
 to us again, but to believe it. A full reconciliation 
 seems impossible. We are ready to forget the unfor- 
 tunate affair, to dismiss it from our memory, to be on 
 calling terms again, even to have our quondam friend at 
 our house, but we feel that he can never again be on 
 the same footing. It is true that he has expressed his 
 regret, and we on our part are quite prepared to let 
 bygones be bygones, but the injury has spoiled the old 
 easy familiarity, which has gone never to be recovered. 
 We look upon it as a necessary consequence; and so far 
 from reproaching ourselves for a lack of generosity. 
 consider that, on the whole, we have behaved hand- 
 somely. Further knowledge is stayed. 
 
 It is well that the Divine reconciliation is not 
 expressed in such prudent and cautious terms, for in 
 that case we should never know the Lord. For personal 
 knowledge, complete confidence is essential. Unless 
 the old position may be ours, we may be servants, but we
 
 Vital Religion. 1 1 
 
 can never be friends. It is this that our Lord makes 
 abundantly clear in His parable of the Prodigal Son. It 
 will be remembered that He told the story as an explan- 
 ation of His friendly, loving ways with publicans and 
 sinners. These the righteous Pharisee could not under- 
 stand. Here were outcasts from society, men and 
 women who set law and custom at defiance, and yet 
 were admitted into the friendship of the Lord. Surely 
 such ought to be proved first. But that was not 
 God's way, as He shews. The son comes home 
 from the ways of extravagance, waste and sin; and 
 on his repentance is not first tested, and then, after a 
 course of years, put back into the old place, but at once 
 set there. There is the kiss, attesting his father's warm 
 feeling; the best robe and ring, giving public assurance 
 that the old place is his ; the banquet and dancing 
 arranged, that others may not only recognize this, but 
 rejoice in it. Every element is present that may give 
 confidence. All is as it had been before; the recon- 
 ciliation is complete. The world would criticize such 
 a proceeding, if followed out in human affairs, as an 
 encouragement to sin, as lacking in justice, and 
 generally dangerous to the interests of society; and even 
 the ministry of the Church has at times hesitated to 
 follow the Divine plan in its methods of reconciliation. 
 But whatever may be said as to the difficulties involved 
 in translating the Divine principles into action in the 
 public affairs of the State and Church, there can be no 
 question as to its importance in a home where the 
 parents' moving principle of action is that they may be 
 known. No child can rightly estimate the character of 
 either of his parents as long as he fears he is not fully 
 trusted. Confidence, as we have said, is essential to 
 knowledge. 
 
 8—2
 
 1 1 6 Vital Religion. 
 
 But, on the other hand, such full and free confidence 
 cannot be given or received where there is no repent- 
 ance. And repentance is not the simple affair it is 
 ordinarily supposed to be. It is not a regret springing 
 chiefly from a sense of the discomforts which sin brings; 
 it is not sorrow caused by punishment. The penalty 
 often brings a man to himself, makes him hate the 
 course of action that has proved so disastrous, but it is 
 not the moving cause of repentance. That is contained 
 in the word " Father." It is " the goodness of God " 
 that leads a man to repentance. The consequences of 
 sin make a man realize what the old home life was, how 
 generous the treatment, how loving the Father. And 
 the repentance that thus springs up has three elements 
 which prove its genuineness. The first is, a recognition 
 of the outrage to Divine Justice ; the second, a recog- 
 nition of the personal wrong done against the Lord ; and 
 the third, a readiness to submit to any penalty that may 
 be ordered. 
 
 The words, 'T have sinned against heaven," express 
 some sense of the disorder every sin creates. It is not 
 only that we have hurt ourselves — become, as we say, our 
 own worst enemy — but we have injured the Divine 
 Society. We have made its work more difficult, given 
 opportunity to the enemy to blaspheme. Men and 
 women have been led astray by our action to be 
 careless and indifferent ; their faith in goodness has 
 been sapped; their belief in the grace of God and the 
 Sacraments seriously hurt. 
 
 And springing out of this is a deeper feeling, that we 
 have pained Christ — " I have sinned against Thee " — 
 that, in spite of His continued goodness, we have dis- 
 trusted Him, preferring our own way ; that we have 
 broken our friendship, as though it were a matter of no
 
 Vital Religion. 117 
 
 importance ; that we have treated Him with a dishonour 
 that we should not have shewn our enemy. And this is 
 the fact about sin that gives us most trouble. We do 
 not see how it can ever be mended. For as we look at 
 Him, and remember what we enjoyed with Him, how 
 scrupulously careful He was of all that was best in us, 
 how in every way He developed rather than hindered 
 our freedom, we are amazed at the madness of our 
 independence, and cannot too bitterly accuse ourselves. 
 We are ready to submit to any discipline if we can in 
 some way share in the old home life ; and so springs up 
 the third element of repentance, the willingness to 
 submit to the Divine penalty, whatever it may be. That 
 the prodigal in the story was not placed under any 
 discipline must not be taken to imply that the penalty is 
 always remitted. Our Lord is anxious to emphasize the 
 fulness of the reconciliation, and so does not suggest 
 any thought that might be supposed to be inconsistent 
 with it : but, as we know from His teaching elsewhere, 
 the Cross is always present, and no one can become 
 even a learner in His family unless he takes it up. He 
 could give the publicans and sinners His love, but He 
 would not, if He could, have relieved them of the 
 discipline which would burn out their sins. 
 
 We see, then, how the knowledge of our Lord, 
 interrupted by sin, may be restored. As Mr. Illingworth 
 says : " Penitence of heart, or contrition, would seem a 
 necessary element in the purification of those who 
 would know God. . . . Who that has ever wronged a 
 parent, a benefactor, a lover, or a friend does not know 
 as a matter of experience not only the naturalness of 
 emotional as distinct from ethical repentance — of sorrow, 
 that is to say, as distinct from mere amendment — but 
 also its necessity before mutual understanding can be
 
 n8 Vital Religion. 
 
 restored, and the increase of that necessity in proportion 
 to the degree of the love wounded and the wrong done ? 
 This is not a matter of external propriety, but a 
 psychological law which there is no evading. Without 
 emotional repentance we must part, or remain on a lower 
 level of intercourse, but we cannot grow in intimacy and 
 the insight which intimacy brings. . . . Human analogy 
 is in our favour when we maintain that this character 
 (i.e., the character that would know God) must be 
 penitent as well as progressive, sorrowful of heart as 
 well as resolute of will."* And when it is remembered 
 that our past is a past of sin, that we have by countless 
 acts made it more and more difficult for us to know our 
 Lord and for Him to know us, we may well be patient 
 with our slow progress, as well as with that discipline 
 which is to purify our minds and consciences to appre- 
 hend Him. We are often tempted to complain that our 
 circumstances are harder than justice demands, that 
 God's treatment is harsher than our deserts; but when 
 we say this, we forget that we are sinners, \\;e forget that 
 the Good Physician is dealing with the sick, to whom it 
 would be fatal to allow the freedom that the healthy 
 have; that our knowledge of Him necessarily depends on 
 our purification of character, and that on our submission 
 to His discipline. 
 
 The teaching of this chapter cannot be better summed 
 up than in the old Legend of the Face of Christ, which 
 shews in a striking way that the knowledge of Christ is 
 the spring of penitence as well as its goal. 
 
 The story runs that in the years long ago, when all 
 men's actions seemed to be affected by their relations to 
 the world of darkness or the world of light, a poor lad 
 
 * Illingworth : Personality Human and Divine, p. 122.
 
 Vital Religion. 119 
 
 who had been well brought up, but felt within him 
 the artist's instincts without the power to exercise them, 
 sold himself to the devil on condition that he might 
 have, during a definite period of years, the power of 
 depicting to the life any subject he chose to take. 
 The bargain was struck. The young man speedily 
 became famous, and his pictures brought him enormous 
 sums of money. He married, and purchased a magnifi- 
 cent home. But the ill-gotten gains — and such they were, 
 for the pictures were diabolically seductive and sensual 
 — brought him but little happiness. Quarrels led 
 to the separation from his wife and family, and 
 dissipation to loss of health and premature old age. 
 At last the day came when he knew Satan would 
 claim his side of the bargain. The thought of 
 eternal companionship with the evil and gloomy fiend, 
 whose only aim was to make men miserable, filled 
 him with despair. He sought out the village priest, 
 whom he had hitherto scorned, and told him his 
 awful peril. The priest met him with sympathy and 
 prayer, and bade him return and paint the Face of 
 the Christ. He did so ; and presently out of the canvas, 
 in wondrous colours, came the Face of Jesus of Nazareth 
 as the blessed Apostles saw it. As the work proceeded, it 
 produced a strange excitement in the artist. He could 
 not stay working; and yet every fresh effort seemed to 
 give such life to the picture, that it seemed as though it 
 were alive and its subject had come to judge him. At 
 last the feeling was too intense, and he fell to the floor 
 unconscious. The servants sent for the priest, thinking 
 he was dead. He came, and, on seeing him, at once 
 applied restoratives, which brought him to returning 
 consciousness. Directly he opened his eyes the priest 
 told him that he was saved, for Satan's hour was past,
 
 120 Vital Religion. 
 
 and he was now the servant of Him at Whose feet he 
 lay. He reverently covered the picture with a veil and 
 began life anew. He craved absolution, but the priest 
 deferred it till he had learnt the lesson the Face of Christ 
 would give him. So long as the veil lay upon It he 
 found that his old self began to reassert itself; directly 
 he took it off, he began to think thoughts which were 
 strange to him. His old pictures became a source of 
 horror instead of pleasure, and he beggared himself in 
 buying them back to destroy them. Having done this, 
 he again sought absolution; but the blessing was post- 
 poned, for the lesson was not fully learned. Again the 
 Face of Christ exercised its strange influence. It made 
 him think of his wife and children, and he rested not till 
 he had them back with him in his narrow cottage. 
 Surely now the Church's forgiveness would be his. But 
 no; still more had to be learned. He gazed at the Face, 
 and wondered what the new lesson would be; and then 
 bethought him of the grief, the pain, the loss he had 
 occasioned Him Whose eyes seemed to penetrate the 
 depths of his being. Two feelings now began to 
 struggle within him : bitter grief for the way in which he 
 had treated the Christ, consuming love for Him Who 
 yet remained patient ; and in the heat of this internal 
 conflict his heart brake, and he died. Again the priest 
 was summoned ; and, as he looked on the calm peace 
 that had succeeded the look of anguish on the face of 
 the artist, he cried, "He has now what he sought for, 
 the peace of God which passeth all understanding." 
 
 The legend embodies for us two truths of great 
 importance : the one that no past, however black, may 
 prevent our knowing the Lord, that this depends solely 
 on the desire to do so, and that if the effort be but 
 strong enough, Christ will be revealed ; the other is
 
 Vital Religion. 121 
 
 that our growth in that knowledge depends on our 
 persistence in the path of penitence. The legend must 
 not be pressed. No distinction can be drawn between 
 the freedom gained by the revelation of Christ and 
 His full absolution. The latter, when it falls on the 
 truly penitent heart, always brings a revelation, and 
 therefore freedom. But the gradual development of 
 penitence concurrently with the progressive knowledge 
 of the Lord is most true, and it is only in its last stages 
 that we realize what the Psalmist expressed so forcibly in 
 the words, "Against Thee only have I sinned, and done 
 this evil in Thy sight."* 
 
 Ps. li. 4.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Assurance of Knowledge. 
 
 Hereby we know that we know Him, if we keep His 
 commandments. — I John ii. 3. 
 
 WE have already spoken of the ways in which 
 we may know our Lord and of the hindrance 
 which sin presents. It may now be reasonably asked 
 by one who is persuaded that this knowledge is the 
 greatest gift that God can give, whether there is not 
 some definite sign by which he may be assured that 
 he has it. He may say with truth that he is sometimes 
 inclined to doubt his own experience ; that he may be 
 regarding as manifestations signs which are simply 
 coincidences ; that he may be supposing that he is 
 growing in knowledge because his feelings are from time 
 to time stirred in singing some hymn or in listening 
 to some sermon. He desires, quite rightly, to find 
 some external test which may make this knowledge a 
 matter of certainty. His very modesty makes him seek 
 for some characteristic mark, less selfish, less uncertain, 
 by which he may test the manifestations which he 
 believes are now and again accorded to him. 
 
 It is this that the Apostle who, perhaps, knew our 
 Lord best gives us. He writes, as though he had 
 our difficulty in view, " Hereby we do know that we
 
 Vital Religion. 123 
 
 know Him, if we keep His commandments."* And if 
 we ask what he means by His commandments, he 
 replies: "This is His commandment, That we should 
 believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love 
 one another."f Any one who fails to do this, and yet 
 imagines that he knows God, "is a liar, and the truth 
 is not in him."+ 
 
 There is no occasion to say anything about faith in 
 the name of Jesus Christ ; that we can see is obviously 
 necessary for the knowledge of Him. It is not, however, 
 so obvious how the love of others is a test of know- 
 ledge. And yet that it is so is plain, by such other 
 passages from his letter as " Every one that loveth .. . . 
 knoweth God,"§ and " he that loveth not, knoweth not 
 God. "| [ In these words S. John seems to take for granted 
 that the man who loves, no matter in what other ways 
 he fails, knows God ; while the man who misses this, 
 and yet possesses other qualifications, knows not God. 
 Knowing God and loving our neighbour are identical. 
 
 Here, then, we have the test we are seeking. There 
 can be no mistake about its reliability, and none 
 whatever as to the kind of assurance it conveys. It 
 is a sign quite unmistakable in character, as little due 
 to fancy as it is to our own power. It is not that 
 interest in everybody which is born of curiosity, nor that 
 general amiability of temperament which finds its own 
 pleasure in having its relations with others as smooth as 
 possible. It has no limitations, whether of family, 
 country, or creed, though it is necessarily stronger and 
 deeper where there is some natural basis of sympathy. 
 It is not simply an enthusiasm for humanity at large, 
 but rather devotion to the individuals composing it. It 
 
 * 1 John ii. 3. t I John iii. 23. + 1 John ii. 4. 
 
 § I John iv. 7. |, 1 John iv. 8.
 
 124 Vital Religion. 
 
 is generally supposed that it is easier of cultivation than 
 the love of God ; and yet that, as we have seen, has a 
 groundwork, a starting place, which this has not. We 
 know that God loves us ; and we know also that He, 
 with His adorable perfections, is lovable. To know Him 
 is to love Him. These advantages are, for the most part, 
 absent in the claim that our neighbour has upon us. In 
 our family and amongst our friends we may be loved, 
 and, therefore, able to love ; but the world, which is 
 made up of those whom we ought to love, is indifferent 
 to us. There are also those whom to know is to love ; 
 but there are others, so disfigured by vices or selfish- 
 ness, that we are afraid lest further knowledge should 
 engender hatred rather than love. If, then, we find 
 that a love of these is growing up within us, we may 
 be sure that we know Him Who loved all men and 
 gave Himself for them. But how can it be produced, 
 and what has knowledge to do with it ? 
 
 Now, it is not difficult to see that if we know God 
 we shall be filled with love. God is Love, and to know 
 love is to catch its spirit. Let us take an illustration 
 to make this clear. We rise one morning rather 
 depressed, not only feeling out of sorts with our work, 
 but with those with whom we live. An invitation from 
 a friend near by lies on our table. He is, so far as 
 our experience goes, the most perfect embodiment of 
 human love that we know. Feeling that our work is 
 likely to drag heavily under the present circumstances, 
 and that time ran be spared, we gladly avail ourselves 
 of the opportunity his kindness affords us. On the 
 road to his house we overtake some unfortunate 
 who appeals for alms. We say something sharp and 
 pass on, indignant with the man's persistence and 
 our own curt rejection. We turn in to our friend's
 
 Vital Religion. 125 
 
 grounds, and in the cheerful bright look of the 
 men about , ; the place seem to see the reflection 
 of the master's kindness. The servant who answers 
 the door has the same welcome look on her face. 
 Whilst waiting in the drawing room, a child of the house 
 comes in to entertain us and apologize for her father's 
 temporary absence. Here, again, we find the same 
 disinterested affection that we had noticed before, and 
 in the child's efforts to please we are already beginning 
 to feel sensibly better. At last our friend enters, 
 evidently glad to see us. There is no fuss, no patronage, 
 no forced appearance of amiability, as though he were 
 fulfilling a duty which required a stimulus. He is at 
 once interested in our affairs, dismisses our gloom with 
 his sunshine, our depression with his hopefulness. 
 Whilst we are talking, the poor wretched creature who 
 asked our help appears at the door. We make some 
 remark about the nuisance of such people, but find that 
 our friend looks pained. With apology for deserting 
 us for a moment, he leaves the room ; and we presently 
 see him giving the same care, attention and sympathy 
 to the wanderer that he gave us. He takes him to a 
 bench under the tree, where plain food is provided, 
 and he further gives him some safe means of help in 
 a recommendation or letter to some acquaintance in a 
 neighbouring town. Our friend returns to us, giving 
 himself with the same unrestrained freedom and joy 
 to our needs that he had shewn before he left us. We 
 spend the morning in a home of sunshine and love, 
 and return to our house with changed feelings and new 
 hopes. The half-written letter of angry remonstrance 
 with some business man we throw into the waste paper 
 basket ; the promise we had made to get a clerkship 
 for a friend's son we set about fulfilling ; the long,
 
 i 26 Vital Religion. 
 
 expected visit to cheer a dull neighbour is at last 
 paid. The cloud that lay so heavily over our work 
 has lifted. We have known love, and have already 
 begun to enjoy the taste of loving. Love has entered 
 our being, and is now finding its way out. " Every 
 one that knoweth love, loveth." This is a human 
 experience, an experience every one has probably felt 
 and enjoyed. Its effect may not have lasted long, but 
 we have known it. 
 
 Now, that love which we have imagined is only the 
 reflected love of Christ. It bears the same resemblance 
 to His love that moonlight does to sunlight. It is 
 beautiful, but has neither the strength nor warmth of 
 Christ's love. Let us suppose that, instead of our 
 friend's house, the house had been that of Christ. The 
 Apostles would have been the servants. Imagine what 
 a welcome we should have had as we passed within the 
 circle of His society. Think how S. Peter and S. John 
 would have given themselves to us; how eager they 
 would have been that we should know Him, and thus 
 get rid of our sadness. And as we waited our turn, 
 possibly we should see Him at work with some sufferer 
 who had sought His help. How gentle, and yet how 
 firm! how patient, and yet encouraging! How absorbed 
 and concentrated in the work ! and, when once the 
 human chord was touched, how immediate the response! 
 "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!" And 
 then let us try and realize what it would have been 
 as He turned from that happy, joyous sufferer, now 
 released from his pain, to ourselves. How rested we 
 should feel as we came under the brightness of that 
 same strong love ; how strengthened and encouraged 
 as we found the same devotion to our interests, the 
 same patient consideration, the same insight into our
 
 Vital Religion. 127 
 
 difficulties, and anxiety to free us from them. Can we 
 suppose that if we had once known it we should be 
 ever quite the same again ? Perhaps, as we passed away, 
 we should hear the words, " Freely ye have received, 
 freely give," and rejoice in carrying to others the 
 blessing we had received. To have known His love 
 would be to love. 
 
 But here, again, it may be said : " We are ready to 
 grant that had we been in His fellowship, that Society 
 which He founded, we should have a larger trust in men, 
 a deeper compassion for their needs, and a more sincere 
 love for their virtues, but that experience is denied us. 
 We are obliged to imagine instead of realize, to draw 
 a picture from the mind instead of from life." And yet 
 there are others who have been in our position who 
 have rivalled the Twelve in their devotion to Humanity, 
 their love for the individual members of the Race, 
 though they have been without the daily sensible 
 experience of His love that the Apostles experienced. 
 Let us take the case of S. Paul. Consider his out- 
 look on Human Society before he knows Christ. 
 The world is for him divided into two parts, the one 
 infinitely larger than the other, consisting of " dogs 
 of Gentiles"; the other, of the "sons of Abraham." 
 It is nothing to him that in the larger class there have 
 been books and characters produced which rival some 
 of those that Israel has known. It is nothing to him 
 that pride, arrogance and obstinacy are the characteristic 
 marks of his countrymen. The larger half are doomed 
 to destruction, the smaller chosen for salvation. He 
 has the narrowness and bigotry of a Spanish Inquisitor; 
 and when the Christian sect sprang up, he was foremost 
 in hunting it to death. He not only gladly assumed 
 the responsibility for Stephen's death, but would have
 
 128 Vital Religion. 
 
 exterminated the whole body of the disciples had he been 
 able. He then passes under the experience of the love 
 of Christ. He sees it as expressed to others, as realized 
 by himself, and a change takes place which is, on every 
 other ground than the knowledge of Christ, inexplicable. 
 The "dogs of Gentiles," whom he had cursed and spat 
 on, are the men whose liberties he now takes on his 
 own shoulders. The Jews who, in their hatred of the 
 renegade, would gladly have put him to death, are not 
 only met by love and devotion, but by a readiness to 
 be " wiped out of the book of the living," if by so doing 
 he could save them. All narrowness disappears. He 
 takes the whole human race into his large heart. He 
 would win every one, for he loves every one. To the 
 Jews, he became a Jew ; to those under the law, as 
 under the law ; to those without law, as one without 
 law ; to the weak, as one weak : he became all things 
 to all men, that he might win some.* And this devotion 
 was not so catholic as to cease to become individualistic. 
 We have only to turn to the last chapter of his letter to 
 the Romans to see how many and intimate his friend- 
 ships were. He had known love, and henceforth he 
 loved men with all the passion of a regenerate nature. 
 
 But S. Paul is not a solitary illustration of the prin- 
 ciple we are trying to explain. History records many 
 others ; so many, indeed, that it would be impossible 
 to set down the names even of those whose memory 
 our own country cherishes. They knew the Lord, and 
 therefore loved the brethren. They made the old 
 Gospel scenes live before them, and in the light that 
 fell from them they went forth with an incredible 
 compassion for men's needs. To be a Christian was 
 to be in love with all mankind. We in these days, 
 to whom such a deep and broad catholic love is strange, 
 
 * i Cor. ix. 21-22.
 
 Vital Religion. 129 
 
 ask how it is that they found all men sufficiently 
 interesting to love. To our eyes the mass of mankind 
 seems dull and commonplace, and such features as it 
 has often repel rather than attract us. The foreigner, 
 the aristocrat, the middle-class people, the poor, as they 
 come under our notice, awaken a momentary curiosity, 
 but it soons disappears, and they are quickly dismissed 
 from our mind. These apostolic Christians, on the other 
 hand, saw in the Asiatic, the Greek and the Roman, in 
 the proconsuls, merchants, and poor slaves something 
 that was quite independent of racial or class distinctions ; 
 and that something excited their love. What was it ? 
 
 In the first place, they had learned through their 
 discipleship in His school to have no respect of men's 
 persons as such. As S. James expresses it in his 
 Epistle, they had not the faith of Jesus Christ with respect 
 of persons ;* it was impossible that they could have. 
 The dress, manner, speech of those with whom they 
 met had a very subordinate place in any estimate they 
 passed on the men who sought their help. And, in the 
 second place, being gifted with the Spirit of Love, they 
 had insight sufficient to penetrate beneath these acci- 
 dental circumstances and see the image of Christ, which 
 they knew to be implanted within them. Somewhere 
 His feature, and that a new one, would be found. 
 They worked in the faith of it, and often had the joy of 
 finding this " pearl of great price " buried beneath a 
 heap of moral rubbish. " The Head of every man is 
 Christ. "f The image of every man is in Christ, for 
 in Him man was made ;\ the spirit of every man is His 
 candle,§ to use the quaint metaphor of Scripture, 
 waiting to be illuminated by the light of His divine 
 love. No one, then, could be commonplace ; no one 
 
 * S. James ii. i. t i Cor. xi. 3. J 1 Cor. ii. 10. § Prov. xx. 27. 
 
 9
 
 130 Vital Religion 
 
 could be dull. Lack of interest shewed ignorance of 
 Christ's mind ; lack of love shewed ignorance of Christ's 
 heart. To know is to love. 
 
 But it may be asked, in conclusion, What about the 
 vicious, the tyrannical, the brutal ? Can they be loved ? 
 The answer is, Did He love them ? It is true that before 
 Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate He was in the main silent; to 
 them He made no moving appeals, gave no declarations 
 of His love ; but under such conditions the passage of 
 love was impossible, the channel was dammed up, and 
 any expression would have done more harm than good. 
 To all three, however, He gave the best that was 
 possible, the opportunity that was most likely to bring 
 them to repentance. It may not be possible always 
 to express our love, but this ought to be, as it was with 
 Him, always ready for expression. Even in the very 
 worst cases, we have only to place ourselves by imagina- 
 tion in the circumstances that they have known from 
 their earliest years to feel deep compassion for the 
 difficulties in which their lives have been involved. If 
 they have fallen among thieves, been wounded and left 
 half dead, it is our part to try with infinite patience 
 to bring them round, for that was the work of the Good 
 Samaritan, Whose steps we ought to follow and Whose 
 Mind we desire to know. 
 
 And we may further remember that, however striking 
 the contrast may be between the rudeness, coarseness 
 and sensuality of the degraded, and the refinement and 
 gentleness of those who have been brought up under 
 happier circumstances, that contrast is not so great as 
 that which exists between us and Christ. *A story 
 is told of a Swedish lady who was for long repelled 
 by a little boy in a Home, over which she watched with 
 
 * Step by Step, written by Miss Ebba de Ramsay, p. 56.
 
 Vital Religion. 131 
 
 much devotion. He was not only repulsive in feature 
 and complexion, but had little else than his power of 
 crying to distinguish him from a corpse. He never 
 seemed to take notice of her, but only scratched her, as 
 he did everybody he could reach, particularly aiming at 
 people's eyes, — thus he had some intellect, at least the 
 instinct of doing evil. The tenderness of his god- 
 mother's heart was sorely tried, and she began to 
 despair of giving any real help. One Sunday she 
 dreamed a dream. In her dream she saw herself in the 
 lap of Christ. She was amazed at her own ugliness and 
 foulness, at the contrast between herself and His purity 
 and beauty. And yet His love saw no hindrance ; It 
 overleapt the barrier of moral degradation, and fastened 
 with all Its strength on her soul. When she awoke, she 
 saw the meaning. A spirit of undefinable sympathy and 
 compassion filled her soul. She bent down over the little 
 one, and did what she had never done before, kissed it. 
 That kiss awakened a response in the heart of the child, 
 who gave her back a smile so sweet that she had never 
 seen one like it before. The child was conquered. 
 The story expresses a great truth. We, too, may well 
 feel with the great Apostle that, when all things are 
 taken into consideration, "I am the chief of sinners," 
 i.e., no case is so bad as ours; and the recollection ought 
 to move us, as it did him, to great tenderness and 
 compassion. There are, then, no impossibilities with 
 love. We cannot excuse ourselves on the ground that 
 the Apostles' assurance of Christ's love was necessarily 
 different from ours. If we know Him, we too shall love. 
 We can now understand why our Lord laid such 
 stress on His disciples' "abiding in Him" and "abiding 
 in His love."* It was the knowledge of Him and His 
 love that would be the source and spring of the know- 
 
 * S. John xv. 9. 9 — 2
 
 132 Vital Religion 
 
 ledge and love of mankind. If we ask what was meant 
 by "abiding," we can hardly doubt that it was the 
 definite study and thought of Him, the frequent com- 
 munion and fellowship with Him, the countless acts 
 of faith in Him, the intelligent and reverent use of all 
 those means which He has provided for our knowing 
 Him better. Knowledge is the spring of conduct ; and 
 conduct, especially that side of it which relates to our 
 brethren and neighbours, is the measure of knowledge. 
 Love, then, is the assurance of the knowledge of the 
 Lord. As we find that not only the people we meet 
 are becoming more interesting to us, but their needs and 
 difficulties are exciting in us a deep compassion, as we 
 find that those to whom we are by kinship or friendship 
 attached are becoming more and more to us, then we 
 may be sure that we are growing in the knowledge 
 of Christ. It may be that to some who are conscious 
 of this enthusiasm, not only for humanity but for 
 individuals, the Christ presented to them in sermons 
 and books is strange. Of such we say, they may not 
 know the presentation, but they know the real Christ 
 that lies behind it, otherwise such a love as that which 
 they express would be impossible. He will be no 
 stranger to them when they meet. But, on the contrary, 
 he to whom the world of men and women is dull and 
 tasteless, he who feels no warmth in looking into the 
 face of a little child, he who has no loves, no com- 
 passions, then, though he could tell every line in the 
 Gospel portrait and speak eloquently of the faith his 
 Christ inspires, he does not really know Him. Nay, 
 his very profession is a falsehood ; for he that saith, 
 "I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments," 
 the chief of which is that we love one another, " is a 
 liar, and the truth is not in him."* 
 
 I John ii. 4.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Knowledge of the Son in His Relation 
 to the Father. 
 
 The Son can do nothing of Himself. — S. John v. 19. 
 
 IN the course of our study of the personal knowledge 
 of the Son, it has no doubt been felt by some that 
 we have as yet said nothing of the knowledge of the 
 Father. Surprise may have been expressed that that 
 doctrine which has, through the labours of Maurice, 
 Erskine, Kingsley and others been of such great service 
 in clearing away misconceptions of the Atonement, as 
 well as in establishing on firm grounds the truth that 
 God is essentially Love, has not been alluded to, and that 
 all the attention has been concentrated on the Second 
 rather than the First Person of the Holy Trinity. 
 
 "Do you know the Father?" was the pathetic question 
 which, according to Dean Stanley, Erskine once asked of 
 a Scotch shepherd. "Do you know the Father?" not 
 "Do you know Jesus Christ?" It was natural, perhaps, in 
 the fervour that the restoration of the doctrine of the 
 Divine Fatherhood caused that the question should take 
 this shape; and yet, as we shall see, the more direct and 
 definite form of the question would have been, " Do you 
 know Jesus Christ?" We may, however, be told to look 
 at our Prayers, at the Liturgies, nay, at the Lord's
 
 134 Vital Religion 
 
 Prayer itself, and see whether in devotion we are not 
 bidden to think chiefly of the Father; to look at the 
 Psalms, the Church's Prayer Book for centuries, and see 
 whether it is not the knowledge of the eternal God 
 that incites and stirs human praise ; to listen to criticism 
 that has been, and is being, passed by those whose 
 judgment has weight, on our Hymns Ancient and 
 Modern, which is that the collection as a whole departs 
 from the Christian standard in having more rather than 
 fewer hymns addressed to the Son ; nay, to look at the 
 Gospels and there see for ourselves that the teaching of 
 our Lord is in the main a teaching of the Father. 
 
 The answer to this criticism is, we think, contained in 
 our Lord's words: "No man knoweth .... who the 
 Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will 
 reveal Him."* "I am the Way. ... No man cometh 
 unto the Father, but by Me." The study of the personal 
 knowledge of the Father must first be concentrated on 
 the Son. Necessarily so, because there is no certain 
 revelation of God except in the Son. That, indeed, was 
 the object of the Incarnation, to make known the Father. 
 The wish expressed by S. Philip, " Lord, shew us the 
 Father, and it sufnceth us,"t was a natural one. It was 
 not born of theological discussion, was not the offspring 
 of a religious philosopher, but was the earnest question of 
 a working man. It is, then, widely representative of the 
 feeling of all serious minded men that if the Father, the 
 great Jehovah, could be seen and known, there would 
 be nothing further to ask for. We long to get behind 
 the outward, and see the inward that sustains it; to push 
 behind the phenomena of nature, and find ourselves in 
 His presence Who made them ; to pass from the vision 
 
 * S. Luke x. 22. ; S. John xiv. 8.
 
 Vital Religion. 135 
 
 of God manifest in the Flesh to that which men have 
 called the Beatific Vision. And yet to us as to him, 
 made up as we all are of flesh as well as spirit, there is 
 but one answer: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
 Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father."* 
 Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in spite of the 
 natural limitations that the outward presents in form, 
 language and thought, is the best, the only manifestation 
 of the Father that is possible to us, that would be in the 
 least intelligible. And it is the work of the blessed 
 Spirit to carry us through these limitations, to enable us 
 to penetrate behind the form and language of the 
 Incarnate Son — "the veil" of His flesh, as it is called — 
 and to shew us in and through the Son, the Father. 
 The study of the Son, then, never rests in the Son, but 
 carries us beyond Him to the Father, to Whom the Son 
 is the Way. We may, therefore, nay, must predicate all 
 that we learn of the Son as belonging truly to the 
 Father. His love of the publicans and sinners, His 
 pity for the children and the weak, His sympathy with 
 suffering are as truly attributes of the Father as they are 
 of the Son. He is not more loving, more tender or 
 compassionate, nor is He less intolerant of pride and 
 hypocrisy. The Son is "the express image of His sub- 
 stance, "f We are not, then, ignoring the Father in 
 our study of the Son; nay, we are taking the surest 
 steps towards knowing Him. 
 
 At the same time, the question directs our attention to 
 a side of the subject which we have not yet considered. 
 We have so far thought of our Lord as He is in Him- 
 self. We have looked at all such helps as may lead us 
 to understand Him as He stands before us in His 
 
 * S. John xiv. 9. t Heb. i. 3.
 
 136 Vital Religion. 
 
 relation to men. We shall, however, be missing very 
 much if we do not look at Him in His relation to the 
 Father. This relationship is, as we learn from the 
 Gospel of S. John, brought very prominently before us 
 in our Lord's discourses. When rebuked because His 
 miracles were wrought on the Sabbath day, it was 
 sufficient to say that it was the Father's work, done by 
 His express desire; when charged with false teaching, 
 the reply is, "My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent 
 Me."* His Divine Sonship is ever before us; and, unless 
 we study its main features, we shall not only fail in 
 knowing the Son as we ought, but also in knowing the 
 Father. That this was from the first clearly appre- 
 hended by the disciples is manifest from any study we 
 make of the way in which they learnt to know Who our 
 Lord was. 
 
 Every thoughtful reader of the New Testament who 
 starts with a clear conception of the Jewish doctrine 
 of the Unity of God, who remembers that the Creed 
 which S. John and S. Peter and the other Galilean 
 Apostles said, probably every day of their life, was " The 
 Lord our God; the Lord, He is One,"t may have 
 wondered how it was that men whose minds were not 
 trained to nice theological distinctions came to confess 
 their Master as God without a violent break with the 
 past. How did they come to be Christians without 
 ceasing to be essentially Jews ? How could they, who 
 had learned that God was One, and who were prepared 
 to die for that faith, ever recognize that in this unity of 
 Godhead there were different Persons ? That they 
 learned it by experience we know; for in no sense was 
 the apostolic body a theological college, with dogmatics 
 
 * S. John vii. 16. j Deut. vi. 4 ; S. Mark xii. 29.
 
 Vital Religion. 13J 
 
 for its main subject. What, then, was the experience by 
 which the great dogma of God's Unity was carried safely 
 and uninjured, and yet made ready for the reception of 
 a new life-giving element? 
 
 In the first place, our Lord reiterated again and again 
 their own dogma with the same intensity of conviction 
 that they were accustomed to hear it repeated by their 
 own teachers. He evidently held it as they did. When 
 asked by one of the scribes which was the first com- 
 mandment, He repeated their own creed, "Hear, O 
 Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is One."* And 
 this public expression of His own convictions is 
 emphasized by the prayer which He made in the hearing 
 of the Apostles, in which He addressed His Father as 
 the Only True God.t 
 
 In the second place, though they gradually found 
 themselves, through the lofty claims He made to be 
 their Judge and their chief object of desire, asking, as 
 He did, for an affection prior to husband, wife, father or 
 mother, giving Him a reverence and devotion that they 
 had formerly only associated with Jehovah, yet they had 
 no thought of two Jehovahs. It was always Father and 
 Son. 
 
 At first, no doubt, their idea of Sonship was not far 
 removed from an exalted human sonship, as their con- 
 ception of the Messiah was not very different from that 
 of a Jewish Prince who should be a universal monarch. 
 It is true that such sayings as " My Father is greater 
 than I," " I and My Father are One,"! sounded very 
 strangely if they came from the lips of one who was only 
 a human son. Any comparison that any man sought to 
 
 * S. Mark xii. 29. f S. John xvii. 3. 
 
 + S. John xiv. 28 ; x. 36.
 
 138 Vital Religion. 
 
 set up between himself and God was clearly absurd ; 
 the fact, then, that He did it must of itself point to a 
 personality higher, more august than that of a creature. 
 Yet it is doubtful how far they took in or remembered 
 such extremely difficult thoughts. Some scenes in 
 which the claim was implied could never be forgotten. 
 There was that one, for example, when the Jews took 
 up stones to stone Him for blasphemy in claiming 
 equality with God. How quiet His bearing! How free 
 from any disclaimer was His reply! How He assumed 
 that the One sanctified by the Father and sent into the 
 world must be One with the Father.* 
 
 But these words and scenes were not easy to under- 
 stand, and the Apostles did not, till after Pentecost, 
 attempt to harmonize the apparently conflicting truths 
 that their experience of Him and His teaching was 
 continually creating. They then learnt as an inviolable 
 truth that He was Son, as they knew that Jehovah was 
 Father. Now, what did this mean? It meant nothing 
 less than a fresh discovery ; for it meant that all that side 
 of life which had been associated with contempt, the 
 side of dependence and obedience, was equally divine 
 with that side of life which the world specially com- 
 mended, the side of independence and authority. He 
 Who gradually obtained more and more of their homage, 
 till they gave Him equal honour with the Father, was 
 continually associated in their minds with those 
 characteristics the world never understood: the passive 
 virtues, as they may be called, meekness, dependence, 
 receptiveness. He Whom they gladly acknowledged to 
 be their King was yet their servant, ministering to their 
 needs as none had ever done before. He Whom they 
 
 * S. John x. 36.
 
 Vital Religion. 139 
 
 knew to be the Deliverer of the world claimed no 
 original power whatever: "The Son" (it is to be noted 
 that He does not say "Son of Man") "can do nothing 
 of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do";* or, in 
 stronger language, " I can of Mine own self do 
 nothing."! He Whom they recognized as the Prophet 
 greater than Moses, yet forbade them to suppose that He 
 had Himself formed His teaching, that it was His in any 
 independent sense. " My doctrine is not Mine, but His 
 that sent Me."J Indeed, it was so clear, that in some way 
 He Who seemed above all rule and authority was yet 
 under it, that the Roman centurion, heathen though he 
 was, appealed to it as a proof that He could heal His 
 servant without seeing. " I also am a man set under 
 authority, and I say unto this man, Go, and he goeth; 
 and to that man, Do this, and he doeth it."§ 
 
 The world, indeed, was tired of this continual refer- 
 ence to Another, and rejected Him largely on the 
 ground of it. They preferred that anyone who came 
 amongst them as a teacher or leader should come in his 
 own name. That was the manly thing to do, to be 
 independent, to stand on your own ground. Our Lord 
 knew this, and rebuked the Jews for sharing it. "I am 
 come in My Father's Name, and ye receive Me not: if 
 another come in his own name, him ye will receive."|| 
 But, though neither the world nor the Church appre- 
 ciated it, it appealed to the religious sense of the 
 disciples. Knowing Him as they did, they could see 
 that it did not proceed, as it might have done with 
 any one else, from weakness or cowardice. It was not 
 an endeavour to shelter His actions or statements under 
 
 * S. John v. 19. f S. John v. 30. % S. John vii. 16. 
 § S. Luke vii. 8. II S. John v. 43.
 
 140 Vital Religion 
 
 the name of the Great Invisible, Who could not be 
 challenged for confirmation or denial. No one was so 
 strong, so courageous, so absolutely fearless as He was. 
 Even His enemies admitted that He cared not for the 
 person of men. Dependence, Sonship, Obedience were 
 divine, then. The superiority attached to fatherhood 
 and the inferiority that belonged to sonship, the dignity 
 attached to authority and the contempt associated with 
 obedience needed correction. It was as great to obey 
 as to command ; as divine a thing to carry out a plan as 
 to originate it; as full of dignity to be a good son as a 
 good father. Such a recognition gradually carried with 
 it the conception that the living God, embodying in 
 Himself, as He must necessarily do, all perfections, 
 must in some way have these opposite characteristics. 
 It was not difficult, then, to acknowledge that the Son 
 was God as the Father was God. 
 
 Now, this fresh knowledge of God, which had been 
 built up by their experience of what their Master had 
 said and done, was a knowledge that they and the 
 world sorely needed ; a knowledge that nearly nineteen 
 centuries have failed to completely establish; but a 
 knowledge that, when entertained, brings real power, 
 according to the promise : " This is life eternal, that 
 they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ, Whom Thou hast sent."* 
 
 In the first place, it helps us in the life of sonship. 
 This, whether experienced in the work of a servant, a 
 clerk, or a clergyman, presents the greatest difficulties. 
 It is easier to exercise authority than to obey; pleasanter 
 to give orders than to carry them out ; more natural to 
 domineer than to submit. We need, as Mr. R. K. 
 
 * S. John xvii. 3.
 
 Vital Religion. 141 
 
 Hutton reminds us in his famous essay, " The Incarna- 
 tion and Principles of Evidence," "the inspiration and 
 present help of a perfect filial will. We cannot conceive 
 the Father as sharing in that dependent attitude which 
 is our principal spiritual want. It is a father's perfection 
 to originate, a son's to receive. We crave sympathy and 
 aid in the receptive life. We need the will to be good 
 as sons, and to this the vivid faith in the help of a true 
 Son is essential. Such a revelation alone makes 
 humility divine rather than human, eternal instead of 
 temporary and finite ; such a revelation alone refers the 
 origin of self-sacrifice to heaven rather than earth." 
 
 It is, then, by contemplating Him in His eternal 
 submission to the Father, in His joy at doing His Will, 
 in His continuous upward look that we learn the glory 
 of obedience, the honour that belongs to the life of 
 dependence. " I am among you as he that serveth " is 
 not only the expression of Christ's life, but the motto of 
 Divine living. It may be said that the analogy fails, 
 because the Will of the Father was always good, whereas 
 the will of those under whom we are set is sometimes 
 harsh and often mistaken. But was that Will always 
 seen as desirable? What does the agony in Gethsemane 
 which was expressed in the words, "Father, if Thou be 
 willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My 
 will, but Thine, be done,"* mean, but that for the com- 
 plete entering into our needs He allowed the Divine 
 Will to be for the time obscured, and that He blessed it 
 even when hidden ? Even, then, when we see not, there 
 is a virtue in obedience ; nay, it may be truly said that 
 obedience is never tested till the path along which it 
 points is unintelligible. 
 
 * S. Luke xxii. 42.
 
 142 Vital Religion. 
 
 The independence, then, which is a characteristic 
 feature in every department of life, which is made so 
 much of and so loudly applauded by those who are 
 interested in our taking a stand, is not of God. It 
 is true that the oppression of others, the maintenance 
 of a great principle, may justify, nay, demand an attitude 
 of opposition; but how clear the case must be before 
 we change the normal spirit of the Christian life for 
 the abnormal. How positive we must be before we 
 change the attitude of dependence, which, perhaps, 
 belongs to our position, and, therefore, claims first 
 recognition, for that of independence. And then, when 
 the stand is taken, how careful to catch His spirit Who . 
 shewed even before Pilate and Herod quiet calmness 
 and dignified submission rather than the force of legions 
 of angels which was at His command. 
 
 Again, we say, as in the Chapter on " Suffering," we 
 can only know Him if we are willing to share His mind. 
 And the knowledge of that mind carries us further than 
 our relations towards those set over us. One stands 
 to us in that same absolute relation that the Father 
 stands to the Son. Our Lord expresses it in these 
 words: "As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live 
 by the Father: so he that eateth Me, even he shall live 
 by Me."* Christ, then, is our Lord and Master. To 
 live by Christ is to be absolutely, entirely and con- 
 tinuously dependent upon Him. It is the recognition 
 that no other rule of life is possible for us but that 
 which He Himself expresses: "I can do nothing of 
 Myself"; "As I hear, I judge"; "My teaching is not 
 Mine." It is to be taken up into His life: to be what 
 the branches are to the vine; to derive all our physical, 
 
 • S. John vi. 57.
 
 Vital Religion. 14; 
 
 intellectual and spiritual strength from Him. It is to 
 recognize frankly that we can do nothing safely but 
 what we see Christ doing, i.e., what we recognize as a 
 principle in His life.* It is to go forth to our work 
 in Christ's name, to acknowledge His power in it, and 
 to refer whatever success we may obtain to Him. It 
 is to realize, not as a theological dogma, but as a 
 present fact, that we are in Christ and that Christ is in 
 us, that He is the Head and we are the members. 
 It is to feel, as an ever present consciousness, that 
 our work is nothing in itself, though great in Him. 
 
 Emerson, in his essay on " The American Scholar," 
 tells us that "it is one of those fables which, out of an 
 unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom ; 
 that the Gods in the beginning divided Man into men, 
 that he might be more helpful to himself, just as the 
 hand was divided into fingers to answer its end. The 
 old fable," he goes on to say, "covers a doctrine ever 
 new and sublime ; that there is one Man — present to all 
 particular men only partially, or through one faculty; 
 and that you must take the whole society to find the 
 whole Man."f The fable and the comment are more 
 true than even Emerson himself recognized. Christ is 
 that one Man, and we are all parts of Him: "the priest, 
 the scholar, the statesman, the producer, the soldier," 
 the old and the young, the man, the woman, the child 
 are, as it were, fingers of that One Human Hand which 
 sustains our world, and which, in the language of 
 the Psalms, " bears up the pillars " and guides the 
 destinies of the universe. How foolish and absurd, not 
 to say how sinful, for the member to follow out his own 
 
 * S. John v. 15. 
 f Emerson : Miscellanies, p. 63.
 
 144 Vital Religion. 
 
 little plans, his own private ends ! In that case, the 
 Christ not acting in him, man becomes a thing. "The 
 planter," to quote Emerson's words again, only sub- 
 stituting Christ for Man, " sent out into the field to 
 gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true 
 dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart 
 and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer instead 
 of Christ on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever 
 gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the 
 routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. 
 The priest becomes a form ; the attorney, a statute 
 book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of 
 the ship." And the state of society, where the Head 
 Who keeps all together is not recognized, becomes one 
 in which "the members have suffered amputation from 
 the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters — 
 a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never 
 a man." It is not merely that, through failure to 
 recognize our part in Christ and Christ in us, we 
 become weak, but that we become nothing: gradually 
 lose our dignity as men, and sink into decaying forces of 
 humanity, scarcely distinguishable from the animals 
 about us. 
 
 Christ's relationship to His Father, then, is a subject 
 likely to prove most fruitful when we remember that 
 it is the Pattern set for our imitation : that we are to be 
 to Him what He was and is to the Father: that our 
 glory, as His, lies in Another; that our life, as His, lies 
 in Another; that only as we abide, consciously, intel- 
 ligently and continuously in Him, can the magnificent 
 future reserved for us be attained.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Knowledge of Christ and Unity. 
 
 That they may be one, even as We are One : I in them, and Thou 
 in Me, that they may be perfected into one. — S. John xvii. 
 22-23. 
 
 WE have seen in the last chapter what effect the 
 knowledge of our Lord as the Son of God 
 must have upon our personal lives, how it will strengthen 
 and develop the life of dependence ; in this chapter 
 we propose to continue the subject further, and see the 
 influence the same truth will have upon our relations 
 with others, whether in the home or the Church. 
 
 It is clear from our Lord's words in S. John xvii. 22, 
 23, quoted above, that He hopes to see perfected in the 
 world the same unity as is found in the Divine relations 
 of the Persons of the blessed Godhead. "There is," 
 writes Bishop Westcott, "so to speak, an interchange of 
 the energy of the Divine life (' Thou in Me, and I in 
 Thee') which finds a counterpart in the harmonious 
 relations of the members of the Church." And again : 
 "As the Divine Unity consists with a variety of Persons, 
 so, too, the final unity of men does not exclude, but 
 perfectly harmonizes, the separate being of each in the 
 whole."* 
 
 Westcott : Gospel of S. John, p. 246. 
 
 10
 
 146 Vital Religion 
 
 It is, then, our duty to weigh well such words as 
 those our Lord gives us in that most pathetic prayer 
 which He made before He died, to try to discover what 
 elements there are in that glory which He gave His 
 disciples that they might be one, "even as We are 
 One : I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be 
 perfected into one." In such words He seems to imply 
 that if we really know Him, /<?., in His relationship to 
 the Father, that we shall learn the true secret of unity. ' 
 Many have forgotten this. They are looking for unity in 
 the removal of tests, barriers, obligations ; they are 
 considering what number of subjects may be looked 
 upon as common subjects, what others may be dismissed 
 as unimportant ; they are looking earthward instead of 
 heavenward. Carlyle, however, saw this was wrong. He 
 taught us that " only in looking heavenward, not in 
 looking earthward, does what we can call union, mutual 
 love, society, become possible." We look, then, at the 
 Divine relationship of Father and Son to which our 
 Lord points us: to the words, "One, even as We are 
 One"; "One; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in 
 Thee." And looking, we find three principles of unity : — 
 
 (1) Identity of nature ; 
 
 (2) Distinctness of relationships: 
 
 (3) Love. 
 
 (1) Identity of Nature. — 
 
 We are all familiar with those great words of the 
 Creed for which the Church contended so earnestly, 
 "Of one substance with the Father": and if we have 
 read their history, read how all division would have 
 ceased if the party of Athanasius had but agreed to 
 the substitution of one Greek letter for another, had 
 but agreed to substitute the words "of like substance" 
 for those "of one substance," we may have wondered
 
 Vital Religion. 147 
 
 at an obstinacy which seemed intent on victory rather 
 than peace, wondered until we realized that there is 
 the widest possible difference between " likeness " and 
 "identity," and that the latter was declared in the 
 very strongest terms by our Lord in His words, " I and 
 the Father are one " (thing) ; and by His Apostle in 
 the name "Word," which he gives Him; thereby 
 shewing that His relation to the Father was as close 
 as that of the word to the thought which it expresses. 
 We, then, are thankful that the question was never left 
 in doubt, but crystallized in those expressions which the 
 Catholic Church has made her own: "The Godhead 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost 
 is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such 
 as the Father is, such is the Son. The Father Eternal, 
 the Son Eternal; the Father Almighty, the Son Almighty ; 
 the Father is God, the Son is God ; the Father is Lord, 
 the Son Lord." 
 
 The mystery of the Undivided Essence of the God- 
 head, as we call it, is of course beyond us ; but we 
 accept it as a precious truth, a truth forming, if we may 
 dare so to speak, the basis of the relationship between 
 the Father and the Son. Identity of nature : this is 
 the basis of unity. Do we ask how this concerns the 
 subject of Christian unity ? " The true unity of believers, 
 like the Unity of Persons in the Holy Trinity, with which 
 it is compared, is offered as something far more than a 
 mere moral unity of purpose, feeling and affection; it is, 
 in some mysterious mode which we cannot distinctly 
 apprehend, a vital unity."* Nothing is more clear than 
 the loss which the Church has suffered through forget- 
 fulness of this. On the one hand we have those who 
 
 * Weslcott : Gospel of S. John, p. 246. 
 
 TO 2
 
 148 Vital Religion. 
 
 consider that the Church or the Kingdom of God is 
 so wide as to embrace all mankind ; on the other, so 
 narrow that only those who can pronounce a party 
 shibboleth are its members. The first considers that 
 baptism is only an outward recognition of a citizenship 
 which was possessed before. The African savage, living 
 in ignorance of the Gospel, is a member though he 
 knows it not ; or he may know it, and, like the king 
 waiting for his coronation, is looking to his baptism 
 as attesting it in the eyes of the world. A unity of 
 the Church, however, which is to be as comprehensive 
 as the unity of mankind is likely to be so attenuated, 
 so unreal, that it never could make such an impression 
 on the world as would lead to its conversion. 
 
 The second, forgetting the unity of nature conferred 
 by baptism — -" In one Spirit were we all baptized into 
 one body, .... and were all made to drink of one 
 Spirit "* — have cut themselves off from their brethren in 
 Christ, and refused to acknowledge their unity with 
 them in the One body. They have made the basis of 
 unity to consist in a similarity of creed or confession, in 
 something which man has made, in a mere opinion, it 
 may be. 
 
 Now, whilst it is undeniable that there can be no 
 unity where there is a profession of different faiths, 
 whilst it is certain that the Scripture insists on the One 
 Faith as well as the One Baptism, yet many an obstacle 
 may be removed out of the path of unity by a frank 
 recognition of the fact that it is in their baptism, and 
 not in their acknowledgment of the creed, that men are 
 made members of the Church. The Wesleyan, the 
 Presbyterian, the Independent, being duly baptized 
 
 I Cor. xii. 13.
 
 Vital Religion. 149 
 
 into the Sacred Name, are all members of the One 
 Church, are indeed Churchmen, though they may hold 
 opinions at variance with some point of the teaching of 
 the Undivided Church. They are all members of the 
 same Lord, all possessed of His glorious life, all indwelt 
 by His blessed Spirit. This, surely, is a fact of immense 
 significance, and enables us to see a unity in Christ of 
 foundation which embraces almost all Christendom. 
 
 And passing from the Church to the family, how 
 precious we feel the recognition of this foundation 
 truth. Had men realized the truth taught by our Lord, 
 that in marriage husband and wife are one in nature, 
 they twain having become "one flesh,'' how much that 
 has led to divorce would be impossible. Identity of 
 nature is the foundation of unity in the home as well as 
 unity in the Church. 
 
 (2) Distinctness of relationships. — 
 
 But this is only one element in the Divine Unity ; the 
 second is of equal importance, namely, the distinction 
 in personal relationship, or, as it has been named, "the 
 interchange of the energy of the Divine life." We 
 have been taught to confess that in the Unity of the 
 Godhead there is " One Person of the Father, Another 
 of the Son": that there is "One Father, not three 
 Fathers ; One Son, not three Sons." We have been 
 taught to differentiate between the Father and the Son : 
 to acknowledge the Father as a true Father, the Son 
 as a true Son. This lesson has not, however, been so 
 easy to learn as that of the Unity of Nature. So clearly 
 has that truth been taught that there are but few Chris- 
 tians who find any difficulty in such expressions as 
 declare the true Godhead of the Son. That He should 
 be declared to be One with the Father, existing before 
 Abraham, the Eternal Word, the only Way, the only
 
 i 50 Vital Religion. 
 
 Truth, the only Life, the express Image of the Divine 
 Substance, God over all blessed for ever, is what we 
 have been accustomed to believe. We give no heed 
 to any one bringing any other doctrine. This is the 
 faith once delivered to the saints, irrevocable, unalterable, 
 irreversible, in which we try to live, move, and have 
 our being. 
 
 But with this truth there is, as we saw in the last 
 chapter, another which speaks of the Son as doing 
 nothing by Himself, and living by Another. We find, in 
 other words, an interchange of personal life, in which 
 authority belongs to the Father, obedience to the Son ; 
 independence of origination to the Father, but depen- 
 dence to the Son. We find in the Divine Unity two 
 elements apparently contradictory, which alone explain 
 in a unity of perfect equality the paradoxical statements, 
 " My Father is greater than I" and "The Head of Christ 
 is God." That the Greatness and Headship do not refer 
 to Essence is plain, for that has already been declared to 
 be identical with that of the Father; not to Omniscience, 
 Omnipotence, Omnipresence, for "as the Father is 
 Almighty, so the Son is Almighty ; as the Father is 
 incomprehensible, so the Son is incomprehensible." 
 No ; the greatness has respect to relationship. The 
 Father is first, the Son second ; the Father sends, the 
 Son is sent ; the Father speaks, the Son obeys ; the 
 Father authorizes, the Son receives. The life of initia- 
 tion and authority is the life of the Father ; the life of 
 execution and obedience is the life of the Son. The 
 Father is a true Father, willing, sending, ordaining ; the 
 Son is a true Son, hearing, doing, seeking not His own 
 will, but the will of Him that sent Him.* 
 
 *See Pearson: Exposition of the Creed, Article I., pp. 61-76 
 (Cambridge edition.)
 
 Vital Religion. 151 
 
 At first — for our own sense of what is right and wrong 
 is so dulled by pride — we think that there must be 
 inferiority in that position of the Son which the Scripture 
 marks out. We suppose that the life of obedience is 
 lower than the life of authority, the receptive life less 
 exalted than the life of giving. Our Lord's whole life 
 was a correction of this. "Whether is greater," He 
 asks, " he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth ? " 
 Would you not say, He that sitteth at meat ? And yet 
 what is the fact? "I am among you as he that 
 serveth."* 
 
 But this mysterious truth, of what practical concern 
 is it to us in our study of the subject of Unity? It 
 is not difficult, indeed, to see its reference to the unity of 
 the home; for "the Head of every man is Christ, and the 
 head of the woman is the man ; and the Head of Christ 
 is God."t And as the Divine relationship is founded 
 on the Eternal Origin of the Son from the Father, so the 
 human relationship is founded on the temporal origin 
 of the woman from the man ; for " the man is not of the 
 woman, but the woman of the man. "J The unity of the 
 family, then, depends not only on the recognition that 
 the man and the wife are "no longer twain, but one 
 flesh," but on the further recognition that in this one 
 life there are two elements, that of authority and that of 
 service, that of giving and that of receiving. We know 
 how beautifully these two principles are emphasized in 
 the marriage service, where the Church exacts, on the 
 one hand, from the man the rule of giving, that he 
 endow his wife with all his worldly goods, that he give 
 her, so long as he shall live, comfort, protection and 
 loyal affiance ; and, on the other, from the woman the 
 
 * S. Luke xxii. 27. f 1 Cor. xi. 3. + I Cor. xi. 8.
 
 152 Vital Religion. 
 
 rule of obedience and service. And yet, so fallen from 
 1 )ivine light and truth are we that it is this very obliga- 
 tion of obedience and service, the mark, as we have 
 seen, of the eternal life of the Son, that is the subject 
 of so much criticism. It has been supposed that unity 
 must mean a double centre of origination : that there 
 is no equality unless there are two separate spheres 
 of independence, that there can be no peace unless 
 the identity of nature is expressed in identity of office. 
 A little thought, however, will convince us that any 
 such unity will be of a dead, formal character, very 
 different from that of God, which is life. 
 
 Passing from the home, we can see without much 
 difficulty how much real peace the Church would have 
 enjoyed had this second principle of Divine Unity been 
 always uppermost in her life. From the very first, as 
 is evident from the Acts of the Apostles, it has been 
 most difficult to obtain a clear recognition of the blessing 
 that belongs to the life of dependence in the Church. 
 There was a time when many wished to rank as 
 teachers, nay, even as Apostles, when all sought to claim 
 Divine authority. But, in spite of divisions, there was 
 from the first a number of men chosen by the Lord 
 Himself, and invested by Him with Divine authority. 
 This body was so select that, when one of the number 
 failed, though two apparently equally fit men were found 
 to fill his position, only one was added to the number. 
 These Twelve represented our Lord ; and, as time went 
 on, others, like S. Paul, were allowed to exercise the 
 same authority. As death thinned the members of the 
 Apostolic Body, their jurisdiction was given to others, 
 like S. Timothy and S. Titus, and from them to others, 
 to whom in time the general name bishop was exclu- 
 sively applied. So authority, the necessary pledge of
 
 Vital Religion. 153 
 
 unity, was planted in the Church ; planted, it will be 
 observed, by the Lord, not by the Church ; from above, 
 not from beneath. That it found two and then three 
 spheres of operation, that of bishops, priests and deacons, 
 only emphasizes its importance. That the unity of the 
 Church depended upon its recognition is clear from the 
 appeals made by the Apostles to the various Churches 
 to obey those that were set over them in the Lord. For 
 fifteen hundred years, in spite of the autocratic and 
 tyrannical manner in which this authority was exercised, 
 it was scarcely questioned. Then tyranny led to revolt, 
 and revolt to the creation of new centres of authority ; 
 but this time from below, and not from above. A new 
 principle was started, namely, that any congregation of 
 Christian persons could give authority to one of their 
 number to act over them as minister. 
 
 From the purely social point of view there was 
 nothing incorrect in this: but not only was the authority 
 thus conferred of earth, and not of heaven ; not only 
 was the jurisdiction extremely limited, it being necessarily 
 confined to those who had part in the election ; but 
 it was temporal ; lasting, and lasting only, during the 
 good pleasure of the congregation. It was in every 
 respect different from Apostolic Authority, which was of 
 the Lord, and not of men ; which was valid throughout 
 the Church, and not only in one congregation of it ; and 
 which was eternal ; for as princes should they sit on 
 twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And 
 though we arc not told that they conferred this on any 
 successors, yet the fact that the same kind of authority 
 is found after their decease gives a very strong presump- 
 tion in favour of it, almost amounting to proof. 
 
 We have, then, in the Christian Church at present 
 the exercise of two kinds of authority. The one is
 
 154 Vital Religion. 
 
 that which takes for its basis a fact which it relies upon 
 history to prove, that its ministry have the authority 
 which was delegated to them by Apostles through a 
 long line of spiritual ancestors. Whatever may be said 
 about the historical proof, the claim made and unques- 
 tioned for fifteen hundred years is that this authority 
 is from Jesus Christ, and attested by an outward sign, 
 that it is valid everywhere and for all time. The other 
 is that which takes for its basis the congregation, and 
 makes no claim beyond that in which it ministers. 
 Between these two, which are clear and logical, there 
 are others which, like the Presbyterian ministry, rest 
 partly on the one and partly on the other. 
 
 The question which now seriously engages the atten- 
 tion of all thoughtful Christians is how this clashing 
 of authorities may be stayed. The necessity of authority, 
 and that it should possess some Divine sanction, is 
 becoming more and more widely recognized ; and it 
 is considered more and more perilous that its only proof 
 should be the excellence of the works done in the name 
 of Christ. Our Lord tells us plainly that great works 
 may be done by those whom He never recognized.* 
 Authority must, then, have a basis of its own ; and, in 
 spite of all that is said about the difficulty of proving 
 an historic succession, there can be but little question 
 that the care which has been from time immemorial 
 taken in securing the outward sign of it, constitutes 
 prima facie evidence that the historic basis is well 
 founded. ^Yhen this is recognized — and there can be 
 no doubt that its recognition has made great progress 
 within the last fifty years — some method ought to be 
 found whereby the wider, fuller authority might be 
 sought for without disparagement of the authority that 
 
 * S. Matt. vii. 22-2;.
 
 Vital Religion. 155 
 
 has been exercised, it may be, for many years. An 
 illustration of this may be given. A Presbyterian 
 minister of great eminence was asked how he came to 
 seek Orders in the Anglican Church whilst he still 
 believed in the validity of his Presbyterian ordination. 
 His reply was: "I sought a wider jurisdiction." 
 
 It may be that there are many who would be quite 
 able to satisfy any inquiry as to their knowledge of 
 the apostolic faith, and glad to have the wider and 
 fuller authority of the apostolic Church, if in so doing 
 it could be shewn that the step involved no disparage- 
 ment of their previous ministry. In that case it might 
 be possible for the congregation, as well as the pastor, 
 to receive such blessing as such a step would surely 
 bring. But whatever be the method, the fuller know- 
 ledge of our Lord as the eternal Son of God will 
 assuredly bring with it conviction that in the Church 
 of God there must be a well-defined authority and a 
 loyal obedience. No plan for Church unity is likely 
 to succeed where this is ignored. It may be that, 
 at a time when the apostolic authority of the Church 
 was rudely shaken, good men have given their sanction 
 to a ministry suddenly created by the necessities ot 
 the times ; but whatever excuse may be urged then 
 is not valid now, when we have learned, by criticism and 
 history, how surely grounded apostolic authority was 
 from the very first days. To cite but one example: it 
 seems impossible that Ignatius could have written, at 
 the end of the first century, so plainly and strongly as he 
 did on the principle unless he was relying on apostolic 
 tradition. 
 
 (3) Love. 
 
 Enough, however, has been said on this point. We 
 now look at the third element in the Divine Unity,
 
 156 Vital Religion. 
 
 namely, Love. It is from forgetfulness of this that so 
 much difficulty has arisen in the recognition of authority. 
 That word, unhappily, through its associations stands 
 for aloofness, hauteur, severity. It is not the authority 
 of the Father, but of a system, a discipline, an ecclesias- 
 tical body. How different this from that Divine authority 
 which works through love. "The Father loveth the 
 Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth."* 
 "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed 
 all judgment unto the Son : that all men should 
 honour the Son, even as they honour the Father."f 
 This lack of reserve ; this full revelation of the Father's 
 mind, so that no secret is unshared by the Son ; this 
 joy in the honour of the Son ; this Divine longing that 
 His humiliation, His dependence should not rob Him 
 of one smallest grain of the full honour that belongs 
 to the Father ; this entire committal to Him of the 
 judgment of the universe, that all should recognize 
 the co-equality of the Son with the Father : what a 
 contrast to the exercise of authority in the Church 
 and in the home ! 
 
 The separation in the past of bishops and priests 
 from their flocks, the indisposition to admit the laity 
 into their councils, the pomp and reserve behind which 
 the rulers of the Church have been hidden, the eager 
 desire they have shewn for honour and place : how 
 entirely alien from that heavenly pattern which we are 
 bidden to follow ! Can it be doubted that, had the 
 authority of the ecclesiastics of the middle ages been 
 tempered with love, the break of the Reformation 
 would never have taken place ? We live now in happier 
 days. Laymen are receiving the honour which is their 
 
 * S. John v. 20. t S. John v. 22-23.
 
 Vital Religion. 157 
 
 due. They are invited to share the counsels of bishops 
 and priests. Prelacy, in the sense of ecclesiastical 
 despotism, is a thing of the past. Nay, it seems as 
 though the Church's danger might lie in the opposite 
 direction, in placing her authority where it cannot and 
 must not be. Still, in spite of such danger, who does 
 not welcome the altered state of things, and see in it a 
 recognition of that element of sympathy and love which 
 is a feature of the Divine Unity ? 
 
 It is not otherwise with the home. There, too, is 
 growing a fuller recognition of love as the basis of 
 authority, of honour as the tribute to obedience. Every- 
 where the place of the wife is receiving that dignity 
 and distinction which is the peculiar reward of those 
 whose greatness consists in service. 
 
 The Divine Unity is being more and more clearly 
 manifested ; its glory, which is mercifully revealed to us 
 in Holy Scripture, is more and more fully venerated 
 and adored; and as it enters into men's hearts, it dispels 
 the dark shadows of separation and independence, and 
 plants a holy fear in each heart; so that, looking upward 
 to those who are placed above him, man rejoices in 
 shewing the life of the Son ; and looking downwards 
 to those who are placed below him, he joys in manifest- 
 ing the life of the Father ; and so, drawing all to himself 
 as a centre of unity, he becomes more and more perfect, 
 even as the Son, nay, even as His Father in heaven is 
 perfect.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Knowledge of Christ as King. 
 
 To the Jew first, and also to the Greek. — Rom. i. 16. 
 
 Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judrea, 
 and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. — 
 Acts i. 8. 
 
 SO far we have studied the methods by which we 
 may know our Lord in relation to ourselves. Our 
 own little life, if we are careful to seek for the signs of 
 His Presence, will reveal much that may be built up 
 into an experience that can say, with some degree of 
 certainty, "I know in Whom I have believed." But no 
 Christian can rest content with this. The Christ in 
 Whom he believes is a King, the mighty Sovereign of a 
 great Kingdom which is extending daily and gradually 
 taking possession of the earth. The kingdoms of this 
 world are becoming the kingdoms of Christ;* and this 
 not by compulsion or the sword, but by persuasion, by 
 "art of human word. 7 ' We shall not, then, know Him 
 as He may be known unless we watch with care the 
 progress of the great Society He has founded. To take 
 an illustration. If some friend of mine whom I have 
 learned to know had obtained, by some strange fortune, 
 
 * Rev. xi. 15.
 
 Vital Religion. 159 
 
 the throne of a great kingdom, I should at first expect 
 that, being immersed in public affairs, he would have 
 no time to give to me, and that my friendship was 
 likely to suffer; but if I found that not only was his care 
 for me and interest in my small life undiminished, but 
 that he wished me to see something of the great affairs 
 of State in which he was now engaged, how gladly I 
 should respond, how I should welcome any opportunities 
 which might lead me to understand what I may call the 
 public side of his character. I should naturally feel that, 
 precious and valuable as the personal knowledge was, 
 it needed supplementing by the wider knowledge of his 
 sovereignty if I were to know him fully. 
 
 It is not otherwise with Christ. The two disciples 
 who knew Him best, S. Paul and S. John, are they who 
 shew the closest interest in the fortunes of His Kingdom. 
 S. Paul, in such letters as that to the Ephesians, and 
 S. John, in the book of the Revelation, carry us so far 
 in their descriptions of the purposes and fortunes of the 
 Kingdom that we find it difficult to follow them. The 
 very loftiest imagery is employed to inspire us with the 
 interest they themselves felt. A knowledge, then, of 
 what we call missionary work can only fail to be 
 attractive when it is looked upon as a geographical or 
 philanthropic enterprise, when it is dissociated from 
 Him. But when, on the contrary, we look upon it as 
 giving some account of the " open doors " He has 
 secured, of the outposts He is planting here and there, 
 of the colonies that He is developing that in time they 
 may become States of His empire, it becomes to us 
 what the present growth of our own empire is, strangely 
 interesting. We feel that a study of it will give us 
 some knowledge of His plans, words that He spake 
 will gain a new meaning, and it will not be strange if
 
 160 Vital Religion. 
 
 we find in His Sovereignty some principles that touch 
 ourselves very nearly. 
 
 Of course, the difficulty that first meets us- is where 
 to find such an account of His present work in the world 
 as may enable us to gauge the progress of His Kingdom. 
 Owing to causes which we need not now discuss, the 
 army at present in the field is to some extent divided, 
 and we have bodies of regular forces not only acting 
 independently of one another, but also acting apart from 
 large bodies of active and energetic irregular forces. 
 The attack is confused, and its results not very readily 
 perceived. Our attention is naturally drawn to that 
 part of the force which we ourselves have sent out, and 
 we are apt to draw conclusions which are probably as 
 erroneous as generalizations of the British army would 
 be if, ignoring all that has been done by Colonial con- 
 tingents — e.g., the yeomanry, the artillery, in Africa — we 
 were to base them on a few facts known about one of the 
 regiments in which we are specially interested. We are, 
 therefore, obliged to give up trying to gain from the field 
 itself such a knowledge of our Lord's foreign policy, 
 if we may use such an expression, as would give us fresh 
 insight into His principles. The field we watch is too 
 small. But what we cannot obtain from the present 
 mission field we may be able to find in that field which 
 is laid open to us in the Acts of the Apostles. There 
 we find the Church going forth to her conquests with 
 one heart and mind, and evidently acting on a well- 
 defined plan of campaign. It is this that we must 
 look closely at to find principles ; and when we have 
 discovered them, we can look to that part of the 
 present field in which we are chiefly interested to find 
 illustrations of them. 
 
 Now, in looking at the Acts of the Apostles with such
 
 Vital Religion. 1 6 r 
 
 light as is thrown upon it by the Gospels, we find three 
 principles — (i) Limitation, or Concentration; (2) Con- 
 tinuity, or Conservatism ; (3) Adaptation, or Freedom ; 
 and these are based on three distinguishing character- 
 istics of the Lord, namely, Patience, Obedience, Love. 
 The first principle is indicated in the great promise of 
 power which the Church was to receive and to exercise. 
 She was to receive the Holy Ghost, and to bear witness 
 to her King in Jerusalem, all Judcza, Samaria, and unto 
 the uttermost part of the earth* The order suggests 
 sequence. First, Jerusalem is to be evangelized, then 
 Judaea, then Samaria, and then the rest of the world. 
 But had not this, which means, of course, a certain 
 limitation, been clearly laid down, we might have 
 guessed it from our Lord's own action. When we 
 consider how fruitful the Apostolic work became when it 
 left the narrow confines of Palestine, we feel surprised 
 that our Lord not only rigidly bound Himself to it, but 
 expressly stated to a heathen who sought His help just 
 over the border that He was not sent "but to the lost 
 sheep of the House of Israel." \ The whole world was 
 hungering for Him ; some Greeks actually sought Him 
 out; a citizen of Rome, in the employ of Rome, had 
 shewn a greater faith than even the Apostles had done; 
 the Jews were either indifferent or hostile; and yet He 
 confined Himself to the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel. There must have been some reason for this. 
 We ask what it was. Does it not lie in this, that 
 missionary work can only hope to be ultimately success- 
 ful where it is carried on in ground prepared for it ? For 
 over one thousand years Israel had been in training, in 
 school, we may say, receiving that education which was 
 
 * Acts i. 8. t S. Matt. xv. 24. 
 
 1 1
 
 1 62 Vital Religion. 
 
 to make her the great missionary nation of the world. 
 It is true, the education seemed as though it had com- 
 pletely failed, so small were its results ; but our Lord 
 trusted it, and His trust was afterwards largely rewarded. 
 It is inconceivable that any Greek or Roman heathen 
 could have written S. Paul's letters. It is also incon- 
 ceivable that anyone but a Jew would have shewn the 
 missionary zeal that he did, a zeal that has never been 
 surpassed. 
 
 But not only did our Lord trust it, but His Apostles 
 had such confidence in it that for a long time they 
 supposed that not only was the world to be reached by 
 Israel, but in Israel. It needed a strange vision and a 
 wondrous sign, a sign as remarkable in its way as that 
 of Pentecost, to convince S. Peter that heathen could 
 become Christians except through first becoming Jews. 
 Though they knew from our Lord's teaching, from such 
 words of His as "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
 draw all men unto Me,"* that He had relations with the 
 whole world; yet from such other words as "Salvation is 
 of the Jews,"t and those we have already commented 
 upon, it seemed clear that only through and in Israel 
 could this relationship become a reality. They had the 
 command to go into all the world and make disciples of 
 all the nations, and they were quite prepared to execute 
 it ; but no other method of fulfilling it occurred to them 
 except that with which they had been familiar for many, 
 many years, namely, the method of making Jewish 
 proselytes. And if we suppose that the Council of 
 Jerusalem which authorized a wider principle took place 
 in the year 53, we see that it was twenty years before the 
 Church was prepared to give a larger liberty. Xow, we 
 
 * S. John xii. 32. t S. John iv. 22.
 
 Vital Religion. 163 
 
 must not forget that during this time she was under the 
 direct guidance of the Holy Ghost, Who filled her as 
 perhaps never before or since, and we therefore naturally 
 suppose that some great principle was at stake which the 
 newer method would endanger if pressed too hastily. 
 That principle was the one of which I am speaking, the 
 principle of Limitation. 
 
 Turning, now, to the work of the great missionary 
 Apostle, S. Paul, we ask, what was his attitude towards 
 it? He was zealous as none before or since. He was a 
 Roman citizen, and had, we may suppose, received part 
 of his education at the celebrated university of that city 
 of which he was so proud. It might, therefore, be 
 expected that in his desire to bring all men to know 
 the Lord he would throw aside every restriction that 
 hampered. We might suppose that when he went into 
 Asia with the Gospel he would avoid those places where 
 Jewish opposition was likely to be excited, and preach to 
 purely heathen congregations. The Jews had rejected 
 Christ, and everywhere opposed themselves to the 
 Gospel. What a waste of time, then, to be arguing with 
 them when the heathen outside were thirsting for his 
 news. Whatever temptations S. Paul had to pursue 
 what seemed the easier path, he never gave way to 
 them. His rule always and everywhere was "first to 
 the Jews, then to the Gentiles." And if we follow his 
 journeys, we see how he could pass by large and im- 
 portant cities as Amphipolis and Apollonia, till he came 
 to a place like "Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of 
 the Jews."* 
 
 We can easily see the advantage of such a course. 
 Saturated as the Jews were in the teaching of their 
 
 * Acts xvii. 1.
 
 164 Vital Religion. 
 
 Scriptures and Ritual, inspired by a common hope, 
 there was something to appeal to. They were already 
 interested in his subject. S. Paul's only task, then, lay 
 in shewing them that their hope was fulfilled, their 
 nterest satisfied. But though the principle is reason- 
 able, we are doubtful how long it was adhered to, 
 even in Apostolic days. It made great demands on 
 patience; it exposed those who acted upon it to great 
 perils ; it lacked the novelty that always accompanies 
 the preaching of the Gospel to heathen peoples. As 
 the Jews always opposed themselves to the Christian 
 teachers, it seemed as though it were not worth while 
 to try to win them over. And so, probably, it was not 
 seldom abandoned. Missionary journeys were made to 
 places like India, where it is probable that but few 
 Jews would be found. It may be that the cause of the 
 want of spiritual stability shewn in the history of the 
 missions in Armenia, Abyssinia, and amongst the Goths 
 is due to the fact that there were but few, if any, 
 synagogues there ; and that the work in Arabia, India 
 and Persia failed, to a large extent, from the same cause. 
 But though the principle has been justified by the 
 success that has followed its practice and the failure that 
 has attended its abandonment, it is strange to find how 
 indifferent the Church on the whole is to it. Not only 
 does the Christian missionary generally prefer the heathen 
 village to the town where his own countrymen have made 
 a settlement, but in many cases to the Christian colony. 
 He tells you, as S. Paul might have said, that his fellow 
 citizens, dispersed throughout the world from commercial 
 or selfish motives, are far more difficult to move than the 
 heathen. And yet, if it was important that the Christian 
 Gospel should follow along the line of the Jews, it is still 
 moie important that it should follow along the line of
 
 Vital Religion. 165 
 
 the Christians. If the dispersed Jews, with their know- 
 ledge of the Old Testament, their reverence for a 
 dignified and pure worship, their devotion to the 
 Messiah, formed a nucleus in a heathen city of the 
 greatest possible value to those who were planting the 
 Church, then, surely, the Christians now living in 
 heathen cities ought to form the most helpful support ; 
 nay, rather, the seed of all future work. But the 
 difficulties, it is said, are too serious ; the lack of 
 Christian enthusiasm too sadly apparent ; the common- 
 place character of the work — " I might as well be in 
 England " — too dull for the man who has been fired by 
 the command, "Go ye into all the world." So the 
 scattered colonists are left alone. And, instead of con- 
 centrating our attention, massing our forces on our own 
 empire — sadly in need of them — and working upon the 
 three hundred millions of heathens entrusted to our care 
 through our own English settlements, we are spending 
 part of our force on districts in countries like Corea, 
 China and Japan, where the Englishman is hardly 
 known ; where it is sometimes boasted the Christian has 
 never been seen. So much, then, for the first principle, 
 Limitation. 
 
 The second, Continuity, touches us still more nearly. 
 It has been shewn, again and again, how much of history 
 lies hidden in " the fulness of time " in which Christ 
 came ; how not only the Jews, but the Romans and 
 Greeks, contributed elements to that preparation which 
 made propagation of the Gospel so much easier than it 
 otherwise would have been. Greece "gave a universal 
 language and literature, by seizing the general laws of 
 beauty and thought ; Rome founded a universal empire 
 by asserting, with instinctive justice, the great principles 
 of right in her dependent provinces"'; and S. Paul, the
 
 1 66 Vital Religion. 
 
 great missionary Apostle, used both of these to the full. 
 He not only, it would appear, confined his work to 
 places where Greek was known and spoken, but where 
 Roman law was respected. This has been brought out 
 with great clearness by Professor Ramsay, in the various 
 lectures and books he has written on the subject of the 
 Acts of the Apostles. He was struck, he tells us, with 
 the extraordinary diversity of rate in the propagation 
 of Christianity in different regions. In one place it 
 spread with enormous rapidity ; in another, apparently 
 nearer the origin, it seemed to make no impression. 
 He sought for a reason for the difference, and found 
 it in "the lines of intercourse across the empire." 
 "The life of the early Church," he writes, "lay in 
 constant intercommunication between all its parts ; its 
 health and growth were dependent on the free circula- 
 tion of the life blood of common thought and feeling. 
 Hence it was firmly seated on the great lines of com- 
 munication across the empire, that led from its origin 
 in Jerusalem to its imperial centre in Rome. It had 
 already struck root in Rome within little more than 
 twenty years after the Crucifixion, and it had become 
 really strong in the great city about thirty years after 
 the Apostles began to work round and out from 
 Jerusalem. This marvellous development was possible 
 only because the seed of the new thought floated free 
 on the main currents of communication which were ever 
 sweeping back and forward between the heart of the 
 Empire and its outlying members. Paul, who mainly 
 directed the great movement, threw himself boldly and 
 confidently into the life of the time; he took the Empire 
 as it was, accepted its political conformation and 
 arrangement, and sought only to touch the spiritual and 
 moral life of the people while he always advised them
 
 Vital Religion. 167 
 
 to obey the existing Government and conform to the 
 existing laws of the State and society, so far as they 
 did not lead into direct conflict with Christian prin- 
 ciples." The same thought has been expressed by a 
 German writer, Gustav Warneck, even more directly : 
 "The missionaries followed the public roads which God 
 Himself had laid out, and occupied the stations which 
 His hand indicated." They did not go, then, wherever 
 heathen were to be found ; they did not believe that 
 the command, "Go ye into all the world," meant that, 
 in some way or another, they were to cover the whole of 
 the world ; though they had peculiar gifts for evangeliza- 
 tion, and miraculous powers certain to impress ignorant 
 heathen peoples, they recognized that a certain order 
 had been laid down in our Lord's words, and when 
 Jerusalem, Juda;a and Samaria had been evangelized, 
 and they were free to embark on the great Western 
 Sea, they sought and found, in the guidance of the 
 Holy Ghost, the order in which the conquest of the 
 world was to be effected. And this order was found 
 to be along the lines of national enterprise. It is to 
 be noted how the history tells us that when S. Paul was 
 tempted to turn from the Imperial roads he was warned 
 back again.* That the work planted along those lines 
 has been successful is clear from the history of missions 
 in Europe, and the contrast that it presents with the 
 history of missions elsewhere. 
 
 And yet, here again, the branches of the Christian 
 Church seem to be missing their true goal, for, instead 
 of concentrating their forces on the heathen in their 
 own colonies, they are spreading themselves over the face 
 of the earth, where neither government nor language 
 
 * Acts xvi.
 
 1 68 Vital Religion. 
 
 could be of any assistance. It seemed, indeed, as 
 though English missionary activity would at first follow 
 what appears to be the Divine order. Prepared, by 
 the revival of Greek learning, to take a wider outlook; 
 by the invention of printing to circulate with com- 
 parative ease and quickness every message given to 
 her ; by the Bible and Prayer Book in her own tongue 
 to make her faith intelligible ; and by her interests in 
 the newly-discovered America to sympathize with those 
 outside her own borders, a Society was formed, at the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel, whose first aim, according to her charter, 
 should be to instruct her colonists, and then to minister 
 to the heathen surrounding them. And it is at least 
 significant that, directly this resolve was formed, our 
 Lord gave her increasing opportunity, year by year, to 
 fulfil it, until at last she has a large part of the earth 
 in possession, and at least three hundred millions of 
 heathen to bring into Christ's fold. But, pressed first 
 by this demand and then by that, urged again and again 
 by those who said the Church's marching orders were 
 to go into all the world, and yet forgot the significance 
 that lay in the words, " Make disciples of all the 
 nations," the Society yielded, and, whilst clinging to her 
 charter, yet sanctioned important exceptions, thus 
 leaving parts of the Empire hopelessly undermanned. 
 We now pass to the third principle, Adaptation. It 
 would not be difficult to shew how this runs through 
 the whole of our Lord's life, which is, we may say, one 
 continuous expression of it. Knowing what was in man, 
 able to penetrate behind those national or racial dis- 
 tinctions which we find so baffling, He met each man, 
 whether Roman, Samaritan, Greek or Jew, on his own 
 ground, and so gave him that particular help he chiefly
 
 Vital Religion. 169 
 
 needed. The Apostle, who knew Him so well, carried 
 this principle out in his missionary operations. In his 
 own words, he says: "Unto the Jews" I became as a 
 Jew . . . . ; to them that are under the law, as 
 under the law . . . . ; to them that are without law, 
 
 as without law ; to the weak became I as 
 
 weak: .... I am made all things to all men, that 
 I might by all means save some."* And the general 
 statement is well borne out by facts. He would 
 not have his heathen converts forced to circumcision ; 
 nor would he suffer them to be pressed, except by 
 necessity, into breaking those social relations which, 
 even after they became Christians, were so dear to 
 them. As an illustration, take his wise dealing with 
 those who had still many friends amongst the heathen. 
 If asked to a heathen banquet or social entertainment, 
 were they to go ? And if so, might they partake of the 
 food set on the table ? Would it not be certain that 
 much of it, perhaps all, had been offered to a false god 
 in a heathen temple? These were difficult questions. 
 How does S. Paul answer them ? " If any of them that 
 believe not " {i.e., the heathen) " bid you to a feast, and 
 ye be disposed to go ; whatsoever is set before you, eat, 
 asking no question for conscience sake. But if any 
 man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, 
 eat not for his sake that shewed it."f 
 
 See another illustration of the same principle in his 
 attitude towards Jewish prejudices. Again and again he 
 had said that no one could be saved by the Mosaic law 
 of ordinances ; and yet, when it was pointed out to him 
 that he might win over some of the Jewish Christians in 
 Jerusalem by making himself one with certain Jews, who 
 were fulfilling, in the strictest manner prescribed by the 
 
 * 1 Cor. ix. 20-22. f 1 Cor. x. 27-33.
 
 170 Vital Religion. 
 
 law, a vow, he did not hesitate for a moment, but at 
 once did it, though no one knew better than he how 
 useless it would be. 
 
 So, too, in his speeches and sermons, there is to be 
 seen the same careful consideration of the disposition 
 and character of his audience. At Lystra he does not 
 mention our Lord at all ; at Athens, only towards the 
 end. He never attempted to set the whole Gospel 
 before those who were not prepared for it. Like his 
 Master, he spake as they were able to bear it. And, so 
 far as we are able to discover, he shewed great un- 
 willingness to interfere with the civil life of his converts. 
 To the slave he preaches contentment with his lot ; to 
 the slaveowner, consideration towards his slaves. As 
 he did not wish men to become' Jews, so neither did he 
 wish them to become Romans. 
 
 So, too, in services. There were certain great prin- 
 ciples of order, such as the appearance and behaviour of 
 women in churches, and the moderation of the exercise 
 of the exciting gift of tongues, but there was probably no 
 stereotyped form. Converts would naturally prefer the 
 form of the celebration of the Eucharist which had been 
 observed from the first, but local variations would, no 
 doubt, grow up, and, as time went on, become greatly 
 cherished. 
 
 So, too, in the adaptation of instruments for the work. 
 S. Paul chose from those amongst whom he worked 
 his presbyters and workers. It is strange to find that, 
 on the first missionary journey, he does not hesitate, 
 when returning, to ordain presbyters in every Church, 
 though they must have been converts of only a few 
 months' standing. The Churches were built up from 
 within, not from without.* 
 
 Acts xiv. 2;.
 
 Vital Religion. 171 
 
 Now, in looking at the application of this third 
 principle in modern missions, it is impossible not to 
 notice how timorous and hesitating our own Church is 
 in its adoption. As The Spectator wrote some years 
 ago :* " With us the difference of civilization is allowed 
 to count for too much. There is a disposition to think 
 that a convert who has not become in all respects like a 
 middle-class European of the more pious habits of 
 
 mind, falls short of the desired ideal Whereas, 
 
 the object should be to utilize, not suppress, the native 
 side." Again : "No preference is given in Asia to Jewish 
 and Arab missionaries. The Arab has the tongue of a 
 poet, the manner of a born teacher, and a heart with 
 fire in it. A hundred Arabs, as wandering preachers 
 in Africa, would carry Christianity into its very depths." 
 Why are they not used? Why do we feel that our 
 missionaries must be European, and neglect the forces 
 which lie in similarity of colour, civilization and 
 thought? We are tempted to forget that in Him "there 
 is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither 
 male nor female ; but that all are one " ;f and that, in 
 some way, we must represent His mind by avoiding 
 all partiality, by reverencing all distinctions in human 
 nature ; and so we consequently lose that knowledge 
 of Him which is to be found in the Hindoo, Kaffir, 
 Zulu, Maori, Negro, and Indian. For they all are 
 His ; they are all made to reflect some feature of 
 His mind and character which we have not yet seen, 
 and, if we can but use what they bring, " our creed will 
 grow radiant with a fresh glory by the light which they 
 are fitted to cast upon it." 
 
 It must not be supposed, from the above, that the 
 
 * Spectator, 8th May, 1897. t Gal. iii. 28.
 
 172 Vital Religion. 
 
 English Church has shewn greater timidity in these 
 respects than other Churches. Far from it. She does 
 use the Imperial highways, and has an increasing native 
 ministry. The Roman Church, having done her best to 
 kill national ecclesiastical life, cannot use, as we can, 
 the force of national enterprise. The Greek Church, 
 with its immovable, iron-bound autocracy, has almost 
 lost its sense of missionary responsibility. The English 
 Church has magnificent opportunities, and in the 
 national character a certain genius for dealing with 
 native peoples'. But no one can read our missionary 
 reports and magazines without seeing how difficult 
 it is for Church or Nonconformist zeal to catch the 
 native spirit and express it. Some societies at home 
 would be horrified if the surplice or clerical coat were 
 changed for some Oriental vestment that might give the 
 sense of worship more quickly; if the architecture of the 
 buildings were Eastern rather than Western; if changes 
 in liturgy, ritual or simplest forms were made. The zeal 
 — and it is too full of love and power to be criticized — 
 must run on in its old channels, and consequently the 
 comparatively trifling disputes of English ecclesiastical 
 life are carried into an atmosphere where their history 
 is unknown and their character unintelligible. Of 
 course, it cannot be forgotten that the services of the 
 English congregation, where there is one, set the norm 
 which natives, with their love of imitation and shrinking 
 from originality, do not care to depart from; but it 
 will be a sad confession of impotence if, for example, 
 the external form of Indian Christianity is to be a weak 
 imitation of English religious life. 
 
 Now, bearing these three principles in mind, we 
 ought to be able to read the accounts of our Lord's 
 work in the world with intelligence. We shall see, in
 
 Vital Religion. ijt, 
 
 the first place, the meaning that underlies the great 
 colonizing movement which has distinguished the past, 
 as it will distinguish the present century. The move- 
 ments of England in Africa, America in the Philippines, 
 Russia in China, what are they but parts of that great 
 plan by which He designs to reach the heathen through 
 the Christian Church in its social as well as its religious 
 life? 
 
 We shall see, in the second place, that the difficulties 
 which beset the Christian missionary in his work are 
 largely due to those features of unlikeness which it is 
 so important to preserve. We shall then seek to find, 
 in such reports as reach us, what the distinctive features 
 of the native races are, what those characteristics which 
 strike us as so un-English mean ; in fact, what contribu- 
 tion they are bringing to the knowledge of the Lord ; 
 for they, too, are His children, and "we all are 
 brethren." 
 
 And as we become more familiar with His plans and 
 principles, we shall see how they explain His own 
 dealings with us ; how the patience which will not hurry 
 the great operations tarries with the small ; how the 
 same care for the type which is seen in the relation 
 of Christ to the heathen is also seen in the relation of 
 Christ to the individual ; how He wishes for us that 
 we should be ourselves, ourselves fully and completely, 
 and not weak reflections of others. We shall understand, 
 also, that in His development of our characters He will 
 not neglect those educative influences of school, univer- 
 sity, and foreign travel which have done so much to 
 shape our own lives. Those are His preparations, and 
 those assuredly He will not neglect. 
 
 This chapter must not be closed without an expression 
 of regret that it appears to be pervaded by a spirit of
 
 i 74 Vital Religion. 
 
 criticism quite alien to the conception of the main 
 subject. And the work, the direction of which this 
 criticism specially affects, is of such a singularly noble 
 character, is marked by such special devotion to our 
 Lord and sustained by such constant reliance upon the 
 Holy Ghost, that the word presumption hardly expresses 
 the character of conclusions so widely different from 
 those current amongst missionary experts and enthu- 
 siasts. The author understands, however, both from 
 what he has himself heard, and also from the reports 
 of others, that the late Bishop of Durham held views 
 not unlike those here expressed as to the concentration 
 of missionary work. The interested bystander, too, 
 whose difficulties certainly deserve consideration, will 
 often express his bewilderment at principles which, 
 however magnificently illustrated by noble confessions 
 and martyred lives, imply the evangelization of China, 
 Japan and Corea at the cost of our own fellow subjects 
 in India and Africa. The feeling that the whole world 
 must be evangelized, if not in our generation, at least 
 in this century, is a noble one, and it would be impious 
 to deny its possibility. But the zeal that is kindled 
 at this glorious prospect must not disregard the lessons 
 learned in Scripture and the teaching of history. It 
 will be for others to say whether they are those of this 
 chapter, or those more in accord with modern missionary 
 thought. The writer is conscious that he has only 
 presented one side, but he believes it to be an important 
 one, leading to fresh knowledge of the ever living Lord. 
 It was from this point of view he contemplated it, 
 and with the hope that by it Christ's sovereignty might 
 be more fully recognized he has ventured to put it 
 forward.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 THOSE who have read the preceding chapters will 
 have realized that we have only touched the 
 fringe of a great subject. Suggestions have been made 
 and hints thrown out as to how all may, nay, ought 
 to have a part in the living, experimental knowledge 
 of Christ ; but a large field is still left unexplored. 
 Christ touches us in all points, not only in the few that 
 have been mentioned. The life of thought, worship and 
 recreation, deeply interesting as our Lord's relation to 
 each is, has been omitted ; so, too, the social and 
 political life ; so, too, His particular revelations in the 
 great crises of life, such as Confirmation, Conversion, 
 Marriage and Death; but it is hoped that enough has 
 been said to start such questions as : May Jesus Christ, 
 ' though He be Lord of all, be known as a Friend ? Are 
 the hymns of Xavier, S. Bernard, the Wesleys, John 
 Keble, Miss Havergal imaginary poems, or the offspring 
 of a real experience ? Can we take them on our lips, as 
 we are so often asked to do, without a fear that, if 
 questioned as to our own experience, we should have 
 nothing to say? The book has endeavoured to shew 
 that such experiences are most real, and that we ought 
 to have our share in them. 
 
 But not without trouble, not without cost. The effort
 
 176 Vital Religion. 
 
 must be sustained and unflagging. Any relaxation will 
 lead to hesitation and doubt. The mind must be con- 
 centrated on every part of life, whether large or small ; 
 not only what we call the important events, but the 
 unimportant ; not only red letter days, but the days 
 unmarked by any feature, good or bad. All must reflect 
 His action. The " falling of a sparrow to the ground " 
 is not a great event, but it never occurs without the 
 knowledge and will of Christ.* The loss of something 
 as insignificant as a hair of our head is certainly of 
 infinitely small importance, but we are assured by Christ 
 that it is not unnoticed. We must give up the idea 
 suggested by such words as accidents, mishaps, lucky 
 events, and such like. There are really no such things. 
 All are ordered, though the action of our free-will has a 
 part in their ordering. There is nothing superstitious in 
 this confidence that we have in Christ's direction of all 
 things. Superstition is the false notion that inanimate 
 things or combinations of circumstances can of them- 
 selves influence life. It is superstitious to believe that a 
 certain stone always brings ill luck, a certain flower 
 always good luck ; that because thirteen people sit down 
 to a meal something evil will happen ; or that to help 
 our neighbour to salt is to cause him misfortune ; or 
 that to go to sea on a Friday is to ensure a bad voyage. 
 But it is not superstitious to believe that my friend's call 
 on a particular day when a missionary from India was 
 staying with me, which led to his undertaking foreign 
 work, was designed by Christ ; that the bodily injury 
 which led to the deepening of character was pre- 
 ordained ; that the absence from home which led to an 
 important decision was pre-arranged. Superstition is 
 
 * S. Matt. x. 29-30.
 
 Vital Religion. 177 
 
 essentially unreasonable ; but faith in Christ's provi- 
 dential ordering of all things is profoundly reasonable. 
 
 Directly the Life recorded in the Gospels is accepted 
 as true, and Jesus Christ is believed to be alive and all 
 powerful, His relation to unimportant as well as im- 
 portant people, to insignificant as well as momentous 
 events follows as a matter of course; for we are assured 
 that He is the same to-day as in the yesterday when He 
 lived in Palestine. With this belief, no life is or can be 
 dull, no place or event is or can be of small importance. 
 Bethlehem and Nazareth have had a larger share in the 
 world's history than Rome or Athens ; and a few fishing 
 folk in an obscure country not larger than Wales have 
 more influence in modern Europe than Socrates or 
 Plato. The unimportant became important ; the small 
 became great. Why ? Simply because they were used 
 by Christ and responded to His touch. Capernaum, 
 Chorazin, Bethsaida, Pilate, Caiaphas and Herod sink 
 into insignificance or remain as beacons of warning. 
 They saw the Christ, heard Him, but never yielded to 
 His will. The question this book raises is, Are the 
 same possibilities open now ? Religion asserts they are, 
 and fraught with the most important consequences to 
 our country and empire. The aim of the previous dis- 
 cussion has been missed if it is supposed that vital 
 religion begins and ends in an experience. Such an 
 experience could not be that of the living Chris- 
 Whose heart and mind throb in responsive sympathy 
 with the social and intellectual problems of our time. 
 The man who knows Him recognizes Him, as S. Paul 
 did, as suffering with and in His faithful members, and 
 he cannot, therefore, remain a cool observer of the 
 movements that affect both Him and them. But his 
 attitude is one of hope as well as sympathy. He never 
 
 12
 
 178 Vital Religion. 
 
 forgets Christ has conquered ; and if he sometimes, with 
 Nature, "travails in pain and groans" in his impatient 
 waiting for the expected Redemption, he knows it will 
 come, for he has the sense of it within himself. The 
 same Master is at work in the world as in his own 
 nature : 
 
 From seeming evil still educing good ; 
 
 And better thence again, and better still 
 
 In infinite progression. 
 
 Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Ro;i\ London, E.C
 
 NEW AND HELPFUL MANUAL FOR THE 
 HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 Price is. nett in cloth ; in leather binding at is. neit ; 
 lambskin, 3s. nett ; and in Persian calf, 3s. 6d. 
 
 COMMUNION AND 
 OFFERING 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. G. H. S. WALPOLE, D.D. 
 
 (Examining Chaplain to the A rchhishop of York), 
 RECTOR OF LAMBETH. 
 
 The object of this little book is to help Communicants 
 to an intelligent appreciation of our Communion Office. 
 Whilst it endeavours to supply help for Preparation and 
 Thanksgiving by suitable prayers and hymns, its chief aim 
 is to place those who use it in possession of the meaning of 
 each part of the Service. For this purpose the Service is 
 divided into three parts, and each of these into clearly marked 
 divisions. The use of it will, it is hoped, soon shew what 
 the main idea of the Service is, and how each part contirbutes 
 to it. And it is believed that the more closely the structure 
 is considered, the more clearly will it appear that Offering 
 and Communion are the leading characteristics, not Offering 
 alone, or Communion alone, but both interwoven the one 
 with the other. The Book consists of a Kalendar to contain 
 the names of persons and events that we desire to remember 
 at Communion, a short Introduction setting out the meaning 
 and purpose of our Lord's Institution, the Service itself 
 briefly explained step by step, suggestions for Preparation 
 and Thanksgiving, and the leading thoughts of the Collects, 
 Epistles, and Gospels. Primarily designed for the author's 
 own Communicants and Confirmation Candidates at Lambeth, 
 it is written simply and plainly, and bears in mind the diffi- 
 culties that beset hurried lives in their preparation for Holy 
 Communion, and the necessity of being intensely real where 
 all is so real. That they may be helped to help themselves 
 is its chief object. 
 
 The work is issued in a conveniently portable size, being 
 divided into three parts, and arranged systematically under 
 the subordinate subjects. 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.
 
 In J2W0. size, cloth limp, for the pocket, 2s. nett. 
 
 Also for Presentation, in leather binding, js. nett; in Lambskin, 
 
 js. bd. nett ; and in Persian Calf, 4s. 6d. nett. 
 
 THE 
 
 PEOPLE'S PSALTER 
 
 A PLAIN BOOK FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO 
 
 USE THE PSALMS IN CHURCH WITH 
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND DEVOTION. 
 
 By The Rev. G. H. S. W ALP OLE, D.D. 
 
 (Examining Chaplain to the Archbishop of York), 
 RECTOR OF LAMBETH. 
 
 Recommendations and Extracts from Reviews of the 
 "People's Psaiter " : — 
 
 " The book seems to be admirably adapted for its pur- 
 pose, and I trust it will have a very wide usefulness." — 
 Bishop of Durham. 
 
 " I am very glad to have it and shall try to use it. It 
 appears to answer what people much want — a real guide to 
 the meaning of Psalms for practical purposes." — Arch- 
 deacon Mackarness. 
 
 " We think that this little book may be a useful help 
 by suggesting ways in which different Psalms may be applied 
 to present day difficulties and to the problems and anxieties 
 with which the Church is always confronted." — The Guardian. 
 
 " A very useful book. . . . will be found a real help." — 
 Record. 
 
 "A most timely and practical volume." — The Rock. 
 
 " A truly excellent little book, and one for which we 
 have been waiting for years." — Church Family Xcivspaper. 
 
 " The author deserves the thanks of all men for the 
 effort he has made to give the Psalms a meaning as they 
 stand and a modern application." — Expository Times. 
 
 " We very heartily commend this book. It admirably 
 fulfils its purpose." — Christian Progress. 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.
 
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