REESE LIBRARY 
 
 

 
THE UNITY OF GOD AND MAN 
 
 PREACHED AT BEDFORD CHAPEL, BLOOMSBURY, 
 
 REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A, 
 
 H 
 
 BOSTON: 
 GEORGE H. ELLIS, 141, FRANKLIN STREET, 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVI. 
 
3 
 
 A3 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE Sermons included in this volume have appeared at 
 various times, in a private publication, and I have thought 
 that the public might, perhaps, care to read them. They 
 have been carefully revised and corrected. 
 
 The two discourses on Joshua do not include any state- 
 ment concerning the authenticity of the history, but the 
 remarks at the beginning of the following sermon on Lot 
 and Abraham state the way in which I look upon, and 
 consider these early Old Testament stories. 
 
 STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 
 
 i, MANCHESTER SQUARE, 
 May I, 1886. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE UNITY OK GOD AND MAN 6 
 
 Do. (continued) 14 
 
 Do. (continued) 23 
 
 THE WANDERING SHEEP 34 
 
 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 45 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 61 
 
 ATONEMENT 71 
 
 Do. (continued) 82 
 
 Do. (continued) 94 
 
 THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOSHUA no 
 
 Do. (continued) 126 
 
 THE LATER CHOICE OF LIFE 143 
 
 FALSE FERVOUR OF HEART 155 
 
 THE FERVOUR THAT SEEKS MONOTONY 166 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF FERVOUR OF SPIRIT 177 
 
 YOUTH. FERVENT IN SPIRIT 188 
 
 MIDDLE AGE. NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS 201 
 
 OLD AGE. SERVING THE LORD 212 
 
SERMONS. 
 
 [June 7, 1885.] 
 THE UNITY OF GOD AND MAN. 
 
 " I and my Father are one." JOHN x. 30. 
 
 THIS mighty saying proclaims by the lips of Jesus the ancient 
 truth suggested in the first of the Hebrew books, that man 
 is the image of God. It is the highest of the disclosures 
 made by Jesus concerning Man. Indeed, all that he has 
 told us of humanity is contained in it. Embodied now and 
 then in casual phrase by prophets of other races, hidden in 
 myth and legend, Jesus was the first who declared it roundly, 
 clearly, boldly, and left it to mankind. And it was not 
 understood by those who came after him. They could not 
 believe that he said it as a man, in the name of humanity. 
 Therefore, not wishing to deny his words, they declared 
 that Jesus said it, as God, about himself and God. 
 
 The true, and the more practical view is, that Jesus, 
 when he said these words, and others of the same meaning, 
 said them, knowing and feeling himself to be nothing more 
 than a man ; said in them that which was, in idea, true of 
 all the human race, which ought to be true of every man, 
 and which in the future will be true of all men. There 
 is none who, having grown to the measure of the stature of 
 
6 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 the fulness of Christ, will not be able hereafter to say with 
 him I and my Father are one. 
 
 It is the right and destiny of the human race which are 
 proclaimed in these words Man is at one with God. That 
 is the Magna Charta of our religion; the idea by which 
 we live, towards which we strive; the idea which will 
 certainly become fact for all of us. It was the voice of 
 Jesus ; the voice of his revelation. It is the voice now in 
 our hearts whereby we cry Abba, Father ; and our con- 
 viction of it is supported by the daily growth of the 
 spiritual life. 
 
 I will take it here as the theory by which we may best 
 explain the conceptions man in general has conceived of 
 God. There are other theories, of course, both Christian 
 and unchristian, spiritual and materialistic ; but as this was 
 the assumption, the revelation, of Jesus, let us see what it 
 does when we bring up to it for explanation the main ideas 
 of God which mankind possesses. 
 
 We certainly have conceptions of God. How did we gain 
 them ? According to this theory according, in another 
 way of stating it, to this revelation of Jesus we gain them 
 from God Himself in us. The divine attributes belong to 
 us in part. We realize them imperfectly, portions of them ; 
 we are conscious of their imperfection in us ; conscious of 
 their partial quality in us ; and immediately we desire and 
 imagine their perfection, and in this effort we dimly con- 
 ceive Deity. The idea of God in us is the idea of our own 
 spiritual nature, made pure and infinite in thought. It is 
 not in a figure that we are like God, but in reality. We con- 
 ceive His attributes because we share in them. 
 
IRNIA^ 
 
 Again, God is intelligence, pure intelligence. How do we 
 come to think that ? We conceive it by and through our 
 own intelligence. Through our limited intelligence we can 
 conceive the illimitable Intelligence because what there is of 
 it in us is the same in kind as it is in God. The light and 
 fire and life of thought of which we are aware, through their 
 partial manifestation in ourselves, we proceed to conceive of 
 as absolute and perfect, and in doing so we think of God 
 and shape Him before us we shape supreme Intelligence. 
 
 Again, how do we know of God's goodness, of His love ? 
 Not from without us, not primarily from revelation, but by 
 the goodness and love we have within us ! They are God's 
 character in us ; and when we are lifted over sin in conquest, 
 or are ardent in the hour of some great sacrifice, then we 
 know that we are so far in the action of the powers of 
 goodness and love at one with God ; and with a rush of 
 unconscious faith, we multiply our love and goodness 
 infinitely, and behold our God. 
 
 And when that inward law within, whereby we approve of 
 righteousness and hate sin, speaks clear and loud, and calls 
 us to obey it ; when abiding in it we are conscious of an 
 infinite Right and Truth, of a mighty authority without us, 
 and in us, whereby all things are bound, to which God Him- 
 self binds Himself, and which His will, self-determined, 
 obeys why have we these thoughts? What means this 
 vast and sublime imperative ? How is it that we know it ? 
 
 It is because we are partakers of God's moral nature, 
 because we are made in His image, because we and the 
 Father are one. 
 
 It is not we alone then who have wrought this, who have 
 
8 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 made this God out of our own fancies, built Him up out of 
 our wants and thoughts, developed Him, while He has no 
 real existence ! There are folk whose intellect that theory 
 satisfies ; there are others who are afraid that theory is true. 
 I am sorry for both of them ; but death at least will settle 
 the questioning of the one and the trouble of the other ; 
 and death is not far away. But for us, it is better to have 
 another faith while we live, and to hear in our hearts those 
 words " O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the 
 prophets have spoken." Our theory, our faith is That it 
 is God who, thinking through our thought, loving through 
 our love, has built up in man man's thought of Him, 
 woven into our nature our love of Himself, our knowledge 
 of Him as love. It is the Father in the child who has 
 made known the Father. We and the Father are one. 
 
 Others say that it is from without us, from the uni- 
 verse and its work on the perceptions, that we conceive 
 God. 
 
 In truth God is in the universe ; in everything His 
 thought appears to us ! But appears to what ? If the 
 universe be only matter, of course it speaks only to 
 matter in us; and there it ends for the materialists. 
 They are now a few and feeble folk, and need not be 
 considered. But if it be Thought that energizes in the 
 universe, why then, it speaks to thought and its powers in 
 us ; and we understand what is doing in the universe because 
 we are capable of doing the same kind of things ourselves. 
 It is because we can ourselves create, that we can compre- 
 hend creation. It is because we can design, apportion 
 means to an end, conceive a whole, that we can discover 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 9 
 
 design, see the means whereby Nature, as we call it, reaches 
 its ends, find out and grasp the ideas on which the whole is 
 built, and then approach the conception of the whole. It 
 is because we are wise within to feel beauty, and to reverence 
 what is noble, that we see beauty in the universe, and bend 
 before its sublimity in the loving awe which is the true 
 mother of all the arts. Here also we see God by God's 
 own light in us, because we are by nature at one with Him. 
 The glory of God's thought in the universe is seen by the 
 light of thought in ourselves. It is not from the outward 
 we gain our conception of God in Nature, it is from God 
 Himself in us. 
 
 But God is infinite, and men say, He is incomprehensible 
 by the finite. As a whole, and at present, yes ! But 
 apart from the truth that we are not, in one sense 
 of the word, finite at all, for we are destined to endless 
 development and life our existence being conter- 
 minous with the existence of God there is this also to 
 be said, that our thought and love and noble power 
 (being, as we assume, of God,) have always the quality 
 of their source. Their essence is always the same, 
 however vast the distance between the degrees of them. 
 The infinite is always the infinite. 
 
 We cannot call God love without feeling love, nor 
 imagine Him as thought without having thought ; and love 
 is the same in kind for ever and in all things ; and so is 
 thought. The smallest conception is, by its very nature, 
 always infinite. The faintest movement of love is eternal. 
 The heat of the candle is the same in kind as the heat 
 of the sun, and is the light and the heat of the sun. 
 
io The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 Moreover, we do conceive infinity ; and we could not 
 conceive it had we not a nature which had kinship with 
 it. We ascribe it to God, because we are of its character. 
 We believe in it, because we possess its powers in the 
 midst of our limitations. We aspire towards more and 
 more of it, because we are capable of more and more of it. 
 
 In all high action for unattained truth ; in original con- 
 ceptions ; in their creation into form ; in imagination's rush 
 beyond the stars; in the long desire after ideal beauty; in the 
 unwearied pursuit of knowledge ; in the dreams of unknown 
 joy ; in the unfathomable depths of human love ; in the 
 martyr's moral power when he dies for truth ; in that might 
 of the soul which conquers and despises all the force 
 of the world ; in the immeasurable rapture of men in death 
 when they see God and feel the first leap within them 
 of the immortal life ; in the mystery of awe we have 
 amid the storm ; in the absoluteness of our quiet when we 
 are satisfied with the peace of the summer ; in the infinite 
 delight which eternal beauty, seen through all art, bestows 
 on us and in the inspiration which it kindles ; in our 
 certainty of an infinite of beauty beyond all that Nature 
 presents to us and art embodies, and in our immediate 
 creation of the conception of that beauty ; in the power of 
 faith that can remove mountains ; in a thousand thousand 
 things each a fact of our actual life the spirit is always 
 rushing beyond its limits, knows that it has wants, and 
 an end which only more and more of the infinite, more 
 of that which it has in part, can set at rest. Well, what 
 theory best explains these perceptions, these conceptions ? 
 They are facts. It is known that the human race has felt 
 
T/ie Unity of God and Man. II 
 
 and thought these things. Is it the theory which says they 
 are developed in the movement of eternal matter, or is it our 
 theory that God Himself, being infinite, has entered into 
 His children, developed in them the thought of His own 
 infinity, and that they themselves are infinite in Him ? 
 
 That at least is our view. The infinite of God has 
 itself in us. It knows itself in us ; we are one of its forms. 
 It is not a belief of it that we have, it is an actual feeling, 
 and it becomes a fact of consciousness. It is a mistake to call 
 ourselves finite. We are God's children, of His nature, born 
 in His image, at one with the Father, and infinite in Him. 
 
 This, then, is the most glorious truth which we can 
 believe and know. If God be the absolute goodness, 
 if He be the source and end of truth and love and justice, 
 then there is no good so great as to be like Him ; no grace 
 so great as to be loved by Him ; no gift so supreme as the 
 gift of Himself. To have intellectual and moral kinship 
 with Him, to have a heart beating with a love that resembles 
 His, to be a spirit that hungers and thirsts to be at one with 
 His righteousness, to grow into union with His perfection, to 
 be His children through unity of Nature ail other joys and 
 blessings are, like rivers that stream into the ocean, borne 
 into and accomplished in that sea of happiness. " In His 
 presence is fulness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures 
 for evermore." Therefore, our chief work in life is to grow 
 out of our imperfect likeness to God into His perfect 
 likeness ; to know absolutely Him, and His life in 
 Himself, and in the universe, and in ourselves in thought 
 and love, in form and action. And this, our chief work, 
 will become our chief delight. 
 
[ 2 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 For only as we are like Him can we enjoy Him and His 
 universe. Only as we realize more of that divine life 
 to which we aspire can we get the pleasure out of it. 
 It is the pure in heart who see purity, and whom it 
 makes happy. It is those who love who can know love, 
 and to whom it is unbounded joy. It is they who are of 
 the truth, who hear truth's voice, to whom it is the music 
 of the world. It is they who see, and know, and hear these 
 things who become consciously at one with God. God is 
 ours when we become God, if I may be allowed to use a 
 paradox. As we grow up into Him, the union becomes 
 personal. He is here, in our hearts. We feel His touch 
 upon the chords of the spirit. He mingles with us, thinks 
 through our thought, speaks in our speech, sees through 
 our eyes, loves in our love ; and is beyond them all as 
 holy fire, swift inspiration, educating watchfulness, tender 
 care. Our pleasures are for evermore ! Being like Him, 
 we rejoice in Him. 
 
 Then, having learnt to rejoice in His moral and spiritual 
 being, we pass on to rejoice in His ideas, and in the 
 beauty into which they are shaped. We understand and love 
 the universe. Understand it ! As the Natural philoso- 
 pher ? No ! We may not know all its secrets, nor be able 
 to analyze it. But glorious as is the pleasure of the philoso- 
 pher if he keep his reverence and be not the slave of mere 
 knowledge, we, even without scientific knowledge, can see 
 the thoughts on which the universe is built as the poet sees 
 them, as Job saw them of old, as millions saw them long 
 before one ray of science illumined the world. These 
 majestic thoughts fill us with awe, and exalt us with their 
 
<?/ GW and Man. 
 
 glory. God's thought has become one with us, and then, 
 rejoicing in His thought, we pass onwards into union with 
 the passion and love which, flowing from God's joy, pervade 
 the universe. We feel, and know why we feel, the beauty 
 of the world. It is God's own loveliness and harmony 
 which from all Nature streams through us, and disturbs 
 us into joy, and excites us with illimitable variety, 
 inimitably inter-woven. The lowliest flower speaks to us 
 of Him, the mightiest mountain lifts its head in prayer to 
 Him, the sea chants of His beauty, and the everlasting stars 
 reply. And all that we feel, we feel because we are His 
 children, because we and the Father are one. 
 
 Lastly, from the universe, we turn to all mankind. It, 
 too, is pervaded with God ; and when we love and rejoice in 
 Him, we begin to love and rejoice with Him in humanity. 
 This was the thought that made the very life of Jesus. He 
 saw in all the pure original feelings of man, in all the 
 ways that love acted between men and men, in the desires 
 and longings of the soul, in the imagination, conscience,, 
 intellect of man his Father's nature and qualities, believed 
 in them in us, loved them, and rejoiced. Men and his 
 Father were one, as he and his Father were one. 
 
 Therefore Jesus had an undying hope, the hope that we 
 should possess, and by which we should live. It was more 
 than hope, it was certainty. He knew, and rejoiced to 
 know, that, when the evil in man was overthrown, every 
 conscious spirit that had ever been born into the earth., 
 would come at last to say with his own conviction "I and 
 the Father are one." 
 
[June 14, 1885.] 
 
 THE UNITY OF GOD AND MAN. 
 " I and my Father are one." JOHN x. 30. 
 
 IT was perhaps the worst evil of the old monarchies and 
 imperialisms that kings and emperors were practically 
 thought to have a nature different from that of their subjects, 
 and to be severed from them* by a great gulf; and it was none 
 the better but rather the worse for humanity when that notion 
 was transferred to a whole class, as to the noblesse of 
 France ; and the king was considered to be the first gentle- 
 man in the caste. For then, not only one, but a great num- 
 ber of men and women were degraded by this false opinion, 
 that is, by an opinion which was against Nature ; lived by 
 it in a ruinous isolation, and did the deeds which naturally 
 flowed from it and their deeds were abominable. It 
 was no wonder, considering that in France this view 
 was more plainly attacked and its iniquities more painfully 
 felt than in other parts of Europe, that the Revolution 
 broke out first in France. And the first thing it said 
 was said by St. Paul at Athens, and was derived from 
 Jesus Christ. "God hath made of one blood all nations 
 on the face of the whole earth." 
 
 It was natural, since men calling themselves Christians 
 came to take up that imperialistic view, that it should be 
 said to belong to the origins of Christianity. But that was 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 15 
 
 not the case. It stole into Christianity from the East, and was 
 developed then by the Imperialism of Rome ; and in accord- 
 ance with it God was made an Emperor. He was divided in 
 nature from His subjects ; He might do as He willed with 
 them, because He had the power ; and they could only 
 approach Him through the ministers of His court. This 
 is a view which still continues, and it is as false and as 
 fatal to a true religion or a true society as the view taken 
 by the king and the nobles was to the society and the 
 policy which the Revolution overthrew. No truce should 
 be kept with that view ; the sword of the intellect and the 
 spirit should never be sheathed till it is overthrown ; and if 
 in order to destroy it we have to go through a period of 
 partial denial of God and abjuration of religion, we can 
 bear that trouble, if only this evil doctrine be over- 
 thrown. It seems we must go through such a period, 
 for indeed we are living in it ; but at least, some of us may 
 keep our heads and guard our hearts, and without drop- 
 ping into the curious condition of Atheism, or into that 
 ill-fortuned decay of love and of imagination which comes 
 from a denial of all religion realize the higher view of 
 God and human society to which even Science itself, the 
 very cause of so much of our disbelief, is leading us day by 
 day. When the idea of God as conceived by Christ is 
 clear, and the idea of Man that is contained in it is fully 
 grasped, no one will dream of disbelieving in God, or of 
 thinking that any man is capable of altogether dying. 
 
 It is, I believe, considered a mark of high and emanci- 
 pated intellect, and, strangely enough, of bold imagination, 
 even of noble emotion, to have given up the faiths of God 
 
1 6 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 and of immortality. It is, in reality, want of intellectual 
 grasp, or enfeebled imagination, or the dwindling of the 
 powers of the heart which have chiefly produced the denial 
 of God and of immortality on the side of unbelief, and the 
 base views of God and of immortality on the side of orthodox 
 theology. I do not know which is most sorrowful to say 
 that there is no God, or to say that He is like an irrespon- 
 sible Eastern Emperor ; to say that there is no immortality, 
 or to say that we are, for the most part, to be immortal with 
 the devil in eternal division from God. The denial is 
 perhaps the saddest of the two, for it finally leaves us face 
 to face with pessimism. 
 
 But both vanish before the view of God in His kinship to 
 man the view of Jesus Christ that which is laid down 
 in the great saying, spoken by a man in behalf of humanity, 
 " I and the Father are one." Man is then by nature the 
 child of God, and not the child of the devil. There is an 
 individual unity of nature between God and man. Man 
 cannot be separated from God, nor God from man. The 
 child of any father on earth may go astray, wander far 
 from his home, himself deny his origin, do all that 
 his father dislikes and hates but the tie is not finally 
 broken. The father, unless he be false to fatherhood, 
 recognizes his relationship all through the forgetfulness 
 of the son, and says to himself, as he thinks in sorrow 
 and solitude " Yet he is my son, mine own. When he 
 returns he shall find himself at home ; nay more, I cannot 
 bear his absence ; I will seek him till I find him, and make 
 him at one with me in love and in character. He must 
 suffer, but his suffering shall burn up his evil. But I will 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 17 
 
 never deny him, never fling him away. I should be false to 
 myself if I could do or even think that wrong." 
 
 Is God different from that ; less noble, less worthy, less 
 loving than the fatherhood of earth ? No ; infinitely 
 more noble, worthy and loving ! There is no earthly tie 
 so close as that which binds God to His children on earth. 
 It were more easy to annihilate the universe than to destroy 
 that immortal bond. The Child and the Father are one. 
 
 And to be a father, what is it ? It is to give our own 
 nature and our own life to beings kindred with ourselves, 
 and to educate them into a full likeness to ourselves. The 
 bond is not only a bond of birthj it is a spiritual, intel- 
 lectual, moral and loving bond. And God is Father when, 
 having created us akin to Himself, he educates us into union 
 with His intelligence, His righteousness, His love, and into 
 those powers in Him by which He creates all that gives joy 
 and embodies beauty ; so that we may be His fellow workmen 
 in the universe, immortal as Himself, and only less infinite 
 in that while He always is, we are always becoming. 
 
 If these things be true, what is our religion ? It is to 
 believe in this bond between us and God, to live in the love 
 of it, to feel all the emotions that flow from it, and to do all 
 the deeds to which this faith and love impel us. It is to 
 worship Him whom we thus conceive ; to worship a God 
 akin to us, whose moral, intellectual, loving nature is the 
 same in kind as our own ; who is the perfection of our 
 spiritual being ; who is within us a Presence so vital, power- 
 ful and creative, that we are enabled to grow into His very 
 image ; and who, in proportion as we grow, communicates 
 to us, in fuller and fuller life, His own goodness, power, 
 
1 8 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 love and joy ; and with them, and of them, His truth and 
 harmony. 
 
 So, then, the true worship of God is to become that 
 which we worship; to draw nearer to Him as the sun 
 whence light and purity and wisdom and power stream into 
 our souls. It is not to tremble before Him, but to have 
 the joy and boldness and humility of love, and to do His 
 will because we are certain it is for the perfection of the race 
 of man. It is to bear all that comes upon us of suffering or 
 of trial, knowing that what is borne is for the use and good 
 of the whole of humanity. It is always to believe in His 
 order and His love, and to abide patiently the end. It is to 
 feel His quickening life within us, making us immortal ; and 
 to do the works meet for immortality. It is to be impassioned 
 for more and more of Him within us. It is by purity to 
 see Him, by love to dwell in Him, by truth to know Him, 
 in reverence to understand Him, in humility to rejoice in 
 Him, in joy to abide in His work, in power to do His work; 
 and in all, to know and be ravished by His everlasting 
 beauty. 
 
 Is that a personal religion which terrifies or depresses, 
 which tends to superstition, which nurtures ignorance, 
 lessens love', enfeebles intelligence, degrades our powers, 
 fetters reason, or injures conscience ? 
 
 On the contrary, it uplifts us into courage, for we fear nothing 
 but doing wrong. It raises us into joy, for it gives us endless 
 life, and that life is love. It destroys superstition, which is 
 the offspring of ignorance and fear of God, for it makes us 
 know God and love what we know, and perfect love casts 
 out all fear. It kindles love, for it reveals eternal beauty. 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 19 
 
 It makes us reverence all intelligence, for every spark of 
 intellect is divine His own, who is the Fount of Thought, 
 the beginning ancUhe end of Truth. It sets the reason free, 
 for to use it is to use His gift. It delivers the conscience 
 when it is injured by theological authority, for what God 
 gave we may not deny. It ennobles the powers of man, 
 for we use them as the powers of God. 
 
 And so indeed He wills it should be with us, who begat 
 us of His own good will, and cherished us in youth, and 
 trained us to be men, and keeps us through old age to His 
 Eternal Kingdom God, with whom we are at one for ever. 
 This is our personal religion ! What our religion, on the 
 same grounds, ought to be in our life with men, I shall speak 
 of next Sunday. Meanwhile, let me dwell for a little on 
 what power this union with God should give us in the course 
 of human life. 
 
 All our true life is made up of work, and joy, and sorrow, 
 and growth. With regard to Work, into which we shape all our 
 inward being, it is, in this idea, the work also of God. It is 
 He who works through our hand in manual labour ; it is He 
 who speaks through all we do in business ; it is He who 
 shapes our thought and passion on the canvass, into the 
 marble, through the music that we make, and the buildings 
 that we frame for the worship or the use of men. It is He 
 who writes with us on all the subjects of human thought and 
 experiment, who leads us into all science, who forms the 
 drama and builds the poem. It is He who with us heals 
 the sick, and preaches the Gospel, and frames the law, and 
 defends the right, and governs the nation and in that 
 belief all work is sanctified, guarded by conscience, freed 
 
 B 2 
 
2O The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 from the world, ennobled by an ideal, enkindled by love, 
 triumphant in failure, finished with joy even though it be 
 finished on the Cross. 
 
 And as to Joy, it does not, if we hold it within this idea of 
 natural union with God, remain within ourselves, nor end 
 in selfishness. It passes beyond the earth to become grati- 
 tude in Heaven. We lose the chances of its becoming evil, 
 when we bind it up with God. We will have none of it for 
 which we cannot praise God with a quiet mind. And, day 
 by day, as we praise Him for pure joy, we find more for 
 which to praise Him ; we fill the world with God, and walk 
 with Him. His is the freshness of the morning, and the 
 rest of eventide. His the beauty of the woodlands and 
 the waters, of the mountains and the clouds that love 
 them, of the deep sea, and the multitudes of the flowers, 
 and His the language of the kindly earth and the ancient 
 Heavens. The rapture of all the love that we have 
 known is His, and to Him belong all the great hopes that 
 have transfigured us, and all the rushing life within which 
 rose again, like Jesus from his grave, when our stricken heart 
 seemed dead. All our joy is God's we and the Father are 
 one. Praise becomes the air we breathe, and from our 
 praise flows so great a gladness that others learn to praise. 
 
 And then, when sorrow comes and pain, we are not 
 unprepared. We know they are in His order whom we 
 love, in whom we are, with whom we are at one. We 
 suffer, but it is with the certainty that the suffering will 
 come to an end, and that the end will be the blessing of 
 others, and, in that, our own. The storm of trial beats 
 upon us, but we are founded on a rock; and there is some- 
 
r ]. 
 The Unity of God and Man. * 
 
 thing almost of joy in the stern resistance we can give to the 
 tempest such resistance, and such a thrill, as a great 
 lighthouse, set far out at sea on a solitary rock, might feel, 
 were it alive, when all the ocean wrath dashed against it, 
 always in vain. Victory is the only solace for sorrow, and of 
 victory he is secure who with Jesus knows that he is at one with 
 the Father. " Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? 
 Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or 
 nakedness, or peril, or sword ? Nay, in all these things we 
 are more than conquerors through him that loved us." 
 
 " More than conquerors." Yet, we have many days of 
 battle to endure, of weakness, and of pain that seems to 
 grasp the hand of death. They have but cold hearts who 
 say that the surety of conquest should carry us beyond the 
 pain of earth. It cannot do so always, nor is it well it 
 should. We must know suffering that we may be able to 
 help those who suffer ; we must weep our day, even though 
 we are going to find peace, that we may know how nobly 
 others before us have endured and wrought. 
 
 Now are we left without the help of our belief in God 
 at one with us, in the midst of the days when trouble makes 
 praise unnatural. For, if we are at one with Him, then we 
 tell Him of all our trials, as a child runs to tell his mother 
 of his pain. We do not ask Him to take them away from 
 us, but we do ask Him to share them with us. It is not praise, 
 but it is prayer silent, contending, deep communion, ab- 
 solute realization of His Presence, certainty of His love, 
 fearlessness, and knowledge ; till, at last, we come out of the 
 obscure wood of trouble saying to ourselves, with greater 
 trust than before, " I and My Father are one." 
 
22 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 In these experiences, lastly, are the roots ot Growth. 
 Through pleasure and pain thus known, and passed 
 through with God, the personal life of the soul develops in 
 such a manner, that while it loses its selfishness in God, 
 it gains the itnmortal individuality which is only found in 
 love. The deepest personality of man is in his unity with 
 God. Never did Jesus feel more profoundly the undying- 
 continuity of his consciousness than when he said " I and 
 my Father are one." 
 
 At last, death comes death, that men think they fear, 
 but who is our kindest friend. And when we stand before 
 the gate, the key of which he keeps, and see through its 
 lattice his solemn and beautiful face, alit with the light of 
 life for, in truth, he whom we call death is our nearest 
 image on earth of life what shall we say to him, with 
 what words unlock the gate of Paradise? "Open, friend : 
 I and my Father are one." 
 
[June 21, 1885.] 
 
 THE UNITY OF GOD AND MAN. 
 " I and my Father are one." JOHN x. 30. 
 
 THIS wonderful word of Jesus, spoken by him in lofty 
 prophetic feeling of the whole race of man whom he felt 
 moving in himself, lays deep the foundation of all 
 religion. In each one of us growing into the power of 
 truly saying it, personal religion consists. To know 
 our kinship to God, to claim it, to live by it, to love 
 Him as- at one with ourselves as a father with a child, to 
 feel that He is educating us day by day into unity 
 with Himself, to believe that the union shall at last be 
 perfect, and to realize it more and more in feeling and in 
 act that is individual religion. In that relation we each 
 stand utterly alone with God. At times we are conscious of 
 nothing else in the whole universe but ourselves and Him ; 
 and this consciousness, and the fact which answers to it that 
 God has a distinct relation to each of us different for ever 
 from that which He has to anyone else is the only un- 
 changeable and certain ground of that which we call 
 individuality. And profoundly important it is to maintain 
 that ground now, at a time when we are called on to sacrifice 
 all individuality for the sake of the whole. We are to 
 sacrifice all desires to have, and take, and keep, for ourselves. 
 These are to be surrendered for the sake of the whole. But 
 
24 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 we are not to sacrifice individuality. In fact, we cannot 
 sacrifice it if we would. If we give it up, we give up the 
 power of sacrifice, for we give up will, character, and 
 consciousness : the very things which constitute our separate 
 individuality. What have we then left to sacrifice ? Indeed, 
 the logical conclusion to which certain philosophers, who 
 hold this theory, are driven, is personal and universal 
 annihilation; for if all the individualities of which the whole 
 of humanity is made up are sacrificed, why, then, the whole 
 is itself destroyed. Such philosophies, however, are 
 transient ; they must run their course and die, having frac- 
 tured their heads against human nature and the laws by which 
 mankind exists. No, the religion of Jesus, in which distinc- 
 tive personality is secured by connecting each human being 
 separately with God, is right, is in accordance with fact, is 
 not only good philosophy, but also common sense. Let 
 each one of you say, " I and my Father are one," and 
 realize towards Him your personality. You can lose person- 
 ality as much as you like towards man ; but keep it towards 
 God. In Him it is certain not to end in selfishness. 
 
 Again, if God be at one with each of the parts, He is 
 more completely at one with the whole or, rather, the 
 whole of mankind is a more complete representation of God 
 than any one of the parts. If each of us may say with 
 Jesus, " I and my Father are one," still more may the whole 
 of mankind, realizing its oneness, say, "I, Universal 
 Humanity, and the Father are one ; God and mankind are 
 one." This is the truth which has been kept alive in the 
 doctrine of the union of God and man in Jesus. The form 
 given to it by the Churches is untrue, and most clearly seen 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 25 
 
 as such in the restriction of its truth to Jesus alone : for we 
 may always take it for granted that a spiritual statement 
 issued in a limited form is untrue so far as it is limited. 
 But through the untrue form the truth stole into the hearts 
 of men, awakened their emotions, and produced life and act 
 accordant to it throughout the ages. Of all great social 
 movements, of all great religious reformations, of all the 
 thoughts that have stirred the souls of nations, of all the 
 universal ideas which have coursed like fire through the 
 heart of man, this truth was the living soul Humanity 
 and God are one. And the day will come, when, after in- 
 finite work, struggle and development, victory over all evil 
 error will be won, and all mankind, from beginning to end, 
 will become conscious that it is at union with God, and take 
 up with universal voice, the saying of Jesus " I and the 
 Father are one." 
 
 I showed last Sunday what on the ground of this belief 
 in our indestructible kinship to God our personal religion 
 was to be, and in what it consisted. 
 
 To-day I will speak of the other side of religion as 
 it flows from this same idea of the kinship of God and 
 man ; that side of it which is in relation to our fellow-men. 
 It is an enormous subject. The sermons of a lifetime would 
 scarcely discuss half the forms it takes ; and I have spoken of 
 it in many ways. But, however numerous its forms, they all 
 flow from this one idea of the natural union of God with 
 man, of the natural kinship of the Father to His children. 
 For in that idea is declared the truth of the brotherhood 
 of man. If all are God's children, all are bound together 
 for eternity, and have the eternal duties and the eternal rights 
 
26 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 01 fraternity laid upon them. All religious life then, con- 
 ceived of as lived in and among men, runs back to God 
 as its centre. The idea of the Fatherhood of God is the most 
 ideal and the most practical ground of all human association, 
 from the relations of the family to those of the whole of 
 mankind. All other grounds are liable to change, are con- 
 tained in the ever shifting matter of human thought and 
 feeling, are capable of being discussed, differed from, over- 
 thrown. This alone, being outside humanity and yet within 
 it, being immutable, infinite, and always good, remains a 
 foundation that cannot be shaken. There is nothing which 
 any old philosophy or new religion has striven to embody 
 concerning the duties of man to man, concerning the rights 
 of man, concerning the evolution and the progress of the 
 race, which is not to be best derived and worked from the 
 idea that all men are brothers because they are the sons 
 of the infinite Goodness, Truth, and Love ; that all men 
 and the Father are one. 
 
 But among the many ways of treating the subject of the 
 religious duties of man to man, on the ground of this 
 belief on which I am dwelling, there is one which is but rarely 
 touched, and which, if I can manage to express it, will 
 develop, in perhaps a new fashion, the belief itself, and the 
 duties that flow from it. 
 
 If Nature could consciously feel and speak, it would say, 
 "I and my Creator are one;" and at least, men have so 
 felt and written about Nature that part of the thinking 
 of man is this "That the universe is one of the 
 forms of God." If, then, humanity and Nature are both 
 forms of God, there is a relationship of kinship, and 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 27 
 
 of essential thought between them. In what Nature does, 
 or in what is done in her, we should find an image of our 
 true lives ; in the doings of natural things, the image of what 
 should be our doings one to another. This, too, was the 
 conception of Jesus. He used continually the processes 
 of Nature, the business of the sun and wind and flowers 
 and corn, to illustrate the Kingdom of God among men. 
 He saw, that is, the inner harmony of thought between 
 humanity and Nature, because he saw that their one and 
 single source was God his Father. 
 
 Our question, then, which we wish to answer is : What 
 does the life of Nature tell us of our religious duties 
 towards men? I shall state this in poetical form, 
 but it will be seen that it may also be stated in scientific 
 form. 
 
 We see first individuality ; each separate thing living its 
 own distinct life, having its own distinct qualities, and yet, in 
 all, and forming all, only one Energy ; different atomic 
 arrangements producing different developments, but the 
 mighty power which drives the vibrations for ever constant and 
 the same. Or, to say the same thing in the poet's way Out 
 of herself Nature furnishes to every creature a silent heart ; 
 every lonely dell and every mountain peak, every flower, 
 every stream and cloud has its own special soul and 
 character. The vast divisions of the world the sea, the 
 heavens, the air, the all-receiving earth, like the great 
 divisions of humanity, have each their complex life and 
 personality. And Nature herself, in whom all the separate 
 lives are merged into one life as persons, societies, nations, 
 and divisions are enfolded in the one life of humanity 
 
28 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 has her own mighty Being which loves, thinks and acts in 
 incessant creation. 
 
 But this individuality of the whole and the parts is con- 
 sistent with, and indeed endures through ceaseless inter- 
 communion, every part giving and receiving all it has, like 
 friends in loving intercourse ; each sacrificing to use an 
 analogical term its life for the life of the rest. Nothing 
 in Nature lives to itself, or dies to itself. Each bears the 
 other's burdens, and so fulfils the law of God. They do it, 
 I suppose I must say, unconsciously, but they do it, and 
 they reveal to us in their doing of it what God desires our 
 life with one another to become. It is one of His universal 
 thoughts of life which we see there ; and the whole statement 
 I have made, as a poet would make it, is just as true, when 
 stated in another form, in the world of scientific fact. It is 
 an absolute truth. 
 
 Individual as we are to be then towards God, we are to 
 be the exact converse towards our fellow men. Among 
 men, our religion is to be (and in this we follow Nature as 
 well as Jesus), the surrender of all we have and are for the 
 sake of others, for the sake of the welfare of the whole. 
 We are to possess a blessed spirit in our being which shall 
 yield, almost without consciousness of giving, with joy and 
 without weariness, as a flower yields its scent and a stream 
 its music, whatever beauty and use we have for the increase 
 of the happiness of man, till at last we feel, through our 
 giving, that we are in communion with the whole of 
 humanity. Then we say, " I and humanity are one ; " and 
 since humanity is the child of God, say again, and in a 
 different way than before, " I and the Father are one." This 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 29 
 
 is a part of our religion towards man ; and he who is not 
 living by this idea, is, so far, isolated not only from God and 
 man, but also from Nature ; at variance not only with 
 theology, but also with science ; not living in harmony with 
 truth. 
 
 Again, as with us, so with Nature, there is a mighty 
 sorrow. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth. 
 Many have looked on the world, and seen in it nothing 
 but pain and destruction. It seems sometimes to us as if 
 the universe were sentient, and we heard the cry of its vast 
 suffering rising in the dead of night, and vainly asking us 
 for help. And did Nature feel, we should know that she 
 would be like humanity, and would realize the same im- 
 mense trouble that we have, and the same immense pro- 
 blem we try to solve. 
 
 But this problem both for her and for us is contained in 
 the categorical imperative which demands the sacrifice of 
 individual desires for the welfare of the whole. As long as 
 we are unwilling to make this sacrifice, so long we shall 
 have pain. As long as humanity is unwilling to obey the 
 law by which the life of the spiritual and the physical 
 universe exists, so long will pain be the lot of humanity. 
 Pain is the unwilling sacrifice of our individual desires to 
 get and to keep things for ourselves alone. Pleasure is the 
 willing surrender for the good of the whole of all things 
 which we should otherwise desire to get and keep. And 
 the only answer to the problem of the suffering earth and 
 man is in the belief, that when all have attained the full 
 power of living for the welfare of the whole, and of using 
 that power with ease, then pain must cease, for that which 
 
3O The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 produced the pain will then produce pleasure. And if so, 
 the end will be so glorious, and the life so intense, that we 
 shall confess that to gain it was worth all the pain. 
 
 But now, face to face with the pain, what does Nature 
 teach us ? It teaches us to take it joyfully. It is im- 
 possible not to be impressed through Nature with the 
 sense of the frank enjoyment of life in organic things ; 
 though we know also that all these things suffer the same 
 natural pains that we endure ; the animals consciously, 
 and, it may be, even the plants that do not tell us of their 
 woes. Yet they take misfortune well. It was not out 
 of Wordsworth's soul alone that the idea came that 
 every flower enjoyed the air it breathed. Even 
 when we are gloomiest we think how gaily the leaves 
 dance in the sunlight, how happily the stream is run- 
 ning, how wild with pleasure is the mountain grass 
 tossing in the wind. The birds, the insect world, the 
 fishes that flash in the river, the lambs in the dappled 
 orchard with what gladness without care, themselves their 
 own enjoyment, they live and move, and seem to praise 
 the Lord. 
 
 This ought to be a part of our religion towards our fellow- 
 men ; yes, in spite of pain, even because of pain. The very 
 first demand on our self-sacrifice, when we are in heavy 
 trouble, is not to let it overcome us so far as to take away 
 the possibility of our rejoicing when its agony is over ; and 
 this demand is made on us for the sake of our fellow-men. 
 There is nothing more selfish, more disagreeable, or which 
 causes more trouble and want of love in the end, than the 
 temper of those persons who, because they think their 
 
The Unity of God and Man 31 
 
 grief a duty, or their trial greater than any one else can 
 know, impose their sorrow and pain upon mankind, refuse 
 all the sunlight of life, and wear the air of incessant 
 martyrdom, without the quiet or the joy of the martyrs. 
 This is incarnate selfishness ; and Nature, who suffers 
 enough, protests against it in her silent way of practice. 
 Think how after winter she bursts into life again ; think 
 how after tempest the flowers lift their heads ; think how 
 after the earthquake and the eruption she clothes the slopes 
 of lava and the torn earth with her green and embroidered 
 garment. Hear how the birds, while they remember their 
 desolated nests, give themselves up to the sweet present ! 
 In all this it is the voice of God you hear, the thought of 
 God you see your Father who is at one with Nature and 
 with you. 
 
 What Nature does, midst of all her pain, let us go and 
 do likewise midst of a suffering world. As the flowers 
 do not know the pleasure that they give to the weary and 
 the sick and the poor; as the birds never think how many of 
 that human race so different from theirs have, by their song, 
 been led away from pain or cheered in sadness ; so the heart 
 that will not yield to trouble, and in its faith and love keeps and 
 gives brightness, as it ought ; which sings on its way, though 
 it does not forget its sorrow as sorrowful, yet always re- 
 joicing does more for men than we can tell, and far more 
 than many who consciously sacrifice themselves. These 
 valiant hearts do not know the pleasure and the strength 
 they give, but it is great ; they may even, like the birds to 
 us, give comfort to a higher race in greater trouble than we, 
 for all the universe of life is bound together. If you will 
 
32 The Unity of God and Man. 
 
 keep joy in the midst of trouble, you may truly say, " I 
 and the Father are one." 
 
 Lastly ; beneath all the outward pleasure and pain of 
 Nature there is peace. Deep calm is at her heart, as in the 
 depths of ocean ; as in the silence of the starry space. 
 Even greater than the impressions of sacrifice and joy which 
 she gives to us, is the impression of repose, as if that were 
 the end both of joy and sorrow. Yet it is not a dead peace, 
 but one of life at harmony with itself, of laws fulfilled and 
 loved, of soft swiftness of Being, at rest through its own 
 swiftness. The calm of the summer landscape, the quiet of 
 the sea, the tranquillity of the evening, the silence of the 
 night, do not bring to us the thought of death, but of 
 obedient and peaceful life. And this, which might be 
 called mere imagination, is the sentence also of great 
 philosophy and of science. In the higher region of thought 
 where all disturbance is seen in its relation to the whole, 
 where order is seated on its throne supreme, there is eternal 
 peace. In the centre of the universe, there is not death but 
 life ; not sleep but energy. It is this tranquil being in the 
 whole and in each thing which "sends its own deep quiet 
 to restore our hearts." It is this unity of energy and rest 
 which, in its last expression, is God with whom we and 
 Nature are one. 
 
 So, that is the end. Peace in swiftness of life ; rest in 
 fulness of being ; harmony in completeness. 
 
 Carry that faith with you through all your doings with 
 your fellow-men. You will then carry with you infinite 
 blessing. What Nature tells you, make a part of your 
 religious life with men. Lead them to see and know the 
 
The Unity of God and Man. 33 
 
 end, the end that Jesus knew when he said, " Come, all ye 
 that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 Infinite peace in infinite life is God. In that also and 
 it is dear to our outwearied lives we and the Father 
 are one. 
 
34 
 
 [July 2, 1882.] 
 THE WANDERING SHEEP. 
 
 " What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one fo them, 
 doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that 
 which is lost until he find it ? 
 
 "And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders 
 rejoicing." ST. LUKE xv. 4, 5. 
 
 THERE is all the sweetness of common religion in this 
 parable. Everyone can feel it, understand it, love it. It 
 belongs to no creed but the creed of human love ; it 
 enshrines no doctrine but the doctrine which we learn by 
 many a gracious touch of God, the doctrine of heavenly 
 pity. It does not lead us into the thorny wood of polemics 
 to find there a faith by which we may live and die ; it places 
 us in the midst of simple human life, and tells us that therein 
 we may know religion. Men ask, Where shall I find 
 teaching that I care for ; where a daily word spoken 
 to my heart; where the short lessons which, teaching more 
 than sermons, flit like swallows over the plains of the soul, 
 and drop a seed to fructify hereafter into a harvest of perfect 
 good ? And the answer is, Open your eyes and look 
 round about you. See the son returning penitent to his 
 father's door, hesitating to enter. But listen for a moment, 
 what do you hear ? A cry of joy "This, my son, was dead, 
 and is alive again, was lost and is found." It is a revelation 
 
The Wandering Sheep. 35 
 
 of God's fatherhood. Take up a common flower as you go 
 over the meadows, the daisy, star of the grass. Look at the 
 way in which the pink is dropped upon its leaves, touch by 
 touch, till you fail to see the gradations. Look how its 
 yellow wands are set in the midst, each with its golden 
 crown. What is that ? It is that infinite care of God 
 which Christ knew when he said, " If God so clothe the grass 
 of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the 
 oven, how much more shall He clothe you, O ye of little 
 faith." 
 
 Watch the growth of the corn, from seed to harvest 
 What do you see there ? You see the growth of the soul. 
 Jesus knew its story well, and taught his happiest spiritual 
 lessons from all that he saw in the green fields round Gen- 
 nesaret. Pass by an orchard in spring: you see a tree laden 
 with foliage. Pass by the same orchard in autumn : you see 
 the tree producing no fruit, but only leaves. What does the 
 owner do ? He waits a little. Year by year he digs about 
 the tree, and takes care that it has plenty of refreshing 
 nutriment ; but if nothing comes of it he says, " Cut it 
 down ; why cumbereth it the ground ? " What have you 
 seen ? You have seen the way in which God deals with a 
 soul whose life produces leaves but no fruit. 
 
 Pass by on a Yorkshire moor or Highland mountain side 
 when eve is falling dark and menacing, and the snow comes 
 up hidden in the bosom of the cloud ; stay till you see the 
 ninety-nine sheep penned in the rough fold beneath the 
 shelter of the rock, and then, amid the blinding drift, go 
 with the shepherd all night long from glen to glen, till at last 
 he find the dying lamb, and, laying it on his shoulders, 
 
 c 2 
 
3^ The Wandering Sheep. 
 
 brings it back rejoicing. What have you seen? Only a 
 shepherd and his sheep, and danger faced, and joy born out 
 of the depths of love and pity for one of lower by one of 
 higher race ? More, more than that. You have seen 
 Christianity, seen the relation of the Great Shepherd to the 
 race of men. The whole world is a parable of the dealings 
 of God with man. The interpretation is plain to all who will 
 open their eyes to see. All our religion, all that is necessary 
 for us to believe may be found in our daily life with men, 
 and can be learnt from the relation of men to animals. 
 
 Christ teaches us in this parable to be pitiful to the lost. 
 There are two classes of open sinners those who go away 
 wilfully, and those who are lost through error. Lost ! Mark 
 the word ; for it makes the distinction between this parable 
 and that of the Prodigal Son. The fault of severance from a 
 father had been wilfully made by the younger son. Then, he 
 ruined himself of his own direct will; he was not betrayed, or 
 deceived into evil, or overtaken in a fault. He chose the 
 wild life of his own accord. He was not only ruined; he was, 
 we are told, dead. But the wandering sheep was led away, 
 it knew not how, from the guarded flock. A patch of 
 greener grass had attracted it ; and then another, and 
 another ; a belt of shadow next beside a brook, beneath a 
 tree, had lured its thirst and then its slumber. It awoke in 
 mist and solitude, and in dumb pain and ghastly fear went 
 blindly through the wilderness and was lost. It is thus 
 that many a vain, weak, and passionate creature has 
 perished. The light that leads astray seems often 
 at first to be light from heaven. The frailty which leads 
 them to sin takes often the semblance of strength. The 
 

 ( 
 The Wandering Sheep. 37 
 
 path on which they walk appears so beautiful that it cannot, 
 they think, be wrong. Alas ! no mistake is so common as 
 to think that the beautiful is necessarily the true. 
 
 Many of these wandering creatures, both men and women, 
 fell in the way of Christ. He was attracted by them, and had 
 himself an irresistible attraction for the outcasts of society. 
 The Pharisee, at their sight, drew round him the cloak of 
 sanctimonious indignation ; a touch from a sinner was a 
 stain. The Sadducee did not care about saving them from 
 ruin. He would say, " A certain amount of immorality is 
 inevitable ; sin to some temperaments is almost a necessity : 
 I can do nothing, and I do not particularly care ; and after 
 all, as there is no life after death, they may as well follow 
 their nature. If they hurt society in following their nature, 
 society can put an end to them." 
 
 Between these two sides which I have modernized a 
 little, and you may recognize their existence now the 
 publican and the sinner in Judaea were abandoned to 
 themselves. No voice of love reached them ; no chance 
 was given them. Reprobated by one side, ignored by the 
 other, they felt themselves infamous, and they became still 
 more that which society declared them to be. Hardness of 
 heart corrupted the strong among them ; despair of heart 
 corrupted the weak. 
 
 But when pure humanity lived on earth, and they saw 
 the love of God shining in the Saviour's eyes, and shining 
 upon them, and heard in every word he spoke the infinite 
 yearning of God to seek and save the lost, they could not 
 resist the heavenly magnetism. " Then drew near all the 
 publicans and sinners for to hear him." The hard heart 
 
3 8 The Wandering Sheep. 
 
 melted into tears ; the despairing saw the star of hope arise. 
 In the very presence of their foes they clustered round 
 Jesus. But they were not allowed their last chance. Even 
 now the lying righteousness of men forbad their penitence, 
 and pushed them back into their guilt. The Scribes and 
 Pharisees did their wicked best to make the only man who 
 had ever seemed to care for these outcasts turn away from 
 them in shame. They "murmured, saying, This man 
 receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." 
 
 What would the prophet do? What would you have 
 done ? Would ridicule or fear overcome Jesus ? Would he 
 bend before the power of the priesthood, and turn away from 
 the sinful woman and the degraded man ? Having opened to 
 them a glimpse of heaven, would he push them back into a 
 hell darker for the glimpse of light ? These questions ran 
 through all hearts in the crowd ; and I can imagine the 
 suspended hush when Christ began to speak. But can we 
 fancy the shame and anger, the shame and, perhaps, the 
 repentance, which stole into the obstinate Pharisaic 
 hearts : the beautiful relief, the delight, the glory of 
 tearful love which filled the sinners' soul when, one 
 after another, in exquisitely simple words and human 
 images, the three parables which follow fell like musical 
 winds, born in the highest heavens of tenderness, 
 upon their ears? Nothing like those parables had ever 
 been heard before ; nothing like them will be heard again 
 on earth. They have come down to us from that ancient 
 time, and they have never ceased to touch, and soften, and 
 redeem the heart of the lost. They have drawn more 
 healing tears from men ; comforted more despair ; fallen 
 
The Wandering SJieeb. 39 
 
 like April rain upon more exhausted hearts ; blessed more 
 death beds with the supreme beauty of hope ; told us more 
 of heavenly love than all the poetry, art, and religious 
 teaching of thousands of years. 
 
 And how was this wonder wrought ? By an appeal to 
 doctrine ; by an appeal to abstract principles ; by an appeal 
 to social economy ? Nothing of the kind. By an appeal to 
 ordinary human nature, and to its affections. 
 
 He turned round upon the Pharisees, and went direct to 
 the human centre of pity in their hearts, taking the case into 
 a region unconfused by any conventional and hardened 
 thought. " What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if 
 he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in 
 the wilderness and go after that which was lost, until he find 
 it ? " That is, he asked the objector, " How would one of 
 you act in such a case ? You would go after the wanderer 
 until you found it." It is just so, said Christ, that God 
 would act. Think of your feelings when the prodigal 
 returns. These are God's feelings when a sinner turns to 
 Him. 
 
 This is simple teaching, utterly simple; a child can 
 comprehend it, a wise man can love it with all his heart. 
 There is no need to represent Christianity as a difficult thing 
 to understand. In the minuter details of life, in the appli- 
 cation of the principles of Jesus to diverse characters, diffi- 
 culties arise. But one simple idea lies at the root of all Christ's 
 teaching the salvation of the lost, the bringing of rest to the 
 weary and sorrowful and sinful of the world. Broadly and 
 clearly, Christ declared in these parables the identity 
 of God's compassion with our compassion ; the identity 
 
40 The Wandering Sheep. 
 
 of God's eagerness to find the lost with our eagerness 
 to find them. It is the fashion with some to deny this 
 identity and to quote " My ways are not your ways, nor my 
 thoughts as your thoughts." Very true ! But those words 
 were spoken to men who were sinning by injustice and 
 unpitifulness against true human nature. They did not 
 deny that fact which made the manifestation of God's 
 character in Christ possible and valuable, the fact contained 
 in the phrase of the human heart of God. It is that fact which 
 the Pharisee, at all times of the world's history, denies. 
 Secluding himself in his religious doctrine and formalism, in 
 bigotry and bitterness, he refuses to give love to the sinner, to 
 feel pity for the penitent. It is his religion to be hard on 
 others. He denies his human heart, and though he thinks he 
 affirms God in so doing, he in fact denies God. To turn and 
 believe that God feels love and pity, and is just, not cruel, 
 is the only chance such a man has to redeem his soul. By 
 appealing to the human nature in these obstinate Jews, 
 Christ recalled them from the region of dead and bigoted 
 religion, swept them for a moment out of their world of 
 thorny maxims of morality, of separation from mankind, 
 and brought them back to Nature. Nor does he forget now 
 in his perfect life those whom he touched with so subtle 
 and so gentle a finger here on earth. Wherever there is the 
 wanderer and the sinner there is One who seeks them. We, 
 untempted and folded in the watchful precincts of home, do 
 not know the agony of such loss as this ; but there are times 
 even for us when the heart is outcast and the life undone ; 
 when broken down with the unutterable pang of a lost love 
 or a fruitless indignation, we hide our sorrow from the eyes 
 
The Wandering Sheep. 41 
 
 of men, and move among them with no sign of outward 
 trouble, but inwardly are wandering for ever through a misty 
 wilderness, wild and thirsty as the most passionate desert 
 dream. Worse still, when, seized in the grip of some secret 
 sin, though seeming righteous to the world, we know that we 
 are no longer of the ninety and nine just ones who need no 
 repentance, but are adrift upon the sea of self-contempt, 
 alone with the torture of remorse and hopelessness and 
 shame. In these and other cases, if we are not spiritu- 
 ally dead, there is but one longing in the soul the longing 
 or some divine comforter to come after us and say, "Your 
 hidden grief is mine, my child, your secret sin I forgive 
 and forget. Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no 
 more." 
 
 Far worse, however, is the outcasts' case. Thousands 
 of outcasts drift through this great city ; women who have 
 sinned, men who have never heard a word of kindness 
 from their birth. They are the hundredth sheep. It 
 you can, be to them, when they cross your path, like Christ 
 and God ; do not stand apart ; help to save a few from the 
 terror of despair and the death in life. Your own peace, 
 your gracious home purity should make you pitiful. Have 
 you never asked yourself how much you may have indirectly 
 done to swell those dreadful ranks, how thoughtlessness 
 again and again repeated in matters that pertain to every-day 
 existence may have driven many into this outcast life. " We 
 know not what we do," some cry ; but they ought to know. 
 They ought to think that more evils are wrought by want of 
 thought than by want of heart, and that thoughtlessness, 
 encouraged or unchecked, or long protracted after warnings 
 
42 The Wandering Sheep. 
 
 given, becomes want of heart. The impulse of pity is 
 checked by selfishness ; the desire of helping by vanity and 
 love of show, by disinclination to break in upon our easy 
 going life. The practice of love is troublesome, and at last 
 divine charity dies. Then we are dead to God, dead far 
 more than the miserable outcast we ignore. For death to 
 love is death to God. " For those who shut out love, in 
 turn shall be shut out from love, and on her threshold lie, 
 howling in outer darkness." 
 
 Let us open, then, when we can, a door for the broken 
 and contrite heart. We can go after the lost sheep 
 until we find it ; we can be untiring in our effort, un- 
 sparing of our wealth. For even though we may often 
 fail, we shall resemble that ever-seeking Father, whose 
 children we ought to be in the sleeplessness of our tender- 
 ness, and the obstinacy of our assistance. 
 
 Lastly, in those words, " until he find it," we see that 
 which I have elsewhere called the pertinacity of God. 
 Human love is baffled by fate ; worn by time ; exhausted by 
 indifference ; made base by fear ; tainted by caprice j 
 reversed by a swift circumstance. But the love of God to 
 every son of man moves always true, steady, and persistent 
 to its goal the salvation and perfection of the soul. He 
 will never cease to pursue the wanderer until He find him. 
 By impulses of soul and sense ; by unvoiced words heard in 
 the silence of the hills or in the dead of night ; by the sudden 
 kindling of aspirations ; by the joy of youth ; by success in 
 life ; by every divine touch of human feeling ; by sudden 
 recollections falling upon us, He seeks us in youth ; and, if 
 we will not hear, then He seeks us in a sterner way by the 
 
The Wandering Sheep. 43 
 
 later discipline of life. He makes that seeking felt in trial, in 
 exhaustion of excitement, so that joy itself is pain because it 
 has satiety. He seeks us in the storm which lays waste the 
 garden of life ; in the voiceless agony of the soul ; in the 
 bitterness of hope delayed ; in the darkness out of which we 
 cry, " My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " 
 For if joy will not do anything for us, perhaps pain may. 
 There is something awful, when we are its subjects, in this 
 terrible pertinacity of God ; awful in its trial hours ; awful at 
 every hour, when we stop in the midst of joy, to think, " I 
 am haunted by the Eternal God. It is no use my contend- 
 ing against Him He will make me His at last." 
 
 It is awful, but not terrifying, when we yield ourselves to 
 it. It produces no slavish, coward, superstitious fear ; nay, 
 it exalts the soul of him who believes it, makes him proud of 
 his destiny, and sends him forth armed, " to strive, to seek, 
 to find, and not to yield." Faith in the perseverance of God 
 is the training which makes heroic hearts. It makes us 
 not only heroic, but also joyful, when we believe in this 
 divine perseverance not for ourselves alone, but for men. 
 Every wandering sheep the Shepherd will seek until he 
 find it. The flock shall be perfect in the end. All shall 
 be brought home on his shoulders, rejoicing; the per- 
 severance of the Charity of God shall look at last upon 
 the whole of mankind folded in the embrace of heaven. 
 
 This is the work of God. Do what you can in it to make 
 it complete, if I may use the word. Go after and seek for 
 those that are lost, and in the end you shall have joy and 
 reward. What reward ? Material good, a comfortable place 
 in heaven ! Oh, not that, but a sure and exquisite reward, if 
 
44 The Wandering Sheep. 
 
 you have the heart to feel it. The fruit of love is love. 
 You will have the manifold growth of tenderness within 
 your soul, the divine pleasure of saving the lost, the same 
 delight that filled the heart of Christ when the outcast and 
 the sinner gathered round him. You will have something 
 more : you will realize the sympathy of heaven with your 
 work on earth. Listen to the exquisite and beautiful touch 
 in which this thought is held. "Likewise I say to you, 
 there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one 
 sinner that repenteth." I pray that the music of that thought 
 may thrill in your hearts and kindle your love, while you walk 
 hand in hand through life with Jesus. 
 
45 
 
 [Nov. 5, 1882.] 
 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 
 
 " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap. 
 
 " For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; 
 but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." 
 GALATIANS vi. 7, 8. 
 
 IT is now many years ago since a partial victory was won in 
 the English Church over the doctrine of eternal punishment. 
 It was plainly declared that to hope for universal redemp- 
 tion was not inconsistent with subscription to its formularies. 
 I remember well with what joy this tiny boon was accepted 
 by many of us. Since that time, the revolt against the doctrine 
 has been going on in a great number of the orthodox religious 
 bodies. Even among the Wesleyan Methodists perhaps the 
 most strong of all the dissenting sects in their assertion of 
 eternal punishment a disturbance has arisen which has 
 greatly afflicted the leaders of that body. In England, in 
 Scotland, in the Church of Ireland, this subject has been so 
 prominently brought forward, that many ministers have 
 ceased to declare directly the doctrine of eternal punishment. 
 And now an ever-increasing number of the clergy, and a 
 still greater number of the laity, have wholly and openly 
 put out of their creed this abominable opinion. 
 
 To those who worship in this chapel it is scarcely necessary 
 
46 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 for me to speak upon the subject; but it is important 
 that I should try and put into as clear form as I can 
 the arguments against this doctrine, in order that they who 
 do not believe it may be well armed to contend against 
 those who do, and to help on the cause of God by over- 
 throwing it. 
 
 To this position men have come but slowly. To say that 
 the doctrine ought to have been held abominable a century 
 ago, would be absurd. The mass of men cannot be before 
 their age, and the doctrine of eternal hell could not strike 
 the religious men of the past as immoral. Neither their 
 idea of God nor their idea of man fought against it. Men 
 did not believe then in the universal brotherhood of man, 
 and, therefore, could not believe in the universal Father- 
 hood of God. But from the moment that in the political and 
 social sphere of thought the idea of mankind as one 
 nation of which all men were, by right of their manhood, 
 citizens, and of all men as forming a universal brotherhood, 
 took shape and ran like fire over the world, kindling the 
 commonest soul into passion the doctrine of universal 
 redemption began to grow in the minds of men. Religious 
 men, arguing from what they felt as citizens, con- 
 ceived a loftier notion of the duties of God's King- 
 ship. He owed it to Himself, they felt, to redeem, and 
 ennoble, and make perfect His subjects. And arguing 
 from what they felt as brothers one of another, they felt 
 that in the realm of religion universal brotherhood could 
 only be spiritually based on a doctrine of God's universal 
 Fatherhood. If, then, God is the Father of all men, and 
 men His children, it is incredible that a Father can 
 
Eternal Punishment. 47 
 
 send to utter moral ruin and eternal pain the greater part of 
 His children. If He does, He cannot be a Father; He 
 has no sense of the duty of a Father, nor of the love of a 
 Father. If eternal hell be true, we have no God at all, or 
 none we choose to worship. And the declaration through 
 Christ of God's Fatherhood is the cynical mockery of a 
 tyrant. 
 
 That kind of argument took root in this country first 
 through means of the poets, who feel more strongly than 
 other men the duties and necessities of the heart. Then it 
 stole into the mind of the laity, and, lastly, it reached the 
 clergy, and it will not be long, though it lingers among the 
 natural conservatives of the Church of Christ, before the old 
 doctrine perish out of every pulpit in the land, and the test 
 of orthodoxy be no longer " Do you believe in the devil ? 3> 
 but this " Do you believe in God the Father ? " 
 
 The doctrine of eternal punishment ought to be denied, 
 because of its evil fruits. A good tree does not bring forth 
 corrupt fruit, and we owe to this doctrine all the slaughter 
 and cruelty done by alternately triumphant sects in the 
 name of God. It gave birth to the Inquisition ; it drove the 
 Jews to unutterable misery ; it burnt thousands of innocent 
 men and women for witchcraft ; it tortured and rent the 
 bodies and souls of men ; it depopulated fertile lands ; it 
 ruined nations ; it kept the world for centuries in darkness ; 
 held back civilization ; and in all ages urged on the dogs of 
 cruelty and fanaticism to their accursed hunting. 
 
 So dreadful were its deeds, that a door of escape was pro- 
 vided.from its full horror by the Church of the time. The 
 doctrine of purgatory and of prayers for the dead was the 
 
48 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 reaction from its terrors, and it saved religion. Unrelieved 
 by this merciful interposition, eternal punishment would 
 have slain the world. 
 
 Those were its fruits in the past, and on this account we 
 ought to deny its truth. But now we ought to fight against 
 its lies day by day ; for we who do not believe it have no 
 notion of the harm it is doing to those who do believe it. 
 We are bound to contend against it if we have any desire 
 that a nobler Christianity should prevail among men, for 
 its teaching drives men into violent atheism. The less 
 educated classes, who yet feel strongly, and perhaps more 
 strongly than the educated, the things of the conscience and 
 the heart, say that it denies all their moral instincts. And 
 so it does. It makes them look on God as an unreasoning 
 and capricious tyrant, and they turn from Him with dread 
 and hate. It makes them consider the story of redemption 
 as either a weak effort on the part of an incapable God to 
 save man, or a mockery by Him of His creatures on the 
 plea of a love which they see as derisive, and a justice which 
 they see as favouritism. And till we free the teaching of 
 Christianity from this doctrine, religious teachers will still 
 continue to give, as they do now, the greatest impulse to 
 infidelity among the working classes, an impulse much 
 greater than any given by all the materialism of philosophers, 
 or all the attacks of iconoclasts. 
 
 As to its influence on educated men, it is this. It throws 
 an air of fiction over the whole of Christian teaching. These 
 men cannot believe it if they believe in God. It represents, 
 even apart from God, no idea at all to their minds. They 
 know, being accustomed to reasoning, that the idea of ever- 
 
Eternal Punishment. 49 
 
 lasting punishment is inconceivable. But they are told that 
 it is bound up with the whole of Christian doctrine ; that if 
 they do not believe it they cannot believe the rest. They 
 do not like to openly leave their Church or sect, and to 
 profess themselves unbelievers ; they are thus driven to a 
 mere conventional assent ; till, by degrees, Christianity 
 (infected in their minds by this false doctrine) drops 
 altogether out of their heart as a life-impelling power. They 
 see what they believe to be a fiction walking about 
 unchallenged and unreproved among doctrines which, un- 
 accompanied by this traitor, they could receive as honest 
 and true, but which, bound up with it, they must reject. 
 And, sooner or later, they do reject the whole. The one 
 black sheep has infected all the flock, and all the flock are 
 slain. 
 
 It has as evil a result in the case of those who teach it 
 and, indeed, in the case of those who are silent about it but 
 accept it for it makes them unconsciously false. Of all 
 who teach it, who believes it ? Only a few ! The rest 
 think they do, but do not. If they did, it would tell more 
 vitally on their lives. A living faith in any truth influences 
 the whole life, changes character, modifies or rules all our 
 dealings with men ; and the belief in eternal goodness has 
 that power. But the belief in eternal evil (for eternal 
 punishment means eternal evil) has scarcely any power over 
 the daily thoughts and acts of men. In more than half the 
 acts and thoughts of those who say they hold it, it is 
 implicitly denied. The greater number of those they meet are 
 damned to eternal torture, to torture endlessly renewed with 
 exquisite skill, so that when countless ages have rolled away, 
 
5O , Eternal Punishment. 
 
 it cannot be said to have begun, and into every moment 
 an eternity of pain is pent ; and, believing this of their 
 friends, and relatives, and fellow-men, they can eat and 
 drink peacefully, and beget children for whom that 
 fate is reserved, and move without infinite horror among 
 men. Nonsense ! They do not believe it at all. Do you 
 imagine there are a hundred persons in England who 
 believe in eternal evil as they believe in eternal goodness ? 
 They might as well know their own minds and say at once, 
 " No ! we do not believe it. It has no influence at all on our 
 lives." But that is just what they will not do, and they reap 
 their reward. They sow to lies, and they reap lying within. 
 They think by asserting and asserting to convince themselves 
 and the world of their faith. The world smiles behind its 
 sleeve while they spend half their time in diligently hiding 
 away the fact that they do not believe what they say they 
 do, till all their teaching becomes unreal. 
 
 They reap their reward, I say. It is a terrible business 
 to have a falsehood domiciled with truths. It is worse for its 
 possessor, when he is only half convinced, or not at all con- 
 vinced, of its truth, to take the greatest pains to dress it up 
 like a truth. For the falsehood gets no good from the 
 truths, but the truths all get maimed by the falsehood. These 
 men talk of the love of God, and His mercy, and His pity, 
 and His justice, and His righteousness, and His fatherhood, 
 and the goodness of salvation. All the time they are talking, 
 this hideous companion in their own soul is laughing at all 
 these things. Love of God ! What of eternal torture ? 
 Righteousness of God ! What of eternal evil ? Good news, 
 salvation ! Fling them to the winds ! And this, which goes 
 
Eternal 
 
 on often in their own mind, goes on still more in the minds 
 of those who listen, until the trail of a lie and its sickly 
 smell defile their whole religious life. This evil belongs 
 chiefly to the Protestant, less to the Roman Catholic. 
 The latter, at least, is better off. He has a chance, and 
 more than a chance, of escaping this eternal doom. 
 
 That is one set of reasons why you should denounce the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment. But those who most 
 strongly assert this doctrine put forward an ethical objection 
 to the opposite doctrine of universal redemption, which is at 
 least worth considering. They say that the denial of the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment produces the greatest of 
 evils, because it destroys the doctrine of retribution, and 
 weakens our fear of doing wrong by taking away the punish- 
 ment of wrong doing. This is the ethical objection, and it 
 has its weight. 
 
 But, in answer, I ask, first, what efficacy has fear in either 
 bringing a man to God or in deterring him from sin? It 
 is not the terror of Christ, but the love of Christ which 
 constraineth us to give up our guilt. The weapon of 
 religious terror is always a devilish weapon, and it 
 drives men to the devil. It confuses and renders idiotic a 
 weak man. It hardens a strong one into fierce rebellion. 
 It drives some to despair or wretchlessness of unclean living; 
 others to scorn or hatred of God ; and the sacrifices it makes 
 (unlike those made by a heart broken by love) are the 
 sacrifices that the savage makes to his god, of whose 
 character he is ignorant, or whom he fears because of 
 ignorance. 
 
 As to its fruits, what are they worth? The obedience 
 
 D 2 
 
52 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 wrung from a child by the uplifted lash, the reverence given 
 through fear ; would that please you, fathers and mothers in 
 this congregation ? What would you think it worth ? It is 
 selfishness, not obedience ! And do you think that God 
 wishes that selfish cry, or that He fancies it obedience ? If 
 so, what sort of God is He ? Is a God obeyed only 
 through fear worth obeying at all? Is this religion, or 
 superstition and idolatry ? No, we lose nothing in getting 
 rid of the motive of fear, as the motive of religion. 
 
 But, in getting rid of that motive, and in denying 
 the eternity of hell, do we in truth destroy the doctrine 
 of retribution ? Not at all we establish it, and are 
 enabled to assert it on clear and reasonable grounds. 
 First, we can believe in it. The heart and the conscience 
 alike refuse to believe in everlasting punishment. The 
 imagination cannot conceive it. The reason denies its 
 justice ; but the retribution taught by the opposite doctrine 
 That God's punishment is remedial, not final, that it is 
 exacted, but that it ends when it has done its work is con- 
 ceivable, is allowed by the heart for its root is love ; is agreed 
 to by the conscience for it is felt to be just ; is accepted of 
 the reason for it is based on law. 
 
 It is only when we deny eternal punishment that we can 
 assert in a way in which it can be believed the doctrine of 
 retribution. 
 
 And, in our belief, the ground of retribution is this : That 
 God cannot rest till He has wrought evil out of all spirits, 
 and that this work of His is chiefly done by causing us to 
 suffer the natural consequence of sin. The very root, then, 
 of our belief in the non-eternity of punishment involves an 
 
Eternal Punishment. 53 
 
 awful idea of punishment. For on this ground God will not 
 cease to be a consuming fire to a man till He has destroyed 
 all his evil. Nor can He cease. The imperative in His- 
 nature binds Him to root out evil, and God does His duty 
 by us. Does this view destroy and not rather assert retribu- 
 tion ? 
 
 We can all understand that. Introduce evil into your 
 life, and you are introducing punishment. God will not rest till 
 He has consumed it. Sow to the flesh, and you will of the 
 flesh reap corruption ; you shall eat the fruits of your own 
 devices, and find in them your hell. And God will take care 
 that you do. For His love knows well that only by knowing 
 the bitterness and death of sin, you can be brought 
 to hate it, repent of it and cry, " I will arise and go to my 
 Father." Nor will God spare a single pang, if only He can 
 bring us to His arms at last. Punishment here and in the world 
 to come is no dream, but a dread reality. But it is strictly 
 and justly given, and naturally it comes to a close. One 
 cry of longing repentance changes its quality, one bitter 
 sorrow for wrong, one quick conviction that God is love 
 and wishes our perfection. But to produce that repentance, 
 and till it is produced, God's painful work on our evil is 
 done and will be done. 
 
 That is not the work of a tyrant, but of love. It is 
 no weak love, such as we are accused of preaching. It is 
 the mighty, all-knowing love which looks to the end, and in 
 merciless mercy uses the means. It is love according to 
 law ; the kind of love of which, when it has wrought its 
 saving work, we acknowledge the justice. It is love which, 
 though it causes suffering, does not injure the heart, for the 
 
54 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 root of it is not desire to make us suffer, but desire to 
 make us pure, and true, and like the eternal Love 
 which must be true to right or cease to be love. When we 
 have faith in that strong tenderness at the heart of punish- 
 ment, when we know that every suffering God inflicts on 
 man is born of His desire for their perfection, of His long- 
 ing to make us all His own, the heart rebels no more 
 against punishment, nor does the conscience. The 
 purified conscience itself claims retribution, will not 
 be content to be let off from punishment because were 
 that possible, the sanctity of perfect law would suffer, and 
 injury done to it would injure the whole world. The more 
 ennobled the moral sense of man becomes, the more does 
 he insist, even to his own pain, on retribution. That 
 which I have sowed, he says, I must reap. 
 
 Then you may say, " What chance has a man of 
 escaping in the end, if he is bound in this way under 
 law." No chance at all ! Things in God's world are 
 not chance ! No chance, but certainty of escape, according 
 to law. When he ceases to sow weeds he ceases to reap 
 weeds ; when he roots up the useless, poisonous plants in his 
 soul and burns them, then the soul receives the good seed, 
 nourishes it, and he brings forth good fruit. Then he is no 
 longer in punishment, retribution has become reward ; but 
 both are terms for the one thing, the one law That what we 
 sow we reap. By the same law we are in pain or in 
 pleasure, in hell or in heaven, according as we use the law. 
 Surely that is plain enough, sensible enough the answer of 
 the conscience to it is unhesitating in approval ; the 
 answer of the scientific reason is as clear in its approval. 
 
Eternal Punishment. 55 
 
 But, some say, this change is not possible hereafter, man's 
 character is fixed at death as the tree falls, so it lies they 
 that are filthy are filthy still. The results of a long life of 
 sin can never be destroyed or altered. Habits once rooted 
 have a tendency to continue, and when the change of 
 death comes, we enter into a state in which these evil 
 habits have unrestricted room to develop themselves, and 
 do so. 
 
 First, that is nonsense. The analogy of nature is against 
 it. A tract of the earth may have got into a habit of earth- 
 quakes, but the upheaving force exhausts itself, and then 
 nature repairs her wrongs, and the desert of lava becomes a 
 fruitful field. An evil climate has slowly degraded a species. 
 But if the climate change, the animals gain new powers, 
 seizing and appropriating what is useful for their development. 
 But these are only analogies. The facts are against this 
 brutal theory. I have known men who have been idle for 
 years become hard workers under a new impulse, and those 
 who have been under the power of habits of evil, such as 
 ^eize on body, and soul, and spirit, overcome those habits 
 and become new men ; and if that happens even once, the 
 single example refutes this theory, if we assume a God of 
 love who is working with incessant impulses upon human 
 souls. 
 
 " But He does not work so hereafter," they say, " in the 
 world to come." There is the real point, then, and what 
 have we to say of it ? 
 
 It asserts either God's powerlessness to redeem the 
 guilty or His unwillingness to do so ; the first assertion 
 is treason to Him, and the second blasphemy. If God 
 
5 6 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 cannot save, what becomes of His omnipotence? If God will 
 not save, what becomes of His love? And if love be violated, 
 what becomes of His justice ? In the acid of this theory 
 God is utterly dissolved. 
 
 " No," it is said, " sin is justly punished with eternal 
 ruin," because, done against an infinite God, it is itself 
 infinite, and, therefore, requires infinite punishment. That 
 is a statement which catches the understanding in a trap 
 and persuades it that it is satisfied by a show of logic, by a 
 clink of words ; and it has had in times past, and even now, 
 a certain charm and attraction about it for many persons, 
 such as a riddle has, or a trick of words which always seems 
 on the point of being discovered, but never is discovered, be- 
 cause it cannot be discovered. And thousands have lived and 
 died believing it. I do not blame them in the past. The 
 idea of God was built up on the idea of a despotic king. 
 But I do blame, and severely, those who believe it now 
 because the higher light has come, and they shut their eyes 
 to it. No one now thinks that might makes right, and yet, 
 some men still continue to impute that wickedness to God. 
 Moreover, what does the theory really assert? It asserts 
 not only eternal punishment, it asserts eternal evil. It 
 gives to evil the essential ground of the nature of the Deity, 
 and makes two eternal powers in the universe, and these 
 two for ever in opposition. It makes absolute goodness 
 contentedly or uncontentedly permit absolute evil. It strips 
 God of omnipotence, for it is wholly impossible to conceive 
 without destroying the very nature of goodness that it 
 has the power to destroy evil and does not exercise it. 
 God cannot allow eternal evil and continue God. And 
 
Eternal Punishment. 57 
 
 if He allows eternal punishment, He does allow eternal 
 evil. It is a vile conception, and if it were true, we 
 should be forced to pray to a cruel power for the only 
 favour we could with all our hearts desire for the world 
 and for ourselves, the favour of instant and complete an- 
 nihilation. 
 
 But lastly, it is said, that if eternal punishment be not 
 true, neither is eternal blessedness. They stand and fall 
 together, and if we destroy the belief in everlasting punish- 
 ment we destroy the belief in everlasting happiness. That 
 statement also sounds well. But what does it really mean ? 
 Translate it into clear words, and its falseness at once 
 appears. Eternal punishment asserts eternal evil, as eternal 
 happiness asserts eternal goodness, and then the statement 
 is actually this : If eternal evil be not true, neither is eternal 
 goodness. And that is not only blasphemy but folly. 
 Goodness, if there is an everlasting God, is naturally eternal, 
 self-existent, without beginning and without end. And the 
 heart and reason of mankind accept that statement. It is 
 on that ground, of the natural and essential everlastingness 
 of goodness, that we believe in the naturalness and necessity 
 of everlasting happiness for those who are good at death, or 
 become good after it. 
 
 On the other hand, everlasting misery is neither natural, 
 necessary, nor possible, just because evil is not necessarily 
 eternal. That is not eternal which has an origin, and evil 
 had a beginning; that is not eternal which is not self-existent 
 and absolute, and evil is neither one nor the other, unless we 
 say that evil is in God. The eternity of good does not 
 involve the eternity of evil. On the contrary, it implicitly 
 
58 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 denies it. The argument is all the other way. If ever- 
 lasting happiness be true, it means everlasting goodness ; 
 and if everlasting goodness be true, it means that evil 
 cannot be everlasting ; and if evil be not everlasting, punish- 
 ment cannot be everlasting. 
 
 But, after all, what should we need of argument, if men 
 would listen to the God within their own hearts. Ask 
 those whose hearts are pure, who hate evil with the same 
 passion with which they love God, whether they have ever 
 conceived of the possibility of eternal sin except in connec- 
 tion with a sense of disbelief in God, or at least have ever 
 felt that the answer of their own heart in moments when it 
 was most consciously filled with God to the question, Is 
 evil eternal ? came as clearly as the answer to the question, 
 Is good eternal ? 
 
 When we think of the eternity of sin, life is accursed, 
 shrouded in unmixed and fatal gloom. The world is hope- 
 less, its vice and sorrow bound on it for ever, and eternity, 
 even if we are saved, stained and blackened with unfading 
 horror ; and God Himself, our King, an unrelenting tyrant 
 who either cannot or will not conquer sin. We are told 
 that God has conquered the evil of the lost, because He has 
 trampled them down for ever and ever into hell. That is not 
 conquest, but rather the notion which a savage chieftain 
 has of conquest. It only subdues the outward powers, and 
 leaves within the heart of millions, still burning unsubdued, 
 the unconquerable will to do wrong, the "study of revenge, 
 immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield, and 
 what is else not to be overcome." 
 
 But when we think of the eternity of goodness and its 
 
Eternal Punishment. 59 
 
 victory and this we have now been driven to the soul 
 exults, even the blood stirs with joy ; all nature seems to 
 sing along with us. Life puts on its noble aspect. In our 
 loneliness high thoughts and hope are our companions ; 
 among the crowd of men the light, and life, and joy of God 
 move along with us. All work is dignified and great. 
 Things seem worth the doing, thoughts worth thinking, 
 endeavours worth perseverance, temptations worth resisting, 
 trials worth the toil of conquering them, life, even the 
 commonest, worth living nobly to the end. The curse of 
 time departs. We can behold all the energy of decay, 
 but can still rejoice. We know that God, who made all 
 things fair, lives, and will live for ever till He lias made 
 decay into life, and all the things that failed as fair as their 
 ideal for His goodness is infinite in the accomplishment of 
 beauty. 
 
 And the wild sorrow of the world, tossing like a 
 midnight sea its uplifted waves to heaven in supplication ; 
 and our own sorrow and the passions which rend and 
 consume the heart, each an atom of dark water in that sea 
 of sorrow; and the vice, and crime, and selfish greed which 
 make of earth and of our own personal life so ghastly and 
 so drear a thing when our eyes pierce beneath the sugared 
 crust on which we pace so merrily, as if there were no 
 rottenness beneath there is but one truth which can 
 obliterate the horror of that vision, which can enable us to 
 fight against wrong, and to conquer in the end, and give us 
 power, faith, and hope in face of this awful revelation. It is 
 the unconquerable goodness of God, the conviction, deep 
 rooted as the mountains, of His infinite love and justice, 
 
60 Eternal Punishment. 
 
 the knowledge that the world is redeemed, the victory over 
 evil won, and that though the work is slow, not one soul 
 shall be lost for ever. For he shall reign till He hath 
 subdued all things to Himself in the willingness of happy 
 obedience, and the joy of creative Love. 
 
6i 
 
 [July, 1882.] 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a 
 cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which 
 doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set 
 before us. 
 
 " Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." 
 HEBREWS xii. i, 2. 
 
 THE Christian Church has for many generations set apart a 
 day for the observance of the Feast of All Saints ; and its 
 eve, celebrated in poetry, in games, by wild and graceful 
 superstitions, and bearing in its practices traces of heathen 
 faiths and legend, has been called All-Hallows-Eve. The 
 Feast was originally set up to put an end to the excessive 
 multiplication of Saints' Days. These grew so rapidly each 
 nation wishing to honour its own special saints that more 
 than half the days in each month were turned into holidays. 
 Work was neglected, and laziness seemed in danger of 
 developing into a virtue. The Roman Church, then, 
 while it wished to preserve reverence for these lesser 
 saints, wished also to end the scandal, and threw the 
 veneration and love of all these holy persons into one 
 festival instead of many, and the day was called the Feast 
 of All Saints. The term included not only the lesser but 
 the greater saints as well ; all were celebrated together ; 
 
62 The 'Communion of Saints. 
 
 and the festival finally became the poetic form in which 
 the doctrine of the Communion of Saints was enshrined. 
 
 That idea the inter-communion of all who were holy 
 was one of the root ideas of the society formed by Jesus 
 Christ ; and no greater idea, nor one more original at the 
 time, has ever been put forward in this world. It was the 
 first great international conception. It made a country of 
 which Greek and Jew and Roman and Oriental and 
 Barbarian were all citizens, and in brotherhood with one 
 another. Distinctions of race and character, of caste and 
 rank, of language and learning, were held to perish before the 
 idea of this society, and the only difference among its mem- 
 bers was that made by more or less of holiness and love and 
 faith. It conceived, then though still but partially of a 
 universal humanity. 
 
 Nor was it content to include only those living on earth. 
 It took into its infinite embrace the saintly dead. Time 
 and space disappeared, and the communion of spiritual 
 life and love was established with all those who, from the 
 beginning of the world, had been loving and holy, and who 
 now were alive in God. The meanest slave in a Roman 
 noble's household, the stone cutter who wrought for a scanty 
 wage on the quays of Corinth, was in vital communion if 
 he were a child of God with Adam and Enoch, David and 
 Isaiah, with millions of uncounted witnesses for truth who 
 were watching with sympathy and loving kindness their 
 difficult and lowly life. In that vast assemblage in earth 
 and heaven of men and women there was not one trace of 
 death. What prevailed and filled the infinite circles of 
 those who had passed from earth was keen and unquench- 
 
The Communion of 
 
 able life, and the life was the expression of their eternal 
 love. This was the invisible, as that was the visible Church 
 and both were one assemblage. One spirit was theirs 
 one faith, one country, one home, one humanity, one 
 brotherhood, and one Father. 
 
 And among, and for ever with this host on earth and in 
 heaven, was Jesus, their master, leader, and inspiring 
 friend, the captain of their salvation ; him in whom the 
 ideal of their human nature had been realized, author and 
 finisher of human love and faith and holiness, whose spirit 
 ran like living fire through them all, and whom they loved 
 with love which could endure all things rather than be false 
 to the life he had lived before them, and to the ideas and 
 passions that inspired it. They had in him the human 
 centre of their communion, and the host in heaven and the 
 host on earth were one in him. 
 
 But this was not enough. There was still needed an 
 eternal, immutable, absolute centre of life and love and 
 power, in whom and by whom the whole assemblage might 
 consist, and be for ever secure of continuance and of 
 development ; from whom life and love and holiness, un- 
 failing, increasing, and joyful, might for ever be outpoured ; 
 so that progress might be certain, and bliss in it undying. 
 And this was God, their Father, the ground of all association 
 on earth and in heaven, the binding power of the whole, 
 the centre of this Rose every petal of which lodged a thou- 
 sand thousand souls ; radiating His light and life and love and 
 might to every human heart, and in the unity of this 
 spiritual effluence binding them all to Himself and to one 
 another. 
 
64 The Communion of Saints. 
 
 This was the full idea of the early Christian Church, and 
 it was unique in the history of religion. But no great idea 
 remains in the form it has originally taken. It develops 
 with the further development of mankind, and this idea, 
 long kept back from growth by being bound up with false 
 or limiting opinions, has, since the outburst of more 
 universal ideas concerning humanity an outburst of which 
 its unconscious working was the cause taken a fresh 
 expansion. It is no longer limited to certain sects, or 
 visible churches, or religious castes. It embraces all 
 mankind. It says that because God is the Father of 
 all men, that therefore this communion of saints will be 
 co-extensive in the end with the whole race that all 
 will be brought into holiness, all live with the life of 
 God, all be filled with the same love and faith with 
 which Jesus was filled. The Communion of Saints will 
 finally be identical with the Communion of all Humanity. 
 This is the final form which, in the belief of all, this 
 conception will assume, and its power as an established 
 faith will change, exalt, and govern the whole world. 
 
 The Positivist idea of humanity is but one inadequate 
 form of this idea ; inadequate because it has no absolute 
 centre outside of humanity ; inadequate because it is more 
 or less bound up with the opinion of the death and anni- 
 hilation of every human being ; and degrading, not so 
 much because it is accompanied by death and not by life, 
 but because it keeps up the idea of a kind of hell, that is, of 
 a class who are sacrificed for the sake of a few, who are 
 useless to others save as warning, and unable to live in the 
 memory or in the lives of men. Nevertheless, as it does 
 
The Communion of Saints. 65 
 
 declare a communion of noble men, independent of national 
 and caste differences, it is useful, and so far will live. But 
 it only lives as an offshoot of the original thought, and 
 by the life of that thought. It is essentially a limited 
 conception. 
 
 Our idea is far different. It conceives, first, of the whole 
 of the righteous and loving beings of the past as now living 
 in God, for one another, and for those on earth, and ever 
 moving forward into loftier life and work. It conceives of 
 all those in the past who have died while yet unrighteous 
 and unloving as also moving forward into holiness and 
 love, until they join the great assemblage of the just made 
 perfect ; until they also, beginning a redeemed and noble life, 
 shall feel vibrating through them the loving spirit of this vast 
 communion. 
 
 It conceives, secondly, of the present human beings 
 abiding on this earth as living also in God, the holy, con- 
 sciously, the unholy unconsciously; but both indestructibly 
 bound up with the humanity of the past, watched by it, 
 helped by it, and hour by hour passing onwards into nearer 
 union with it. 
 
 It conceives, thirdly, of the whole mass of beings that shall 
 hereafter live upon the earth as conditionally held in this 
 communion, fated to play their part in it, and finally to 
 complete that numberless nation of humanity which shall 
 take its part among the other forms of spiritual being in the 
 peopled universe of God a perfect race. 
 
 And through all the past humanity, through the present, 
 and through the thought of the future humanity which lies 
 still unfolded in the creative thought of God, one thing for 
 
 E 
 
66 TJie Communion of Saints. 
 
 ever moves and thrills infinite, universal life. One quality 
 for ever grows it is holiness. One passion for ever burns 
 an unquenchable fire, and makes life for ever kindle into 
 fresh joy, and holiness for ever quicken into fresh work the 
 passion of that love, which, flowing forth from God, fills and 
 irradiates the universe. 
 
 This is the idea, and it is only with a quiet smile that one 
 who possesses and is possessed by it can receive the invita- 
 tion to change it for any offered to him by the new religions. 
 I should not change the pearl of great price for an imitation 
 pearl ; not the music of the spheres for a discussion on its 
 existence ; and I will not change all mankind alive in God 
 for all mankind dead in dying knowledge ? To catch and 
 keep the best Thought that should be our struggle, and 
 when we have got it and love it, he is a fool indeed who does 
 not cling to it. 
 
 And the more we cling to this conception and love it, the 
 greater becomes its power over life. It becomes a ruling 
 portion of that faith by which we daily live. At first, only a 
 little of it is doubtfully believed ; the full splendour of the 
 truth only unveils itself to long and mingled work and con- 
 templation work, not done on it as an idea, for that would 
 bring us into the thorny wood of theology, and finally to 
 the caves of vanity or of despair ; but done for men, and 
 among them, for the sake of the truth you have learnt, and 
 inspired by the joy of the idea and contemplation of it, not 
 as an abstract thought, but of it as it takes form in the lives 
 of men, of its power as seen in our own use of it. 
 
 As we use it thus, and thus contemplate it, it will develop 
 itself in us and before us ; add to itself within us the 
 
TJie Communion of Saints. 67 
 
 glories it always possesses without us in the mind of God ; 
 until it may be granted us, before we die, to see it in all its 
 fulness. That is the progress of all great truths in the soul 
 of those who love their light. They seem at first like the 
 thin clear sickle of pale and trembling light which, seen 
 through dim mist, we call the moon, but which, night after 
 night, grows fuller, till at last in death we behold it 
 rounded, perfect apparent Queen of all the sky. 
 
 That is belief in the communion of humanity in God, 
 and no time is enough to tell of its results on the inward 
 and outward life. They vary in every soul that believes 
 the truth, being conditioned by the soil in which it grows. 
 But there are some of these results which vary little, and 
 among them are certain truths which most console human 
 life. These are the best to speak of now; for the world is 
 very weary and sad in these days. It needs no rough treat- 
 ment, but consolation. 
 
 The first is that this faith tells us that we are never alone. 
 The very ground of it is that in the midst of this vast world 
 of Being, supporting its existence and pervading it, touching 
 it at all points, and conscious of the life of every soul in it, 
 is God, our Father, at once the vital principle by which 
 each several being to borrow an illustration from science 
 spins on its individual poles, and the aether in which inde- 
 pendently it moves. He knows every thought ; He feels 
 every sorrow and every joy ; He supports with all the force 
 of law every effort towards goodness, that is, towards union 
 with the eternal in the universe ; He makes us feel, when 
 we are in evil thought or act, our contradiction to the whole 
 universe, our apartness from Him ; till at last, we yield our- 
 selves to goodness only, and are consciously at one with Him. 
 
 E 2 
 
68 The Communion of Saints. 
 
 It is a joy so great, that all the sorrows and pains of life 
 may well be borne to attain it. It is a life so vivid, so 
 unspeakable, that the whole universe of nature, and the 
 whole past, present, and future of humanity seem to live 
 within us. We are ourselves, and yet we are all nature, 
 all mankind. And the paradox is true, that at the very 
 moment when we have lost personality in the whole, we are 
 most conscious of the rapture of life. If, even after many, 
 many years, that should be true, and true it will be, there is 
 no greater comfort possible to man. For it means the very 
 absolute of perfect joy in the midst of perfect goodness and 
 perfect love. 
 
 And, secondly, it is not only God who, according to this 
 idea, is present with us for solace and for power, but also 
 all the noble dead all who live in God, and who, through 
 the unity of His pervading spirit, are interwoven with 
 us in the infinite web of immortal communion. Their 
 lives are mixed with ours. Their personal sympathy, 
 joy, love, and comfort are communicated to us. "Lo, 
 I am with you alway, even to the end of the world " 
 was no foolish saying. " I will not leave you comfortless, 
 I will come to you," was no mere fanciful expression. Jesus 
 knew this truth, and knew what he would be able to do. 
 And what he said as man, all men who believe as he 
 believed this truth may also say, when dying, to those they 
 leave behind. We, too, can whisper with a smile to our 
 friends and our loved ones when we are going away " Lo, 
 I am with you always ;" "I will not leave you orphaned of 
 my presence, I will come to you." And we shall be able 
 to do that very thing. Yes, we who are struggling here are 
 
TJie Communion of Saints. 69 
 
 not left alone by the dead who are alive. Not only God, 
 but our own humankind are with us, in vital communion, 
 sympathizing like God with all our good, sorrowing for all 
 our sin, and helping us in all our trouble. Jesus is the 
 lover of our soul, and so are all the holy and loving souls 
 who live in the eternal world. He is the nearest, and the 
 most conquering in his love and in his communion. But 
 yet there are some whom we have known and loved on earth 
 who have to us a relationship of union, not so powerful in 
 love, but nearer in human bonds. These are ours, and the 
 tie between us, though they are not seen, is closer even 
 than it was on earth. What is its ground, where is its 
 strength rooted? In the truth of the Communion of 
 Saints. 
 
 Finally, there are two things more to say One is, 
 that all the joy and comfort of this doctrine depend on 
 our becoming pure in heart, holy in word and deed. We 
 cannot believe in a Communion of Saints until we are 
 becoming saintly. All the glorious forms which the idea 
 takes, all its evolution into higher and higher forms, are 
 destroyed in us by evil doing and evil thinking. The first 
 and foremost way to gain belief in it the gate into its 
 splendour is the struggle to gain righteousness. It is 
 an idea then that bears on conduct ; and it unfolds itself to 
 holiness. If you want it, if you desire its consolation and 
 its joy, live hour by hour to gain a pure and loving heart. 
 
 Communion with God is known through holiness. The 
 pure in heart see God. Communion with humanity in God 
 is known by Love. And there is no other way in the world 
 by which we can believe in God and believe in Man. 
 
70 The Communion of Saints. 
 
 And, secondly ; when we think of this vast assemblage, all 
 united in a communion of saintliness, we understand that 
 the last and highest range of human nature is not knowledge 
 or power, but holiness held in love. It is a thought we 
 would do well to recall in the midst of this modern life of 
 ours. Here, power, wealth, intellect are first. There, it is 
 different. Power dies, disarmed by goodness ; isolated 
 wealth has no place in the celestial country where all have 
 equal welfare ; knowledge passes away, lost in love which 
 sees what knowledge vainly strives to find. And the one 
 thing which is eternal, which is the root of true power 
 over men, which is the true wealth because it possesses the 
 good and joy of all things, which is the ground of all true 
 knowledge, which develops out of itself faith and hope and 
 love is goodness. The goodness of God is the centre of 
 the universe. 
 
[April I, 1883.] 
 
 A TONEMENT. 
 
 "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
 me." ST. JOHN xii. 32. 
 
 IT is a strange phrase, this glorification of death. For 
 death in itself is vile, and men shrink from its presence. 
 It seems to be the remover of power, the destroyer of love, 
 the depriver of thought. We bury out of our sight, with 
 the same natural dismay, the dead king of men and the dead 
 clown, the dead poet and the dead fool, the face that thrilled 
 a nation and the brutalized features of the savage. " As 
 the one dieth, so dieth the other, so that a man hath no 
 pre-eminence over a beast ; for all this is vanity." What 
 is death but horror and hatefulness ? 
 
 But no man, not even the materialist, believes that this is 
 the whole account of the matter. It is not death which is 
 attractive or repulsive, but the spirit in which men die, or 
 the thoughts awakened in us by their death. The death 
 of a selfish man has all the hatefulness of death ; but the 
 thoughts awakened when a noble and loving character has 
 passed away draw us continually round his memory. We 
 love him in death, because he is alive in us, an inspiring and 
 quickening power ; we are drawn to him because his life 
 makes us hope that the world is better than it seems. 
 And around his grave cluster all those feelings which 
 
72 Atonement. 
 
 soften the heart as April showers the grass dried by the 
 winds of March. Regret, love, ennobling sorrow, sympathy 
 with all who loved him, delight that he has been so good, 
 yet pain that so much is lost to us, faith that he is giving 
 now of his good to others, spring up and flower and 
 bear fruit in us. We are softened and inspired; the 
 life we lead is made more delicate in the midst of a 
 world whose ways are dusty and whose temper is hard. 
 Being lifted up from earth he draws men after him. 
 
 But the main thing which attracts us is not so much the 
 thoughts and feelings which are awakened in us, as the spirit 
 in which a great and loving man meets death. The sur- 
 render of life for the sake of truth in defence of an 
 idea necessary for mankind; the conscious sacrifice of 
 worldly honour and of wealth for the sake of others, the 
 conquest of pain and fear by the love of man this is the 
 attractive power of the cross. It is the one thing which has 
 in all ages been beautiful to men beyond all other beautiful 
 things. 
 
 Men have given a fleeting worship to power in war or 
 power in intellect, but they have given adoration to Self- 
 sacrifice. It is not to Caesar, but to Washington that 
 we turn when our hearts bestow the crown of glory 
 on the rulers of men. It is not around the brilliant 
 intellect of the selfish genius that our love and reverence 
 approach to worship, but round the prison bed of 
 Socrates. The spirit of the cross of Christ still and for ever 
 attracts the soul. " If I be lifted up, I will draw all men 
 to me." There is but one supreme beauty the beauty of 
 perfect love; and it wins the enduring love of men. "I, 
 
Atonement. 73 
 
 if I be lifted up, will draw all men to me." It wins also the 
 love of God " Therefore doth my Father love me, because 
 I lay down my life for the sheep." This, then, is the attrac- 
 tiveness of the cross ; this is the reason why all nations have 
 come to pour out their love beneath its shadow ! For all 
 the varied and partial manifestations of this annihilation of 
 self through love of truth and love of mankind were con- 
 centrated in the life and death of Jesus Christ. 
 
 But the beauty and the attractiveness of the cross are not 
 confined to Calvary. The spirit of the cross lives in men, 
 and wherever it is found it does its work. It draws us 
 out of evil by its loveliness, and when we are convinced of 
 its beauty, we rise out of spiritual death. It happens some- 
 times that we are tempted to be careless about truths, to hold 
 moral convictions slightly, to drift away from our early love 
 of a life above the common standard of the world. We are 
 then in the general stream of things, and our weakness or 
 our desires lead us to go with the current. Now and 
 then, led by a higher impulse, we contend for a little 
 time ; but at last, after many failures, we think of resistance 
 no longer, and our life becomes trivial, mean or 
 thoughtless. Effort will not at first redeem us. Only 
 a great admiration, only the vision of a great spiritual 
 beauty will kindle us into that fire of love which will 
 give effort power. And one day we meet a man who, 
 through evil report and good report, has been true to 
 convictions, who has lost much for truth's sake, whom 
 the world has not conquered, but who still loves the 
 world ; and there comes upon us a new inspiration ! 
 We admire and love and become ardent to be like him. 
 
74 Atonement. 
 
 And in the rush of love \ve take up again the ideals of 
 youth, and are born again into a fresh and noble life. 
 
 What has done this? It is the same power as that of Christ's 
 death in the man. It is that he has been enabled to show forth 
 in his life the beauty of the sacrifice Christ put into these 
 words : " For this end was I born, and for this cause came 
 I into the world, to bear witness to the truth." And the 
 loveliness draws us to itself. An atonement with good is 
 wrought for us and in us. 
 
 Or, take another example. We are tempted in the midst 
 of comfort to complain of our lot. Without pain, without 
 real trial, one of our rose leaves is crumpled. We magnify 
 a little grain of difficulty, which if we were less troubled 
 with prosperity would weigh lighter than a feather, into a 
 mountain. And it is strange how one little thing, when 
 dwelt on, establishes a power over us, and spoils the whole 
 of life. The veriest trifles seem to ruin some men's lives. 
 Yet it is not the trifles themselves, but our dwelling upon 
 them till we are absorbed in self-consideration, that does 
 the evil work. Nay, sometimes in our prosperity we invent 
 troubles, because our life is monotonous through want of 
 labour, and end by believing our own inventions so 
 vile does life become without the beauty of sacrifice ! 
 
 I remember once knowing one of this temper whom God 
 led into friendship with a man who moved serenely and with 
 love among his fellows, and did his work with cheerfulness. 
 To him the complainer entrusted his trifle of trouble, and 
 wearily asked for sympathy. And the sympathy was given, 
 and the remedy suggested, as if the slight thing were really 
 great. And through the sympathy, effort was born ; and in 
 
Atonement. 75 
 
 the air of effort the rose leaf began to grow smooth again. 
 But still the man remained untouched by love. The result 
 of selfishness lasted, though the cause was removed. 
 
 One day, however, he made a discovery. He found out 
 that his friend, whose life seemed so much at rest, whose 
 cheerful activity was so inspiring, was the constant victim of 
 a disease which consumed him with pain ; and that the evil 
 lives of other men kept him in ceaseless difficulty. Yet 
 there was no complaint, no word of reproach to God, no 
 remissness in work, no disbelief in men. He loved God, he 
 loved the world, and he was silent concerning his own pain. 
 
 Then shame fell upon the slothful complainer, redeeming 
 shame, shame that soon lost itself in wonder and love. A 
 new ideal of human life was born within him ; his own life 
 seemed base in the light of this revelation of true beauty, 
 and yet so great was the attractive power of the beauty, that 
 in desire to be at one with it, he forgot his own baseness 
 and pressed forward to imitate it. He was saved from self, 
 and born into the life of love. What was this beauty 
 what was it which drew him to union with it ? It was the 
 loveliness and the power of the cross of Christ in his 
 friend. 
 
 Even so now is Christ always redeeming men through 
 other men who are like himself; even so is the true efficacy 
 of all atonement continued through the passing years. 
 Yes, when the passion of self-surrender begins to stir in 
 our hearts, we feel in it the prophecy of all the love and 
 beauty which will follow from it. Its first breath is like the 
 earliest airs of spring, that, flowing through the winds of 
 March, tell of the change and loveliness that are at hand. 
 
76 Atonement. 
 
 Spring has begun in our hearts, and we shall produce 
 leaf and flower and fruit, the harvest of love and 
 righteousness. It is the substance of things hoped for 
 this first attractive power of sacrifice. 
 
 ii. But it is said that Christ's sacrifice of life and love 
 not only attracts to itself, but also redeems us from sin. 
 How is that ? Is the statement true ? 
 
 We will be content to find an explanation, not in mystical 
 interpretations, nor in logical schemes of redemption, but in 
 the doings of our common human nature, in the plain and 
 living facts of human life. The laws which ruled the 
 life of Jesus were the laws which rule the life of all 
 men. That which is called his atonement is no isolated 
 thing, but the central exhibition of an existing law that 
 every day is at work among us; and the law is That love 
 when revealed creates love, and that love, when it is wholly 
 given for others, redeems from sin those who believe in 
 love by destroying the root of sin, by killing selfishness. 
 
 First, then, the sacrifice of Christ, that is the giving up of 
 his whole life in love to mankind, was a revelation to 
 us that God was not anger, or jealousy, or vengeance, or 
 hatred but love, and love to us ; that He did not need to 
 be appeased or bought off, but that He only asked us to be 
 reconciled to Him, and to love Him. And that revela 
 tion, when it is believed, saves us from enmity to 
 God. The conviction of love awakes love. " What," 
 we say, " God loves me ; then I will love Him ! " And to 
 love Him is to love goodness, and to love goodness is to 
 do goodness, and to do goodness is to be saved. We are 
 drawn to God, and in love of Him we are saved. 
 
Atonement. 77 
 
 That is not difficult to understand. It is within all our 
 experience. When our heart is filled in youth with that 
 eager, passionate, all-absorbing feeling for another which 
 men call love, what happens ? All life is referred to the 
 person we love, our self is lost, we are delighted to surrender 
 all things ; we are wholly at one with whom we love. 
 So it is, in higher fashion, when we love God. We lose 
 ourself in love of our Father, in love of His character, 
 in love of truth, and purity, and perfection. The 
 very root of sin is burnt up in the union of love. Our 
 whole life alters in the passion of aspiration, in the per- 
 sonal delight of growing like to Him. It matters not 
 that the growth is often slow. We know, in loving, that 
 eternal life is begun in us ; that the power is now within 
 which must destroy sin in the end. 
 
 That is part of atonement of our reconciliation to 
 God bringing a new life with it ; and it has its analogies 
 in our common life. It is natural, easy to be understood, 
 and wholly human. 
 
 But there is more. We are reconciled to ourselves ; our 
 whole life is changed, and punishment is transmuted. Let 
 me use an old illustration of mine. There was once a 
 widowed mother who had an only son. All her love was 
 lavished on him, her life spent, her work done, entirely 
 for his service ; not a moment of the day but was devoted to 
 him. Her love became a common-place to him, and he took 
 it as we take the air we breathe. It even came to weary 
 him. His life became thoughtless, his youth made him 
 cruel. Then he left her alone, and, far away in the great 
 city, wasted her substance in riotous living, till he had spent 
 
78 Atonement. 
 
 all her goods. Afterwards she died ; but, though neglected, 
 slain indeed by him, her love had remained unbroken. 
 Still hoping for him, still forgiving, her last words were 
 messages of love. The long self-sacrifice was over. 
 
 Had it been in vain ? Love never is in vain ; never 
 faileth. 
 
 The son heard of his mother's death, returned to his 
 village, and, in the quiet evening, went to see her grave. 
 Then all came back upon him, her long patience, her 
 unwearied love, his forgetfulness and her remembrance, the 
 beauty of her tenderness, the horror of his ingratitude and 
 in a moment the careless heart was broken. A spring of 
 love gushed from the rock, and the softening river of 
 penitence began to flow. Hatred of his sin awakened 
 it was sin against her ! Self-loathing stirred, and he was 
 tempted in despair to return to his old life. But then he 
 heard of her last words. They were words of love. She 
 did not despair of him, she believed in him, she forgave ; 
 and when he felt that he was still loved, he took a nobler 
 courage than that of despair, and the renewal of his life 
 began. " She shall be alive to me ! " he cried. " There is 
 yet time, and I will be worthy of her love. I will be all she 
 wished me once to be. We shall meet again, and I will fall 
 at her feet and say, ' Mother, all your love was not lost ; 
 it lived in me, and made me a new creature.' " 
 
 And it was true. A mighty love, awakened by love, took 
 him away from self ; he thought no more of his own pleasure, 
 but of what hers would be. His whole life was over- 
 shadowed by her immanent presence, ruled by her, renewed 
 by her ; till, at last, conscious of the wonderful change, he 
 
A tenement. 79 
 
 knew that he had been made good, and was reconciled to 
 his own life. He felt sure he was redeemed. 
 
 But had he no punishment ? Oh yes, redemption of life 
 through the awakening of love for love is not primarily 
 redemption from punishment. Nay, at first it is the giving 
 of punishment. The pain at his heart was keen, so 
 keen that one might almost say the punishment had only 
 now begun. But it was remedial punishment. Born of 
 love, it worked towards the same end as love, the one end 
 towards which all worked now in him : the regeneration of 
 the life through the regeneration of the heart. The pain 
 kept her goodness, truth, and forgiveness continually 
 before his eyes. It stung him into new efforts to be 
 worthy of her ; to do for others all that she had done for 
 him. And, at last, through the work it did, it ceased to be 
 felt as punishment. When he became wholly at one with 
 the life he loved, he felt pain no longer. The punishment 
 had lasted till it had ennobled him, till it had wrought in 
 him the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Thus, and thus 
 only, was he redeemed from punishment. 
 
 But he was at once redeemed from self, from hardness 
 of heart, from inability to feel punishment, from the 
 tendency to yield to temptation, from a base life, from the 
 sins of the past. He was a new man in love nay, a new 
 man in Christ Jesus, for it was the same love Christ 
 felt, which dwelt in his mother, and wrought upon him. 
 
 Is that true or not ? Are there not a thousand instances 
 of the same kind occurring in the world around us friend 
 who so saves a friend, wife who so saves her husband, 
 minister who so saves his people, men who so save a 
 
So Atonement. 
 
 nation? Is that simple, human, natural, easy to be 
 believed, appealing directly to our reason, affections, 
 experience, worthy of all love and reverence, irresistibly 
 attractive ? If so, turn and believe in the doctrine of 
 human atonement revealed in the life of Jesus, for that is 
 its inward work, as its outward work is to make us believe 
 that God is love. 
 
 It is nothing, I repeat, which Christ alone can do. 
 It is something he did fully and perfectly, and which 
 we all can do, and are bound to do. We can all, in 
 following his life, reveal that God is love, and save men 
 by love. We can all be atoning persons. Put aside all 
 the difficulties the intellect has woven round the doctrine. 
 Do not seek to reduce it to a scheme, do not bind up 
 its beautiful, simple, and natural tenderness in logical 
 propositions. It refuses to be bound. It is infinite, for 
 love is infinite. See it in its human and divine 
 simplicity ; do not call it a doctrine, call it a law ; 
 see it as the perfect fulfilment of the common law 
 of love, whereby all redeeming, comforting, healing, and 
 blessing work has ever been done on earth and will 
 ever be done in heaven. Then accept it as the law of 
 your life, and you will begin to live. And as you live 
 by it, and in the doing of it, you also will become an 
 atoner in the same way that Christ made atonement. You 
 will know the meaning of being saved by Christ, of being 
 redeemed by his death, of being cleansed from your sins 
 by him, of being made at one with God by him ; of 
 fulfilling in your own life his salvation, of being yourself, 
 through him, through dying to self in love, the Saviour 
 
A tenement. 
 
 81 
 
 of men, the cleanser of them from sin, the atoner of 
 them to God. And as you grow up into him in this life, 
 the beauty that eye hath not seen, nor heart imagined, will 
 be yours. You will know at last in all its meaning, the 
 import of the text " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
 to me." 
 
82 
 
 [April 8, 1883.] 
 A TONEMENT. 
 
 " Above, when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and 
 offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither had pleasure therein ; which 
 are offered by the law ; 
 
 "Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh 
 away the first that he may establish the second." HEBREWS x. 8, 9. 
 
 IF an innocent man should suffer, what is the common 
 verdict of the world ? It says " There is a crime beneath 
 the seeming innocence, or he would not suffer." That was 
 the judgment of the friends of Job, and the book of Job 
 gives the Old Testament answer to this blind opinion. 
 The complete answer is in the death and suffering of 
 Jesus. It has been written there for all the world 
 to read, that this stupid maxim is wrong. Suffering does 
 not always prove God's anger, nor prove the sufferer's 
 sin. If increase of love were possible, never did the Father 
 so deeply love the Son of Man as at the hour of the Cross ; 
 if increase of righteousness were possible, never was Jesus 
 more sinless than in that hour of human agony and 
 apparent defeat. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is astonishing how strongly this super- 
 stitious view of God's anger as manifested in human 
 suffering clings to the minds of men. It has vitiated the 
 whole view taken of the death of Jesus by large numbers of 
 
\ 
 
 A tenement. 
 
 S3 
 
 the Church of Christ. They are so unconsciously influenced 
 by the thought that where there is suffering there must be 
 sin, that they ransack heaven and earth for arguments, and 
 violate all the essential ideas of God and man to account 
 for the coincidence of the suffering and of the sinlessness of 
 Jesus. The Cross is suffering : therefore, somewhere about 
 the sufferer there must be sin, and God must be angry. 
 But, they say, Christ had no sin ; then what does the 
 suffering mean ? Their half-pagan maxim puts them into a 
 sad dilemma. 
 
 At last, light comes to theni not spiritual, but logical 
 light and the thing is clear. Man sins, they say : and sin 
 against an infinite Being is infinite, and deserving of infinite 
 punishment. A debate takes place in the nature of God. 
 Justice says " I must punish, I will take the law." Mercy 
 replies "Have pity." "No," answers Justice, "I must have 
 my bond." Then love steps in " Is there no way to make 
 Mercy and Justice at one ? The Son of God is infinite. 
 Let him bear as man the infinite punishment ; let the sins 
 of the race lie upon him ; let Justice exact from him the 
 forfeited bond ; let God's anger be poured upon his head. 
 Then, Justice being satisfied, Mercy can have her gracious 
 way." And this, they say, was done; and, therefore, 
 the Cross is no exception to their maxim Where there is 
 suffering, there is God's anger. 
 
 I do not say that this theory was consciously elaborated out 
 of the maxim, but it certainly is its child. It wears on its 
 brow the traces of its savage heathen paternity. In itself, it 
 is entirely a work of the mere reasoning faculty, though a 
 special spirituality is curiously claimed for it. There is not 
 
 F 2 
 
84 A tonement. 
 
 a trace of a spiritual intuition in it. The spiritual intuitions 
 are all against it. It outrages the moral sense. If I 
 murdered* a man to-morrow, would Justice be satisfied if my 
 brother came forward and offered to be put to death in my 
 stead ? It outrages the heart. It makes a father, who is 
 perfect love, pour his wrath upon a guiltless son at the 
 moment when the son in perfect love chose to die for men. 
 It outrages our idea of God. It makes Him satisfied with a 
 fiction. It makes His notion of justice totally different from 
 that which He has given us. It represents the All-Wise as 
 in a painful dilemma, out of which He can only escape by a 
 subterfuge. It divides His nature, setting one part of it in 
 opposition with another Mercy against Justice and so 
 destroys all conception of His self-unity. 
 
 That theory has, I hope, begun to disappear from 
 amongst us, but it is on the most absolute contradiction 
 of every point of it that we base the doctrine of Atone- 
 ment. It is well not to lose the word, even at the risk of 
 misunderstanding. The word is a good one, and only 
 needs to be freed from false ideas to express quite clearly 
 true ideas. Christ did not come to tell us that God needed 
 to be reconciled to us, but that we needed to reconcile 
 ourselves to Him ; Christ did not come to tell us that God 
 was angry with us in the sense here spoken of, but to deny 
 that; and to reveal to us the very opposite "That God 
 loved us, and longed for us to love Him, that we might be 
 delivered from our sin." Christ did not come to die for us, 
 the innocent for the guilty, that God's justice might be 
 satisfied, and because of this satisfaction, be enabled to 
 show mercy to us. He came to die that he might make 
 
Atonement. 85 
 
 us feel, through the intensity of his human love, how 
 much God loved us, and make us understand that God's 
 justice, though it punished, was final mercy. Christ did 
 not come to tell us that we should be saved if we 
 believed in his righteousness being imputed to us, but 
 that we should be saved if we lived his life; because 
 that life, being the same in kind as God's life of love 
 and goodness, and' holding in it the power of right- 
 eousness, was incompatible with continued sin. Who- 
 soever lived in that love was saved from sin. Christ 
 did not come to enable God to forgive us, he came to 
 tell us that God had forgiven us. And it is in the 
 revelation of these truths, every one of which is in direct 
 opposition to the propositions set forth by the forensic 
 theory of Atonement, that the good news of Christ 
 consists ; it is by the knowledge of these truths, and faith in 
 them, that man is brought nigh to God, induced to love 
 God, made at one with God. And when that divine and 
 blessed work is wrought out perfectly in every man, then will 
 all Atonement be completed, and God and mankind be at 
 one, as Jesus was when he said "I and my Father are one." 
 It was to free us then from this false and pagan view 
 of God that God was to be propitiated by bloody sacrifice 
 of the innocent for the guilty that Jesus lived and died. 
 It was no wonder, and it is no wonder that men refused to 
 be reconciled to a God whose justice was satisfied by the 
 punishment of the innocent ; who created us to sin, and 
 then, being angry with us for sinning, sent us hell ; who 
 followed His own caprice in saving or condemning ; who 
 had no real love at all for us, only love for His own power 
 
86 Atonement. 
 
 and glory ; and who remedied the mistake He permitted us 
 to make by a scheme so clumsy and so unjust that it would 
 be rejected as dangerous to morality by any court of law in 
 ancient Rome or in modern Europe. For a parallel to it, 
 we must fall back on the legends of savage nations, who 
 derived their notions of divine law from those superstitious 
 conceptions of the gods which are naturally engendered in 
 the minds of men by that which seemed the terrible caprice 
 of the powers of Nature. And it is a view of God, which, 
 as in the savage it produced all the evils and abominations 
 of pagan worship, so now it produces all the evils and 
 abominations of religious intolerance. 
 
 Jesus denied it altogether. He revealed a God of com- 
 passion and love, whose life, he said, was in loving all His 
 children. They had sinned, it is true, but God asked them 
 to unite themselves to His righteousness, in order that they 
 might sin no more. No propitiation was required but that 
 which would be wrought in their own hearts when they 
 believed that God was love and came to ask Him to 
 receive them. Men feared God, but Christ said their 
 fear was foolish. God was of that beautiful and heavenly 
 character, tender, just, fatherly, ready to give them all 
 His Being, that, if once they could see Him as He really 
 was, fear would be drowned in exceeding love. And Jesus 
 recorded, in words of eternal loveliness, in the parable 
 of the Prodigal Son, the way in which God felt towards 
 a sinner the way in which He received a sinner when 
 he came to himself and returned to his Father. Not one 
 word about propitiation, not one word of any condition 
 save that which is contained in the abandonment of a foolish 
 
Atonement. 87 
 
 life and the rush of love in the heart which cried, " I will 
 arise and go to my Father " ; in the rush of humility and 
 desire to be good which cried, "I have sinned against Heaven 
 and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called 
 Thy son." Yet God, being righteous, could not abide sin, 
 and He did demand its surrender, and sacrifice for sin. 
 But the sacrifices He asked for were such sacrifices as 
 Jesus made to God, and none other the sacrifice of 
 pleasure and self-will and wrong for the sake of being like 
 God in character ; the sacrifice of life for the sake of the 
 welfare of the human race ; the sacrifice of self made day 
 by day for the sake of truth, justice, freedom, of intellectual 
 power, of spiritual progress, for all things and all ideas by 
 which the advance of man in God is promoted and secured. 
 God did not demand the sacrifice of reason, or conscience, or 
 human love, for to sacrifice these things would be to sacrifice 
 God Himself within us but the giving up and the burning 
 before Him, on the altar of a pure life, of falsehood and shame, 
 of injustice and selfishness, of cruel deeds and words, of 
 impure thoughts and dishonest life, of hatred and jealousy, 
 of heedless pleasure and passion-driven will ; of all that 
 made us unworthy of being sons and daughters of the 
 Lord of Righteouness and Love. These were the Christian 
 sacrifices, this the sacrifice Jesus offered to his Father. 
 It is put closely, clearly in the text " Sacrifice and burnt 
 offering for sin Thou didst not require " ; for these were the 
 demands the Pagan thought his gods made of man. Then 
 said I ; then said Jesus : " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O 
 God ! " He took away the first kind of sacrifice, that he 
 might establish the second. 
 
88 Atonement. 
 
 It is when we believe and trust in such a God that we 
 are atoned to Him. It is because we are saved through our 
 belief in these truths which Jesus revealed, and for which he 
 died, that we say we are saved through him ; that we 
 say we pray to God through him. It is not that he 
 has saved us through a vicarious sacrifice it is that we 
 are saved by means of the revelation that he gave. It is 
 not that Christ, out of his essential divinity, has saved us 
 that is God's work alone ; it is that through following the 
 blessed steps of his most holy life we find we are redeemed 
 from sin and made at one with God. It is not because we 
 need a Mediator that we pray to God through him, it is 
 because it is a fact that he has been the Mediator the 
 medium whereby we have learnt to know the character of 
 God, and are saved by that knowledge. Yes, when God's 
 character is known by us as Jesus knew it, we are reconciled 
 to God. We hate God and fear Him no more. We are 
 ready with joy to become at one with God, as Jesus is at one 
 with Him, and in the same way. How can we hate a Father 
 who is fatherly in all the profound meaning of the word ? 
 How can we fear One who, if Jesus be true, is ready to 
 give away His whole Being to us in utter love, who runs to 
 meet us when we come to Him with a joy which is more 
 than we can ask or think ; who, if He punishes, does so 
 by law and not by caprice, and whose law of punishment 
 is established for the destruction in us of evil and the 
 perfecting in us of good. 
 
 To believe that is to be saved ; first, from our own 
 ignorant and ghastly idea of God which sets our whole 
 life and thought and feeling wrong ; and secondly, from our 
 
A tenement. 89 
 
 sin, because when we know God as He is and love His 
 character, we become that which we love. To love God is 
 to give up sin ; nay, more, it is to win a heart which cannot 
 sin, so that the statement of St. John, " He cannot sin 
 because he is born of God," is not so extravagant as 
 it seems. This is Atonement, the reconciliation of man 
 to God, through the knowledge that Jesus has given us 
 of God. 
 
 2. But the work done did not end here. The revelation 
 made of the Fatherhood of God the revelation that He 
 loved all men as His sons the intense reality into which 
 Jesus threw that revelation by dying for its truth, the 
 mighty belief in the love of God which urged him to love 
 men so much that he died to prove to them that love was 
 all in all, the spirit of that death becoming the attractive 
 force of the world the one thing which it was worth while 
 to follow all these things and their related actions entered 
 into men of all nations, tribes, and kindreds and bound them 
 together into one whole. Man became reconciled to man 
 in the love of God revealed in the life and death of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Before the time of Jesus there was no bond of union be- 
 tween different peoples, except that of subjection; nay, rather, 
 different nations were natural enemies. After his time, the 
 moment a man became a Christian, he became in idea the 
 brother of all other Christians. The Jew and the Gentile, 
 the Roman and the Greek, the Gaul and the Briton, the 
 barbarian Scythian and the philosopher, the Athenian poet 
 and the Dacian slave, the Roman matron and the poor 
 Syrian woman one and all, all nations, all castes, all classes 
 
90 Atonement. 
 
 of society, all classes of women as well as of men, were 
 united in a common name, in a common nation, in a 
 common citizenship, in a common love to one another and 
 to God, in the man Christ Jesus. It was no fictitious bond, 
 but one made active, charitable, real, in every city and every 
 land where went the story and the gospel of the Lord. Of 
 course, the idea was contradicted again and again in the 
 carrying out of it ; that is the fate of all great ideas. It was 
 most contradicted when the Church became imperialized 
 and changed into a system of castes. But, nevertheless, 
 the idea was working on behind the false systems, and 
 it is working now. 
 
 The little Church of Christ was the first international 
 society, the first republican brotherhood, the first equality. 
 And all our political struggle towards the conception of one 
 nation, the nation of mankind, in which all citizens are free, 
 equal, and fraternal, not only because of their rights being 
 equal, but because of the equality of the duties which 
 men owe to one another is but the working out in 
 society and politics of this mighty atonement of nation to 
 nation which Jesus set on foot in the realm of the spirit of 
 man, when He bound the whole of those who believed in 
 his tidings about God into one Church, by a common love 
 of God, by a common following of his own spirit, by a 
 common belief that, since they were sons of God, they were 
 brothers one of another. That glorious work continues, 
 and as the day will come when all shall be at one with 
 God, from the least to the greatest, so the day shall also 
 come when men shall know and love their unity. 
 
 That was another part of the work of that which is called 
 
Atonement. 91 
 
 the Atonement, but which may more truly be called the 
 Reconciliation of Man. 
 
 3. But there was one hatred which men had, and have 
 now, which it seemed impossible to turn away. 
 
 Hatred of suffering in ourselves, in others ; hatred of death 
 as the last and bitterest of pains. Pain by itself independ- 
 ent of reasons why it is to be borne physical, and still 
 more mental pain, is the hateful thing. Can man ever be 
 reconciled to that ? There were two things, however, before 
 the time of Jesus which had made pain seem beautiful. One 
 was Conscience ; the other was Love. Men had for centuries 
 men, too, quite ignorant that what urged them to die was 
 an atomic habit rejoiced to die for what they thought right 
 and true, for ideas likely to benefit their own people : and 
 they had found in their inward thoughts of right a strange 
 joy which enabled them to overcome or despise the suffering. 
 These were the great souls of the world ; but save in war for 
 their native land, it was not supposed that many could or 
 ought to do this. Suffering did not bring this kind of joy 
 to all men. 
 
 But Christ declared by his life and death and it was 
 one of those daring generalizations that lift him so far above- 
 all other prophets that this which had arisen here and 
 there among men, was the highest duty and law of life ; that 
 it was to be obeyed and fulfilled, not only by the philosopher 
 and the hero, but by the child, the woman, the common 
 citizen, the slave, the savage. There was not a man or 
 woman who was not capable of this, not one who in this 
 way of suffering for righteousness, or for the sake of ideas 
 useful to men, might not have all the noble calm of the 
 
92 Atonement, 
 
 philosopher, and all the splendid joy of the hero. " Blessed 
 are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for 
 theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Jesus swept the particular motive into the universal. 
 Not for one's own people only, not for one's own class 
 alone, but for the life, honour, and advance of all man- 
 kind, even for those who hated us and put us to death, 
 was this sacrifice to be made. It was in this spirit that 
 the Christian, bond or free, endured torture and death for 
 sake of conscience and truth, and finding in himself a 
 reconciliation to all the sufferings he bore, was the means of 
 reconciling other men to suffering. And how wide-spread 
 this reconciliation of men to suffering became is plainly laid 
 before us in history. 
 
 Once more ; men had, before Jesus, suffered and died 
 for love of others. There is a feeling in the heart which 
 they, at least, did not know was only an atomic dance and 
 which we still call love, which since the world began has 
 made animals, and still more men (for it deepens as life 
 grows higher and more complex), not only bear pain, but 
 rejoice in it, if it can save others towards whom that feeling 
 exists. But that passion which illuminated and transfigured 
 suffering was only felt by men and women towards a very 
 few the small circle of home, or friends whom they 
 distinctly and personally loved. Christ declared that this 
 isolated passion was to be made universal. That which the 
 mother feels for her child when to save it she smiles at pain; 
 that which the lover feels towards his mistress when to free 
 her from trouble, he gladly dies ; that same passion which 
 makes pain and death a garden of delight, the veriest 
 
Atonement. 93 
 
 Paradise on earth, the height and depth and burning centre 
 of ineffable life and joy ; Christ felt when he gave up life 
 for love of all mankind, even at the very moment when he 
 also felt the pain most deeply. Nay, it was reached through 
 the extremity of pain. 
 
 To feel that we are reconciled to suffering through love of 
 one whom we know and love, is noble : but to extend that 
 to those we know not, nay, to our enemies, because they are 
 sons of God ; to have this unutterable passion for mankind, 
 and, in it, unutterable joy in the heart of suffering ; is the 
 ideal life which Christ said was possible to all of us and it 
 is possible. We shall know what it means at last, and 
 when it is known, we shall be wholly reconciled to suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 These things, then, which belong to the law of Atone- 
 ment, are not theological dreams, woven out of the intellect, 
 not parts of a scheme. They are developments of human 
 powers natural to man, things possible to his nature ; 
 growing out of the common life of man ; ideals, but prac- 
 ticable ideals ; the flower, according to law, of plants in the 
 garden of human nature. 
 
 Christ manifested these powers, showed that they were 
 practical and possible, made us understand that we could 
 also blossom into this perfection. And that was another 
 way in which he brought salvation to us, took away our 
 sins, and justly earned the title of Redeemer. 
 
 His revelation reconciles us to God, reconciles man to 
 man, reconciles man to suffering. 
 
94 
 
 [April 15, 1883.] 
 A T N E M E N T. 
 
 " Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children 
 of God." MATTHEW v. 9. 
 
 THE relation of man to God, as long as man is unholy, 
 is the relation of a wrongdoer to one who, on re- 
 pentance, forgives the wrong, but whose forgiveness is 
 not believed in. It is a common condition of things 
 between man and man. We are ready to forgive, but 
 we find that the injurer does not forgive us. The man 
 that does wrong to another is proverbially slow to believe in 
 love, and therefore in forgiveness ; nay, often he is set into 
 greater hatred by forgiveness, because he thinks forgiveness 
 is hypocrisy. This is natural enough. For the injurer, being 
 full of hatred and anger, imputes to the injured his own 
 feelings, and realizing their ugliness in the other through 
 imagination, hates them in him, though not in himself, and 
 feels himself wronged by their existence. Two results 
 follow : first, he cannot forgive the state of heart he 
 imagines in the other; secondly, he cannot believe in 
 forgiveness at all. 
 
 It is the same between evil men and God, as long as 
 there rankles in their heart suspicion of God's resentment. 
 As long as they imagine God to be altogether such a 
 -one as themselves, there is no reconciliation possible. 
 
A tenement. 95 
 
 They will not forgive God, and they cannot receive God's 
 forgiveness. It has no power. Till it is believed, it cannot 
 produce its blessed fruits in the soul. Hence the deep 
 necessity of that on which all religious writers insist, the 
 necessity of faith. 
 
 I repeat then, here, in another form, that which I have 
 already said. Two things must take place in our soul 
 before we can feel ourselves at one with God, before 
 Atonement is an inward fact of the spirit. First, we 
 must change our false view of God for a true one ; and, 
 secondly, our own character must grow more into har- 
 mony with God's character. It was Christ's work to set 
 on foot these two changes. He made clear to us that 
 God was not jealous of us ; that He was not vindictive ; 
 that He did not play with our weakness ; and, therefore, 
 that we had no longer any reason to hate Him or to 
 suspect Him ; that it was false to impute to Him, as we 
 had done, the baseness and selfishness of infliction of 
 punishment for the sake of His own glory. And that 
 revelation (when it is seized by the soul as a fact), frees 
 us from all desire to contend against the Father. We 
 cannot be angry with perfect love when we know it as 
 Love. The first step in our own reconciliation to God is 
 made when our false view of God is replaced by the true 
 one. 
 
 The second is the direct result of the first. Believing 
 God to be Love, Redemption, Fatherhood, we must 
 become miserable when we separate ourselves from His 
 goodness by doing or thinking evil. The conviction of 
 eternal love melts the soul into penitence. And then 
 
96 A tenement. 
 
 the love of Love awakens, and out of penitence we 
 rise with a mighty cry to unite ourselves to Love ; and 
 united to Him, we cannot do otherwise than repeat in 
 our lives the righteousness we adore. So our character 
 is changed, and in that change the certainty of our 
 union with God is secured. It is the second part of our 
 reconciliation. 
 
 We are then atoned, reconciled to God through Jesus 
 in this sense, that he gave us such a revelation of God's 
 character that when we believed in it we could be angry 
 with God no longer, but were, so to speak, compelled 
 to love Him ; and that in so loving perfect goodness, 
 truth, righteousness, purity, and mercy, we grew like that 
 which we loved ; and this inward change of heart com- 
 pleted our oneness with God. 
 
 And I said that this representation of the doctrine was 
 not apart from human life, was in reality nothing strange or 
 new, but the complete fulfilment in Jesus, and the flowering 
 in him of those acts and spiritual powers by which all men 
 who have reconciled man to man, all who have atoned 
 together nations or societies, have done their atoning work 
 from the beginning. It was nothing more than the fulfil- 
 ment in a complete life of that law of love and of 
 forgiveness which has prevailed and saved from the very 
 first the finished manifestation of the principles by which 
 human love has always done redeeming work. 
 
 I purpose to-day to show how these principles apply ; so 
 that we may carry them out in our own lives and be our- 
 selves atoners persons who bring together those who are 
 severed one from another ; and, as far as single individuals 
 
Atonement. 97 
 
 can do such work, persons who unite divided nations ; and 
 lastly, persons who so regulate their inward life that they 
 are enabled to bring into atonement within themselves 
 the jarring elements within their heart. 
 
 Jesus, then, according to the view I have laid before you, 
 did perfectly for us and for God what loving and true men 
 have always been doing less perfectly for man and God 
 since the beginning of the world. Whenever any man has 
 been loving, forgiving, faithful to justice, he has made, 
 however unconsciously, his brother man feel that God 
 is of the same loving and faithful temper. He has 
 revealed the character of God, and brought men to love 
 it ; and, in doing so, has changed the character of men 
 from evil to good. He has wrought an atonement. 
 
 It is one of our most benign and blessed works to do 
 this work. We reconcile men to God, when we show 
 forth God in our lives. If we love men, we make men 
 believe that God is Love. They see God in us, and 
 when they realize Him through loving Him in us, they 
 pass onwards into love of Him for Himself alone and, 
 loving Him, are changed into His image. This is the 
 redeeming, atoning work we all may do, and it represents 
 exactly the atoning work which Christ did in perfection. 
 And this is no mere theological doctrine, but the simple 
 declaration of facts which everyone can see if but the 
 eye is set to look for them. It is at once the explanation 
 and the proof of all Atonement, as we have conceived it. 
 
 Again, to extend the parallel, the way of Jesus is the best 
 method we can use, if we wish to be the peacemaker 
 between two men who are at enmity, one of whom has done, 
 
98 Atonement. 
 
 and the other of whom has suffered, wrong. First induce 
 the one who has suffered wrong to forgive the other. You 
 will find that the more easy thing to do. Then you will 
 have established a condition partly analogous to that 
 which exists between God and man forgiveness on one 
 side, wrong on the other. But there is a difficulty, and 
 it is, as I have said, that the doer of the wrong argues 
 from himself to the character of the injured, and imputes 
 to him his own evil passions. He hates and suspects the 
 other, as Saul hated and suspected David, as many men 
 hate and suspect God. 
 
 What is your work, then? It is to go to the wrong 
 doer, and to reveal to him the true character and feelings 
 of the man he has injured, his love and his forgiveness. 
 He may not believe this at first, but harden himself in 
 hatred ; still, if you persevere in your proof, he will not 
 persevere in his suspicion. And when he yields at last, 
 his character is changed by the revelation, and he himself, 
 becoming noble again, feels that he is forgiven, is, in fact, 
 changed, and the change is his forgiveness. Then he can 
 reknit the old friendship without untruthfulness and without 
 shame. That is a constant occurrence in men's lives. Let 
 some kind expression of one whom we thought an enemy 
 be told us, let us find unexpected love in the heart of a 
 brother, lover, a wife to whom we have done wrong and 
 our heart warms again. Sorrow awakens, and love resumes 
 its gentle sway. The character of the loving person is told, 
 and the announcement of the character changes the heart 
 of the unloving. The evil is repaired, and life is again 
 happy. 
 
Atonement. 99 
 
 Alas ! it is not always possible to make life happy again, 
 even though reconciliation is made. There are wrongs we 
 do which we repent in vain. We are forgiven the wrongs, 
 but we cannot undo them. The forgiver feels them less 
 because he has forgiven, but they have done their work. 
 It is a dreadful thing when, lightly, only for the sake 
 of getting vengeance, we give ourselves up with blind 
 wrath to slander or persecution of another ; and it is not 
 so uncommon in this hot-hearted world of ours. We 
 may then discover, all too late, that one whom we have 
 pursued with hate, or with the revenge of love, is still 
 loving to us, still helping us unknown. Then the heart 
 is broken with the late remorse of affection, and the love 
 of our whole life seems too little to express our repentance 
 for the ruin we have worked by our wrong. 
 
 It is often too little. We repent our evil bitterly, weave 
 with fruitless tenderness a thousand flowers of kindness 
 round the life we have destroyed, wish to give up the whole 
 world, nay, even to die, if only we may build up again the 
 temple we have shattered so recklessly. It is of little 
 use. The ruin is a ruin still, however we may clothe it 
 with flowers : we never can rebuild it. Our work is done 
 for this life. Only the divine Architect, and only in a 
 happier world, can repair the miserable work our passionate 
 hands have done. Oh take care ! Watch against revenge, 
 against jealousy, against hatred. Once they seize the heart, 
 we never can say what their madness may do to men and 
 women. Repentance saves the soul, forgiveness heals half 
 the pain of the forgiver, but neither buy back the past. 
 
 That is the extreme case, though it is not uncommon. 
 
 o 2 
 
ioo .Atonement. 
 
 But often the wrong can be repaired, and to help men to 
 repair it in the way \ have sketched for you, to look out for 
 opportunities for reconciling men, is to do on earth some- 
 thing of the atoning work of Jesus Christ. 
 
 ii. But to pass from this to a larger part of the subject. 
 I have said that part of Christ's work was, first, by estab- 
 lishing the love of a common Father among men, to 
 establish the idea of a common Brotherhood, and by these 
 two to do away with the enmities of nations. A spirit 
 was infused into the progress of the world which went 
 on reconciling nation to nation. A mighty conception 
 went through the world, like a great prophet, to make an 
 international atonement. 
 
 It partly succeeded, and partly failed. It has suc- 
 ceeded so far, that Christendom recognizes, beneath all its 
 dissensions, its unity in the worship of a common Father. 
 And this has been one of the great civilizing powers of 
 the world. But while this first idea has succeeded, the 
 second has been neglected. The Apostles had scarcely 
 died before the notion of a common brotherhood decayed. 
 Nay, more ; men divorced the love of mankind from the 
 love of God, and wars, persecutions, national and religious 
 hatreds, proclaimed that those who worshipped the same 
 God did not consider themselves as brothers. 
 
 It may be it was necessary, in the slow progress of man- 
 kind, that this idea, so far beyond the time at which it was 
 proclaimed, should suffer from reactions which in the end 
 should establish it more firmly ; that it should go through 
 all its excesses and all its defects, so that it might be 
 more clearly grasped by men. But nothing is sadder than 
 
Atonement. 101 
 
 the long waiting that mankind has yet to go through, 
 before it is convinced that the two ideas of Christ must 
 be re-married before progress is easy and noble. It seems 
 even now almost impossible to make men believe that 
 love to man is as important as love to God ; nay, that 
 love to man for this is the true way to put it is identical 
 with love to God, and that nations who for the sake of 
 their own honour, as they basely call it, or for their own 
 interest, violate, by war or by oppression, justice or freedom 
 or individuality in other nations, or support those who 
 violate these things, are not worthy of the name of Christ, 
 and live by Pagan, not by Christian thoughts. 
 
 What we need now is, that all over the world it should be 
 felt as a first principle, that the sin of sins (against God as 
 against man) is to injure humanity in any of its members ; 
 that a war, or a law, or a measure which imposes suffering 
 upon a people (except as the strictly just punishment of 
 crime), or limits their true liberty, or tramples under foot 
 their desire for national individuality, or retards their advance, 
 either now or in the future, is guilt of the deepest dye, is a 
 wrong done to God who has made Himself at one with the 
 cause of man. 
 
 It is our work as peacemakers, as a nation that follows 
 Christ ; it is our work as individual members of the English 
 nation, to labour to spread far and wide the atoning and 
 reconciling thought that true national religion is this That 
 each nation should work, not only for its own special 
 interests, or be jealous for its own honour as duellists are 
 jealous, but labour for the interests of other nations more 
 than for its own, and be jealous for the just rights of other 
 
IO2 Atonement. 
 
 nations more than for its own ; that nothing should even be 
 done in the present by one nation for its own interests 
 which might in the future put into jeopardy the freedom, 
 the advance, or the individuality of another nation ; that, in 
 one word, all that we call so falsely national glory, which 
 means making our military power to conquer respected, 
 should be subordinated to the true glory, which means 
 making our power to do and support the right and just 
 thing loved ; that all that we call national prosperity and 
 pre-eminence must be systematically subordinated and this 
 should be the foundation of all foreign politics to the 
 interest of the whole of mankind. Till that is done, our 
 Christianity may be personal, but it is not national ; and till 
 it is done, we shall never have our rights in the only way 
 worth having them ; we shall never gain our true interests, 
 nor realize our true honour. It is only half Christianity to 
 worship God revealed in Christ. We must add to it the 
 service of mankind in Christ. 
 
 It is in your power to do a great deal towards that noble 
 consummation. It is in your power, year by year (for year 
 by year such questions rise in English politics), to support 
 by voice and writing, in society, at home, and in your 
 business, the view which regulates our policy abroad on the 
 moral grounds of justice, of love of freedom, of hatred of 
 oppression, of hatred of grasping wars and grasping trade, 
 and to decry and abhor the selfishness and the petty 
 frenzies which, under the cry of England's honour, hide the 
 principles and the passions of the duellist and the savage. 
 
 The desire to get more, or the desire to keep what we 
 have unjustly won, is the very antagonist of the spirit of 
 
Atonement. 103 
 
 Christ ; the source of all hatred, and cruelty, and violence ; 
 the source of nine-tenths of the wars and wickedness of the 
 world. It is as evil in nations as it is in men. Have the 
 heart, as members of a great nation, to live in the spirit of 
 Christ Jesus. To give away, to think little of self, to care 
 for the whole, to love and to die for the great things of 
 justice, freedom, love, pity, progress that is to be the 
 maker of peace, one of the great atoning band who shall 
 at last see all nations atoned together, bound together by 
 mutual self-surrender into the mighty and glorious Humanity 
 that Jesus shall present to God when the harvest of the 
 world is ripe. 
 
 iii. Nor, lastly, is this atoning work which the spirit that 
 follows the life of Christ does in the outward world, less 
 powerful in the inward world of our own heart. There it 
 also sets things at one, there it reconciles jarring elements. 
 The love which loses itself in God, in duty, in man, in 
 nature ; the willing offering up of life on the altar which the 
 will, led by love of God and man, builds with fervour in the 
 heart this is the atoning of inward discord, the recon- 
 ciliation, the peace, the power that redeems, that raises us 
 within from death. 
 
 Look at the world of our own heart ! What a universe ! 
 where as it were in a space infinite to thought we see all 
 human history reproduced. There are as many nations of 
 thoughts within us as there are nations of passions and 
 powers ; and they abide in conditions similar to those of the 
 nations of the world ; sometimes despotically overthrown 
 under the tyranny of one passion ; sometimes all the rest 
 ruled by the unholy alliance of a few ; sometimes all inde- 
 
1O4 Atonement. 
 
 pendent, or all savage ; sometimes in a state of armed 
 neutrality, often all at war, or on the point of war. There is 
 no peace, no atonement in our soul. That which we would, 
 we do not ; that which we would not, that we do. The 
 noble ideal struggles with the selfish pleasure ; the religious 
 emotion with the scorn of the understanding ; swift passion 
 with steady duty ; the present fear with the future hope ; 
 the desire of the good things of the world with truth to our 
 aspirations ; the nobler with the lower being. Nay, more, 
 we often do not know, in our anarchy within, whether we 
 are good or bad, so strangely do the passions and powers 
 glide out of noble into ignoble forms. Love slips into lust, 
 justice into uncharitableness, courage into boasting or reck- 
 less display, modesty into fear, love of truth into Pharisaism, 
 indignation into revenge, faith into superstition, love of work 
 into diseased desire of fame, love of rest into sloth, 
 imagination into sensuality, love of clear thinking into 
 suppression of the instincts of the spirit ; or the very opposite 
 takes place, and these evil things suddenly become good 
 things. This is anarchy, the state of savagery when every 
 village within is ready at a moment to go to war with its 
 neighbour village. 
 
 What can make these warring things at one ; bring peace 
 to this little universe ; supply the spell by which these con- 
 flicting powers can be harmonized towards an aim which 
 God would approve, and which His love shall confirm 
 into a holy unity ? 
 
 Only one thing; to possess one ruling idea, beyond our 
 self, which all that is within us should obey; to love that 
 idea, and will it, wholly ; and, with that, to love God who 
 
Atonement. 105 
 
 gives the idea, and is at its root, so that in the end we lose 
 ourselves in God. This idea is the ruling thought of 
 Christ's life I am the son of God, and God's will 1 must 
 do. " My meat and drink is to do my Father's will, and 
 to finish His work. I can do nothing of myself. The 
 works that I do, I do not of myself, the Father that 
 dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." God's will 
 recognized as righteous, loved because it is love to man, 
 made the Lord and Master of the heart that is the 
 reconciliation of the warring elements of the human soul. 
 
 Then your whole being will have the peace that Christ 
 had within, and in the same way. When one aim is 
 dominant, and one belief the belief that you are here to 
 do a special work for God, and not for yourself the aim, 
 one and undivided, to do that work as God's work then 
 these two lords of your life will set your whole heart into the 
 peace of order. The aim, being noble, will so ennoble all 
 your passions and powers, that they will not slip into sin or 
 into degradation; the belief, being one and divine, will order 
 all your powers under it into one phalanx of soldiers for a 
 single work. Every human faculty, rejoicing in union each 
 with each, will pass onwards together in a progress which 
 has its close only in the infinitude of God Himself. The 
 soul has peace in this unity a peace that passeth under- 
 standing. The spirit of Christ's life has made all things at 
 one within. 
 
 There is yet another thing to say. The same spirit, the 
 spirit which loses itself in love, reconciles us to the sufferings 
 of life, and brings peace to the storms that suffering makes 
 within. 
 
io6 Atonement. 
 
 There are some who have suffered vile and grievous 
 wrong. Added to the wrong, there is the sense of the 
 injustice of God gnawing at the heart. So feels many a 
 betrayed woman, many a cheated man. There is but one 
 way by which such a life may find peace. It is the way of 
 Christ. It is by a mighty effort to forgive the injurer. It is 
 to say out of a divine power, " Father, forgive him ; Father, 
 forgive her ; they knew not what they did." It is strange, 
 yet not so strange, so god-like is our nature, what peace 
 that brings, how life is softened and made possible to live 
 again, and how, in some inexplicable way, the sense of 
 God's injustice passes out of sight, for we are at one with 
 God through our forgiveness. 
 
 ' ' Oh, blest are they 
 Whose sorrow rather is to suffer wrong 
 Than to do wrong." 
 
 All evil things that disturb the rough judgments of the 
 world, the whips and scorns of time, the bitter poison of 
 self-blame, the pain of our desire for revenge, the pain of 
 the wrong itself cannot live in the sweet clear air of the 
 life of those who, in Christ's strength on Calvary, pass at 
 last in perfect peace " into that pure and unknown world of 
 Love, where injury cannot come." Nay, more, such a 
 heart is reconciled to pain. It feels the nobility it has 
 reached through pain conquered by forgiveness. It says to 
 itself, " It was well that I suffered, for now I am at one with 
 God." 
 
 Others cannot so easily win content. They forgive men 
 and gain the peace that comes through forgiveness ; but they 
 
Atonement. 107 
 
 are restless still. Their nature is unpeaceful as a mountain 
 stream, which, never to be charmed to gentleness, runs 
 among rocks, and only rests for moments in obscure pools 
 a rest wilder even than its trouble. Perhaps, in this life, 
 they never can reach peace of heart. Yes ; there are some 
 not the wicked, but those overwrought by phantasy who 
 live unrested, and will die unrested, to whom it seems as if 
 eternity itself could not give rest ; on whose tombs might be 
 written, "Without hope, I implore peace." There are more 
 of such men than we know. We may not be of that strange 
 and difficult temper, but in all our lives there are times 
 when this experience is ours; when nervous excitement, 
 fierce pain, base injustice, continued anxiety, decaying love 
 that corrupts the life, the vulture claw and beak of jealousy, 
 ingratitude's sharp tooth that both of them turn the heart 
 to carrion, and then rend and devour it have made us hate 
 life and death equally as vile, and send forth from our heart 
 an unutterable cry for peace. 
 
 What then is our help? How then shall we reconcile 
 ourselves to life ? 
 
 Only by throwing ourselves, as Christ did when troubles 
 of this kind came upon him, out of ourselves into love of 
 God, and into love of man. Again and again, when Jesus 
 was half broken-hearted with the evil which attacked him, 
 he went into the wilderness or to the mountain top to pray 
 alone, to realize his union with the Father. In the very 
 last and bitterest sorrow, when even his best beloved could 
 not watch with him for one hour, he sought in the olive 
 garden communion with his Father. And there, in utter 
 loss of self, he found the peace which carried him through 
 
J o8 Atonement. 
 
 a death inflicted by those who hated him who died for 
 them in love. 
 
 This is one secret of victory over suffering loss of self 
 in love of God. 
 
 But that alone would not have been enough for Jesus. 
 For such solitary communion tends to isolate us with 
 ourselves. Jesus, and we with him, must lose himself 
 in communion with God through work of love done to 
 mankind. He passed from his own trouble into active 
 help, and forgot all pain in the larger thoughts of what he 
 might do to heal and succour pain. I think some of us 
 might try that way. Trouble, anxiety, discontent double 
 themselves by brooding on them ; they lessen to a shred 
 when we seek the anxious, the troubled, and the discon- 
 tented, and lift them up, using our pain to help their pain. 
 It is by work of this kind that the vast conception of 
 mankind growing through sorrow and sacrifice into union 
 with God slowly arises in us, and dwarfs in the end all 
 our personal distress. We live then in so glorious an 
 idea that we feel our life glorious. We prize the breath 
 we share with human kind, however painfully we draw it ; 
 and at last, driven by pain to feel with the pain of the 
 world, learn the ineffable joy of that forgetfulness of self 
 in sympathy with others, which was the support, nay, even 
 the rapture of Christ upon the Cross ; which (touched 
 for one moment with the depth of agony) passed into that 
 majestic cry of peace and joy " It is finished ; Father, 
 into Thy hands I commend my spirit." 
 
 W T e may, with him, feel the very worst agony of life, and 
 know we can live no more. But if, in the midst of it, we 
 
Atonement. 109 
 
 live in love, if still, for all the pain, we lose ourselves, we shall 
 win the last and crowning joy of death for love. For God 
 does not ask us to live longer than we can. The hour comes 
 when death our friend releases us and then all our long 
 repression, all the forces of sorrowful effort, all the noble 
 pain, are transformed into the expansion of the soul, into 
 powers of joy, into the inconceivable rapidity with which 
 we live and work in the life and labour of God. 
 
IO 
 
 THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOSHUA. 
 
 " And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom ; for 
 Moses had laid his hands upon him : and the children of Israel 
 hearkened unto him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses." 
 I) HUT. xxxiv. 9. 
 
 THE education of Joshua is of great interest, and full of 
 lessons to us. It is a long, long time before he steps into 
 the first place. Moses is represented as being eighty years 
 old before he took the lead, and Joshua nearly as old. One 
 thing is quite plain even though we are unable to con- 
 sider the history as accurate that the ancient Hebrews 
 and certainly the late compiler of the Pentateuch 
 thought a man who had a great work to do should 
 undergo a long period of training before he entered upon it. 
 There is infinite care spent on the forming and moulding 
 of the men of genius who are to form and mould the first 
 rude clay of a great people Greece, or Rome, or England ; 
 .and the Jew who put these books together makes us con- 
 scious of the anxious education given to Joshua through 
 the forty years of the wandering. He held that this 
 was the doing of God, and it is our view. God is at the 
 root of all great nations, chooses and educates specially 
 those who are to represent the type of the nation, and to im- 
 
T/ie Life and Character of Jo, 
 
 press a character upon it. This is what the theologians call 
 election not the selection, as men have said, of certain 
 to be saved for the glory of God and to the ruin of the rest, 
 but the choice and education of men who are to save others 
 for the glory of mankind, and, therefore, for the glory of 
 God, since God's glory does not consist in damning the 
 world, but in redeeming it. 
 
 In one sense we are all elected, each to do a certain part, 
 which no one else could do, of God's great work the 
 perfecting of the human race. But the true doctrine of 
 election looks rather to the choice by God, and the making 
 by God, of certain great and universal men, who, by their 
 genius, will change the face of the world, create nations, 
 inspire and influence all hearts, embody ideas and make 
 them run like a fire through mankind. It is wonderful the 
 pains God takes with these men: they are "chosen vessels;" 
 and when they die, we look back on their lives, even after 
 a thousand years, and say, " This is the Lord's doing, and 
 it is marvellous in our eyes." That is the true doctrine 
 of election. 
 
 Joshua was elected to finish the work of Moses. It was 
 of the first importance that the great ideas of Moses, rude 
 and primitive though they were, concerning God in his 
 relation to the Israelites, and concerning their government, 
 should be clearly handed down and kept : that the whole 
 spirit of the work Moses had done in the wilderness should 
 be continued in Canaan. And we may be sure that part of 
 the endeavour of Moses' life was to secure that this should 
 be done. For that end, he wrought Joshua, and when he 
 died, that work was done. "And Joshua the son of Nun 
 
112 TJie Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his 
 hands upon him." 
 
 It was not done in a hurry, but through forty years of 
 companionship, and therefore it lasted. We cannot quickly 
 penetrate a man with our ideas, nor a nation. We are 
 disappointed if our thoughts are not at once as clear to 
 others as they are to ourselves. We are impatient if our 
 children, or those we teach or seek to influence, do not 
 accept, and do not understand our ideas after we have 
 been giving ourselves away to them for a year. Do not 
 trouble yourselves about that. If we believe what we are 
 saying, and if it be true, then, after forty years, we shall 
 have made men who will continue our work, and they will 
 have been worth the making. The followers who are not 
 always worth the making are those who accept us at 
 once ; who rush into enthusiasm about us. They receive 
 our seed on ground that has no depth of earth, and 
 when the sun of difficulty comes, their swift excitement 
 withers. In time of temptation they fall away. 
 
 Moses made a firm, solid-set man out of his follower. 
 He succeeded because he worked patiently for many years ; 
 and he did his work quietly. He let Joshua's union with 
 him grow out of circumstances. It first arose out of 
 Joshua's genius for war. When the infant people met 
 their first enemy, Moses chose Joshua as the leader of the 
 host in battle. It was natural when the battle was won, 
 that Joshua and the Lawgiver should be much thrown 
 together. The thinker must have close at hand his man of 
 action. And we hear that this close relation was estab- 
 lished. Day by day, in quiet intercourse, we may imagine 
 
The L ife and Character of Joshua. 1 1 3 
 
 then that Moses trained the man ; not seeking to train him 
 specially, but always doing it indirectly. And we can well 
 fancy the reverence and love which an unimaginative, plain, 
 unthoughtful, unmystical, but fiery nature like Joshua's 
 would have for a subtle, many-sided, spiritual, imaginative, 
 but fiery nature like that of Moses. For in fire, and ardour, 
 and courage, they were equal and at one. By that reverence 
 and love, growing deeper year by year, Joshua won the 
 power of understanding the ideas of Moses, and of rooting 
 them into his character. And they were rooted there, and 
 Moses was glad of his work when he died. 
 
 But he was not the man to be glad to have only a 
 reflection of himself, or his thoughts ; else he would have 
 chosen one who was similar in nature to himself to be his 
 follower. On the contrary, he chose a nature entirely 
 different from his own ; a man whose genius was a genius 
 for war, one who would naturally represent his ideas in a 
 different form, and in whom he himself would see them 
 differently. That was wise, and it proves that the one thing 
 Moses cared for was not the form, but the thought ; not the 
 temporary clothing of the thought which came from himself, 
 but the Eternal thought itself which came from God. It 
 was more than wise, it was prophetic. For the thoughts 
 Moses gave the people were to be continued to them in 
 different circumstances. They had been given in wander- 
 ing and in comparative peace. They were to be continued 
 first during incessant war, and then in a national settlement. 
 He took care, therefore, that they should belong to a 
 warrior, and be coloured and moulded in the mind of a 
 warrior. Nothing could be better for their friendship than 
 
 H 
 
114 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 this frank acceptance of dissimilarity and its results. 
 Unlike natures, if they love, are kept loving by unlikeness. 
 Each admires and desires that in the other which he does 
 not himself possess. Respect, wonder, and loving curiosity 
 knit them together, till at last each gains and keeps, without 
 losing his own individuality, the good and glory of the 
 other. 
 
 That was the friendship of Moses and Joshua the ground 
 of Joshua's education for his work. And it is full of lessons 
 for us, which I can only indicate. If any one, child, work- 
 man, or follower, serve or listen to you, and you have any- 
 thing to give them, do not neglect them because they are of 
 a different nature to yours, and care for different things. 
 Dissimilarity of nature may be the very thing needed in 
 your follower in order that he may afterwards carry on 
 your thoughts in dissimilar circumstances to those that 
 now surround you. Do not seek to be reflected by those 
 who follow you. It is soothing, but it ruins a man. It 
 pleases his vanity, but as you would not like to have the 
 character which enjoyed posing before a mirror, so you 
 should not like to do the same in matters pertaining to 
 your own thoughts. Your work, always given back to you 
 softened by reflection, will be shut up in admiration of 
 itself; and then your effort, isolated from the movement of 
 the thought of the world, and from opposition which kindles 
 it into activity will stagnate and then corrupt. Seek for 
 those to carry on your thoughts who have life in themselves, 
 who will add their own thoughts to yours, and who, while 
 keeping your thoughts, will bring them forth in a new garb, 
 and in a form more suitable for new minds and new 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 115 
 
 circumstances. For the one thing to be cared for, and 
 to secure being true, is the idea, and not its clothing. It 
 is natural for us to like the clothing we ourselves give to 
 an idea. But by unduly loving our form, we are in 
 danger of being so dazzled by it as to forget the truth which 
 underlies the form, and finally to believe only in the form. 
 Do not be betrayed through vanity, or through the applause 
 of men into that deadly error. Desire, on the contrary, that 
 the idea should have new clothes for every change of circum- 
 \stances, for every change of the world's thoughts around 
 it. Then, it will do good. But keep the old clothes upon 
 it, and it becomes useless, and is thrown by on the dust-heap 
 of worn out things, until some one comes by, finds it, strips 
 it of the rotten garments, sees that it is a beautiful thing, and 
 re-clothes it ! Would you save your thought from that fate? 
 Be like Moses, then, who provided that a different form 
 should be given to his thoughts in Joshua ; like Christ, who 
 gave His ideas to twelve men, all different in type, that 
 there might be diversities of gifts, but the same spirit, 
 differences of administration, but the same Lord working 
 all and in all. 
 
 So far, then, for the starting of the friendship between 
 Moses and Joshua. How does Joshua first appear before us ? 
 It is as the warrior, and he keeps that apparition till near the 
 end of the story. And no figure can well be finer. He 
 is the great soldier, so full of the spirit of war, that it is 
 the first thing he thinks of always, as when descending the 
 mountain he cries, on hearing the shouting and singing, 
 " There is a noise of war in the camp " the dominant 
 thought claiming all things as its own j the natural 
 
 H 2 
 
Ii6 The Life and CJiaracter of JosJnia. 
 
 chieftain, whose mighty war-cry always stirred, and may 
 have first given birth to, that peculiar and terror-striking 
 shout with which Israel rushed to battle. We think of 
 Achilles shouting from the trench as we think of Joshua. 
 And the two great battle images we have of him recall the 
 spirit of the Greek hero. We see him by the side of 
 the gorge of Ai, when he had lured the warriors of the 
 city forth, on a rock beside the path, stretching forth his 
 spear towards the city, shouting to the ambush until it 
 rose, and then turning like a lion on the foe he had tricked, 
 surrounded, and now descended to destroy. He is seen 
 again, in the same picturesque isolation, standing on the 
 heights above Bethhoron, spear in hand, against the space 
 of broken light, calling on the sun to halt, and the moon 
 to stay : at his feet the stony valley, filled with the rout of 
 the kings of the Canaanites and the pursuing Israelites, 
 and over them and in the sky, the dark onset of the fierce 
 clouds that poured hail and lightning forth until the people 
 were avenged of their enemies. It is a splendid image of 
 wild war ; and he is its centre and its inspiration. 
 
 The career, of which that battle was the crown, began 
 almost immediately after the Exodus, more than forty years 
 before, in the fight with Amalek. Moses sent him forth ; 
 he returned in triumph, and then began his training. It was 
 an hour of great danger for his future work, for no one can 
 help seeing that his temptation would be to feel that which 
 every Israelite was first taught not to feel that it was his 
 own arm that had won the fight, and his own genius that had 
 secured it. It is not without reason, then, that the story 
 makes Moses take him up afterwards with him into the 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 117 
 
 sacred mountain, into the awful presence of God's power, 
 and while he went himself into the central darkness, left 
 Joshua upon the outskirts alone, in those dread solitudes. 
 That was enough to take out of a man the sense of his own 
 greatness. What solemn thoughts then were his, what 
 inspiration of his own nothingness, and of God's fulness, 
 what overwhelming awe, we may conjecture, but need not 
 tell. We, who have been alone on the mountains, or on the 
 sea, when a mighty storm was raging, and there was within 
 us also a deep conviction of God, may, perhaps, conceive 
 how deep was the lesson of humility learnt by Joshua during 
 the many days upon the mountain ! It was learnt for life, 
 at least. There is not one touch from beginning to end of 
 his course, of any self-exaltation to the exclusion of God. 
 No man could more undividedly carry out the idea that all 
 Israel's victories and success were due to God alone. 
 
 But humble as he was made before God, he might have 
 been tempted by his first success to set himself forth as leader 
 instead of Moses. There was cabal enough against Moses 
 had Joshua been inclined to join it ; and right glad would 
 the rebels have been of his help. But had he been capable 
 of that, he would not have been capable of governing. The 
 next step in his training was to learn how to obey with love 
 and reverence. Therefore, after he had been solemnized 
 upon the mountain, he became the "servant," the daily 
 attendant of Moses. He lived with him in the tabernacle, 
 doing his work, running to and fro in attendance, learning 
 the duties which should belong to him as leader by being 
 the right hand of the leader ; the greatest warrior of the camp 
 in daily obedience to the lawgiver of the camp. And we 
 
Ii8 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 see why he did this not because it was useful to him, or 
 gave him a name, but because he needed, out of his strong 
 and simple heart, to express his love and his veneration in 
 delighted service. That is the very best thing which can 
 possibly happen to a man who has in after-life to do 
 similar work to that which Joshua had to do to manage 
 others and to govern them. It teaches him how to rule ; 
 it teaches him the things which must be done, if rule is 
 to be supported ; and how to do them, and to get them 
 done. It teaches him that the truest service is that done 
 through love and reverence. It teaches him that the ruler's 
 life must be such as to win love and reverence that these 
 are the roots of power. It was a lesson thoroughly learnt 
 by Joshua. 
 
 Indeed, it seems as if this kind of work on Joshua, this 
 teaching of him to be the obedient, the humble servant, 
 instead of the chief warrior, went still further. It looks as 
 if he were taken away from being the war leader for a time. 
 We do not find him as captain in the wars with Sihon, King 
 of Heshbon, or Og of Bashan. Phinehas and others take 
 the command in these, and Joshua is left with Moses, to all 
 appearance, quietly in the camp. That is curious, but it 
 was wise and good for him for he was not to be the warrior 
 only. There would fall to his work afterwards the allotment 
 of land to the tribes ; the organization of the new settlement ; 
 the founding of a government along with the priesthood. To 
 stay with Moses, then, and to learn that which did not belong 
 to his special genius ; to drink in something of the law- 
 giver's spirit ; to make friends with men like Eleazar, who 
 governed the religious body, and who would be his confi- 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 119 
 
 dant and adviser these were things he could not do after- 
 wards, in the midst of the wars of Canaan, and it was all 
 important to learn them now. Therefore, he may have been 
 led to lay aside for a time his special type of work and to 
 do things necessary for the future settlement he had to 
 organize in Canaan. 
 
 Again, had he alone led the host he might have thought 
 too little of the ability of others to do his work, or been 
 jealous of any one sharing in it or coming near his glory. 
 He was kept, therefore, in the background for a time, till he 
 learned that there were plenty of men in the host quite fit 
 to lead the children of Israel to victory. It was an excellent 
 lesson. He knew thus the stuff of the men he had to 
 command ; he knew whom he could trust ; he lost all envy 
 and jealousy of the fame of others ; he was ready to give 
 every man under his command his due, to hold himself only 
 as one among many heroes. The little story in the eleventh 
 chapter of Numbers shows how much he needed this. He 
 was angry because two men who had not been appointed by 
 Moses prophesied in the camp. It was the very spirit of 
 the martinet, and, if it had not been checked, would have 
 been the jealous and envious spirit in the commander of an 
 army ; and both would have been fatal in Canaan to his 
 influence and success among the hot tempered princes of 
 Israel arid the fierce people. As it was, whatever be the 
 reason, Joshua had got rid of all this weak, jealous, and 
 martinet temper when we find him in Canaan. Net one of 
 the complaints, not one of the cabals, such as were made 
 against Moses, were made against him. That which Moses 
 said to him when he carried his jealous tale about the un- 
 
I2O The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 authorized prophets " Enviest thou for my sake, would 
 God all the Lord's people were prophets " Joshua would 
 have said to any one who reported to him an unauthorized 
 deed of war by one of his companions as dangerous to his 
 supremacy " Enviest thou for my sake, would God all the 
 Lord's people were chieftains in war." To reach that noble 
 temper was worth his long retreat. 
 
 Of course, it holds its lesson for us. It is not to shut 
 ourselves away from all pursuits or objects save those for 
 which we have a special genius; it is to retire sometimes 
 from that we do, or think we do, in a splendid way and 
 in which we get fame, in order to learn the other side of 
 things ; to balance and complete our powers ; and to do 
 that, not with the self-conscious object of making ourself 
 a greater personality, but because we have met some one 
 like Moses whose qualities we think higher than our own, 
 and whom we admire with all our heart. The giving up 
 for a time of work for which we have a genius, if we have 
 this motive, will do wonders for our character ; will check 
 the evils and balance the good of our genius ; will enable 
 us to see how well others do that which we think 
 we do so splendidly ; and when we get back to our 
 toil will help us to use the powers of others in the 
 best way possible, without their opposition or their 
 jealousy, because we are free from jealousy. It will 
 delight us then to find merit ; for we care, not for our 
 own fame in the thing for which we have genius, but for 
 the beauty of the thing itself. Self has been wrought out of 
 us. " Would God," we say, " that all men .were musicians, 
 or poets, or great lawgivers." Why? Because it is music 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 12 1 
 
 and poetry and great thinking that we care for, and their 
 beauty not for our own fame in these matters. And that, 
 believe me, is the great, the noble, and the beautiful temper. 
 Worldliness, littleness, and conceit cannot breathe in its 
 atmosphere. It is simple and passionate, and modest and 
 heroic. Many English war chiefs have had it, and many 
 men of genius ; and in the Bible Joshua is its type. 
 
 But though he was thus removed from chieftainship, he 
 knew now his destiny. For now comes the central point of 
 his life in the wilderness on this side of Canaan. He was 
 sent out with eleven others to view the land, and had not 
 the craven spirit of the enslaved Israelites intervened, he 
 would have entered it then as the war leader. For with 
 the sending of him into Palestine was linked his future 
 work as conqueror of the land. Moses drew him apart 
 from the rest and changed his name from Oshea, the 
 Saviour, to Jehoshea, God the Saviour. The new name 
 enshrined his destiny ; it dedicated him to his work as 
 captain of the Lord's host, as the winner of the land. 
 It was a kind of baptism ; a solemn consecration. Hence- 
 forth he knew what he was to do. A mighty, ruling idea 
 was added to his life, and, as events fell out, it guided, 
 inspired, and developed him for many years before he 
 could put it into action. It was a wonderful thing to 
 have this new tenant in his heart, and the change of name 
 was but a faint symbol of the marvellous change the 
 thought must have wrought in his whole character. 
 Imagine the life, the prophecy, the ardour it must have, 
 by its very presence, given to all act and thinking, to 
 every quality of his character. It was like the outbreaking 
 
122 The Life and Character of JosJnia. 
 
 of a springhead of waters in a commonplace land; and 
 it is delightful to picture to oneself the new and passionate 
 thoughts and feelings the warrior must have had as he went 
 along, day after day, with the rest, through the vineyards 
 and fields, and by the villages of the land where his fathers 
 had been, and which he was chosen by God to conquer for 
 his brethren. Those were days one would give years of life 
 to share in and remember. 
 
 Full of enthusiasm, he came back, one faithful companion 
 with him taking part in his excitement and courage. And 
 now, at the very height of his eagerness, all his dream was 
 broken and despised. When the people heard the report 
 of the spies, they were terror-stricken, and one of those 
 base outbreaks took place which are prompted by fear. 
 Would to God, they said, we had died in Egypt, or in the 
 wilderness better to return to Egypt than to fall by the 
 sword of the Anakim. Let us make a captain and get 
 back to Egypt. This was Joshua's first trial, and it was 
 a sharp one. In the bitterness of his disappointment, in 
 the chilling of his hopes, he might easily have been 
 tempted to go with the majority, or to give way to their 
 dread, or to oppose himself to Moses, or to be untrue to the 
 great object of his life the winning of Canaan. How 
 easy to say " I will be your captain and take you back 
 to Egypt." How did he come out of it? For in these 
 times when a man is tested, we see the real stuff of which he 
 is made. " And they said " that is, Caleb and Joshua 
 "the land which we passed through to search it, is an 
 exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then He 
 will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 123 
 
 floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the 
 Lord." See what vigorous religion, what practical faith 
 in God there is in these men ! And now listen to the 
 ring of courage full of faith in their words : " Neither fear 
 ye the people of the land, for they are bread for us ; their 
 defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us ; 
 fear them not ! " How was this brave cry answered ? 
 "All the congregation bade stone them with stones!" It 
 was a sorrowful experience for Joshua. He had quietly to 
 put by his ardour, and his splendid destiny, for many years. 
 But he took two things with him, the two things we find in 
 his speech great courage, that cheerful courage which is so 
 animating ; and great faith in God. 
 
 I close by trying to make this story real to our lives. If 
 we are to do anything in life, the time comes sooner or later, 
 when, after much beating to and fro, we find it out and 
 know it. It came to Joshua when Moses re-named him, and 
 gave him his life work. It came to David when Samuel 
 anointed him King over Israel, and he was yet a boy. It 
 came to Christ when he went up to the baptism of John, 
 and was driven into the wilderness to realize the idea of his 
 mission and all its temptations. It came to Wordsworth, 
 and is recorded by him to take an instance from our own 
 times on that dewy morning among the hills when he was 
 filled with God, and felt he was a dedicated spirit. It 
 comes to all of us the day we feel " Here is my work, I 
 will do it and love it, God helping me." It is a solemn 
 time, our name is as it were changed, we are re-baptized, 
 consecrated by God and by our own will. 
 
 Some among you may be at that moment now. Then 
 
124 The Life and Character of JosJnia. 
 
 count the cost, lest having begun you be not able to finish ! 
 See what lies before you ; search out the land you are going 
 to conquer ; go through it step by step, finding out its 
 giants and where they live, its strong places of difficulty and 
 of evil, and all that you have to overcome ! And may the 
 courage and faith you have be such, that you may say 
 "All this is bread for me, the defence of these things is 
 gone. If the Lord delight in me, and I be faithful, I shall 
 accomplish my endeavour." 
 
 Some among you may have already begun, or may be 
 well on in the work to which you gave yourself. How have 
 you done it? Well or slothfully? Bravely or fearfully? 
 Having seen the cities of pleasure walled up to heaven, the 
 giants of wrong, the difficulties of the world, have you then 
 come back and cried " Too hard, would God I had died. 
 Let me get back to Egypt, to my slavish comforts, and my 
 flesh pots ! " Then remember this old history. You will 
 not get back to Egypt, you will wander, and it may be die, 
 in the wilderness of a wasted life. 
 
 Or is it another thing that has happened. In the very 
 midst of conquest, has some terrible foe stepped in, tempta- 
 tion of pleasure, of evil fame, of self-desire, and led you to 
 give up or to be false to the idea of your work ? As you 
 look back, do you know you have been untrue to the ancient 
 inspiration, that it has not been kept pure, that it is 
 trembling on the verge of loss ; merciful God, that it is 
 lost, and that you and your work are ruining down the 
 precipice ! 
 
 It may not be yet. Recall the days when you were 
 baptized into it, when the dew of its inspiration made your 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 125 
 
 soul like a summer garden in the dawn, when ardour filled 
 you and made your life like Paradise, w r hen God's hand was 
 on your shoulder and you heard His very voice " This is the 
 way, walk ye in it." Or rather recall but little, or only 
 recall enough to gain impulse to go forward. Think of our 
 Joshua, Jesus the great Master. Rise from the dead w r ith 
 him, and follow him into a new life, with faith in the 
 redeeming of wrong by doing right ; with faith in God as 
 your Friend and with the courage of Joshua, begin once 
 more. Be strong and very courageous, and all the Anakim 
 of evil, and even your own evil, will fall down before the 
 faith which labours and the courage that believes. 
 
126 
 
 THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOSHUA. 
 
 "Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this 
 Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to 
 them, even to the children of Israel. 
 
 "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have 
 I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. 
 
 " From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, 
 the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea 
 toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. 
 
 "There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days 
 of thy life : as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee : I will not fail 
 thee, nor forsake thee. 
 
 " Be strong and of a good courage : for unto this people shall thou 
 divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to 
 give them." JOSHUA i. 26. 
 
 THE mourning for Moses was over, and Joshua was left 
 alone ; looking his work in the face a grave and solemn 
 hour. And the thoughts of his soul were the ground of the 
 vision that he saw, when Jehovah spake to him and said 
 " Moses My servant is dead, therefore arise, go over this 
 Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I 
 have given them. Be strong and of a good courage. I 
 will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." We see in that the 
 first great thought of Joshua's mind. And the second is, 
 that in the conquered land, and in the conquering of it, 
 the law given by Moses, and its ideas the unity of God, 
 the overthrow of idolatry, the unity of the people in one 
 
The Life and Character of JosJiua. 127 
 
 God, the bold moral outlines of the Decalogue, should 
 be rigidly preserved and sternly insisted on. These were 
 the grounds of his life, these the things he went over 
 Jordan to do ; and their clearness, and the strength of 
 them, wrought as they were in him by a long education, 
 gave to his life and work their absolute force and lucidity. 
 If you want to do good work, and with overcoming energy, 
 get your thoughts clear, let their outlines be as sharp as 
 those of mountains against the sky. 
 
 In this manner, then, the thoughts of the man appear 
 in his vision. In it also appears his character. In another 
 vision said to have been seen by him, the Lord stands 
 at his right hand with a drawn sword. The apparition 
 is such as a warrior would see in dream. To Moses the 
 vision of God comes as the light that no man can approach 
 unto, as the palpable darkness, as the invisible voice that 
 proclaims character such visions as belong to the prophet 
 and the law-giver but God comes to Joshua as the Captain 
 of the Host of the Lord. Out of Joshua's character came 
 his vision, and out of our character grows the symbol 
 of our God ! As you are, as your nation is, so will be 
 the form of your God, and your nation's God ; and 
 as the form is so will the worship be pure or base, 
 spiritual or idolatrous. Were you to see the vision of your 
 God, how would he appear to you? How should we 
 represent him now ? How would the hand of England 
 paint him, were we to collect the vision of the ma- 
 jority ? In our peace, would he seem to us as just and 
 pure, as ideal as he seemed to Moses ? In our wars, 
 should we see him standing in our front with his sword 
 
128 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 drawn in his hand, the Captain of our Host? Take our 
 national character now, our aims, our lives, our doings with 
 money, with books, with trade, with one another, our objects 
 in politics within and without and build up out of them 
 the image of our God. Should we dare to realize it, dare to 
 set it up in the exchanges, dare to paint it on canvas, dare 
 to proclaim " Hear, O England, this is the symbol of your 
 God, this the thing you worship ! " Is that too difficult to 
 answer? Then build out of your own imagination the 
 image of your God, see if you dare to realize that which is 
 at the root of the worship of your life. The effort, at least, 
 will teach you more than all the preachers can tell you. 
 
 The image Moses and Joshua had of God was different for 
 both ; but the difference makes no matter if the symbol be 
 noble, formed out of a noble thought. For then the love 
 and reverence the worship in one word is the same. It 
 does not matter in what form we worship, provided that 
 we worship God, and not a devil. It does not matter 
 whether we build up our thought of Him as Conservative or 
 Liberal, Churchman or Dissenter, provided our symbol of 
 Him is noble enough to draw forth the deepest awe of 
 conscience, and the deepest love of the spirit. That is the 
 point. Moses saw Him as the uncreated Light and Truth, 
 Joshua as the Captain of the Host : but both worshipped Him 
 with ennobling love and awe. 
 
 With these thoughts of God in his soul, Joshua went forth 
 to the conquest of Canaan. 
 
 How he had won the country, and of what kind his 
 character, as warrior now and governor, was in itself, and 
 what it was to others, is the most convenient division I 
 can make of what I have to say. 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 129 
 
 i. In itself. The first point is the power of Faith in the 
 man ; faith in God, faith in the work he had to do, and, 
 therefore, faith in himself. It is faith which gives power in 
 life when the faith is worth the name that is, when it is 
 belief in realities and not in lies ; when it is faith in 
 pure, beautiful and righteous things and persons. If we 
 have such faith, all things are possible, we shall be able to 
 remove mountains. By it, Joshua subdued Canaan ; 
 established the nation of Israel ; realized that which seemed 
 impossible ; and died, having attained his end. It is equally 
 powerful against our spiritual foes, against the evil in us. 
 The man who can truly say " I believe in God the Father 
 Almighty," is master of the world and of himself. The 
 man who can truly say " I believe in the forgiveness of 
 sins," is already not in fact, but in certainty of future 
 righteousness freed from sin. There is nothing evil in him 
 which will not be finally overthrown. 
 
 On such a faith naturally follows the next quality in 
 Joshua's character the quality of Courage. Christ puts the 
 connection between these two things with great clearness 
 " Why are ye so fearful, oh ye of little faith ? " Faith is 
 always the best ground of courage ; faith in oneself the 
 ground of physical courage ; faith in the Tightness of one's 
 cause, or the Tightness of one's thoughts on any subject 
 the ground of moral courage ; faith in God and God's 
 character the ground of spiritual courage ; and when the 
 whole three kinds of faith are wrought together, like three 
 threads of iron in a sword, we have a character like Joshua's, 
 strong and very courageous ; mighty in battle, mighty in 
 organization, mighty in making God's ways prevail. And 
 
130 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 they ought to be wrought together. Physical courage by 
 itself is not a moral quality. It strengthens and gives 
 splendour to moral qualities ; but alone, it is to be praised 
 only as good looks, or good health are praised. It needs to 
 be linked to moral acts, or used in behalf of true ideas 
 before it can be highly honoured. Shown in defence of the 
 weak, in sacrifice for love's sake, in death or endurance for 
 others, for the sake of a cause on which vast issues to man- 
 kind depend, it shares in the beauty and greatness of these 
 things, and is worthily honoured. The animal quality is 
 made at one with moral, imaginative, and spiritual qualities, 
 and is, in the union, ennobled. 
 
 True courage shares, and must share, in the powers of 
 faith, in the passion for .right, in the qualities of love. 
 Indeed, of it the same things are true, should we describe it, 
 that are true of love. For courage suffereth long, and is 
 kind ; courage envieth not ; courage vaunteth not itself, is 
 not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly ; seeketh not 
 her own ; is not easily provoked ; thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth 
 not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all 
 things ; believeth all things ; hopeth all things ; endureth all 
 things. 
 
 Out of the clear view of what Joshua had to do, and his 
 faith in its Tightness, and in his own power, and out of the 
 great bravery of the man, arose the main quality of his war- 
 like genius, a quality which is all but constant in every great 
 commander ; in Alexander, Caesar, Frederick, Marlborough, 
 Napoleon the quality of swiftness. What is to be done 
 presents itself at once, and, along with that, the action of it, 
 and both are carried out before another man would have 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 131 
 
 made the first step. Twice in Joshua's history we meet 
 this swiftness. The first time was when the five kings of 
 the Canaanites attacked Gibeon ; and the second when the 
 northern kings leagued against him, and made their camp 
 at Merom. The sudden rapidity of the march is dwelt on 
 in both cases. Joshua no sooner hears the news than he 
 is afoot. He marches all night, and ere the sleep is out of 
 the eyes of his enemies, his small army is in their midst, 
 shouting its terror-striking war cry. 
 
 That is a quality we sorely want in life, and as rarely 
 have ; swiftness of decision, swiftness of action. " It belongs 
 to genius," some say, "and it is no use trying for it." No ; 
 that is not the true way to put it. It does belong to genius, 
 but it does so because of the steady work, and the long 
 training, and the imaginative exercise of the intelligence 
 which genius has put itself through. These are its roots ; 
 these things we all may do a kind of supernatural insight 
 is not its root. Genius labours, and thinks, and makes ex- 
 periments, and acts, and tries all methods of action and 
 thought, and never ceases to do this work; therefore, 
 when, after this long energy and practice, a new event or a 
 new crisis calls on it for action it can think and act swiftly. 
 That is the real source of rapidity, and we may all get a 
 great deal of it in the same way not all that genius has, 
 but enough to enable us to act more readily than we are 
 accustomed to do. In business, in the conduct of life, in 
 political and literary movements, that is the lesson, and it is 
 just as true in the spiritual life of the soul. Think quickly, 
 act like lightning, would you be great ; but remember that 
 quick thought and swift act, without years of work and 
 
 I 2 
 
132 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 thought behind them, may bring you whether you be men 
 of genius or not, and even more if you have genius to 
 nothing but ruin. Opportunity can only be grasped with 
 success when you have got the hands to hold it first. There- 
 fore Christ said, " Take oil in your vessels with your lamps," 
 else when the cry comes, "Behold the bridegroom cometh," 
 you will have no light, and the door will be shut. 
 
 2. And now with regard to Joshua's character in its 
 relation to others. The courage of which I spoke was 
 shown in war, and at that time war was very pitiless. Were 
 we to conduct war as Joshua did, our courage would be 
 stained with crime ; but at that time it was not believed 
 to be wrong, but right, to mercilessly slay the enemy. 
 And, indeed, when we make war against a savage nation, 
 I do not think we are one whit better than the Israelites 
 under Joshua were, but as fierce and as bloodthirsty. 
 And Joshua had with his faith the terrible intolerance 
 of the true believer. There is nothing more exterminating 
 than the idea of the one God when it is not modified 
 by the doctrine of the Cross. And Joshua was ruthless, 
 but with the ruthlessness there was also determined 
 thoughtfulness towards his end. He slew, not because he 
 delighted in cruelty, but because he was resolute to get the 
 land for Israel, to fulfil the long desire of Moses, to fulfil 
 what he believed to be the will of God. He slew, not 
 because he loved blood, but because he was fixed in his 
 resolution to overthrow idolatry, and the only way men 
 could think of doing that then was by fire and sword. The 
 world had not seen the more excellent way of Christ. And 
 Joshua won his day. There was no retreat from his 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 133 
 
 thoughts, no compromise, no pause, no hesitation. When 
 anything stood in the way of completing his thought, he was 
 as stern and pitiless as death. One story represents it all. 
 At the great crisis of the war, at one of those times when in 
 fierce excitement and Joshua had been living in fire all the 
 day a man shows what is in him, at the close of the battle 
 of Bethhoron, he took the kings out of the cave, and cast 
 them on the ground, and called to the princes and captains 
 of Israel " Come near, and put your feet on the necks of 
 these kings." That stamps the man ; that stamped, by one 
 symbolic act, his one great thought of Canaan as the heritage 
 of Israel, into the soul of every man in the host. It was 
 one of those deeds which are never forgotten by a nation as 
 long as the nation lives, which enter into a nation's spirit, 
 and are in it as courage and power. 
 
 The same stern, resolute spirit worked towards his own 
 people. When Achan took of the spoil of idolatry, and the 
 first trace appeared of that paltering with the accursed thing 
 which was afterwards to work such woe to Israel, there was 
 no more pity shown than was shown to foes, because Achan's 
 act endangered the ideas Joshua was set to guard and 
 establish. It were well if we were as ruthless with ourselves 
 as he was with Achan ; well, if when we are lured away to 
 touch the accursed thing, and to join hands with our 
 idolatries, we should stone till it died the evil in us which 
 stands in the way of our realizing the thoughts which we are 
 bound to fulfil for God and man in our lives. We are not 
 half pitiless enough with ourselves in life. Better than 
 our false and sentimental mercy for evil is the temper of 
 Joshua, the temper of the Puritan ; the temper which 
 
134 The Life and CJiaracter of Joshua. 
 
 says, " Come near, and put your foot on the necks of 
 these kings." 
 
 It was thus that Joshua won obedience. He was a 
 man that had to be obeyed, and obeyed he was. To 
 secure obedience is one of the first necessities for a 
 leader of men ; nay, for an employer of labour, for the head 
 of a business, for a father in his house, for a master of a 
 school, for all who have to guide. It is the first thing ; we 
 must secure it. The only question is, how ? To secure it 
 by brutality is finally to lose it. To secure it despotically is 
 to encourage disobedience. To secure it by justice, and by 
 good sense, and by respect for individual liberty, is to 
 secure it as Joshua secured it. Yes ; even at this early 
 time, that was his way. Men saw that he kept his word. 
 The carefulness with which he kept it is shown in the 
 watchfulness which in the sack of a city like Jericho could 
 attend to the fate of Rahab. The absolute sanctity of it is 
 shown in the way in which, against his own most cherished 
 thoughts, against the advice of many, he rescued the 
 Gibeonites, who had tricked him and the princes of Israel 
 into a promise of saving them. Though it was to his hurt, 
 though he had been defrauded, his word was sacred. Every 
 soul in the host knew then, that if Joshua claimed 
 obedience, he claimed it on the ground that truth should be 
 respected by him, and justice done. 
 
 Nor was his good sense in managing men less. They were 
 a jealous, quick, passionate people with whom he had to do. 
 Had he assumed to himself the airs of a despot, had he ruled 
 them like an Oriental tyrant, he would have won rebellion 
 very shortly. But all through his life he consulted others. 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 135 
 
 The princes are made assessors with him in all acts ; the 
 elders are consulted ; the people are told his plans. Eleazar 
 the priest is his bosom friend, and all things are done with 
 his help. Every Israelite felt that if Joshua claimed 
 obedience, he claimed it more because of his being the voice 
 of the best men in the congregation than because he was 
 Joshua. 
 
 And it was accompanied by the fullest recognition of 
 personal action. There is a story in which the rough common 
 sense and humour of the man comes out most pleasantly, 
 and which illustrates this (Joshua xvii. 14-18). The tribe of 
 Ephraim, his own tribe, claimed more than their right in the 
 land. They should have no more than their lot, said 
 Joshua ; for the rest, they might get what they could by 
 their own hand. " If thou be a great people, get thee up to 
 the wood country and cut down for thyself there, in the land 
 of the giants, if Ephraim be too little for thee." And when 
 they complained and said that the Canaanites were strong, 
 Joshua's rude humour, while he threw them on their own 
 honour and courage, broke out, " Thou art a great people, 
 thou shalt not have one lot only, the mountain shall be thine, 
 and the outgoings shall be thine, for thou shalt drive out the 
 Canaanites. They have iron chariots, and they are strong." 
 Those were pleasant outgoings for a people who wanted to 
 sit still. Even for his friend Caleb, who wanted the rich 
 vintage valley of Hebron, Joshua had the same kind of 
 word. He might have it, but he must win it ; and Caleb 
 did win it, driving out the vast sons of Anak. This was the 
 sort of man to make warriors of a nation, and to win their 
 obedience. 
 
136 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 And they are all qualities we need if we would be useful 
 fathers, leaders, employers, officers, statesmen ; in every 
 position in which by making and winning obedience we have 
 to organize and educate children, labourers, soldiers, a party, 
 a following, or a nation. Is your word sacred, even to your 
 own hurt ; can men depend on what you say and feel they 
 can so depend ? Are they sure of justice from you, sure 
 that, till you have heard all sides, you will not give sentence; 
 sure that you will put prejudice and party and personal 
 passion aside ? Are they sure that even when you are de- 
 frauded and cheated, and yet have promised, that you will 
 be careful to be true to the last shred of your promise ? Are 
 they certain of your honesty of purpose, do they see that 
 ideas, or your cause, and not your own interest, are first with 
 you ? Are they convinced that you do not act hastily, or 
 for your own selfish ends, but with care for the whole com- 
 munity or household or party, by your readiness to listen to 
 or to consult with others ? Do they feel that under you they 
 have a chance of self-development ; that you look out for 
 their abilities and give them the work they can do well, laying 
 aside your own doing of it and your own glory to promote 
 theirs ; and do they find in you, not solitary moroseness, or 
 retiring pride, but a pleasant comradeship, a humour either 
 rough or gay, but full of desire for their honour ; a humour 
 that makes them feel that life is not too hard for conquest ; 
 which sets hard tasks but laughs as it sets them, in reliance 
 on your courage ; and, lastly, do they find in you a clear 
 good sense, which, for the interests of the whole, puts aside 
 all favouritism, which, wnile you love your own household 
 and your friends, keeps that love for private life, and in 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 137 
 
 public, honours and loves best those who are most useful 
 and most faithful to the interests of the household, the 
 community, or the nation ? Then you will be obeyed and 
 merit obedience ; otherwise not. 
 
 I turn now to Joshua's more secret feelings ; to the inner 
 life of the man. We have painted him as he was on the 
 outside, in those matters which belonged to his mission and 
 his relation to his people and his enemies. The poetry in 
 him, the sentiment in him, if he had either, we have not 
 touched. 
 
 Of poetry there was not much ; his was not the lyric 
 temper. Among a people who sang naturally in verse, his 
 voice was silent, though he made the subjects for songs. 
 But it is not uncommon that such men, at some passionate 
 crisis of their lives, have for a moment found themselves 
 forced to express emotion in a higher form than that of 
 prose. There are many instances of men who have pro- 
 duced a single poem. It was once so with Joshua. He 
 had rushed up all night from Gilgal and fallen on his foes. 
 On the fate of the battle hung the whole fortunes of Israel. 
 All the day he had fought with the enemy, and now they 
 were driving in headlong flight down the steep of Bethhoron. 
 He saw the long, long desire of hundreds of yeais, the long 
 desire of his master, his own passionate hope fulfilled. 
 Canaan was theirs ! It was enough to excite a man who 
 had not slept, who had marched all night, who had fought 
 for a whole day. And now, to heighten his excitement, the 
 storm broke forth, the thunder roared. God spoke in the 
 crash, and the sweeping hail, and the blinding lightning. 
 The wild shout of the people in pursuit reached him on his 
 
138 TJie Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 height, and, in the wild inspiration of the hour, he broke 
 into poetry : 
 
 " Stand thou still, O sun, upon Gibeon ; 
 And thou, moon, on the valley of Aialon ! " 
 
 They may well be his very words. They are some of the 
 oldest words in the Bible, wrought afterwards into the 
 ancient verses of the Book of Heroes, which is quoted in our 
 Book of Joshua. " And the sun was still, and the moon 
 stayed, until the people had avenged them on their enemies." 
 It was no wonder Joshua burst into song, no wonder in the 
 light that followed the storm the simple men of the time saw 
 God's answer to His servant's cry. 
 
 That was the first and the last poetry of Joshua. But of 
 the poetry of human feeling, of the sentiment that flows, 
 voiceless, round the love of country, of friends, of home, his 
 life had enough to satisfy imagination. 
 
 For forty years he followed and clung to Moses, in daily 
 service. Nothing but love could do that. The strong de- 
 votion of the rougher to the finer character, of the practical 
 to the ideal (for it was the ideal part of Moses that won 
 Joshua's love), of which there are many examples in history 
 that was Joshua's steady romance. Then we may well 
 imagine that there was a close friendship between him 
 and Caleb. Of all the host these two alone remembered 
 Egypt ; had seen together, face to face, all the wonders of 
 the wilderness. Of all the ancient host they had alone been 
 faithful to trust and courage. They had together maintained 
 that the Canaanites, huge and powerful as they were, would 
 be as water before their valour. Caleb had the same dash, 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 139 
 
 the same fierce strength, the same indomitable belief in him- 
 self, the same spirit of adventure as Joshua. In his old age 
 when he won Hebron, and founded the mighty tribe of 
 Judah in its place, he set into flame his followers for adven- 
 ture, and the one romantic story of the Book of Joshua, where 
 the women of Judah are shown as the inspirers of chivalric act, 
 is a story of the family of Caleb. 
 
 So it is a pleasant thought to think of Joshua and Caleb 
 together in their old age, when both had settled down. 
 What talk they would have had ; what memories of Egypt ; 
 how the young men must have clustered round them in the 
 evening to hear the tale of the deliverance, of the Red Sea, 
 of Sinai, from the lips of those who alone in the whole 
 of Israel had seen the things ; and how closely this strange, 
 isolated relationship must have knit them together ! There 
 is no more poetic situation in the whole of the Bible ! 
 Consider it, picture that relationship. It carries us out of 
 the tumult of war into the peace of life's eventide, away 
 from the vision of the ruthless conquerors to that of the 
 quiet friends who sat chatting together on the slopes of 
 Gerizim, listening to the music of the many springs that still 
 fall from rock to rock, and hearing in the shouting of the 
 reapers in the valley, so rich in corn that it laughed and 
 sang, the witness and proof of the fulfilment of God's 
 promise to their fathers. 
 
 The picture strikes the note of Joshua's old age. When 
 the conquest was over, he sought a home. He found it in 
 the midst of his own tribe, the mighty tribe of Ephraim ; in 
 the central valley of Canaan, at Shechem, "the border of 
 the Sanctuary," on which Mount Gerizim looked, " the 
 
140 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 mountain which the right hand of God had purchased." It 
 was a fitting place to spend the last days of a life which had 
 been lived to secure the promise given to Abraham, Isaac 
 and Jacob. For the country was steeped in the traditions 
 of his fathers. It was on Gerizim's height, the story ran, that 
 Abraham had taken the knife to slay his son, and God had 
 interposed to promise him the land. It was on Gerizim 
 that Melchisedek, men said, had ministered. It was in the 
 valley below that the tribal oak had been consecrated by 
 Abraham. Beneath its shade Joshua spoke, beneath it Isaac 
 had rested and Jacob worshipped. Close by Shechem was 
 Jacob's well, and Jacob's dwelling place for many years. 
 Everything he saw recalled his fathers and the promise, 
 and Joshua's heart swelled with joy as he looked down 
 from his house, and felt that God had done so great a 
 work. 
 
 Finally, one great ceremony embodied all his life. 
 There, in full assembly of Israel, he celebrated the 
 fulfilment of the promise by laying the bones of Joseph at 
 last to rest. They had remained, waiting for deliverance, 
 in Egypt, for many, many years. " God shall surely visit 
 you," said Joseph, dying, "and ye shall carry up my bones 
 from thence." They had been taken with them that terrible 
 night, and crossed the sea with the escaping host. They 
 had rested at Sinai, gone through the wilderness, accom- 
 panied the conquest their Palladium, the immortal witness 
 of what Israel had done in Egypt, and was to be in 
 Canaan and, on this solemn day, of all that Israel had 
 attained. And now, after so many restless years, they 
 were put to sleep at last, in the plot of ground that Jacob 
 
The Life and Character of Joshua. 141 
 
 had given to his son Joseph. It was the crowning act of 
 Joshua's life. 
 
 Yet he lived a long time after that God had given his 
 people rest. It was, to the end, a life of work, quiet but 
 steady work of arrangement, allotment, consultation, 
 advice. Every week he went to confer with Eleazar. He 
 set up his house, organized the city, build the citadel, 
 secured and wrought together the land he had conquered 
 and the nation he had made. And then, old and stricken 
 in years, beneath the oak of Abraham and Jacob, he called 
 together the people, and made his last farewell, set up the 
 pillar men long remembered, and died, rooting still deeper 
 by his speech in the minds of his nation the two sides of his 
 life ; for he made a covenant with them that they would 
 be true to the invincible God of Moses, and he told them 
 again and again that Canaan, God's promised land, was. 
 theirs for ever. 
 
 Oh, may we, when our age comes, so live and die ! After 
 long education, after stormy manhood, after unbroken 
 pursuit of our idea, after the wars of life in which we 
 conquer the enemies of our work and place our foot upon 
 their necks may we sit down in peace, not without friends 
 and love, and build our house of rest, and lay down our 
 thoughts and work, having finished them, as Joshua laid 
 down the bones of Joseph yet, while we live, be not without 
 work ; supporting and watching the results of all we have 
 accomplished ; by our wisdom dividing and providing new 
 toil for others ; making our experience useful ; happy with 
 our old companions ; delighted with the young warriors of 
 life whom we encourage ; and bidding, finally, farewell to 
 
142 The Life and Character of Joshua. 
 
 all, before we go to God, with solemn words of warning, 
 hope and love none better than those of Joshua to his 
 people "Cleave to the Lord your God;" "Be very 
 courageous to keep the law of God ;" "One man of you 
 shall chase a thousand " hear the old warrior ring " Take 
 good heed that ye love the Lord your God -" and at last 
 with our last breath, rejoicing in the fulfilment of the work 
 of life in God, have utter joy in death as we look back 
 on the duties we have done, and the long years we have 
 fulfilled. 
 
 "And behold this day I am going the way of all the 
 earth, and ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, 
 that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which 
 the Lord your God spake concerning you ; all hath come to 
 pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof." 
 
 To the last, triumphant faith a warrior's courage ! 
 
143 
 
 [July I, 1883.] 
 THE LATER CHOICE OF LIFE. 
 
 "And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, 
 that he said, Escape for thy life ; look not behind thee, neither stay 
 thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed !" 
 GENESIS xix. 17. 
 
 THERE is no need for me to explain or to rationalize this 
 story, to show how far it may be historical and how far not. 
 All that is waste of time. Only one thing is historical in it, 
 and that is the destruction of the cities of the plain of 
 Siddim by a volcanic earthquake, with its usual accompani- 
 ments. With regard to the rest of the tale, it is better at 
 once to class it under the title of a legend, invented by the 
 writer, with a patriotic and a religious purpose, out of some 
 scanty materials. We are then enabled, taking it as such, 
 to get out of it such lessons for life as we derive from other 
 religious legends invented by men who, filled with the ex- 
 perience of human life, and eager to warn and teach, em- 
 bodied their thoughts in a story. Take, then, the characters 
 as real in the realm of poetry, but not historical ; take the 
 events as we take the events in the legend of Achilles or 
 Arthur, and let us see what the early artist meant and how 
 far his poetic representation of a scene in the drama of 
 human life can speak to us across the centuries. As in all 
 fine artistic work, the characters are made so real that we 
 
144 The Later Choice of Life. 
 
 may treat them for our purpose as if they had been true. 
 Lot and Abraham stand out as representative of two types 
 of types now among us, and the events which exercise 
 them are such as, in their spirit, may happen now. 
 
 Some time before, matters had come to a point in the 
 life of Lot and Abraham. Their servants quarrelled, and it 
 was necessary, for the sake of peace and friendship, that 
 they should break up their united lives and dwell apart; and 
 Abraham, in his grand and easy way, said to Lot, " Take 
 your choice, and what you leave I will have for mine." 
 And Lot chose the rich valley, and Abraham took the 
 mountain and the pilgrim life ; not that he would 
 have chosen any other, but the writer of the story made it 
 so. So Abraham was left alone with God and high thoughts 
 and plain living, to live apart, till death, his life of faith ; and 
 Lot went down to the cities where ease and wealth and 
 comfort were, among men who in sin and sloth had forgotten 
 judgment. And if he were vexed, as a later writer said, by 
 the foul life around him, he seems to have borne it with 
 enough complacency. At any rate, while Abraham's 
 character deepened into grandeur, Lot's degraded into 
 weakness. 
 
 Character, then, hangs on a choice of this kind, and it is 
 a choice which does not belong to youth, but to later life. 
 Both these periods of life have their hour of decision, but it 
 is the later one of which we think to-day. 
 
 The fable is always true which represents the choice 
 which has to be made at the entrance into life. Two 
 women stand before us, clad each in the vesture of their 
 character. One, with a majestic beauty, half of which is 
 
XJKIVERSIT 
 
 The Later Choice of Life. 145 
 
 strength, and on whose face is the loveliness of experience 
 and power, will guide us to the mountain paths where 
 every step is labour, and the end of which is wisdom and 
 force, and power to give power and blessing. The other, on 
 whose face is the beauty of the wind and the flowers, and 
 whose eyes dance with the brightness of pleasure, and 
 whose feet, with the lightness of impulse, will guide us to 
 the stream-fed valley, where every wish breaks into flowers 
 at our feet and the sunlight is warm as love. And the 
 end of it is slavery, and weakness, and weariness, and the 
 knowledge of wrong that cannot be set right. And as we 
 look back, the valley of past years is waste, and the 
 flowers dead, and the stream dry. 
 
 Then, from the end of the valley, where the mountain 
 is pathless, we must, if we would escape, ascend, for the 
 abyss is before us. But with what torment is the mountain 
 climbed then ! It is well for us if there is left enough 
 of fierce impatience in our hearts to carry us over rocks and 
 brake, before the night fall, to the way of strength and 
 renunciation ! 
 
 So is it in youth. But even if we have taken the 
 mountain path at the beginning, or even if we have escaped 
 from the valley of pleasure, and are now pursuing the 
 upward climb, and have won our way half way up 
 the mountain side of life, is there no further choice ? 
 Do the two fair women never appear again? Yes, 
 in later life. There is then an hour of decision on which 
 hangs the weightiest issue possible ! A sudden turn that 
 seems fortuitous, comes in the path; some event has made it, 
 in our own life or in another's such as this quarrel between 
 
 K 
 
146 The Later Choice of Life. 
 
 the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot ; or a new element 
 enters from without into our lives, and, all in a moment, 
 we meet the two women again, face to face ! But their 
 form is changed, and their offers are changed, and we are 
 changed. We have now won wisdom and knowledge, great 
 or little ; the tools of life are in our hands and we know how 
 to use them ; we have gained power, and that conscious 
 sense of it which doubles its capacity. We have won, not 
 only power, but also the knowledge of our weakness, of 
 what we cannot do, so that we can avoid waste of energy. 
 We are equipped, and our step is easy up the mountain, if 
 our heart is light. \Vhat do the women want ? Why do 
 they stop the way ? Well, the time has come when we must 
 choose between the world and God; between a life of slavery 
 and a life of simplicity. And she who of old was Pleasure 
 stands before us now superb, with wealth in her hand, 
 and a crown ablaze with gems of fame upon her head, and with 
 the pride of life glittering in her eye the Queen of the World, 
 who will give us many things, almost all things but Peace, 
 and Love, and God. In her skirts are hidden cares, and 
 cravings, and insatiableness, and coldness of heart ; and 
 round her feet serpents are crawling Meanness, the 
 Peceitfulness of wealth, and Lying, and Dishonesty, and 
 Vulgarity of heart. " Come with me," she cries, " turn 
 the stones of this desert into gold ! There is a valley close 
 by here, in the heart of the hill, where you shall have 
 worship, and pleasure, and ease, and luxury. Climb the 
 arduous hill no more ; you have done enough of aspiration ! 
 The summit of the Ideal is cold and lonely ; cling to the glory 
 of wealth and ease and to your own will to the material 
 
The Later Choice of Life. 147 
 
 and the practical. Thousand thousand are my followers, 
 and the whole valley is warmed with fires not with this 
 sunshine of the mountain side, broken by storms, so that 
 you have no peace as you climb ! You shall have all things 
 you need for outward life." And the promises dazzle our 
 eyes and heart, and we yield to her voice, and the rest of life 
 is given to that service a service that changes into slavery. 
 "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of 
 Jordan that it was well watered everywhere, as the garden 
 of the Lord ; and he chose it, and pitched his tent 
 towards Sodom," and came to dwell therein. 
 
 But it may be we pause awhile, taught, perhaps, by the 
 pain we have suffered in escaping from the valley of Pleasure, 
 and listen to the other woman. She has no splendid robes, 
 no glittering crown, no horn of plenty in her hand, nor is 
 there on her face that audacious beauty. Her garment is of 
 silver-grey, woven without seam from the top to the bottom, 
 and in its folds lurk no hidden things, for fold it has none. 
 And her head is hooded, but the hood does not hide her 
 lovely face where many sorrows have been, but where peace 
 is conquering sorrow ; nor her eyes, in whose depths is seen, 
 far off, perfect joy; nor her smile, downcast, but noble, 
 which has the promise of infinity ; and in her hand is the 
 secret of love. " Come/' she cries, " with me, and climb 
 the mountain still. We shall have storm and pain, but 
 natural shall be the sunlight, and the pleasures shall be 
 noble. And the mountain top of the Ideal is not so cold 
 and not so lonely, for God is there and the assembly of 
 those who never ceased to strive; lovers of righteousness, 
 lovers of beauty, lovers of truth ; those uncontented save 
 
 K 2 
 
148 The Later Choice of Life. 
 
 with perfection. You shall not have wealth, but you shall 
 keep wonder ; you shall not have the praise of men, but you 
 shall retain admiration, hope, and love ; you shall not have 
 the wisdom of the world which is involved, but you shall 
 retain the wisdom of the child among the powers of faithful 
 work ; and yours shall be the simplicity of humility, and 
 singleness of aim, and fidelity to truth, and carelessness of 
 debasing cares. No sensuous pleasure is in my power, nor 
 splendid display, but you shall have the unpurchased joy 
 which receives all the joy of the universe into its breast because 
 it thinks not of itself; and the splendour of God shall be 
 your delight. I will give you no outward things, but I will 
 make you noble within ; and when you are dead, in the 
 seed that you have sown shall all families of the earth be 
 blessed." 
 
 A wonderful voice it is, and great is the beauty of the 
 woman ; and as we climb with her, more and more lovely 
 shine her eyes, and deeper is the light within her 
 countenance. Follow her, for in her hand are the issues 
 of true life, since in her hand is Love. Follow her, if you 
 have the heart to do it ; but if you follow, look not back 
 with regret, lest you lose her perfect joy, nor think for one 
 instant of all the glittering things which fall on the path of 
 that stately and rich Dame whose hand you have put aside 
 for ever. Choose, and cling to your choice. Love not the 
 world, nor the things of the world. And Abraham went 
 forth a pilgrim, and dwelt in the uncitied plains and in the 
 hills, and spoke with God, and wandering, built at every 
 place he dwelt in an altar to the Lord ; a stern and simple 
 life, but blessed within with righteousness. 
 
The. Later Choice of Life. 149 
 
 That is the choice of later life, and then, more even than 
 in earlier life, are the words true " Strait is the gate and 
 narrow the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that 
 find it." For a hundred that go with Abraham, there are 
 thousands that go with Lot. And what do they get in the 
 end thereof ? When the latter days came, what has become 
 of Lot, and what of Abraham ? what of him that went with 
 the World, and of him that went with the Ideal ? 
 
 Let us follow the story, for though it could not paint all 
 the types of those who take to the life of comfort, and 
 getting on, and self-pleasing, and inward death, yet it paints 
 one type in Lot, and sketches another in his wife. They 
 lived in peace for years, when, all in an instant, their easy 
 life broke up in judgment and dismay ; such dismay and 
 judgment as falls on many now in loss of fortune, loss of 
 honour, loss of health, in the fires and earthquake of life- 
 things which, when they come upon a heart like Abraham's, 
 simple, and pure, and strong, and full of faith in God, 
 awaken in it vigour and joy of battle, and certainty of 
 conquest ; but which, sweeping in on a heart softened and 
 enervated like Lot's, are ruin. Clanging in his ears, so long 
 lulled to the music of luxury, came the cry, " Escape for thy 
 life, escape to the mountains, lest thou be consumed ! " He 
 had enough of faith to obey the call, but with what miserable 
 weakness it was obeyed ! All his character had been 
 enfeebled. He had had strength enough not to join in the 
 wickedness around him in the city, but not strength enough 
 to leave it ; content to live among evil, yet soothing his soul 
 with the thought that he was free from it ; lingering on in 
 habits of life which were stealing away, day by day, his moral 
 
150 The Later Choice of Life, 
 
 and spiritual power ; doing all his goodness by halves ; 
 slipping further and further away from righteousness : 
 enervated, softened, unmanly ; incapable of grasping any 
 crisis firmly ; incapable of seeing absolute necessities ; 
 clinging to situations that had become impossible ; shutting 
 his eyes to the hour of judgment, like us, when for years we 
 have abandoned the mountain life. He had to be forced 
 away so vivid is the story. He dreaded the night journey, 
 begged with unmanly wailing for a respite few words in 
 the Bible are more abject than his prayer for Zoar; all his 
 life long " letting I dare not wait upon I would." This was 
 the character wrought by the world in his heart. So he fled 
 away, helpless, unsupported, inwardly complaining, into the 
 night, while behind him the fire fell upon his home. But 
 he took with him into solitude the character he had made 
 for himself. When morning came he looked back over a 
 wasted life, and looked forward to a lonely end his memory 
 haunted with sights of sin, his soul sick with its own weak- 
 ness, dogged to the grave with the sense of miserable failure. 
 Follow him to the end, and see how the lesson deepens. 
 He feared to remain in Zoar, the terrors were about him. 
 He fled to the mountain to live in fruitless solitude. Then 
 drunkenness, the sin of the lonely, stole over him, and in his 
 family was the trail of abominable evil and then there is no 
 more. He goes out in silence and it is best. 
 
 Is this a legend of three thousand years ago ? Why, it 
 happened yesterday, down in the City here, in the West 
 End ! How do I know it is not happening at this instant, 
 while I preach, in the hearts of some among us? For if it 
 be not outward ruin through inward weakness that we see, 
 
The Later Choice of Life. 151 
 
 it may be the inward ruin which we cannot see with our 
 eyes. The man who will not separate himself from the evil 
 of the world because he enjoys the life which accompanies 
 that evil, who overlooks wrong lest he should be disturbed 
 in -his comfort, who shelves the convictions of his soul that 
 he may not offend those whom yet he thinks untrue, who 
 suffers the sensual while he claims to be righteous, who sits 
 in the gate of Sodom, and yet tries to enter the gate of 
 Heaven, who would turn the crown of thorns into a crown 
 of flowers, and the cross into a bed of roses, may be delivered 
 from this vile life when judgment falls, but it will be so as 
 by fire a brand plucked from the burning, as the prophet 
 called Lot ; but even delivered, he is miserable ; a weak, 
 broken, self-despised, guilt-beset, complaining, empty man. 
 Nothing is left within but the desert, and silence and death 
 are his only friends. 
 
 While you can, before it be too late, ere the judgment fall, 
 before the hand of the driving angel is on your shoulder, 
 escape to the mountains, seize, at whatever cost, the life of 
 Abraham. Better to die in that effort than to live any more 
 in the world of weakness and pleasure, in the slumber of 
 sloth, or the greed of wealth. 
 
 Lot had some character, and it was spoiled ; but there 
 was another with him his wife who seems to symbolize 
 those persons whom the mere life of wealthy commonplace 
 and comfort forbids to grow. They may have a character, 
 but it is never developed. I might sketch her from fancy 
 as the type of many : nothing actually evil, nothing actually 
 good, insensibly taking the hue of the society and times in 
 which she lived : not sufficiently astir to swim herself witli 
 
152 The Later Choice of Life. 
 
 the stream of impulse, but unresistingly borne with it ; in 
 one point alone her attachments strong, in a blind, cat-like, 
 clinging to the habits of the 'life and place she was accus- 
 tomed to, until all new action and new thought seemed 
 intolerable. 
 
 So, she made ready to go with her husband, but drawn 
 aside by long established ties, still loitered in the well-known 
 streets torpid with long comfort, loath to let go the old, 
 loath to begin the new; now wishing to gather and take 
 with her the things with which her life was bound up ; now 
 wishing again to see her friends ; wholly confused with the 
 sudden summons to depart and without a grain of faith in 
 its necessity, for she had no world beyond her senses lin- 
 gering, lingering on in passive sensuousness, till it was too late. 
 FlyiRg alone across the plain, encumbered with the relics of 
 her old life, like many a one whose story is told in the over- 
 throw of the cities of Campania, she was overtaken by the 
 deadly vapour, fixed in death, and round her piled the 
 storm-driven salt, a monument of the doom that attends 
 delay when Heaven and earth are come together in judg- 
 ment. 
 
 It is a vivid story, and all the more vivid to us when 
 we take it with a symbolic meaning, as Christ himself took 
 it. "Remember Lot's wife." When the day of proof and 
 choice arrives, when life comes to a crisis, and God speaks 
 at last, it is not the time for loitering, for clinging to the 
 past, for trying to carry with you into the future the relics of 
 the old. Escape for thy life, cries God, escape to the 
 mountain world ; the very angel's hand is felt upon the 
 shoulder, pushing us forth and yet we linger enthralled 
 
The Later Choice of Life. 153 
 
 putting off the new duty ; loving the ancient house of life, 
 passively clinging to the habits or sins of life, unable to 
 move till it is too late and the judgment comes. For life 
 we are fixed into the death from which we might have 
 broken away. The vapours of habitual wrong stifle the 
 soul, and our life is salt dull bitterness, or, if we waken 
 into anger as some of this type have done at last savage 
 self-contempt. 
 
 So, in these two examples worked the world. The fate 
 of neither could have come in youth or early manhood. It 
 belonged, in both cases, to later life. It was the result of a 
 choice made in the midst of life. As I have said before, 
 so I say again, it is not so much in youth, as when we 
 have all our powers clear and our character formed, that 
 the real crisis comes. Each has his own testing, but in our 
 society the most common is that of which I have spoken. 
 Will you turn then to the life of the world, or will you 
 live the simpler life that Abraham lived ? Which character 
 shall be yours, for that is the best way to put it, and what 
 shall be your end ? 
 
 We have dwelt on Lot, and on the miserable fate he 
 made ; on his wife and her piteous close. It is like passing 
 out of heavy vapour into the freshness of the hill tops, to 
 pass away from Lot to think of Abraham. From the hour 
 he left his ancient country, he had never wavered. His 
 life had the blessedness of the continuity of goodness. 
 Day by day he went onward towards the ideal. He 
 looked for a city that had foundations, whose builder and 
 maker was God. Day by day he endured hardness, and 
 his soul was made strong. Day by day he grew in power 
 
154 The Later CJioicc of Life. 
 
 and in gentleness. God, and not the sickly life of the 
 cities, dwelt within him. Mighty ideas were his, and 
 matchless joys ; and the stars of Heaven were more vocal 
 to him in age than in youth. Life was simple ; yet, it had 
 the changes in it of noble love, of a heart into which 
 flowed, because it was empty of self, all the wonder of the 
 universe. 
 
 It is not an old story that I tell you ; it is a story of to- 
 day. The life of Abraham is a life you may yourselves 
 lead, it is a character you may yourselves possess. But to 
 lead the life, and have the character, you must give up the 
 world. 
 
155 
 
 [February 4, 1883.] 
 
 FALSE FERVOUR OF HEART. 
 
 " Fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord." ROMANS xii. II. 
 
 IN a society so full of opportunities for excitement as 
 ours is in this great city, and where the culture of the 
 feelings has gone so far and wandered over so many 
 strange paths ; where men and women have wearied out 
 so much of life that they are either quiet from lassitude of 
 experience, or excited to find new experiences which will 
 kindle fresh desires and fresh pleasure, it is hard to draw 
 the line between noble and ignoble excitement between 
 noble and ignoble quietness ; and every day sees persons 
 who impel themselves, or permit themselves, into extrava- 
 gant and erring excitements who, curious of new sensa- 
 tions, seek them unwearily ; others who, wearied with 
 sensations they have had, or afraid to have sensational li e 
 of any kind vaguely fearing that which they have not 
 experienced either sink slowly into monotony as a kind of 
 repose, or deliberately choose it as their portion because it 
 is safe. 
 
 It may not be without use to analyze a portion of the 
 life of such fervent characters and to see what can be wisely 
 said about it. 
 
 There are those, then, who cannot bear a quiet life, or, 
 rather, a life which is not always moving, either without or 
 
i 56 False Fervour of Heart. 
 
 within. They do not dislike a life which seems quiet, 
 provided it has its emotions minute by minute. They do 
 not always want great emotions, but they do want them 
 numberless and varied if they are not great. And their 
 habit is not only to seek them eagerly if they have not got 
 them, and to be restless, impatient, indignant without them, 
 but also, when the emotions come or are discovered, to fling 
 themselves wholly into them ; to set sail the moment the 
 wind begins to blow, and to clap their hands with joy as 
 they round the pier head, and, leaving the dull harbour 
 behind, feel the waves dancing under their vessel, and an 
 unknown sea before them. " This time," they think, " they 
 may find the happy isles, and, at least, there is life in the 
 sea and wind and in the battle with the storm." What 
 may happen is nothing to them ! Even if they know there 
 is danger in the new emotion they will not forecast the 
 danger, or, if they do, it has its own charm. Curiosity is so 
 awake that it seems as if it would never sleep again, 
 and the Unknown lures them forward with irresistible 
 witchery. " If I die," they say, " I die ; but, at least, 
 I shall have had my day ! If others are injured in my 
 impulse, let them look out for that ! I am not their 
 keeper ; and if they are happy before they die, or before 
 they have sorrow, neither sorrow nor death will matter much 
 to them ! " 
 
 But mostly they do not argue or think thus they act 
 without thinking. The movement, the thrill, the pleasure 
 of each moment are enough for them. Away, far away, 
 they . sail fervent in spirit, indeed but not serving the 
 Lord ! 
 
False Fervour of Heart. 157 
 
 Sometimes they are fortunate, when the impulse happens 
 for it is all chance to be a good one, and to move within 
 the sphere of natural* morality ; but just as often and far 
 more often, indeed they are shattered or wrecked, or they 
 wreck and shatter others. The impulse towards the un- 
 known, or the emotion they encourage, either happens to 
 be wrong or holds wrong in its end. If it be wrong, they 
 find themselves, when too late, in the midst of the wrong 
 and fond of the wrong. Then, even though they see the 
 rocks, they rush upon them rather than retreat. It may be, 
 they think, they will get through the breakers and land upon 
 the blissful isle ! 
 
 Or the impulse, in itself right and noble at first, is 
 changed into wrong because they think only of their 
 own pleasure in it, and not of the nobleness of it. And 
 they have the horror at the end of finding they have spoilt 
 in themselves or in others that which was the glory and 
 perfection of life, turned the fine gold into clay, changed 
 the swift summer wind into a tempest, made desolate the 
 garden by forcing all its flowers into hurried bloom ! 
 That is a dreadful disenchantment ; and, after it, life for a 
 time is shattered. They creep back to the harbour like a 
 disabled ship. 
 
 Such characters and such things are common enough, 
 though they are secret ; and half of the complaints of life, half 
 the idleness of society, half the want of faith in God, half 
 the irreligion of the day is caused by these uncurbed 
 impulses ; by emotion yielded to for its charm, and selfish 
 because it is thoughtless. And these persons are dangerous 
 to themselves and dangerous to others, because the swift feel- 
 
158 False Fervour of Heart. 
 
 ing and keen life they possess and give are, in the midst of 
 a dull society, the most attractive thing in the world. I 
 am inclined to say that this reckless fashion of living, 
 of yielding in a moment to the moment, is more wicked 
 and does more harm, than guilt which all the world 
 recognizes as guilt. The real root of it is selfishness of a 
 kind which seems to make great sacrifices ; and there is 
 nothing so dangerous as selfishness which wears the garb of 
 high emotion ; which, seeing the forbidden fruit, mistakes 
 the thrill of curiosity and the rush of feeling for noble 
 enthusiasm and lofty love, and takes it, imagining, " This is 
 good for food and pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to 
 make one wise, and because 7 like it, it will be good for 
 others, and pleasant to them, and will make them wise." 
 Thus, these fervent characters seem to care for and to think 
 of others, but yet it is only their own joy, their own satisfac- 
 tion, their own winning of their goal for which they care and 
 of which they think. The more selfish they are, the more 
 they strive to convince themselves that they are unselfish. 
 It is the sole homage that they pay to virtue ! 
 
 Of course, they are not calculating or cold. I do not 
 speak of those who seek excitement and who do not run its 
 risks, who take its pleasures but keep their own life safe 
 not of those, almost the vilest of mankind but of those 
 who take all the risks ; who do not think until they reach 
 their goal, or until they are wrecked, of their own security 
 or their own danger, and who are so far unselfish. These 
 please themselves in thinking of how unselfish they have 
 been for it is natural to dwell on and see what is good ; 
 but truly the goodness is a small matter. It is rather 
 
False Fervour of Heart. 159 
 
 not goodness at all, but only the negation of the worst 
 evil. 
 
 Well, after the wild sail and the storm are over, they 
 return all but wrecked, exhausted, shattered, to the har- 
 bour ; often leaving behind them their companions 
 drowned in the sea. What happens then? Many things, 
 and many are the phases they go through, according to 
 character and circumstances. 
 
 First, there are those who only wait to refit the ship to 
 begin again; and the moment they are rested, and have gone 
 through their remorse which only lasts as long as they are 
 tired, and is, in fact, neither spiritual nor moral ; that is, it 
 has no leaning even towards repentance, but is only physical 
 look out for a new excitement, whistle for a new wind, 
 and set forth on a new voyage to face a new storm with all 
 their ancient recklessness. In fact, after a month or two 
 of quiet, life is intolerable until it is again seeking some new 
 excitement, devouring some new path to some untried 
 shore ; and, once more they are not only as reckless for 
 themselves as in the past, but as reckless for others whom 
 they carry with them. 
 
 And so they lead their lives, often to the very close, until 
 they are either broken to pieces on the high seas and sink 
 in the night, or until decay and old age beset them ; and 
 they pass on to the grave, tormented by the memories of 
 pleasures they cannot fulfil, or sitting alone by the fireside 
 of the heart where all their life lies burnt to a heap of dead 
 ash, and opposite them, eye to eye, and always silent, their 
 Fetch, their second self, watching them with intolerable 
 scorn, and often rising to embrace them, and smite itself 
 
160 False Fervour of Heart. 
 
 into them, till they know not which they are, themselves or 
 their self-scorn. That is a pleasant close of life ! 
 
 (2.) There is another phase of return. It is when, 
 having come back to harbour, they eagerly desire to sail 
 away again, but are unable : either opportunity fails, or 
 circumstances tie them down, or they are restrained by 
 society. Then they acquiesce sulkily in the fate which 
 fetters them, and live a life which they hate and which 
 they think a slavery, though the lash of it is in their own 
 hands, and laid on by themselves. They are quiet enough 
 to the outward eye, rarely flashing forth, but within, the 
 ceaseless strain abides, the ceaseless anger against mono- 
 tony, the ceaseless hatred of the still waters of the haven, 
 the ceaseless yearning for the waves and the wind, and 
 the watch upon the prow for the undiscovered isles of joy. 
 They will not turn to find life and interest in the present, to 
 work, or to delight in the peaceful, simple, common things 
 around their anchored ship. All their passion is in the 
 past, except that which in the present desires, in thoughts 
 by day, in dreams by night, to repeat the past in another 
 voyage. Two things consume that life the secret, 
 lonely, down-pressed longing, and that which is the 
 longing's child the devouring weariness of unexcited life. 
 There are hundreds who live and die in that condition, and 
 the only good to be said of it is negative " It is not 
 apathy." 
 
 (3.) There is another phase. It is when the voyage and 
 the storm being over, the ship has stolen sheltered into 
 harbour, and the owner casts anchor with a sigh, and never 
 wishes again to tempt the deep. These are they who do 
 
False Fervour of Heart. 161 
 
 not go forth again, not because they repent of wrong, but 
 because they have no desire left, and no courage. They 
 fear the wind and the waves, or they are drained dry. 
 "Ask me no more," they say: "give me the still repose; 
 even sleep, if I may rest from tossing; even monotony 
 day after day the same, no trouble; minute sliding into 
 minute, hour into hour, the same soft quiet things always ; 
 and if stagnation come well, I can endure it better than 
 the tempest." 
 
 That is very easy to ask for, but it is not so easy to 
 attain. For the natures which ask for it are not capable 
 of monotony ; and if the day be given to self-quiet, to 
 slumbrous ease ; if it be not filled with duties which take 
 them out of themselves, and waken and kindle love and 
 work for others they begin to brood. The memories of past 
 delight, past excitement, past hours when they rode upon 
 the crest of the wave come thronging back, without their 
 pain, without their dismay, without their danger and, 
 therefore, without a certain redeeming quality and weave 
 their enchantment round them : and they live in them, unable 
 to work because of their thraldom ; restless as a wild beast 
 in his den ; wholly enslaved by them yet all the time 
 knowing that they dare not seek them again; that they would 
 not, if they had the chance ; that they have no energy left to 
 set sail and bear away over the deep enchanting themselves 
 with impalpable dreams, and despising themselves because 
 the dreams are impalpable; and sunk in self contempt 
 deeper and deeper still, because they fear to realize their 
 visions, and yet are enslaved to the imagining of them. 
 They have all the evil of their imaginations, and none of 
 
1 62 False Fervour of Heart. 
 
 their good ; all the death and corruption of them, and none 
 of the movement and life of their reality ; all the unhinging 
 thought without the kindling effort ; all the hunger and 
 thirst and craving, without one grain of food, one drop of 
 water soaking day by day into themselves, consumed like 
 a rag in an acid ; eaten away by inward scorn ; made vile 
 by fear, and useless by sloth, until they rot to death at 
 anchor in a stagnant sea. It is a dreadful fate ; and though 
 it is always silent, and therefore unknown, it is the most 
 common of those of which I speak. 
 
 These are the phases and they belong to those who are 
 fervent in spirit, or have been in the beginning but who are 
 not serving the Lord. They are serving self, pleasure, ex- 
 citement, sloth, their own will. And if they would escape, 
 they need to make a mighty effort, and to call on God to be 
 their helper. It will not do for them, with this fervent 
 temper, to fight with these desires face to face, as we fight 
 with enemies, for the fighting with them is thinking of them, 
 keeping with them ; and even when we beat them down, 
 their face is too fair for us to lift the sword to slay them. On 
 the contrary, we lift them from the ground in pity and in 
 love. They are dearer than before, and we are enslaved 
 again. There is but one way ; it is to replace them by other 
 and nobler passions, which, while they kindle equally, and 
 need as keen a pursuit, do not exhaust themselves or exhaust 
 us, but grow more kindling as they are better known, and 
 bring with them a fire which does not burn away. The 
 excitements of earth lash us from without into speed, and 
 while our power lasts, the speed is joy ; but the joy passes 
 with the power, and leaves us weak and cold. The excite- 
 
False Fervour of Heart. 1 63 
 
 merits of Heaven rise within us in a well of life, and the more 
 they rise, the more desire they have to spring upwards. The 
 joy they bring is sweeter and fresher the more we drink of 
 it. They have the powers of their own life, and they keep 
 us strong and warm of heart. It is only these divine 
 passions that drive out earthly passions which are wrong, or 
 wrong-bringing ; and they drive them out by replacing them. 
 The soul is not left empty, swept, and garnished ; it is filled 
 and contented. 
 
 Would you conquer, you must win a conscious love of 
 God, passionate desire to be His child in goodness and love, 
 in purity and truth. There is no hope of rest until you 
 know nothing in heaven or earth so dear as to see His smile 
 of approval and to hear His voice in your hearts, until you 
 work out your love of God in love of man, and have as much 
 passion in giving up your self as you had before in satisfying 
 it. There is no chance of salvation from the tyranny of 
 your self-will until you set body, soul, and spirit, pulling 
 together mightily, into your work, with the old eagerness, the 
 old pursuit, the old impossibility of sloth, the old delight in 
 looking forward, hour by hour, to see the undiscovered land. 
 Give the effort all your powers; invent new means, dis- 
 cover new plans, realize new hopes by putting them into 
 form, conceive new faiths for man, and act up to your faith, 
 and work on men for God your Father, who, with you, 
 desires their life ; and for Christ your Master, who, with you, 
 dies that man may live. Then you will escape. But it 
 is no easy matter. Indeed, it needs a desperate effort ; 
 and were it not that we are not left to ourselves to make 
 it, but that there is One that works with us in love, and 
 
 L 2 
 
164 False Fej-vour of Heart. 
 
 causes us to feel His love, and who secures to us the 
 strength which, by an unchanging law, is the fruit of every 
 effort towards right which is made with truthfulness, we 
 might well despair, so silently fierce, and so long protracted 
 is the struggle out of passionate self-will into the sacrifice of 
 self to righteousness, and into joy in the sacrifice. Every 
 atom of force in us will have to be given to the winning of 
 love of things which have nothing to do with that which we 
 loved of old, but which demand its surrender as the first con- 
 dition of their love. It is that surrender which is inevitable, 
 and it is that which, for a time, makes the effort almost un- 
 endurable. There must be no relaxation of watchfulness ; 
 daily, hourly, minute by minute, the soul must stand to its 
 arms. All things which soften or relax the heart must be 
 put away; even innocent and beautiful things, until they 
 come with the new life and not with the old within them ; 
 all past associations, until there is no fatal tenderness 
 about them. We must die, and be buried, that we may 
 rise again. 
 
 Above all, we must not despair if at first we fail again 
 and again. Courage and hope are ours in God, and despair 
 is the meanest and vilest vice of man. Soon, if we pray 
 and work we shall gain contempt of pain, and before long 
 the struggle will begin to please. The old joy of the waves 
 and winds will rise, and the old excitement kindle and 
 rejoice the heart ; but that excitement is now concerned 
 with conquering sin, and claiming and finding righteous- 
 ness and it endures. There is no exhaustion, but hourly 
 increasing power ; and, as before, with the same rapture, 
 but with how different a goal, we stand upon the prow of the 
 
False Fervour of Heart. 
 
 165 
 
 ship of life, eagerly looking forward to the happy days, now 
 almost at hand, when we shall have won freedom from evil, 
 pure light, rejoicing love, union with mankind, communion 
 undisturbed with God ; at last, at last, a life impassioned 
 for things which neither exhaust nor wreck the heart, nor 
 in themselves decay. " Fervent in spirit, yet serving the 
 Lord." 
 
1 66 
 
 [February II, 1883.] 
 
 THE FERVOUR THAT SEEKS MONOTONY. 
 " Fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord." ROMANS xii. n. 
 
 THERE are those in this stirring world who are by nature 
 quiet, and who prefer the quiet life. They do not know 
 the impulses which beset those who are fervent in spirit, nor 
 what it is to feel that in the space, as it were, of a moment, 
 1 they are swept out of the harbour into the wild sea, and feel 
 the gale blowing in their heart. Their life, when it moves, 
 only rocks at its anchorage. Day after day, hour after hour, 
 it is much the same ; the same duties are done in the same 
 way, the same hours kept, the same thoughts considered and 
 feelings felt, from morn to night. They know, when they 
 wake, all they will do and probably think of throughout the 
 day ; and it is only when some shock of fortune, or illness, or 
 bereavement comes, that the calm of their life is broken. 
 And the quiet suits them, and they suit the quiet. Such a 
 life may be a happy one, and is often very happy ; but it has 
 one possible evil, or, shall I say, one temptation. It may 
 become lazy ; and the fruit of laziness is monotony ; and 
 monotony, endurable in youth, becomes a source of disease 
 in later years and in old age. And the moment it is felt as 
 disease, the quiet comfort of the life is over. It gnaws at 
 our heart, and we become uneasy, nervous, troubled, not 
 knowing what to make of ourselves, or what to do with our- 
 
The Fervour that sctks Monotony. 167 
 
 selves. We are like a living ship which should feel the dry 
 rot in its timbers, and dreads the day when it will sink, all 
 standing, at its anchorage. There are two ends which may 
 come upon us then ; one is the increase of self-dread, self- 
 irritation, until life is unbearable; and the other is the 
 passing through the irritation to the other side of it, into a 
 dead apathy ; and I know not which is the worse. 
 
 There is no need of such an end ; it can be kept at bay. 
 The quiet life may remain usefully, happily, gently quiet to 
 the end; and the heart live, sufficiently stirred not to become 
 stagnant, and having the beauty of quietude the sunset 
 lights, rosy and of peaceful pearl, around the harboured 
 ship, when all the world and we are old. But to gain 
 this sweet peace and gentle joy, we must prepare our hearts, 
 if we are of this quiet temper, towards this end. It will not 
 come of itself; and what we must do is the same with 
 modifications which our own character will naturally make 
 as those who are fervent in spirit, but who choose the 
 quiet life, will have to do. Both these the quiet and the 
 ardent who want to be quiet need a similar preparation for 
 the end of life. What that preparation is, and its method, 
 will be the subject of my next sermon. Meanwhile, I must 
 describe those ardent hearts who outwardly resemble those 
 that are quiet, who even seem monotonous because they 
 resolutely repress their fervour, who either determine to choose 
 the quiet life, or are forced into it by circumstances. 
 
 These can never be really monotonous. I do not say that 
 they are not often forced into an outer life of monotony. Oi 
 course they are ; and there are few trials deeper in the 
 world than those the fervent spirit endures from the fetters 
 
1 68 The Fervour that seeks Monotony. 
 
 of a prisoned life. But prison it in circumstances as you 
 please, it is not monotonous within ! Nay, often the storm 
 is all the wilder within, because it cannot get forth and spend 
 itself in expression, 
 
 I have spoken of those who burst through their barriers, 
 or who, having no barriers, let themselves loose, and, 
 in reckless self-abandonment, or in useless hopelessness 
 and barren longing after self-abandonment, lost the fruits 
 and good of life of the fervent in spirit who would not 
 serve the Lord ! 
 
 To-day I speak of those who, though - ardent in heart, are 
 not reckless, who neither wreck themselves nor others, and 
 who, in this self-repression, run into other dangers danger 
 of idleness, danger of apathy, danger of loss of the ideal, 
 danger of evil sadness. 
 
 i. There are those fervent in spirit on whom a life of 
 monotony is not enforced, but who seek it because it is safe. 
 Their motive is to guard themselves. They select circum- 
 stances which bring no disturbance with them ; they make 
 modes of daily action which have no excitement ; they put 
 aside books, art, poetry, music anything that stirs and 
 thrills the nerves or the sleeping love of excitement in them. 
 They shut all the windows of the heart and let their in- 
 tellect act alone. 
 
 It is very well, and sometimes it succeeds if the will be 
 strong, and if these persons can always guard against the 
 rush of circumstance. But the motive is not the right one 
 nor is the self-treatment they pursue prudent or right. 
 The motive, being for self-safety only, keeps them locked 
 up with themselves, whereas their only true safety is in 
 
The Fervour tliat seeks Monotony. 169 
 
 being fervent in love of others, so as to lose self-thought 
 altogether. The self-treatment they pursue only battens 
 down the fervent spirit under hatches; and, in the imprison- 
 ment, ardour of heart loses self-command and changes slowly 
 its good into evil. It needs the open air, needs to be drilled 
 and exercised into obedience to righteous will, and in free 
 movement; needs not to be crushed, but to be directed 
 rightly ; not to be left untrained, but to be educated ; 
 not to be imprisoned and beaten down, but to be exalted 
 by noble motives and filled with righteous eagerness. 
 Otherwise, it remains as wild as if no trouble had been 
 taken with it, and is more wild than it was when its 
 possessor was young nay, often it is maddened by 
 imprisonment. And then, if a crisis should come, if 
 circumstance should dash open the doors of the heart 
 and let the prisoner free, there has been no safety secured. 
 The ardent nature issues forth, reckless from confinement, 
 and, since it has had no education, and gained no principles 
 of love of others, and is furnished with no lofty and im- 
 passionating motives of the nobler kind, it avenges itself, 
 seizes on the whole man or woman, and the ruin and the 
 shipwreck are worse even than of those who had never been 
 cautious, never sought for safety. And thereof come, in the 
 end, burning remorse, hatred of the wrong-doing, and hatred 
 even deeper of the old life of peace. The whole of life is as 
 if a fire had passed over it ! 
 
 2. There are others of these ardent spirits who choose to 
 make their life monotonous in another fashion. They make 
 no effort, they are satisfied to do nothing, and think of 
 nothing. They determine to love nothing, to give them- 
 
170 The Fervour tJiat seeks Monotony. 
 
 selves away to nothing. " Let me keep my soul un- 
 occupied," they say, " my heart empty ; so shall I be freed 
 from the great peril of thinking of myself, of wondering how 
 I shall be more happy, of caring for anything, of indulging 
 in any curiosity. I will lay the oars in the boat, shut my 
 eyes, and drift with the stream, and my sleep shall be with- 
 out dreams. As to the day, let trifles fill it, the froth of life 
 nothing which can stay me a moment, nothing which I 
 need do more than touch, and while I touch despise." 
 
 There are soulless persons who can so live always ; 
 without a heart, without a brain, dim zoophytes of men 
 and women ; but they are not these of whom we speak. 
 These have the ardent heart ; have will, if they choose to 
 realize it ; have a soul, if they would not starve it ; might 
 fill their life brimful with emotions, thoughts, and actions, if 
 they would, and make it populous with humanity. But 
 they choose the other line of conduct choose to have 
 their house of life empty, swept and garnished. What is 
 their fate? It is wholly impossible that they should go on 
 in this way for long. They cannot bear emptiness, and if 
 they will not fill their heart with divine and noble love, 
 with sweet and glorious effort, with the laughter and joy, 
 the sorrow and pity of humanity, with all the angel-graces 
 which excite without exhausting why, we have the wisdom 
 of Christ to tell us what will happen. Seven devils come 
 and dwell in this house of life, and the last state of that man 
 is worse than the first. It is at your greatest peril, if you 
 are fervent in spirit, that you leave your heart empty, your 
 soul unimpelled, your life without work, your brain un- 
 peopled. It . is an invitation to evil ; and evil is sure to 
 
The Fervoitr that seeks Monotony. 171 
 
 enter in and fill the unfurnished lodgings. And when, 
 and how, you will get the evil lodgers out, none but 
 God can tell. 
 
 3. There is yet another character, wiser, better far, but 
 still failing to get the good of its ardour ; which, because it 
 knows its own ardency and its danger, deliberately chooses 
 what is called monotony. But the monotony is not chosen 
 only for the sake of safety (though that element does enter 
 into the decision) ; nor is it chosen in the midst of idleness 
 and drifting. These characters dread excitement, and with 
 good reason, for they know not whither they may be carried ! 
 Now and again they taste excitement, and the taste pleases 
 while it terrifies. They know what would be the pleasure of 
 the gale and the rushing voyage, but they cling the more to 
 harbour. "Let me always keep my anchor down," they 
 say, " and my sails furled ; were I to lift the anchor, and 
 spread the sail, were the wind from the land to blow 
 joyously, and fill the sail, I could not resist the freshening 
 blast, I should forget all things for the sea. Therefore, I 
 rest in my place. The wind may blow, but I will never 
 unfurl the sail. Yet I will not rest in idleness. I will find 
 things to do, and think, and feel. I will work for men 
 and women, and help them through life ; I will make the 
 lives of others bright ; I will crowd the day from end to end 
 with labour ; I know the laws which regulate my life, and I 
 will obey them. Though my ship is at anchor, I will visit 
 every other ship in the harbour, and bring them what good 
 I can ; I will receive into my ship all that come and give 
 them all I can always provided nothing I do, or say, or 
 feel, puts a light to the pile of firewood in the heart of 
 
1/2 The Fervour that seeks Monotony. 
 
 the ship; for, once kindled, it would blaze as high as 
 heaven." 
 
 This is good, so far as it goes, and many a fervent heart 
 lives by this effort to the end in useful security. But such a 
 life has, first, its own danger ; and, secondly, it is hampered 
 by the repression of its most living qualities. 
 
 (1) It has its danger, for there is always danger no 
 matter how much work you may give yourself if you leave 
 one part of your nature unsatisfied. Its hunger and thirst 
 may become, you cannot tell when, too great to be borne ; 
 and hunger and thirst, in their extremes, do not reason, or 
 wait, but rush upon their food. You have no business to 
 make life wholly monotonous even though it be the 
 monotony of work, for the power in you which hates 
 monotony will burst through its barriers, unless you give it 
 something to think of, to love, and to act upon. It is too 
 perilous for you to live always in the common-place ; and 
 work done only for duty's sake, and not with joy, and 
 charm, and passion in it, is good for others, but it is not 
 enough for you. And since it is not enough, it has these 
 dangers. They may never come, but they are there 
 
 (2) There is another mistake in this life. It has but little 
 joy, and less excitement in its work. Nay, it keeps the 
 work, by choice, monotonous. It does not allow too much 
 feeling, too much fervour ; it keeps within the limits of the 
 excellent commonplace ; nay, it strives to love the common- 
 place, and says that it needs no special joy, for joy would 
 make it discontented with the sober corn and oil of life. 
 " Here, in my daily round and common task, among the old 
 and the well-known, here I will abide and be content ; I 
 
The Fervour that seeks Monotony. 173 
 
 know it is monotonous ; I know it is not enchanted land ; 
 but I will expect and seek no more." 
 
 Yes, that is very well if it could always be. But the soul 
 that says it, regrets it while it says it; and the time will 
 come because it has crushed, and not exalted, the fervent 
 quality which God gave it to use when it will pity itself, 
 and feel that half of life has gone to waste, that all has not 
 been made of the nature given by God ; and the self-pity 
 will be true. For when the heart is capable of joy, it ought 
 to find joy pure and noble joy, but still joy ; not the pale 
 shadow of it alone that the choosers of monotonous work 
 make believe that they possess. When the soul is capable 
 of fine and high excitement that excitement for fitly 
 beautiful and glorious things which kindles every feeling 
 into swift life and into rapidity of action that stimulates 
 others it falls below itself when it never realizes that of 
 which it is capable. When the soul can shape its ideals, it 
 is sure if it does not try to shape them, to have the 
 rapture of creating, and of kindling others through creation 
 to seek and find unworthiness, and to realize it. To 
 lose these things and their powers in a life which selects 
 work which is monotonous work which is not loved with 
 joy, but done through dim fear, or through a sense of law 
 alone, or to escape from a more drear monotony, or to hide 
 oneself from thought, or to occupy the room of feeling is 
 to lose the greater and the nobler half of yourself. You 
 were made to live the life of the lark, half your time singing 
 at Heaven's gate in joy that gives joy to all the world 
 beneath, and half your time in the joy of the nest below 
 and you have chosen the life of the barn-door fowl 
 
1/4 The Fervour that seeks Monotony. 
 
 excellent, but not all you might have been. And the end 
 is, that one day you will say, with infinite self-pity, and 
 those who know you will think it pitiful also " I am not 
 myself: I never have been myself. Half the world I have 
 within is barren rock, and it might have been covered with 
 woods and wild flowers, and musical with streams. I have 
 been useful, but I have been mechanical, and I fear that 
 mechanical toil gives no impulse to others. I have, I 
 trust, done good to men, but I am not sure. I have not 
 loved my work with my whole heart, and the want of 
 ardour in it, ardour of love, has prevented it from kindling 
 others. He only who is aflame, inflames." 
 
 This is a sorrowful ending. And its worst sorrow is when 
 life, in that sorrow, becomes like a frozen lake : glittering, 
 having its own beauty, but smooth and cold. The living 
 soul is, indeed, deep down beneath where the waters are not 
 frozen, but there is no chance any more on earth of the 
 warm waves breaking through ! At last, death comes, 
 .and the ice-covered soul is let loose. 
 
 All these ways of meeting the dangers and the difficulties 
 of an ardent spirit either wholly fail, or only partly succeed ; 
 and they fail because they one and all strive to crush, 
 ignore, or leave uneducated an integral part of character. 
 Natural character cannot be crushed : if you try to crush it, 
 it avenges itself in the end, and out of that comes your 
 punishment. But it can be recognized, accepted, and nobly 
 developed. And in that method lies your true salvation. 
 You can be fervent in spirit and serving the Lord. 
 
 And now that I have described those quiet characters to 
 whom monotonous life is natural, and who need to bring 
 
The Fervour that seeks Monotony. 175 
 
 forth into life and nourish such seeds of fervour as may lie 
 hid within them and those who being fervent choose the 
 monotonous life, but within whom hidden ardour flings its 
 trailers as wildly as the woodbine it is time to inquire what 
 kind is the self-education which both these types of char- 
 acter, whose outward life is similar, are bound to give them- 
 selves. What are they to do ? 
 
 One principle is enough to lay down at present. 
 There is nothing in human nature which ought to be 
 neglected, imprisoned, despised, or enslaved ; no matter 
 what dangers it may threaten, or what trouble it may 
 give you ; and if you attempt this kind of work, there will 
 be rebellion : the enslaved or repressed quality will revolt 
 and claim its rights. You may then crush it out, but what 
 have you done? You have maimed yourself. Least of 
 all, is ardour, fervency of nature, to be beaten down. 
 For it is the quality which, nobly trained, gives life and 
 beauty to all the rest. 
 
 That is the negative declaration of the principle. The 
 positive form of it is this : Every quality of human nature 
 and among these none is nobler than ardour of heart is 
 not to be allowed to run wild like a street Arab but to be 
 reverenced, and used as a trust and gift from God ; and, 
 therefore, to be educated, taught its methods, developed into 
 perfection through self-temperance ; trained to do its own 
 special work within those limits in which it grows most 
 nobly and swiftly ; made to see that its highest aim is not to 
 please itself, but to be a helper of the other qualities, in 
 order that, altogether, the whole assemblage of them may 
 serve God, and do good to man ; wrought into a free and 
 
176 The Fervour that seeks Monotony. 
 
 loving servant of a righteous will; and every fibre of it 
 supplied with food so that it may reach its full power and do 
 its full work. It is not restraint then that fervour of spirit 
 originally wants ; it is high, loving, righteous, and active 
 development. That is the principle, and it is contained 
 in the words of the Apostle : " Fervent in spirit ; serving 
 the Lord.''* 
 
177 
 
 [February 18, 1883.] 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF FERVOUR OF SPIRIT. 
 " Fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord." ROMANS xii. 1 1. 
 
 I HAVE spoken of the dangers which beset the quiet in 
 spirit from their tendency to apathy ; and of those which 
 beset the fervent in spirit from their endeavour to imprison 
 their fervour, or to let it loose without restraint ; and I said 
 that I would try to show how these dangers could be dis- 
 persed or changed. The same principle is valid for both, 
 though the quiet spirit will apply it in one way, and the 
 fervent in another. 
 
 That principle is this : No natural quality is to be 
 repressed, but is to be educated. It is not by coercion, but 
 by the development into fulness of being of every essential 
 quality of our nature that we can govern justly the little 
 republic within us. Therefore, I say to those who love 
 the quiet life Give your nature liberty, let quietude have 
 her perfect work ; but if it run towards evil that is, towards 
 apathy or sloth meet that difficulty, not by checking the 
 quality itself, but by educating other powers in your nature 
 which will balance it, and which, being developed, will 
 strengthen and ennoble quietude. Apathy, sloth are really 
 quietude weakened, not developed ; quietude changing into 
 helplessness, not rising into intelligence of itself, and into 
 capacity for using its powers. 
 
 M 
 
178 The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 
 
 The true method of action has a different result. 
 There is sure to be, in all quiet natures, a little ardour 
 somewhere ; a capacity, however small, for strong loving 
 and impassioned action at some one point ; a power of 
 aspiration, and for eager pursuit after at least one ideal. 
 This undeveloped power may be hid in some recess within 
 your soul, but if you seek for it you will find it. Bring the 
 shy thing forth ; put it into situations in which it must speak, 
 must act ; encourage it to love and to be eager ; find out 
 what aspiration kindles it, what ideal excites it and develop 
 it. This will give you some trouble, for the quiet man is 
 naturally lazy, and his first failures are likely to induce 
 what he calls despair ; but half the happiness of your man- 
 hood depends on your making some exertion of this kind ; 
 and all the noble happiness of your old age. 
 
 The moment this little quality, now roused into activity, 
 begins to move within you, its action will modify your 
 quietude, and supply it with exactly that companion, which, 
 without lessening its good, will hinder it from ever sliding 
 into sloth, or drowning itself in apathy. 
 
 2. The same method is to be used with regard to fervour 
 of spirit. Do not be ashamed of it, do not repress it so 
 that it shall not speak ; give it free course ; set it to breathe 
 the full air of heaven where it may act and glow. But lest 
 it should lead you into danger, search for those qualities in 
 you which will modify and ennoble its actions. There is 
 sure to be somewhere in you some love of quietude, of the 
 fair and gentle things which grow out of calm, and are only 
 to be enjoyed in calm. Educate and give food to these 
 qualities. They will not imprison or silence ardour, but they 
 
The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 179 
 
 will, by living with it, add to its life such elements as will 
 soften its wildness, and set bounds to its extravagance. 
 
 There is sure to be also in you some love of temperance, 
 of that noble quality which is the girdle of all the virtues. 
 Indeed, the extravagance into which ardour often runs, 
 suggests and creates, in hours of exhaustion, the desire and 
 the reality of temperance. Develop this quality ; make it 
 one of the powers of the soul ; be watchful till it is 
 possessed ; and then temperance; living side by side with 
 ardour, will not, as you might think, lessen the heat of 
 ardour, but increase it through concentration. Heat will 
 not be dissipated, and is never dissipated by temperance in 
 the things done. It is made white hot. And the work 
 which is done by ardour married to temperance is the most 
 suggestive, the most kindling, and the loveliest which is 
 accomplished, in the arts, in politics, in science, in social 
 movements, and in religion. In this way it will happen that 
 instead of having crushed or lost the use and power of a 
 fervent heart, you will have gained both quietude and 
 activity, enthusiasm and calm; gained, that is, the full 
 use of two powers, and developed both for ardour 
 is deepened by temperance, and temperance is kept warm 
 by ardour. 
 
 Therefore I repeat the principle. It is not coercion of 
 qualities which saves us from their dangerous extremes ; it is 
 the full development of all the qualities in the character. 
 Each will then check the extravagant and erring growths of 
 each, and minister to the right and beautiful growth of each ; 
 so that, at last, all the powers of the character, working in 
 and through each other with full force, and charioted by 
 
i8o The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 
 
 ardour and temperance, race forwards to the last and 
 highest goal the perfection of the man in God. 
 
 That is the first principle of the education of a fervent 
 nature. The second thing to be spoken of is the education 
 itself. Every quality and especially ardour which is the 
 inspirer of the other qualities needs more than the influence 
 which the development of other qualities exercise upon it. 
 It needs an education of its own. What, then, is the quiet 
 soul which seeks ardour because it fears apathy, and the 
 fervent soul which must ennoble ardour lest it should 
 run away with its possessor what are they to do ? How 
 is ardour of heart to be gained and trained ? 
 
 i. Well, first, there are certain things which never grow 
 old, never decay, and are always full of life ; they are as 
 beautiful in this century as they were a hundred centuries 
 ago. These are the common things of earth and air, and 
 the universal things of simple human nature the loveliness 
 of the woods and skies, the hills and waters, of the grass of 
 the field, and the ways of animals and plants ; the sweet- 
 ness of human love and faith, the common duties and 
 hopes and works of life; the universal relations, in purity 
 and tenderness, of men to women, and women to men ; the 
 multitudinous interchanges of work, sympathy, sacrifice and 
 help which pass between us all, hour by hour multi- 
 tudinous as the stars, and as beautiful ; as constant in 
 their companionship as sun and moon, and yet as ever- 
 lasting. " Their sound is gone forth into all lands, and 
 their words to the end of the world." 
 
 These are the things which men and women possess, but 
 do not set themselves to love. They are thought to be too 
 
The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 181 
 
 common ; and as culture increases and curiosity develops, 
 men seek for the strange and the uncommon, for the rare 
 and the complex, on which to expand their ardour, and by 
 which to awaken it. So grows up a life which, like our 
 modern life, is full of failure, and full of exhaustion ; for 
 few can win the uncommon, and when it is won, it is soon 
 drained dry. 
 
 But it should not be so with you. The simplicities of life 
 are perennial streams. Live in your cottage by their side, and 
 their sweet flowing will be the good and beauty of all your days. 
 
 It is not difficult for youth, and it should not be difficult 
 for those who are older, to win the power of enjoying these 
 simple and common things of nature and of life ; to get out 
 of them enchantment, such enchantment as the child 
 has in its little garden; and by living with them daily 
 to learn to love them with a love which never can grow 
 cold. It is by companying with them, with set desire to 
 keep and to encourage the natural joy and love with which 
 they are at first attended, that the natural joy and love is ex- 
 alted into an eternal and spiritual possession. Then as 
 years go on, admiration of their beauty and power de- 
 velops, for the more we know of them the wider seems their 
 universe ; and after admiration comes reverence of them, 
 for we become conscious of their universality, their eternity, 
 and that God is nearest to us in them. Out of all these, 
 and continuously, stream the sources and the river of 
 ardour. The quiet soul can find enough in them to kindle 
 fervour, the stillest of mankind who has loved them can 
 never pass into the apathetic life. The fiery heart who has 
 gained them will not care to send its desires forth to 
 
1 82 The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 
 
 strange lands, or to pursue strange excitements. It has 
 enough, for its love and joy are full ; and its passion is kept 
 from wrong by noble admiration, by sacred reverence for 
 their deathless and righteous beauty. 
 
 Nor are these words too strong. The simple things of 
 nature and mankind are in truth the divine and beautiful 
 things. The complex and curious things are not divine, for 
 they are not purely human ; not perfectly beautiful for they 
 are exhaustible. As we penetrate into these common 
 things of nature and man, as we go on living with them, 
 they grow brighter and brighter, more and more varied. As 
 we penetrate into and live with the remoter and difficult 
 things, they grow wearisome, less and less varied. There is 
 as much difference between the strange and sensational 
 scenery of nature and human life, in which a diseased ardour 
 loves to roam, and their original and simple elements, as 
 there is between an artificial garden full of exotic flowers 
 and the gracious universality of the grass of the field. The 
 garden is but rarely seen, and we tire of it in a month. The 
 grass spreads everywhere in soft and satisfying beauty ; and 
 in every place beneath the trees, among the rocks, beside 
 the stream, in nooks of the hills, on far-spread plains, in 
 narrowing combes is always different, and yet in difference 
 is lovely. It is so with simple things, and with their joy and 
 love. Once we have found their love, once we can enjoy 
 them our ardour for them, and the reasons of that ardour, 
 grow day by day. And age, even in decay, keeps to them 
 as fervent a spirit as youth, in its brightness and life, 
 bestowed upon them. This then is one form of the 
 education we should give to fervour of spirit. It is an 
 
77/6' Education of Fervour of Spirit. 183 
 
 education that guards our ardour from wrong, establishes it 
 in good, preserves it and deepens it to the close of life. 
 
 ii. But this is not enough. We want something more 
 upon which to feed ardour of heart than the every-day 
 beauty of nature, and the every-day life and love of human 
 life. We need to give the soul that which lifts us above the 
 daily world, which enables us to soar and sing, which 
 kindles in us that which seeks perfection, which aspires to 
 see the " light that never was on sea or land." And this is 
 now easy. For having attained to love of the simple and the 
 common, we can now find the sublime and the imaginative. 
 The first and the right step has been made, and in the 
 true order. "First the natural, afterward that which is 
 spiritual." It is through the real that we are made 
 conscious of the ideal. It is when we are kindled by the 
 daily beauty of the world, and thrilled by it, that there steals 
 slowly into us as often you must have felt in solitary places 
 in the w r oods, or hills, or by the deep sea a sense of some- 
 thing greater of sublimity which cannot be expressed ; of 
 universal life ; of thought that may not be circumscribed ; 
 of love that is as a spiritual fire in all things ; of an infinite 
 beauty, of which all beauty of air and earth is but the form. 
 In such moments outward nature vanishes away, and we 
 seem to stand alone, uplifted in silent and solemn awe, hand 
 in hand with the invisible and everlasting God. 
 
 There are those who throw these hours and their emotions 
 away as unfitted for practical life. I ask you to seize on them, 
 to make their memories, when they themselves pass away, the 
 favoured haunts of the imagination, to cherish them as the 
 consecrated holidays of life ; to make them the food of the 
 
1 84 The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 
 
 thoughts that kindle feeling in youth, and of the feelings 
 which supply thought to age. Ardour of heart thrives upon 
 them ; grows into beauty through them, develops by them 
 delicately and strongly ; is ennobled by their company. They 
 break into poetry in youth, they dedicate the beginning of 
 manhood to high aims ; they keep middle age free from the 
 curse of worldliness, from the deceitfulness of riches, from 
 overcare and overwork ; and they are the exalting com- 
 panions of old age. Educate your ardour with them, be 
 borne with joy and rapture on their wings into the im- 
 passioned world of the imagination, into the infinite world 
 where the spirit is alone with God. There will be no danger, 
 with such companions, of exhausting ardour, no risk of 
 rushing into extravagance ; the spirit will be filled with a 
 divine glow which will take earthly ardour into itself, and 
 there exalt and purify it. 
 
 iii. Nearer to us, and more magnificent, are those ideals 
 which come to us through the simple and common things of 
 human life. We see with pleasure the gay, unconscious joy 
 of children and all in a moment we think of the perfect 
 joy. We watch the love which binds two together, and makes 
 the whole world romance to them why is it that we pass 
 beyond it to think of love for ever undivided, of a land where 
 nothing shall grow old ? We see, in the midst of sorrow 
 and pain, one who daily surrenders life for love's sake, and 
 finds in the surrender happiness and through the sight 
 we pass beyond it, and see the absolute sacrifice of which it 
 is one form. We hear the story of the Prodigal Son and it 
 is not only a single forgiveness on earth we realize, but the 
 universal forgiving of the Everlasting Father. We touch one 
 
Tlie Education of Fervour of Spirit. 185 
 
 instance of mercy, or gentleness, or long suffering and how 
 is it that we find ourselves enthralled by the sense of their 
 eternal beauty ? We rejoice, finding one example of right- 
 eousness and purity won through moral strife or faith in God 
 and are carried forward as if on wings to behold the face 
 of absolute righteousness. We are excited by some pursuit 
 of truth which has ended in grasping the truth ; by some 
 struggle for liberty which has won its day, or its crown of 
 martyrdom ; by some endeavour towards one form of beauty 
 which has at last shaped itself in music or in art ~, and it is 
 impossible to stay in any of these things : we leave them 
 behind, and for the moment (but through their impulse) 
 realize the divine labour which rejoices as it creates, 
 absolute truth and the knowledge of it, liberty found by 
 all the world of men and sanctioned by the decree of 
 God ; beauty ever flowing, always perfect, and accomp- 
 lishing itself in a myriad-formed variety. So, through 
 the natural and common things of man, we conceive in a 
 just way their ideals ; and, conceiving them, love them with 
 joy unspeakable and full of glory. Yes, these are ideas : they 
 make the high clear air into which we can mount and sing 
 when we leave our nest below. While we fly upwards in 
 them, we know what we shall be when we see God as 
 He is. 
 
 These ideas, then, are the ethereal food of ardour. For 
 them I bid you burn and glow. They lead to no monotony ; 
 they cannot be exhausted. There is no extravagance in 
 their enthusiasm ; no sin or wrong hidden behind their 
 beauty, and of their noble pursuit there is no end ; and in it 
 no shipwreck. Tongue cannot tell what a life it is to live 
 
1 86 The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 
 
 within them, and what a death it is which dies expecting 
 clearer vision of them. 
 
 But it is not enough to glow only within with these ideas. 
 Indeed, if you have them truly, and burn with them, they 
 force you into activity. Therefore, would you still further 
 feed and educate ardour of heart, live for these ideas as 
 Christ your Master lived for them? Let the fire of them 
 pass from thoughts and feelings into acts ; kindle others by 
 shaping their light and heat within you into deeds before 
 men, and for the sake of men. Show forth, as beautifully 
 as you can, the ideals in reality, so that men may be lured 
 to run after them. Make clear your ardent love of love, of 
 truth, of liberty, of forgiveness, and of beauty, by living and 
 dying for it. Sacrifice your whole life upon its altar 
 with a fervent and willing heart. Then you will understand 
 what the Son of Man who thus lived, and in such ardour 
 meant when He said, " I, if be lifted up, will draw all men 
 to me." 
 
 iv. Then there is yet another step. Ask yourselves 
 Are these things only ideas, or do they inhere in one 
 Being, from whom they come to us, and in whom they are 
 essential and perfect, and, therefore, most blessed of all 
 tidings, in union with whom we shall realize their perfect 
 beauty ? 
 
 And the answer to that question is a rejoicing affirmative. 
 There is God our Father. This is the answer Jesus 
 Christ gave, " Be ye therefore perfect ; even as your 
 Father which is in heaven is perfect." All the daily 
 beauty of earth, and air, and human life, and all the ideals 
 of mankind flow from Him, are made in Him, arc Himself; 
 
The Education of Fervour of Spirit. 187 
 
 are absolute in perfection in Him. When, therefore, we 
 burn and glow for them, we burn and glow for God. To 
 know that truth, to realize it as the deepest foundation of 
 life, is to make all life religious. 
 
 Then in this ordered progress of the education of 
 ardour we have reached the goal, the highest worship 
 which fervour of spirit can give ; the celestial food by which 
 it lives most purely, nobly, and eternally ; the home where 
 ardour flames for ever, but also is at peace for ever. 
 
 Lastly, in this wisely-regulated life, has not the possibility 
 of the evils, dangers, and unwisdom of which I spoke 
 disappeared ? They cannot come to quietude which has 
 sought such ardour, or to ardour which has undergone 
 this education. The passion of goodness is at the root of 
 daily life ; the passion for perfection at the root of imagina- 
 tive life ; and the love of God, as of a child to a father, 
 carries both onwards for ever into the eternal world. Nor is 
 the present lost ; for in it all the simple things we first love 
 are preserved. The higher ardours have grown out of 
 the lower, as naturally as the branches of a tree from its 
 root and stem ; and they, taking from the light and air of 
 heaven new energy, send it back to the roots of common 
 life, so that they also multiply themselves, and strike more 
 deeply, firmly, and with greater joy, into the simple and 
 natural humanity, out of which at first the tree arose. The 
 real, the ideal, and God, are knit each to each in natural 
 piety ; we lose ourselves ; and, bathed in one glowing ardour 
 of love and joy, are, at last fervent in spirit, and at one 
 with God. 
 
i88 
 
 [February 25, 1883.] 
 YOUTH. FERVENT IN SPIRIT. 
 
 "Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord." 
 ROMANS xii. n. 
 
 THE sermons I have preached on this text have been 
 chiefly occupied in analysis of certain forms of feeling and 
 act belonging to a fervent heart, and with the manner of 
 avoiding the dangers and educating the capacities which 
 belong to it. What has been said, therefore, has chiefly 
 belonged to the inner life. Of that portion of the text 
 which belongs to the outer life "slothful in business" 
 nothing has yet been said ; and of its latter clause 
 " serving the Lord " not enough has yet been said. 
 
 The three phrases may be allotted to the three periods 
 of life to youth, to middle age, and to old age. It 
 is natural that fervour of heart should rule in youth ; that 
 activity in business should rule in manhood ; that serving 
 the Lord should have the undivided attention of old age. 
 But when I say that these several things rule in each period, 
 I do not mean that youth should not serve the Lord and be 
 active in business ; that middle age should not be fervent in 
 spirit and serve the Lord; that age should not be eager 
 of heart and active in its own work but only that at each 
 of these periods one of these aims or qualities of heart has 
 
Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 189 
 
 naturally the most attention given to it. It is the mistake 
 of life that so many men act as if they said, " I will be 
 ardent only in youth ; active only in manhood ; I will 
 serve God only in old age." That is common, and 
 common is the result the loss in manhood of the powers 
 of youth, because all its fervour, being unbalanced, has 
 been exhausted ; the incapacity of manhood for perfect 
 development, because it is given up to business only ; 
 and when old age comes, inability to serve the Lord, 
 for the man can scarcely hope to take up when he is decay- 
 ing that which he has neglected all his life. I will, there- 
 fore, speak to-day of how youth should, in the midst of 
 its fervour, be not slothful in business, and how it should 
 serve the Lord. 
 
 Youth is the time when feeling is most awake, and 
 most enjoys itself. The freshness of its morning is like 
 sunlight in all things, and every day opens a new land 
 to curiosity, to effort, and to joy. We love the beauty 
 of the world, and do not spoil the beauty by asking how or 
 why we love it. It is for that reason that hour by hour 
 revelations are made to us by nature, that we live upon the 
 crest of enjoyment, always fervent for the future. Nor is 
 our life with man less wonderful, less impassioned. Keen in 
 our sympathy for the rights of man, we are as keen in our 
 indignation against his wrongs. We play with every theory 
 that concerns the progress of the race, have daily dreams of 
 what we will do for it, look forward to a golden age and sing 
 it ; spend an infinity of emotion on the past history, on the 
 present struggles, and have an infinite faith in the future, of 
 mankind. Personal love adds its passion to universal love 
 
190 Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 
 
 and deepens our capacity of feeling ; and with first love come 
 ideal dreams those visions which form so much of the 
 scenery of youth, and which, though they may never be 
 realized, are yet the fountain by whose waters the whole of 
 life is sweetened, ennobled, and kept pure. 
 
 Youth should be full of beauty, joy and fervour ; and it 
 is one of the worst curses of a conventional society that so 
 few have any youth at all. How many of the young men 
 and young girls whom we meet are fervent in spirit ? Tied 
 up like plants in a greenhouse, they are clipped into the 
 shapes that society imposes on them, and their fate is to 
 produce a multitude of over-developed flowers at a certain 
 time, and then so far as blossoming or beauty, fervour 
 or natural impulse are concerned to be no more good at 
 all for the rest of their lives. 
 
 But you who do feel, enjoy, and love naturally, and who 
 are eager to put aside conventionalities when they limit that 
 which is natural and simple and true, let your youth and all 
 it has possess their fulness. As long as you are children of the 
 bridechamber, do not fast. But remember that life is not 
 all youth, and that the way ahead is long. Noon is coming 
 with its burning heat, and afternoon, and evening and the 
 fervent heart is not all you need with which to meet these 
 later days of life. Unless you have strengthened and en- 
 nobled the qualities of youth, they will be exhausted while 
 you are yet young, and manhood and old age will be 
 defrauded of their use and presence. 
 
 How, then, are you to prepare in youth to meet the 
 trials of manhood and old age, to strengthen and develop 
 those special qualities of youth which you ought to carry 
 
Youth. Fervent iu Spirit. 191 
 
 with you, as powers of the soul, into later life ? Bring 
 into youth the special needs and powers of after life. Let 
 it be not slothful in business, and let it serve the Lord. 
 
 i. Not slothful in business. Unless you gain in youth 
 the habit of work, you will have to dedicate all the first 
 years of manhood to gaining it, and all the time you 
 then spend in winning with difficulty what you ought 
 to have already won with ease is dead loss which you 
 might have avoided, and which you never can replace. 
 I do not say that you are to work so as to lose joy, 
 excitement, love, for then you will ruin your youth and spoil 
 your manhood, but you must bring work into your joy and 
 love. How ? There is the delight you have in Nature : 
 mingle with it some knowledge ! Get some ideas with 
 regard to the causes of the things you love ! It will not 
 make the way of the winds with the clouds less beautiful 
 when you take some trouble to know how they move and 
 why they are so lovely. It will not make the earth less 
 glorious if you know, by some steady labour, how the hills 
 were built and hewn into the forms that kindle in you 
 poetic feeling. And you will have gained a power beyond 
 the knowledge and beyond the feeling which you can use 
 like a sword in after life to open your way through the world. 
 
 Let it be the same with your impassioned desires for man 
 and with your personal love and ideals. Find out some way, 
 even the slightest, by which day by day you may put your 
 enthusiasm into a practical form, and cling close to the 
 doing of this little thing until you bring it into finish. Do 
 not begin another thing till that one thing is in working 
 order. That will give you power. He who can finish that 
 
192 Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 
 
 which is least can finish, in after life, that which is greatest. 
 And as to your excitement and its youthful joy instead of 
 being lessened it will be doubled. Nothing increases 
 excitement of a true kind so much as putting that about 
 which we are excited into working form. The same is true 
 with regard to ideals. You have a vision of absolute self- 
 sacrifice, of universal justice. Well, keep the visions ; let 
 them illuminate and glorify life, but be not slothful in their 
 business. All ideals have their work, or they cease to be 
 ideals. Sacrifice yourself for others here, at home ; sacri- 
 fice your poetic contemplation of self-sacrifice for the 
 sake of making a brother, a sister, a friend happier get the 
 ideal of love into some form. The dream of universal 
 justice and truth is beautiful, but it will pass away if you are 
 not active about it. Take some pains, then, to be just and 
 truthful in the particular ; for the proper food of universal 
 ideals is particular practice of them. If you want justice all 
 over the world be just in your own little corner of it. Get, 
 I say again, the ideal into form and with activity, and you 
 will find that you will lose nothing of your delight in the 
 imaginative vision, nor will the vision become less beautiful. 
 On the contrary, the ideal will grow more splendid ; the 
 vision open new worlds to you, your fervour increase, and 
 your youth have more rapture. 
 
 As to personal love, it is the same. The days of first 
 love, all the days of youthful love, are enchanting. It is a 
 business in which one is never slothful ; but it is often a time 
 when we are lured into doing no other business ; and, 
 through that, a foundation of laziness is laid for life. 
 Drifting and idleness become habits of the soul, and, by and 
 
Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 193 
 
 by, when love has had its way and won its goal, we 
 who have been most romantic, most fervent, are surprised 
 in after life, when we look back to find that all the 
 romance is gone, all the fervour grown cold ; and though 
 love has remained true, yet that it has become common- 
 place. It wears no more its robe of many colours, nor 
 does the sunshine fall upon it now, or the glow of imagina- 
 tion. Its charm has been left behind in the fields of youth. 
 This is a common story, and a sad one. Of all sorrowful 
 things the death of romance is the most sorrowful. 
 
 One reason of this sad thing is that love has not 
 been united to any other activity, to any other interest or 
 business than its own. It ought to have taken into its 
 house " Not slothful in business." Love, when it is of the 
 best quality, should not only be full of itself, but should 
 kindle and stimulate all the powers of life ; should make you 
 conscious of powers you did not know of, and never let you 
 rest until you had used them ; should make you do all the 
 things you have to do much better than before ; think twice 
 as quickly, act with double swiftness ; live with more truth, 
 more faith, more hope, more of purpose than before ; set 
 every capacity into movement ; make every beautiful thing 
 more beautiful, and every ideal more ideal, and your desire 
 to get the beautiful into form, and the ideal into some 
 reality, so intense that you cannot rest until you are 
 accomplishing your desire. 
 
 That is what love should do; make you not only not 
 slothful in its own work, but not slothful in the business of 
 life. And then what happens? Has love lessened through 
 this activity beyond itself? Is it made less ideal, less 
 
194 Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 
 
 romantic, when its power is used for the practical work of 
 life, for realities? Is it less concentrated on its object 
 because its strength is spread abroad over many interests, 
 or less beautiful because it is taken into the midst of the 
 commonplace ? No, indeed ; it is increased, because all the 
 interests in which it has shared have poured each their ad- 
 ditional interest into it ; it is more romantic, more ideal 
 more enkindled, and more beautiful, because it has proved 
 its power to shed romance over the commonplace, to make 
 the everyday things of life ideal, to change the slowest work 
 into the swiftest, and the ugliest work into beauty and 
 splendour ; until this mutual and enlivening action of love 
 and of activity upon each other, this doubling and trebling 
 of life, moving together over a hundred interests are 
 all taken, with all their powers, and added to love and to 
 the object loved, so that concentration of feeling is in- 
 creased by expansion of feeling, and personal love made 
 tenfold more profound and fervent because more living, more 
 excited, and more interesting. 
 
 And after-life knows the blessing of that earnest effort to 
 realize the ideal. Love so wrought together with activity, so 
 divided from slothfulness, so expanded over all the world, 
 does not decay, does not lose its beauty, its changeful coat, 
 its sunshine of imagination, its romance. Accustomed from 
 the beginning to movement, it is always alive. Trained to 
 use its power in work, all the interest of afterwork naturally 
 flows into it, and is part of its sweet waters. The charm is 
 kept, love's memories of the past are always sweet, its 
 future always ideal, its present always tender. 
 
 That is a work well worthy of youth to do ; and it 
 
Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 195 
 
 is done by adding the special aim of manhood, " activity 
 in business," to the special quality of youth, " fervour of 
 heart." On this, then, I have said enough. The principle 
 is now easily grasped, and each may apply it as they 
 please. 
 
 But this is only a part of what I have to say. We must 
 bring into youth and its fervour, not only the activity of 
 manhood, but the religious spirit which ought to be deepest 
 in old age. /;/ youth let us seme the Lord. Not as in age, 
 not in the same way as in manhood to each their own 
 but in the way that fits the time. 
 
 There are those who do not care to bring God into their 
 youth, who are content with its joy and live only from hour 
 to hour. It is time enough, they think, to seek for their 
 Father when trouble comes in later life, or when death is 
 coming in age. It is not time enough. When we have 
 not known our God as the Giver of our joy, we shall not 
 easily be able to see Him as our Father in the darkness 
 of manhood's trouble, and love Him through our trial, 
 and have His power with us for our battle. We are more 
 likely then to think Him our enemy, to see our trouble as 
 His wrath, and our weakness as His cruelty ; and if death 
 should come, to find it hard to know that behind death 
 He is waiting, and that in death He is our life. 
 
 When we think only of God's anger, troubles continue, 
 are deepened, and sever us farther from Him ; nor does 
 death bring us at once, with conscious joy, into His 
 presence. No ; that communion with God which makes 
 the strength of manhood and the comfort of age and the 
 life of death, is not to be gained in a moment, and ought to 
 
 N 2 
 
196 Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 
 
 be rooted deep in the consecration of youth to His service. 
 Give to God the freshness of your early inspiration. If He 
 bestow upon you joy and fervour, activity and love, forget not 
 the Giver in the gifts. Sanctify the brightness of youth with 
 watchfulness against wrong, with carefulness for love and 
 truth, with prayerful dedication of your inward life to the 
 Father who loves you, with constant and conscious union of 
 all your outward life to His will. And then when trouble 
 comes, you will know His hand in it, and see His smile, and 
 be thrilled with His power ; and in death look upwards and 
 behold the countenance of eternal life. Not in careless 
 pleasure, but in watchful love and trust of God your Father, 
 in faithful and fervent desire to be His child, is the secret of 
 life's victory, and of the overcoming of death by life. 
 
 Others are not so much careless of serving the Lord, as 
 steadily opposed to it. I do not say they hate religion, but 
 they abjure it. They have no reverence for it ; all worship 
 wearies them ; all emotion of it is mere sentiment, and 
 not science ; and God, they say, is but a name for their 
 own ideas, and as their ideas are but a weakness, they bid 
 them begone. 
 
 Well, they cannot be helped at present, for vanity has got 
 hold of them. And they may live very well upon their vanity. 
 It is a food which never fails, but it only feeds the possessor, 
 and it will become in the end a great weariness to him, 
 and is, indeed, always a weariness to others. I do not 
 say that the root of this scorn or abjuration of God 
 is vanity in those who in middle age or in later life throw 
 God and religion away. They do it seriously, and often 
 after long struggle and trouble ; but when young people, who 
 
Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 197 
 
 have had no experience in life, profess openly to cast God 
 aside, it is almost always vanity, adoration of their own 
 opinions, which prompt them to do so. And through their 
 vanity they lose reverence and humility and the sense of 
 things beyond them and above them, and their aspiration 
 which they think they retain is not aspiration, it is ambition. 
 They can succeed in winning a good place in the world, in 
 getting wealth, in securing a moral reputation, in being 
 admirable reasoners but there is one thing in which they 
 will not succeed. They will never be good artists in 
 anything only mechanicians in painting, poetry, and music 
 nor will they ever move, thrill, or inspire mankind. In 
 manhood or womanhood they will never awaken a great 
 love, or stir a great aspiration, or create a great ideal. 
 They will set no one on fire. They have lost the use of 
 youth in vanity, or in coldness of heart. If you tell them 
 this, they will not believe it, indeed, they could not believe 
 it, but it is true ; and of all the piteous things of the present 
 day, the most piteous is youth which boasts itself on being 
 without a God. You may save those who are near this fate, 
 if you are very wise and loving, but you cannot save those 
 who are in it. It is one of those matters which has to be 
 left to God Himself. But you who are young and not vain, 
 do not lose the serving of God in your youth. Take all 
 your fervour, all your joy in nature, all your love, all your 
 ideals, and mingle with them worship and love of God. 
 
 There is your love of the natural world, your desire to 
 penetrate its secrets. I have always said that we cannot 
 realize God as personal in the universe or in its parts, 
 but we can pass below the surface, and become con- 
 
198 Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 
 
 scious, through the conception of the whole, and then, 
 through the vision of any part, of a vast Life moving in 
 perfect order, of a Thought which is as vast as the life 
 and which informs it, and then, of Love, as vast as life 
 and thought and informing both, which kindles all this 
 universe, and is that, which, when you discover a secret 
 way of nature, makes your brain leap with joy; and that 
 which, when you stand ravished in the woodland beauty 
 or awed into solemn pleasure among the mountain storms, 
 is flowing through you, and making you at one with itself. 
 What is that life, thought, love ? It is God the Lord. Take 
 the mighty conception always with you. It is impersonal, 
 but none the less real ; and it will elevate all scientific work 
 on nature, give a soul to all the doing of an artist, and double 
 through its grandeur all poetic joy in nature. To keep it 
 always with you is in this sphere of youthful life to serve 
 the Lord. 
 
 Then, there is youthful love. When it comes, lay it at the 
 feet of the Lord of all love. Let it be sanctified and 
 hallowed, all through its course, with constant reference to 
 Him who is righteousness, truth, faithfulness, purity, and 
 gentleness. Thus, you will keep it free from self, free from 
 sin, free from vanity, free from commonplace ; and ennoble 
 it, through your union with the eternal, with the glory of 
 the Infinite. And God, realized now as caring for your love, 
 and in sympathy with it, will begin to grow personal to you, 
 and dear to you, and at home with you, as friend to 
 friend. You will add the personal to the impersonal con- 
 ception. 
 
 Then, again, there are all the ideals of youth and all its 
 
r 36 " 
 
 TJKIVEBSlTt U 
 
 Youth. Fervent in ?$pirtL - 199 
 
 dreams for man. It is in the belief that all these ideals are 
 somewhere realized that there is a perfect love, a perfect 
 righteousness, actually thinking, feeling, and acting, and who 
 will bring us finally to the level of our ideals in union 
 with Himself it is in that belief that the ideals of youth take 
 consistency, win the power of inspiring act, and become, not 
 visions which die in disappointment, but capacities and 
 powers of the soul. 
 
 And as these deepen into powers, and our faith in their 
 having a source in one mighty Being grows, we begin to see 
 that the dreams we have had of the future of mankind 
 are not merely the hopes of a poet, but the certainties 
 of noble faith. For now we know that we all have come 
 from God, and that He is in us, as He is in nature: personal 
 with us because we are personal, impersonal in nature because 
 nature is impersonal ; and, therefore, that man can never be 
 divided from Him. As sure as He lives, all men shall live 
 for ever. As sure as He loves, all men shall love for ever. 
 As sure as He is righteous, all that have streamed from 
 Him, and taken personality, shall be personally righteous 
 for evermore. To have that faith is to serve the Lord 
 in youth, for all these beliefs, being living and impassionating 
 thoughts, kindle the outward life into their own activities. 
 
 Slowly, then and here is the end there grows up in 
 such a life the sense that we are knit to God, as a child to 
 a Father (the sense in which personal religion of the heart 
 begins) ; the feeling out of which grows personal love of God, 
 passionate desire to do His holy will, and to be at one 
 with Him for ever. The knowledge of a divine communion 
 begins ; and life is ennobled by it. The sense of eternity 
 
2OO Youth. Fervent in Spirit. 
 
 grows up within us, the faith in everlasting life. And, for 
 this world, and for the next, there is now purpose in 
 our life the purpose of holiness, of union with God, of 
 union with all men through Him and with this purpose 
 mingles the faith in everlasting joy for all mankind. These 
 add their powers to the fervour and the activity of youth, and 
 will flow through the whole of manhood into our old age. 
 This is the serving of the Lord in youth. It is not yet what 
 it will be ; but it is enough for the time. The seed has been 
 sown, the plant has shot above the ground, the spring airs 
 are round it, and the sunshine of God feeds it. It will grow; 
 the trials of after-life will not deform, but develop it ; old 
 age will not destroy its glory, but make it perfect. 
 
201 
 
 [March 4, 1883.] 
 MIDDLE AGE. NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS. 
 
 " Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord." 
 ROMANS xii. n. 
 
 EVERY one who can be said to have lived has heard the 
 cry " not slothful in business " on passing out of youth 
 into manhood, on entering the world of men. The time 
 had come when we knew we had to put preparation aside, 
 and to do that for which we had prepared ourselves ; when 
 we heard the voice of home less and lessening, because 
 the call was so loud which came to us from the world 
 without ; when the claim of mankind on our work was so 
 powerful within, that we were forced to put aside dreams, 
 ideals, love, and beauty, or at least our absorption in them, 
 and go forth to answer " I am here " as a soldier in the 
 ranks of human labour. 
 
 There are many who obey the call reluctantly, sulkily, 
 slothfully, casting back longing looks to the garden in which 
 they have lived ; hating the waste land they are called on to 
 reclaim, and the toil of reclaiming it still more ; impatient 
 as children with the thorns and thistles which spring up 
 under their feet. But he who puts his hand to the plough 
 and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of Labour, any 
 more than he is fit for the kingdom of God. Whatever else 
 ought to be true of us in manhood, there is one thing which 
 
202 Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 
 
 is the foundation of all nobility of character it is activity, 
 " not slothful in business." And in this country most men 
 are workers. There is an idle class who cumber the world 
 and rob the state, and live by the overtoil of others ; but 
 I speak of the workers of the world, who give their whole 
 middle-life to labour. 
 
 They do rightly; and I need not sing the praises of 
 earnest and steady work which runs to its goal, and wins its 
 goal ; or runs to its goal, and -seems to fail. Whether it win 
 or fail, matters not, provided the work be good. Indeed, it 
 is often the failures of honest work which are of most use to 
 mankind. The torch which drops from the faithful hand is 
 not extinguished. Another runner takes it up, and the 
 work itself is done, though the first worker has died upon 
 the way ! And for himself the sorrow of his failure lasts 
 but a little time. For the labourer lives again, and in the 
 higher world rejoices that though he may be forgotten the 
 work is done which he began. It is not personal success 
 that God or man demand of us. It is that we be not 
 slothful in what we undertake. 
 
 But this set life of work has its dangers, and especially 
 at this time when many men seem to think work the only 
 good. There are those who live for nothing else and think 
 of nothing else ; who are like horses harnessed in the 
 morning to turn the monotonous mill, and who, un- 
 harnessed at night, eat and fall asleep to renew the same 
 dreary toil day after day throughout the year. Or, tired 
 of this, they plunge into speculation and are consumed with 
 cares and fears about money. Or, having made their money, 
 they rush into the other extreme of idleness and dissipa- 
 
Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 203 
 
 tion, and squander their wealth as fast as they have made it. 
 Or, not having desire for either extreme of work or 
 speculation, they settle down into a low life of weary care 
 and weary labour, and creep to death all their days, over 
 weighted with their own apathy. And with them all abides 
 one idol, whose worship more than all else degrades 
 and renders dead the soul the idol of the world's opinion 
 of their life ; what their large or small society will say of 
 them and of their work. That is their God ; and a 
 miserable fetish it is ! 
 
 In such lives, then, what room is there for joy, for love of 
 beauty, for love of noble musing, for seeing and hearing that 
 which uplifts the soul ; for the dreaming which puts them in 
 mind of Paradise, for the ideals which take them out of 
 themselves and make them think of man as a whole ; 
 for the wants of the spirit within them and the mighty 
 hopes which take a man's hand and lead him up to 
 God ; which, in fruitful solitude and wise leisure, cause him 
 to hear the voice like John of Patmos as it were of a 
 trumpet talking to him and saying " Come up hither, and 
 I will show thee things that shall be hereafter." All their 
 youth has perished ; all its fervour, all its joy, all its sweet 
 and high enchantment ! The men have lost their wings ; 
 and, at times, the infinite pitifulness of this passes by them 
 like a vision with bright hair, weeping and crying " Out 
 upon them," and they know its wail is the cry of a loss they 
 never can repair, and one hour of whose ancient gain were 
 worth all their successful years. They have not been slothful 
 in business, but they have been nothing else, and their 
 life is ruined. This is the fate of thousands. It is not 
 
204 Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 
 
 easy to be saved from it when once it has been accepted as 
 a good, but I warn of it the young who are entering 
 into the business of life. And the warning may be couched 
 in words easy to remember " Take care to bring into all 
 work which you are not to do slothfully the fervour 
 of spirit which chiefly belongs to youth, and the serving of 
 the Lord which chiefly belongs to old age. Be not slothful 
 in business, but also, through your manhood, be fervent 
 in spirit, and serve the Lord. 
 
 Do not let the spirit of youth pass wholly away ! In the 
 midst of the great city's press of men, remember still 
 the days when you loved the beauty of the woods and hills ; 
 and let the memory be dear, so dear that you cannot be 
 content to live without renewing joys so pure. Lose some 
 money, give some time, that you may refresh your eyes and 
 restore your heart with the loveliness of nature which is given 
 without price, but which will not give itself to a soul which 
 thinks only of things that are given with price. Nor yet 
 wholly surrender romance. Romance lies in the power of 
 passionately feeling all things that are beautiful and noble in 
 humanity, but chiefly all things that belong to love ; and it 
 pertains, as deeply, but in a different way, to the heart of the 
 old man as it does to youth, and as it ought to do to man- 
 hood. Keep your soul alive to it in the midst of business. 
 If intensity of work chill or decay that power in you, be 
 sure you are losing that which you will miss most bitterly 
 when old age steals upon you ; and be still more sure then, 
 that work and the worldliness it often brings with it are 
 doing you grievous wrong. Better lose some prosperity, 
 better give up some of your money and position than grow 
 
Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 205 
 
 insensitive to kindling feeling, dull of heart, chill and 
 half-dead within. Be not slothful in business, but keep 
 romance of heart. Let youth run on into manhood. 
 
 Nor altogether lose your dreams, because they are un- 
 practical ; or forget your ideals, because you have not time 
 to realize them. If you can no more look forward to a 
 golden age for man ; if you have lost all optimism, if you 
 never dream as a poet dreams ; if no visions come before 
 you of glorious things which may yet happen to mankind ; if 
 you have no hopes or sorrows or sympathies beyond your- 
 self, if you can never leave your own daily life and all its 
 imprisoning interests, and lose yourself in prophecy if 
 you have no ideals, never see the ideal of perfect Truth, 
 absolute Self-sacrifice, unstained Justice, Beauty without a 
 flaw ; if no aspiration towards the unattainable ever besets 
 you or lifts you towards imaginative perfection ; if all these 
 things, which belong to youth and which live by fervour of 
 spirit, have left you, because you are not slothful in business 
 then, your business is killing more than half of your true 
 life ; and, when age comes, you will not only be a half-dead, 
 miserable man, but you will have lost those qualities with- 
 out which you will not be able to serve the Lord in any 
 faithful or noble way. 
 
 To live by these things alone in manhood would be 
 folly. To carry youth only into manhood is never to be 
 a man ; but to take nothing of your ardent youth with you, 
 is, in losing the continuity of personality, and in losing all 
 inspiration, never to become a complete man. 
 
 ii. If these things are true with regard to ardour of 
 heart mingled with activity of work, still more are they 
 
206 Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 
 
 true with regard to serving God in the midst of unslothful 
 business. 
 
 It has been too much the fashion to divide the service of 
 God from the work of the world, to call on men to leave all 
 business to follow Christ, as if Christ meant when he called 
 Peter and Matthew away for a special missionary work, that 
 no one should remain to do the needful works of life, and 
 that no one who did not leave these works could follow him. 
 Thus mistaking a particular call of special men to a 
 particular work for a universal call to all men, the fatal 
 division was made of sacred and profane work ; as if any 
 work was profane which was done in the spirit of Christ ; 
 as if Christ himself wished to make the whole of mankind 
 into missionary preachers. To those who had that spirit he 
 said " Leave all sell what you have and come with me " 
 and wise advice it is. The mission preacher had better 
 cling to his work, and leave all other work alone. Property 
 and its duties are only his confusion. But Jesus had no 
 such advice for those who had another kind of call. He 
 did not bid the business man leave his business, but do it 
 for the sake of man and in faith in God. The parable of 
 the talents does not encourage flight from the work of the 
 world. 
 
 The true teaching of Jesus was that all work was given to 
 men by God, and was to be done divinely, with love and 
 faith and joy. The true way to serve God in business is 
 not to leave it for idleness of spiritual contemplation, 
 but to do it in the faith that God Himself has sent 
 you into the world to do it; and to reveal, through your 
 doing of it, a part of His character to man. Whatever 
 
Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 207 
 
 profession, trade, or craft you be, it is God Himself who 
 has given you that work, and placed you there to serve Him 
 in it. It is God's work you do ; and He is in you doing it, 
 for the sake of other men, His children. This is the faith 
 which will save you from all wrong in your work, from 
 worldliness in it, from selfishness in it ; and make its highest 
 aim, not your own wealth, or your own advance, but the 
 manifestation in it of all that is God's character of truth, 
 justice, love, uprightness, reverence for the work itself so 
 that it may be the very best you can do and, beyond that, 
 the ultimate direction of all that you do to the bettering, 
 the development, and the saving of mankind. To show 
 forth in work in law, in medicine, in literature, in art, 
 in the ministry, in all trades, in all handicrafts, in every- 
 thing that man or woman can do the character of God, 
 and to direct all work to the advance and blessing of your 
 brother-men ; is to serve God while you are not slothful ; 
 and a sacred and beautiful conception it is of the business 
 of middle age. 
 
 And when you have that faith and live by it, you will 
 carry with you "through bustling lane and wrangling mart," 
 through household cares and common duties, a secret 
 sweetness, charm and grace, which will make life as fair 
 and gracious as a summer's day. Amid the noise and 
 overwhelming of the world, you will have in your heart 
 the music of a divine communion ; the comfort of your 
 Father's love ; and in your ears the tranquillizing voice of 
 Jesus "Let not your heart be troubled." 
 
 These are the powers of the soul which will lessen the 
 temptations and guard you in the troubles of middle life. 
 
208 Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 
 
 They will lessen the temptations, because, carried with you 
 into the midst of business, they, of their own power, 
 make you careless of men's opinion, keep that villain, 
 Worldliness, outside the doors of your heart ; hinder the 
 growth of the vanity of riches (vanity of hoarding them, 
 vanity of expending them), keep at bay the tyranny of 
 anxieties, the terror of losing property; and protect you 
 from the weariness of labour and the loneliness of a life 
 whose only care is to increase its store. Glorious and 
 bright-eyed are these guests of the soul ! They will save 
 you from the ruin which falls on poor and rich alike who 
 have been " not slothful in business," but have never been 
 fervent in spirit, nor have served the Lord. 
 
 And then in trouble, as well as in temptation, you have 
 these powers as your great allies. 
 
 Often in such trouble as illness, you are thrown out 
 of work. If business be your all in all, what are you to 
 do ? There you lie, chafing on your couch, querulous 
 because you miss your daily work, bored to death a 
 melancholy picture, and one that deserves but little pity, 
 for it is your own fault. You have lost the powers of 
 youth and not anticipated those of age. Had you kept 
 the joy of love, the capacity for dreaming, the desire 
 of beauty, the fervour of heart which inspires life, the 
 passion of the ideal; had you in your soul some service 
 of God, some desire to bless mankind with the love of 
 Jesus Christ, do you think you would lie there complain- 
 ing, more like a wounded animal than a man? Why, 
 your life would be as full as if you were in the very express 
 of business ! 
 
Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 209 
 
 And the deeper troubles which beset the human heart, 
 which, while we are driven to do our daily business, we 
 carry with us at home or abroad, deep down within 
 the devourers of life these finally kill if they are continued. 
 Work only dulls them for a time, and through the day ; they 
 pierce with their hornet sting at night ! Nor does work 
 relieve them ; and when they make it wearisome, and, 
 in the end, cause us to do it badly, then work itself being 
 ill done, and we being conscious of its weakness becomes 
 a fresh trouble, and adds itself to the others. Then, when 
 work has failed, what remains ? Nothing ; and the man 
 burns out like a fire in a swift wind. I have seen it only 
 too often ! 
 
 But this is not the case if we have kept the powers of our 
 youth. The memory of joy is in itself a joy a refuge from 
 pain, a shadow from the heat, a shelter as of a great rock in 
 a weary land. The power of loving sustains a happiness in 
 sorrow, and keeps us capable of hope. There is no trouble, 
 we think, which may not be if we bear it nobly of use 
 to the race of men ; and in that outward thought we 
 lose the overwhelming of self-thought, and pardon our pain 
 in the knowledge that it will bring a good to man. The 
 fervour in our heart upraises us above our torment; 
 imagination opens to us her glorious world. We are cast 
 down, but not destroyed. We live on, and win out of 
 trouble into sunny life again. 
 
 Still less does trouble overwhelm us if we have faith 
 in God. Always in our ears are the words of Christ " In 
 this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I 
 have overcome the world." 
 
2io Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 
 
 Our trouble is in God's will, and it is His will that we 
 should despise its power to subdue the soul extract its 
 power to develop the soul. All trouble has its need in the 
 mind of God. It is to do some good, to bring some power 
 to others, to ennoble or to make happier some who are 
 ignoble or unhappy. " My God," we then cry, "take me 
 use me for mankind ! Give me Thy companionship, that I 
 may bear, work through, and conquer all the evil in my 
 sorrow ! Give me love, that I may make my pain into the 
 power of help ! " 
 
 He who can so believe and so love ' is not beaten in the 
 midst of business by any pain whatever. 
 
 Finally, business power is not lessened in this life. 
 Nay, it is increased. Fervour of heart will stimulate 
 all your powers. Your intellect will be quicker to do 
 the work of the world, and your mind, through the pene- 
 tration of the heart, more fitted to discover men who 
 can be your helpers. A finer imagination will discover 
 more fields of business, and you will expand your work. 
 The dreams and ideals you possess will ennoble your 
 business, and make it delightful. It will take into it so 
 high a thought and so profound a feeling, when it 
 takes into it as an end the bettering and progress of man, 
 that it can never become a weariness, nor you be ever solitary 
 in it. You will be bright, uplifted, at rest, and capable of 
 joy, even to the end. 
 
 And God will bless your w r ork with the power of 
 bestowing pleasure, because it is done, not for yourself 
 alone, but for the use and joy and growth of all His 
 children; and the blessing will fall back upon your own 
 
Middle Age. Not Slothful in Business. 211 
 
 heart and make you happy. And happiness within 
 is not that the climate in which business is least sloth- 
 ful, done in the finest fashion, finished because of the 
 pleasure in it to the remotest fibre, polished to the nail ? 
 
 This is the life I lay before you. It is true you will make 
 less money ; you may not reach the social height others 
 reach ; the world of society and of wealth may not court 
 you but all the question lies in this what is a man's life ? 
 Is it in the things he possesses, or is it in what he is ? Is it 
 in having money and fame and the approval of the world 
 or is it in joy, in beauty, in imagination's world, in the love 
 of mankind and the power of loving, in a heart at peace, in 
 the companionship of God, in the life of Jesus Christ, in the 
 spirit which can rejoice to say, " I wish to live and love for 
 ever"? 
 
 O 2 
 
212 
 
 [March II, 1883.] 
 OLD AGE. SERVING THE LORD. 
 
 " Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord."- 
 ROMANS xii. ii. 
 
 OUR text has been concerned with three periods of life, 
 with their special powers and work. Of youth and its 
 fervour we have spoken, of middle-age and its activity. Our 
 subject now is old age and its special service of the Lord. 
 But the principle laid down did not assert that in old age 
 alone we were to serve the Lord, or that in old age we could 
 not be active or fervent in spirit. On the contrary, it 
 averred that while each period had a pre-eminent aim of 
 its own, it could not develop it in the best possible way 
 unless the pre-eminent interests of the two other periods 
 were taken into it ; nay, more, that youth, manhood, and 
 old age were each incomplete and even fruitless, unless the 
 powers of the three were bound together. 
 
 When youth passed away, its special pleasures, its outward 
 manners and work passed with it. But if it had brought 
 down into its life some of the serious activity which 
 belongs to manhood, and something of the quiet consecra- 
 tion of old age to the service of the Lord ; then though 
 its outward elements were left behind all that was enduring 
 in its fervour passed on into manhood, and became in 
 the midst of its unslothful activity a spirit of life, aspira 
 
Old Age. Serving the Lord. 213 
 
 tion and love which guarded heavy labour from many 
 dangers. But manhood, thus preserving what was best in 
 youth, was not content with that alone ; it borrowed from 
 old age the special aim of old age; it hallowed all its busi- 
 ness with that serving of the Lord which makes business 
 not a serving of self, but a service of mankind. And 
 this was easy in manhood, because the serving of the 
 Lord had begun in youth and was supported through man- 
 hood by the unselfish ardour of youth. 
 
 So now, when age has come and the excitement of youth 
 is long gone by, and business has been laid aside, the 
 serving of the Lord, the purpose and delight of age, is not 
 difficult to accomplish strongly or to feel passionately. It is 
 no sudden thing taken up in a moment; it has begun 
 where the stream of life rushed forth, on the hills of 
 childhood, and kept company with the waters as they 
 sprang from rock to rock in the gladness of their youth. 
 It went with the river when it flowed, a fuller and a fuller 
 tide, through the fertile meadows and past the busy towns 
 of manhood. It is with old age still, its most beloved 
 companion, as slowly flowing, but deep and full, it nears 
 the ocean of eternity. The habit of life has been to 
 serve the Lord, and now the time has come for the 
 fulfilled development of this service ; it takes the foremost 
 place in the finishing of life. 
 
 But the service of God does not stand alone in old age. 
 The spirit of the ardour of youth has been carried into 
 manhood ; it is still borne onward into old age. Nor does the 
 activity of manhood, idealized by the ardour of youth, die 
 with the dying of the work of manhood. It, too, is carried 
 
214 Old Age. Serving the Lord. 
 
 into old age. It is then that old age is perfect. Old age is 
 not the decaying of the man ; it is his highest reach on earth ; 
 the completion of all periods in one, the crown of life. This 
 is the fine doctrine of continuity the historical continuity 
 of personality ; each period of life knit to each, the powers 
 and practice, the thoughts and feelings of each time woven 
 in and through one another, so that the growth is as natural, 
 as successive, as steady, as beautiful and as finished as the 
 growth of a great tree. 
 
 These are the things to be expanded. And first take the 
 contrast. Look at old age which has come on a man when 
 none of this previous work has been done. 
 
 I described what manhood was when all that belonged 
 to youth had been squandered, so that none of youth's 
 fine spirit was carried on into the graver activities of middle 
 age a manhood subject to the transient world, worshipping 
 the idol of wealth, enslaved by dreary cares, corrupted with 
 work which turns into a disease ; without the joy of love, 
 abandoned of romance, undone of dreams, having no ideals, 
 disbelieving in aspirations ; successful without, ruined within ; 
 and when old age touches it, exhausted. 
 
 What kind of an old age is that which follows ? It has 
 none of the spirit of youth in it. The man hates his old 
 age, and hates it all the more when he remembers his youth : 
 for he thinks how much he hoped for, how passionately he 
 wrought and felt, how eager was his love, how high were his 
 ideals, how bright were the wings of joy on which he was 
 borne along. And now it is all gone ! Not one trace of 
 it remains within ; not one ray of it is shining on his 
 heart. And as his nature is either stern or soft, so does he 
 
Old Age. Serving the Lord. 2 1 5 
 
 turn in age to fruitless scorn or to fruitless sorrow sour 
 scorn of the ancient time when he believed and loved and 
 dreamed for has it not all proved false, is it not all outworn, 
 all turned into evil ? 
 
 " Virtue ! to be good and just ! 
 
 Every heart when sifted well, 
 Is a clot of warmer dust 
 
 Mixed with cunning sparks of hell." 
 
 Or, it is not scorn, but bitter and miserable sorrow to 
 feel that all is gone by, save vain regrets, vain longing for 
 the swift foot and the quick heart, hungry wailing for the 
 days that are no more till the corrupting apathy that waits 
 for death deepens in his soul, or the nameless horror of 
 death rules him like a tyrant, crying out " In me there will 
 not even be the memory of fire and joy." 
 
 Nor has this dreary old age the powers of manhood in it. 
 For the man having had no youth in his manhood, has had 
 nothing to lift his work over monotony, and when he can 
 do it no more, is weary of it even to sickness, and yet more 
 weary of not having it to do. He misses his labour, yet 
 hates it ; strives to do it, but gives up striving. His life is 
 now so empty that, when he is not half mad with the lone- 
 liness of doing nothing, he half maddens others with 
 irritability and complaint, with all the misery and misery- 
 making of angry impotence. He has neither fervour of 
 heart, nor capacity for activity neither youth nor manhood 
 in old age. 
 
 And does he serve the Lord? Is he fit to fulfil the 
 perfect work of the last years of life ? Not he ! He has 
 neither served the Lord through youth nor manhood. He 
 
216 Old Age. Serving the Lord. 
 
 is not likely to do so now with any joy or peace. There 
 are those who cannot begin to search for God if they have 
 neglected Him all their life. It is too late. The ground 
 within is too hard, too beaten down with the trampling of 
 battering days to receive the seed of God ; or too choked 
 with the thorns and thistles of selfish worldliness to let 
 the seed grow, even should it creep into the soil. Others do 
 not care. " Death is coming fast. Let me eat and drink," 
 they say, " for to-morrow I die." It is as common a cry in 
 chilly age as in hot-hearted youth. If the old have none of 
 youth's spiritual fervour, they will seek what sensual fervour 
 there may yet be left. If they have no romance within, 
 there is still " savoury venison such as my soul loveth." If 
 they can be active no more to win money, they can console 
 themselves with contemplating it. " At least, I shall die 
 rich," they say, " and to walk among my barns warms my 
 heart." In these lives God does not abide. They cannot 
 serve the Lord ; and they die alone, looking out into dark- 
 ness, insatiably clinging to life like a drowning sailor to the 
 rock against which the waves are breaking him to pieces. 
 
 Some, however, do succeed in finding God their Father, 
 though they have not served Him in the past. But with 
 what pain, with what trouble is the work done ? For all 
 the hard ground of the old life has to be broken up, and 
 this is terrible work for an old man. Or if he have not 
 the strong nature which needs this rough ploughing, and 
 have a nature either dull or weak, how little joy he has 
 in serving God ! How lifeless now are all his efforts ! 
 How dimly, as through a window of horn, does he see the 
 celestial city and the face of God ! And what regret they 
 
Old Age. Serving the Lord. 217 
 
 both possess. For they have only the dregs of life to offer 
 to their Father ; and though He accepts them with infinite 
 love, yet, in proportion as they feel His love, have they the 
 sorrow of loving Him all too kte ; of having but little 
 fervour to give, little work of which they are now capable. 
 A maimed, imperfect, joyless, regretful old age. 
 
 ii. It should be different : it is different for those who 
 have added the serving of the Lord to the ardour of youth, 
 and ennobled with it the business of middle age. God has 
 been dear to them in the past ; He is dearer now. Com- 
 munion with Him has made youth sweeter, brighter, holier ; 
 manhood wiser, more loving, more ideal : while tempted, 
 conquering ; while troubled, still at peace. And now the 
 hour is come when we may draw still nearer to Him whom 
 we have served all our life long. The noise of life is over, 
 and we can listen, far apart, to the " undisturbed song of 
 pure concent." The temptations of life are no more. They 
 lie dead, like the Egyptians on the sea-shore, and in our 
 hearts is the song of Miriam " Sing ye to the Lord, for He 
 hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath He 
 thrown into the sea. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, 
 but unto Thy name be the praise." The troubles of life 
 are no more trouble. They have been transmuted into 
 inward powers. The cares of life are fled away ; they are 
 with God, cast on Him, for He careth for us. All is deep 
 peace ; and we say to ourselves as we go to rest each night, 
 and it is both prayer and praise " He maketh the storm a 
 calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they 
 glad because they are at rest, so He bringeth them to the 
 haven where they would be." Then we know the meaning of 
 
218 Old Age. Serving the Lord. 
 
 Immanuel God with us ; deep, ineffable, unbroken, eternal 
 communion with God, as of friend with friend, so that we 
 have the dearest affection of manhood with Him ; as of 
 Teacher with pupil still, so that we feel young again with 
 Him ; as of Father with child, so that, in the winter of age, 
 we walk with Him through the fields of childhood, till, in 
 this communion with Him who is for ever old and for ever 
 young, we know no fixity of feeling as to youth, or middle- 
 age, or old age, but live in that eternity of God which keeps 
 the powers of all the three. 
 
 And it is in and through this deep communion that we 
 at last understand that saying of St. Paul's " Now abideth 
 Faith, Hope, and Charity, these three; but the greatest 
 of these is Charity." 
 
 The Hope which was so plentiful in youth is no longer 
 with us in age. It was hope for things belonging to this 
 world, and for our own inner life ; and as to the things of 
 this world, we have passed through them ; and as to our 
 own inner life, we have attained the things we hoped for 
 when we were young. Hope, therefore, unless we are very 
 anxious to live on and some have that desire does not 
 much trouble old age. Or, if we hope, it is not for our- 
 selves, but for others. And, indeed, one of the most 
 beautiful things which can belong to old age, and which 
 is as fair for others to see as it is for the old themselves to 
 feel, is its happy hopefulness for others. It loses all trouble 
 at the defeat of bygone hopes in the joy with which it 
 prophecies the success, and cheers the despondency, of the 
 young. " Let me abide in my own hopes no more," cries 
 the old man "and be troubled with them no more. But in 
 
l/<' VI] 
 
 f&l J 
 
 \^': '^ 
 
 Old Age. Serving the Lord. 219 
 
 the new hopes of the world, I live. In all the expectations 
 of mankind, in the poetry, romance, dreams, and ideals of 
 youth, I will abide and sympathize." 
 
 So also is it with Faith. All that the old man once saw 
 far off, and believed in, is now his own. He has the sub- 
 stance. The eternal world is in him. God needs no 
 proof; for he is in God, and God in him. But, as before it 
 was with hope, so is it now with faith. No longer personal, 
 it passes out of himself and becomes active for others. He 
 believes in men and for men ; and his faith for them, living 
 in them, cheers, uplifts, and sends them forward when they 
 faint in the race, or weary in the battle. 
 
 But it is not so with Love. Love not only passes from 
 him to the outer world, but abides within him. Indeed, I 
 may express what I have said about hope and faith by 
 saying that they have changed into love ; or, better, that 
 they have become new powers of love. Love within, filling 
 the old man's soul, is his very life ; felt in silence, when he 
 sits apart as in youthful sunshine ; flowing through every 
 memory, kindling in every thought ; making tender every 
 book he reads, every soul he meets, every changing of the 
 sky, every music in his ear. For nothing happens hour by 
 hour, into which does not pour, out of the long experi- 
 ences of feeling, a freshening tide of loving thoughts, of 
 soft and fair associations. 
 
 This inner life of love passes from him outwards, and 
 is like a summer atmosphere in which his home and friends 
 are warmed and made more happy ; in which sorrows 
 and pains are healed, and mercy poured on wrong, and sins 
 covered, and quarrels laid by, and injuries forgotten. An 
 
22O Old Age. Serving the Lord. 
 
 exquisite gentleness, a mellowed justice, an inexhaustible 
 forgiveness are the old man's heritage ; and they are given 
 to all around him, so that they enter into all. This life, so 
 lived, is like an image of God with man ; and in truth it is 
 the spirit of the Father rising like light and life from the 
 depths of the old man's heart, and pouring itself forth into 
 the world. One ancient story represents the whole. It 
 was the custom of the disciples of St. John, when he 
 had passed the age of ninety and could scarcely speak to 
 them, to carry the aged apostle every day into the church, 
 and to lay him in their midst. And the old man contented 
 himself with stretching forth his hands towards the crowd, 
 and saying to them, " Little children, love one another." 
 And being asked why he said nothing else, he answered, 
 " That if they truly did so, it were enough." 
 
 And in and through all this life is the deepening of 
 personality. None of these things that the old man feels 
 are new, in the sense that they are only now beginning to 
 act, or to be felt. They have acted and been felt from 
 the beginning. Youth has had them ; manhood has had 
 them ; and now old age has them more fully still. This 
 is their flower. Hence the sense of continuity in life, on 
 which I have already touched, deepens ; and, with the feeling 
 that the whole of life is wrought together into one harmoni- 
 ous whole, the conviction of personality is increased. 
 And this personality is felt to be from God, and to abide 
 in God. The old man knows that God has been the living 
 warp upon which the pattern of his life has, from beginning 
 to end, been woven. 
 
 And now, what is the deep, the exciting knowledge which 
 
Old Age. Serving the Lord. 221 
 
 grows out of that conviction of the continuity of personality 
 from youth to age, and out of its divine foundation? It is 
 this That decay cannot injure or death destroy a life 
 which has cost so much trouble to weave together 
 into continuity. And doubling that conviction, as it 
 were with tenfold proof, is the strange and glorious thing 
 often revealed to us in old age that neither youth nor 
 manhood are the times in which the graces and gifts which 
 are highest in man reach their full perfection. It is 
 now, now that the man is old, now that decay and death are 
 near, that the best things are in flower love, mercy, 
 righteousness, joy, peace, humanity and the more 
 perfect they are, the more they carry with them the con- 
 viction of their immortality. 
 
 That glorious conviction, now established, makes all these 
 graces and gifts more perfect. And then, old age, that so 
 many vainly pity, goes on its way down hill, upborne by 
 two companions, joy and peace, and feeling in every touch 
 of decay of body, in every warning that death gives, not the 
 approach of dissolution, but a prophecy of everlasting 
 life. 
 
 This is old age serving the Lord. It seems to be only 
 contemplation, to be all an inner life. But no ! Into this 
 serving of the Lord is carried onwards the activity of man- 
 hood. Age has its own business, and it will now be done 
 with activity business of cheering, of comforting, of im- 
 pelling, of using experience for help, of being a centre of 
 peace, a living witness to righteousness and the beauty of 
 righteousness, of hoping and believing for others till they 
 believe and hope for themselves. And in all this business 
 
222 Old Age. Serving the Lord. 
 
 the old man is not slothful. For all the habit of his man- 
 hood cleaves to him, and to the last he works in this noble 
 and quiet way ; and feels again in this bearing into old age 
 of the powers of manhood, the continuity and deepening of 
 personality. 
 
 Nor is youth unrepresented. 
 
 Its joy remains. The old man's spirit has never ceased 
 to be fervent. Through manhood his youth has lived 
 continuously. Here it is still, in old age. Often, in memory, 
 in dreams, all the romance of early life is present, and 
 his heart beats as fast in age as in the days of old. Still 
 undiminished, even deepened, is the love of beauty. Even 
 in the hour of death the face lights up with joy, thinking of 
 the summer fields and the flying clouds, and the rolling of 
 the sea. And passionate feeling, felt through all beauty, 
 kindled when hearing of some great and noble action, brings 
 tears to the eyes, as warm as those which filled the eyes of 
 youth. 
 
 Nor yet do dreams for the future of the world die in old 
 age. They also are here ; but they have changed their 
 object. Once they were for the human life of the man 
 himself, and for all he would do ; or for the human race, 
 and for all that it would develop in the future. Now, he 
 dreams of all he will be, and of all mankind will be, 
 in the greater, larger world beyond this earth. And 
 these visions are as glorious, as brightly coloured, as 
 the dreams of youth, and far more certain of fulfilment. 
 And as to the ideals to which he aspired when young, he 
 knows he is to find them absolutely fulfilled in the future 
 world. He will touch, and realize, and become at one with 
 
Old Age. Serving the Lord. 223 
 
 perfect self-sacrifice, absolute love, essential truth, eternal 
 knowledge those divine things which here on earth 
 he knew only in part, and saw, darkly, as through a 
 glass. 
 
 So falls on him, while still he is here, the radiance of the 
 other world. In the depths of his soul are all the rapture 
 of youth, all the strength of manhood. Neither youth nor 
 manhood have more excited imaginations, more of all the 
 powers of life, more of all the rushing fire of love, than the 
 old man has now within himself, when, like the sea-king of 
 old, he is laid in the bosom of the ship beneath the 
 mast, with the golden flag flying above his head, and sent 
 forth alone into the sea of eternity to meet God, and 
 with Him to live for ever not slothful in business ; fervent 
 in spirit ; serving the Lord. 
 
 Henderson, Rait, & Sfalding, Printers, 3 & j, Marylelwie T.ane, 
 
JUST PUBLISHED. 
 
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 OF THE 
 
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